FantabulASH?

....is the new word I learned from Bill. Go Figure
After 3 days of backpacking, cultural brainwashing, and getting lost in this culture of SuperNew Technology and Very old Traditions, I've almost lost myself. But We're back in Hikone and I have pictures to upload.



HAI!

That is the Osaka castle. This Castle was ginormous. It had an outer wall, huge, and an inner wall within the outer wall, even bigger, and then a massive wooden gate surrounding everything. Fantastic
Inside this castle were groups of Japanese schoolchildren singing japanese songs in very very high pitched noies. I walked over and started directed them. Eventually they stopped singing in a roar of giggles. They wanted a picture with the tall American. ME.

We visited the Museum of History in Osaka which was on the tenth floor of this amazing building.
I took the elevator up, looked at one exhibit, and took it back down again to go rent an English Audio translation headset. After exiting the elevater I told the Japanese curators that the exhibit was terrible. Not getting the joke, the lady was so upset that I didnt like the museum, wondering what was wrong, etc. It took her a second to look at my face and finally get the joke. All japanese people smile, but hers was especially big that time.

The headset was like a police billy club. If it wasn't spouting out english I probably would have destroyed a certain someone with it. The whole Museum was amazing, state of the art, and efficient. Pretty much like all of Japan. We're talkign so effiecent that construction workers were actually WORKING, I could seem doing it. Unheard of in E.L.

Inside the Castle walls, (which we went to after the paradise museum) there was a training house for Kendo and Judo. I'm scared of japanese children. If I couldn't always fall back on my height to step on them, they could beat me down with their furious skills. I saw a probably 90 pound Japanese boy throwing kids my size over his body and slamming them into a mat. A Japanese girl the size of a desktop computer was attacking a person 3 times her size with a bamboo sword. I've never seen such fury.

And speaking of Fury.

My lunch today, which consisted of shrimp potato cakes, Japanese Ramen, and rice crackers, was not fulfilling. We are going to Big Boy for some (hopefully) slim Jims, and lets be honest, who can pass up a slim jim when the opportunity awaits.

So as a passing thought*

Pretty much explains itself.