Entries this day: bridge-to-be-built-between-toshiba-and-muza brush-teeth-proudly cacauphany hot-foot-bath swan-lake watching-transcendence

bridge to be built between toshiba and muza

21:25 Saturday 24 December 2016 JST

brush teeth proudly

06:15 Saturday 24 December 2016 JST

Was at someone's house like family reunion and wanted to get away from it all

Girl was beautiful but couldn't skateboard, and we took the time to teach her to skateboard. She went from zero ability to basically being able to skate. I gave her a congratulations hug and kiss at the end and she thanked me for taking time to help her learn.

So I was all alone in the narrow bathroom (my shouldrs could touch / were compressed between the wall and the glasss door, and I was brushing my teeth and crying a little. Mama saw me and was like "yo man you gota brush your teeth proudly outside" and made a big show of how it was important to be proud, etc. I called her stupid stupid stupid and then said sorry, but then was like, "oh yeah well what's the difference between cleaning my teeth alone and you washing your face alone or trimming your moustace hair alone?" and she got all quiet and other people were like "what's up?" and I go "Mama wants me to brush my teeth outside, but I don't see her logic," to one guy and then we both said at the same time, "because there is none."

Then Lin was committing some changes to a repository at her work, and I was helping her with that

06:39

Oh, also I dreamt there were some guys playing frisbee out in a big field; I joined them and we threw for a while. Some of my ultimate friends came and asked if we were going to play ultimate, and I said I didn't know, but was just going to throw and be happy.

Going back to sleep for a bit.

09:11

Waking up now.

cacauphany

06:24 Saturday 24 December 2016 JST

There's a huge number of birds outside; I mostly hear crows, but there may be others. They sound a bit far away, but quite plentiful in numbers.. The sound seems to come in waves. Ohh Mikako was saying there are tons of geese or maybe she said swans, for which Niigata is famous. This sound must be coming from them.

10:10 Saturday 24 December 2016 JST

Nope; Mikako they were crows!

hot foot bath

We ate ramen then ice cream.

17:03 Saturday 24 December 2016 JST

Now we are headed to a hot foot bath, which I guess is 足温 泉足おんせん in Japanese. Oops it's 足湯うあしゆう

Good for me since I'm barefoot, and it's about 3C outside.

18:02 Saturday 24 December 2016 JST

mmmmm that was nice. Also nice to talk to some of the locals. I dropped the anger that usually comes up when people tell me how "good" my Japanese is, and just talked to them the best I could. They asked which country I was from, then about Trump, then how long we had been in Niigata. "Two days" gained us "welcome to Niigata" in reply.

swan lake

15:41 Saturday 24 December 2016 JST

We are at Swan Lake in Niigata, where swans apparently gather for the evenings in winter. There are none here now.

17:00 Saturday 24 December 2016 JST

Several came back starting around 4:30pm, right when the sky was getting dark.

But even cooler than seeing swans flying was seeing the window through which we could see them! 1.7m tall by 12 meters wide. One pane of glass. Thanks to the lady for actually getting out a tape measure to measure its length and height.

watching transcendence

21:27 Saturday 24 December 2016 JST

23:19 Saturday 24 December 2016 JST

Hmm; I didn't quite understand the end, but it was pretty good.