Nagoya Snow Day

Check out this video Jenny and I made for the very, very, very snowy day here in Nagoya! I have never seen this much snow in Nagoya before. It was horrible! But at least everyone else enjoyed it. I am also including some pictures.

 

Lucky Bags 2011

In Japan, you can buy lucky bags on January 2nd. They’re called lucky bags because each store just puts goods in the bag and you have no way of knowing what’s in the bag. You just pay a set price and hope for the best. This year, Jen and I decided to take part in the lucky bag festivities. And we were super lucky! Watch as we open our bags, but really boxes, to find what’s inside!

New Years Day!

Jen, Hiro, and I spent New Years Day together. We even ate sauerkraut. But, man, pierogies are super time-consuming to make. Thankfully, they are also super delicious to eat!!

 

Gladiator Gone Glam

People actually make these shoes?? I am not even shocked to see someone wearing such awful, awful shoes. This is Japan after all. But what designer actually finished these and thought that they were awesome? Yet another reason why I would never cut it in the fashion world.

Ugly Shoes

 

How much is that mango??

I snuck this photo in the grocery store. There was just no way to resist snapping a shot of the ugliest mango I have ever seen in my life, especially considering that this horrible, in my opinion, rotten looking mango costs nearly $20. The saddest thing about this whole thing is that some dumb person will actually buy that mango simply because it costs $20.

Welcome to the sad and frustrating world of produce in Japan. One of the nice things about Japan is that you can only buy fruit in season. When I lived in the states I had no concept that apples were only available in the fall and strawberries in the spring. At the grocery store you can buy whatever you want, whenever you want. Now I live for the fall when all of my favorite fruits are in season. I really like the idea of stocking fruit only when its in season, but sometimes in real life, it can be so frustrating. For example, I love persimmons, but they are most exclusively a fall fruit. I waited all year for persimmon season, but persimmons had a rough year and the harvest this year yielded poor fruit. What a letdown. Now I have to wait a whole year.

The downside to produce only being available in season doesn’t apply so exclusively to vegetables, but you pay a lot of money for veggies when they’re out of season. I have long since stopped batting an eye at paying a dollar per cucumber or three dollars for two small bell peppers. It is just a way of life here. But for whatever reason, I have drawn the proverbial line in the sand concerning avocados. I absolutely will not buy an avocado for more than a dollar. I don’t know why it is, but that is the straw that breaks this camels back.

 

 

 

 

Oh Roommates

I recently found this picture on my phone. This is a shot of my roommates trying to hide from me in the subway station.

Yeah, not so effective, especially since I could hear Jennys laugh from down the walkway and I recognized Jens bag.

Simons Cat

I love this series of shorts about a man and his cat. Here is a new favorite.

Some Disney Pictures

Wow! It has been way too long since I have updated this. Sorry everyone. I was just not in the mood to write any blogs for a while. But today, I uploaded a lot of photos from some Disney trips that I have taken this year.

 

Up first is my spring trip to Disney Sea. We had a fun time even though it was super rainy all day.

And then last month I went to Disney Land for Jenny’s birthday! We stayed at the Tokyo Disney Hotel, which was super nice.

 

Well, I am going to get back to uploading photos, so enjoy these two albums!

 

Some Bathroom Literature

Recently, I have been spotting some strange signs when I use public restrooms. I swear, I have never seen another country give as many directions about proper toilet use as Japan does.

Instructions at work:

The Work Sign

I found this gem in the third floor ladies room at work. This sign is illustration the proper way to use the toilet. Now, let us leave aside the obvious, glaring question of who doesn’t know how to use a toilet, and instead look at the details of the artwork itself. This is obviously handmade and it’s the only one of its kind. I know this because I have checked other bathrooms at work. Things that I particularly like about this sign- the woman, besides the fact that she is missing the top of her head, looks like she’s just sitting on the toilet. Her skirt is so nicely drawn that it makes it seem as though she’s peeing through her skirt. Not the correct way to use the toilet I’m guessing. The second thing that I like is the placement of gold diamonds all over the sign as though the happy diamonds were meant to make all of us feel less embarrassed by the fact that someone on the third floor obviously thinks that women are too stupid to know how to use a Western style toilet correctly- hence the need for the sign in the first place.

On a side note, when I saw this sign, I was immediately curious as to whether or not there was a corresponding sign in the mens room. So, I snuck to the mens room door, listened for a few moments for activity. After hearing silence, I quietly walked in only to see a man using the urinal! His back was to me, so I just as quietly, though a little more speedily, departed from the mens room and the third floor completely.

The Sign at Japanese Lessons

Instructions at Japanese Lessons:

This one is particularly hard to read, but I was straddling a Japanese style toilet while taking the picture. This sign is at the women’s center where I take my Japanese lessons. I like it because it gives directions about what to and not to put in the toilet. But why I really like it is that it is in so many languages- English, French, Korean, Mandarin, and perhaps Russian. But wait, there are no directions in Japanese. What? Apparently it seems that, while catering very extensively to the 10% of foreigners that use these toilets, they have forgotten completely about the other 90% of old Japanese women using the facilities. But of course, the Japanese are not the ones causing the problems, so really, no need to scold them through a passive-aggressive bathroom etiquette sign.

Instructions at a Hotel:

The Hotel Sign

The Hilton is certainly a very classy hotel. And while I do appreciate their efforts to accommodate their guests, I definitely never, never, never want to use a bidet in a public restroom. Seriously, are there people out there who would? That is a little disturbing and makes me feel a little gross.

A Very, Very Unwelcome Guest

This evening as Jenny and I were standing in the living room chatting, Jenny suddenly but calmly informed me that there was a bug. I turned around to see a very large roach on the wall above our living room door, just hanging out like it belonged there and paid rent. So, I in turn, called to Jen from in her room and informed her of the roach that was on our wall. Since it was above the door, understandably, Jen did not come into the living room.

But we did work together to formulate a game plan of how to get the roach out of our apartment. And our grand idea was this: to trap the roach on the wall with a bowl. We each had our own roles. Jenny was in charge of watching the roach in case it suddenly wised up to our eradication plans and made a run for it. Jen was in charge of getting a paper to put under the bowl. And that left me in charge of getting the bowl and thus capturing the roach.

After a few misses because of the roach’s proximity to the corners of the wall, the roach skittered down the wall behind the couch, which was exactly what we didn’t want to happen. We cleared the floor and slowly pulled out the couch, but we didn’t see the roach. Jenny and I were very close to where the roach had disappeared while Jen was on the other side of the couch. She pulled out the couch a little more and suddenly the roach came zooming right towards Jenny and I. Now, logically I know that the roaches don’t hurt people and that they’re much more afraid of us than we are of them. But when that seemingly ginormous roach suddenly came running at us, I screamed. Not a scream of terror, but more like a panicked/freaked out scream. Luckily, I was not alone and Jenny had the same exact reaction as me.  From the other side of the room, Jen shushed us in respect to our neighbors, but I will have to say that the roach was not hurtling its body directly towards her at any point during this escapade.

Then, while all the screaming and shushing was going on, our worst fear happened. The roach ran under the fridge! At this point, Jen took over with her bottle of mold killer. With her eagle-like sight, she managed to spot the roach camouflaged as a dust bunny in the corner and started spraying it crazily with the mold killer. It ran into an open enough space for me to cover it with the bowl. After a lot of maneuvering, we secured the bowl for transport. Jen and I left Jenny to clean up the trail of mold cleaner bubbles left behind while Jen and I disposed of the roach outside.

We took it down to the road behind our apartment. We put the bowl down in the middle of the road. Jen kicked the bowl over and I watched to see if it would scurry away. We found it curled up, probably dead from the cleaner not too far from where the bowl had originally been placed.

And thus ended our roach adventure for the evening. After all the excitement, our apartment feels even more like a sauna than it did before. Boo to roaches.