Adventures in Japan

DELICIOUS!!

I've never been much of a fan of peaches. That has changed. Or maybe not. All I know is that I had the best peach I've ever tasted today. One of the mothers gave it as a gift. Wow. Keiko, who has had experience with such things, told me to eat it over the sink. Thank god she did. The first bite exploded all over the place. I had to suck as I bit, there was so much juice. Still, oodles of juice ran down my hands. Probably the best piece of fruit I've ever had the pleasure of masticating.

Still don't know if I'd enjoy a regular ol' peach tho'.

The devine peach clouded my sense so much that I paid entirely too much for a bottle of apple juice.

The Days Are Just Packed

Wow. We were busy.

The beach party was fun. Not as big or as packed as we were expecting. The beach itself was pretty big, a nice long stretch of sand. And the weather was much nicer than when we last visited it with Trevor back in January. The 'boardwalk' (quoted because it was not in any way made of boards) had a bunch of bars set up along it. But mainly just bars. It was expecting all sorts of small stores selling assorted tchotchkes. There were none. Other than the bars, there was one tattoo parlour.

Likewise, I was expecting a couple of bandstands playing different music. I expected all this because most of what we read and heard about this Suma Beach Party mentioned that it was 'big'. Not so much. There was only one bandstand, with no one dancing in front of it. I can understand the lack of dancing, the music was lackluster. Generic repetitive beats being rapped over, reggae style.

See, this always happens. I'm sounding too negative. We had a good time. The weather was great, the surroundings were very pleasant and the food was good. The beverages were a bit overpriced, but we just walked until we found cheaper.

During our walking, we met a big group of Japanese revellers. They had fireworks. Along the beach, at regular intervals were very cute signs asking people to please not set off any fireworks. The signs were goggle-like in their efficacy.

I didn't get a lot of pictures of the beach, but I did get a bunch of hanabi (fireworks) photos.






By the end of the evening, the beach was covered in a haze of fireworks smoke. And we were covered in watermelon juice. One of the girls from the group of Japanese people bought a watermelon. We ate a lot of watermelon. Watermelons here are expensive. They cost like twenty bucks.



This guy was a loud annoying jerk.

The event did not go all night long and was winding down around the time we left. Just as well, that meant we could actually get a little bit of sleep before going to see the big parade in Kyoto.

There was a big parade in Kyoto. Fairly different than the parades back home. Well, there were still lots of people walking down closed off streets, big crowds watching the lots of people, and 'floats'.






I shouldn't really call them floats, cuz that might be insulting. These non-floats don't have motors, don't have nails either, put together entirely with wood and rope. They are pulled along by teams of sweating men and steered by other sweaty men using chocks, blocks and wedges.


So it was all very impressive looking.



I don't know how they don't just tip over.


After the parade we went to the college I teach at to enjoy a school festival. Basically all the kids from the different faculties get together and put on different events. There was a talent show with MCs and various acts. I just missed one of my students singing and dancing. That kinda sucked. The tech kids taped the talent kids and this was broadcast over all the TVs around the school. That was cool. There was a haunted house. That was fun. There was food and fun a good times. And pretty pictures. We all had a good time.

Berfdays

I worked on my birthday. Which is not anything out of the ordinary. One of my favourite three year olds just about crushed both of my testicles, which is luckily very out of the ordinary. You know that thing you do, where you hold on to the little kid's hands, he walks up your legs and then flips round and lands back on his feet? Well this boy decided to skip the whole walk up the legs thing. He jumped suddenly and planted both feet firmly in my crotchal region. His mother screamed out "ITAI!!" which (according to my DS dictionary) means "painful; sore". Luckily, he missed. His feet landed in a non-painful place. Happy birthday to me.

Also happy birthday to me: I got a fairly non-good haircut. I now look like a guy who cuts his hair short because he's going bald. Grr. The moms seem to like it. Plus it is much cooler, which is nice.

Also happy birthday to me: my boss gave me a bottle of wine. And one of my students made for me a card. It is so cute!! I would post pictures, but she's such a shy girl I feel that would be a form of betrayal. The card was made for me, and I love it to bits.

Also happy birthday to: Hunter, Jerry, Diane, Jon. I might not get a chance to call y'all so, have a good one. Except for Jon. Not that I don't want you to have a good one, but I am most definitely going to talk to you soon. There's a good chance I may vomit on you.

This weekend is just packed. There's a massive beach party going on, that a group of us are partaking in, I add this part of the sentence so I don't end said sentence with 'partaking in'. There's a huge parade in Kyoto that we're going to try to see. And the college I teach at is having some kind of festival. None of my bosses mentioned the festival to me, but my students all invited me. It sounds like it will be interesting.

Your duty as Canadians!

Vote for Tyler's dad as Canada's hottest MP!

http://hottestcanadianmp.blogspot.com

Then wish Tyler a happy birthday/Bastille Day! If you want to send him a gift, a link to our address is over there on the right -->

Think extravagant!

RoboCup 2005

OMG! Why am I teaching English when I could be building robots?! ROBOTS!!

I'm sure I had plenty of insightful things to say earlier today, but my brain has gone a bit to mush. Or something. Here's some pictures. Flash photography was prohibited because it might interfere with the robots, so most of them didn't turn out. But:


Robots playing soccer. Kinda the point of the whole event. This picture is of a game in the four-legged league, consisting entirely of Sony Aibos. Terribly entertaining.

I very much want an Aibo.


Besides the soccer, there was a rescue league. The rescue robots were hard to see because they were usually obscured by rubble and other disaster-type paraphernalia. Not quite as much fun as robot puppies playing soccer, but important nonetheless.


A team poster from the Junior division. So cute.

I very much want some Lego Mindstorms.

Besides the competitions, there were a lot of exhibitor booths. Some of them were very cool. Some of them were very cute (lots of companion robots for the elderly). Some of them were kinda creepy. I was especially unnerved by the ones that stared right at me.


Disembodied eyes are somehow cuter, but still staring.


And then there's this one. It doesn't quite come across in the picture, but it was a pretty convincing approximation of a real person. Almost beyond the uncanny valley.


If it weren't for the fact that her mouth wasn't always synchronized with the words that came out of the speakers, and the fact that there was no articulation in the fingers, I might've thought she was a booth babe.

And here's a really for real booth babe, because I know Tyler likes them:

I'm a Dollar

Japan is odd. There are many good odd things about it and a few bad odd things. The worst of these odd things, as I believe we have mentioned before, is the banking.

North America is well on its way to being a cashless society. Japan not so much. Which is weird because the homeless people here don't beg for change. It took a while to get used to the fact that I only get paid once a month. Per job. And both jobs pay me on the same day. It makes the last few days not so fun sometimes. But we're getting better at budgeting. I am still not used to getting paid in cash. My two day a week job puts my paycheck right into my bank account, but my fulltime job pays me in cash.

One day a month I carry around three thousand dollars (Canadian) in cash in my wallet. That's cool and scary all at the same time. What's not cool at all is that once I put that wad into the bank, it's not always the easiest thing in the world to get it out again. Most ATMs here aren't 24 hours. They close. Even the ones in a 24 hour convenience store. Figure that one out.

Figure this one out: when we bought our Summer Sonic tickets, we couldn't direct debit with our bank cards, but mine worked just fine in the ATM a foot away from the cashier. The ATM tacked on and extra two fifty (Canadian). The amount of effort it has taken us just to arrange for our bills to be paid directly from my bank account has been ridiculous. And we still don't have it all sorted out. I don't like the way money works in this country.

Carla says only one bank in this country is solvent. Or only one can actually prove that it is. That's kind of scary.

But Summer Sonic tickets!! Woo Hoo!!

Doo be doo be doo

Ever wanted to see a picture of a penguin in a bikini? Well here's your chance!

Making baking

Since we got our oven, we've been looking for baking soda. You know, for baking, and perhaps cleaning. Couldn't find it anywhere. Lots of baking powder, but no baking soda. Guess the Japanese just don't use the stuff. We'd given up on ever finding it and resigned ourselves to a life without the joys of paper maché volcanoes when we stumbled across some Arm & Hammer at Costco. In 12-pound bags! That's a lot. Yet I haven't completely ruled out a purchase...

Something else we can't find here: measuring cups. The kind for dry goods like flour & sugar. The closest we've seen are scoops with graduations marked down the side. Not terribly precise and just not the same. Sigh.

Also, our oven doesn't get hot enough to bake pies.

But if we really want one, we can always buy a 12-pound pie from Costco.

Jar Babies

Our weekend was a bit busy, rain or no. Our friend, Ben, has a friend, Sean, visiting from Australia. We met Ben and Sean for drinks at, where else?, the Hub. Jonathan, David's roommate was also there at the Hub. David swung by after he was done work and he brought along an acquaintance named Eugene. Let's meet the new guys...

Sean is, as mentioned, from Australia. Melbourne to be precise. He used to major in Police Officer-ing and minor in acting. Just recently he managed to combine his two loves: he played a police officer in the Major Motion Picture "Ghost Rider" (starring Nic Cage), coming to a theatre near you some time next year. Sean seems like a great guy. We had a blast.

Eugene, on the other hand I didn't like so much. He hails from New York and has done a fair bit of traveling, not that you can tell. His interpersonal skills weren't on the same level as Sean's. I can't say much more about Eugene, as I didn't learn much more about Eugene. He was too busy being argumentative to talk to anyone. Luckily, he didn't watch Star Wars with us.

We saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. I won't go into much more detail about the movie. Instead, I'll detail the rest of our evening. After the Hub, we bought our tickets for Star Wars. The start time was 2:40 in the morning. Having 3 hours to kill, we headed of to an izakaya (Japanese bar with lots of yummy food, but you knew that). At the izakaya we ate and drank and chatted. And one member of the party smoked. While we were trying to eat. I'll give you one guess as to who (whom?). Also at the izakaya, we met a table full of Japanese girls. 3 Japanese girls. A table full of 3 Japanese girls. Which is not a roundabout way of saying they were fat.

And we didn't really meet them, Ben met them and we all just came along for the ride. They showed us how to make ducks out of our hand towels. In return we invited them to Karaoke.

We went to Karaoke. It was fun, but it only lasted an hour so we didn't get to really let loose. Sean can really belt out a tune.

Then we ran, literally, to see the movie.

After that we stumbled into the Wendy's right across the street and drank beer, ate cheap hamburgers and talked about the film. Joked about the film to be more honest. It was a fun night. Expensive too.

Canada Day

So our Canada day came and went with little fanfare, but I wanted to send this out on the internet before Canada day finishes over there in Canada. Hope you have a good one.

Better than the one over here. June was supposed to be the rainy month, but it looks like July is going to be fairly wet. There was a Canada Day Picnic planned for today, but that got axed because of the rain.

While we're on the subject of both Canada and disappointment: we're not going to be able to fly home for a visit this summer. We crunched the numbers and found that we didn't have nearly enough numbers. Yeah. Sorry about that. I was really looking forward to seeing everyone. And, to be truthful, I just want to get away from this humidity. It's like every action, every thought, has a weight attached to it and all I ever want to do is lie down and nap. But it's too warm and wet to do anything other than sweat.

But never mind me, have a great Canada Day all!