This is one of the cats that live on the campus. Most of them are skittish or just plain evil and will scratch anything that is not actively giving them food. This one, however, very kindly let us pet and crowd around it, and in exchange gave us all rabies, the bubonic plague, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. But it was so worth it.
Today I was a bicycling machine, and discovered that it takes about seven minutes to get to the heart of downtown from my dorm, where previously it had taken me 20-25 minutes back in those foolish, long-forgotten days when I would motor around on my feet like a schmuck. There are no real bike parking places around town, but fortunately the Japanese have a healthy disregard for no parking signs, so I was able to park mine directly in front of a sign scolding me in several languages for doing so. It made me feel like a real man to show such blatant disregard for the law - tomorrow I may even jaywalk.
I actually had to do homework for several hours today, which I resent greatly. The class with all the survey stuff is making me do a presentation of the language survey I did a month ago or so, so I spent a couple of hours computing data in highly scientific ways that may or may not have involved colored pencils and butcher paper. Then I made a paper hat and pretended I was the bold and carefree Paper Hat Pirate, corsair extraordinaire and friend to ladies in all ports.
Today I caught the cleaning staff in the act for the first time.
The first draft of that sentence was the exact same as the current one, excepting that it used the word "today" three times. What's wrong with me?
Anyway, the cleaning staff here is a model of silent effectiveness, so much so that I didn't realize that anyone even vacuumed the halls until today; this is a massive change from ASU, where the cleaning staff takes out their anger at being denied a green card and being forced to work illegally for excellent pay by slamming vacuums against your door at seven in the morning or, where that doesn't apply, pouring dozens of gallons of water directly outside your door, then sweeping it off, a process so ridiculous and inefficient that it takes half an hour of loud, angry scraping to complete. Barring all of this, they manage to communicate their hatred for the world in general and cheerily sleeping college students in general by screaming across the building in rapid-fire, nasal Spanish about, presumably, the status of their latest negotiation with the Dark Lord himself about soul-devouring quotas for the month.
- Gyaa! I'm give up
Naka-ku, Hiroshima
730-0803
JAPAN
