Darth Humid and Tomas Rainbows

Another two week break. Mainly due to laziness this time. Although I'm wiling to assign part of the blame to technical difficulties. Last time I connected my camera to my computer to upload photos, it decided to put all the pictures from Kyoto back on the camera (wtf?). For some reason it then took about 3 or 4 hours to go through the process of deleting them. My end was simply ctrl+a, del. That's like 2 seconds. What the fuck, computers? How you gonna take over the world if I'm outperforming you that bad?

Anyways... two weeks ago, Naoko and I went hiking! We went to azumayama, which is maybe an hour or so from Matsue. It was really nice, but it was hot as hell. And humid. More on that later. I've noticed that, in general, mountains in Japan are a bit different than in America (at least the ones I've been too). There's a lot of trees and large bushes, and they're all packed really tight together. There's also enough birds and insects making various noises that it occasionally felt like walking through a rain forest. Again, the damn humidity helped that illusion.

Here's a view from a clear spot midway up the mountain. This one was kind of unique in that the top was relatively free of dense tree growth.

Naoko and I at the top. We ate some lunch up there and our freaking McGuyver hike leader busted out some hot coffee and cold snacks (kind of like otter pops). At the top of a mountain. In Summer. This guy was prepared.

I'm sporting a bit of a derp face here, but it's pretty much the only group shot we have (minus the leader, who took the picture. Although the old guy in teal was kind of the de facto leader). The guy on the far left of the picture lent me the towel-thing on my head, because they were worried I would get sunburned. Japanese people are SUPER paranoid about the sun. They were arm guards or sweaters and all of them have hats. They also put on sunscreen (but their sunscreen is shit over here. I've been on two Summer outings so far. Used copious amounts of sunscreen on both. Still got sunburned both times).

I honestly don't remember what we did on Monday. The pictures on my iPhone make me think that maybe we went to the mall. Is that the week we saw Super 8, or did we see it the week before? Why am I asking this question to the internet? Well, yeah. Something occurred on Monday. I'm sure it was magical.

 This week, we went to Iwami Ginzan, which is a world heritage site silver mine that was in use for something around 400 years. I was not prepared for the extent of the trip. I thought it was like an hour away by car and just a little outing. It was two hours by bus and took up most of the day. Regardless, it was fun.

Here's the entrance of the cave. Not pictured: our feeling of absolute joy standing in front of that tunnel opening because the inside was like a damn air conditioner and it was making the unbearable heat somewhat bearable. I've always heard that mines are warm because they're deeper in the earth, but this one was, for whatever reason, a good 10-15 degrees cooler than it was outside. So nice.

Not a good place for claustrophobic people, however. Even Naoko had to duck down for parts of it.

At the end there was a pretty open tunnel heading up to the topside. It wasn't even that long. Didn't stop it from having a bunch of little chair-benches that folded down from the wall for people to sit on.

I really, really like this picture of Naoko. There's another one from a few seconds later where she's actually posing, but this one is better I think. Also, yes, those are heels. She wore heels, and they both broke, so she had difficulty walking back and was sad that her shoes that she really liked got broken. Then I was sad because she was sad. Her response when I told her she should really wear tennis shoes or something for trips like this? "But heels are cute." That logic, it is flawless. Really though, it wasn't that big a deal, I just felt bad that I couldn't help. It was a good excuse to avoid taking another few hours in side trips to temples on the walk back to the bus station (I kinda regret it now, but I was so damn tired at the time).

We did, however, visit one temple. It had a derp face lion. I tried so hard to make my mouth look like his, but I guess I'm just not cool enough :(

My air conditioner is broken this week, so we decided to do something where it wasn't about 100 degrees with humidity when we got back. Our decision was to go see Harry Potter. Randomly ran into my buddy Dustin, which was cool. Movie was pretty meh, though. Overall, it was a really good day. Today Naoko had work so I sat around and played video games. I like video games. :D

Random Shit:

1.) I forgot some stuff last time. Here it is: I got the dubious honor of holding a stinky drunk guy on his feet while we tried to figure out what to do with him. Naoko and I were leaving English Night at 5150 on Tuesday, and there was a loud thunk as an old drunk dude fell over. I helped him up while the owner called the police (not a bad thing here I guess? Apparently they were going to help him home). Eventually they told me to just sit him down and head home. Unfortunately, I was holding him up long enough for the stink to get on me. Damn, that was gross.

I was told I was an excellent teacher. I've been here for about 8 months now, and this is the only time I've heard it. It made me a little happy, but I think the absence of other such comments reinforces the fact that I probably am not.

I was talking to one of my students about things you can and can't do at the zoo, and he came out with this one: "You can't give the animals water... or beer." The way he said that last bit caused uncontrollable laughter. Usually I can hold it back, but not this time. It was like a mix of shame, extreme pride, and honest heartfelt advice. After prompting him for more info, he told me he fed a chicken beer at a zoo and it fell over.

2.) I hate heat and heat hates me. Seriously, everywhere I go, heat follows. We're having a 40 year heatwave in Japan this year. Just for clarification, that is a heatwave of severity that it only happens once in FOUR DECADES. And, just like every other house I've ever lived in, my air conditioner broke this week. Of course, work is dragging ass about fixing it. Last I heard on Saturday, they were going to "ask head office". I would fix it on my own, but I'm not allowed to because it's their apartment. So now I'm stuck in an apartment that is routinely over 100 degrees when I come home for work and in the mid 90s until about 3 in the morning. Oh, and it's humid. I've never experienced humidity before, but I knew it was going to suck. It's not like I was unprepared. Unfortunately, it's kind of like knowing you're about to be kicked in the balls. You know it's gonna hurt, and maybe you even mentally prepare yourself for it. Doesn't change the fact that you feel a disturbance in the force as if millions of voices suddenly cried out and were silenced. Those voices were your unborn sperm babies, and knowing that pain was coming didn't help them either. I think what we can learn from this really weird and typically inappropriate analogy is that humidity is the dark side. And the death star.

3.) 

Scooters are cool here!

4.)

It's... what... how...

I am very disappointed with myself. I was heading back to work after lunch, going across the big bridge from my apartment, and I saw a rainbow. A double rainbow actually (what does it mean?! It's okay if you don't get that. One of my Japanese friends did, and it was awesome). But it was no ordinary (double) rainbow, it was a (double) rainbow perfectly framing the river and the mountains in the background. It started at one bank, and arched perfectly to the other. I thought to myself "I should take a picture". But I didn't. I took one when I got back to the office, but it wasn't the same. So pissed even now. Of course, the adorable child that sometimes comes to work greeted me with a cheerful "Tomas, rainbow!" which just made it worse.

JLP Fails and Meat Love

So yeah, sorry this is late and I didn't post last week. I was working my ass off to get ready for the JLPT. Between work, studying, working out, and trying to cook healthier meals, I pretty much have about 2-3 hours tops of "free" time each day. I put "free" in quotes because if I do anything like cleaning or posting a blog, that time gets cut down even more. Slightly complaining and slightly throwing that out there so I don't feel as bad about missing updates.

Anyways, since last time, what's been up? Hmm.... Oh, I went to an Indian restaurant with some AEON employees from Izumo. It was nice, but it was somehow even hotter and more humid inside that restaurant than it was outside. Not even slightly exaggerating, I felt like I was going to pass out for about half of the dinner. That was the weekend before my test prep began, and I think it was all I did that weekend.

Last weekend was much busier. On Sunday, I had the JLPT in Okayama. Naoko decided to take the day off without telling me in advance, so we both got up at 6 freaking AM to catch the bus out there. I got to see some nice scenery on the ride at least, but, predictably, I got very little sleep the night before. On the bus was one of the co-workers from Izumo who was taking the test, a JET from Izumo who was taking the test, and some dude who was on his way to orientation for NOVA. Once we hit Okayama, we had enough time to grab some food then get on the super packed bus to the university. We met a woman from Italy who is teaching Italian and was taking the same level test as us (the guy was taking the N2, one step above us).

There was a guy helping people find the bus to campus, but once there people were much less helpful. We headed the wrong way, but that led us to an information counter where we got back on track. Cue waiting around for about a half an hour before going into a room full of people to... wait around for another half hour. There was a lot of waiting for this test. It was kind of infuriating. Overall, it was four hours and the staff was super strict. Aside from me and the aforementioned people I met, there was only one other Westerner in our testing room. He's an AEON worker from Tottori, and he's a total tool. How much of a tool? Well, he was one of the last people to show up, just minutes before the test, ignored myself and the Izumo worker (he's met us both) even when she directly greeted him, spent the whole time acting like he owned the place, and showed up after the doors had been closed on the final section, interrupting the proctors explanation, without even apologizing (just for reference, you're supposed to be disqualified from the test for that). This isn't isolated behavior. He always acts like that. Everyone else was Chinese, Korean, or Indian, and some were very interesting. One dude was performing a full on stretching routine before the test. I expected him to get up and do a warm-up jog before the test or something. Another guy came in kind of late with a weird cast around his arm. Except it wasn't really a cast, it was just a thick, white fabric wrapped around his arm, and his hand kept twitching. I expected a horror movie to start at any moment.

As for the test itself, it was actually a bit harder than I had been expecting. I don't think I passed (I was about 50/50 on my chances going in). Overall, everything went as expected (no problem with kanji, grammar and reading kind of tough but okay, slaughtered on vocab) except for the listening section. I spend a lot of time talking to Naoko and, to a lesser extent, my other friends in Japanese. I thought listening would be okay. I don't know if it was because it was at the end of a four hour test, because I was working on less than five hours of sleep, or because I just suck at listening, but I think that section alone sealed my doom. I kept just stopping paying attention halfway through the conversations, and they threw in a lot of curveballs to make "trick" questions. I took a glance around as they were collecting the tests, and pretty much everyone had different answers... Thing is, there's three sections to the test. You need 95 points overall with at least 19 points in each section to pass. Listening only had 27 points. If I missed more than 8, I failed the whole test. At least vocab had 35 or so, so I had more leniency... Oh well. I won't find out until early September, but I'm not holding my breath.

Afterwards, we grabbed some dinner and headed back home. On Monday, Naoko and I were going to go hiking but it rained. Instead, we hit up the department store, watched a movie (Super 8), drove around a bit, ate some yakiniku, and had an annoyingly serious conversation about what may or may not happen when I return to The States for grad school. No Japanese class that day because I'm taking the week off studying. I think I earned it with the JLPT. That's more or less it, except for a whole mess of random shit:

1.)

Another ATM this month, and I saw this at the Yonago station. Apparently it's from last year, but still. A salvia festival? Really? Between this and the pot air fresheners, I'm beginning to think Japan is a nation of undercover stoners.

2.)

This is... I mean, really. What? Yes.

3.)

Couldn't help but notice the ridiculousness of this as I was preparing a lesson. How was my food poisoning? Really? Is that the best example you could think of to teach "how was it?"?

4.)

These pictures show me that apparently Naoko and I went to sushi the week before last. There were a bunch of those awesome pictures. Also, hot dog sushi. WTF Japan?

5.)

Oh yeah, this. This is part of my disappointment with myself lately. Naoko and I have started jogging. In typical fashion for things that other people get me to do, it was her idea but she has only jogged once while I've kept to a strict jogging schedule. What is making me sad is I enjoy it. I look forward to the days when I jog after work, and I have to stop myself from jogging extra days. WTF Thomas?

6.) Compounding my above disappointment was a series of thoughts I had while making dinner last week. Not only did I choose juice over beer as my drink of choice for the night, I actually had the thought "I should stop eating hamburgers. They're too greasy." pop into my head. Now, let's get one thing straight here: I love meat. I love meat so much that I wish it was there to welcome me home every night after work with a hot meal. Made of meat. If the Green Goblin dropped meat and a bus full of children off a bridge, I would save meat and let the kids plummet to their screaming doom. If I was a politician, I would have a sordid affair with meat and have to leave office when the scandalous photos arose. If I had to choose between my loved ones and meat... okay, well, I'd choose my loved ones. But I'd think of meat every day thereafter and, sometimes, when they night was still and I was lying alone in bed, I would sit up and wonder if I had made the right choice. It would be heartbreaking. I love meat so much I, I don't even care how incredibly homosexual this entire rant has sounded. Hopefully this gives you some insight into why I was so deeply disturbed when I thought of cutting one of the purest forms of meat out of my diet. Shame on me.

7.)

Been meaning to snap a picture of this for a while. View of the rice field below the bridge near my house. Got it on the way to the station on Sunday.

8.)

Speaking of awesome, here's one of the many great scenes I got going through the mountains on the bus. Not pictured because I couldn't get my iPhone to bear in time: the big yellow sign with a monkey scratching its head and the warning "beware of monkeys" below it. No, that is not a liberal translation. Entirely literal. No "b" in this spelling.

 9.)

Coming into Okayama. Big American Shop? I... what? What do they sell there? Also nearby and not pictured: a store called Love Drugs. More proof. Damn Japanese stoners.

 10.)

They has Magic cards here! These next few pictures are from me and Naoko gallivanting around the department store.

Awesome party costume.

This is actually from the biggest book store in Matsue (about the size of a normal-sized Borders in The States). This is their entire foreign language book section.

Awesome book marks from the department store again. I feel like my mom would like these. They're kind of her sense of humor.