The Joys of Line Drying and Rain

I put some towels out on Saturday. It is Wednesday, and they MIGHT finally dry out today. Clothes that have been drying since yesterday are still wet. It hasn't rained in two days. It's just so darn humid that the clothes can't let go of moisture. Oh well, I'll just dream of dryers for the next two months.

Late weekend

Andrea had to work this past Saturday, so our weekend didn't start until Sunday. We didn't do much, but Monday we decide to go back out to Gotemba and look for shoes for the mountain climbing ahead. I manage to spend $40 more on a pair of boot-shoes than on any pair of shoes in my history. Granted they were from Timberland, and they are very good, well made shoes, but I still had a personal struggle that delayed me buying shoes for about an hour. Andrea got a pair of snowboard-ish shoes. She needed something with a high ankle on it, as she rolled her ankle the last time we up and down. We also decided to pick up some imported corn chips for the dinner with the other Fuji-area JETs. Hopefully we will have some fun with everybody before they move back to their respective countries.

What rainy season?

There is rain in the forecast, every day, for 9 days. I suppose that's the definition of it, and I don't mind walking without the sun baking in fantastic tshirt lines on my skin, but It's still a little annoying. I enjoy dry clothes, this is making it hard. Oh well.

Andrea has to work this weekend AGAIN, but she gets monday off, so it is not a much of a problem. Next weekend Lyndsi is coming to hang out with us one last time, and to go to a festival in Hiratsuka with us. The weekend after that we have a dinner party at John's with some of the Fuji-area JETs before a lot of them go back, something like 80% of this prefecture are leaving. Then comes Katherine and my 2nd trip up Mt. Fuji. The next week my family arrives and the week after that will be my 3rd time up the mountain. Yeah I'm doing it twice with a two week break. Am I crazy?

We'll have 3 weeks then until one or both of us come home. Of course in that time we have 2 dinners we have to go to, one for the school and one for the prefecture. Andrea's new co-worker will be moving in (though I don't know how that will work, it seems that he and his wife are bringing their dog and I know our apartment doesn't allow pets. I don't know if her apartment allows them, but even then, the quarantine rules are pretty harsh if I remember correctly) so we'll have to assist them with getting settled I'm sure, even if they don't live in this apartment building.

A webmaster-like note, I'm going to be changing the set up of my posts. The idea is to just have the first paragraph shown, and then have a link to the entire post. That way longer posts won't distract from the other posts on the page. Makes it easier to avoid things if you're looking for something specific. It should be obvious once it happens, hopefully it won't be too confusing.

Didn't feel a thing

Yes there was a large earthquake today. I was no where near it, about 400 miles away. Andrea was in Hiratsuka with Katherine today, which was closer to the earthquake, but still too far to cause any real shaking. This was the largest earthquake in Japan since we've been here, a medium 6 on the Japanese intensity scale. 7 is the highest, and would be near catastophic. Here's a map of the quake .

I'm officially a loser

I just bought 2 tshirts with Metal Gear Solid 4 artwork (if you can really call it art) at Uniqlo (sort of like the gap) tonight. They were released to go along with the launch of the game. I guess all that matters is that I like them. Maybe I'll post some pictures tomorrow. Tonight is for sleeping.

Where in the world is Joe?

I know, I know. I complain about people not realy reading this, then I disappear for 3 weeks. I'm sorry. I've been busy (I know, old excuse) working on getting things set up for my family/Katherine to come here. In addition to that, I've felt like crap this week. Sort of similar to coming down with the flu, with a little sore throat tossed in for fun. I'll post a few times this weekend, to catch up on my insanity.

In response to a post a few weeks ago, I mentioned that we wouldn't be seeing Mt. Fuji for a while. People got confused and thought I was moving or going on a long trip. In reality, I'm doing nothing exciting. It's becoming rainy season here. It's partly cloudy 90% of the time, and mostly cloudy 50% of that. Rarely we'll have a clear day, maybe once every other week. This being the case, Fuji will be covered by clouds from now until August. And that's the rest of the story.

Some people may also be confused about my short post about Fuji Safari Park (FSP) back in May. Well here is the explaination. FSP is almost like a zoo, except its a little more open so the animals can run around. You can take a bus and go on a "safari" through the zoo feeding and petting the animals along the way. More importantly, you get to hold baby cats. Tigers, lions, etc. This makes for adorable pictures. Unfortunately, FSP was ending holding baby cats for the season, as they were getting too large and becoming potentially dangerous. Last day was May 31st if I remember correctly. Because of all that, we decided to go the last week of May to try and get in on the baby holding action. We grabbed info off their website which said they had buses running ever 50 minutes from Mishima and from Gotemba. Yeah, nothing in Fuji, go figure.

We got to Mishima at 945, the bus left at 930. No problem right? We'll just take the next one in 50 minutes. No luck, the only other bus came at 1230. I wasn't going to wait 3 hours for the next bus. We decide to ride the train to Gotemba, which is about 30 minutes from Mishima. We missed the first train from Numazu, so we had to wait 15 minutes for the second one. When we got to Gotemba, guess what? Bus left 4 minutes before we got there. The next bus was coming at 230. Did I mention that they stop letting you hold the babies at 1230? I was immedietly angry that they website said they run buses all the time when they only run them twice at each station. Obviously we missed our opportunity to go. We decided to go to outlet mall again and wander around. Andrea bought some clothes. I stayed angry.

Oh well, maybe another time.