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.