Musings of a Drunken Monk: Individual Entry Archive

Yeah, sorry for such a long absence, but things have been pretty insane. You never really realize how much you need certain things; food, water, sunlight ... internet. Having gone through serious withdrawal (apparently though no one in Gyoda has heard of securing their wireless networks, none of them are strong enough for me to use ... curses!), I figure it's high time to start doing my blog writing "unwired" and update when I can. At least I can come up with witty things to say when I'm not trying desperately just to wade through the 400 emails in my inbox. No, that's not a self-aggrandizing statement. You see, most of them are notifications from Movable Type (the blogging program I use) that I've gotten yet another spam comment. I don't even know what the hell cialis is, but boy someone thinks it's important to plaster all over my page. Seriously, spam in every form should be punished with public whuppings. I know just about anyone with internet access would love to get a piece of a spammer or two. Not that kind of piece, you pervert.

So, about my experience thus far: I live in a town of 70,000 (I guess that's really "countryside" by Japan standards) called Gyoda in the Northeast section of Saitama Prefecture. Saitama is known by people in Tokyo as "Dasaitama" which pretty much means "uncool." Think of Saitama as New Jersey or Southern Connecticut is to New York City. But regardless of this, Gyoda is cool enough to live in. Unfortunately, I don't mean temperature-wise, because days here thus far have averaged over 95 degrees with over 70% humidity. Imagine waking up at 7AM only to find that it's already 88 degrees. Living in Gyoda has already been an exercise in self-discovery. For instance, I am reminded that my Japanese completely sucks. I also now know that I sweat more in one hour than I thought was humanly possible. Both of my JET friends have asian ancestry, so for some reason they are blessed not only with relative hairlessness (God am I jealous) but also, they apparently have half the sweat glands that I do. This usually translates into the one sweaty gaijin walking around the streets of Gyoda, even though there are three (or four, when Lorna joins us) new faces in town. I went to the local supermarket to buy groceries, and was astounded by the desparity of prices here. A watermelon literally costs $20 on average. A container of tofu (normally $1.60 or so in the US) costs 60 yen here, maybe 50 cents. 40 doses of asprin (less than a month's supply for me, thanks for the genes dad) costs $20. The most soul-crushing moment for me, though (at least in the grocery store) was the discovery that Doritos don't exist. At least, not good flavor ones. What the hell is "taco" flavor anyway? Oh God, what have I gotten into?

Most of my ramblings pretty much are things that every gaijin since 18-whatever have discovered. I guess I'll just be redundant. But every newcomer to Japan simply must visit the hyaku-en store. That's 100 yen for anything in the store. Basically it's a dollar store. Why so great, you may ask? Simple. It's not useless crap like American dollar stores have. Nichole (one of the other JETs) has bought so much crap there, I'm surprised her apartment still holds people. I hear Peter has bought one less item. It's all cheap, but it's really not as crappy as I may have expected.

I've posted some new pictures for your enjoyment. These are of my apartment and not-so-pretty Gyoda. Pay particular attention to the notebook I bought for Japanese study.

Collabolation!