ONSEN! ONSEN! ONSEN!

No, I didn't go.

But I joined the Onsen club by accident. Because it turns out buses are noisy.

When I had spoken to Yuan on the bus I thought he said that he was in a club that goes to famous places around Japan. Apparently they go to famous ONSEN around Japan. For the uninitated, onsen are hot springs. In the sides of volcanoes. That you bathe in. In public.

Naked.

So hey... should be an experience, eh?

Everyone in the club is REALLY nice so I'm going to keep going. They speak Japanese primarily during the meetings, and the speak it at, you know, native fluency. So I follow what I can, and I laugh when they laugh and applaud when they applaud.

And then go back to my room and weep at my incompetence.

Not really, though. Yuan is helping me along in the meetings and he let me know about this "nihongonet" thing that meets on Fridays where foreigners go and practice their Japanese, so I'm gonna go to that. Cause I don't speak Japanese. And I need to apparently. You know, being in Japan and all.

So that went well, and the president of the club is really nice (ah good, I didn't objectify her by blurting out how hot she is. Proud of myself). There was free food so that really adds to the experience, and after the meeting everyone was nice enough to speak half and half to me, so it wasn't so bad. Turns out the pres studied in America for a year (in Fargo apparently. Not sure why they'd subject the poor Japanese students to the place, but hey, whatever).

So that's all that. Classes aside from interpreting are going well, so that's good. And I bought some food that apparently has mayonnaise in it. It was good after you got rid of the mayo. Again... I need to learn to read labels. Cause this said in bright yellow katakana "MAYONNAISE". D'oh.

After classes I went to the bathroom. And I was enlightened, I saw a sign!



Okay, maybe enlightened is less the word I'm looking for. Bewildered? I'm serious, does anyone know what this sign means? It's like.... are there rebels that bring their own toilet paper around in Japan and then tell people about it? Because even if I try to make sense of this, nobody is going to KNOW if you use other toilet paper. Or construction paper, wood chips, copies of seventeen magazine. I really just don't understand Japan.

Oh, sorry. I did that wrong.

Fucking Japan!

Also, my attention span has gotten worse:



It's a bottle birdy! You can see the wings, and the tail, and one of the eyes! And you can't tell from this angle, but the british lady on the front is the beak.

Yeah, I need help.

And I still haven't posted those pictures from the other day! HA! You'll never see them!

Nah, I'm gonna set up a flickr account for anyone who cares. It'll have a bunch of behind the scenes photos for you to look at.

No, that doesn't mean that I'll be without pants.