Domo Arigatou, Mr. Roboto

I think that almost all kids (in America, at least) at one time or another in their formative years harbor unrealistic dreams of pop stardom. However, as we all know, very few ever feel the sweet embrace of fame. Well, friends, I am here today to report that I have achieved the dream. At the very least, I now know how it feels to be a member of N'Sync or SMAP, if you will.

Yesterday I taught my first “English club”. Many schools have after-school clubs for especially enthusiastic English students, although I have no idea what they normally do in these clubs. They are almost always comprised entirely of girls as studying English outside of class seems to be looked upon as a “sissy” activity. So I showed up at Momoishi Elementary School just before three o’ clock and sat at my desk in the teacher’s office, without really knowing what to expect.

Before long, an extremely cheery middle-aged woman walked up to my desk and in seemingly perfect English said, “Hello, I am the teacher of the English club! It’s nice to meet you!” Well, judging from the quality of her introduction, I assumed that she was fairly fluent, so I took the opportunity to ask her a few questions, “Yeah, I’m not really sure exactly what type of things you normally do in English club. What kind of activity did you expect me to have prepared?” She continued to smile at me. “Speak more slow, I do not understand you,” she said, again in nearly unaccented English. “Um, what type of things do you want me to teach?” I said, pronouncing every syllable separately. She asked me to slow down my speech even more; at this point I was pausing for a few seconds between each word. She stood there with a puzzled look on her face and then suddenly exclaimed “Oh! Type! What Type!” and I was like “Yes, what type”. “There are thirteen children in the class,” she responded and then walked out of the office. I don’t know what she’s been teaching that club but it sure as hell isn’t English.

The girls in the club were the oldest kids I have taught so far, they probably ranged from 3th-5th grade, I imagine. As such, they whipped through the exercises that I had prepared for the younger kids, to the point that I was a little concerned if I was going to be able to fill up all 40 minutes of class time. Luckily, my secret weapon, the drawing animals on the chalkboard game, was a rousing success. It’s no secret that Japanese children love to draw and I’ve been doing my best to exploit this to my full advantage. When the teacher said that the class was over, the girls began pounding on their desks in unison, I guess this means that they were having so much fun that they wanted to continue the activity? So I did one more round of drawings with them, at which point they started banging on their desks again. In the end, we probably went a good 10-15 minutes over the allotted time, although I was glad to be there rather than killing time at the Minakurukan.

The minute the class was over, I was bum rushed by the group of most enthusiastic girls in the class. They immediately started yelling out questions “How tall are you?” “How much do you weigh?” and each response from me was greeted with a chorus of “EEEEEEEEEEEE?” (the universal vocal showing of amazement). As expected, they quickly moved on to more personal inquires, “Are you married?” “If you’re not married, why do you wear that ring?” “Do you have a lover?” Luckily, I was able to play the dumb foreigner and pretended to not know what “恋人同士” meant. One of the girls then grabbed my right hand and began to inspect it closely while another ran behind me and began to poke me in the back with a pointer. They then all scrambled to stand on top of a nearby desk to see if they could get as tall as me. Having accomplished that, one girl ran over to the door and pointed to a sheet of song lyrics hung on the wall. “Mehan Sensei, do you know this song? It is from a famous movie!” I gave it a cursory glance and asked what it was called. “Country Road,” the girl responded (i.e. the John Denver song). “Oh, I know that, like from the movie 耳をすませば　(Whisper of the Heart), right?” What followed was probably the closest thing I will ever hear to the mythical siren song. The entire group of girls let out high-pitched shrieks in unison; the upper-registers of their voices threatening to shatter glass in a Mariah Carey-like fashion. The English club teacher actually covered her ears with her hands. Dare I say, these girls might have a lucrative future in the field of noise music.

After work, I got a call from Charlie informing me that the first Japanese language class was going to be held in Hachinohe at 6:30. Since there are six levels of classes taught, I had to sit the ridiculously arbitrary “placement exam,” which consisted of a woman asking me questions from a script of about 30 increasingly complicated queries and then choosing the cut-off point based on the first question that I was unable to understand. After about 10 questions, I was having trouble hearing her and asked in Japanese, “Could you please repeat that?” She responded by pulling out a map and saying, “You will be in level number two”. Upon arriving at the level two class where only about half of the students could write either hiragana or katakana or answer simple questions, it became pretty clear that I was in the wrong class. I moved up to the level three class, where they were in the middle of reviewing てーform. This was closer to my level, even though I was a bit more experienced than the other students in the class and didn’t really feel like I necessarily needed that much review. I think I’ll try the level four class next time, hopefully that one will be a bit more challenging.

I’m currently trying to put together a coalition of the willing to go down to the Aichi Expo over the holiday weekend of September 17th to 19th. Logistically it’s going to be a nightmare; it’s a holiday weekend, the week before the end of the Expo and Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets are going to run us a cool $250, each way. Regardless, I’m pretty determined to see this thing. I’ve had a long standing obsession with World’s Fairs (which was perhaps cultivated further by the fact that I got to walk across the Midway of the World’s Columbian Expedition at least once a week), I love wooly mammoths and I love robots even more. I figure, as expensive as it might be, I’ll probably never get a chance to see something like this again in my life. Who’s with me?

Finally, I’ve made it so that anyone can post comments now (no blogger account required). There’s no longer an excuse for any of you shy bastards.

School Spirit

During an instant messenger conversation sometime last week I was asked, by the ever-observant Mark Baffa the Second, “So, how come you stopped talking about this job you’re supposedly doing?” Good question. The answer is, quite simply, that I wasn’t doing anything other than killing time and waiting for the school year to begin, which it finally did last week. Today was officially my first day of teaching and if I had to describe the experience in one word, it would be “exhausting”. I was only told that I would be teaching one 3rd grade elementary school class but I actually ended up teaching two of those classes, as well as two kindergarten classes. Having to teach four classes in a shirt and tie in super hot and humid weather was something like the exact opposite of the phrase “fun on the bun”.

The first thing that I learned today was that two classes of the exact same level at the same school can be different as night and day. The first class of 3rd graders was boisterous, excited and very enthusiastic whereas the second class was shy and quiet.
Upon entering the first class, it became immediately clear who the class clown was. He was basically standing up in his seat, shouting constantly and had his hand raised for the entire duration of the class. Every time I called on him the classroom erupted in laughter and applause. When I had the kids come up to the board and draw animals so that the rest of the class could guess the animal in English, the class clown drew some anime character and kept adding comic flourishes to his illustration, much to the adoration of his fans. When a kid drew a bear on the board one student yelled out “Vegeta, no, Super Vegeta!” While both classes presented their own challenges, my activities were a hit for the most part and both students and staff seemed satisfied.

I really had no idea what to expect from the kindergarteners initially, but a few minutes in the classroom was all it took. It’s like teaching a classroom of puppies; cute, energetic and affectionate but not capable of many higher-level mental functions. The vice-principal of the kindergarten, Megumi Matsuhashi, lived briefly in France, speaks some English and French and aspires to run an artsy, culturally informed kindergarten. She told me that I should try reading to the kids in English (even though they won’t understand a word of it), although I’m a little skeptical if their attention spans will allow for that sort of thing. She believes very strongly in exposing children to many languages at a young age and as she drove me back to the office she said, “My nephew knows how to say ‘apple’ but he cannot say ‘林檎’. Even though he is Japanese, I am worried that they will call him a gaijin.”

My boss walked over to my desk today with a letter that he received and asked me to explain an English phrase in the letter for him (he doesn’t read English). The phrase was “heart of partnership”. I have no idea why they chose to express this one phrase in English, since the entire rest of the letter was written in Japanese. Furthermore, it seems likely that it was translated from Japanese in the first place, as it is essentially meaningless in English. The word “heart” when used figuratively, has no real equivalent in Japanese; the closest I know of is kokoro, which is often translated as “mind,” “heart,” or “spirit”. The actual meaning of the word is something like “the center of feeling” but, like the English “heart,” it has a much more nuanced meaning than one sentence can accurately describe.

I saw one of my 3rd grade students at the mall tonight. He looked up at me with a visage of abject terror and exclaimed, “Uh…Mehan Sensei!” So long as I can strike fear into the hearts of young children, I'll know that I'm doing something right.

Mountaineers

After our exciting jaunt in Hachinohe, it was back to Matt's house in Nambu town. Yeah, that's right, Matt has a house. He also has air conditioning. Just look at that bourgeois bastard, looking all smug and everything. This, folks, is what the most spoiled JET in the prefecture looks like.

Nambu is apparently famous for for lying at the foot of Nakuiyama, one of the holiest mountains in the general vicinity. There's a temple called Hokoji somewhere on the mountain which features the tallest three-story pagoda in all of Japan and was apparently a major temple some time ago. This may have been connected to the fact that Nambu was once the seat of the local Daimyo, which explains why the entire southeast region of Aomori is referred to as Nambu as well. Anyway, on Sunday morning, after impressing me with his french toast making skills, Matt asked if I would like to go for a hike up the mountain. I assumed that this was just going to be some easy tourist shit, so I agreed.

First, we had to walk about a mile or two uphill to the base of the mountain. Here, we found a pretty small but cool shrine area.


Not far from here, we discovered a playground that had a huge slide, possibly longer than the one in Momoishi's Icho Sports Park. Notice Matt's wingspan, which provides a sense of scale. The slide actually curves and goes further down the hill, so you're only seeing about 2/3 of it in this picture.

They also had this awesome rope race thingy. Matt took some footage of us playing around on these things which will hopefully be posted on his video blog shortly.

So anyway, we soon get on the trail and begin our hike to the top. Now I had no idea but apparently Matt is like a professional hiker or something. He was telling me stories of seeing bears in the mountains and stuff. Yeah, I hear you man, one time I got stuck in traffic because of a Bears game. In all seriousness though, the hike started out easy enough and it seemed like it would only be an endurance test. The mountain is apparently over 615 meters high but I'm an American, so unless it's a mile, foot or hogshead, it's completely meaningless to me.

Well, that casual stroll though the woods didn't last long. Do you see the photo below of a seemingly vertical slope covered with slippery mud and harboring a flimsy yellow rope as the only means of survival? Yeah, well, picture my un-athletic self in mud-covered hipster best, panting like a dog and trying to clamor up this crazy mountain. Or, even better, just wait until Matt posts the actual footage on his blog and enjoy an even heartier guffaw at my expense.

Somehow we made it to the summit, from where we could see for tens of miles in every direction, it was really quite a sight.

There were also some stone structures up there including this dragon, on which people left offerings of change. Had I died along the way, I would like to think that Matt might have fashioned some sort of primitive yet dignified grave for me up here.


On the way back down the mountain, we decided to do a bit of exploring and happened upon what has to be the best vantage point on the entire mountain. Matt is scared of heights, so he is making a funny face.


So the funny part is that we never did get to see that pagoda. Granted, it's a huge mountain and there's a lot of ground to cover but you'd think we would at least have caught a glimpse of it. Whatever, I climbed you fair and square, mountain. I win.

Hachinohe, Ho!

Late Saturday morning I set out on my bike for Shimoda station, bound for the bright lights of Hachinohe. Okay, admittedly Hach is laid out more like a highly populated suburb but next to Momoishi, anything looks like a big city. On the way to the station exists something so out of place that only the modern technology of photography could accurately represent it.


That's right, an authentic Mini specialist (not the fake BMW kind we have in the states) out in the middle of nowhere Shimoda. Why?

At any rate, I eventually made my way into Hachinohe where I met up with Matt. We then proceeded to wander around the city rather aimlessly for the rest of the day. Here are some highlights.

Japan may be famous for its dearth of real firearms but they manage to fill the void quite nicely with shockingly realistic bb gun replicas. Despite the poor quality of the photograph, you should be able to see that most of these things have no markings on them to identify them as toys. I'm pretty sure you could rob a bank with one of these, if you saw fit.

Neither Matt nor myself had eaten a Japanese donut yet, having been thoroughly scared off by reports about how strange and disappointing they were. Despite these warnings, we just couldn't resist. If you've ever walked past a Mister Donut, you would know that the donuts there just look so good that there's no way they could be bad. Plus, they have the funniest advertisement that I have ever seen, which Matt and I discussed at length while sampling the product (perhaps you would like to watch it in Real Player, or maybe you would prefer the Windows Media format instead). So, what about the donuts? Again, the miracle of modern technology comes to our aid. The following time lapse sequence documents Matt's reaction, from the first bite to the point of reflection. Notice the full range of emotions through which he is moved by the donut.

Yeah, the donuts were good. The only thing that was strange about them was that they were both sweet and salty. The powdered sugar that they put on top of the donuts had a little bit of salt mixed in. Strange but still delicious.

The new thing for Japanese soda machines is that you can buy a soda using your cellphone, no change required. This machine has that feature. As you can see, it also has a video monitor on which a short movie plays of a chimpanzee in a striped sweater who attempts to buy a Coca-Cola. Despite his human-like sense of style, he is not successful in his endeavors.

The last places we went before heading into Nambu were the Toys R Us and the Yamada Denki. I saw this device at Toys R Us, it's apparently a DVDRW deck that also plays Playstation 2 games and also has either a 250 GB or 160 GB drive in it (which I'm assuming means it has some sort of Tivo-like functionality). I did not know that such a thing existed.

I knew that I wanted to buy a Region 2 DVD player and I also knew that I might want a Nintendo. So I ended up buying this lil' guy, the Panasonic Q. It plays both Gamecube games and DVDs and looks all shiny and pretty-like. I decided to fall for the nostalgia trap and bought Starfox to go along with it. I haven't really played it much yet although my initial impression leads me to believe that I will be able to relive my glory days of Super FX microchip powered dogfights in a satisfactory manner.

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

While navigating the high seas of the Aomori blogsphere today, I noticed that super-blogger Jamie Patterson (who I have never met, as far as I recall) seems to have mysteriously added a link to this very blog on his site. In case you've never been, his blog offers a nearly endless quantity of humorous observations, as well as photos and videos. Quite rightly, it's currently the number two result returned for a Google search for "Aomori JET". Now, before you start fearing that a Lion King-esque pack of animals might diverge upon this very point at any minute, I have to inform you that the link is broken. Despite this fact, I've decided to return the favor with a permanent working link to his site on the sidebar. I even went as far as to test it out.

I've struggled with seasonal allergies my entire life, although I've often found it impossible to predict when I'll be affected. I almost never experienced them in Chicago but I always get them at my parent's house in Wisconsin, regardless of season. I know that I'm allergic to certain things (dust, ragweed, pollen) but my lack of super-human abilities has rendered me incapable of detecting these substances until it's too late.

Well, yesterday, out of the blue, something hit me and it hit hard. Ever since then I've been sneezing and sniffling like a madman. At first, everyone in the office was convinced that I had a cold but I kept telling them it was just allergies. So then they assumed it was a food allergy and started asking me what foods I've eaten lately, so I had to switch to using the Japanese equivalent of "hay fever". Despite this fact, I am still enjoying concerned interrogations regarding the content of my diet.

In America, Allegra-D was my savior but due to strict drug importation laws, I was unable to bring my stash with me. So I wandered around the drugstore section of Jusco yesterday, looking in vain for an equivalent. Unfortunately, I was having a hard time telling the difference between the cold and allergy medicines and when I'm feeling groggy like that, the last thing I want to do is ask someone something in Japanese. Plus, the katakanaized version of allergy is pronounced in some unholy way (I think it's something along the lines of Ah-Re-Ru-Gee) that would require an impossible feat of contortion of my midwestern tongue. I was beginning to attract a lot of attention in the store (I imagine there was a run on the face mask department the minute the tall foreigner entered the store and began sneezing uncontrollably), so I decided to go home, put on some Smiths and wait for the sweet release of death. Oh, Morrissey, only you understand my literate yet preciously melodramatic pain.

Anyhow, I do intend to return tonight and will hit up the real drugstore as well, if Jusco's selection proves insufficient. Japan is supposedly the "most heavily medicated nation in the world," so hopefully someone in this country will be able to dope me up to my satisfaction.

Barring my untimely death, I intend to catch a train to Hach tomorrow, so that I might hang out with Nambu's favorite son, that elusive troublemaker, Matt Cosnett. Maybe then I can write about something less nerdy than allergies and blogs.

I was just given what I was told is a edomame paste mochi-ball. The best way I can think of to describe this delicacy to you, the reader, is to say that in terms of both appearance and texture it closely resembles a large wad of chewing gum onto which someone has vomited generously.

My Favorite Child Was the One Who Proudly Professed His Love For Jaguars

A while ago, somebody in this office told me that I was going to be teaching kindergarten yesterday. I don't recall who it was but I was definitely told that on the 24th I would be going to the kindergarten. Well, the day before yesterday, I thought it would be a good idea to confirm this. "So, I'm going to the kindergarten tomorrow?" I asked out loud. "Oh, you are! Well, good luck!" "Um, no, you see I don't really know," I replied. So Kondoh-Kacho told me to wait for Okubo-San, who is officially in charge of my schedule.

So yesterday, I casually asked Okubo-San the same question. "Oh, you are?" she replied. "No, I'm asking if you know." "Well," she said, "you should ask Kondoh-Kacho." So I asked him again. "Don't you know where you're supposed to be going today?' he asked me. When I told him I didn't know, the entire office freaked out and promptly called all four schools to find out what I was supposed to be doing.

Well, as it turns out, I was just meeting with the Vice-Principal of the kindergarten yesterday but today, I had to give a self-introduction speech (自己紹介) in Japanese to all of the students at one of the elementary schools. Boy am I glad that I asked. I prepared a short speech and had the office ladies look over it for me to make sure there weren't any strange mistakes. One of the office ladies changed one of my sentences to read "the people of Aomori prefecture are attractive." I am not sure why.

So today at about 10:20, I showed up at the elementary school. They had me sit in the office while they prepared all the students for the assembly. A few kids snuck up to the windows of the office to sneak a peek at me. Before long, a group of shy little girls showed up at the door. After about a minute of coaxing from their teacher, one of them said "please come here". They led me to the gymnasium where the entire school was assembled, separated by class. They then had me give my self introduction, after which, they pulled out a map and asked me to teach the children about where I was from. I was totally unprepared for this, so I said something like "Chicago is in the middle of the United States. The weather is the same as here, it is very cold in the winter and there is a lot of snow. There are many tall buildings". After the kids sang the school song in unison (I didn't even know that elementary schools had songs), they opened up the floor for questions. The room was silent. Then the teacher said "He speaks Japanese, it's okay to ask in Japanese" and literally half of the hands in the room shot up. The questions ran the gamut from normal questions ("What's your favorite color/food/sport?") to normal Japanese kid questions ("What bugs do you dislike?" "What food to you hate the most?") to downright strange ones ("What is your favorite precious jewel?" "What is your favorite color for a ring?"). Naturally, I didn't understand some of the words they were using, so one of the teachers stood by with her electronic dictionary, ready to translate.

Back in the office, a few of the teachers tried to talk to me and one in particular was very amazed that I knew so much about Japanese novelists. "I haven't read any American books," she told me, "Oh! Other than The DaVinci Code". "Oh, did you read that?" a younger teacher chimed in. "Did you hear, they're making a movie?" LOL.

Then, one of the older teachers came up to me and asked if I knew any older books like Tales of Genji (for those of you who don't know, it's like the 1,000+ page prototypical classic of Japanese literature). He then started talking to me about Kawabata. "Have you seen the movie for The Dancing Girl of Izu?" he asked. "How about Snow Country?" I've actually seen the former but I lied and said that I hadn't. The Japanese have a habit of ruining their classic novels by turning them into terribly cheesy made-for-TV movies. "Well, I'll have to rent them for you sometime," he said.

Or as the Indians Call it, "Maize"

Just before lunch today, this woman from the next office walked in and asked us "Do you guys like corn?". Well, naturally, everyone in my office was like "yeah". So she gave us each a package with three ears of corn in it, fully cooked, still warm and ready to eat. I ate one of them on my lunch break and it was pretty much the sweetest corn I've ever eaten (although not quite as tasty as fresh Nebraska corn). If nothing else, it steeled my resolve to make burgers tonight.

As usual I watched the celebrity game-show during my lunch break and they had all these kids on the show today for some reason. They would ask the kids a question and then the kids would write down their answer. Then, the celebrities had to guess what the kids had written. Some of the 10-11 year-olds actually wrote sentences that were too complex for me to understand. Boy was that embarrassing.

I added a dorky "what i'm listening to" section to the sidebar yesterday. I stole the idea from a mythologically promiscuous webboarder. Perhaps you already noticed it.

See You in the Funny Pages

So there's this shogi museum in my town that just had its grand opening over the weekend and apparently, it's a very big deal. For those of you who don't know, shogi is essentially the Japanese version of chess. As far as I can gather, there have been a number of famous shogi matches played here in Momoishi and to commemorate that fact, they decided to build a museum. The museum itself is really nice and has all this high tech stuff, the coolest of which is a fake tatami room with a shogi set-up onto which video projectors project a very dramatic presentation about one of Oyama Yasuharu's most famed matches (a statue of him playing shogi, pictured above, sits at the entrance to the museum). Having said that, though, it's basically a museum about chess, so it's pretty damn boring.

Anyway, while I was over there they brought in some reporter from the town newsletter type thing to photograph me. We then went back to the office where he interviewed me (I guess there's going to be an article about me in the next issue?). Every time I had difficulty expressing myself in Japanese he told me that it was okay to speak in English but every time I complied it became quite clear that he didn't understand a word that I was saying, so I stuck with Japanese mostly. I'll try to get my hands on a copy when it comes out so that I can scan it or whatever, it should be pretty funny.

You would have to be some kind of fool to mess around with my right speaker because it is being guarded by the king of monsters.

Attack of the Clones

If you’ve ever wandered why the license tests in Gran Turismo are so hard, it’s because that’s what they’re actually like over here in Japan. Apparently, before any sort of action is made, your mirrors need to be checked in some specific and arbitrary order and if your tires so much as touch an object outside of the test area at any point, you’re automatically disqualified. Case in point: Charlie finally received his license on Friday, thereby proving the old adage that the third time is a charm. He actually had to pay some driving school something like $50 an hour so that he could do practice runs on their track before he was deemed road worthy.

Well, this was good news for both Charlie and my mooching self. We celebrated today by eating at a small ramen shop and then enjoyed a brief stint in Hachinohe where we browsed the electronics store and I bought a toy Godzilla at Toys R Us.

At this point, I think that if I failed to make an appearance at the Shimoda Mall for even one day it might arouse suspicion from the locals, so we returned to the mall for a movie. On the way in, Charlie told me that they used to have a huge ferris wheel in back of the mall that they tore down and paved over a few weeks before I moved here. That was pretty depressing.

Anyway, we decided to see The Island because I didn’t know very much about it aside from the fact that it looked like a bad sci-fi movie and also because I am prone to acting on blind faith when it comes to matters regarding Ewan McGregor. Well, it turns out that it was actually an action movie that simply used post-Matrix dystopic fantasy as a springboard for lots of explosions and a series of increasingly unlikely narrow escapes. It also was apparently trying to break the Guinness book record for product placement or something. Bad news mac fans: apparently Apple will still be selling the same cinema displays in 60 years time. Compounding these problems, the movie copped many of its only redeemable ideas and visuals from THX 1138, wholesale. In fact, you might say that the plot was essentially a cross between that movie and The Matrix.

This being my first experience at a Japanese movie theater, however, I have a number of interesting things to report on. Movies in Japan are really expensive but there are a few ways to get around this. First off, it’s the opposite of how things work in America-matinees are expensive and late shows are cheap. They also have themed days (“men’s day,” “women’s day,” “couple’s day”) when you can get a discount. Since we went late, I only had to pay about $10 for my ticket, not much more than I paid in Chicago.

When we bought our tickets, I was surprised that we had to choose seats from a seating chart. Our assigned seat number was then printed onto our tickets. I was relieved to find that refreshments seemed much cheaper than their American counterparts but were considerably smaller. For example, the small popcorn came in a 12 oz. soda cup.

Before the movie, they played this anti-piracy public service advertisement that was, quite possibly, the strangest thing I have seen in this country so far. It featured an actress looking directly into the camera and saying things like “important things are being damaged”. Then black tears start rolling down her cheeks. Then those tears fall into a pool of water and turn into skulls. Watch and learn, children.

A Different City

Maybe you've noticed that I haven't posted anything in a few days. If so, thanks for validating my existence. I was actually in Aomori City for a few days, attending the new JETs orientation conference. I will now document my time in Aomori with a series of mostly humorous photographs.


Matt and I found this place in a mall called "Panama Boy," which was essentially a store that sold imported American thrift store clothes. You know how sometimes they have those stores in really gentrified neighborhoods that buy all the good clothes from thrift stores and then sell them for exorbitant prices? Well, this was just like that but way more expensive. I don't think those shirts were really ¥525, otherwise I probably would have bought the Dr. Pepper one.

This is a punching game where you fight people by punching the targets as they pop out at you. Perhaps one person reading this will remember playing this game with me in Italy. Remember that?

Look closer, Lenny.

Matt ordered a "Naan Taco" at Mos Burger one day. From a culinary standpoint, this is quite an accomplishment: Tex-Mex-Indian fusion in an American-style Japanese restaurant.

Matt and Leo, shortly after being released from the Creamy Prison.

Leo and I found this quaint little boutique called "Fuck" on a back street. The owner of the place seemed really interested in the fact that we were Americans and pulled out a book with a pornographic image on the cover and asked if we had read it. He also lifted up his shirt to bear what is almost certainly a Yakuza tattoo when I tried to take this picture.

Leo was very disappointed when he inserted his pony into this machine but received nothing in return.

You've probably heard all sorts of stories about Japanese toilets and their strange and terrifying features. Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time before I posted a photo of the control panel on one of these things, this one from my hotel room in Aomori. I don't care if the odor is free, I don't think I want it.

The Old Man and the Sea

I was innocently doing laundry at about 6:30 pm last night when my doorbell unexpectedly rang. Expecting to see Charlie on the other side of the door, I quickly opened it up. There stood the superintendent of the Minakurukan, Komata-San, a short, old man who commands an incredible amount of respect in the office (yet maintains the demeanor of a well-meaning grandpa). He was wearing a blue polo shirt, a Le Coq Sportif cap and a black Kappa track jacket. “We’re having a party,” he said simply in Japanese, “let’s go”. I hastily finished hanging my laundry and ran out my front door to see him waiting outside on his bicycle. I hopped on my bike and followed him, having no idea where I was being led. Well, just a few blocks for my apartment we reached a clearing and I saw a large group of people crowded around a series of grills. Turns out, it was an old-fashioned neighborhood barbecue. They had set up three huge charcoal grills, brought literally enough food to feed a small army and even had a small keg of Sapporo (which was pretty much tapped by the time I got there). After giving my formal introduction to the group, I was invited to dine on the delicacies roasting on the grill; squid, beef, pork, mushrooms, potatoes and countless other foods. And they kept bringing out more and more food. At first, they mostly just laughed at my strange mannerisms but soon enough, they were reeling in amazement at the fact that I knew well enough to use the other side of my chopsticks for serving food.

When a guy showed up with a box of large fish heads and plunked them down on the grill, the man to my right turned to me and said “Looks delicious, huh?”. I thought he was just joshing me but as soon as it was done, I was presented with a whole fish head to eat by myself. This required a bit of instruction from one of my newfound friends but I am now in a position to tell you that if you ever find yourself in such a predicament, the soft mush of the eye is to be eaten while the hard part can be spit out.

While I was seated at the party I noticed that as random people walked by, the partygoers would shout out “Hey! Come eat with us!” and a few passerby took them up on the offer. It was a very exoteric event; the only prerequisite seemed to be living in the neighborhood.

Not long after I arrived, I was introduced to the Pilipino high school exchange student, Dominique, who had actually been coached in Japanese by my predecessor, Beau. Her Japanese was good and she also spoke a little English, so I turned to her at a few points during the night to ask random etiquette questions (for example, “What do Japanese people do with watermelon seeds?”).

At about 8:00 or so the Momoishi fireworks came on. It was the last day of Obon, celebrating both dead ancestors and the end of the Second World War. I’m not sure exactly why but they seemed to be organized in spurts. There would be about 5 fireworks followed by a 3-minute pause and then more fireworks. This went on for about an hour. The guy to my right (the same fellow who foisted the fish head upon me) kept saying “Oh! This is the last one!” every time and never seemed to tire of my laughter. When I told the superintendent that I needed to return home briefly to use the bathroom, the fish head fellow insisted that I simply follow him into his nearby house. Once inside, I discovered that he actually had a small urinal in his bathroom, in addition to a Western-style toilet. I am still in awe.

Later in the evening, I actually managed to have a rather enjoyable discussion with a youngish fellow about Japanese literature, despite my remedial grasp of the Japanese language. Apparently none other than Dasai Osamu was born on the Northwestern shore of Aomori, who knew? The guy’s father was apparently an ardent fisher and when I asked him if he liked fishing the son interrupted to say, “Fishing is his life. He is like the Hemingway of Momoishi”.

Well, thanks to the courteous and helpful Blogger support team, the archive links finally got fixed. Embarrassingly enough, it was actually a server-side problem that I easily could’ve caught myself. Alas and alack.

Earthquake

Just about 5 minutes ago, I was sitting at my desk when I started to feel like someone was pulling on the back of my chair or something. I looked up and one of the office ladies calmly said "地震" ("Earthquake"). Sure enough, the ground started shaking more violently, although not quite enough to make anything fall or to even really displace anything. It lasted about a minute or so and afterwards, there were a few mild aftershocks. I ended up feeling a little dizzy but not much else. Afterwards, my boss turned on the tv and everyone watched them talking about the earthquake for about 5 minutes and then it was back to business as usual.

Update: I watched the news coverage on the tv during my lunch break. Turns out that the earthquake registered a 4 on the Richter scale elsewhere in Aomori and as high as 6 in other parts of Japan. They had footage of people cleaning up supermarkets where displays of bottles had fallen over and stuff like that. CNN is currently reporting that the magnitude was closer to 7.

Day of the Dead

First things first. It's been brought to my attention that the venerable Matt Cosnett of Nambu fame has posted a video of the Nebuta Festival on his soon to be famous blog. It's very well put together, if I may say so myself and does a good job of encapsulating the madness of grown men and women jumping around and yelling in funny costumes. The video also appears to feature some type of indie pop music, so you need not worry about losing any scene points by clicking on the link.

I don't understand how sushi is priced at the supermarket. I have observed that there are "cheap" days and "expensive" days but the reasoning behind this remains a mystery to me. I'm going to be in Aomori City for three days this week and I don't get paid until I get back, so in an effort to conserve funds I dined on cheap sushi and pre-made ginger noodles tonight. Luckily, even the really cheap pre-made food in Japan seems to be quite palatable.

Perhaps I didn't mention this before but this week in Japan marks the holiday where people honor their ancestors by visiting their graves and leaving offerings. They also apparently celebrate by lighting fireworks, which I can currently hear going off all around the neighborhood. Unlike America, though, their fireworks are pretty low key. They don't seem to approach the celebration of holidays with explosives with quite the same ethos as we tend to ("What better way to celebrate you country's independence than by blowing up a small piece of it?").


On the TV, they're contrasting images of Japanese children eating ice cream and such with footage from on the ground in Iraq. They even have a television drama here about a Japanese reporter in Iraq who dies in the line of fire. It's funny that America is the only nation in the world that seems intent on waging war while hiding the reality of what that actually means from its citizens. This is especially ironic in the face of American scholarship that's obsessed with representing the Japanese as having never owned up to their actions as wartime aggressors in public discourse. On a related note, you may recall that some of the only investigative reporting on depleted uranium usage in the first Gulf War was published in Japan by Akira Tashiro, a reporter for the Chugoku Shimbun. Unsurprisingly, they've had quite a bit of difficulty trying to get his book published Stateside. An English translation is available through Transnet however, for those who are interested.

This spider situation is really getting out of hand. The day before yesterday I cleared out all the spider webs within a 5 foot radius of my door with a shovel. Today, my door is again completely encased in finely woven silk. Just a few minutes ago, I was greeted by a spider literally the size of a silver dollar, just outside my door. However, in the time it took me to run and grab my camera, it had disappeared. Eerie.

I think I've decided that Muji is by far my favorite store in Japan. It's true that this is in no small part owed to the fact that they are one of the few places that accepts my Visa card, allowing me to pretend that I'm not broke for a fleeting instant. But they also have basically everything you could ever need, from cardigans to popcorn, all at fairly reasonable prices. Well, reasonable for Japan, anyway.

This little kid at the supermarket was smiling at me today and when I waved at him, he started grinning from ear to ear. That really made my day.

And You Thought That iPod Accessories Were Getting Out of Hand in America

A little over a week ago, Ars Technica ran a short piece about a new iPod accessory made by Tiger Electronics and Sega of Japan: the iDog. While we've all seen our fair share of unnecessary iPod accessories within the past few years, the iDog appears to be the single most useless product ever created. What does it do? Well, plug it into your iPod and it dances. That's it. I saw one on display at the Shimoda Mall today and couldn't help but snap a photo of it. Trust me, it's even more ridiculous in person than you could imagine.


The pet store at the mall was selling something in these small tanks today and everyone was crowding around to see what it was, so I thought I would take a look as well. It turned out that they were selling huge beetles in small plastic tanks for about $15. It was simultaneously cool and utterly terrifying. They were also selling puppies there for about $2,000 which appear to have been genetically modified in order to maximize their cuteness.

Later, while sitting inside a coffee shop, I saw a baby with a mohawk. He seriously couldn't have been more than a year old and it was obvious that his hair had been intentionally styled that way (most likely by his father, who proceeded to pull out a cigarette and blow smoke into his face). It was incredible.

Icho Sports Park

For those of you who know me personally, it might come as a shock that I've spent the last two days wandering around a place called the Icho Sports Park. However, I'm glad to announce that this park has a lot more to offer, even for those of us who are not usually inclined to participate in competitive athletic events. Hopefully the following photo montage will help illustrate this.

One of the many rice fields that I pass on my way to the park.



Momoishi's most famous landmark is the fake Statue of Liberty, pictured above. As you might have gathered from the middle picture, it was erected to celebrate the fact that Momoishi is the same latitude as New York City. Well intentioned enough, I suppose. However, when you actually get up close to the statue, you realize that it's very strange looking. I think that they didn't realize that the Statue of Liberty is supposed to be a woman because this one has very manly features.





The Japanese seem to take children's playgrounds very seriously. For example, Icho Park features the largest slide I have ever seen in my entire life. The pictures below aren't very good but it was literally difficult to fit the entire slide in the frame. I'm not very good with distances, so I won't even attempt to give an estimate of how long it is.

The Frozen Pizza Challenge: Part Two

Having experienced relative success with the last Top Valu brand pizza (and having nothing better to do on a Friday night), I've decided to continue the grand cross-cultural experiment. You could say that the previous pizza was something of a safe bet, as it was comprised of mostly recognizable ingredients. As such, I decided to branch out a little today and try the shrimp and squid pizza. You know how the old saying goes. When in Rome, eat shrimp and squid pizza.

Brand: Top Valu
Toppings: Ebi to Ika (Shrimp and Squid)
Price: about $4


I wasn't expecting to like this pizza so much, I really wasn't. But wow, was it surprisingly satisfying. This time I left it in a bit longer, so the whole thing was pretty uniformly cooked yet not burned. All of the elements on this pizza were well balanced and the chewiness of the squid really added something in terms of texture. I noticed this time around that the sauce is quite garlicky but it actually kind of works. It even had some cracked pepper sprinkled on the top for an extra bit of kick. Just about the only bad things I can say about this one are that the cheese was a little bland and the crust was about the same as the previous one (that is to say, soft on the underside).

Final Grade: B+
Aside from the unfortunate crust (which seems endemic to Japanese frozen pizza), I can't really say anything bad about this pie. Clearly the best one yet.

Mes Lunettes

This woman just walked into our office and asked for my glasses. I gave them to her and she cleaned the lenses thoroughly before returning them to me. Then she walked out of the room. Awesome.

Back To The Future

So today was the big day, folks. You can't really claim to live in Japan unless you have a keitai (cell phone), so I guess it's official now. The phone that I originally wanted (the orange one) was so old that they didn't have any paperwork on it, so they couldn't confirm if it had the option of changing the menus to English (although almost all of them did). So I decided to go for the Foma P700i, another low-end phone, offered by DoCoMo. Despite the fact that it only cost me ¥1 (the equivalent of 1¢), it sports the following features: camera, video camera, email, web browser, java games, real-time video chat and probably a million other features I'll never use. I mainly bought it because it was cheap and also because it has a button on the side that makes the phone open up. Now that's a useful innovation.

This is what the box looks like.

I'm pretty sure that all products in Japan need to fulfill a cuteness minimum in order to be sold legally. This little mushroom man may have been packaged with my phone in accordance with such regulations.

This is what the phone looks like when it's closed.

Now the phone is open. You can't tell in this picture, but the background is constantly moving; the bunny hops around, the clouds in the sky move, etc.


I wish I had some way of accurately demonstrating how crisp, clear and detailed the display is. These screenshots of various games don't really do it justice.

The charger is very small.

You can put a mini SD card in here, probably for storing pictures and video.

It came with this free headset but the AC adaptor cost an extra ¥900. Isn't that strange?

Japanese cell phones can scan these bar code things using their cameras and they usually take you to a website where you can buy or download something. This is a book of free background wallpapers that came with the phone. I've also seen these bar codes pop up on screens in arcade games, although I'm not sure what for.

Alexis had heard about this service where DoCoMo will call an English-speaking representative and then you pass the phone back and forth in order to work through the contract and such, so we thought we'd just show up and give it a shot. Well, possibly because I spoke to the woman in Japanese, no such thing happened. Luckily, everything was pretty straightforward and I was able to make sense of most everything she explained to us. A few times she had to pull out the English rate plan guide to explain things I didn't understand. For example, in Japan you don't buy "minutes" like you do in America. Instead, you choose how much you want to pay per month (between about $35 and $170) and depending how much you pay, your rate per minute varies. Even on the lowest plan, you only have to pay like ¥22 a minute, so I didn't see any use in upgrading.

The Dancing Boy of Momoishi-Machi

So last night, I went to (surprise!) the mall. However, this time, my goals were somewhat more complex than walking around aimlessly and/or eating an ice cream cone. I met Charlie and Alexis at the food court, intending for Charlie to help me navigate the complexities of the Japanese cell phone contract.

Well, I found out that the mall food court is a far more interesting place than I had ever imagined. Although I was initially turned off by the presence of McDonalds, I found that the court still held its share of secrets. For example, Pepper Lunch, where I chose to eat yesterday. Basically, they way this place works is that you walk up to a machine, insert your money and select a meal from the list (I chose this, which was basically like a pepper steak with a fried egg and some vegetables). The machine then spits out a ticket, which you hand to the person at the counter. They, in turn, hand you a little buzzer device (not unlike those handed out at the Olive Garden and other similar establishments when one is waiting for a table, except smaller and with a screen) that starts beeping when your food is ready. Well, upon returning to the counter, you're greeted by a tray with a super hot platter on it which you then take back to your table and cook your food with. It's basically like a fast-foodized version of Korean barbecue and it was so good.

Well, it so turns out that although the electronics store is open until 10:00 pm, they can only process applications until 8:00 pm, so I had to leave empty handed. Afterwards I wandered around Jusco where Alexis and Charlie discussed the merits of various types of garbage cans and soup stock. I think I'm going back again tonight to try to get a phone and I will most certainly eat in the food court again.

Beau (my predecessor) called today and talked to each one of us for quite some time. He has apparently found gainful post-JET employment at a pet store in Florida. While on the phone with him, Kondoh-San asked him if he knew Izu No Odoriko (known in English as The Dancing Girl of Izu by Kawabata Yasunari, one of the most revered modern Japanese novelists) and then proceeded to compare me to the dancing girl of Izu. What could he possibly mean by that? That I'm a pre-pubecent girl who entertains travelers by dancing for money and then falls in love with a young student but is ultimately incapable of expressing that love due to societal expectations? Hopefully, that's exactly what he meant.

Lost In Translation (LOL)

Well, I guess there's not actually very much translation going on but I do sometimes get the feeling that there's a communications breakdown of sorts in my office. Allow me to illustrate with the following retelling of a comical anecdote.

Last week, I was handed a fax that had a long paragraph at the top in Japanese (which I couldn't really make sense out of), as well as the following in English, below.

ALT gathering time; AM 11:00
Places; Rokunohe town cultural hall
Content; Prior meeting before it acts of afternoon
Miscellaneous - I will correspond here about the lunch. (Become independence.)
- Shoes for the room are necessary.

I stared for some time at this mysterious and enigmatic text. What was happening? On what day? How exactly does one "become independence"? Well, I was at least able to get out of the Japanese that the event was on Tuesday the 9th, although I still had no idea what the event was. I resigned myself to the belief that these mysteries would probably be unraveled with time.

Well, this week my boss started talking to me about the event, saying that it was a goodbye party. He didn't say for whom and I had no idea who might be leaving but it didn't seem to matter too much. A free lunch on the company dime? Sign me up. So I showed up in Rokunohe yesterday where I met up with Charlie and Alexis. We stood around and talked for a while until an English teacher from one of the schools came into the room and told us that in a few minutes, we would be giving a two-hour presentation to all of the English teachers from the tri-town area on how to teach English speaking in schools. Alexis had apparently been informed of this in advance but Charlie had no idea that anything was going on at all until he came into the office that morning (so he wasn't even really dressed for the occasion).

So that's how I ended up in front of a room of about 30 old Japanese people, being asked to sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" to them. At least I still got that free lunch.

Crisis: Averted

I was both surprised and relieved to find out that my Citibank ATM card works just fine at the local post office ATM machine. And what's more, the ATM has English instructions, which made my life so much easier. I pulled out $700-more than enough to cover both rent and living until payday on the 19th. Since Japan is a cash economy (and really safe, to boot), ATMs have really high limits on how much money you can pull out at once. I guess I won't have to ask anyone to tie ¥10,000 bills to transpacific carrier pigeons anymore (feel free, however, should the urge persist).

It was raining pretty hard today at the office and since I ride my bike to work, my boss gave me some instant ramen to eat at my desk so that I wouldn't have to get wet. Man, even instant ramen here is serious as all hell. It had freeze-dried meat and vegetables in it, packets of flavoring and soy sauce, seaweed and even a fake fish cake with a pink swirl on it. So naturally, when I went to the supermarket today, I was determined to find where this magical food came from. I was amazed to find that the supermarket had an entire aisle (both sides, too) of all ramen. I was a little overwhelmed, so I just bought the one I knew and another similar one. They were only a buck apiece.

So, I think I've decided on a cell phone (or keitai, as they call them here). I want the orange one. Please tell me what you think. Too girly? Not girly enough? The people at my office have become rather persistent about their requests for me to get a phone (they're basically required here), so I'll probably pick it up sometime this week. That's a ¥1 phone and even though it has flash games, a camera and email, it's just about the simplest phone you can buy without aid of a time machine. The "in" thing now is watching tv on your phone and also recording video.

As much as I'm trying to restrict myself to talking about Japan, I've got to let it slip that this new death cab is surprisingly decent. Especially since they've seemingly spent the last few years concentrating on disappointing their fans. At the very least, it's far superior to the last one. It's to be had on a place called the internet, if you're into that sort of thing.

If Anyone Is On Good Terms With A Yakuza Loanshark

Now would be the time to tell me. Just when I thought that I would be able to stretch my last three hundred bucks to last me through August 19th (when I finally get paid), they tell me that I need to pay rent on Friday (which is $450). At this point, a few fingernails as interest seems like a small price to pay.

The Frozen Pizza Challenge: Chapter One

Due to pressure from a specific subsection of my fan-base, I'm going to talk about Japanese pizza. In case you haven't heard, it's terrible, for the most part. Being the sort of person who claims Chicago as my adopted hometown I'm certainly not an impartial judge. However, disregarding my membership in one of the world's great pizza civilizations, there are certain conventions on which we can base our analysis. Japanese pizza breaks from pizza tradition in the following ways:

The toppings: Yes, squid and corn pizza is one of the more popular combinations here (it's not that bad, actually). Some places will even substitute squid ink for pizza sauce at the customer's request. I know this sounds like a joke but it's not.

The ratio of its components: They tend to like a lot of cheese here and not very much sauce. Being the type of person who often orders a pie with extra cheese and light on the sauce, this sits well with me.

The crust: It tends to be far less crispy, even on thin crust pizzas. This is especially true of frozen pizzas, although the blame may lie with Japanese "ovens" rather than the pizzas themselves. More on this later.

The size: The slices are basically more like slivers. Kisuke apparently gasped in terror after seeing the size of slices at the Pizza Hut located on the American military base in Misawa. Frozen pizzas are much smaller as well, being more single than LP in terms of size.

Now having said this, I've actually had terrific pizza here. On Friday night, I was talked into an Italian joint in Aomori City that had excellent cracker-crust pizza. If I was served this pizza in America I would undoubtedly think it was good. However, if I paid $20 for it in America, I would have complained loudly.

But we all know that the real test is frozen pizza. As difficult as it is to bake a good pizza, it's almost impossible to produce a good frozen pizza. While I have my trusted brands in America, I have no idea what to buy here. Thus, in what may prove to be a continuing series, I have decided to review the frozen pizzas that I have consumed thus far.

Brand: La Pizza
Toppings: Some strange pepperoni/sausage hybrid
Price: about $4


My first Japanese pizza making experience was confusing and un-fulfilling. It's worth noting that this wasn't really a frozen pizza, it was actually refrigerated (in hindsight, that should have been enough of a warning for me). There are no ovens in Japan like we have in America. Instead, microwaves double as ovens of some sort. Having been shown briefly by Charlie how to operate such a device, I decided to give it my best shot.

From what I could read, the directions instructed me to bake the pizza at 250 degrees Celsius for 5-7 minutes.

I set the "oven" for the correct temperature and waited for some sort of sign that it had preheated. Once it beeped, I put the pizza in. Upon opening the door of the device, the temperature dropped to 230. No matter what I did, I could not get it to go back up to 250. So I decided to leave the pizza in for a few extra minutes to compensate.

This turned out to be a mistake. As you can probably tell from the picture, it came out a little burned although not horribly so.

My main problem with this pizza was the crust, which on the underside had the firmness of soft bread. It was definitely done though, just really soft. Was this the fault of the pizza, the oven, or my inability to cook the thing at the correct temperature? I'm going to blame the pizza.
Final Grade: D
The pizza on the American Airlines flight over was better. Seriously.

Brand: Top Valu
Toppings: Supreme (or "mixed" as the bag calls it)
Price: about $6

This pizza was more expensive but much better. I was surprised to find a pizza that was not only frozen but that also had what I considered to be fairly normal toppings. The "Top Value" brand is actually Jusco's generic brand but as far as I can tell, they make the only actual frozen pizzas to be found at Jusco. Unfortunately, I had the same strange temperature problem while cooking this one. I decided to err on the side of caution this time, which resulted in a small section of the center being cold. It looked done to me, though.

This one had the same disappointing softness of crust but the cheese and toppings were far superior. The pepperoni wasn't quite like the American stuff but was passable. Overall, not a bad effort.

Final Grade: B-
Not good and not bad but somewhere in-between.

A Slew of Random Sunday Night Observations

Let me start this post out with a tribute to the magic box that has finally brought the joy of the internet into my apartment: the Yahoo Broadband Trio 3-G Plus.

This little guy brings me 26M DSL (I applied for 50M but it’s not available here yet), VOIP service and broadband television. From the looks of it, it’s also a four-port router. I don’t have the television service yet, as an actual technician needs to come here to install the set-top box. Notice the paper thin Ethernet cable coming out of the back. Maybe we have those in America as well but I’ve never seen anything like it before.

I’ve been living in this apartment for well over a week now and until tonight, I had not thrown out any trash. The Japanese are famous for both their love of recycling and the product of that love, confusing local garbage disposal systems. The schedule by which one disposes of various types of garbage as well as the method by which one does so varies from town to town, so I decided to hoard my garbage until I was told what to do with it. Well, having been provided with a chart at work last week, I decided to give it a shot. From what I can tell, regular garbage (that is to say “burnable” garbage) is collected twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays and various types of recyclables (cans, paper, cardboard, etc.) are collected 1-2 times a month (they rotate on a week to week basis). I need to buy special garbage bags not only for the town in which I live but also different bags for the various types of garbage and recyclables. The chart (pictured below) even has regulations printed on it for disposing of motorcycles and couches and such. I do not plan on throwing away anything of that nature in the near future.

While the actual washing of clothing in Japan is done similarly to elsewhere (using a washing machine), dryers are extremely rare as most people line-dry their clothes. Pictured below is the clothes drying rack that I found in my apartment. I have been told that in the summer it’s too humid so your clothes never actually get dry. And in the winter, it’s so cold inside the un-insulated Japanese houses that clothes actually freeze. Wonderful.

In Japan, many products use small toys to entice the would-be consumer. Pictured below are two small figures that came attached to bottles of Coca-Cola.

Finally, my most unpleasant observation. I was told the other day by one of the office ladies that Beau (the previous inhabitant of this apartment) often referred to this place as "the spider house". Oh, how right he was. When entering the apartment, I often have to brush cobwebs and the like out of my hair. Today, after returning from throwing out my garbage, I discovered that about seven spiders were working furiously to enclose the front of my apartment with their handiwork. I grabbed a nearby shovel and attempted to break up the party but I'm sure that's not the last I'll see of them. Additionally (and perhaps most disturbing), when I retired to my room last night, a huge spider jumped on me from out of the blue. Needless to say, I killed the little bastard. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you, spiders!

Slightly Less Interesting Photos of Sannai-Maruyama

The Beast And Dragon, Adored