child devil of tuna

God dammit... there is a centipede now residing in my shower room. I found it at first inside my bathtub and laughing like a madwoman, I merely turned on the faucet and watched it disappear in a swirly whirlpool of hot shower water. But just in case, I let the water run for like 5 minutes before taking a shower. I thought that I had triumphed over the evil that came to me in the form of a 42-legged arthropod, but was I ever wrong. I saw it AGAIN a couple of hours sitting on the floor of my shower room, having somehow crawled its way out of the drain. Evil bastard. I sprayed it with some cockroach neurotoxin (which is the same stuff I used to kill Fiona's evil spider) but all it did was crawl into the little space between my bathtub and the wall. That was two days ago. I keep the shower door shut so that it can't get into the rest of my apartment so that means it's still in there. I dread having to take a shower each morning. I'm just afraid that it's going to jump on my head when I least suspect it. Fucking bugs...

posted by Grace @ 6/28/2004 11:45:00 PM 0 comments

Typhoon warnings threatened to leave us stranded in Okinawa, but we managed to get back to Mie-ken more or less as scheduled. Despite the fact that impending bad weather cut our beach time in half, I still had an awesome time and I think I'll have to make another trip, preferably not during rainy season.

Disclaimer: Snapfish has done something to change the resolution of my photos so they are unintentionally enlarged and blurry. Sorry about that. If you want the originals, let me know.


First night out during the Tokyo Recontracting Conference. I think we were in Shibuya.


Too cheap to go out for a real meal, we decided to get ramen from a roadside stand. Smelled and looked better than it tasted.


Furuzamami Beach. Before we got kicked off of Zamami Jima by the mayor/governor or Zamami himself, we decided to try and squeeze in some snorkeling.


Ama Beach on Zamami Jima.


The ladies...


...and the men (sporting their highly fashionable Hawaiian shirts).


Out in Naha.


And some killer waves courtesy of our friend, the typhoon. 10-12 feet, maybe?

posted by Grace @ 6/21/2004 05:30:00 AM 0 comments

Going to Tokyo tomorrow! Going to Okinawa on Wednesday! Have fun at work, suckers! Puahahaha! =P

posted by Grace @ 6/13/2004 09:19:00 AM 0 comments

SCENE: Waiting at Kuwana train station, talking to Ruth on my cell.

ME: ...OK, I'll see you in a bit. Bye!
RANDOM GAIJIN: Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice. You're English is very good.
ME: Oh, I should hope so.
RANDOM GAIJIN: Why? How long have you studied English?
ME: Actually, I'm American.

That guy got on the same train as me, but didn't try to make any smalltalk the rest of the way to Yokkaichi. Ah, life in Japan.

posted by Grace @ 6/11/2004 07:53:00 AM 0 comments

Oh, and by the way, Venus will make a transit across the Sun's surface tomorrow: June 8, 2004. This is the first time that Venus' orbit has crossed in front of the Sun (from Earth's point of view) since 1882. No one alive on Earth today has ever witnessed this event.

posted by Grace @ 6/06/2004 10:08:00 PM 0 comments

I had visions of writing a great blog entry. I was ready to dump onto you, my faithful reader, the crap that was accumulating in my brain. I was going to pour my soul into this entry. I had every intention of letting my guard down, of wrenching my heart out of its safe place under my sternum and into the open for all to see. My poor bleeding heart.

But alas, I really don't have anything that significant to report. Hence the once-a-week blogging habit I seemed to have picked up recently. So instead, I'll talk about how much I dislike shopping for clothes in Japan.

I need a bathing suit. SOON. So I decided to bite the bullet and try to find a bathing suit in Japan. "Try" being the operative word in that last sentence. I went into 4 different stores and they all only carried one size of bathing suit. ONE size. This is in a country that sells different sizes of hats, for crying out loud. How on earth is it possible to carry only one-size-fits-us-but-not-you bathing suits? Man, I was pissed.

It's like trying to buy underwear in this country. Believe it or not, most stores only carry a Japanese size medium in panties (Japanese medium = western xsmall/small). Some stores will carry a Japanese large. However, finding the elusive large doesn't necessarly mean that my problems are over. Japanese mediums come in a variety of cute designs. Lace, bikini-cut, low-rise, thong--name it, they've got it. Japanese larges come in only one design: above the belly-button granny pants. I might as well wear boxer briefs; they'd be just as flattering.

Forgive me if my ass is 3 to 5cm larger in circumference than the average Japanese ass (for those of you who are metrically challenged, that's about 1 - 2 inches, which is the difference in measurements between a medium and a large). I guess I'll have to wait until I get back to the States to find underwear or a bathing suit that'll fit my very average-sized body.

posted by Grace @ 6/06/2004 09:14:00 PM 0 comments

Freakin-A! I went to an elementary school today and the headmaster asked me about Tennessee. WHAT'S IN TENNESSEE THAT'S SO IMPORTANT??

posted by Grace @ 6/02/2004 06:18:00 AM 0 comments