Adventures in Japan

All The Small Things

The thing about not posting every day, and about me being to lazy to take accurate notes, is that a lot of the small details get lost. "The happy little trees" of our trip, to couch it in Bob Ross terminology. To put it another way, I'm forgetting about the flavouring. I likes the flavouring. I know that I already use too many words, but you'll be glad to know that I know that a little flavouring goes a long way. Too much flavouring, too many flavours, and whatever it is your cooking turns to crap.

It's just that there are certain things that stand out sharply to me when they happen at the time, and I say to myself, "Remember to mention that the waitress at the Thai buffet looked remarkably like Zhang Ziyi." And what happens when I go to write about the Thai buffet (buffets, or smorgs, are called Vikings here, pronounced BaiKinGu)? I don't mention the cute waitress, nor the fact that she can speak French. That's some nice little detail. Detail that would make my friends jealous at the very least. Which is why I didn't mention her horribly unfortunate teeth. So I'll try to get better at that. Yay, more reading!!

I work in Kyoto. That's about an hours travel from here. A twenty minute subway ride followed by forty on a train. Wanting to fit in as best I can, I oftentimes fall asleep on these conveyances. I have no idea how I wake up in time to not miss my stops. I don't try to fall asleep, I try to study or read but no matter how hard I try it always ends up with me groggily apologizing to the nice Japanese person next to me for drooling on him or her in my sleep. But on my ride home today I managed to stay awake. It's an entirely different experience.

Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe are all so close together that they could almost be called one city. There's not a lot of open space. But there are mountains. Maybe not mountains, but big jutty hills at the very least. The cities are slowly climbing up these steep hills. Or the hills are slowly creeping on the cities. They are covered in vegetation, these hills. Carla says they look like they're covered in broccoli, that should give you a good idea of what they look like. Lots of round, poofy protrusions obscuring the rock below. And at this time of year, there is a wonderful variety of colours. I myself think that the hills look like massive mounds of mold that have run rampant. It's crazy man, they are high and steep and just poised on the edge of civilization. It's like they are waiting for the perfect moment to explode forward, smothering and crushing all that lies in their way. It's really quite pretty.

I stopped in Namba on the way home to pick up some groceries. Then I picked up some groceries. To be fair, I was also very tempted to buy a DS. I saw them on sale man! I saw slightly used units and games for even cheaper, man! They ain't all sold out! To be completely honest, I was so tempted that I tried to purchase one but the stupid Japanese credit card reader was racist. I guess it was not meant to be. Back to groceries: I was lugging my groceries home and wanted to figure out when I'd be getting home. So I asked a nice looking Japanese man what time it was. He told me. He was walking in the same direction as me so he struck up a conversation. In Japanese. I managed to keep up. In Japanese. He asked simple questions and I provided even simpler answers. Perhaps emboldened by my performance so far, he asked a few questions that flew right over my head. I apologized. He said I should study more. I told him that I study every day but it all goes in one ear and out the other. He laughed. That's a good phrase to know. He seemed very impressed that I was walking all the way from Namba to Abeno. It's only about a 45 minute walk. But I was weighted down with about 10 pounds of stuff. Through hobo town.

It's not really called hobo town. There's just a bunch of homeless people who hang out there. Have we mentioned the homeless people here? Other than the one who touched Carla moistly? It's strange. They don't beg. They don't wash windows at intersections. They just rummage through rubbish in search of sustenance. And they build their own little lean-tos out of cardboard, newspaper and tarp. Some are quite elaborate. I walked by about a dozen such constructions on the way home. I'm debating whether or not to mention that there's been at least one murder in this area recently. No, I'd better not. It might upset the moms.