Dozo

What an amazing day Saturday turned out to be, Nick!

It couldn’t have been more than mid-/low- 80s at it's hottest, and then at around 2 pm the humidity dropped, so I decided to take Geoff out for a ride around town

¹ I decided to name the bike after it’s previous owner, though, technically, I think the black one was Mickie’s and the orange one was Geoff’s. Then again saying “I rode Geoff/Mickie” sounds terribly uncomely. I’ll have to think about it some more.

¹. I ended up biking around in concentric figure-eights, starting with a mini-loop to and from the super market across the Ohori-gawa River for some milk and cereal then winding my way up north-east to the farms bordering super-rich area of town, then back across the northern face south of Kitakashiwa station, around to the other side of the river again, to the “other” rich side of town. This went on for maybe an hour or so before I ended up back at the 7-11 for more munchies (in an ill-fated search for popcorn), before coming back home.

It’s a beautiful town. I was a little worried because the two blocks between my apartment and Kitakashiwa station is home to a Pachinko parlor, a couple convenience stores, apartments and a parking lot. But Kitakashiwa is a splendid blend of “small-town” on the fringes of a burgeoning city (Kashiwa proper), framed on all sides by rural farms and wide blue sky. The closest thing to it that I can think of would be Inverness: a sleepy, emerald suburban-shawl wrapped around a vibrant, churning river.

Anyway, I’ll get around to posting those Kashiwa pics after the end of the Kyoto-update. Speaking of which…





Oh, I almost forgot: after the fried-chicken debacle at lunch yesterday, I thought I’d go with something simple like reheating chicken karaage in the gas-broiler. Of course, stupid me, I set the karaage-stick on fire. Still tasted fine. No harm no foul, right? Right.

Anyway, I’m super-happy that I got my internet set up today. I watched a couple of hours of No Reservations off my Slingbox and punched out a ton of episodes I’ve had backlogged on my Hulu account

² Mostly episodes of Louie, Archer, and Colbert.

². I’m just a little tired of Japanese TV right now.

Okay, so I know it’s pretty well documented how lame scheduled programming is in Japan (though their game shows are pretty good… unfortunately, their news programs are kinda bad, and 90% of the remaining shows are of the Variety-Programming style…), but this will really get your goat. Live sporting events aren’t regularly televised on non-cable TV

³ Occasionally, a big match up or event will be televised, but that’s not so different from America, right?

³. Well, if the television programmers allot 3 hours for a baseball game (say, the Hanshin Tigers against the Yomiuri Giants), they will only televise 3 hours, even if the game runs longer. I’m sure they’ll figure that out after a while. I mean, they did eventually get the toilet right…