BIG FUN (An Exciting Recap)

[bonelesspuppy]

I don't yet have pictures of the Big Fun (lo, I am lazy and did not bring my own camera), but I can distill a bit of the goodness down to bullet points.

• "Shirako" does not mean "tasty fried thing." It means, as my co-workers helpfully translated after I had eaten a piece, "fish man egg." This delightful incident technically happened pre-Big Fun, but. Just but.
  
• Last Monday night, Oma was deserted. Like post-Apocalypse deserted. Like the beginning of Twenty-Eight Days Later deserted. It was creeeepy.
  
• Ico is such a fun game. Especially with the mace. But less so with the windmill.
  
• I am proud to have fostered addictions to Lumines, melon bread, and milk tea.
  
• Industrial Hakodate? I've been there, and not on purpose. There's no feeling quite like hearing your cab driver ask, "How on earth did you get here?"
  
• I have seen the single greatest historical monument in all of Japan, but I cannot say what it is for fear of spoiling the coming pictures.
  
• They're peeeeeeking.
  
• IF (osembei = lembas AND Me.race = dwarf) {"Mmm. You could survive indefinitely on these things. ";} ELSE {notify (hunger, &script); "Man, you wish you were a dwarven ranger. ";}
  
• Our first hotel room was on a floor that declared itself to be "for the ladies." And it had Tempurpedic pillows. For the ladies. Ladies, ladies, ladies.
  
• Japan produces bright purple sweet potatoes. And puts them in pasta. Mmm.
  
• Japanese drugs are weak. Not even the stuff I was assured was the "ichiban tsuyoi" came through. Next time, we find Drug Dealer Takeya in the back alley and haggle for some proper pill-candy.
  
• I have the best bad fortunes from Asakusa. I will type them up at my convenience to share.
  
• I got adorable things for my birthday. They will appear when I take photos of my loot.
  
• Sometimes, Denny's? Is not Denny's.
  
• Did you know that it's possible for every single hotel in all of Tokyo to be booked solid for a night? 'Cause it is.
  
• Nishi-kawaguchi really deserves a post of its own. It was also for the ladies, but not in the same way. At all. No amount of scrubbing will ever make it clean.
  
• ...And that Nishi-kawaguchi cab driver deserves his own icon.
  
• The Super Potato in Akihabara is the most wonderful retro games store in all the world and I would gladly sleep on the floor to work there or even commute from Nishi-kawaguchi because that place is so fantastically lovely it made my hands shake and no I am not a junkie la la la can't hear you.
  
• Yes, Virginia, it is possible to get lost walking to a station you've been to many times before. Blame it on the rain.
  
• The Fellowship has been broken, and, judging from the hellacious weather that greeted me back in Oma, I'm the one who went off to Mordor. But we'll always have Moria Industrial Hakodate.

All in all YAY. I am making so many icons. So many. Consider them an impetus to get a paid account. :)

Awwww, the Okoppe JTE's wife just gave me a picture of the graduates this year with messages to me written in an delightful mix of English and Japanese all around the frame. It is quite possibly the cutest thing in the world, and I will find a way to scan it. SQUEE.

And it's really hitting me now how much I'm going to miss living in this country. Methinks I should find a well-paying job so that I can visit often.