yes, it has. So much to say, so little time before I go out. I'm getting over a cold still which had my lying in agony for the better part of the week - started feeling it coming on Tuesday on my day off, left work early on Wednesday after visiting the kiddies at one of the local elementary schools, then stayed home Thursday. I even went to the doctor due to the insistance of everyone around me... must appease the masses after all. After a little interview and a thermometer in the armpit (their idea, not mine) they gave me a whole load of crap to ingest, which is good since Japanese medicine is pretty weak in general. Oh, and in case you're wondering, yes that's how they take your temperature here. At least it's not up the butt like they do with babies. I'm still sorta feeling it (the cold, not the thermometer), but really all I can do is rest up and not do anything that would really strain my body.
Yeah, so the mutant Japanese colds here rip through my feeble American immune system like Ginsu knives do toilet paper. They are the current bane of my existance. I guess I was sort of asking for it though- I mean, it is the season for it because of the climate change from Summer to Fall, and I did go out drinking pretty much all last weekend, waking up in rather curious environs on Sunday morning. I was almost vampiricly scuttling from shadow to shadow whilst squinting at the enblazening sun beating down on me from above as I slowly made my way from an overnight internet cafe to the nearest train home.
What's more, this Wednesday we got hit with some vicious torrential downpour, the likes of which you'll never find back home. Remember in Forrest Gump how he talks about "big 'ol fat rain" and "even rain that comes in sideways"? Yeah, that's here. It comes down, straight at you all horizontal-like, up from the ground in massive puddles that are ankle deep, all that. I took an umbrella, and even then my sleeves got soaked just walking from the car to the office, which is like 50 feet at most. It is actually typhoon season right now, but I haven't heard anything about typhoon effect coming through this time so it might've just been a really hardcore system coming through. There was actually a typhoon that went from Kyushu up to Korea and then back over Hokkaido a few weeks back that killed like 10 people or so, but it was off the coast here so we just got a bunch of rain and stuff. Most of the typhoons miss us since we're far enough north from what I hear, sort of like Ocean City back home. The other day I was riding with my boss though, and he pointed out that the rice paddies (yes, my town has many, many rice paddies) were all full of water, but they should be totally dry this time of year since it's harvest season.
Oh and speaking of natural disasters and the havoc they wreak on the whole of this tiny island country, there has been one earthquake that I've noticed since arriving two months ago. It lasted a few seconds, which was long enough for me to actually get up and look all pathetically powerless like my dog Spanky used to when a big thunderstorm would come through. That's definitely one thing I never got used to and probably won't for quite some time to come. There's a big one that's supposedly overdue for coming through this area, so who knows. I know I would freak the hell out if it came, that's for sure.
Yeah, Japan gets it all - typhoons, earthquakes, floods, volcanos... basically God hates Japan. It's sort of strange that a place like this that's 66% uninhabited due to mountainous terrain and has next to no natural resources (I forget the numbers, but Japan is something like 80% dependant upon imports for natural resources) is so overpopulated. Go figure. It's probably not a bad thing that the population is on the decline at the moment if you take all that into consideration.
Alrighty, well I have plenty of other stuff to talk about, but time's up so that's all I have to say about that. Until next time...
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