Allen and I hit up the mega HardOff near Uts on Saturday. He wanted- I don't even remember what he was originally looking for. GameCube controllers or a hard drive or something. HardOff is what is known as a "Recycle Shop" in Japan. A second-hand shop of ultimate proportions. There are several stores associated with it: BookOff (used books, manga, ( Read more... )

I don't know what Showa Day is. Okay, I just looked it up on wikipedia. Apparently it was Emperor Showa's (Hirohito) birthday. You know, the emperor who ruled during and after WWII, passing away in 1989. Of course, he's no longer the emperor (death tends to do that) and thus now it's for reflecting on the Showa era, supposedly. What's important is ( Read more... )

So, let's see. When did I move to Japan? August of last year. How many months does that mean I've been living in this apartment? Oh, nearly nine months. Who just realized that she does indeed own an oven? Yes, that would be me ( Read more... )

As you might have guessed from my picture and mobile posts, I went traveling for Spring Break. Allen and I headed down to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, the two Atomic Bomb sites, but we actually only checked out the A-Bomb site at Hiroshima, which was incredibly moving and saddening. I was interested in Nagasaki because of it's pre-bomb history. ( Read more... )

Before catching our bus back to Tokyo, we decided to swing by the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima as we had only seen it from the Peace Park before.

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Allen and I are in Hiroshima. It's a pretty chill city. Crazy to think the areas we've walked through were once Hell on Earth. The Peace Park and A Bomb museum are amazing. Also amazing is how Jehovah Witnesses are drawn to Allen and are determined to teach him when we sit for long enough ( Read more... )

Just got back from buying a whole bunch of things for the place with Kristine. While I was out there, I happen to come across a scale I believe 
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A list of things I have randomly attempted recently while here in Japan. Some are mundane, but posted because I have not done said activity before. Others should be mundane, but Japan simply does not make it so.

• Taking time off one afternoon to run errands like going to the bank and post office- SUCCESS! Both places were actually open and I could ( Read more... )

*breathe* I'd just been working for the last 15 or 20 minutes on an entry and totally misclicked on something and completely lost everything.  *breathe*

So, here's follow-up to the Mt. Fuji post from earlier today with an explanation and better pictures. This morning, while I was getting ready to go to school, I suddenly received a text from a ( Read more... )