The year that New Year's wasn't.

Another late one. I do apologize, but the holiday has had me very busy (odd how that works out). Next week should be back to your regularly scheduled awful.

So, this is gonna be a long post. You might want to make yourself a snack. Maybe take an intermission in the middle or something. Just to give you an idea, I have 250 pictures from the last week to sort through... yeah, somehow I'm not looking forward to writing this post that much ><

This week has been... interesting. I only had two things planned, which suddenly morphed into about twelve things, then got reduced back down to about five. Yeah, it was pretty much like that. On Tuesday, I had another nabe party; this time with Tor, his wife (Takako), and her two friends (one of which used to be an AEON student at my school :D). No pictures, but it really just would have been more of the same. Finding the place was a little hard, but once again I was glad to have been a delivery driver for a year and a half; finding places isn't so hard anymore. At first, I was searching on the street behind the place for about ten minutes (Google Maps INSISTED the house was there and got mad it me if I went to a different street). It was a really creepy and dangerous street. Only half of it had street lights, and there was an old, abandoned shrine or something on the half that didn't. What's more, the road was tiny and the left side dropped directly into a very large canal. No guard rail or anything, just a six or so foot drop into shallow water and mud. Yeah, no lights + no guard rail + tiny road = holy crap I don't like that road. I practiced Japanese a little bit then stopped because I was embarrassed by how bad I was, talked to Tor about roleplaying games (apparently they're bigger than I thought in Europe. Especially live action stuff, but that's not really my thing), and was warned about the dangers of my high school girl and housewife students by Takako's friends (Apparently the high schoolers might only take the class to see the foreign teacher and housewives have too much time and money on their hands. Pretty sure they were just teasing me, but given my history with middle aged women being interested in me, I'm now scared). I also tried Umeshu (plum alchohol). It was really good. Overall, it was a great night, but the stupid weather rained on me on the way home :(

Wednesday I decided to take it easy, 'cause by then most of the rest of my week had also magically filled itself with holiday plans. My decision was apparently not allowed. While trying to deal with some errands, I ran into an issue with my phone that needed resolving. My co-worker, Yuko, was nice enough to spend almost three hours of her day driving me around town to get it fixed. We also went shopping, and she helped me get my tickets to visit Hiroshima (more on that later. Oh yes, A LOT more on that later). I'm really glad we stopped to go shopping, because she showed me a really cool little department store that I would never have found on my own. There are a bunch of nice shops there, and one that has a bunch of really "Japanesey" things (definitely gonna go there to buy presents for people).

Pretty much just took this picture for Heather. Was surprised to see they had anything Rainbow Brite there. Although, Yuko had no idea what it was, so maybe it's not very popular.

It's a Spanky Hook. Shaped like a heart. Yeah, "Bag Hanger", I'm sure.

So yeah, not many pictures there either. Beware there, for here be photo spam.

Thursday was the first day that I had plans that had been made before the start of the week. Sarah and Seiji had invited me to a small bounenkai (Year end party) at a curry place in town with their friends. Their friends turned out to be two couples, both of which had very young daughters (think one was two and a half and the other was 17 months). The two and a half year old had the most adorable sweater I have EVER seen. It was a monster. The hood was its head, and there were cloth teeth hanging from the top of the hood, so it looked like it was eating the kid when it was pulled up. Its tongue was also sticking out of the side of the hood. Adorable. The girl wearing the sweater was equally adorable. For example, when her dad's beer arrived and he wasn't paying attention, she pulled on his shirt and said "Tousan, douzo." ("Here, dad.") until he picked up his beer. She also quickly pulled her fork away from the 17 month old when she picked it up from the counter. At first, I thought she was just doing the "no, mine!" thing that kids do, but she then informed the younger girl in a very serious voice "abunai" ("dangerous"). She didn't want the little one to play with the fork 'cause she realized it wasn't safe. Best kid ever.

Food time! Let's see here... there was a sweet potato dumpling, some kind of fried dough, some cooked squid, random vegetables, pineapple, and tuna. I'll let you figure out which is which :P

Deer meat! I was very excited to add another kind of meat to my "animals I have eaten" list.

Horse meat! Once again, excited. They were both VERY rare though, the horse more so than the deer. So I'd like to try them again.

First time actually having curry. It was decent, but I don't see what all the fuss is about.

Keep those eyes open! This was in the bathroom. Terrifying nightmare fuel.

There was actually a bunch of stuff on the walls in the bathroom. Some was cool, but some... I think they just put random shit on the wall. Pretty sure this is a bug spray box.

So yeah, we stayed until a little past midnight, but the little ones were getting restless, so dinner wrapped up. Seiji, Sarah, and I, however, went to 5150, an Izakaya (bar) owned by Seiji and Sarah's friend that was at open mic night.

5150 has an awesome theme. Rock music (the owner loves rock), pirates,

and dragons. Yes, yes, and yes. Too bad it's expensive, otherwise I'd prolly go there pretty often.

This was in the bathroom. The Kama Sutra of Death. Interesting... Yes, that poster below it is "30 Reasons Why a Beer is Better Than a Woman". XD There were also A LOT of naked pictures or mostly naked pictures of women. Figured I probably shouldn't take photos of those.

But yeah, I talked to the owner about music (his English wasn't great, but it was enough to have a limited conversation), mainly rock and what was popular in the US. The place actually got kind of busy. There was a group of people playing some kind of game with a huge, fuzzy die, but I couldn't figure out what it was. The owner also gave me some Okinawan alcohol free of charge and asked me to try it. He gave it to me in a shot glass, so I drank it like a shot and said it was really good (it was). Apparently he was really impressed by this, cause he gave me another one free of charge. Hey, I'm not complaining. Thus, Thursday night ended. I was really looking forward to the next few days. New Year's Eve and New Year's day would be great. I was going to go drinking with a friend I had met at Daniel's (my predecessor) going away party and her friend, then, in the morning, I was going to watch the sun rise from the top of Matsue Castle. I think I also had plans for later that day, but I can't remember. It doesn't matter though, cause Mother Nature decided to give a big ol' "fuck you and your plans" in the form of a nasty snowstorm.

I didn't even realize it was snowing at first. Woke up, took a shower, and was about to make breakfast when I looked at my window and thought to myself "why does it look like my window is covered in snow?" Not to spoil it for you, but the answer was "because that's what windows look like when they're covered in snow." I found this out when I opened it and almost got attacked by a mini avalanche. After dealing with that, I saw the neighboring apartment complex looking like this.

Then looked over and saw the street looking like this.

Looking down my stairwell. This was the first of about a dozen times that I decided to walk outside with no shoes on. Why, you ask? Because I'm a fucking genius, that's why.

My "front yard". Pretty easy to tell which direction the wind was coming from. Poor telephone pole and tree.

Oh look, it's my bike! This is the first of a few "reference shots" I took, so feel free to marvel as I did at the accumulation of snow. I started taking pictures at about noon on Friday, so yeah.

I also used this car for reference, although apparently I didn't take as many pictures as I thought. Guess I was just using it for personal reference.

My bike a few hours later during one of the temporary lulls in the storm.

Me trying to get a decent example of how deep the snow was. That's about 3/4 of the way up to my knee. At around 4 PM on the day it started snowing... there was no snow at the start of the day. This was when I realized for sure I wasn't going to be able to make any of my plans that night. This also demonstrates one of the reasons why walking wasn't an option. I have no boots since Matsue isn't supposed to get this much snow (this year was record breaking. Like, "we haven't seen this much snow for almost a century" record breaking). Every time I took a step, my foot sunk into the snow and my shoes got filled with it. Not exactly conducive to walking around without frostbite.

Of course, that didn't stop me from trying. Cause I'm a genius. I knew I wasn't going to go drinking or anything like that, but I wanted to at least get to the konbini (convenience store) a few blocks from my place. I had almost no food and absolutely no alcohol, and it was New Year's Eve! I quickly found out that wasn't an option. The snow had gotten way deeper, and the other problem with walking showed up: since it was a snowSTORM, I couldn't really look up. If I did, wind and tiny crystals of frozen water began assaulting my unprotected vision orbs. That doesn't feel very good. Vision orbs are sensitive. This was about 8 PM.

So I retreated to my stairwell and took some pictures!

The snow was already beginning to fill in my tracks O.o

Since I had little food, most of which was rice, I decided to make some makeshift nachos. Really makeshift. Those aren't tortilla chips, they're week-old taco shells that were kinda stale. That's also not normal cheese, it's this weird pseudo-american-cheese-style stuff that they have over here. It's also on aluminum foil because I don't have a microwave, I have a toaster oven. Yes, that's right, I had taco crazy cheese toasted nachos for New Year's Eve dinner. Go me. They were decent at first, but the cheese hardened really fast. They weren't good after that.

A few hours later, footprints pretty much completely filled in.

Poor bike.

Saturday was pretty much completely filled with me sitting around doing nothing and being hungry. I had two bowls of rice left, so I had to kind of spread them out. It was still pretty much impossible to walk to the store. I didn't really take any pictures because, well, what's the point? By the end of the day, though, the snow had stopped falling.

Sunday morning, after the snow had melted a little. At its highest, it was actually almost up to the door handles on the car. I had to get food though, so I headed outside. Luckily, the roads had been cleared a bit just because people were driving on them. Main roads had been plowed, but side roads just had ruts from tires. I walked in them, as did dozens of other people. It seriously looked almost post-apocalyptic. People were huddled in coats and hats, some carrying their children, others dragging them along beside them, trudging down roads and making way for the occasional car. Other cars were trapped on the side of the road and abandoned, and everything was a mess. Yeah, Matsue wasn't ready for this.

The rice fields as viewed from the bridge on my way back from the store. Poor rice :(

The roads were apparently clear enough for my Christmas package to get through! Thanks mom and dad. PS - Only awesome people take pictures of their new camera with their iPhone.

Testing my new camera.

Night picture! :D

So yeah. All told, my best guess would be somewhere between 2-3 feet of snow. Mostly in one day. Fun stuff. Interesting/funny/sad notes:

1.) Totally saw a bird crash land into a snow covered roof cartoon-style at the beginning of the storm. There was a big poof of snow, then it got up and flew off a few seconds later. Fantastic.

2.) I'm utterly amazed by how many people couldn't figure out how to drive in the snow. I understand that this much is an anomaly, but they get at least a little every year. How is it that I know how to drive in the snow better than them? Roseville doesn't exactly get any. Yet, at least 4 times a day, I heard (then witnessed when I got curious and watched from my window) as someone tried to floor it in reverse to get out of the snow they were stuck in... thus digging themselves in even deeper. Even if that did get them out, they would have flown backward and smashed into something. People banded together to help them, but I wouldn't really have been able to communicate, and they all managed to get out eventually, so I just stayed as a spectator.

3.) Sirens. Nonstop. For three days. I shit you not.

4.) As I said, Matsue (Shimane in general) was not prepared for this. Four people died in an avalanche at Mt. Daisen. An old woman died when a pile of snow fell from her roof onto here and the ambulance took five hours to get there because of traffic. A train was caught on the rails for 42 hours without any assistance. The main highway was gridlocked with traffic because of a major accident combined with the snow. It's Tuesday as I write this, and some parts of Matsue still aren't really traversable. Ridiculous.

Okay, I'm taking a break. It's taken me 2 hours to write this much, primarily because the freaking site HATES uploading photos right now. Like 2-3 minutes per picture. Only one more day to talk about, but there's a lot of pictures for it. I'll post it later today.

Alien Babies and Emo Knives

First off, sorry for the lateness. Last minute plans last night = me not having time to type up a post. Also, I'm lazy :P This week will probably be a little shorter than normal. I did stuff, but it was mostly just get togethers and stuff like that; not much to comment on.

This week it snowed. It snowed a little bit last week as well, but it didn't stick. This time, the weather decided to rectify that error.

It was snowing all day Tuesday, but it only started to accumulate towards the evening.

Wednesday morning, looking out my apartment window. It piled up a bit more throughout the day. Yeah, no exactly a blizzard or anything, but I liked it. I'm actually really pissed at myself, because I saw a scene that would've made a great snowy picture on my way to work, but I passed on the chance of taking it because of that whole embarrassment thing. Decided to use my self loathing constructively by utilizing it to browbeat myself into taking more pictures in the future. It's actually been working... hooray for using my shortcomings as weapons against my other shortcomings?

I had Thursday off, and although it had stopped snowing, it was still pretty cold. What do you do when you have freezing cold days off in the middle of the week? You go to nabe (hot pot) parties, of course!

Yuko (my coworker that invited me) is not in the picture :( but, from left to right, there's me (hah, bet you didn't guess that one!), Yuko's friend, and Yuri (also known as Jessica. She's of Japanese descent but is actually Brazilian. Yeah, it kinda confused me at first.)

The nabe was delicious! If you've never heard of it, it's basically a pot that you put on a portable burner on the table. You fill it with either water or various kinds of soup, depending on what kind of nabe you're making (ours was filled with water), then you add in meat, vegetables, tofu, and other stuff. You can either eat it plain or with sauce (that's what's in those bowls in front of us). We had two kinds of sauce. One was kind of like soy sauce with yuzu (the lemon-looking fruit I posted a picture of last time), the other... I have no idea what it was. It was a bit thicker, brownish, and had black specks in it. It was the better of the two, but they were both good. The only thing I didn't like about the nabe was the fried tofu. Between its consistency and its flavor mixed with the sauce it soaked up (it was like a sponge), it tasted like chewing on soggy bits of vomit. When I finished, there were about 5 pieces of it leftover in my bowl... Yuko laughed at me >< We also had donuts and shu kurimu (cream puffs). They were delicious. Especially the shu kurimu. :D

Friday and Saturday were pretty much just normal workdays. Of course, Saturday was Christmas, but that hasn't meant all that much to me for a few years now. Pretty much just worked, came home, drank some beers, had some chocolate, and watched tv. Ho ho ho?

Sunday was takoyaki (octopus ball. Octopus and cheese baked inside of some kind of batter in the shape of a ball) party time! :D

From left to right: Mika (the hostess. Well, her and her parents, but she's the one that invited me), Mika's friend (I really need to get better at remembering names. It's always been a weak point of mine), Tor (He's a Dane!), Yuko (the same one that had the Nabe party), and Yuri again. Pretty sure you know who the other dude is. Maybe. If not, you just hurt my feelings and now I'm crying. Jerk. This was actually towards the end of the meal, as evidenced by that massive amount of candy and sweets on the table.

The whole thing was really nice and well put together. First of all, Mika's family's house was freaking gorgeous. It was an older, Japanese-style home. The inside was full of amazing artwork and decorations, and the back yard was a beautiful garden with stone lanterns and everything. Mika's dad also showed us how the snow-viewing screens worked (two-part paper and wood screens that covered the back sliding glass door. You can pull the bottom part up to look at the snow.) The meal started with WAY more than just takoyaki. There was salad, noodles, hotdogyaki (my own word. It's like takoyaki, only with hotdog inside instead), rice covered with the fried tofu I mentioned earlier (not as bad when it's not soggy, but still not very good), and a lot of drinks. Seriously, hellsa drinks. In addition to the soda, grape fruit, and green tea we brought, they had coffee, koucha (black tea), and warm green tea. Mika's mom was really good at making traditional green tea. In fact, after I mentioned that I liked to try to eat salads without dressing because it's healthier, they all seemed to think I was a health nut and only served me various kinds of tea for the rest of the evening XD

This was their cat. It's 13 freaking years old. I don't think it looks like it. That's Mika's mom holding it up in the first picture, and it's perched on a space heater in the second. That second picture is what it looked like most of the time I was there. The thing was freaking hilarious though. It would jump down from the space heater, walk up to people, and meow then rub against their leg like it wanted some petting. The second someone besides Mika's mom petted it, though, it would meow angrily and run away. Crazy cat >< I mentioned to Mika's mom (oh, by the way, this isn't actually a case of me forgetting names. Mika's parents actually introduced themselves as Mika's "Otousan" and "Okaasan", aka her father and mother. Names are for people who aren't badass old Japanese people) that I liked cats as long as I didn't own them, because taking care of them is a pain. Her response? "You don't have to take care of cats. You just let them do what they want." O.o I'm pretty sure I just got wtfpwned by sage wisdom from an Asian elder. Guess I can cross that one off my "to-do" list...

Last night, my last minute plans were going over to Sarah's place with Seiji and having leftover ham and peas with turkey soup. Yum :D We also watched a crazy Japanese drama about a doctor from the present that got sent back in time to the Edo Period. I'm pretty sure he was sent back by an alien baby. Every commercial break it showed a really far away shot of it floating in a jar, and the dude hallucinated and saw it at one point. I got in the habit of yelling "ALIEN BABY!" every time it was shown. Seiji found this highly amusing. He also really liked this impersonating comedian we saw. He did a really extended performance/song where he impersonated a hundred different people for his 30th year anniversary of being a performer. Sarah and I were very confused by most of it >< Both of them were sick, which was something I did not know before going over... hope I didn't catch it ><

Sarah had these at her place. It might be hard to see, but they have smiley faces. In my imagination, this set also includes a knife, but the knife has a sad face. Poor emo knife, it can cut everything but itself :(

Random stuff time!

1.) This week my head teacher had two bandages on the sides of her face, near her eyes. I asked if she was alright, and she said they were "eulogy scratches" then apologized for being so ugly O.o o.O O.O ...I'm now scared of my head teacher.

2.) Christmas music here is... different. For example they REALLY love the song "Last Christmas" I hear it at least once a day. Hardly the cheery fare from America. I also heard a song made up entirely of pig oinks, and an entirely different song of dog barks... wtf Japan?

3.) I. Love. Engrish.

Wanna know the sad thing? I took this picture inside of our school. This was on one of our whiteboards. The picture is really cool though. Let's all make a wonder Christmas!

Toss away tobacco, toss away JAPAN!!!!

4.) In yet another embarrassing development that I have no idea why I'm sharing with you, I can't figure out the fucking garbage system over here. Everything has to be separated, but not in a way that makes any logical fucking sense. Some burnable things aren't allowed to be put in burnable garbage, and some things that I'm pretty sure aren't supposed to be burned are. If you get it wrong, they don't collect your garbage. Everything also has to be in specific bags, which I didn't realize until recently. It's been five weeks, and I haven't been successful in getting my garbage collected even once. Didn't even know for sure where to leave it until last week... collection again on Thursday... 11th time's the charm? ><

No food challenge this week because of all my other plans. Maybe some extras next week, but I'm not promising anything. Happy Holidays everyone! (Look at me, I'm politically correct!)

Manageable Mishaps

I'd like to start this week with something completely unrelated to Japan or me being in it. If you don't like that, tough; I don't like your face.

I found this on the intarwebs while I was eating lunch at a restaurant and got weird looks for laughing out loud hella hard. I miss Mass Effect :( (PS - I once did this twice on the same mountain. Almost broke a controller.)

Okay, on to things that are actually relevant. This weekend was freaking beautiful. The temperature rose by about 16 degrees (leaving it in the 60s, which I think is pretty comfortable) and it was sunny the whole time. Of course, it chose to do this on the one weekend so far when I already had plans that take up almost all of both my days off. Screw you, weather.

Sunday was pretty much all errands. I had actually set aside a big chunk of time to reach a new level of nerdery by playing DnD over Skype, but somebody (*cough* Ryan *cough*) was wrong about when it was being played. I had forced myself to get up after about 5 hours of sleep in order to play, so I pretty much just went back to sleep for all the time I would have been playing. Why was I so tired, you ask? Because Saturday night was Open Mic Night! Of course, I didn't sing or perform because I have about as much musical talent as an alley cat at midnight (the point I'm going for here is that people throw old boots at me and knock me off wooden fences. True story). Since open mic is for people that actually have talent, I chose to just observe. During the last half of the event I even got over my embarrassment of being noticed and took some pictures. Yay baby steps! Unfortunately, it was too late to get any shots of Sarah (who invited me. Seiji was hosting it), but here's some random pics of a few performers!

This is Seiji. In the short time I have known him, I have quickly decided that Seiji makes everything more awesome. Why have I decided this? Well, take this picture for example. He wasn't part of this performance. He didn't even know the words to the song. People weren't being excited enough for him, though, so he jumped up, grabbed the mic, and just started making sounds that fit the tune of the song. It was awesome. The guy sitting in the background was the actual singer for this one, by the way.

This dude. This freaking dude. He was KING of the damn guitars. Seriously, every time he joined in a song, it instantly got better. 

This guy was pretty cool. He talked to me for a little bit before going up, but it was the same old story: his English wasn't good enough and neither was my Japanese. The chat was short :/ After that, he just stood up there and fulfilled the role of the stereotypical supporting electric guitarist. Completely. As proof, he was in this stance for at least 90% of the night. Occasionally he nodded his head to the beat. He got one solo in the night, and he was also really good. To be honest, all of the performers were great, and they all appeared to be proficient in pretty much every instrument available. It was a bit intimidating.

Bass and another supporting electric guitarist. There were about six people who could play guitar, and they all seemed to just rotate about between the various kinds. Especially in the last hour or so when it pretty much morphed into a jam session that was one really long song.

Here's Seiji actually performing on purpose. He's a good singer when he knows the words and isn't so drunk that he's falling over.

The owner of the venue had a dog. It was adorable. I asked if I could take a picture, and she tried to get it to pose, but the thing just wouldn't look at the camera. Whatever, snob dog, your face was a jerk anyways. I felt a little bad for it though. First of all, she dressed it up in a sweater (dressing up dogs is just something I object to in general). Second, she was holding it all night, and there was more than one occasion when it very obviously wanted to be let go, but she just held on tighter. Oh well, that's what it gets for being a tiny toy dog :/

So yeah, the night was really fun. Only downsides? It was fucking FREEZING when Sarah and I left, so I was shivering on the entire bike ride back home. Then there's the ever-present problem with going to any event ever over here: my sweater reeks of cigarettes. Again. It's enough to give me a headache.

Today was full of a lot of errands as well, but I took some time off to visit another shrine (I'm sure you're already getting sick of seeing these. Tough luck. I love them. I know people say all the pictures look the same, and maybe they're right, but I don't agree. Every single shrine and temple has its own character and feel to it, and I'm not planning to stop posting about them anytime soon. In fact, I still have to visit the part of city called Teramachi (Temple City), so yeah, get used to it). 

Not part of the temple, just some interesting decorations in the park across from the city hall (had to stop by there today).

So yeah, found this on my way back from the city hall. Hooray for always trying to take different routes! This was behind the shrine. It had to have been open at one point considering the stairs and Torii in the second picture, but not anymore.

This is the actual entrance, complete with a dude hanging up decorations! That road to the left is actually leading onto a highway, so this shrine is really tucked away in the middle of everything.

There seems to be a lot of moon motifs in this city. One of my pairs of chopsticks has them too. Not sure if it's a general thing in Japan, but it's not something I've seen in a lot of "stereotypical" shrine and temple pictures, so maybe not?

Purification stone/basin! This one actually had water that looked clean, unlike the older ones I found...

Don't know if these lions were getting ready to pounce or kneeling in obeisance. Considering that they're guardians, I'm inclined to believe the former. Most of the lions here were like this though.

They look really old and worn down, but I think it's because of what they're made out of. Looked like a really coarse sandstone, which seems to me like a horrible thing to make statues out of. Dunno.

Hey, look, someone is actually at this one! ... it was the dude putting up decorations. Think the car is a funny thing to have in a temple pic though :D

Very nice looking lanterns.

This one was opened up. Maybe the guy was getting ready for some kind of event?

The inside was very fancy.

Omikuji! Jisho.org informs me that means "written oracle". So maybe like a fortune? They were only 20 yen (notice the honor policy here. To my knowledge, all temples are like this), so I bought one. The parts I could read were just the generic "you will be happy, yadda yadda yadda" stuff, and it was hard as hell to open (it ripped in a few spots). I ended up tossing it :/

Mini shrine with happy lions :D I like the one on the right, he seems more friendly.

Mini mini shrine apparently marking this fucking creepy looking tree.

These are on the opposite side of that wall of plants from earlier. Definitely used to be an entrance of some kind. In case you haven't noticed by now, the lions always flank pathways, entrances/exits, or the front of shrines/temples.

I like this picture. This is what I mean when I say every shrine has its own personality. This place is obviously pretty popular, but a lot of parts are really run down. Yet, despite the fact that it is no longer able to serve its function, this torii still stands tall. Just because no one recognizes its purpose doesn't mean it's going to stop. This is a proud torii, and I feel like this picture shows that.

Random pictures I liked.

This has to be one of the most well preserved sculptures I've seen here. Seriously, it's barely touched at all.

And it has a baby lion!

Probably because it's protected by the awning there. Or it's new.

Too bad this is all you can see from the front. You have to be an annoying tourist and walk around the side to get a good look.

Lion on the other side of the same building. Also in decent condition. The discoloring makes me think they're both older, just really well protected. Notice the lack of baby lion. Not sure what that signifies.

Hard to see, but the eyes are actually some kind of shiny material. Prolly glass.

Creepy hidden horse sculpture is creepy.

There used to be something here.

Now it's only this. Doesn't look like it burned down, because nothing is charred. Thomas is confused.

Again, notice the baby and lack of baby. This time the side that's a mommy is switched. This is gonna bother me.

Another creepy abandoned part of the temple. Not really sure what function it served. I tried to get close and look in the cracks, but it was too dark. Plus, I kept feeling like I was tempting fate too much by setting up the perfect opening to a horror film, so yeah.

Okay, so only the central building seems to be popular. Everything else is neglected.

Mini gate. Had to duck to get under this one.

What kind of sad shrine? Seriously.

Hey, look, another one covered in those tiny fox sculptures!

A whole host of hewn hardware hidden with horticulture! (Hey, you try finding a word that means stone or mineral and starts with an "h" sound. It was either hardware or headstone, and headstone is a bit of a misnomer...)

Another one I liked

Here's the gate heading out.

And a view in minus the dude on the ladder.

My omikuji. Notice the rips. Yeah...

So yeah, finished up there and went off to get my first Japanese haircut! On the way back, I went through a portion of town with a lot of shops to visit. It really drove home to me the fact that I will never be able to explore this whole city, let alone all of Japan. Especially with how sedentary and antisocial I am. Every weekend I have the choice of staying home and actually resting or forcing myself to go out and about and start the next work week feeling like I didn't have a day off. Don't get me wrong, I like doing things, it just requires so much effort on my part that it pretty much feels like I'm working. I hate it. But yeah, that realization was a bit depressing :/ But yeah, not looking to turn this into a repeat of last week's post, so let's check out what happened when I got my hair did!

First off, haircuts are fucking expensive over here. The average place I see is about 2,000 yen (around $25). I went to one in Saty that was 1,000 yen (About $12.50), and that's the absolute cheapest I have seen. It wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. It's a little bit longer than I'd prefer, but at least I still have hair. Also, they're freaking immaculate about getting loose hair off your head after the haircut here. First the dude used a blowdryer like they do in The States, then he used a dry towel to kind of "dust" my head and shake the hair out, then he used a kind of soft brush on my forehead, face, and sides of my head, THEN he wiped my neck off with a towel after taking the little hairguard cape thing off. Seriously. It was kind of weird, but there was almost no loose hairs left over afterwards. So yeah. (PS - I definitely didn't have to take like ten pictures of myself before I found one that didn't make me cringe long enough to put it up. Nope. Definitely not. I never do that. Ever.)

Okay, random crap section now (anyone else that I have apparently decided to format my blog the same way every week. I didn't even intend to. Guess that says a lot about my personality. I like order).

1.) My work plays English songs in the lobby through overhead speakers. They're not loud or anything, but they're easily audible. This week they played an unedited version of "Love the Way You Lie"... seems like an interesting choice to me.

2.) Apparently Japanese people have a REALLY hard time making the sound "BZZZZZ". One of the conversations for my classes had it as one of the lines, and both the students just ended up saying "BUZUZUZUZUZUZU" even after I spent a couple minutes trying to help them do it the right way. Odd.

3.) They have winter tires here. Like full on, you buy these and only use them during winter tires They have deeper treads than normal for better traction and a single set lasts multiple years since you only use them for a small time each year. Why the fuck don't we have these back home?!

4.) I'm now officially a registered alien! Got my Alien Registration Card today. I'd post a pic, but it has some random info like my passport number, address, and junk. Probably nothing any kind of criminal could do anything with, but I'm a paranoid dude. It's okay, I can take comfort in being a spaceman. Why do I suddenly have the urge to eat some cats?

5.) Krugle, Danielle, Sheldon, and Leonard are awesome.

6.) One of my students had her last lesson this week. :(

7.) I have a new student to add to my "favorite students" list. Remember the one that looked at me all crazy-like because I haven't had curry? Well, turns out she's awesome. She takes private lessons, and she's always hella funny. It seems Japan has no shortage of adorable old ladies. This week she gave me a present. It was a bag of food, and it was the sweetest thing ever. A few of the notable items:

She gave me some mandarins as well as some normal oranges. But she didn't call them normal oranges. No, that wouldn't be hilarious enough. She called them "angry" oranges. "These oranges are very angary!" she informed me in a very serious tone.

Holy crap, she was right. That's one angry orange. Joke's on him though, I ripped off his face then ate him... wow, um, that was supposed to be more funny and less disturbing.

Apples here are huge and individually wrapped.

Thomas' Play at Home Food Challenge Day 7: Oyako-donburi

Green onions, eggs, chicken, and rice. Was actually pretty tasty. I'm especially proud of this one considering that the recipe is pretty damn complicated. A few random notes if you plan on making this at home (by the way, is anyone actually playing at home? Am I just wasting my time linking these things?): the recipe only calls for 1/4 pound of chicken. That's bullshit. Especially considering that the unaltered version is supposed to feed four people and use 6-8 cups of rice. Do yourself a favor and use some more chicken. It also says to use 4-5 eggs. I used 4, and I feel like it wasn't enough. 5 is probably better. Also, pouring eggs around the edge of a frying pan is hard... don't be a loser like me and make a big mess. Finally, be sure to take the whole thing off the heat quickly. I wasn't sure when the edges of the egg were adequately "bubbling", so I feel like I kept it on for too long. Still, I liked it.

Recipe: http://bento.com/trt-oyako.html

Score to date: Thomas -3 Vengeful Food Gods - 2

Thomas' Play at Home Food Challenge Day 8: Fried Salmon, Rice, and Awesome Juice

So, this is actually another episode of  "Thomas Did Something Stupid!" You see, that was actually supposed to read BAKED salmon. I found a really nice Japanese recipe for baked salmon, and was psyched to try it. Of course, I didn't actually check to see if I had a dish to make it in. I don't. At all. So, I made fried salmon instead. I also tried to make some nikuman (or nikumanjuu), which is basically meat dumplings. They need to be steamed. I don't have a steamer. So I decide that I'm gonna be TomGyver and use my colander with a pot of boiling water and a pan top to make them. My plastic colander. "It'll be fine." I told myself, "Just keep a close eye on it and it won't melt."

I don't have a colander anymore. Fucking nikuman weren't even that good.

This is called a yuzu. I was going to use shavings from its peel for the marinade in the original recipe. It smells like hairy donkey ass.

Dessert! Definitely delicious.

Anyways, the fried salmon turned out well, but I have to give this round to the Food Gods for two reasons: 1.) It technically wasn't a Japanese recipe, which is kinda what this whole challenge is about. 2.) It wasn't what I set out to make, which means I autofail. So yeah.

Recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/pan-fried-salmon-recipe2/index.html

Score to Date: Thomas - 3 Vengeful Food Gods 3 (Is anyone else noticing that every week is ending in a tie? Oh well, at least I'm not losing by a huge margin or something...)