Mexican Toast

Don't they say that necessity is the mother of creation, well so be it that was the inspiration behind my lunch. My need to eat and the lack of food in my house, and the need to get rid of re-fried beans in the fridge, I thought why not make like pizza toast with it. So I spread on some re-fried beans topped it with salsa and cheese then toasted it. Out of the toaster oven I put some guacamole dip on top, hence the green. It was actually pretty good. It could have used some fresh jalapenos though. I save that for next time.

Dr. Fish

You may remeber that I posted about these little guys awhile back and at that time it was a random picture I took off the internet. This time it is all me and they were getting busy on my feet. It was sort of gross and tingle but other that that it wasn't so bad.



There were 2 ladies doing it at the same time and when I took a picture they wanted to do the same thing.
The fish really went to work around my toes and when the 10min. were up they came out sort of red. I actually think to to a better job I would need to be in for a lot longer, but I don't think I will be doing it again any time soon. It is one of those things you want to try once but after that...

Cicada

This morning I was taking in my wash and started to fold when i felt a flapping against my arm and that all to fimilar sound of the "semi". I was totally disgusted threw the shirt down but was a little freaked because it meant that I was loose in the house. Luckily I picked up the shirt and it was still on it and I was able to shake it out. I was only to happy to get rid of it. Below is an example of what I encountered.

Soba Meishi

So to make up for my disappointing lunch I remembered this restaurant that I had seen in one of the new malls that opend up near here. So off I went in search of soba meishi, kind of a combination between yaki soba and fried rice. It is a chain out of Kobe and I had eaten at one of their other branches and loved it. Believe it or not it has my least favorite ingredient in it, konyaku or "cement jello", as I like to call it, but it all gets blended in. It was quite the treat.

Quick Lunch, Not!

I thought that I would make a quick run to McDonald's for lunch. Forget the quick part I think I stood in line for twenty minutes. Now that wouldn't have been so awful if it hadn't been but 5 people in front of me in line. Then when I got my food and sat down there were the loudest kids sitting behind me, I wanted so bad to just turn around and stare down the mother and maybe she would get the message that her kids were out of control. But instead I sat and did my best to ignore them and get out of there as fast as I could. Lesson learned, summer vacation and McD's don't mix.

Caption this

This picture keeps poping up on my screen saver rotation of slides and it always cracks me up. I think she is a little "pac-man". There has to be a funny caption for it.

Money, Money, Money...

It's a rich man's world.
So the song goes, and I don't feel like a rich man, but I have been doing some banking and it is sort of scary what you can do now-a-days. I guess I could go back to Florida and going to the bank and cashing 2 checks for $6,000. Of course they gave me cash and I walked with a big envelope of green. the scarry part was flying with it to Anderson, but once I got there I got to had it over to people at the board and they are making a money transfer for me.

Now the yen rate has dropped so I thought it was time to change some money, let's just say that transfer had 3 zeros too. Well that took a big bite out of my CITI Bank acct. so this morning I walked to the bank and transferred lets just say more than I was allowed to at one time. I had to get a special permission, but it wasn't that difficult, except that I forgot to tell them I had made a transfer of my rent so they had to change the amt. Now the weird thing is the transfer was made at the ATM, but I had to get permission from a bank clerk. It seems they could have done it for me if they were worried about some kind of fraud or something.

Now I have money more money in CITI Bank, I probably should be doing more transfers. I prefer having money sitting in my bank acct. in the states rather than here, because the interest really is terrible, I think the last interest that I got was about 7 yen on $10,000. Terrible huh.

Mom

Thought I should put this up for you mom, that is if you are reading this. You'll be glad to know that everyone was very surprised at how young you were. So do I look old or do you look young.

Hot

It has been terrible hot the last few days, with reports of several deaths due to the heat. Had it been up to me I think I would have canceled tennis practice for the day. But to help the situation I ended up buying popcycles for the girls. Hopefully it cooled them off a little bit and they got to rest just a bit longer. The last 2 days I have been at school for tennis and it has been so hot in the afternoon that once I get home there is no way that I want to go out again. But it looks like I will get out this evening I'm going to meet Rach, Abby, and Ryan for dinner. Should be nice as long as I don't melt.

Bikers

Here we are with our bikes, we were on a lonely road between Hananoyu onsen and Tokusa onsen.

Tokusa Onsen

One of the places we visited on our trip was Tokusa Onsen. I didn't know it but Tokusa means bull rush in English. I won't post the pictures that Shige and I took they are bordeline NSFW. Just a lot of skin. This was the public open air bath along the river, it was a little hot and there were a lot of horseflies buzzing around. I have at least 6 bites. The other public bath called Hirose was not so hot and indoors the waters were very different and we should have gone back to Hirose instead of this one later on in the afternoon.

Obon Touring

I have always wanted to get to one of these villages in Japan and I was able to do that this past weekend. Shige and I rode our motorcycles to Minami Aizu. Ouchijuku was the main attraction on the second day. We also found another small village that is lived in called Maezawa. For more pictures of the whole trip go to my Mac page Minami Aizu.

Back Home

This picture was taken last week at Kennedy we were lucky to get run into this spaceman just as we entered the visitors center. It is hard to believe that a week has already past. It is good to be home, but at the same time it would have been nice to stay on a little longer, although I don't know if my waistline could have taken it any longer. I hope that I will be able to lose the few ponds that I put on while I was away. I really need to, luckily it is much easier to do here in Japan than back in the states.

Tomorrow I'm off to Minami Aizu hopefully to relax and enjoy some beautiful scenery. The first night this is where we are staying.


I'm sure we will have a good time I just hope that I can stay awake.

James Dean

About 20 years ago I visited James Dean grave, and last night I got there again. For such an American icon his grave is very lonely surrounded with plastic flowers. When I come back to the states this winter I think that I will have to bring some nice flowers.

They were a little reticent about kneeling behind the grave, but I think it will become the best gift to take home.

Gators

Now they have always said that wherever there is water you will find an alligator in Florida, but this is the only time that I have seen one on the Warner Southern Campus. It was pretty cool.