Storm's A-Brewin'

It's been nearly a week since my last post.  Once again, a lot has happened in said week.  That's actually the reason WHY I haven't posted.  But here's a brief rundown of what happened in my week:

June 13th: Posted previous blog post!
June 14th: Dinner and drinks at my favorite place!
June 15th: Karaoke with company folk!
June 16th: American-Style Birthday Party!
June 17th: Packing!
June 18th: Conveyor-belt Sushi!
June 19th: Tonight!

There you go.  Here's the same story in pantomime:

Previous blog.

Photo of dinner and drinks at my favorite place not available.  Here's a dragon.

Company karaoke.

This picture is way cuter than the one where I'm at her birthday party.  But it was fun!

Wait, this isn't packing.  This is getting out of hand.

(Conveyor belt sushi)

When your best friend makes awesome Chinese food, you eat it.  I couldn't take a picture fast enough for there to be much left.

Now of course after a post like this you're thinking "What could possibly be left to show of Japan?"

I have a couple of things left to show of Japan.  Every "prefecture" ("state") has it's own "mascot" ("mascot").  At work we have a poster of all the mascots.  Here is a sampling of them, with my editorial commentary in yellow:

Last thing.  This sign is in the lobby of the post office.  Please no negative stereotypes in the comments.

You Might As Well Throw Away Your Kobe Beef

So much has happened since the last time I blogged, even though I only let about a week go by this time!  Where I left off last was of course having an awesome time in Nagasaki with Izumi and Sumihiro, my two favorite people.  Also a giant centipede which was a "little" centipede, and the promise to get pictures of a big one wrapped all the way around the border of the city, which I'm still waiting on.

I greeted the weekend with open arms.  My boss wanted to take me out of town on Saturday, and as is common with bosses and holidays, he said we should plan on leaving town even earlier than I normally even leave my house for work.  So I got up about 10 minutes before he got there and took the world's fastest shower because it takes me about 9 and a half minutes to get dressed for some reason.  Here's a picture of me in the shower:

We drove and drove and drove and drove until finally we came to a town known to the locals as "Hirado" and known to everyone else also as "Hirado."  Hirado has, hands down, the finest beef in all of Japan.  I don't know why the rest of the world is gaga (no reference to Lady) over Kobe beef.  We ate the most wonderful steak lunch.

That steak practically melted in my mouth.  It was so tender and juicy.  And then it came with dessert.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I guess I was a little too excited about the food.  BEFORE the food, we spent like 5 hours hiking around town to various historic sites and panoramic views.  Here's the Hirado Castle:

Actually, that's a minor outlying building of the castle, taken from the top floor of the main castle building.  We also went to see a view of temples and a church, 110 meters to the left of this sign:

I suppose you want to see what that looked like.  I'll have to post that in the next blog, I didn't get a great shot of it so I'll have to get it from my boss.  But here's a picture of him getting a great shot of it.

We also climbed a lot of stairs.

After all that, I went back to Omura, where I met up with my friend for dinner and drinks.  We had dinner at his place, and then went to the bar his cousin owns called Shochu Bar Mizu.  His cousin was treating us that night, and insisted that I have the opportunity to try some of the finest and rarest wines available in Japan available at his bar.  For example, this beauty:

"Tamaekane" runs about $15 a glass.  The owner told me to order it by its name in English: Balls.

Later in the evening, after my best friend ditched me, this also happened:

The very very next day, I went sightseeing in Nagasaki again, this time with my good work friend.  Nagasaki is a big town, so there wasn't much overlap in my Nagasaki sightseeing trips.  We got to see the Peace Park which is pretty much where the bomb fell.

We also went to Glover Park, which is where some guy named Thomas Glover bought a bunch of land a long time ago and became famous, and they still keep up his historical house. He also had something to do with Madame Butterfly, and maybe some koi.

And here I am carrying a little person:

We ALSO went to see the night sky view of Nagasaki.  This is where Sumihiro and Izumi and I went too, but we went during the day.  My work friend and his wife and adorable daugter and I went after dark.  We parked low on the mountain and hiked nearly a mile to the top, only to reach the observatory JUST as the rain started coming down.  So we RAN out onto the roof and snapped a few quick pics and said "That's good.  You good?  I'm good."  Then we took a taxi back down to the car.

Compare that to the night sky view of Omura, which I was fortunate enough to see last night.

Not as bright, but still beautiful.  Of course my camera does't take great pictures...it looked quite a bit better than this in person.

I didn't know where to fit this photo in, but I'm at the end of my story now, so here it is, from the side of a public ash tray:

A Month's Worth of Blog in One Post

I haven't written a post in about three weeks, and for that I apologize.  Once everyone found out I'm leaving soon, my life got a lot busier. Actually, once I found out I'm leaving, I made my life a lot busier.  Finding out that you have to fit a year's worth of memories into 6 months is like, um, something but I'm not sure what.  But something rough.  Maybe it's like sandpaper.

Anyway, over the course of the last month I have been to many places and seen many things.  I went to a classic car show.  Here's a picture of some classic cars.

That was the same day I went to a waterfall.  This waterfall, in fact.

The weekend after that, I had a GREAT barbecue with my co-workers after work on Saturday.  It was raining, but we barbecued inside the work facility and all.  We had already scheduled the barbecue some time ago, but since everyone found out I will be leaving soon, they altered it to be my going away party and they pooled their resources and bought me a really nice modern-day stationery set with a really nice retro theme.  I say modern-day because rather than stationery, it has a nice pen, a 4Gb flash drive, a mouse pad, and a business card case, and they're all sprinkled with gold dust.  Lit'rally.

After the barbecue, I missed out on some really great karaoke but at least I got to spend hours and hours with the company president in a dimly-lit, smoky bar you may have heard of before, called Snack Funny.

However, the next day I got to go to Penguin Town City Hall, which is not what's it is called in English OR in Japanese, but I like the ring of that so I'm sticking with it.  We met all the council members as we served them lunch.

And we got a rare glimpse of the King of the Penguins, sitting on His throne.

I also found out on short notice that my really super awesome little sister Izumi from when I was an exchange student found time to come visit me!  So Tuesday after work I picked her up from the train station.  It was SO good to see her.  We ate a hearty dinner at my favorite pub with my best friend.  Mom sent loads of cash so that we could paint the town red while Izumi was visiting, so we ordered anything and everything we wanted from the menu.  Here's a stock photo of Japanese money because I forgot to take a picture of the food.  But I will mention: raw horse.

Wednesday I took the day off work to spend with Izumi.  My best friend Sumihiro also took the day off work to spend with Izumi.  He drove us to Nagasaki (proper) and showed us the bits and pieces of Nagasaki that lots of people don't know about.

Some of these backroads end abruptly in stairs, so there's no way for vehicles to get through.  So if you live up in the hills and you order a package from Amazon, the delivery man straps on a giant backpack and hikes up all the steps way up into the hills to deliver your package.  It's true! I saw it on TV!

Here's a picture of me about to enter the women's bath.  Silly American!  Don't you know those characters on the door mean "women's bath"?

The funniest thing is introducing Izumi to people I know as "my little sister."  The other person invariably IMMEDIATELY looks at her, and she very casually nods in agreement...no smile on her face or immediate offer of explanation.  To us it's just a given that we're brother and sister.  Then of course when people ask, we go into detail, but if they don't ask, we just let them think about it for years to come.

Last time I came to Japan, Izumi and I had a movie moment, where I was on the "passengers only" side of the glass barrier and she was on the lobby side, and I ran out of prepaid cell phone usage but I had already entered a text to her in my phone so I just pressed my phone up to the glass so she could read it.  Then we both cried so hard.  THIS time, we've come a long way and realized how small the world is and how strange the world is and that we'll almost surely see each other again, and probably soon.  Not that it wasn't difficult parting ways AGAIN, but it was a lot easier than last time.

That brings us up to today, because Izumi left this morning after a late late night of drinking wine and talking about our childhood together, where we've been since then, religion, philosophy, relationships, parents, children, EVERYTHING.  

So, while we're on the subject of today, here's an old-timey internet we use at work.  In the photo, I'm using it to check Facebook.  It's different, but it works.

And here's a picture I managed to capture of two monkeys playing in the sand.

Author's Note: I opted to not put pictures of giant biting centipedes in my post today because it was only just announced this week at work that it's "officially centipede season" and we should be checking our shoes regularly before putting them on, and the centipedes we have seen around the office so far have been the "small" ones, only a little longer than my middle finger.  The "big" ones will be around soon, and I will post panoramic photos of them as I see them.