Four cute chicks. ^__^ These fit birds live in the Makuhari train station. I went out for a dinner party at my friend's place, and while waiting for a few people I noticed these young things. You can surely see a small red dot under the far right bird? I'm sitting at well over 6000 photos on this camera, and it's wearing out. It's too bad, because I love it (Sony V1). I'm thinking of getting the Sony W7, which is a step down in class, but newer and with higher resolution. It's also significantly smaller, which would be much more convenient. The V1's replacement (the V3) is much larger than the original.
This is the Chiba park. I got up at 5:30 this morning, so that I could leave my house by 6:30, so that I could miss my train, and have to take the 7:12. I arrived in Chiba at 8:20 or so, met another ALT, and took yet another train to the Chiba Immigration Center. We wanted to arrive a full hour before they open, after hearing 5 hour wait horror stories. But we arrived around 30 minutes early, which is when everyone arrives. So we had a healthy, but reasonable wait. We got out of there, got some lunch and stopped at Chiba park for a bit. I arrived home around 2pm or so, and exhausted slept until 9pm.
Blendy
This is the cheapest and best place to buy fruits and vegetables in town. Unfortunately it's quite far from my apartment.
This is a frog statue guarding a neighbor's house. Frogs are awesome.
My cell phone toy thing gets in the way of my pictures once and a while.
Have I mentioned how humid Japan can be in the summer? Today brought me to question my personal definition of "fog." When I mentally picture fog, I think of cold mornings over little Wisconsin lakes. But what if it's in sweltering heat? Hard to imagine if you've never experienced it I think. When I got home from my short photo shoot, my clothes were damp, and my hair was 'fresh out of the shower' wet. Uncomfortable to say the least.
This little trooper's taking a break from shrine pulling in Sawara, Japan. The astute observer may notice the women's uniforms say Shimonaka-chou (???), not Sawara-shi (???). I'd love to explain why to you, but I really don't know. My guess is it's the historical name for the town, like Edo and Tokyo. But again, that's just a guess.
These are some of the nice ladies I went to the beach with this weekend! We all headed south to Tateyama. We had a great time swimming and catching some sun. ^__^
It's Andrea on day 2 of the beach adventure! Today is "Marine Day," so many people came to the beach.
(>_<)
I went to Chiba city to pick up my new Visa this morning. The immigration office opens at 9:00, and I got there at around 9:10. Sounds pretty good right? Unfortunately, I was looking at a 4 to 5 hour wait! So, I gave up and decided to get there earlier the next day.
Wow! What a busy day. I arrived in Chiba around 7:50 this morning. I was around number 10 in line so counting the wait before they opened, I was only waiting around 2 hours. After I got my new visa, I had to go straight to work to do some paperwork. Of course I was supposed to get my visa yesterday, so I had to hurry to get back to work.
Crop circles? Not quite... It turns out you can draw on the ground with lit sparklers. Fireworks are really cheap in Japan, and pretty much everything is legal.
It's Trevor's going away party! We'll miss you!
I met the family today! It was great, and we all got along just fine. Naturally, none of them speak English, so it was an all Japanese night. Faring a father's questions on a first encounter can be hard enough in English, but I think I did okay.
This is one of the cutest pictures I've ever seen. Unfortunately, you can't see much of the baby bunny being held in this little one's hands. What you see here is a photo of a photo, the real thing looks much better.
Leftover stew! Veggies, ham, rice, and miso for flavor. Not bad, but it's no Jacks Supreme.