Want.

Ahhhh. Much better. The hayfever fairy has apparently left to go torture other hapless souls. Seriously, everytime I tried standing up yesterday, my nose (tmi alert) did an impression of Niagara Falls. Naturally, the only thing to do was to not stand up, and so I spent about nine hours all told on the couch, watching Veronica Mars the whole time. Today was rather more productive.

Saw the new Spidy movie last weekend. Now, usually in this kind of film when the good guy turns evil for some reason (mind control, cloning, evil alien goo), he immediately becomes cooler. More suave. Much better dressed. Because if there is one thing that the movies have taught us, it is that Evil has Style. When Peter Parker became possessed by evil alien goo, he...started wearing his bangs swept in front of his face and giving fingerguns to every hot chick he saw. He did eventually end up being better dressed, but apparently Peter Parker is so inherently dorky that even evil alien goo cannot make a dint in his dorkitude.

Next weekend Pirates of the Caribbean opens. I may have to wait until after payday to see it, but I am already very excited. Captain Jack Sparrow! Man with an octopus for a head! And if I'm very lucky, fighting skeletons! Wheee!

On Sunday I went out for lunch with the lady from the gym and two of her students...she teaches them English, and as you will see in a moment, it's really not a good idea to take English lessons from a non-fluent speaker. So, we go out to the restaurant...very post, lovely view, astronomical prices, so-so food. One of the ladies (they were both around 65) said something in Japanese that I didn't catch, so Gym Lady translated it as "You are very glamorous!" This puzzled me, as I was wearing jeans and a tank-top. Nice jeans and a tank-top, yes, but hardly red carpet worthy. Then the lady made a rather unmistakable hand gesture and I realized that Gym Lady had, for some reason, decided to translate "Nice rack" as "You are very glamorous."

Sigh

I have been paid a visit by the hayfever fairy. Luckily, she struck on a Monday. so I have been able to spend the entire afternoon/evening prone on the couch with a box of tissues and various snacks. It's not a cure, but it helps a lot with the overall misery.

Taken from a very amusing blog titled My Boyfriend Is A Twat (I was unable to figure out how to link to just this one post, so I just copied the text):

Water versus Wine.

It has been scientifically proven that if we drink 1 litre of Water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli (E. Coli) Bacteria found in faeces.

In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of Poo.

However, we do not run that risk when drinking wine, beer (or other liquors) because alcohol has to go through a distillation process of boiling, filtering and fermenting.

WATER = Poo

WINE = HEALTH

Free yourself of Poo; drink WINE! It is better to drink wine and talk shit than to drink water and be full of shit.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information. I am doing it as a public service.

I think I need to have a geography lesson with the Hosoe students. Because I am new (and exciting! and exotic!), they, of course, want to know all about me. And so today I got the question;

"Gaikoku ni sundeimasuka?" ("Do you live in Foreignland?")

"Er, no. No, I do not live in "Foreignland". I live in Hamamatsu."

*general shock and disbelief*

"But then how come you can speak English??"

Then I was asked if I was Brazilian, so I said no, I'm from Canada, and then I was hit by a welter of questions, among which I made out the word "Italy".

Am I from Italy? Is Canada in Italy? What was he asking? I wish I knew. At any rate, storytime is coming up in two weeks, and I'm giving serious thought to showing up with a map of the world.

The Entetsu department store had a special table in their jewelry section today featuring Venetian glass beads. Even if some of the finished necklaces were not quite to my taste, the beads themselves were gorgeous, and I was sorely tempted to splurge and get one.

And then there was this:



It is selling for 126 000 yen, which is more than my ticket to New Zealand cost.

I am now getting junk mail from myself. A couple of times now I have checked my phone to see how much junk I've gotten and there's been a message from my email address. Obviously, it is time to change my phone email. Now if I can just remember how to do that...

I think my new address will be arrived at by smashing my hands down on the computer keyboard while randomly holding down the shift key and seeing what I get.

hUGiu'(bkjJlKL+G

There. That's my new email addy. Hack that, spambots!

It is 30 degrees out, people. Thirty degrees! And in a joyous "break out the pretty skirts and oooh, is that an ice cold margarita? Thanks, don't mind if I do!" kind of way, not the "Oh...God....can't breath...." way more common to summer.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go look through my summer clothes and see what I want to wear today. La la la!

Golden Week is almost over. Getting up tomorrow morning is gonna hurt.

It has been a very low-key week, but I managed to avoid going stir-crazy. Last weekend, of course, was all about the house cleaning (well, tidying) and the random riding around in search of couch covers (I eventually went with all red). I also finally took a picture of this:



Everytime I see it, I want to show a picture of an Amish woman to the staff and ask if this is, indeed, the look they are going for.

I had lunch on Monday and dinner on Tuesday with Mr and Mrs Matsui and their current exchange student from my old high school. She is here for about four weeks and is on a patented Matsui whirlwind tour. Among other places, she has been taken to the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. I've been to the Embassy. It's a handy place to go to when you need to get a new passport, but hardly a must-see tourist destination. She's also been to at least one factory (Honda, I think), but was not taken to Harajuku to see the dancing Elvii. Personally, I would think that seeing the dancing Elvii would be a MUCH more culturally enriching experience than going to the headquarters of the Honda factory, but what do I know?

Liz came up on Wednesday night and just left a few hours ago. We played many many games of Boggle and Upwords, most of which I lost. D'oh. It's fun playing with an Australian...I learn lots of new words. (Most of which I don't allow. If a word makes me go "bwuh??" AND it's not in the dictionary, it's out. No, that's not mean or pedantic. Hush.)

We went out to the kite festival on Thursday with Sasha and Mrs Matsui and her grand-niece, Mio. We got there for the 11 am start, when all the kites go up at once. And then mostly crash back down to the ground. You wouldn't think a kite festival would be so exciting, but there is much jumping around and avoiding of giant kites. Sasha seemed to find this more exciting than car factories, and was very interested in the difference between Japanese festivals and Canadian ones. (The main difference being, of course, much less cattle involved in Japanese festivals.)






This is the Hatsuoi kite! I finally found it. Of course, it's backwards and upside down, so you can't read the kanji, and it's also kind of dull...red on white is very common at the festival, so it's rather hard to distinguish when it's up in the sky.



Some kites fared better than others.



On Friday we went downtown and wandered around for a bit, eating food from the street (stalls, that is. Not actual food we just found on the street.) and watching a bit of the night festival. It's very cool, but really, once you've seen a couple of floats, they lose their interest.



Then we bought some expensive cakes. I got this one because it was cuuuuute. Did you know ladybugs taste like raspberry jam and almond paste? Mmmm.



There is a new store downtown that sells the most bizarre things. These are cookies that will make your boobs bigger. Now, most cookies will make your boobs bigger if you eat enough of them, but I think these ones are claiming that they cause only your boobs to grow. I can't decide if that or the anti-snoring device was the biggest waste of money they had...the anti-snoring device being tape. So you can tape your mouth shut. To, y'know, prevent snoring.



Saturday night we were gonna go out to the dance club, but then I mentioned that I would be just as happy staying home and playing more Boggle, and Liz said she felt the same way, so we decided to be sensible and save our money and just sit around in our pjs all night playing word games. Because we are practicing for when we are 80 years old.

I find your lack of Alisa disturbing.

Which movie was this quote from?

Get your own quotes:

I am easily entertained.