I BOUGHT A BIKE! Woot! I had refused to buy a bike for all this time because I felt that it was ridiculous to pay $100 for a bike with no gears and a girly basket on the front, but on Sunday I finally decided to yield to temptation and went home with this little beaut. It is shiny blue, has a light, a chaling-chaling bell, mudguards and a basket! I am the queen of convenient transportation! I just couldn't be more thrilled that, among other things, I won't have to walk my lazy self half an hour to church any more, but will instead by able to bike there at a reasonable approximation of the speed of light. It is going to kill me to leave this precious little number behind in August, but it's definitely worth it to be able to drive it into the ground and then cast it aside like a very shiny old glove. Incidentally, the hilarious thing about bikes in Japan is that, unlike in America where they are primarily the domain of ultra-cool, alternative college kids who absolutely must have a twenty-thousand-gear mountain bike for riding around campus, they are considered to be nothing but a speedy way of getting from here to there without shelling out for tolls, gas and a license. As a result, you will constantly spot serious-looking salarymen perched on effeminately curving bikes with no gears, but cheery little bells and baskets on the front instead. Nothing says cutthroat businessman like a basket.
I finally finished that book of short stories today, boldly bringing the total of books I've finished in the last two and a half months to two. But that does double the number of books I've read in Japanese, so I guess I should be glad. When did I become illiterate? Oh yes, the instant I stepped off the plane in September. Man, it is wearing on the patience to start from square one with reading - at this point I think I'm reading at maybe a sixth-grade level at a second-grade speed. Still, I can almost guarantee you that if I got in a read-off with a kindergartener, I would spank the pants off that brat. Only foreign exchange students are allowed to gloat about beating babies and toddlers at anything, but we can do it with wild abandon.
This picture makes me look kind of stoned and doesn't really represent the hat very well, but I am far too lazy to replace it. Anyway, I now look all kinds of thug styling. Woot quantity squared.
- Gyaa! I'm give up
Naka-ku, Hiroshima
730-0803
JAPAN
