On Friday I went to meet a friend of a friend (actually, acquaintance would be a good word to use) and her husband at the airport. It reminded me how acclimated I am here now; I got to literally see the culture shock on their faces. What she liked the most was the hot cans of coffee you can get from the vending machine. Little things like that are ( Read more... )

This one has more pictures, but mostly of cool buildings. It`ll take longer to explain them though. ( Read more... )

Yesterday I wanted to go to Nikko, but decided it was too far away. I`ve been reading Waldon, and this gave me an unusual mood: I wanted to go to a "natural" place. I ended up in Mito, which is not very natural, but has a beautiful lake and Japanese gardens. ( Read more... )

Because it's long...
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Jesus Christ Superstar: Japanesque version was even worse than I thought it would be. Jesus with a tenor voice, singing in Japanese...just...strange. Pilate was this gay samurai type character. Actually, the musical could be called "The Judas Story" because Judas was in it more than Jesus was. One of the kids before asked me what "Jesus" was in ( Read more... )

I went to Niigata today to visit a friend from University who just came to Japan 3 weeks ago. [am writing this in retrospect] She lives about two blocks from the sea of Japan. It's a really nice area. She lives on a hill (though you can't see the ocean), and there are cedar trees which go all the way down close to the coast. There isn't much sand-- ( Read more... )

Yesterday I took a paid holiday to go to Yokohama. A friend from when I was in Leeds lives there, so I got him to show me around the city. The day didn’t start out that great as I didn’t have an umbrella and it was raining pretty hard when I was walking to the station. (My umbrella was skiving off since I left it at work.) Needless to say, I got ( Read more... )

Today I toured a brewery. Yes, this is just one of the high class things I do now that I'm in Japan. No, actually J, S, and C (all boys) were going, so I said I'd go too. I like tours of things--even if it's just how beer is made. Perhaps this fettish comes from watching too much Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, where he shows the film clips of how ( Read more... )

Yep. I meant to go to the bank in Shibuya to transfer money to my American bank account, but sadly I didn't have all the information so I couldn't do it. Then I wanted to buy a Kotatsu cover but alas, they were too expensive. Then I rushed to Akihabara to meet A and was late as usual ( Read more... )

Today I met Ami and went to Asakusa. There was some trouble getting there as we met in Akihabara, so I had to figure out the subway from Ueno to Akihabara. But it was done with the minimal amount of confusion, and we found each other in Akihabara near the subway. We went back through to Ueno (go figure, I should've met her there) and from thence ( Read more... )