Live from Japan!

Not very modest now, is she?

…for using the toilet.

Thank goodness for the amazing pictorial instructions, otherwise I might have been totally lost!

Step One – Pull Down Your Pants

Step Two – Sit On The Toilet

Step Three – Do a Shit (This is the literal translation from Japanese)

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Just a little bit of randomness that I found in our iPhoto album. These pictures were snapped during our biking trip around Lake Biwa. When I saw this building I was actually quite curious about what goes on in the Young People’s village. Aside from them climbing up the sides of tall buildings and whatnot.

Usually when I see signs, especially signs with a lot of Japanese on them, I ignore them. After all, chances are I am not going to come even close to understanding what the sign is about anyways, so what is the point?

But, for whatever reason, this one just sort of caught my eye. I looked at it for awhile and much to my surprise, right there on the bottom among all of the Asian faces is a picture of Hillary Clinton! Why is she there? What is this sign all about?

Does anyone have any ideas?

While in Tokyo we did any number of silly things, but this perhaps was the silliest.

We rented a swan-shaped paddle boat and coasted around the pond in Ueno park. It was fun though, and good people watching too!

Of course we splurged, paying the higher price for the swan than for the regular paddle boat or the oar boat. I mean, this may be our only chance to ride in a swan, it would have been so sad to pass it up.

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On of my jobs around the office is to handle any miscellaneous English tasks that come up through the day. If an English letter comes in, I am usually the first to read it and summarize it. If a letter has to be written, that’s my job too. Basically any English task, which can be so time-consuming and frustrating for the JTE’s, even though they are pretty good at English, comes to my desk first. I am a native speaker and I fully understand that those sorts of things are significantly easier for me to deal with. Actually, it makes me feel good knowing that I have a role around the school that no one else does. It makes me feel like I am contributing in a positive way.

Just the other day my old supervisor (I have a new one now and that is another story for another day when I feel like I can let loose and rant) came over and told me that she had two English emails in her inbox. She asked me if I would mind reading them, they were pretty long, and telling her whether or not they were important.

At first I thought her request was a little strange, I mean seriously, why don’t you just read them yourself? But I went over to her computer anyways to help her out. Lord knows she has helped me out more times than I can even mention because I am a stupid illiterate fool living in this strange land.

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I promised, last week, that I would share some photos of themed food from the penis festival. First up, chocolate covered bananas!

The best thing about this was that once we all posed, some of us more provocatively than others, with our bananas we were swamped by Japanese people that wanted their picture taken with us. The lady on the left was one such person. I guess, a group of five foreigners with chocolate covered phallic bananas creates quite a scene. Who knew!!

Now that the weather has started to warm a little, Aaron and I have started doing what we do best. We have been going on random walks, with no particular purpose in mind, aside from just walking and talking.

Today the high was nearly 53 degrees and we decided to head into Nagoya for a few hours of wandering around and doing a little shopping. We got off the subway near Osu-kannon and started to explore some small little streets when we happened upon this little bar.

It isn’t often that you see something so ironic and, yet so perfect. I, obviously, had to stop and take a little photograph. And I may just have to head back to this little bar for a drink someday.

Last night we are hanging out with Angus and Ella and I thought I should share one particularly funny moment.

We were talking about what we had done over the previous weekend and I started to tell them about the AJET Winter Camp (the skiing trip). I started by telling them about the lodge that we stayed at.

Danielle: Yeah! The lodge was fantastic! The accommodations were really nice! (This was said with a rather enthusiastic tone of voice)

Angus: Really?! Were there beds?

Danielle: Well, no . . .

I have no idea how this happened!! How is it possible that my idea of a fantastic accommodation has so rapidly deteriorated. Six months ago I would never have thought that I would consider sleeping on the floor in a huge room with at least 15 other people to be fantastic accommodations. I wonder what will deteriorate next?!

So, spiders in Bali are way bigger than they are in Japan. A few months ago I posted about the spider I saw under a bed at Camp Horado. I remember being a little put off by the size of the guy, but nothing could have prepared me for the spiders in Bali. With that lovely warm tropical climate they flourished!

See what I mean? One of the local guides found this one and took him around to show us and tell us about him. This one was, in fact, a little bit poisonous, but the guide assured us that it wasn’t fatal. He did offer to let us hold him, needless to say, everyone declined his offer.