Stray Kibbles N' Bits

At Kappa Sushi, the kaiten sushi restaurant with the amazing  touch screen and bullet train order system, if you steal someone's order as it's zooming by--and there really is nothing other than one's own agility to stop anybody--can we call that a "train job"? Staying with that wild west theme we also wondered if somebody who pilfers an order of basashi (horse sashimi) as it zooms by would be a "horse thief". I think the answer to both is a resounding 'hell yes'.

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The lunchtime activities of elementary school kids is inexplicable here in Japan. Two weeks ago I visited Yahata JHS's companion elementary school for a string or horrible classes and got sucked out into the vacuum that is the lunch break there and pulled into orbit around a group of children toiling under a wood lattice canopy. They were, well, digging a pit and wanted my help. To what ends the pit was being dug I can't say. They were even making a sort of cement out of sand and mud to shore up the walls. I didn't want to get dirty so every time I was given a trowel I circled around and twirled it in my hands to give the appearance of working. Some keen-eyed munchkin noticed this and pulled me aside to do something else. My new task was collecting weeds to be used in the mud-sand daubing and I spent the rest of the lunch break doing that. Weeding. Weeding in the school's backlot.

When I returned with my bounty they were pouring water and sand into the pit to collapse it. My work...my work all for naught.

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Maia said it best about life here in Japan and I wholeheartedly agree: Days in this country are manic depressive, as perhaps you'd get the idea of after reading this blog at length. It's a place where the adventurous are finding new and beautiful experiences one day and then kicking in a car door over the next day's ridiculous monetary extortions. Relax in a solitary onsen overlooking an emerald vista of grass, flowers and rock, go to work the next day and have to pound your fist against the chalkboard to get anybody's attention in class.

It's a bit of a surprise that more medication isn't doled out to the masses here to deal with this affliction they call "life".

--Matt