daikuma
Pete's gone and my apartment feels both blessedly empty and a bit lonely. Figured it would happen. Had a great time while he was here, though, including the last couple days in Tokyo. I showed him Akihabara (big electronics district) which he loved for obvious reasons, and a few other places like Shinjuku and Shibuya and such. I had always noticed, but it never quite sunk in, just how much freaking PORN there is all over Tokyo. I mean, seriously! We'd go into a shop that had action figures and such all over the first floor. They'd have video games on another floor, then all of a sudden you're surrounded by PORN! Both hentai and real porn, action figures of hentai porn, videos of real porn playing on screen, and japanese dudes wandering the aisles without a care in the world. The funny thing is they think Americans are all perverted (had a girlfriend tell me this once, which was something I knew, but I kinda freaked out on her and started going off about Japanese tentacle rape porn and all sorts of crap. She'd never heard of it, so I took the time to educate her >:) ) At one of the action figure places there were a bunch of vending machines that sold all sorts of things (ok, ALL the places had these, but we only purchased some at one of the stores) from pikachu to One Piece to Gundamn to babes in bikinis, etc. So I got him a bust of... well, a bust, hehe. paid 200 yen for basically a plastic piece of a woman from her shoulders to her belly button, not nude or anything, but the ad had a finger pointing at the boobs and said "touch!" so I had to buy it, hehe. Gave it to him as a present. He bought me a random babe in a bikini, hehe. We also went to Tokyo Tower, as neither of us had been there before. It was cool (aside from having to wait in a line to get to buy a ticket, wait in a line to get the main observation deck at 150m, wait in a line to get to the secondary deck at 250 meters, than wait in a line to get back DOWN) but I got kinda a "me too!" feel from it, like "hey, France has the Eiffel Tower, we want something like that!" Anyway. We also consumed 3 Western Bacon Cheeseburgers in a 3 hour period (I ate a LOT of burgers in Tokyo, cause they're beter than burgers out here in Toyama) and we went to a Japanese Denny's, which, oddly enough, is not that much like an American Denny's. We also, at my behest, went to Kinokuniya, a VERY large bookstore with nearly half a floor (the 7th floor, for those of you keeping track at home) dedicated to English books. They didn't have Feast for Crows, which I was looking for, but I picked up a new Terry Pratchet book, and a book called The Road which is some post-apocalyptic thing Peter said was quite good. Feels good to be reading again as I plowed through the books i ordered off Amazon.co.jp in about a week (Storm of Swords, and some book on Aztec history).
The three things peter hated most about Japan were as follows (in no particular order)
1. no refills on soda (there are some drink bars that give you about 6oz glasses and refills, but for the most part no refills)
2. no hot water at public/restaurant bathroom faucets
3. American medium size is Japanese large size.
i interjected my own with the lack of central heating. Seriously, kerosene heaters everywhere. My main school goes through somewhere just shy of 1000 liters of kerosene PER WEEK. This is not an exaggeration, I was talking to the maintainance dude about it (Ao-san) and he was complaining that they'd gone through 2000 liters in 10 days and that it had been way too much. That's ri-fuckin-diculous. Plus going from hot teachers' room to cold hallways to hot classroom constantly throughout the day is both annoying and probably bad for my health. Not that I'm thrilled to being smelling burning kerosene all day, either. Anyway, time for class. I'll post more about my day-to-day later as it's been quite busy, my 3rd grade JHS kids have their high school entrance exams... shit, tomorrow! hehe. Good luck to 'em (been staying after school helping some of my girls with conversational english, which has been a lot of fun, but still, you know, work)
The three things peter hated most about Japan were as follows (in no particular order)
1. no refills on soda (there are some drink bars that give you about 6oz glasses and refills, but for the most part no refills)
2. no hot water at public/restaurant bathroom faucets
3. American medium size is Japanese large size.
i interjected my own with the lack of central heating. Seriously, kerosene heaters everywhere. My main school goes through somewhere just shy of 1000 liters of kerosene PER WEEK. This is not an exaggeration, I was talking to the maintainance dude about it (Ao-san) and he was complaining that they'd gone through 2000 liters in 10 days and that it had been way too much. That's ri-fuckin-diculous. Plus going from hot teachers' room to cold hallways to hot classroom constantly throughout the day is both annoying and probably bad for my health. Not that I'm thrilled to being smelling burning kerosene all day, either. Anyway, time for class. I'll post more about my day-to-day later as it's been quite busy, my 3rd grade JHS kids have their high school entrance exams... shit, tomorrow! hehe. Good luck to 'em (been staying after school helping some of my girls with conversational english, which has been a lot of fun, but still, you know, work)