Typhoon #13 and Other Dissapointments

It seems I've been putting this off once again. Sorry... I just haven't been in the mood to sit down and write with classes and all of that.

Thursday was one of my four-class days so that is all that day pretty much consisted of. Nothing to speak of that I can think of.

Friday we were supposed to get hit by Typhoon #13! I got warning emails on my cellphone about what happens if classes are canceled and all of us foreigners were just getting excited. We all want to experience typhoons and earthquakes at least once, but not on a scale where there are casualties and extensive property damage... Just enough to say we've experienced it.

I don't know if I can say that about a typhoon. It basically just rained a good bit through the morning and then died off in the afternoon, and the rest of the day was nice and sunny. Kind of a disappointment.

I think I also went out with Joe to Zenya, a place up the road for dinner. I had a small meal of yakitori (grilled chicken) and yakionigiri (grilled rice cakes) and tried warm sake for the first time. It was under 500 yen so I wonder if being kind of cheap (for sake?) was why I hated it so much. I've had tastier Nyquil. Again I can say I've experienced it...

For Saturday (today) was planning to go to Osaka to try out Den-den Town and maybe try to see Osaka-jo, the Castle. I was going to go alone but then I got a text from Joe asking if I would like him to come... I sent him a "yes", but the dorm has spotty cellphone coverage (but this is Japan!) so he never got the message so I waited around for too long. There wasn't enough time to go, so I hung around here for the afternoon and then eventually we became bored and biked to Makino, took the train to Kuzuha, and went to the mall and a few other stores outside of it.

Earlier I looked up some manga (comics) to buy that might be good practice for reading and building vocabulary (plus understanding informal Japanese.) This is hard, as most manga deal with schoolgirls / boys with magical powers, giant flying-robots, or romance (or a combination of all three!) I want something that is a tad more serious and that doesn't have obnoxious ammounts of sex and violence. I'm really looking for just stories of people or views of everyday life in Japan.

One called 東京うばすて山 (Abandon the Old in Tokyo) sounded good, quote the website: "...working class male protagonists in gritty urban settings dealing with poverty, alienation, sexual dysfunction and a general disconnection from society." Sounds interesting. Another one, モンスター (Monster,) is about a doctor who saves a young boy in his clinic before the mayor, and the ramifications of it which drag him into a dangerous situation. That one sounded realistic and interesting. 夕凪の街 桜の国 (Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms,) deals with a family coming to terms with Hiroshima in 1955. よつばと！(Yotsuba&!) is about a weird little girl that knows nothing about everyday life, as in what things are for and how things work, so I think I can relate perfectly as a foreigner here. And last, 名探偵コナン (Detective Conan) which is about a highschooler who runs into crime much like Angela Lansbury but is somehow turned into a little kid and has to deal with that along with his hunger for crime-solving. It sounds silly but a number of respectable people have told me it's quite good, haha.

So of course there are some good ones out there, you just have to know where to look.

Anyway, I bought some donuts from Mr. Donut and they should be quite good. I need to get a card from there so I can rack up points to get a Pon De Lion toy (their donut-faced lion mascot) or a nice mug. I also got a pastry with a hotdog inside of it because I must explore this infatuation with hotdogs here. Why?!

I'm getting good at riding my bike as well! I can manuver through those little death-poles quite well, and I haven't gone into a death-ditch either (almost!).

But that's about it. Tomorrow I'm just going to study, go for another bike ride, and maybe go to a bookstore I know to try and find some of those other manga, Detective Conan was the only one I bought so far. Going to go work on that now!