This is a picture of a crow posing on top of a phoenix statue on the roof of the Byodo-in. The crow's like "You think it's so great that you can rise from the dead and all that? Well, look at me! I'm... um... black! Suck it."
My Hiroshima professor is totally broken. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but ever since the first day of class, his ability to hold an actual lesson has been decreasing visibly. It's like he has an increasingly potent form of Professor ADD - the first day we had a good fifteen minutes of lecture, at which point a timer went off in his head and he completely lost interest and started chatting with us instead. The next time we met in class, he lasted about seven minutes before turning again to chit-chat. The next class he devoted zero time to lecture and cut straight to the chatty chase; this time, he burst in to the room and said "Hey, I would love a beer or something," then took us to a bar and got sloshed. Where do we go from here? Is he going to e-mail us before next session, telling us to meet him at a strip club? This was the first time I've ever gone drinking with a professor, but it turns out to hold secret joys I never would have guessed. Besides, he's not really that much of a professor.
Moreover, he appears to be the most connected man in Hiroshima, although it is unlikely that he is involved with the yakuza. For example, he is actively transforming my friend Ayed into a Japanese pop star, to the extent that a record deal seems quite reasonable in the near future (Ayed wants to be a Japanese pop idol because the ladies are super-fly). During the Bar Extravaganza, he suggested that Ayed hold a private debut concert just before Christmas that will be on a train and fully catered. Idle talk? To prove his point, he placed a slightly drunken phone call to the second in command of public transportation in Hiroshima while we were sitting there, and immediately told the man how it was going to be. Ho. Ly. Poop. This man is like Zeus mixed with Bacchus packed into the body of a late-middle-ages Japanese professor. He is basically non-stop hilarity, in part because he's a great guy and in part because I'm always waiting with baited breath for his next little nugget of craziness. Despite the fact that I learn almost nothing in it, I am thrilled to be taking this "class."
- Gyaa! I'm give up
