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Highway
Robbery
I was
voluntarily robbed today.
First,
I paid some overdue charges for a single movie and a CD. I
paid about $4.50 US to check them out for a week (the usual
at my regular video store). You'd think that I could find
20 minutes during the week to get up off my lazy ass to return
the damn things. That's seven days. Seven whole days. But
no. That would necessitate having an organized life, which
I most certainly do not. So, I return them five days late.
I'm thinking, "How much could they charge? I mean, not
more than twice the regular check-out, right?" El
wrongo.
I walked
away from those bloodsuckers $20 poorer.
Next,
I went to the supermarket to buy some fruit. Two apples cost
me about four dollars.
That's
four dollars. As in about four hundred cents.
Y'know,
everyone around here grows rice. If they have a small plot
of land five feet by five feet, they'll plant rice there.
Man, screw rice. Grow fruit! Grow those honeydew melons that
cost freaking 50 or 100 bucks a pop! Apparently no one thinks
like this and it's a shame. It makes fruit so rare that when
they do get fruit it comes wrapped in celophane with soft-styrofoam
mesh protectant packaging. It looks outrageously ridiculous.
So much trouble for a piece of fruit which costs a tenth of
that price in the States... I never knew I had it so good.
School
Trip: Part Deux
Through
a strange twist of scheduling, I ended up changing schools
to Seiwa Junior High Schooljust before they went on their
school trip. The last one wasn't
so exhilerating, so I opted to go with the first graders to
Tomogasima Island. It's not far from Wakayama City, a train
ride, short walk, then a short ferry ride over.
(I'll
have the pictures posted in this entry in a couple days after
I've gotten them developed!)
Going with
the first graders was going to be tiring, I knew, but just
knowing it was going to be trying couldn't prepare me for
today. I didn't even get the chance to open the book I brought.
On the train to Kada I was assaulted by questions, pokes and
prods. For some reason, the first graders at this school are
obsessed with touching me.
I felt
like saying, "Hey, kids. I'm not a god or anything. I'm
not one of those statues at the Shinto shrines you can rub
the belly for good luck so if you please, STOP POKING ME,
GODDAMMIT!"
A girl
named Miyuki started chatting to me right away. She was so
happy to be standing next to me, talking to me that she held
her hands in front of her face for half the train ride...
giggling uncontrollably like a madman. Her face and hands
were so red with excitement that I thought for sure her clothes
would start to smolder.
The ferry
ride over was heaven. I love the wide open sea. The smells
of the ocean, the sounds of a boat churning through the waters
and the misty spray that comes off the front of the boat and
blesses your face if you lean over the side just a bit. We
were only going a short way, but I could see so far. I must
say it was tempting to just LEAP over the side and land in
all that water, just to feel the expanse of the open sea.
There's an actual name for this phenomenon, but I can't remember
what it is... for the irrational desire to be overcome or
be engulfed by a vast emptiness of space. It makes people
jump off of cliffs, bridges, and out of planes and they screen
astronauts for it. It must feel great... for a few seconds
(then it's game over, neh?)
Like last
time, I was kidnapped early by a group of girls, Miyuki
and a few of her friends and we went hiking around the small
island. Now, this place was small, but it was a pretty decent
hike. It even made me tired. The trail went along the seashore
and criscrossed through the island.
The trip
to the island only lasted about three hours, then the kids
were rounded up for the trip back. Me and the kids got back
just in time to see the fishers wrapping up their spoils and
getting organized. They didn't really catch much. I saw a
couple boasting a few colorful eel-like fishies (which I'm
pretty sure my Japanese friends said were poisonous) and one
had this jellyfish-like thing, but it didnt' have any tentacles...
I'd never seen anything like it, I wonder what it was.
There were
five students missing in action. Late coming back from their
hikes. The bastards who ran the ferry wouldn't even wait a
couple minutes, they said. The had to go right at 1pm, and
if they didn't, the wrath of all their gods was sure to be
unleashed and they would have bad luck for 579 days. A few
teachers stayed behind to look for the errant youths. As fate
would have it, we saw them scurrying up the path towards the
dock just as we were pulling out. Those teachers were pissed.
They had to hire another boat.
Damn, those
kids were touchy... we were packed like sardines on the ferry
and I didn't see any English teachers for the duration of
the voyage, so it's not like I could pull a kid aside and
give him a 15 minute lecture on why it's inappropriate to
touch the foreigner there. After poking me in the stomach,
one girl exclaimed suddenly that I was fat! Can you
believe that?!? ME?? ME!! Well, spank
my ass and call me Charlie, I never thought the day would
come when someone would think of me as fat. I mean, just because
the Japanese ideal of beauty happens to be the visage of a
nutritionally-deprived heroin addict, doesn't make everyone
else fat, does it?
Mouse
Mayhem: Revisited
I took
a chance on buying another Japanese mouse. I went USB. It's
the first time I've ever plugged anything USB into my computer...
Gee, I feel like I'm stepping up in the world. It works this
time!
Digitalism
The hunt
for the digital camera of the gods continues. I'm looking
for a 3X optical zoom with a digital zoom, small enough to
fit in my pocket for around 500 big ones. I may be asking
too much. I've got it narrowed down to two, but either one
I take I'll have to compromise on what I want. I'm leaning
towards a Fuji camera that's small, but it's got no USB port
like the Sony one. Drat. The Sony one is about 40% larger
than the Fuji, but has a 2X digital zoom as well. Decisions,
decisions.
Dreams:
Revisited
A
while back I was telling you guys about my wacked-out
nights and one of my few-but-wonderful-and-faithful readers
told me that Tylenol PM would help. Well, it finally came
in the mail today, courtesy of my dear mama. I hope that stuff
works cause these nightmares are eating my brain alive. I
can't stand it anymore. If I have one more dream about a loved-one
dying or my entire future falling into ruin I'm gonna bash
myself over the head with a large, blunt object before I go
to sleep.
Shutdown
WWW.50MEGS.COM
shut down the site I had a lot of my Real Audio files on,
so I had to shunt them to new Angelfire accounts. I can't
wait til I move my site where I'll have much more space. Can't
do that until Network Solutions releases the domain name I'm
waiting for though.
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