Yeah, that's the three Americans at Miyajima again. I opted not to stay the night there, so here I am updating the page as always. To get the joke to your right, I think you need to have read yesterday's caption. Miyajima was great again, as it will always be. This time six of us climbed up what we thought was going to be one small mountain and ended up being one smallish mountain and one hugeish mountain. After an unexpected two-hour hike in totally inappropriate shoes, I'm hurting a little. I was so unprepared for the hike, Carolyn would be spinning in her grave if she were dead. Regardless, it was fantastic and I took the most beautiful picture I've ever taken, although this one isn't too bad either. We taught the Japanese how to play Marco Polo while getting lost on the mountain, and it was awesome hearing them try to pronounce "Marco". And "Polo", for that matter. In fact, maybe I should say that I taught them to play "Maruko Poro".
The mountain was not a total success, however, as the entire reason we started climbing it was to find this Monkey Mountain that I was understandably excited to see. Sadly, it was still very far away when we turned around and probably would have cost money to enter anyway; the disappointment of having an entire mountain of monkeys stolen from me was almost too much to bear.I was talking with someone about it afterward, and apparently the monkeys aren't tame or in cages, but in fact just live the wild life in the trees, dropping out of nowhere to snatch food from your packs and such. My anguish over missing this knows no bounds.
Fortunately, there will be a next time. A next time - for monkeys!
Please note and give me credit for the fact that I avoided the obvious A My Name Is Alice joke in the caption to your right.
After the first day's use, I can confidently say that Japanese cell phones are exactly three times as much fun as a barrel of monkeys.
Just now I learned that the Japanese word for vowel is the same as that for 'big boobs' (the dictionary's phrase). This is a great language. For those interested, this versatile word is 'boin'.
Memory is a capricious ruler. Yesterday I was chatting it up with this guy and randomly pulled the word for 'vowel' out of nowhere; I was pleased because it was necessary for the conversation, but surprised because I'm certain that I've only ever seen it written once and have never heard it spoken. Today, however, I also had cause to talk about vowels and this time I could not pull up the word for the life of me. Aargh. I must be broken somehow.
Suprisingly, it has already become difficult to think in English after a full day of speaking Japanese, even if I have English breaks in there somewhere. This is not to say that I'm thinking all in Japanese yet, but somehow it all comes to the fore when I'm trying to write this page. If this starts to sound Engrishy, you now know why.
