Ohh, so tired... Why didn't we climb Mt. Fuji like this?

Ahh... once again I'm waiting for results so I can justify blogging. I suppose a description of my typical day at home in the lonely land of almost-Nara is in order, given that I'm leaving in two weeks.
7:45. Alarm goes off.
8:15. I actually get up.
~8:56. I go for a brisk morning jog to the bus. Sometimes, for even more exercise, I jog all the way to the next bus stop. I love jogging.
9:15. I get to work. Whether I ran to the bus or not, I'm covered in sweat by now. I love humidity.
12:00. Lunch. Usually in the dull cafeteria here, but occasionally fine dining with Mike down the street or my boss in Nara.
5:45 PM. My work day officially ends so I walk over to say good night to my boss. But he starts a conversation I can't get out of, until...
5:55. I miss the bus back. When I'm done chatting with the boss I come back and surf until the next bus.
~6:20. I get home, survey the fridge, and if I'm feeling particularly adventurous pick a recipe. (But with my discovery of frozen dinners I can usually avoid this.)
7:00. Having finally finished deciphering the kanji in my recipe I trek down to the supa to go wander around until I find everything, or a sympathetic-looking clerk who can show me where stuff is. (They'll never just tell me the way they will at Kroger. I know I'm just a gaijin, but really, I can handle things like, Aisle 5 on the right.) I love shopping in kanji...
8:00. The soothing chords of Auld Lang Syne (better known here as the Just Go Home Already song) start wafting through the store as it closes. By now I'm hopefully at home, starting to cook.
~8:30. Dinner, candlelight, and Naruto. Except without the candelight. (Or the Boyz II Men, eh Karen?)
~12:30. I fall asleep after some Simpsons.

Tell me, just why does this site exist?
Learn to use toilets

This is why I love Japanese TV.

Tonight I started the yearlong second big set of goodbyes in my life. Insert wistful thoughts about time, impermanence, suffering, cessation of suffering, and dharma here.

I got my first piece of personally addressed junk mail today! Unlike the standard fare of apartment offers and call-girl services, this had my name, handwritten (since their print templates probably can't deal with a massive name like mine). This is how I know I've been living here too long.

If other blogs have kanji of the day, Japanese words of the day, and even bio jargon of the day, I can be geeky too with my GRE Word of the Day: erudite ("learned, scholarly"). Whee...

So after the ladies changed into yukata, I rejoined them, clad in traditional T-shirt-and-shorts, to go to the Hirakata fireworks. Which were sweet, although they paled in comparison to PL of course. Afterward we wandered around the matsuri, where we saw people dancing the bon odori Okano-sensei taught us back in Japanese class. I never thought I'd actually see it in person... And we ate Doraemon- and Hello-Kitty-shaped castera. Mmmm...Doraemon...

Oh good, California's election was looking a little too credible:
Vote chalupa!

Sunday I went to the beach with Audrey and her host sister Aya, Audrey's coworker Emma, half of Northern Ireland who knows Emma, Karen, and these two male coworkers she brought from Okayama. I shall say no more about the two of them, except that they persuaded her to ditch us for both lunch and dinner that day... The beach was lots of fun, eventually leading to contests to see who could do the most acrobatic dives...

After the Okayama posse hurried back for dinner and we bid the Irish farewell, Audrey, Aya, and I went back to her homestay to meet up with a friend of theirs so they could change into yukata while I sat around making small talk with her host father, who came in and greeted me with, "So, is this a strip show?" What am I supposed to say, "Yes, I'm watching a strip show with your daughter in it"?

Things That Light Up
Evil QuickTime broke my photo clip maker. So you get spared the crappy background music...instead you can now browse an album of cool (and semi-cook) shots from the light-ups at Nara and Kyoto from two weekends ago. It's happier with Internet Explorer (yes, I know, that's annoying, but I'm too lazy to do anything about it right now).

Friday night most of Kansai met up at this great ramen place near Tim and Catherine's old place. I was an hour late, thanks to the city bus and the hordes of people getting off Kintetsu. (Usually there's more of a sense of urgency coming out of train stations--including the guys who always run in vain after the last train as if there will be a bus waiting for them, but this time it must have been Gawk at Kyoto-Eki Night because there were a ton of people taking their sweet time...) By the time I got to the bus stop the bus should have already left but of course, Kyoto city buses are so reliably late. (Insert my mamonaku ("shortly") rant here.)

Anyhoo, afterward we went bowling. Not just any drab American bowling, mind you. This place was pretty trippy: there were black lights, disco balls, and music videos playing on TVs as we got unlimited bowling for Y1000 ($9). After one or two games, we started finding ways to spice it up. Beer and bowling make for an interesting combination, shall we say. We finally had one of the alley clerks come tell us we couldn't do piggyback bowling, of course in very polite, apologetic Japanese. We would have gotten kicked out of an American alley so fast... Then Oliver decided every frame should be a bet involving the loser kissing someone. So Catherine and Karen ran and hid. Which is understandable: cooties are no laughing matter.

Need a place to stay after an exciting romp with the deer of Nara? Try...
ƒ]ƒ]‚Ì–¯�h: Zozo no Minshuku

18 tatami of more space than Zozo knows what to do with

Convenient location in the exciting town of Kizu--not quite Nara but pretty damn far from Kyoto

Just north of the Nara-ken border, so no pesky deer to stand around peacefully and ignore you

Prepare your tastebuds for an adventure with local specialties prepared by the resident master chef, like rice flamb'e, frozen gyoza, and microwaved shumai

Be astounded by the amazing musical microwave

Five channels of the best Nara TV entertainment you can get for free

Local pizza, sex services available by phone

Nearby grocery store open till 8 for your late-night shopping needs

Free shuttle bus to the world's largest sundial

I must say, despite the location, I really lucked out with this place. Check out my apartment with this 360-degree panorama. (You may need evil QuickTime if you don't already have it.)

Today's revelation: Burnt rice smells (and looks) a lot worse than it tastes, really.

Last night I went (electronics) shopping in Nara. My boss, it turned out, was also headed across the border, and claimed there was a Joshin (big electronics store) in the mal he was going to. Score--free car ride! I never realized just how much I miss riding in cars (not to mention driving...). We get there and it turns out the store in the mall is... a Jusco (grocery store). D'oh! At least he got some fish. We also checked a couple bookstores for this book of video game art (yes, such things do exist) Stephanie's looking for. No dice. But... we made it to a real Joshin with five minutes to spare and I scored a sweet tripod for $13...

When I got home I found among my junk mail two ads: one for a pizza place, and another for a call-girl service. I don't know what kinds of evenings they figure people in my apartment complex have... and I don't think I want to know...

Oh good... because I was just starting to forget the dog from the Aifuru commercials:


What more could this dog want? How about his own CD? Songs "set to 'relaxing' and 'exercising' themes, including one with 'the raw voice of Que-chan'"...

Today I kinda slept in, with my patented Falling Asleep After The Alarm technique. So after the second snooze at 8:15, I sat up in bed but didn't get up, and so I somehow managed to fall asleep sitting up. Next thing I know it's 8:40, and the bus leaves at 8:56. There's nothing quite like the impending fear of being late to get you going in the morning. Granted, 16 minutes is plenty of time to shower. Which makes me wonder why I don't get up at 8:40 every day...

After work today I went bowling with some coworkers. I've never seen a bowling alley so deserted (of course, it was Tuesday night in Nara). I got these nice stylish purple-and-fuschia bowling shoes (perfect example of the word hade). My average was...well, let's not go into that. But the lanes are so high-tech: cameras show the ball knocking down pins close up, a sensor measures the speed of the ball, and at the end you get a detailed printout of every pin you left standing. Not really something I need a reminder of, but still cool.

It's been a chill weekend. Oh no, I'm starting to sound like Oliver... Anyhoo:

Friday felt so much like a Friday. It was a slow day at work, mostly spent waiting for my legions of killer agents to finish, er, killing, so after lunch I was fielding text messages from three different people trying to get to Nara that night. Liz decided to come down on a few hours' notice, which she could do with her JR pass on shinkansen. Meanwhile, pass-less Karen got stranded on regular trains in a real rainstorm and needed to take a shinkansen to get here anyway. And Camille had her first Kintetsu experience, discovering the limited express the hard way. But I met up with them eventually (though not all at the same time) in Nara. The crowds at Todaiji were rabid but Nara's finest were keeping the crowds orderly (even creating an impressive traffic crossing between two streams of visitors). Then we stayed up till 4 watching the Animatrix.

Saturday we had grandiose visions of swimming at a beach, or even a lake. So we went to Lake Biwa. What a letdown. It was kinda gray so it wasn't that great for swimming anyway, but that didn't stop us from trying to break into a hotel swimming pool. We got worried when we saw the lifeguard coming, but he just told us to take a shower downstairs first. (Typical of Japan, actually. They like things clean and unchlorinated.) Thinking we had just fooled them all, we made it all the way into the locker rooms before little hotel ladies came out and asked for our passes. We would have had to pay $29 for the half an hour left before it closed...so no swimming after all.

That night we met up with Carter and one of Liz's friends for the Kyoto Daimonji festival. Essentially they light up big kanji or shapes in fire on the sides of the mountains surrounding the city. Of course we went up to Arashiyama, out in the middle of nowhere, because the Lonely Planet told us to. The kanji-on-the-mountain thing was kinda overrated. The lanterns in the lake were much cooler. After we'd finished gaping at both, we tried following the crowds back to the station but they all got in cars and left. Finally we asked a kind Kyoto couple out walking their dog for directions; they took us all the way to the station instead despite my repeated pleas not to go out of their way.

Once again, we were up till 4, this time watching Naruto.

Wow... I'm so glad I don't live in Detroit any more...

"Before you pick up a brick and throw it, before you tip over a car, before you take a TV, you better ask yourself, is this worth 10 years of my life?"
--Wayne County prosecutor trying to stifle Detroiters' insatiable urge to riot

Tuesday night I went to see the Nara raito-appu (I'm not kidding, that's what they call it) with a coworker. Being only Tuesday night, the crowds weren't that bad. The whole Nara Park (of deer fame) was covered in lanterns and random lit up structures, making for some beautiful scenes, especially on the ponds. The moon was out, but shrouded by clouds, giving me some nice freaky photos of the haunted festival gazebo. There was a small army of festival officals scurrying about relighting lanterns and replacing candles. If this were promoted like the fireworks shows I'd have some figure of how many lanterns there were. I don't know, how about...lots.

Tomorrow night Todaiji is opened up for the peak of the festival, where there'll be even more lanterns inside and a special room opened for one of two days of the year. So I plan to go back, along with every other warm-blooded Kansaijin.

My GRE book arrived from amazon.co.jp today. I was so impressed. Shipping is so efficient here. Two days after ordering I found a little delivery notice in my mailbox asking me to reschedule delivery. (I never get anything from Amazon in two days...) This morning we called to reschedule and they delivered it this afternoon...to the office. Try getting UPS to do that. But now that it's here, I have something else to do at home besides surf, download anime, and watch anime...

Whoa.

I spent the weekend in Okayama visiting Karen and Ben with Tim, Audrey, and Audrey's coworker Emma. Saturday consisted of traveling down there just in time to go shopping in the classy covered arcade. This one had a Virgin record store with a whole wall of "Dance and Black Music". I don't know how they get away with that level of un-PCness (nay, racism) here, other than the lack of customers that speak English or are black. Then we walked Okayama's officially designated Romantic Walk, which starts with the charming post office and runs a full block to a fairy-tale FamilyMart. There are, of course, lots of color-changing neon signs to inform you that this is, in fact, the Romantic Walk.

After a great dinner at a little Korean place we introduced Emma to the bread-and-butter of Japanese nightlife, karaoke. At...the United States of Karaoke? Apparently it's this place where every room is a different theme, say like the all-American Little Tokyo, Chinatown, or Canadian Rocky rooms. My favorite was the Detroit room, so distinguished by its dirty look and steering wheel mounted in the wall. We ended up in what the clerk informed me was the Santa Fe room. Alas the United States of Karaoke only had a United Kingdom's worth of English-language music, but this was made up for by the biggest stock I've seen of Japanese-language American musicals. Now Fantamu obu za Opera ranks as my favorite translation. And for the first time in karaoke I found I Got Rhythm--in Japanese no less! Ah, that brings back memories...

And so in one night we saw the entirety of Okayama's downtown. The next day we saw a garden that ranks as one of Japan's top three (very nice, although what the heck's a rice paddy doing in the middle of it?) and returned to Kurashiki for the novelty of shopping in really old-looking buildings.

If you actually thought porn star Mary Carey's was going to run a serious campaign on anything remotely related to California's problems, think again.

And in other disturbing recall news, the man who may well be California's next governor didn't make the choice lightly:

"It was the most difficult decision that I made in my entire life, except the one in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax."

More than I ever wanted to know about Arnold...

A typhoon came through Japan on Friday. It caused mudslides in Okayama, flooding in Mie, and killed several people with its strong winds.

It was weak sauce in Kyoto. An unequivocal letdown.

The buildup was great. The news Thursday night was talking about 150 km/h winds and forecasting over 30 cm (12") of rain for the Kansai area. We were evacuated from work at 1 PM Friday, ten hours before the typhoon actually arrived, because there were fears trains would be canceled. (Which did happen eventually.) So I went to Kyoto. While I was wandering around waiting for other people to get off work, the wind did kick up a little, and killed my umbrella (no, not a 100-yen/$.85 one; this one cost me Y300...) A little rain started blowing in, which was only an issue on the very edges of the covered arcade.

I met up with the remaining Kansaites who weren't hiding from the (impending) rain. (This excluded Catherine, whose parents got a hold of her home phone and started calling her every hour to make sure she wasn't going outside, and Camille, who jankily decided not to tell us she was having dinner with her host family.) By 9 the streets were deserted, as if word got out that Godzilla was headed to downtown Kyoto. So this left the five of us guys walking around Kiyamachi... it projected the wrong image apparently. Strip club owners desperate for business came out and offered us a "typhoon discount", telling us, "Gaijin are OK too".

We were out till past midnight, and barely any rain fell. The wind was very unimpressive. Only after we got back to Tim's apartment did the typhoon arrive in force, with some stronger winds and rain. Others reported the wind waking them up; I slept through Tim snoring so I was oblivious to it. In the morning the Kamo river looked a little swelled and we saw a (single) tree branch on the ground. Not quite like a hurricane, or even a Midwest thunderstorm...

By far the best Mac ad I've seen in a long time:
http://www.stanford.edu/~zozo/clips/macssuck.wmv

The California recall election is heating up. If you're fed up with Governor Davis, you have your choice from any number of qualified candidates, like:

Arnold Schwarzenegger. Movie actor. Pro: No one's better prepared for the imminent rise of the machines. Con: No one can spell his name either.

Larry Flynt. Porn publisher. (Actual quote: "I don't think anyone here will have a problem with a smut peddler as governor.") Pro: An outspoken proponent of...free speech. Proposed a national holiday to pray for the death of rabid Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. Con: Plans to balance the budget with more slot machines. Why? He coincidentally owns a bunch of casinos.

Mary Carey. Porn star. Pro: Might take votes away from Larry. Con: Campaign slogan? "We've had Brown, we've tried Gray, now it's time for some blonde."

And there are about 200 other candidates. Can you get 65 friends' signatures and $3500? You too could run for governor.

Once again I'm reminded of why I don't read American news here.

Sunday I went to see the 48 Waterfalls of Akame with my boss from work. You'd think that'd be really awkward, but he's a chill guy who, unlike most CS geeks, actually enjoys the outdoors. He's also an aspiring amateur photographer, so he brought his camera. He took so many pictures of me in front of waterfalls it was starting to creep me out. But a few of them, like this one, turned out really well, and he brought me prints and a little CD on Monday. As for the falls, they were beautiful, although swarming with tourists. As my boss said, "The only complaint people have about the 48 Falls of Akame is that there aren't really 48 waterfalls." I didn't count (okay, okay, I lost count), but I don't think I saw 48. Heck, this picture's probably #19, #20 and #21...

Wednesday night I went to a jazz club in Kyoto with Tim, Audrey, and (my language partner) Ritsuko. It was my first jazz club... and definitely my first one in Japan. The music was great: Hiro from Kyoto University and a frequent visitor at the Stanford Center was playing with his band, which was quite good. On the drums was this guy from California who came over and chatted with us about his 3-year stint in Japan.

Afterwards Ritsuko and I had to catch an early train so we could transfer to our little backwaters stops. As we were running along Sanjo I guess this cluster of Japanese girls caught on to the impending last train to anywhere-besides-Osaka because when they saw us they started running too. It was amusing: Japanese people seem to be quite used to running to trains. When I got off at Tambabashi, everyone else making the transfer ran to the other side of the station even though we had like seven minutes to transfer. It's very unnerving to be walking towards a train while everyone else around you is running. It makes you wonder if they know something you don't. Then again, I've also seen Japanese women running out of stations late at night, long after the last bus has left. Maybe it's ingrained habit, or maybe they're just afraid of the gaijin man.

On Saturday Jonathan and I got to taiko class early. So early in fact we were the only ones there. Yes, we kinda forgot that there was no class that weekend. So, after some wandering around and vegetating in his air-conditioned apartment, we set off for Kinkakuji (not to be confused with Ginkakuji, which sounds almost exactly the same) with Tim.

It really is striking: it's called the Golden Pavilion for good reason. Some shogun apparently had nothing better to do with his money than to build himself a gold-plated retirement house. Eventually it was turned into a temple. And in the sunlight, which we had plenty of that day, it's really nice.

Afterward, we decided to go see Pirates of Caribbean (its Japanese title lacks the word the for some reason) with Catherine, subtitled of course. The most violence in a Disney film since Bambi died. But we all enjoyed it. Orlando Bloom actually looked like a man this time, which is always good. (Catherine seemed prepared to defend him to the death, but she doesn't read this blog now does she?)

One more step towards the Matrix. And of course, it's being taken right here in Japan. Actually, not far from Kyoto:
Power from blood could lead to 'human batteries'

Theoretically, it could allow a person to pump out 100 watts - enough to illuminate a light bulb. But that would entail converting all the food eaten by the individual into electricity. In practice, less power would be generated since food is needed by the body.

Good to see we're still allowing for practical concerns, like, say, living...

So it turns out that a couple of photo clips I thought were posted vanished from Leland, maybe out of protest for me using up my quota. But they (Shibuya and Shinjuku, Tokyo) are back now, along with (very) amateur video from the PL Fireworks, for your viewing pleasure.

It's been a fun but exhausting weekend. Friday I headed out to this small town near Osaka for the largest fireworks show in the world, put on by the Church of Perfect Liberty. Exactly what kind of church can afford to shoot off 120,000 fireworks I don't know, but it was spectacular. ("Showering like Niagara Falls," according to one Website.) I was planning to meet up with Jonathan, Tim, and Other Mike, but about a quarter-million Japanese people had other plans. So when I arrived at this tiny station (after transferring thrice to increasingly crowded trains, finally having a conductor turn me away from one that was too packed with people), clearly not built to handle a crowd, I started trying to call people but found a quarter million people trying to use the same cell tower. The only time my keitai ever let me down. That, and the other mob event I went to, Gion Matsuri.

But the fireworks were freaking awesome, easily topping any measly national celebrations in America. These girls behind me seemed to think so too; after nearly each of the 120,000 bursts, they cooed, "Ahh! Kirei! (Beautiful!)". They weren't ready for the finale though--they started screeching as if the fireworks were raining down on them...

But imagine the odds, I ended up finding them all after the crowd began to disperse. Getting out of there was like waiting for a ride at Cedar Point (or Disneyland for anyone not from the Midwest).

There were too many people crowded around for me to get decent shots with my camera, so I resolved to take video instead. The results are up for your viewing pleasure, and although at times it looks more like CNN footage of Baghdad, it looks pretty impressive. And that's only from the first 15 minutes--before I ran out of space on my card...

Call me a gaijin (it wouldn't be the first time), but I never realized you were supposed to vacuum tatami. Hey, stop laughing...at least I found out before it got too late...