Newt/gecko! イモリ・ヤモリ

-6-
As requested by my cousin I am supposed to throw up some Engrish examples. Exhibit A is a Women's clothing store.

I guess I spoke too soon. About the bike that is. I got a flat Thursday, this time in the front tire. I fixed it Friday. Yeesh... all my luck.


Exhibit B is .. well.. maybe a salon, I am not sure.

I went to a japanese tea ceremony thing at school Friday with a bunch of other exchange students a group of korean students visiting Shizuoka. It was pretty amusing. Most of us/nearly all of us really have no clue how to participate in tea ceremony. So, there were lots of mistakes and funny occurences but I still am not sure I could explain the details of tea ceremony right.

Basically, we all entered the place and after they shifted us around into a circle around the edge of the room, the passing of the kashi(candy.. kinda). Before you take your kashi off the tray and set it in front of you, you have to bow and say something like "I'll go ahead of you." Then you wait until everyone has done so and then you slowly unwrap it and eat it. When finished you carefully wrap up the remains(leaf/packaging etc) and make it pretty.

At this point the actually tea part begins. In a nutshell, you get tea along with bowing and picking up the cup with your right hand and placing it on your left hand. Then before you drink you make the part that is before you at the beginning switch to the opposite side with 3 turns. Then when you are done you do the same thing in reverse. Then more bowing etc.

We all got to try our hand at whisking the tea properly. . . my partner said he couldn't get it right but I got told that I did a really good job. . . not that I had any clue what I was doing. I just mimiced to the best of my ability.


In another story, I was looking through the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (english version from 1983) , something I have been doing pretty often, and found something kind of disturbing. In the Adultry「姦通罪」 section in reads, : "Until the 1947 revision of the Penal code, Japan's adultry laws punished women far more severely than men. Under the present code, however, adultery is no longer a criminal act." The fact of the matter is that I don't know if this still holds true but the entry goes on to explain the past laws and how the postwar constitution's part on equality prevents such as being a criminal act. Also, towards the end it mentions that the decision was also partially based in Japan's tolerance for husbands' extramarital affairs. Also, "Adultery is still considered grounds for divorce." Oh, random entry thing too, you are considered an adult in Japan once you become 20.

Another random thing is that the sigting of a small creature in the hallway on the second floor here. A not wholly unwelcome critter, and more importantly not a cockroach or a spider. We had a gecho/newt, and while the jury is still out as to what it is was... it is undeniably cute.

なんか言いたい事があったんだけどな～　　覚えていないけど。。。
ドカーン、自爆。　　結局覚えてない。。
ま、最近天気はそんな悪くないと思う。　ただ暑い。。　ま　そういう事と言いたいけど　今雨を降るのはまた始まった。。。