06 April 2006

Hokusai's 36 views of Boob Mountain





By popular demand, here are all the pictures of Boob Mountain Park (otherwise known as Oppai-yama Kouen) I could google up. As you can see, Boob Mountain gets its name from the distinctive shape of the seats found there. The final picture shows the sculpture I described in my last post, which apparently was designed as a monument to the shopkeepers who lost their lives in the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and represents 'Love'...

Goog Niter to all!

PS to Mom: Did you know the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthqukae happened on your birthday?

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Out and about on the weekend: WTF?

I had two real WTF moments this weekend, one as I was getting off the train at Takarazuka and the other as I was sitting at 'Boob Mountain' waiting for a friend. (BTW, Has anyone been to 'Boob Mountain recently it seems to have acquired this bizarre modern art sculpture of a bunch of torsos stuck together that looks *majorly* phallic when viewed from above. It may be time for a name change!)

Anyway as I got out of Takarazuka station there was this crazy-looking obaa-chan coming out of the conveni with an equally elderly pug. She proceeded to put the pug into the basket of her granny-bike, but the weird part was the pug was wearing DIAPERS! I guess it probably saves on having to always be getting the pooper-scooper out, but still....Eeew!

And then, the next day at 'Boob Mountain' I was sitting and minding my own business when I saw something strange going on across the way. These two middle aged ladies had their arms wrapped around one of those wanna-be-gangster-looking guys in the bad white track-suits and they were kind of moving them up and down like they were regulating his aura or something... Then they bowed to him and thanked him and went up to someone else, talked to them for a bit, and started doing it again. By the time my friend finally got there they had done the spiritual healing or whatever it was to 3 or 4 people. Trés Bizarre.

Goog Morninger

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05 April 2006

Three Cheers for Fish Pants!


I had a lot of fun today considering that I had to go into work on my day off on top of having a cold. But the cold isn't really bad, and the work was just Chibiko training (a mommy-and-me style English class for 2-4 year olds) so it was Ok!

Chibiko training started at 1:20 at Tsukaguchi and the two guys that I was scheduled to train turned out to be just getting into Mah-Jongg, so we chatted a bit about that and exchanged e-mails. We might end up getting together for a game one of these days.

Then, afterwards I went to the Daiei and bought a replacement for my fish pants. Unless you're Erica that last sentence probably doesn't make any sense, so I'll explain: A few weeks ago I was having lunch with the kids at the kindergarten and I was sitting next to Shin-chan. He's a sweet little autistic boy, about 6 years old, very affectionate, but unfortunately not yet able to eat with a fork and knife. So the whole time I'm sitting next to him he's alternating between messily eating fish with his hands, and patting me on the leg. I was able to clean off all the big pieces of fish, but when I got home I realized the left leg of my sweat-pants still reeked of salmon. I put the pants in the wash, but when they came out they were still fishy. I washed them about 5 times before I finally gave up. He really must have ground the salmon in there pretty good 'cause they still stink so bad I can't wear them. So I was happy to find some replacement pants for only ¥990 at the Daiei next door to Tsukaguchi.

After that went I to Osaka to meet my friend Ayuko for dinner. We went to a little fancy izakaya and had yummy snacks, including small hash-browns that were served in a weird Jenga-ish stack and pomegranate sherbert for dessert. She invited her sister as well and we had fun just chatting about this and that. I was surprised to learn that her sister was majoring in Monogolian in college, and was going to go to Mongolia this August. I'm sooooooo jealous!!! But I guess I'll make it over to Mongolia some day...

Goog Niter!
and
Happy Birthdayer to Kate!

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02 April 2006

L'arc-en-ciel (No, not the band)


So we've been having some pretty freaky weather round about Sanda lately. It gets warm and then cold and then chilly and then freezing and then warm again, and two days ago it snowed! It must be global warming or something.
Anyway last Tuesday we had a hellacious thunder-storm that just came up out of the blue and disappeared just as quickly. It was bucketing down outside when I got on the train at Sanda, but when I got out at Takarazuka it was a beautiful spring day complete with a lovely rainbow. Luckily I had my camera-phone, so I snapped a pic, a lot of the passers-by were doing the same...

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