Hello everyone, and sorry for the long wait since my last post. It’s been due to a combination of a couple things. The first being that I do not have internet hooked up in my room at the moment (my free trial ran out), and so I’m waiting for a piece of mail to arrive with confirmation information. Second, due to withdrawal symtoms from the internet, a.k.a. the Influenza Virus, I haven’t been able to leave the dorm for a few days. Right now I decided to move my computer down a couple floors in order to pick up a wifi feed from my friend’s computer hot-spot. I’m feeling on the mend but still quite sick in normal standards.
Anyway, I’ve got a lot to catch you all up on. For example, daily life, classes, my recently assigned research task at the lab, my cameo on stage with a jazz group playing guitar at a jazz concert with Takao-san, a trip to another Jinjya and the surrounding festival with way too much delicious food, amazingly choreographed-synchronized-preschool-pop dancers, my great people watching location (my room’s balcony), and last but not at all least, my second trip up to the top of my backyard mountain, Mt. Yashima. You’ll be surprised by what we found at the top.
For now, here are some teaser photos to keep you satisfied until I can gather enough strength of will and, well, strength, to write a full post.
Small little ramen/toriyakiniku shop. You know what ramen is but I’m guessing you don’t recognized toriyakiniku… Their specialty is Japanese style chicken BBQ. All parts of the chicken. I tried their grilled chicken liver and neck. Both were amazing. The liver was a little odd, quite thick, but fatty and juicy.
Takao and most of these gents playing their instruments are alumni of the same institution. During one of their intermissions he asked permission (without asking me) if I could get up and play guitar. They said yes, and at that point I couldn’t refuse so I got up a strummed around a little bit and soon someone hopped on the bass and piano and we had ourselves a little trio going for a few minutes. Unfortunately I was a bit out of practice but it was still fun.
We walked down the street lined with stalls like this one. It was easy to spend all the money I had on hand. Fortunately, I didn’t have much.
This was in the middle of the covered street-mall.
I’ll save the rest of what we found for later 😉
Goodnight for now. Gotta rest! Bye 🙂
Dan In Japan 