I'm a Cheap Date

Thetruly devout and world's foremost Nicologists have by now figured out that I went out for karaoke last night.  In Japan there are essentially 3 types of bars: Snack bars (like Snack Funny), Izakaya which are like ol'-timey Japanese tavern-pubs, and karaoke bars.  Now of course you can sing karaoke at a snack bar, but only if you want everyone else in the bar to hear you too (which is essentially all Americans know of karaoke).  However, when you go with your friends to  karaoke bar, you get a private room.  Also, most places in Japan don't offer free refills on drinks, but you can pay, by the hour, for the "Nomi-Hodai" which is the "bottomless beverage" and they have a separate menu for that.  So four of my co-workers, one co-worker's girlfriend, and I went out for karaoke.  Following, you will see a few pictures of that outing.  It was really fun, and we bonded, and in the end I managed to not appear in any of my own photos so I'm pretty content.

This is actually the first time I've posted pictures of people I know without getting their explicit permission beforehand.  Luckily, they don't use the internet much and I will not post their names.  Also, I'd like to admit something: yesterday at work I had the worst attack of hay-fever I've ever had in my life.  And by worst, I mean I've never had hay-fever before unless you count that awful sneezing and runny nose I got every spring and blamed on owning a cat, a dog, goats, chickens, or children for the past 10 years.  But really, it's never been THAT bad.  So everyone was concerned about whether or not I'd even make it to karaoke, and I promised I'd stop by the drugstore on the way home and get some allergy meds.

Did you know you're not supposed to have two Moscow Mules after using allergy medicine?  I mean, I know a lot of medicines say explicitly not to have alcohol or operate heavy karaoke machinery after use, but this was a nasal spray.  A NASAL SPRAY!  I always thought nasal sprays were placebos anyway.  But it turns out that while effective in stopping a horrifyingly runny nose, they will also knock you down at 10:30pm and put you to bed but not tuck you in and they might only take off one of your socks and leave your shirt halfway buttoned and a movie playing in the background.

So today I spent the day (as I do most Sundays) hanging out in the apartment watching movies, only leaving once to get groceries and begin stocking up on souvenirs for friends and family.  That's because I will be in Florida next week, and shipping within the US is MUCH cheaper than shipping to the US from Japan.  So I thought I might take advantage of cheap shipping.  But here's something at the store I decided not to give to anyone.  Here they still sell candy cigarettes.

I guess I decided not to give them to a friend or family member out of principle.  I mean, it says right on the box "Orion's Cocoa Cigarettes," but it does say it in Japanese, and the picture looks more like the classic "Missing Post or a Third Post?" optical illusion than anything else.  Plus, the box is tiny, and only contains six pieces.  And if you decide to buy them and your children don't read yet or don't read Japanese, you can tell them that you bought them a box of chalk that they're ALLOWED to eat!

Not only do these delicious treats LOOK like chalk, they taste like minty chalk and have little to no hint of cocoa flavor whatsoever!  Also, can you tell this picture is upside-down?  I didn't think it would matter, but now that I've posted it here it looks really weird to me, like the candy cigarettes are just hanging from the ceiling or something.  But maybe that's only because I saw how the original picture was being taken.

I would post more about the souvenirs, but that might end up being a spoiler for the unwitting people who may or may not know they're getting souvenirs.  Plus, I don't want the kiddies to know ahead of time that I got them lunchbox-size individual servings of squid jerky!  Whoops!  Spoiler alert!

Do You Know, How Many Eyes Has Dragon?

Today we were hanging some signs up at work, and we were using double-sided tape to do so.  My coworker (the girl) had some special "sign-hanging" double-sided tape (as opposed to the taping-two-rolls-of-plastic-together-at-the-ends-so-you-can-roll-them-up-together type).  She pulled the package out of her desk and said "Oh look!  It even has instructions in English!" and we all had a good laugh because we all know I can't read English.

But then I really did read it, and this time I had the last laugh, because the English is some of the best (worst!) I've seen yet.  But after reading it and rereading it several times, I determined that there is NO WAY it could have been translated from the Japanese.  It has waaaaaaaay more words than you would get if you translated the Japanese, and there are some words in Japanese that don't even appear in the English version and many many more words in the English version that don't appear in the Japanese version.  If you don't have time to read that whole "Caution," just pay special attention to the following passage:

Just spend your day pondering this passage, which I think beholds a universal truth and an inherent beauty, like the lotus blossom on Walden Pond.

Good Eatin'

Sometimes people ask me "What do you EAT over there?  Gross!  Is it all gross?  Ew, gross, is it all raw?  Is everything still moving?  Do you know, how many eyes has dragon?"  When I sit through all that patiently waiting for it to end, I say "I cook most of my own meals, so I eat whatever I want."

For example, those many many mini baby squid(s) I showed you a picture of have become dinner tonight.  Here's a picture of them before the final mixing.  Aren't they so cute, just sitting in a calm circle around a pile of vegetables and bacon?  Those teeny white spheres you see near the babies are their eyes, open wide in awe and wonder.  They're having a friendly conversation about how nice the weather was today.  They're really quite pleasant to be around and I have enjoyed living with them these past few days.

Here they are again, ready for eatin'.  I made this, and I made it before once and posted about it I think.  It's called "O-konomi-yaki" and it turned out delicious this time.  Those little babies lived such a noble life and will always be remembered as heroes.  The pig who gave his life to be the bacon, however, was not noble.  So I won't mention him here except for in the sentence titled "The pig who gave his life to be the bacon" and of course this sentence describing that one.





I was changing my bedclothes today and I saw the teeniest tiniest piece of lint on my sheets and had a panic attack and threw my sheets across the room and started beating the mattress with my comforter-smacker (a device used for cleaning--perhaps it'll make it into a future blog post) for a solid two minutes before I realized it was lint, all because of the thought of bugs that's been on my mind lately.

And now, if you don't want to be disgusted or freaked out for the rest of your life, I implore you not to read this irrational fear of mine involving bugs:  my newest fear is that one of those giant centipedes or gargantuan Japanese house spiders will make its way into a bag of chips or something and I'll accidentally touch it!  I actually would care far less about eating it if I never knew it was there, from start to finish.  But if I realize I'm holding one of those things...

The Japanese Word for Socks Could Translate as "Undershoes"

I'm going to warn you before you get to the bottom of this post that there's a photo of a BIG BUG down there.  I wouldn't normally write such a plot spoiler, but my life has been threatened if I don't warn people when I'm going to show them something hideous and potentially psychologically damaging.  Oh, but here's another SPOILER ALERT: the bug is already dead in the photo.

Spring is in the air.  I know I've said that before, and I know it's gloomy and rainy outside right now (and cold!), but I know it's spring now because I bought some new short-socks.  And they're super cute, aren't they?  Especially on my super cute feet!  I got tired of being the only person at work wearing white white socks every single day.  I was starting to feel like an outsider, like we weren't even speaking the same language, all because of my socks.  So I invested in some non-white socks to get myself ahead in the business world.  Plus, when I'm bored, I can play checkers on them.

The socks are juuuuuuuuust barely big enough, when I stretch them as much as they'll stretch, because most Japanese feet don't come in my size.  That's also why I have such a limited selection of shoes to choose from.  Which reminds me, I think I'm going to get some safety shoes tomorrow.  I may have decided which ones, but I'm not going to say which ones until I've bought them because I don't know if the ones I want will still be in stock.  If the store has any in my size at all, they usually only stock one pair at a time.  Of course, it's not like anyone but me is going to buy them in this town.

Here are the other two pairs of socks that came in the three-pack.  I bought them on sale at the drugstore.  Oddly enough this picture was taken on the exact same floor as the picture above.  I don't know why the wood in this picture seems so much more wooden and the one in the picture above seems so much more gray.

So now I have a pair of checkered socks to match all of my moods: happy, angry, and white.  But I'll NEVER tell you which pair goes with which mood.  You'll just have to experience it for yourself.

These are actually some of my most favorite socks I've ever boughten(!) because I've only ever owned one other pair of socks this fancy, and they were merely black-and-white-striped like the Wicked Witch of the East was wearing on that fateful day in 1939 (because I'm not sure whether the Witch had those same socks in the book).





Now before anyone accuses me of just buying cute socks all willy-nilly, with blatant disregard for the gender for which the socks were intended, you should have a gander at the packaging:

Now you see why I'm so happy?  Men's socks don't come this casual in the United States.  And they also don't come in centimeters.  And they also aren't very original.

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for: A BIG BUG!

We found this while spring cleaning at the work facility.  That's my hand, which I tried to include in the photo for size comparison.  However, not only am I a terrible photographer, but I couldn't put my hand near enough to get an accurate size comparison because the thing is horrifying even though it was already dead.  But this specimen is in real life longer than my index finger.  And from what I understand, these little guys are poisonous and also might be attributed to some neurological syndromes.  And as some of my friends know about my ongoing fear of scorpions in my shoes, it turns out you need to check your shoes for these friendly little fellows once it gets warm out.  Oh, and your bed.  As an interesting side note, I plan on quitting my job and begging for my old job back before it gets warm enough to have to consider checking my shoes.

With Dolby Digital Surround Sound

Today was a looooong day at work.  We didn't have any clients and so we spent most of the day trying to come up with what we should be doing.  We didn't want to not be doing anything, but for a while there it seemed like a real stretch to come up with something good.

But one thing we did settle on is that we're going out together Saturday night after work for KARAOKE!  That's a Japanese word that translates literally as "Empty Orchestra" or potentially "Orchestra of the Sky" depending on how you think about it.  But what it really means is me trying to a sing a bunch of songs I only know half of and probably ending up on YouTube because of it.

It got cold again today.  I mean, it was close to 60 but it's still cold when you're not ready for it!  So I'm sitting in my apartment, shivering, thinking about turning on the heat, and wondering how my Indiana friends are doing in Winter Storm Virgil.

"But wait!" you say, "that's really all you're writing today?"
Yes, I'm afraid that nothing really happened.
"No pictures?"
No, I even forgot to take my phone with me to work.  Now I'm in for the evening.
"What about pictures of whatever you make for dinner?  Or before/after pictures of you giving yourself a haircut?"
No, you'd have to wait quite a while for those and I plan on being in bed by then.

Ok, I will share this one little thing.  Every time I get out of the bathtub, I always think for a split second "Oh man, it is so cool to have an IMAX 3D bathtub."

PS - I'm having a bacon sandwich for dinner.

I Don't Live in the Castle...Yet

My three favorite radio shows here are "Sunrise Station," "Tag-team Driving with Taguchi Junnosuke," and the Yellow Hat Tire Commercial.  My least favorite programs are "Fly Day Wonder3" and whatever's on when I get off work every other Saturday that I just pretend is still Fly Day Wonder3 from Friday evening on my way home from work.  You see, I only ever listen to the radio when I'm in the car, and I only take the car to and from work, and I never change the station.  But I feel obligated to have favorites and least favorites.  Plus, Taguchi Junnouke just sounds so adorable and he's so kind to that talking car navigation system when they're deciding where to go each week.

I say all that to say this: today after work I decided to get dinner at MCDONALD'S!  Yes, our very own McDonald's right here in Omura.  I walked in and people stopped dead in their conversations to turn and look at me.  Like they weren't expecting an American!  In McDonald's! This McDonald's is really long and narrow, so to get to the cash registers from the parking lot, I had to walk past every single table in the whole restaurant, and someone had put "Another One Bites the Dust" (that's the most American song I can think of) on the jukebox, and I had my sunglasses on and was smoking a cigarette the whole way, and occasionally tipping down my sunglasses and winking at people at tables.  And it was all in slow motion.  All in all, it took me about 45 minutes to an hour to get to the cash registers.  On my way out, I flicked my cigarette back at the restaurant and the whole place exploded.  It was awesome.  I drove off with the top down on my car (which is not a convertible) and blaring "Sympathy for the Devil" (Roling Stones version) which is ALSO the most American song I can think of.

I said all that to say this: McDonald's is really close to the local castle.  And spring is in full boom at the local castle.  Here are a couple of pictures of spring being in full bloom at the local castle:

Of course, I realize that if I want to get pictures of this in better light then I need to go when there's better light.  Which I fully intend to do.

I say all that to say this: I went to another park yesterday with some previously mentioned children and their dad to see some cherry blossoms.  Here are a couple of the photos from that:

I was making a really bizarre face in BOTH pictures, so I have graciously edited out my face in both.

Anyway, I say all that to say this: I went to this park with these kids and their dad to see the cherry blossoms, and the dad is the same guy who told me that Omura park (where the castle is) is a great place for cherry blossom viewing, and on my way home from work today right before the Yellow Hat tire commercial, Taguchi Junnosuke and his friendly talking car navigation system reminded me of cherry blossom viewing, and so I went to the castle after McDonald's to take a photo in order to one-up a picture of blossoms in southern California my friend Krisi sent me.

Aren't you glad I tied that all together?

I'm Pretty Sure Karaoke Is Available Everywhere

I don't have a lot to say today but I wanted to say SOMETHING so as to stay in the habit of posting every day whenever possible.  I went out with some friends last night for a bit, which was really fun.  We went to a swanky little cocktail lounge called Raja Raman.  Today I watched Inception on line and laid around pretty much all day, until the early evening when one of my coworkers invited me out for dinner.  We got chicken-kabobs and then went to a little lounge called "Snack Rinka".  There I met a Romanian woman named Simona.  She works there!  We spoke in English some, but mostly Japanese.  It's always funny to me to meet someone who is obviously not Japanese and still only be able to communicate with them in Japanese.  I say "always" but it's only happened one other time, with a girl from Brazil.

Anyway, here's my take-home knowledge for the evening: toilet paper comes in pink!

This Is How You Spell Dog

Right at the onset or outset, or on the offset of this post, I would like to show this picture of the word "dog" in Japanese.  This is for a special friend of mine who has only just begun learning Japanese and had better have this character learned perfectly before I get back or there's going to be some 'splainin' to do.  And if you're not sure whether or not I'm talking about you then you should probably go ahead and learn it just in case.

Today it's cold and rainy.  Of course, by cold and rainy, I mean warm and rainy.  The point is, we all know I'm not going outside in this, except perhaps to collect any laundry I may have left hanging outside to dry.

I have the next two days off, because they are Saturday and Sunday (respectively), and this is our "off" Saturday.  Last time I had a break from work (2 days ago) I contemplated calling all of my coworkers and inviting them out for lunch (there are only seven of us total, so "all" isn't that big of an ordeal).  The difference between this past Wednesday and this coming Saturday, however, is that this time I might actually call.

On the way home from work today, I stopped at the store.  I bought a couple of things that you don't often find in the U.S.  First, GREEN KitKat bars!  I'm sure many of my friends would reel back in shock, and some of my friends would even scoff at the sacrilege that is a "Green Tea" flavored KitKat.   But when you realize that the selling point (shown here in a white font across approximately the center of the bag) is "Sweetness for Adults" then you start thinking "Hey, I'm an adult, I should like this."  I haven't eaten one yet, because I'm planning on sending them to a friend back home, which means I'll probably wait until really late tonight and then eat them.

The other thing I picked up is this package of wee squids.  Aren't they adorable?  And do I have big plans for them?  Well, I did when I bought them: take a picture and put it on my blog!  Now I have to come up with new plans for them.  I thought about releasing them back into the wild, but I have a feeling they will never be accepted back into the squid community at large.  So I will probably sauté them with some spices and eat a few and realize I don't actually know how to properly cook squid and throw them all away.  That's not what I want to do, and believe me it's going to hurt me a lot more than it's going to hurt them. But nonetheless, I may have to resort to that.

Here's a picture from my drive home that shows three things.  1) See, I'm not lying about it being rainy out.  2) Isn't that teeny truck cute?  3) The cherry blossoms are in bloom in Omura!  That means it's officially spring.  That and the fact that the first day of spring was officially Wednesday.  That also means it's officially spring.

Lastly, look what I did to my living room ceiling!

Web Log Entry 57, Stardate 66685.9

It has been 68 days since my arrival in this remote fishing village.  The natives seem to be accepting me into their culture; however, I will probably never fully assimilate.  There are a few who seem more accepting than others, but the elders will probably always be suspicious of me.  I am beginning to understand their complex spoken language, but the written language seems to all be in pictures.  If only I had a way to crack the code.

Today I tried to take a shortcut to my favorite grocery store, and ended up never even seeing the store but I ended up at home 10 minutes early.  So I found a shortcut home, which I'll probably never find again!  And I would lie to say that my previous description of the roads around here was an exaggeration, but so far whenever I try to disprove myself, I only further reinforce the description.  The roads aren't straight.  The only ones that are stop immediately at a giant stone wall or a small park with one swing and one kid covered in dust.

It was, however, probably a bit of an exaggeration to say that the roads aren't wide enough for 2 full car widths.  You can see clearly in this picture that both cars fit on the road as they pass each other, they just don't fit in the lines and one car doesn't have anywhere to go but a giant stone wall.  Of course, street signs and telephone poles are often planted in that zone between the white line and the sidewalk or wall, so sometimes if a car is coming toward you, you do have to stop so you can get around the pole.  Also, I wasn't lying about how cars just randomly stop and put their blinkers on on roads like this, but when I tried to get a picture of that it turned out too blurry because I had to throw my camera into the back seat and put my hands back on the steering wheel and get my eyes back on the road so I didn't hit a car parked in the road with it's blinkers on.

Here's a report on my day yesterday, since I didn't blog.  I watched "I, Robot" and then I watched "Snatch" and then I watched "Ocean's 13."  I will admit it wasn't a very productive day, but I will also admit that it was rainy and windy and I was laying in a pile of blankets on the floor while watching movies.  It would have only been better if I could have ordered Chinese delivery or pizza, but I don't have a phone book or the internet.

I Bet You Are Wondering Where the Fifth One Is

Let's take a walk to my favorite convenience store!  I'll show you the sights on the way.  Here's the vending machine closest to my house.

Here's the vending machine around the corner from that one.

Here's the vending machine immediately to the left of that one.

Here's the vending machine immediately to the left of that one.  You can see that it's not lit up but the buttons still light up.  Also, some say if you look closely you can still see the ghost of a foreigner trapped inside, taking pictures.

Directly across from those three vending machines is this hotel.  It has room rates by the hour.  Hmmm.....

And back directly across from the hotel is a line of three vending machines.  But right next those is this, my favorite convenience store, Family Mart!  But don't tell Family Mart, I think it's only my favorite because it's the closest.

At this convenience store is a really nice clerk who always seemed really nervous to help me until the one day when I said in Japanese "Do you work every day?" and he was like "Yep, pretty much," and I was like "Wow."  Since then we've been best friends, as in he smiles at me when I come in.

If you continue past the Family Mart, on your way to the grocery store with the cute elephant logo, you will pass a restaurant that looks like this:

This restaurant stinks.  That is, it smells terrible.  And to be honest, I'm not sure that it's this restaurant.  But whenever I walk past it, there is a FOUL smell afoot.  I feel bad for the restaurant if it's not causing the smell, because I know I'm always in the mood for food until I approach the entrance of his place, and then I'm suddenly not hungry and in the mood to run.

And speaking of food, finally here is my final word on the jar of salsa I bought:  It's pretty good.  It's not terribly unlike one of the cheap brands at a U.S. supermarket, like Wal-Mart or Aldi.

I Can't Think of a Title Right Now, I Heard Some Thumping Outside

Well I feel obligated to post a picture of the dinner I made tonight because I'm kind of proud and because you need to know that I can cook when I know what I'm doing and what ingredients I'm working with.

That's two small open-faced cheeseburgers with all the toppings and two wedges of tomato, posing coyly in front of a beautiful Owl Trio Sitting Cushion by Well.stone that's leaning against a minimalist wall by Christian Dior.  Plate designer unknown.

It suddenly hit me today that I only have two weeks left working here, then I'm going to spend a week in ORLANDO FLORIDA WOOHOO SPRING BREAK OH-THIRTEEN!  Then I'll come back and work for a couple of months at our sister company which is right next door to our company so I won't have to move to a new apartment or learn another language.  As I thought about this and let it sink in, it came to my attention that essentially the fate of this company and perhaps the world rests on my shoulders.  Our company is evolving like so many Charmeleons who are now Charizards.  And the position I hold in the company was created to be the crux, or Horcrux if you will, that contains a fragment of the soul of the company so that it will never die.  But that makes me both excited and scared.  As they say in my employee handbook, "With great power comes great responsibility".  I have a lot of training to do before I'll be able to represent the company appropriately, like little Anakin circa 32 BBY.

At any rate, it's good to know that your every move is being watched by some Higher Power so that if you do something terribly wrong you get canned.

Ok, I'll admit that it's hard to see the one in the picture with the cars, but I swear it's there.

Sorry Would-Be Suitors, I Don't Give My Number Out To Just Anyone

If you ever find yourself thinking "Who is that handsome porcelain-white man in cut-off sweatpants with wool socks pulled up as high as they'll go?" you can rest assured it's probably just Nic On His Day Off.  When I don't have anywhere to go or anyone to see or anything to do or anything to think about, I put on my Sunday best and watch reruns of Worst Cooks in America and Sliders while eating with the lights off.  I try to conserve energy, so the heater's off too (hence the wool socks).  Imagine sitting on a hardwood floor in a cold dark room eating some ill-prepared food and drinking instant coffee, watching trash TV. Sound too good to be true?  Well, as the saying goes, "If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably happening to Nic."

Now the ill-prepared food wasn't entirely my fault.  I discovered too late that I didn't have any measuring utensils in my apartment and was unable to leave the apartment to go buy some because of my physical appearance.  So I threw the ingredients together in a somewhat reasonable fashion, making the recipe at least look like I thought it should look.  Then I cooked it just like they do at the restaurant.

This particular dish is called O-konomiyaki, and is sort of like the halfway point between a pancake and an omelette, and it's savory, not sweet.  O-konomi (or sometimes just Konomi) means essentially "whatever you like" and so aside from the eggy-battery base you just add whatever ingredients you want, which usually includes onions, some sort of meat, and cabbage.  It's really quite good at the restaurants.  At a restaurant, it usually looks like this.　　I know because not only have I had it at a restaurant, but I stole this image from a restaurant's website.



However, if you make it at home without measuring anything and cook it on too high heat and don't actually have Okonomiyaki Sauce, you'll probably get something that looks like this.

And that probably tastes a little like this.

Don't say I didn't warn you.  Oh wait, I didn't!  Whoops, hoe nobody lost their breakfasts over that one.

Anyway, I said all that to say this: it's raining today, and you know what that means.  I'm stir crazy because I have't left the apartment even once.

The Wind Out of My Sails

Boy my blog posting has been patchier than ever lately!  Sorry about that!  Yesterday I went to work, but I had a headache and my stomach felt uneasy and I couldn't concentrate.  I was given some medicine and then after a little while I was sent home.  I slept literally almost all day except for the times when my friend was checking up on me to make sure I was ok and in the evening when my other friend and his wife brought me dinner.  These people are SO NICE!

Today I went to work again, and the first half of the day my head was a little swimmy and it was hard to concentrate.  But after lunch I perked right up and felt great!  Maybe it was the sudden cold snap we had after the 70+ degree weather most of the week.  Anyway, a sudden, unexplained illness 34676 miles from home and a cold snap to boot can take the blogging wind out of your blogging sails for a day.

That being said, I don' have much to blog about anyway.  Like I said, I slept all day yesterday and I don't actually remember much of the first half of today.  But I do remember the lunch-break game of soccer-softball.  That was where four of us played pass with a soccer ball while two of us played catch with a softball while standing mostly right in the middle of the soccer pass game. When I got invited to play, I was thinking at first "uh-oh, now they're going to get to see how terrible I am at sports."  But then I watched them for about 5 minutes and felt right at home!

In case you're still wondering, here's the verdict on the Doritos here:  "Nacho Cheese" flavor (pictured here on its side) tastes more like "A Mix of Cheddar, Swiss, and Parmesan" flavor, which I should have guessed from the packaging.  Which means I stand by my original verdict, that "Mexican Tacos" flavor is actually closer to original Doritos.  I haven't tried the jar of salsa I bought yet, so expect lots and lots more posts about Doritos, salsa, and Mexican food in general.

You may not know this, but many Japanese people do not like to go outside barefoot no matter what.  So even on my fenced-in back porch to which there is no entrance except through the house, there is a pair of slippers (sandals) for anyone to use.  I wouldn't normally use them because I like being barefoot, but they're there and I can't help but put them on every time I open the sliding door.  When I first learned of this custom, I thought it was weird.  But I can see right on the back-porch-slippers that it's "good" so I'm comfortable with it.  Plus, since there are plenty of stinging insects around here that only live near the trees, and my back porch is surrounded by trees, it's probably a good idea to have foot protection.  Plus, if it ever gets REALLY rainy and the fish swim up onto my porch from the ocean, if my foot touches one I'll be like "Gross!  Something touched me!" and start smacking the water and trying to get out as quickly as possible like a pansy,which is what I do whenever something brushes against me while I'm swimming in a lake.



Speaking of the ocean and the lake and not wanting to o swimming at night because dark water is the creepiest, here's a night-time picture or the docks at the bay. It's all greenish so you might think I have one of those night-vision cameras like the military or those paranormal shows, but really everything in Japan is greenish like that all the time.

Airport or Non-Airport: YOU DECIDE

Happy White Day everybody!  White Day is the Japanese answer to Valentine's Day, and by answer I mean that they also have Valentine's Day but on White Day you answer all the people who got you chocolate for Valentine's Day by giving them chocolate in return.  Actually, usually the girls give the guys they like chocolate for Valentine's Day.  Then the guys get "obligatory chocolate" for all the girls unless they really like a girl and then they get her a really nice chocolate gift or ask her to marry.  I only got chocolate in my catered lunch on Valentine's Day, and I think the lunch catering lady is married so I didn't get her any chocolate.

You know how sometimes in the U.S. you get behind a car that drives fine but then takes all turns really wide and slow?  And usually you're like "come ON old lady!" (no offense to old ladies reading this).  Well nearly everyone here drives like that.  I mean, I know the roads are narrow and you're never sure if a side street is a street, and you have to watch out for the many bicyclists and pedestrians about to go by on the sidewalk, but sometimes when someone in front of me is turning, I want to get out and walk up to their car and knock on the window and lean in and say "is everything okay in here?  Just checking," and then walk back leisurely to my car and take a nap.

On the topic of driving, I have found the straightest street in all of Japan.  Or at least all of Omura.  If you look closely, it ends with a van.  But it's a nice drive because it's next to the bay and it's straight.  I usually only accidentally go down this street one time in my life when I think it goes through to my neighborhood and realize that's impossible because of the way the bay is shaped.  But it is a nice shortcut to the post office, and by shortcut of course I mean it takes longer than any other way I've taken yet.

If you stop on this same road to take a picture through the fence, this is the picture you'll get.  It looks like an airport, especially because there are various aircraft parked in some of the buildings.  But it's not Nagasaki Airport, so I don't know what it is.  I think it might have something to do with the military base here in town, because I often see what looks like helicopters crashing on my way home from work but I just now (as I typed this paragraph) put it together that they were probably landing here.  FYI the sun is always setting in the background of this facility, so the pictures will always turn out this nice.

I need to take back everything I've ever said about Doritos.  I realized today that the "Mexican Tacos Flavored" Doritos might actually be taco flavored.  Today at a different store I found Nacho Cheese flavored Doritos.  I haven't eaten them yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion.  I also found salsa!  I haven't eaten it yet either, but it's gotta be better than what I made.  You can expect a full report some other day.

On a final note, it's a rather brisk evening.  It was warm but windy all day, and this is the clear clear sky at around 6:30 when I got home from work and the grocery store.  It's so beautiful it reminds me of the outer edge of a planetarium as they dim the lights at the beginning of the show.  It's amazing how life imitates art.

Oh, as a final final note, you may have noticed that there are often a LOT of typos in my blog posts. I haven't noticed, which would explain why they're there.  My computer keys are apparently not very sensitive, so unless I press each key with the force of an ice-age-bringin'-meteorite, sometimes the letters don't show up.  But I very rarely edit or revise what I've written because if there's one thing that I am it's too good for that.

As a final final final note, have you ever heard of the Osusumebachi?  That's the Japanese word that translates as "Sparrow Hornet," so named because it's the size of a Sparrow II XTC.  They're also called "Japanese giant hornet" in English.  That's because they're big.  While we were on break, outside drinking coffee by the vending machine, I casually asked my friend at work if those hornets lived in this area.  He said "oh no no, not this area.  More like over there, by the trees" (pointing to an area about 15 feet away).  So if I live to post them, you might see pictures of giant hornets.  But of course they'll be wearing monocles and top-hats in the photos, so just relax.