Why I shouldn't be allowed out by myself

I was a total retard this weekend and didn't take any pictures. So it's back to the masterpieces that come out of mspaint.

This weekend, I ended up not having any plans. At the last minute on Friday, Kubo-san (our secretary who is awesome) somehow found out that I had nothing to do, so she offered to show me around a little bit on Sunday. This did mean, however, that I was left to my own devices for a day.

On Saturday it was very sunny here, but since the bus ride down to the nearest tiny town is about 710 yen and takes 45 minutes, I didn't really want to do that unless I really really needed something. So for Saturday I borrowed a bicycle and rode to the nearest convenience store about 2-3 km away. I (very foolishly, as it turned out) also decided to explore a little bit before hitting the convenience store. I tried to climb a mountain.
This failed miserably, since they're all so steep, the slope is about 60 degrees. I went about 100 feet and gave up since the trees were so dense that I wouldn't have been able to see anything even if I did get to the top.

Then I found a cute little stairway going straight down another hill. I could hear running water, so I assumed there was a stream of some sort, which might be pretty. These stairs didn't seem so long, so I decided to go check it out. I got to the bottom and discovered the running water was actually a storm drain. (It was really strange, actually. I was pretty much in the middle of nowhere - there were only two streets I could see and certainly no buildings anywhere close - but the storm drain went really really deep, like a hundred feet or so. Why on earth the civil engineers decided that such a hardcore storm drain was necessary is way beyond me.) Anyway, after discovering Japan's most unecessary sewer, I had to climb up these stairs again.
I almost died. After finally reaching the top and catching my breath, I got to ride another kilometer or so to the convenience store and come all the way back (uphill) to SPring-8. As soon as I got back I took a cold shower, drank about a liter of juice, and fell asleep in the sun for about two hours. Then I got up, ate dinner, and worked a little bit before falling asleep again while 'taking a short break' on the bed.

Today was awesome. My advisor's secretary, her daughter, Ao-chan, and her friend took me shopping. I finally have laundry detergent, and I found a store you can buy taco sauce and tortillas at. (not that I really want tacos, but it's good to know that there's somewhere I can go in case of a taco emergency) We also went to an electronics store. Everything here is really spiffy and way better than in America, but also way more expensive than in America. Also, I found a $12 apple, $20 canteloupe, and an $11 dollar bell pepper. Then we had sushi that was amazing AND cheap, and now I'm super full. Ao-chan taught me lots of words like star, halo, and poo-poo. She was calling Matsumoto-san all sorts of things that are really amusing to a tired six year old, like butt-girl and fart-chan. I have to admit, it was both hilarious and educational. She has a new name, too. She's Broccoli-chan now. I totally forget why she became Broccoli-chan, but she wanted me to be Broccoli-chan so we arm wrestled for it. She totally cheated, so she says I'm Broccoli-chan but I call her Cheater-chan. She also cheats at cards, but she's so cute at it that it's ok.

I'm starting a new method for learning Japanese, other than trying to understand Ao-chan's...earthy Japanese. I bought a Japanese-English dictionary (all the English to Japanese dictionaries have all the Japanese in kanji, which I can't read, and all the kanji dictionaries have the definitions of the the kanji in more kanji.) I also bought a manga (Japanese comic book - they're waaaay more popular here than in the US.) Holy cow, they're cheap here! This was about 300 yen. The english translations cost about $20 at home. Anyway, I'm going to translate this manga. So far, I've gotten halfway through page 1.

Anna and Julie - I almost bought you something today. They had some notebooks that say "Simple things are well loved. Our first goal is tasty design." or something like that. If they had more than about 40 pages in them, I totally would have gotten them for you guys. But don't worry - I'm sure there are plenty of T-shirts with horrible English out there. Just you wait.