Japanese TV- Some of the weirdest stuff you've ever seen.  I was reading late one night when I decided to give my mind a blessed rest from Kanji by watching a little TV.  It was 3 in the morning on a weeknight, and there was a show on channel 12 called "Monsutaa Mune"- Monster Tits.  It was a show where they would run up to women in the streets of Tokyo and ask them embarrasing questions about their chest, and perhaps eventry to cop a feel.  Then there would be a host, guests and a studio audience discussing the events; "Yes, well, this womans chest was certainly large, am I correct Takeshi?" "Yes, Rumiko, she certainly had large breasts.  They would bounce around when she laughed...".  High culture.  Maybe Japan needs more channels- cable only has 7 to 8 standard channels, 4 more if you get satellite.

Onsen- Went with the Gann-man, his girlfriend Rika, and his nice friend who speaks very softly (I forget his name right now) to a huge new Onsen place.  When I thought of Onsen before, I thought of old wooden buildings, wooden planks on the walls and floor like in the movies.  No, this place was like all concrete and modern- the building was huge, the size of a small mall, everything inside was modern.  There were screaming children, noisy teens, the whole works.  The onsen itself (the place was called Utopia) was rather nice- it had apparently only been open for about two months.

Ashio- last weekend I went to Ashio, the location of the once-largest copper mine in Japan.  It was also the origin of Japan's first environmental demonstration (even though it was relatively unsuccessful) some 100 years ago.  The mine had been open and heavily exploited for about 200 years, and the copper runoff polluted everything- forests, rivers, lakes... everyone was slowly being poisoned, and diarrhea and the like were commonplace.  Finally the mine was pretty much shut down for good in the 50s, and everyone who lived and worked in Ashio, then the second largest town in the prefecture (some hundred thousand people) left: There's 4000 people there now- Ashio is truly a ghost town.  And that's where I went for vacation.  It was a pretty place, actually.  Real small-town feel, surrounded by beautiful forests and mountains.  And copper-green lakes.

Language- one of my teachers watched me teach at Azuma Elementary School.  She told me that my self-confidence really comes out in the classroom.  However, the word for self-confidence and the word for earthquake are the same (jishin), so I replied by telling her how I'm from America, and thus not used to the kind of Self-Confidence that there is in Japan- and that sometimes Japanese Self-Confidence wakes me up in the morning.  Also, I found out the word for "set class" was the same as laundry (sentaku), so for the a while I thought elementary school kids had to take 3 laundry classes a semester.  "Laundry must be very important in Japan", I thought.

Guns- Shigeru's family has a couple air guns.  I asked him what he does with them; "We shoot at bad cats".  I just imagine him and his father on the ol' porch, shooting b-bs at nasty neighborhood cats that try to poach their cats' food.  Lawn fishing.

Teaching- I've started teaching, legitimately, the common greeting of "What's up", and "Not much", and sticking it whenever I can into the kids' dialogue.  Also, I've taken to teaching Bob Marley songs to the 3rd year students.  We're grinding through "Three Little Birds", and "No Woman, No Cry".  I figure that eventually, with a little practice, we may be able to work our way up to other areas of pop music besides reggae- perhaps country, or gangsta rap. Insted of "Hello Kumi, this is Hiroki speaking", we may work our way up to, " 'Sup, mo-fukka - It's yo boy Hiroaki callin' from da crib".