The other day, Neil and myself went to Diamond City (I’ll post about that later), but while we were there Neil found another manhole to take a photo of. As he was taking it, I noticed this unassuming bicycle.
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Archive for June, 2007
To make up for the photo of the squished frog, here’s a photo of three cats. This was taken outside my apartment, so you can also see a little piece of the rice field (really getting big now).
As you may have read at Neils Blog, his laptop is currently incapacitated. We took it apart to clean out the dust as it had been overheating, and either during that, or by coincidence it wouldn’t turn on again. I think it’s simply a rather unfortunate coincidence, because we really didn’t touch anything that could cause the problem, and it’s showing some odd behaviour when plugged into a power supply (no battery charging lights) that makes me think it’s the power supply.
Anyway, we couldn’t fix it, so Neil got in contact with an english speaking computer repair shop in Osaka, and found out he had to send his laptop off to them to get it fixed. So on Tuesday we went to the post office, and with the aid of a Japanese phrase book he bought a box, and sent his laptop off to Felix in Osaka.
On the way home, we came across the biggest frog we’ve seen since we got to Japan. Unfortunately, unlike the frogs outside our apartment it was no longer hopping around. I took a photo, because really, it was big. But don’t click it unless you don’t mind run over frogs. You’ve been warned. Click here to see it.
Last night (Saturday) it was decided that we should go to a steakhouse for dinner. Tristan had been to a really nice steakhouse in Kobe, but he went for lunch and it was already expensive then, so we couldn’t guarantee that dinner wouldn’t be ridiculously priced. Instead of Kobe, we headed into Osaka to go to the Outback Steakhouse.
We picked up Neil on the way (he was at work in Takarazuka), and after a short 35 minute rapid train ride we were in Umeda. When we got to the Outback though, our dreams were almost crushed when we were told that there was a one hour wait. The staff gave us a pager to hold until there was a table available. We were all hungry, Neil and Tristan wanted to go to a bar and wait, Luke didn’t want to leave the immediate vincinity because the pager has a limited range, I was leaning towards Luke’s logic, and I have no idea what Bec wanted to do.
After a quick discussion Neil and Tristan bought a beer from the convenience store that was nearby, and we sat outside the Outback waiting for our pager to go off. It can’t have been much more than twenty minutes.
So we went in, and ordered a Blooming Onion. This was as near as I can tell, a giant onion spread open like a flower, then covered in batter, and deep fried with dipping sauce in the middle. It was great.
Then we ordered our mains. Tristan, Luke and Bec all ordered various forms of steak, while Neil and I opted for the Chicken and Ribs. While we waited I had some of the best orange juice I’ve had since coming to Japan. Just thought that was worth a mention.
Eventually our food came, on massive plates. My meal was a big… thing I guess, of ribs. With two chicken breasts on top of it, all covered in a nice sauce. Then there was some chips, a small container of corn salad, and a small container of coleslaw. It was a struggle, but I got through it. There was certainly no room for dessert.
After dinner we caught a train home and got in around 10.30 I think. I cant remember, I was pretty tired so I almost went straight to bed. Too many early mornings, Saturdays I start at 10 and its an absolute killer compared to my normal 1.20 start. All up the meal and travel to and from Osaka came to just over 5000 yen, so thats around $55NZD.
Last Friday, Neil and myself had the first half of Nova kids training. Instead of having the training at a branch we knew, we had to go all the way to Tsukaguchi, which neither of us had been to before
 At the special request of my mother, here are pictures of a Japanese School. You will notice that it is much like a New Zealand school, in so much as it has buildings, with what are potentially classrooms inside them. The buildings also have what look similar to windows along the walls.
I’m pretty sure this is a primary school, the playground (and pool apparently) is at the opposite end of the grounds to where I took these photos.
I was walking home the other night the exact same way I’ve walked since I came to Japan, out of the railway station, past Konami, across the street, and past the car park. Past the school, across the road, and into our building. But this night, I noticed something that I had never noticed before. There is a drinks vending machine outside the car park.
On Wednesday I decided to go back to Flower Town and have a look around the museum that is there. (I also wanted to take a few photos I couldn’t take last time because it looked dodgy if a 22 year old guy takes photos of 6 year old girls playing) However, Wednesday was so hot, that I decided to take the train instead of walking.
No comment necessary.
I’ve just put the finishing touches on a photo gallery for this site. Basically you can view all the images that I’ve uploaded ordered by the months that I uploaded them (newest images first).
As of right now theres only images that I’ve actually used in posts (and some for upcoming posts, ooooh sneak preview), but next time I offload images from my camera I’ll dump them in the newest directory.
No captions, so you have to just imagine. If you want to know what something is just email me and I can tell you. They’re basically chronological though, so you should be able to use that with the posts to work out where they were taken.
