I am so good

At updating late.

I like how I made a point to tell people that I'll be updating by noon and I've done that once in the past two weeks. I'm pretty cool like that. You should model your ability to be punctual on me.

But hey, at least I brought pictures this time. Pictures of Japan! Not just of my food. Though there is one of those too.

It was double hot today and I walked down the road to get these pictures for about 20minutes. If you don't appreciate these I might cry. Maybe I'll stop blogging. That in addition to the fact that I've been actually logging off of AIM will make it seem like I just up and died.

Or stopped loving you.

Anyways, pictures:




The first leg of the journey! Notice the empty streets. Notice the empty NARROW streets. The main thing I've noticed is that there is no passing lane and barely any driving room in Japan. The buses are riding uphill on these mountainous areas with about two inches of clearance from the side. It's insane.



Karasu. BOID. It's a crow, yeah. And it's huge. Like up to my knee. I tried toget a picture of it before it took off into the air but I scared it (funny how that works) and that was the best shot I could get.



More shots of the road. Note how the sidewalk to nowhere is actually wider than the driving area itself. I guess it's cause more people walk than drive in Japan, but honestly, if you're willing to walk to Beppu knowing what's in store for you then we'll probably never see you again.







That's all some scenery for you. The mountains, the trees, the city, and that watery lookin stuff is the bay. I'm not sure if it has a name, but for now we'll call it the Bay of Water. I'm being forced on a team building exercise to hang out there on the 18th. At least there will be free food.

Speaking of food:



Turns out to get the best results shooting spiders I have to set my camera to "cuisine" mode. Huh. That's odd, JAPAN.

But really, speaking of food:



Mmm. More ramen. They call it ラーメン here by the way (it's pronounced ramen, but pretentiously). It was pretty damned good. The stock they used for this was chickeny, so I enjoyed that 100 times more than the chinese soup stock in the other one. The egg was a sonuvabitch to get a hold of using chopsticks. IT's all slippery and covered in soup (duh). That..blackish...greenish stuff on the bottom right I think was called mammen. I'm assuming they are fish flakes, but they taste like absolutely nothing. Not like how tofu tastes like nothing and then tastes like what you cook it in. These retain their nothing flavor and add nothing but miserable neutrality to the dish. Why they are used is beyond me, but if I can get the soup without them it'll be like godsend for me.

That's all the pictures I took. Well, all the ones that turned out right. I had this awesome shot of some trees that was REALLY blurry, and I took a picture of a car but apparently my thumb was over the lens somehow and it came out all black. Oh well. The cars here are boxy and they have so much wind resistance due to lacking aerodynamics that you feel them push by you when they pass.

Holy poop, Batman what a long post. I guess it's a good thing I don't really have anything left to say. You can leave now, just be sure to close the door, it gets drafty. I think I'll keep rambling for another minute or so though.

My Japanese classes are weird. It's a mix of stuff I already know with stuff I don't already know. It's supposed to be the hard level which apparently means nobody speaks in English and the teachers don't teach you anything. Cause they're essentially telling us what page we're using and then tell us to work in pairs and sit back in the chair and laugh at us.

They're nice enough though (I just edited the "But" out of the beginning of the sentence. It's a horrible habit of mine and I apologize to all the English majors that read my blog. I also end a lot of sentences with prepositions. But hey, screw off.) The language stuff isn't that hard and I know about 80% of the Kanji we're using. It's a nice recap with some new grammar points, essentially. Picture knowing all the vocab already, and just being taught how to use it more efficiently. That's basically what the class is,for me at least.

I hate the heat and I always have. Due to the fact that it was so hot out, I was miserable from noon-onwards today. And I even obliged to wear shorts out! Ridiculous! After classes I went to the cafeteria and then remembered that the Pacific Cafe sells ice cream. So I was miserable and sweaty and gross but the magical elixir (in this case NOT mead) lifted me into a mood, reaffirming my stance on ice cream solving everything (wars people, think of the possibilities! Nobody in the Middle East hates us, it's just REALLY HOT there.)

I'm out of things to drink aside from the vile tap water, so I'm going to the vending machine. Which means I should probably stop rambling and hit the submit button. Thank you for anyone who read this far for some reason. Seriously, there's something wrong with you.

Here's a present(you wish you were this cool when you were 4).

That's all for now.