Thursday, February 09, 2006

hello again. sorry about the long break. 'ts been a bit uneventful really, so why write? well, i could just blab about mars but who REALLY cares? not too many i'd imagine, right? so here to the nisshin times: matt's birthday party was fun. here's a beautiful shot of ben and meg fighting for the last drops of a bottle of very cheap white, which was emptied by all of us in about 4 minutes. record?
also spotted recently: this interesting contraption! it's not an urinal, cos there was 2 urinals in that toilet. not a sink, as there also was a sink. not a toilet, as those were also present, and a bidet/bumshower would have a nozzle turned UPwards...i'm still puzzled, but after asking some equally puzzled japanese people and some savvy foreigners, the common conclusion was that this thing is there to catch vomit. that's right, folks! if an unfortunate soul was flying into the loo, this thing is the first thing that greets the dunny visitor. if one kneels down and bends over the wide rim (for easy and comfortable grip) can just let fly. it's wide enough to catch even the wildest expulsions and has a far-reaching tap to get rid of other traces. how utterly bizzaaarrre!!!

last weekend, 6 of us ventured into the highlands of gifu prefecture to a lovely little mountain town called gero, which is famous nationwide for its hot springs (jap. equivalent of schinznach). after a very scenic trainride, the bathing party (ben, meg [who's looking extremely English here], joe, andrea, willierose and I) got a wooden tag thing with a bell that we carried around town. it was some kind of voucher/tag with 3 stickers on it. each sticker allowed us to "swim" in one of the 20 onsen (hot spring place, usually a hotel) places in town. the first one we picked was also the nicest, outside, as well as inside. The water wasn't too hot, we could see snowy peaks, bamboo and forest, whilst reclining in natural hot mineral water (still). nice! ben was awed by the view and decided to sit on a rock, nude, and ponder. i had to take a picture, it was great. plus he always wanted to have a nude pic of himself on the net, so here goes!
after i had some yakiniku at a restaurant, which had the most interesting window i've seen in any food-serving place. these two bewdies were displayed right next to the ubiquitious plastic food. according to atsuko, this isn't unusual at all, just very traditional. she didn't even bat an eyelid!! we certainly did, though.. *BAT!!* *BAT!!!!*
onsen are nice/weird. everybody's naked. you're not allowed to wear swimmers. these days they're pretty much all divided into 2sex places, but you can still find the old combined one. my favourite was the public one...as you walked across the main bridge you could see a small natural pool inside the riverbank, which must have also been a hotspring, as several old japanese guys were strutting their stuff, VERY publicly. interesting! all in all, a fun day!
on sat it's off to tokyo, mk2. Yay!!!!

gg; 10:10 pm