This is a shot of three cool Chinese guys I hang out with a fair amount. Well, the left two are from China proper, but I believe the right one is from Inner Mongolia. They have me call them, starting from the right, Fong, Ah-chan and... Jackie. The names sound normal enough in conversation, but putting them all together like that makes them sound like the world's lamest superhero team.
Today I became the Undefeated Ping-Pong Champion of the World, or at least the dorm. I played for about two hours straight and didn't lose once - I should have known when to quit, though, because I lost the very last game through my opponent's devious and treacherous trick of being better at ping-pong. Regardless, I felt like a tiny pocket-sized god for those two hours. I even managed to beat three Chinese guys (not those pictured above), which felt somewhat like beating a cheesemonger in a cheese-mongering contest, or whatever it may be that cheesemongers do best.
I made two mistakes today: one being cooking three fish starting from the eyes-and-tail-on phase, and the other not taking a picture of it. I confess that when I slit the belly of the first one and a big gooey heart/liver/wobbly mass fell out, I just about lost it. Nonetheless, I perservered through all the forlorn lifeless eyes, tails, decapitation and spine removal only to end up with some extremely fishy fish fillets. They tasted all right, but the fish had sat in my fridge for a few days, which apparently makes this already very fishy fish turn even fishier. The fish is called sanma in Japanese, but is saury in English, which I've never heard before. They are a traditional autumn fish, probably because eating sanma makes people think "Hey, winter sucks, but at least we won't have to eat this fish anymore!" Actually, it's not that bad, but I certainly wouldn't drop everything if I found out that SanmaTown was having an All-Sanma-Must-Go Sale.
This is a pretty tepid bit of Engrish, but I didn't take any other shots today and that was all I had lying around. That's the lens cleaner I bought in the desperate hope that the problem with my CD player was just a diry lens; no such luck. I just can't believe that a $75 CD player is broken a month after purchase, but I guess the Japanese return policy is pretty weak, so I'm stuck with it. In any case, the lens cleaner CD is pretty funny - while it's cleaning this woman's voice plays, telling you things like "You're sooo lucky for having purchased this CD!"
I went to an internet cafe with Jackie and the other Americans and played Counter-Strike for a couple of hours. Seeing Jackie coolly sucking on a cigarette while shooting us all in the head for a good half hour with no opposition felt like being mauled by a little teddy bear with a sweet smile on its face. Eventually we rallied and gave him some kind of run for his money, but there was no recovering from the shock of that first while.
I found an imitation Pocky that is very delicious and much cheaper than the real thing today. I plan on eating it until it gives me diabetes and said diabetes kills me.
- Gyaa! I'm give up
