There and Back Again The continuing travels of me

Kin-yobi: Friday night I went to see ‘Wall-e’ at Aeon (a big shopping centre) in Ota. Marcus (from the US) and Lida (from Canada) came with me. We went to a little boutique grocery store and I introduced Marcus to Tim Tams. He seemed to appreciate them, Lida has spent some time in Australia before so she already knew about the chocolaty goodness.

‘Wall-e’ was about as good as an animated movie can be, if you haven’t seen it by now you should make the effort. It was actually in English with subtitles, odd for a kids movie since many of the littlest won’t be able to read, but perhaps they have a different print for daytime screenings? No that would be too expensive, fortunately there’s not a lot of talking so it probably works out ok.

 I’m not sure if it deserves a best picture rather than a best animated picture award, there’s currently a bit of a fight going on to have it nominated in the overall best picture category. Then again, it was pretty damn good.

Do-yobi: On Saturday I went to a park, can’t recall the name. There is an ancient burial mound (or barrow as they say in England) with a lot of recreated artifacts to see. It was pretty cool. The weather was clear but frosty, it’s getting so cold now that having the heater on one bar isn’t enough at night, I’ll have to start going 2 bars and damn the CO2. I had curry at the curry house in Kiryu for lunch, turned up just at the end of lunch, so I was still eating while they shut up the shop and started preparing for the dinner service, that was really uncomfortable so I rushed through and ate way too fast. Nice though.

Nichi-yobi: Sunday was of course the big ride. There were 12 riders, including an English guy named Jason who has been living in Japan for 13 years, he married a local 7 years ago. This was apparently a big turn out, sometimes it’s only 3 or 4, but the whole crew turned up for the Saitama-ken ride.

They were all keen to check out my bike and found the handle warmers very amusing, I don’t care it’s freezing! I hate riding cold and am more than willing to put up with their mockery. You can see in the gallery that there were ice crystals on the ground, not on the road, in the flower beds. It was a long ride and I was pretty tired by the end and I’ve never ridden in a group before, not since the licence test anyway.  But it was a good day out and I’ll join them again if the dates work out.

We went to a soba restaurant in Saitama-ken, soba is a noodle that can be served hot or cold. I think I was the only one to order hot, typical.

We went for a walk around ‘potato town’ after eating, I guess they sell vegetables, but I only saw a few. Pickles on a stick looked interesting but not enough to fork out cash. We did go into a knife shop where they make knives using the same traditional techniques as samurai swords. They fold the metal dozens of times and create a rippling pattern on the steel. I tried a knife on a piece of radish and it seriously felt like there was no resistance at all when you slice, though you can feel it when you chop though (which we were told was the incorrect technique). The knives were priced from $250 and up, they all remained in their display case when we left.

Getsu-yobi: Monday, back at work. This morning there was an assembly where students were given a bunch of certificates, I’m not sure what for but at various times I heard the names for English and Art, so I guess it’s for academic success of some description. The principal finished off with a speech about Barack Obama. I don’t really know what it was all about but he said koku-jin a lot (that’s the term for black, as in black people) and mentioned my name as well, plus the word ‘tomodachi’ was thrown in there somewhere which I know is friend. So I think it was probably ‘lets all just get along and be friends no matter what colour we are’. At least I hope so, anything else would be really weird.