Retrospective Post: The Day I Came Back

So, before I go on about other things I thought I'd mention something that happened on literally the first day I came back.

I was sitting around at the table, still being slightly estranged by the fact that I was not in Japan anymore. My brother's friend came over and they felt like getting some lunch. I came along, and we decided that we'd get some Mexican food from a place called Alazane's. They've got amazing shrimp burritos there. Well, along the way we came across a truck that had, dangling off the hitch, a pair of truck nuts.

If you're not familiar with them, a quick google search will suffice, however I imagine you can figure out what they are.

In that moment I felt as though I were truly back. I had a vision of us sitting in Doc Brown's time machine, flying back in from 2015 to good ol' 1985.

In fact it would've gone a little something like this:

I apologize for the crappy photoshop job in advance

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly how it went.


In my head at least.


-J

Retrospective Post: The Day They Cut My Cord

I promised I would be back with more postings, and this will be the first of them to get it all started. It's a pretty harmless one, so it should be a nice and easy way to get back into the habit of writing things here again.

Shortly after this we went to Korea, and that took a while to write down in its entirety via my journal, so I'll have to condense those thoughts before I put it up here. I will though, it was a pretty interesting experience.

So, this is from November 1st:

I heard someone call out from the genkan, and it was a voice I hadn't heard before. I got up to check (I believe I was writing in the journal that moment) and it turned out to be a man in a blue jumped with a white hard hat on. He asked if it was okay for him to talk to me about a certain thing going on in the area, and I had no reason to say no. He then proceeded to empty an entire speech on my way about how they were cutting the defunct cables running from my house (all houses in the area for that matter) and simply wanted to let me know what they were doing and why. I replied to half of what he was saying, while nodding to the half I did not get.

This is the problem with learning a new language, all it takes is a new situation for you to feel like you're not that good at it. But the "what to do when the electric company shows up and wants to remove old cable attached to the side of your house" lessons just don't come up in a formal setting.

Anyway, I walked across the street and talked to my neighbor Jiro-san about it, who explained it in a way that made more sense to me. I got up and took some pictures while they worked away on it. I love the way they do things like this in Japan. There's really not much traffic at all running through here, but they still coned it off, put up a sandwich board sign, and had a man to direct people should they arrive and need to know what was going on.

Enjoy!

There's the sandwich board! I wasn't lying.

Why do their cones look like toys?

Later on that day I cooked some small fish in the fish broiler that we have in our stove. No actual oven, so there's a real limit on the kinds of things that you can cook. Well, just the things that require an oven really. But still!

A little too long but it was my first time using a broiler!

 Anyway, that's the short one for now. Stay tuned for more.

-J

A New Look

It's been a while.

I was supposed to start putting up some of the things that happened while I was in Japan for all that time. I haven't forgotten! I've just been a bit occupied with other stuff lately, but I'm hoping to start posting retro-posts. As a kind of deposit on that promise I've already made a new banner for the blog.

Look at that!

Now why would I just go and abandon this place if I went ahead and made that?

Older posts coming soon. Fear not.

-J