Post by curulambe on Sept 15, 2007 13:03:39 GMT -5
Hail &c!
So I've recently been booted off the ship for being certifiably crazy. But of course we all knew this; I even told them this when I got to the ship. It just took them nearly a year to believe me.
The upshot of this is that I should be around more. I'm trying to set up a trip home (i.e. Cincinnati; after coming across the whole damn world I think I can make it another 70 miles north) sometime November-ish. I should be out of the Navy by April.
And now: things you all might actually care about. By which I mean porn.
Japan is odd about porn. On the one hand, they censor it. All of it, theoretically. Except a) they're really spotty about enforcement thereof, and b) they only censor pubic hair. The naughty bits I don't think they could actually care less about.
On the other hand, they're more casual about its presence than Americans. It's commonly available at convenience stores; at one near my house, it's right next to the beer, which I find highly amusing. And one day I came home to find about fifty pages of an H-manga scattered all over my doorstep.
And now a few random tidbits:
You can pay your utility bills, and sometimes your rent, at any convenience store. Except for your water bill which you have to pay on the 8th floor of city hall.
Akihabara is not so much the electronics capital of the world as it is Nerd Mecca. Seriously. You all have a duty to make a pilgrimage there. Four by four blocks of raw, unadulterated nerdage of all types, including - depending on where in the warren of back alleys and underground (sometimes literally) malls that makes up most of the district you go - a black market in graphics cards, a Gundam cafe, a costume store specializing in Japanese school and German military (specifically SS) uniforms, and a massage parlor where all the girls wear plug suits. Not to mention more anime, manga, doujinshi, and novels than you can shake a bundle of sticks at.
Speaking of nerdage, the manga libraries are quite nice and are actually more a cross between an Internet cafe, a library, and an English gentleman's club (the kind where men in tuxes serve wine, not the kind where women stand on stage and do inexplicable things with floor-to-ceiling metal bars).
Everything is more expensive. Except food.
I am now totally ruined for American mass transit. I may be ruined for travel in America in general. I don't have a car, and I went to Kyoto on a whim last weekend. This is roughly comparable to being carless in New York City and deciding, on Saturday morning, that you're going to Washington DC for the weekend.
...and following on from that, the bullet trains resemble nothing so much as airliners that travel along the ground. Except with better service, and more stops.
It's fall, and that means typhoon season. We've had at least two already; we may have had others while I was underway. One of them I was here for; it was fairly unimpressive as tropical cyclones go, though it made landfall reasonably far away so my perception is skewed. And it did put a branch through my roof, but that was a freak occurance; damage in my area was very light.
One of the most frustrating things for me is being illiterate. I've been over here for almost a year now and still I can't read very well - maybe at first grade level. I'm always sounding out the kana, and I know very few kanji. It's particularly aggravating because I like to read so much, and I'm surrounded by awesome things to read that I can't understand.
Convenience stores are just that: ridiculously convenient. I walk past... let's see. Six, I think. Yeah. Six convenience stores on my way in to work every morning - and it's only about a fifteen-minute walk. It's also not counting the various shopfronts that I don't count as convenience stores because they only sell food, although that's the main thing convenience stores provide.
As a direct result of this, I seem to be constitutionally incapable of making that walk without buying food - but because I walk to work before they restock for the day, usually all they have is what's left after twenty-two hours of Japanese people buying what they like to eat. Meaning I have developed a fondness for chicken salad onigiri.
That's all I can think of at the moment. I'll try to be around more.
So I've recently been booted off the ship for being certifiably crazy. But of course we all knew this; I even told them this when I got to the ship. It just took them nearly a year to believe me.
The upshot of this is that I should be around more. I'm trying to set up a trip home (i.e. Cincinnati; after coming across the whole damn world I think I can make it another 70 miles north) sometime November-ish. I should be out of the Navy by April.
And now: things you all might actually care about. By which I mean porn.
Japan is odd about porn. On the one hand, they censor it. All of it, theoretically. Except a) they're really spotty about enforcement thereof, and b) they only censor pubic hair. The naughty bits I don't think they could actually care less about.
On the other hand, they're more casual about its presence than Americans. It's commonly available at convenience stores; at one near my house, it's right next to the beer, which I find highly amusing. And one day I came home to find about fifty pages of an H-manga scattered all over my doorstep.
And now a few random tidbits:
You can pay your utility bills, and sometimes your rent, at any convenience store. Except for your water bill which you have to pay on the 8th floor of city hall.
Akihabara is not so much the electronics capital of the world as it is Nerd Mecca. Seriously. You all have a duty to make a pilgrimage there. Four by four blocks of raw, unadulterated nerdage of all types, including - depending on where in the warren of back alleys and underground (sometimes literally) malls that makes up most of the district you go - a black market in graphics cards, a Gundam cafe, a costume store specializing in Japanese school and German military (specifically SS) uniforms, and a massage parlor where all the girls wear plug suits. Not to mention more anime, manga, doujinshi, and novels than you can shake a bundle of sticks at.
Speaking of nerdage, the manga libraries are quite nice and are actually more a cross between an Internet cafe, a library, and an English gentleman's club (the kind where men in tuxes serve wine, not the kind where women stand on stage and do inexplicable things with floor-to-ceiling metal bars).
Everything is more expensive. Except food.
I am now totally ruined for American mass transit. I may be ruined for travel in America in general. I don't have a car, and I went to Kyoto on a whim last weekend. This is roughly comparable to being carless in New York City and deciding, on Saturday morning, that you're going to Washington DC for the weekend.
...and following on from that, the bullet trains resemble nothing so much as airliners that travel along the ground. Except with better service, and more stops.
It's fall, and that means typhoon season. We've had at least two already; we may have had others while I was underway. One of them I was here for; it was fairly unimpressive as tropical cyclones go, though it made landfall reasonably far away so my perception is skewed. And it did put a branch through my roof, but that was a freak occurance; damage in my area was very light.
One of the most frustrating things for me is being illiterate. I've been over here for almost a year now and still I can't read very well - maybe at first grade level. I'm always sounding out the kana, and I know very few kanji. It's particularly aggravating because I like to read so much, and I'm surrounded by awesome things to read that I can't understand.
Convenience stores are just that: ridiculously convenient. I walk past... let's see. Six, I think. Yeah. Six convenience stores on my way in to work every morning - and it's only about a fifteen-minute walk. It's also not counting the various shopfronts that I don't count as convenience stores because they only sell food, although that's the main thing convenience stores provide.
As a direct result of this, I seem to be constitutionally incapable of making that walk without buying food - but because I walk to work before they restock for the day, usually all they have is what's left after twenty-two hours of Japanese people buying what they like to eat. Meaning I have developed a fondness for chicken salad onigiri.
That's all I can think of at the moment. I'll try to be around more.