Just Clownin' Around

It's something new everyday.

I'm sitting in the kitchen and I hear accordion music coming from the window. Camera in hand, I pull back the curtain and...

Three clowns? Yep. Apparently they were doing some sort of advertising. Fine by me, it was a nice afternoon diversion and a good source of amusement. Just another bit of news to send home. And speaking of news, I have a bit of local American news to share. My super awesome, extremely talented sister, Christina, was in the local newspaper today, or yesterday, depending on what country you're in I guess. She is becoming quite the volleyball star. Read here about her team and see her picture at the bottom of the article. She is #9, and, as my dad said, the one with perfect form, caught at the top of her vertical leap, toes pointed, hands together, fingers forward, and a huge smile on her face as she blocked the ball and shoved it back into the snotty faces of her opposing team. Ok, I added the snotty faces part. Pretty sweet, huh?

So, I went to a Denny's. Yeah, I know, that's what I said too, "Denny's?" But the thing is, you don't understand how good the food is here. Just the presentation is amazing. The Japanese apparently take great pride in their food. You know how when you go to a restaurant and choose a picture off the menu that looks absolutely divine and then you get it and it looks absolutely dismal? Not here. They get the pictures for American menus from Japanese dinner tables. EXCEPT the portions are tiny. None the less, I ordered caramel honey pancakes, which I thought looked like they had whippedcream or something on top. Fine, not a big fan of all that but the pancakes sounded yummy. So I get them... and there is ice cream on my pancakes. And OMG was it delicious. The best breakfast I've had since I've been here. I also got an egg on the side, and get this, it was actually egg. I know, not quite on par with traditional Denny's standards. Oh, and the orange juice, I was practically eating it because it was so fresh and so pulpy. Yum.

Doesn't get any better than this, oh, but it did. Later, I went to a kaitenzushi where sushi comes around on a rotating conveyor belt. I went to one in Sendai too. The sushi is SO good and only about 100 to 200 yen a plate. You can just grab from the conveyor belt or order something special if you want. I had miso soup with clams, grabbed 2 plates of sushi, and ordered another one with crab and some kind of sweet white sauce drizzled over it. I also had a fruit and yogurt dessert to finish. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this Japanese thing. The two most important phrases I know are "arigato gozaimasu" (thank you very much) and "sumimasen" (excuse me). These coupled with pointing and hand gestures can get you what ever you need.

Well, I'm off to have more adventures, sayonara!


Spider Terror Threat Level: Blue (guarded)