No post today

I know by posting it's kind of contradictory. But I'm ass deep in a project that's due tomorrow so I don't have the time to do anything for you. As a result, I stole a comic from Penny Arcade that should help explain the exchange rate on Japanese Yen.


Everything copyright Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Visit their site to prevent my chances of getting sued or something.
I'll be back tomorrow with your regularly scheduled crap of crap.

All Aboard the Ho Train

Got my potato croquette fix today. Mmmm mm.

And I went to Beppu!

I found out the secrets of those mysterious doors. Despite not finding any sliding panels on my first investigation, I looked around harder this time (see: Actually looking) and found out there are actually giant plexiglass panels in the ceiling that slide all the way down and block things off.

I'm not sure why they don't use the, you know, store front with a cage thing that we do in America. Those Japanese sure like to make things tricky.

I bought a bunch of essentials at You Me Town. Some more reading material, some toys, another dragon ball (The 1 star ball. I'm almost there!) some pens, a rack for my schoolwork.

Oh, and a MEXICAN SECTION IN THE GROCERY STORE OMG YES.

By section I mean a shelf with about a foot of Mexican products (see: taco shells and taco sauce. And salsa) and a little mexican flag on it. Aww, ain't that cute. Doesn't matter, I bought some ground beef and this motha's gonna make some tacos this weekend. Gonna be SO CASH.

Also, I bought some "Smoky Salami" pringles, which apparently is a "Flavor of Fall" according to the Japanese Pringles company. I'm not sure why, but they are delicious. Ridiculously so.

I think I'm going to start limiting my spending. Gonna take out 100 dollars on Mondays, and if I run out before the week is over, that's too bad unless I need food or something important comes up like schoolbooks or something. Unless I get a job I think I need to act responsible (What? BLASPHEMY!)

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go ignore my homework and play with my new action figures.

They are NOT dollies!

Dragon Balls

I'm collecting them.



So far I only have the five star ball, but that just means that I'm one step closer to collecting them all. After I get the other 6 I'll have one of my wishes granted. I'm not sure what it is. I think I'll try to cheat the dragon by writing on a sheet of paper all the things I want and then being all "I want my life to be like the things written on this paper." I dunno if that'll work or not, they never tried to exploit that loophole. He might just screw me over and make the world two dimensional. Or just me. That'd probably hurt.

I didn't do anything today aside from use my supernatural senses to determine that I should probably buy more toilet paper, so let's show some pictures:




This may not look like anything special, but I assure you it is. Okay, well maybe special should be in quotes. It's "special." There, that's better. That's pretty much how I describe Japan anyways. But this is a glass door, in the middle of the mall. FOR NO REASON. I looked around. There aren't any panels to connect to it to block off the area, and the door is locked. It's just a door in the middle of the floor. I've always wanted one, but for the purpose of my amusement, and probably somewhere in my yard or inside my house. Or I'd just build it in the middle of the woods somewhere. But it makes even less sense to be in a professional structure.

Also holy crap I just realized there is a tags list box on the bottom of this window. 40+ blogs in and I just notice this now. I should probably start putting things in there. Maybe I'll make some money off of it or get a book deal or something. Sweet. Anyways, more pictures:



Hurray! It's an import store! Called Deli for some reason. And since I'm in Japan their primary import is....American things! Oh god sweet succulent heaven. They have pringles there, AMERICAN pringles. None of this miso soup boiled squid flavored crap. Thank God for silly western trend stores. They also sell a lot of Disney stuff in there. Apparently America = Disney, cause I've had a good amount of people ask me about Disney World.



This is a pastry I bought today. I ate the left ear first, for anyone who was dying to know. The thing was filled with chocolate pudding/frosting/filling/stuff so it was delicious through and through. Japan is cool that way.

Now, back to my fortress of solitude.

[whoosh]

Goin Down to Melbourne

Gonna have myself a time. Friendly faces everywhere, dingos shouting "ATE YOUR BABY"
Goin down to Melbourne gonna see if I can't unwind. Kangaroos and wallabies! Koalas eating EUCALYPTUS.

So yeah. Not that I care much about either candidate, but Britz Gritz Cracker (We don't use real names, not in THIS blog) asked me if I'd stay in Japan if McCain got elected. Nah, Japan sucks. But Australia's only like 100 dollars away, so why not.

For those of you who don't know, Japan is not a Christian nation. As such, they don't believe in daylight savings time. Or time zones for that matter. All of Japan is on one time zone, which means it gets dark sometime between 5 and 6 where I live. It makes you tired.

You may be saying to yourself "Fuck this guy, and fuck his shit. Why should I care about what this straight up foo' be spillin?" Well I'll tell you why, holmes. This means that I am now 14 hours into your future. I am enjoying the future fourteen times as much as you are. As thus, I still maintain that the blog will be updated at noon o clock eastern standard time. This just means that I now have until 2am to get it done. Sure, I'll probably stick with my regular routine so it'll be updated at about 11ish now, but still. Don't EXPECT it until noon.

Also, I've decided. Just simply don't expect me to upload the pictures unless it's not Monday or Thursday. I don't have the mindset to concentrate after all my classes those days. Especially days like today where, oh say, the ATMs were closed for a holiday that our school doesn't celebrate so I had no money for food. Thank God I didn't finish all the stuff in my fridge, although my bread had things growing on it.

I wish it was okay to take pictures of random people. Anyone who's looked through my pictures knows it's totally cool to take pictures of peoples' kids though. (God that sounds creepy). But no, if you're out with a group of friends and someone has a kid that is doing crazy things apparently the parents are filled with pride if you take pictures of the insanity. That's a much better reaction than the triple lawsuit you get in America.

I'm looking into a job here. Not anytime soon, but I should get my work visa and start putting in applications at the end of the semester for next semester.

What will I be doing?

Why, teaching, of course.

English. To Middle Schoolers.

I am going to get deported so fast.

Of Brothels and Hot soup

A dark alley, the middle of the evening. It gets dark early around here. The sun seems to know the kind of people that it oversees. These are nig ht dwellers, and he knows he is not wanted around them. He retires early, as if to let the creatures of the darkness go about their business unmolested.

In the blackened streets debauchery can be seen in every direction. Street vendors of various degrees of legality, with their quick-roll matts filled with goods, mostly illegitimate, but things fall off the backs of trucks quite frequently around here. Gambling parlours where husbands abandon their happy lives to make room for the glint of the only love most will ever know in this cruel world.

Offset from view just a bit lies a sign, a vague neon glow emanating from it, as if its too tired to try for your attention anymore. It doesn't need to try though; its customers know that it's there, and word of mouth is more than enough. Lonely souls enter, full pockets and empty hopes. Poor souls leave with broken pride and thoughts of why it will never get better.

I walk on by. Make no eye contact. Keep moving. This is not your place. It is not your town. These are not your people and this is not your life. Keep walking.

I make it to my destination. The man at the counter gives me a curious look. He can tell I don't belong here, but that's not his concern. He reaches over the counter with a bowl of hot soup. It's delicious. It's gone.

I pay the man and mutter a thank you. I look dead ahead, seeing nothing but the lights out of the corners of my eyes, screaming for my attention but I pay them none. I have a destination. It's not this place.

I make it to the bus stop. People speak in a strange language around me as I wait, a strange language that I can vaguely understand. They wouldn't care if they knew. People will talk about anything in public.

The bus comes. It's a long ride in the darkness. But I can escape. Escape to my asylum, where I can pound on the walls, scratch off the paint. Yell at the voices in my head. Cry out in desperation and loneliness, shouting at the cold world.

But at least here it all makes sense.







Hehe that was fun. But seriously, I went to You Me town. Was supposed to go to karaoke, but JM had to study and do homework and such, so that was called off. I was supposed to meet Yuan there, but it just didn't happen. Got on the wrong bus or we just missed each other or SOMETHING.

I went shopping for some kids manga to practice my Japanese, and I ended up getting Yotsuba& volume 2, and a Super Mario Bros manga. So yeah, pretty neat. And they cost like a third of what they do in America, so thats pretty cool. Ran into some people I knew and we parted ways, but I eventually did find Yuan and some other people from Senjinkai and we wandered around You me town for a bit. Note: for some reason, Japanese kids enjoy running. A LOT. FOR NO REASON. And the parents don't care. It's insane. These kids will run like 8 stores down and back. In America the parents would drop to their knees in tears thinking the kids will get snatched up if they get 20 feet from their leash. Insanity.

Went to a real ramen shop with senjinkai and it was pretty good. Apparently it was supposed to be AWESOME but I'll reserve my judgement until I try other places. My American palate doesn't love the same things that these Japanese people do, so I'll probably fall in love with a completely different dish. And I DID find a Chinese restaurant, so hopefully I can get there soon. Yay.

But on brothels: yeah. Found one. Apparently I've walked past it like....40 times. And never knew it, cause I didn't care too. Yuan knows everything about it, and I'm too polite to ask why. Apparently all the women who work there are late teens, early 20's and very pretty and 100 dollars will buy you 20 minutes with a lady. That HARDLY seems worth it.

Also, it's called Play Station. Take a minute to laugh and then moan that you'll never be able to play video games without thinking about prostitution again.

Also: BBQ pringles. Oh comfort food, how I love thee.

I tried my hand at cooking again today. French Toast this time. And then I burned my hand. Yeah... go me. Apparently you're not supposed to stabilize pans while you're cooking things. I guess they're hot or something, I dunno. I'm not a scientist.

Three more weeks and then I'm done bitching about classes. I can't wait.

That's all for now. Pictures later, camera died again (RICHAAAAAARDS!)

Chinese Food

I miss it so much I'm reading the wikipedia article on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_food

Oy vay. I still need to see if I can find a restaurant around here. People tell me they exist, but I haven't been able to FIND any. We shall soon see.

Chinese cultural festival was today. It was...less than exhilarating. There were something like 3 booths for food up and 3 more booths for selling things. And there was a stage set up but there was mostly just music playing from a cd system. So...kinda lame. One good thing though: Yakitori.

I wake up every morning going "Just once, I'd like yakitori-san to be here for an extra day in the week. I love that yakitori so much". Well, today was that day. Rawk.

The other food was good too. I got invited to eat the leftovers with the workers somehow. I went to go buy some and they said they were closed but then a girl spoke up saying "If you want you can help us finish what we have left" (or the approximate to that, but in severely broken English). I failed at it and only got about half a cup of the soup for my efforts, despite one of the girls assisting me, but I said "Hao chi fan, xie xie ni" which to my best knowledge means "Good food, thank you". So that went well.

Also, one of my classmates was there, who is apparently Chinese (the fiend!). He kept trying to get me to do calligraphy, but for the life of me I couldn't remember my Chinese name from class so I made due with drawing a picture. But I couldn't think of what to draw, so I go "Ota, what should I draw?" and Ota said "Draw Spiderman!"

So I did.



Rest of the day was mostly laundry, doing some homework,and walking back and forth from the bus station debating whether or not I should go to the mall. I decided ultimately not to based on the fact that I'm supposed to go to karaoke tomorrow.

Or was, rather.

Yuan just stopped by my room to let me know that JM had to study really hard and couldn't come with us and some of the other girls were were bringing aren't in Beppu right now. So he made me go to JM's room to...tell him I was sad that we weren't going, apparently. I'm not sure how that happened. Anyways, there was a girl there and I arm wrestled her and she cheated by tickling me.

And I got a brushburn on my elbow.

Man, Japanese people are such jerks.

Also: Image dump! Check out my hideous photobucket link for new pics. And for people that have been complaining about my spelling, if you tell me I tend to go back and edit the post. So I may bitch and moan about how much of a jerk you are, but I sort of appreciate it I guess? I type this up in Internet Explorer so no default spell checker like Firefox has. Lame.

The World of Tomorrooooow!

I don't know why this entry is titled that. Technically I live there for two hours a day (if you're checking from EST) but still.

I woke up at noon today. I don't remember turning my alarms off...but they were both off. And my class ends at noon plus 10, so Basically I missed class.

Awesome.

So I showered, lounged around for a bit and then remembered that I'm supposed to meet one of my Japanese friends so we can work on classwork together.

Go do that and it was actually kinda funy, despite how much I hate my classes. I told him he spoke really good English. No Japanese person will accept compliments. It's almost an insult to compliment them. So I explained it to him in a way that made it seem more like a fact to him to accept it, and accept he did. Then he gave me candy.

YAY CANDY!

Anyways, we're jointly working on the homework so that his English translations don't come out unintelligible and so that I don't fail the course.

I'm so glad that I'm a linguistics major. It gives me the understand of language enough to explain how and why things are the way they are. And trust me, everyone here has a LOT of questions about it. And they are all very, very odd questions.

Another friend told me I can probably get a job teaching English here, so I'm going to look into that. Considering how much more yen is worth than the US dollar (HAHAHAHA-oh... I made myself sad) I think it might be a good investment to find some work. That way I can come back to America a millionaire and pay off all my college debt. Ah, the American dream. Not owing anyone money.

Oh, I made some scrambled eggs today! I managed to not screw it up too! I know the ingredients for scrambled eggs are, well....eggs..... but I still botched it the first time, because I'm a magic man. Also: Do they sell shakers that contain a mixture of salt and pepper in America? Because if not this is another invention I need to bring to the states.

Tomorrow to yon Beppu. To buy comics and KFC at the mall. Wow, nothing like in America!