One more for the bonfire

Mah camrah ees workan agen \o/

First up,

Requests

First one from my father who asked for a video of the house. Kinda became a tour of the whole place. It took a bit, so I had to make two.

Second from my good English Internet friend, Lol. Hi Lol! He asked for pictures of the nearest town, because I said I lived "very countryside", however, Izumo City is like, a city, but with a lot of ricefields in between every house.

Plus, the houses are old, and half of the people living here are farmers, but it's no more than 30 minutes biking until the nearest gigantic shopping mall.
So instead, a picture of how secluded my house is. This one hasn't had its quality bisected, so you can see it in full detail.
See the white "roof" thing right in the middle? That's the clinic.

Cut me some cake

This post is dedicated to the.. uh, son of the son of my grandmother, and his friend. Keita and Ryouta. Orange and blue, respectively.
They're 21-years old each, same as you Alek (My older brother), and University students in Tokyo. They came and stayed in the guest room you saw in the video above for a day, and we became good friends.


We went to Izumo City's Taisha shrine together, took some pictures, and ate some soba (5 bowls!)

The statue in the background is Susa-no-o if I remember correctly. It made a pretty good "Promotions!" picture. Don't worry if you don't get what the hell I'm talking about. It's better if you don't.


We really liked to mess around with language while together, for example, they taught me "Kanben shitekure", which means "Cut me some slack". For some reason, it became "Cut me some cake", which made for some good random laughs.

Maybe it was the heat that day, it hit 30 if I remember correctly. This was about 3 weeks ago though, we've entered the rainy season now, so it'll be a month or two before some proper sun.

Yankees

Yankee means delinquent, and I'll do a quick explanation of different types of yankees I know.

Casual yankee: Wears shirt outside pants, blazer unbuttoned. I sometimes do this because I'm hot. (<-- Interpret whatever way you want) They're usually not 'dangerous', but just do this because their friends around them are doing it. One or two in Taisha.

Misunderstood yankee: Tall, dark, skinhead boys who simply like sports or something, and look naturally yankee. They also rarely shave, which makes them look much older. Depending on who they're with when you meet them, they may be slightly hostile. There're a few of these in Taisha, but they don't say much.

Wannabe yankee: Colored hair, really gay shoes, and lives by the rule of cool. These guys pose no threat whatsoever though, because they always hang out in corners of the school, just to look cool. I mean, wtf. l2live. There're a few in Taisha, except coloring your hair is against the rules.

Baddie yankee: The dangerous ones. These guys smash bikes with bats, skip school and hit teachers. They come in many shapes and sizes, they don't have to have their hair colored or anything. None of these in Taisha, luckily.

Lollipop yankee: This one I heard from Nyuu.
Boys who walk around with a lollipop in their mouth all the time, to look cute/cool. WTF.
I'm not sure what to think of this, but she said it's supposed to be appealing to girls, and make them look like they're smoking at the same time.
Doing it wrong, idiots, sucking on a lollipop is appealing to the wrong sex here.

Oh, and just the other day, I was stopped by police on the way home on my bike. They were apparently doing a patrol, because there's been a lot of bicycle incidents lately. I did look pretty suspicious, with iPod in my ears, unbuttoned shirt, silver necklace and a soda in my hand, though.

The triumvirate of cuteness

I only managed to get two of them on this picture.

Can you see what's up with this picture? Highlight below to find out.
In my school, there are three girls who look EXACTLY the same; they're triplets. Saki, Risa and Shiho. I didn't know until recently, when one of them walked up to me and asked "Do you know what my name is?" "Shiho" "Close!" "!?", was really cool when they all gathered together, it's soooo hard to tell them apart.

I managed to catch two of them and some of their friends on the hallway, and took a picture. They're really cute and nice. Today, I met another one of them, who also asked me her name. "Risa." "OMG YES", wuahaha, I've found that Shiho has two tiny moles on her right chin, Risa has one, and Saki has none.
Left Risa in complete bewilderment after that, as practically no one has ever been able to tell them apart.
Oh, and on the picture, if I remember right.. Left to right: Hiromi (back), Risa, Natsumi, me, Saki.
Wah, they're so funny, too. I need to go to the 3rd floor more often.

Flying things go KAMIKAZEEE

Since it's "tsuyu" right now, the rainy season, it's really, really humid. This means a LOT OF BUGS. Especially HUGE swarms of TINY flies, that fly around RIGHT in high-school-student-on-bike head-height. And if you walk into one of their hovering battalions, they'll FOLLOW you, flying into your ears, mouth, nose, eyes, clothes, and who knows where, until you leg it.

Never bike with your mouth open.

Ignorance is bliss, knowledge is power

Pick one...

Remember Sayaka-chan? The girl with the black-and-white hairband. So yeah, she's in the dance club, suits her, loads of cute girls in the dance club.

I was sitting in the classroom after school some time last week, when a girl from my class, Yuki, who's also in the dance club came in to get something, in her club uniform. I asked if she knew Sayaka-chan, and she was immediately like "You like her??", my body language kind of gave it away even though I didn't utter a word.

Next day, on the train, I greet Mao and Yuka as I always do (Left to right respectively, Yuka was the girl from the ""Embarrassment" is not a word where I come from" story in Lifeslices.). Yuka's in the dance club (Can you tell?), and she was giving me some weird eyes.
"Uh, did Yuki tell you about--"
"Yeah, she did, Sayaka-chan's cute, right?"
"Ahehehe.. How many are you in the dance club again?"
"50ish."
"Oh, man."

Skip to last Friday, after school. School ended early, but I was going somewhere, so I was still hanging around. Sitting in the classroom, listening to my iPod, I hear someone coming.
5-6 of the dance club girls go walking by the classroom in a little group. I know most of them well, so I wave to them, Yuki was in the front.
I could see there was somebody trying to hide behind her back, and what's that.. a .. black and white hairband...
The other girls were pushing her forwards, going "Say hi, say hi!", but she was holding on to her wall with an iron grip. They disappeared before I managed to catch what the hell was actually going on, but I can't quite decipher if that was a good or bad sign..

I haven't seen her since then, except for a show that the dance club did for the school. They were going to a competition, and to score some points, I told them that they'd definitely win with that stuff. They did! Bonus points.

See, this is called a "ca-me-ra".
Look at that picture. "Learn how to use a computer". This is making me nerdrage. It's "Useful expressions" for some English homework about what you're going to do in the summer/fall/winter vacation.

I admit I know that at least half of my classmates have never been on the Internet before, but wagh, this place might be more countryside than what I've been thinking.

Ninja bugs
This mother****er is a giant wood spider. Menacing, right? Yeah, these things are everywhere. And they're BIIIG.

Okay, last.. Sunday, was it. Going up to my room to sleeep. I didn't make my bed that morning, couldn't be arsed, so the sheets were lying a bit over the edge, onto the floor.

As I lift the sheets, a 10ish centimeter long, black and red-legged centipede is lying right there, on the floor, was probably getting all cozy under my sheets. If you scroll down, there's a picture in Addition of the exact same type of centipede.

So, my "LEG IT" instincts kicked in at first, but I saw that it wasn't really moving, so I carefully picked it up with two pencils, and dropped it into a plastic bag. Still wasn't moving a lot by then. So, picked up a bug spray, and sprayed its face in, and closed the bag. THEN it started moving, a lot. Went still a bit after though. Went downstairs to flush it out in the toilet.
Area clear.

I didn't sleep a lot that night though, if you've watched the house tour video, then it -shouldn't- be easy for anything to get in to my room. It's the second floor, gosh.. Friggin' things.

Next morning, going to school. Remember to shake my shoes upside-down well, in case of any more crazy insects. Get out my bike, jump on, s- hold on, something pricked my left palm. I look at it, and there's a tiny red mark that's getting itchy. "Wtf? A bee or something? Better get something from my dad on this, it could be bad.."

It's been a week now, and the mark's still there. It's not a mosquito, because I felt some -thing- in my hand before it bit/stung me. There was some spiderweb on my bike's handle I noticed, and those giant wood spiders are everywhere. It was also pretty numb and red for a while, but it didn't get swollen. Checked Wikipedia:

"The venom of the golden silk orb-weaver is potent, but not lethal to humans. Its venom is a neurotoxin similar to that of the black widow spider; however, its venom is not nearly as powerful. Its bite causes local pain, redness, and blisters, but these symptoms usually disappear within a day (though the bite mark may leave a scar)."

****ing A! I was lucky! Well, if it was that spider. Could have been a beetle or something too, but do they have poison like this?

Skip more! Last Friday, returning home late, and there's one more damn centipede in the shoe area. "Eat this!" *steps on head*, the thing then proceeds to spasm violently all over the place, which shocked me quite a bit. Kicked it outside and closed the door.

Should have brought the "1-second centipede killer" spray and tested it.

Mr. Spokesman

Last week, we had an assignment to pick a topic about some thing we liked, and talk about it, while showing illustrations. The idea was that we kind of had to "sell it", as Anna put it.

2 minutes, and it was in Japanese. Uwah. I kind of forgot about it until the day before deadline, but managed to get some good stuff together about digital cameras. Anna helped me translate it, and it turned out quite well.

Quick summary: First off, why I picked this topic. "As an exchange student, documenting my experiences is an important thing, especially if I want to show it to others. And there's no easier way than using a digital camera."
Then, I put the camera itself on the projector so it was shown on a large screen in front of my class. I pointed to its various buttons and such, explaining what was what.

Then, the main part. I took out the 3x2cm 3GB memory card, and put it on the projector. "This thing can hold more than 700 pieces of A3-size high quality pictures." Where to buy, its weight, price, etc. Then, compared it to an "instant/one time camera" with 50ish A5 pictures, which costs about half of a memory card.

Went really well, because I actually managed to teach people something from "the outer world". Mostly people just talked about bands, scissors, cup ramen or football, but this new, smart technological device seemed very interesting to these countryside Japanese.

Anyway, now I've been invited by the school to go to a "speech contest" somewhere outside the city, next week. And it's in English, wahahaa. Gotta beat 'em all.

Daddy longlegs

Sports test today for the 2nd year students. Yesterday were 3rd years. First was flexibility, then length jump, squeezing power, feet maneuverability, and then endurance.

For the flexibility test, you had to sit against a wall, and push a box as far as you could, in front of you. I have really long arms, so mine got pretty far, although probably wasn't the best.

Second, length jump. THIS was fun. The boys of my class and I were kind of playing around before the actual test, because we had to wait for the other class to finish. I showed off by jump up and down, and they were quite surprised at how high I went.
Then, the real thing. Maruta, 2m 40cm. Yuuji, 2m 55cm. Yomota, 2m 25cm.
Me, 2m 73cm.

I am officially the best jumper in the SCHOOL!

Oh yeah! Moving on.
Squeezing test, had to squeeze some weird device. Normal is 35-40, 40-45 is good, and 45+ is pretty nasty. I have thin fingers, so mine only went to 42.6, while Yuuji's went all the way up to 49! He has bigass hands.

Then, feet maneuverability. Oh man, this was bad. You had to sidestep across some lines as fast as you could, for 20 seconds or so. First off, I didn't catch that I was supposed to count my partner (Yuusuke)'s steps, and when it was my turn, I was waaay behind. These poles may be big and strong, but they're impossible to coordinate. This is why I suck at football.

Then, endurance. As we entered the main gym hall, there were a long line of male students running back and forth from one end of the hall, to the other, which is like ... 20ish meters, to some bell-like tune playing. Then, I noticed the counting. "Seventy-one." .... "Seventy-two." "Oh, boy, this is gonna be a bother."

Most died off at 90, then the last 5-10 (Were about 60 to begin with) did their best to get past 100. The last two got past 120, then one died off at 140, while the final guy, Watanabe, a member of the baseball club, got to 151. That is fuggen impressive.

The tune which played in the background got increasingly faster, too, and if you didn't catch up enough, you're out. Well, you can quit any time you want, too.

So, our class's turn. "Yuusuke, let's go to 200!!" "Woah, you really set high goals, man." "That's better, because if you don't reach it, you won't be disappointed!"

Started off slowly, I was taking it easy, just biding my time until we hit the 50 mark. The tune got faster, and I always run at the same pace, so I was getting pretty tired trying to catch up. I'd taken off my glasses, and wasn't paying any attention to my surroundings, just focusing on running. I remembered there was the 50m sprint after this, so it'd be a good idea to save -some- power. I stopped around 110, after a classmate of mine did too. When I looked around, it was a battle between four football club members, two from my class, two from the other.

The others crashed at 120, but my partner, Yuusuke, managed to get to 129 alone. Afterwards, however, he discovered that his left foot's skin had been ripped off quite a bit, and his shoe was soaked in blood. It was nasty, was at least a centimeter of flesh under the dangling skin.

Then the girls went, where most stopped at 70, while the last five went up to 90, and one from my class got to 95.

Then, the sprint.. "Oh hey, it's raining, so we're saving sprint and volleball toss for next week." "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF"