I woke up at 7:30 a.m. and decided not to go back to sleep, since we would be traveling today back to Tokyo for to last phase of our trip. softlykarou and I lay around in bed for a couple hours, packed up our souvenirs and clothes, and headed out to find some breakfast. softlykarou's initial idea of Cafe du Monde turned out to be a dud because the one in Kyoto Station ( Read more... )

(Bullet = dodged ( Read more... )

...is called Let's Speak English (though I keep reading it as "Let's Speaking English"), written and drawn by an ALT in Japan. It's a collection of 4koma comics about her life there, with plenty of episodes I recognized from my own time in Japan. Like how the centrality of rice to the traditional Japanese diet leads to odd ideas about American ( Read more... )

Walking Path
This is shown from pretty near our house. If you turn the view around and go down the road a ways, you'll be able to see it on the left. And you should probably turn the view around at least a bit, because this section of road's pictures were taken in fall and the trees are great. The momiji especially are spectacularThis is the road ( Read more... )

I'm tempted to replay Portal through again, since the new one comes out on Tuesday (before Episode 3, which is the new Duke Nukem Forever to me, even though it hasn't really been all that long). So much else to do, though...well, all in due time, I suppose ( Read more... )

So, about a week ago, Kaminaka-san asked my help in performing a trick (well, loosely-defined) on his neighborhood. I was to impersonate a US ambassadorial aide with a message from President Obama.

Now, I've lived here for almost two and a half years. I'm pretty sure everyone knows who softlykarou and I are, even if they might not know anything else about us ( Read more... )

We spent Christmas with some friends down on Innoshima, which looks nearly the same as Chiyoda if you ignore the ocean. After forgetting my laptop back in Hiroshima, returning to get it, coming back and nearly falling asleep on the bus and ending up in Shikoku, the rest of the weekend proceeded quite smoothly. Christmas dinner especially was ( Read more... )

So, as I'm sure people noticed, I didn't have the internet for three weeks ( Read more... )

So yesterday, softlykarou y and I went into Hiroshima for the Flower Festival. She wandered off at one point, and I'm sitting in the Peace Park waiting for her when an old man comes up to me and says hello and asks me how I am. I say fine, ask him how he is, and he laughs and says he doesn't speak English well. So I switch to Japanese and ask him how he is ( Read more... )

Hitting "Detect Location" had Tokyo pop up. Japan is small and crowded, but not that small ( Read more... )