Typhoon time

The title of this post is "Typhoon time" because it is almost 1 am in the morning and I have class tomorrow morning. But the wind is so loud, and the windows are shaking so much, and the walls are creaking so badly that there is no way I am going to be able to sleep. Thus a late night blog... Lucky I can just come home and sleep tomorrow. As long as I fall asleep before the sun goes down, I won't be too scared of the Typhoon. That is, if we can see sun tomorrow...

Here is a scene from me walking back to the train station on a Friday afternoon. This was...Friday September 18th. I don't really understand rice cultivation, but apparently you gotta do some burnin' sometimes. Walking home with little fires next to you, and no people, is a little strange. Where are all the locals who stacked up the rice thingies and set a fire? Its definitely man made, the fires were very neat, and set up in a very organized fashion.

This was a Friday afternoon, before a long weekend. The next Monday thru Wednesday I had off for "Silver Week". This "Silver Week" only happens once every 5 years in Japan. There was a national holiday on Monday and Wednesday, so the government decided to give the Tuesday off too, so it would be a long weekend. The two holidays only fall close like that once every 5 years. Good for traveling. My friend Anna and I took off for Fukuoka on Monday for 2 nights. But more about that to come in the next post.

So this was the third Sunday of September. You know how I remember that it was the 3rd Sunday of September? Because the third Sunday of the month is the only time that we can throw out certain trash items. Milk Cartons are separate. Can't throw them away like normal because they have some kind of hazardous lining in them when burned; all regular trash in Japan is burned. All bottles and cans are good to go on the third Sunday also. For regular cans, and bottles, I usually take a trip to 7-11 every few days and sneak them into their recycling areas. 7-11 probably hates me. But all cans, like for canned soup I must take to the recycling area. Also wine bottles. Also any type of metal. Need to throw away basically anything that is not paper or thin, thin plastic? It must be brought to a certain recycling center every 3rd Sunday of the month. If I try to sneak non-burnables into my trash, my trash will end up back on my doorstep. Don't ask me who digs through the trash to monitor this.

Anna has a car, so she offered to pick me up so she could show me where the recycling place was. Wow. Its so strange. There were over 20 volunteers at the recyling center to help us. I had to show them each piece of "non-burnable" that I brought, and they pointed at which crate to throw it into. By the way, red wine bottles, and white wine bottles are different crates. There was one huge truck to throw things into that didn't fit into one of the 20 other categories. Here we threw "broken glass". Why can't broken glass go in the same place as normal glass? Surely that normal glass pile got a bit broken in transit. Anyways, it was interesting.

Afterwards, we both longed for an American breakfest. It was McDonalds or nothing. So we went shopping, and Anna whipped up a breakfast worthy of la casa de Steffy. Well, it was Anna's house. :) but it was amazing. That is the long story of how I knew that this breakfast was the 3rd Sunday of September. Thanks for bearing with me. :)

Anna made me the best breakfast possible. It was like having an Ihop, but better, right here in Hofu.