You, me, and about sixty cyclists in spandex
Archive for May 2009
12 May 2009
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02 May 2009
VIP moss, 日本語を and other california things
A break from the never-ending photos of the Northern mountains to post a few of Kyoto that I never got around to posting last year, because endless photos of beautiful mountain views get monotonous, and reading and thinking endlessly about Japan has made me even more easily distracted than usual. All of these are from my massive day of shin-splint-inducing temple hopping last February, though I can't remember which temple was which anymore.
I don't have any photos of being home yet, mostly because my camera and lens are both at the camera hospital, being cleaned (the camera) and massively repaired (the much-abused lens) after more than a year of being rattled all over South East Asia, and because they served put up with so much abuse at my hands, I am trying not to resent them for the horrific cost of the repairs and resign myself to being a grown-up by taking care of my nice things. At any rate, being here means mostly looking for work and studying Japanese, with varying levels of success; not many of the larger schools are willing to accommodate couples looking for work together, which has been frustrating, as we want to live if not work together - but we have a few leads and also some backup plans if those should fall through.
Branches reflected in a pond.
It is weird how distant Hanoi feels after only a month away, even if I still feel like I know the roads there better than the roads here; still, it's been guiltily easy to settle into a routine of whiling away every afternoon in a cafe (we rotate so that no one gets too mad at us for ordering one cup of tea and as much hot water as it takes to get through three hours of studying). My spoken Japanese is still pretty hopeless, though I can read both the kana alphabets now and am picking up a little kanji. So that's here, and what our plans are, for the moment; once we have our Japan plans settled, we'll hopefully do a little travelling (and I will hopefully get better at driving freeways, to make said travelling possible); more photos of the Vietnamese mountains to follow and maybe some of home, when I get my delinquent camera back.
