Anyways, I went to Yufuin today! It was awesome. First time in a car since I got to Japan, so that was cool too. Still weirded out by driving on the wrong side of the road though. You don't notice it as much in a bus. Also, in some parts of Japan apparently one way streets are two way streets. What I mean by this is the road is wide enough for one car to go down. BARELY. But for some reason it's two ways, and they just have a traffic operator every 60 feet or so point at cars and having them pull over so another one can go through. It's all quite stupid.
But look, a kitty!
D'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW. There are tons of outdoor cats in Japan, I love it.
But yeah, first thing we did when we got to Yufuin was get lunch, which is a good thing because I was starving. I opted with the group that went to the cafe, and we sat on the deck to get served. It had a great view of the lake in Yufuin (Kinchoumizu? Something like that. I forgot to write down the name). I took a bunch of pictures of it and they're all up in the photobucket dump site, so check them out. There was a huge koi swimming around, and a bunch of giant ducks. Seriously. The lake was really pretty though and the food was good.
Being a manly man I picked the first thing on the menu that had meat in it. Turned out to be this. So, miso soup and a rice bowl with a bunch of pork and green leafy things in it. Turned out to be pretty good, and there was this...stuff on it that tasted sort of good, and I made a mental note to not ask anybody what it was, because I probably would've broke down vomiting if I knew. I'm like that.
Anyways, here's the lake. I managed to get the reflection sparkles in a shot, and that startled me for some reason, so I'm excited.:
So after food time, onsen time came. Sort of. The main goal was to come there for an interview, which being that I speak too little Japanese to do an interview, involved me sitting there trying to pick up on what everyone was saying for an hour. But hey, at least it got us free admission to the hot springs, which was nice cause it was a 5 dollar spring if I overheard correctly. That's really expensive for hot springs, as they're normally 50 to 100 yen. So yeah. Really nice. Had complementary towels, actual shower heads, shaving razors, combs, etcetera. Took a comb and a razor as self proclaimed auto-omiyage (omiyage is an important word in Japanese. souvenirs are lifeblood). In the process apparently I taught a Japanese man how to steal, because he took one of the towels. Granted they are complementary, but the razors and combs and stuff were intended to be taken, what with the disposable packaging and all. The towels had umm...a dirty towel basket. So that they can clean them.
Well then....
Anyways, this hot spring was outdoors which is sort of what I expected from all of them. When we were all significantly less naked I went back and took a photo. A poor photo, but this is all you get dammit. So here:
Afterwards we went to a place that I aspire to own one day that was essentially a mix between a pub and a cafe. The owner was outside watering flowers in his kickass bartender outfit and goatee and oh god it smelled pretty. The...the flowers. Shut up.
But yeah, inside looked like this:
That's a good thing, I promise.
It had that sort of "sophisticate" feel to it and the guy was REALLY friendly and told us stories (haha...in Japanese. Dammit) and mixed the drinks well. The capuccinos looked awesome, and apparently my friend's Irish coffee was the best thing ever. And one of the drinks had a story about it involving a rainbow of flavor. I'm serious. That's about all I could pick up from the story, so be thankful you get that. Sure, you'd probably like context, but you know what? I really don't have any.
Anyways, I got an apple juice because I'm boring and didn't feel like trying to figure out the menu, especially cause I was lied to when I was told it was all just coffee. Blargh. NEXT TIME...
I would LOVE to own a type of gentleman's club (not that kind) like that though. Just a nice garden outside, fancy new world knick knacks, weird items hung everywhere, serving drinks and snacks to people. I think that'd be kinda cool. I wanted to be a bartender when I was younger thanks to bad detective stories and westerns. This guy proved to me that those characters actually EXIST, so I don't see why I couldn't do it.
Ah well. Que sera sera.
I came back with the early group (the other group stuck around to go eat more and go drinking) which was for the dual purpose of my being exhausted from not sleeping the night before, and for the fact that Tuesdays ARE YAKITORI DAY YEAH! Unfortunately, Yakitori-san wasn't here today. This depressed, saddened, and filled me with grief. So as a result, tomorrow I'll have to go to You Me town and get a whole bunch of half price yakitori to make up for it.
Also to try dangerous experiments. I'll tell Fanxing to blog for me in case I die ass a result. You're all invited to the funeral. Punch will be served.
Oh yes, the trip to Oita is called off for tomorrow. I'd be more upset but I can now use the day to finish my homework/study for my test on Thursday. So there's that.
I need to end these on more witty sentences like I used to.
Edit: I'm not sure how many people notice this, but I tend to edit this things once or twice. I post it with the full size pictures because it stopped auto-resizing them, then I go through and resize them myself. Then I view the blog and make sure all the pictures are right and fix the spelling errors I catch. Seriously. I work hard at this, you jerks.
Edit edit: Against my better judgement, I'm putting a picture of myself in the blog for once. I tend not to take these, but the Japanese refuse to let you get away with it. I'm putting it up just to show the humor of the size difference. I feel like I look like a different species next to them. The size difference isn't quite as noticeable from my perspective when I'm WITH them, but you notice it in the way things are designed. I'm too tall for most of the chairs and desks here so that gets irritating.
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