Non-japanese ridiculousness!

Look what I found! A must for all the Monty Python fans and Holy Grail seekers! The Black Beast of Aaaaaargh or the rabbit with Nasty Big Sharp Pointy Teeth! If I could stand soft toys, I'd want them! Of course, I could always by the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch to destroy them when they began to irritate me!

In other news, I have a great backlog of japanese ridiculousnesses that also need uploading here. I've had to start ignoring some, to be honest, as I see about 5 or 6 noteworthy engrishes a day. It's all getting too much for me!

In other other news, I went to see Little Miss Sunshine at the Tokyo International Film Festival on saturday. IT was fantastic! Thanks to Sean for the blogged recommendation! The blurb I found in the program here nearly put me off entirely (I wasn't interested in a dysfunctional family driving to a kids beauty pageant) but it's actually a brilliant film. My friend Gloria and I were the only ones (in the enormous theatre comparable to the Lyric Opera in Brisbane) laughing for the first half. I can only assume the japanese subtitles didn't catch the subtle humour! They all caught up in the second half though, and the film won the audience award for the festival!

The rest of Saturday was spent at a university festival, eating slightly dodgy traditional japanese food, and then seeing an alternative rock band (performing for the first time) in a tiny basement bar in Shinjuku. It was a fantastic day, all up!

Now I just have to survive three more days at work, and then I get a three day weekend! Yay for the japanese and their ridiculous number of public holidays!

Flench and Flied Lice

I was back at the machida giant 100yen shop on saturday, and had another look at the frenc mug I mentioned a couple of posts ago. It actually says:
Le temps quand le lait est entierement mis dans le cafe et il boit est le plus heureux.
(The time when the milk is entirely put in the coffee and it drinks is the most happy)

I came home and mademyself fried rice tonight. It took under 5 minutes, and was rather nice. Here's the recipe, just because.

frozen vegies
ready-cooked rice
soy sauce
sesame oil
sesame sauce
an egg
mushrooms & ham (optional)

Method:
Throw all ingredients into a frypan (not necessarily in that order) and fry.

That's it.

It was yummy.

wstfgl

so I've discovered something very interesting. Imported fancy liqueurs are very cheap in japan. I've found an imported foods supermarket in Machida (2 trains stations away). Itwasvery exciting. Apart from Chai tea (to which I am fast becoming addicted) it had a whole aisle of alcohol, including kahlua, southern comfort, absolut vodka, bombay sapphire gin and cointreau - pretty much anything you could ever want - and most of it was at least half the price of the same thing in australia. My first thought looking at it was "I don't want to spend 2000 yen on anything today". Then I realised that the bottle of Benedictine that I was looking at for 2000 yen ($22.20 according to XE.com, costs about $50 in australia. I bought a bottle of Cointreau for about $18. I was in Machida with Gloria - we met after my japanese lesson at 4, went to Hachioji, which we thought was an even bigger town (but turned out to be very dispointing), so we went to Machida (tried and true) and spent hours in the huge hundred yen shop (again) then, starving, returned to Fuchinobe and found the 100yen sushi train Gloria had seen, which was wonderful, then went to an Even Bigger 99yen store (100yen stores are an addiction. We are addicted. It's a terrible affliction) and then came home, and drank large quantities of Cointreau interspersed with Chai ginger tea while talking about anything and everything and then suddenly it was 4am and we're just slightly very pissed and it's probably bed time. We did have plans to go to tokyo tomorrow, after an early visit to the international festival at the place where I have japanese lessons, but not now. The plan is festival, then Hashimoto, then probably machida again, and we'll go to tokyo next weekend. Really we will.
Head spinning. Bed time. mmm cointreau...

And another couple

Yes, that really does say "Happy Life Creator". It was on a full length raincoat. Naturally.

And on someone's tshirt at uni today:

Twinkling her jelly lip and your sparkling eyes.

I'm told that "jelly lip" might mean lip gloss, (rip gross) but it still doesn't seem to make any sense to me. It was a funky shirt though!

And on a related note, Sean pointed out this delightful little article on Chinglish in Beijing. The best is definitely "To Take Notice of Safe; The Slippery are Very Crafty".

This blog is in danger of becoming nothing but a repository of engrish and flench. Ah well, there are worse fates, I suppose!

To prevent it, I will say something else about my current life. I'm doing housework. Isn't that ridiculous. I think it has something to do with moving into a brand new flat that hadn't been lived in before. Everything was so neat and clean that I sort of want to keep it that way. And it will make cleaning up when I move out (in a mere 9 weeks or something) that much easier, and thus I will keep my cleaning deposit. And of course I don't own much, so it isn't hard to keep it all tidy!
Even weirder is that I'm doing yoga regularly...
When I start voluntarily going to be early and waking up early, I'll know there's something wrong.

Flench

And here's one for the francophones. It was on a mug:

Le temps que le cafe est entierement mis dans la tasse avec du lait est le meilleur.

Translation: The time when the coffee is entirely put in the cup with the milk is the best.

I think that's what it said. I'll have to check when I go back to that shop.

Engrish

Here are the first of the wonderful Engrishes that I've collected so far. I realised within a few days of arriving here that living in Japan will certainly be amusing in some ways, because of the engrish that abound, and these examples are just the first I've remembered to remember, if you know what I mean.
The first was a t-shirt I saw a girl wearing today. Unfortunately I'm not really willing to stop people and ask to take a photo of their outfit so I can laugh at it later, so you'll just have to imagine it. It went like this:
Y O U
W E A R
comfortable
m a y p o l e

I just wonder where you're supposed to wear this maypole. I can't really think of anywhere that would be comfortable...

The other I did manage to get a photo of. And I will continue to post engrish that I see here. I might even submit some to engrish.com.

boredom...

You really know you're bored when you get pissed off because other people haven't updated their blogs and thus provided you with something to read. It's even worse when you get pissed off at others not updating their when you haven't updated your own...
So life in Japan isn't turning out to be non-stop fun and action. I'm slightly bored at work (see my serious blog for why) and then when I get home, I still have not much to do. I know. I need to go out and meet people. It's not so easy - we're not exactly in central Tokyo. I'm getting to know some of my students, who aren't much younger than me (6th year uni students in a country where they finish highschool at 18...) but they're all pretty busy, and likely to get busier, so I don't know how much of a social life I will have with them. (not that I'd ever associate with students outside the school, of course, that would be against westgate policy!)
Last weekend I went to Kawagoe, and discovered that their festivals (apparently one of the 4 biggest in japan) is on this weekend. So I was thinking of going back. I don't know if I will or not - I'd rather like to go with someone, cos I think I'd just wander around feeling very "outside" on my own.
Other than that my plans include a shopping trip to Machida (two stations away) and the 5 storey hundred yen store, and a japanese lesson. That's it. So Far.
Just remembered I hadn't looked at engrish.com for a while. That'll keep me occuupied...

Change of Address!

Look a little different? Well, not much different, but this is definitely the best template design!
I have finally moved my Serious Blog to www.katsseriousblog.blogspot.com which leaves this website free for an actualy non-travel blog. Although I love my travel blog and its functions for travelling (like the maps!) its lack of html and other things just irritates me too often, so I've finally created this blog for all those times when I'm not actively travelling, and just living somewhere.
Yes I realise I am developing a ridiculous number of blogs, but they are all for different purposes!