Days turn into weeks

Hello hello! I'm am feeling rather perky. Probably because I just ate yummerific tacos. We made them (of course) but they were still very tasty. Mexican food is always a great revitalizer! Also, we had chili dogs for dinner last night. American food for the win!

It was a good day today. Chris got home at 11:00 am and we spent most of the afternoon just hanging out. It's Izumo area middle school sports bonanza! Well, that's not what it's called in Japanese, but since I don't know what it's called, I thought I would give it an English name (it was going to be sports fiesta, but that sounds so cliche. Anyways, because all the middle schools are doing major sports competitions with each other, Chris gets to come home after 3rd period. He's supposed to go see sporting events but...whatever. We did go see some 3chu baseball. Baseball is more boring in Japan and middle school than America, though. Did you know they almost always bunt? No really. They will try to bunt even when no one is on base. I don't get it.

I did have classes this evening but they went fine. When I was driving to Kisuki I stumbled across the brilliant idea of making Father's Day cards! Woo! That takes 30 of my 60 minutes of class and is cool for the kids to do. Or at least I think so. I make them write English greetings and phrases on the cards and stuff. Man, David better look out. He's already got two cards that I made and will probably get 2 more! Too bad he won't get them in time. But shhh...it's a secret. Does David read my journal? Don't look David! It's a secret/surprise! (ok, now that I've gotten that covered).

We got our plane tickets today! Not the ones from Narita to Atlanta, but the ones from Izumo to Haneda. We fly out of Izumo at 7:40 am on July 26. Then, we arrive at Haneda around 9:00. After that, we take another hour or so bus to the airport. We are going to be there way, way early (flight leaves at 3:30). But whatever, it's way better than missing our flight! Plus, we will have Chris' computer and so we can watch movies and stuff on it while we wait. Still, getting the tickets is very exciting! It took Chris three tries to get his ticket because the poor dude at the travel agency kept spelling his name wrong and inserting extra A's. We figured out the Chris has an insanely long name ('Christopher' alone has 11 letters). My 5 lettered name was much easier on the guy. Though my name in romaji is rather silly (Suuzan uirisu).

On Sunday night, Chris, Jason, and I went to the arcade. Jason wanted to get some Purikura (Print Club photobooth thingies) for a camp he was going to this week and asked me to help him out with it. Purikura was fun, kinda hot though in those little booths. Jason mainly took pictures by himself and I helped him decorate one set. I did abandon him to play some games though (bad me!). Between Chris and I, though, we came home with 5 toys/prizes! Let's see them!


This is a mushroom! It dispenses toothpicks. Hee. We haven't opened it yet, but I am more than happy to have it at home and maybe use it there. It's cute. You press down on he button that looks like a chimney and it pokes out a toothpick. Precious! Chris won it from a pusher game. The prizes sit on a spinning round thing with a hole in the middle and you try to push the toys into the hole and win them. We found one that was really easy to win (it didn't have a lip like most of them so you could just push things right into the pit).


This is Mario running. I won him from a crane game. I didn't think I would, Chris just thought I should try it. I got him on the first try! I just caught him by his head and arm. I really thought he would drop before it got to the prize hole, but it didn't! Awesome. He stands on his own too. Sweeet!




Hah. This is a voice amplifier. You talk through the microphone and it makes your voice louder. That's pretty much all it does. Chris gets a kick out of it though and keeps threatening to take it to school and freak out the kids. This was also won by the pusher game. Chris won it while I was doing purikura with Jason.





And finally, these! These are Yawaraka no Sensha. That means fragile tanks. They are tanks that go to war and get bitten by mosquitoes, eaten/pounced on by cats, and poked by mean little children so they bruise like children. So cute. I won the baby tank and Chris won the other one. Here is where they are from (watch and enjoy):




This is Gordo. He's a monokuro boo. I won him several months ago, I just forgot to mention him. This was from a lifter game. He was sitting on a seat thing and I spun a spinner and tried to make the seat lift 5 times and dump him down into the prize hole. It was kinda hard because you could hit any number from -5 to +5. There is a white pig that pairs with Gordo (the black pig) and Chris tried to win him for me but couldn't. And then it wasn't there anymore. Oh well. I still have Gordo. He's pretty big too. (gordo means fat in Spanish, Chris named him)

So those are our arcade prizes. Pretty nifty, huh?

And finally, in other news, we've started watching Heroes from iTunes. It's a really awesome show, though really complicated and one that you really need to watch from the beginning. The only reason I mentioned it is because there are two Japanese characters in the show who speak Japanese a lot. It's fascinating to be able to understand what they are saying in the original language while reading the subtitles. It's a whole new way to watch things. It's like we get two different dialogues and is pretty rad. Also, we noticed right away the Masi Oka is NOT a native speaker of Japanese. His accent is pretty much on par with my Japanese accent and is really noticable to someone who is surrounded by native Japanese. I can tell that he can speak Japanese, but it's not one of his native tongues. Ironically, the other Japanese character is played by a Korean guy and his accent is better and much closer to being fluent. Nifty! Sometimes, there are Americans speaking Japanese on the show and they are TERRIBLE. You can really tell they don't know Japanese and have just learned it phonetically. They put too much stress and intonation into the words. It's bizarre.

Anyways, I thought that would be interesting to mention. I never thought about watching shows in Japanese with English subtitles and understanding both at the same time. It's neato. Plus, being able to hear accents in Japanese is a huge indicator that my listening has gotten much better since coming Japan. I'm still far from fluent, but I'm much closer than when I started.

So that's that. I hope I didn't ramble too much. Now I have the yawakara tank song in my head. Oh dear...