I tried posting to lomohut without much of a story and I am not sure that I liked it. It seemed to remove a lot – even though writing can be very めんどくさい (pain in the arse) at times. Today’s post will be a short story from about a week and a half ago and some photos of some stuff.

About a week ago and a half ago I was heading to Sakuragicho to meet a friend for lunch. I was all prepared not to bother anybody or at the last have anybody bother me. I was listening to this group on my iPod from Tokyo called Sexy Synthesizer. I bought my ticket and proceeded to the Subway while imagining how cool of a video I could maybe one day make with various footage from around Japan.

Since the Shounandai station is the end of the line for this particular subway line I can ride either line – it would get me to where I am going. I grab a seat that is near the exit – getting a bit comfortable as the ride is going to be about 30 minutes. Suddenly a man and woman sit next to me, I think they were friends or work colleagues – not sure. He touches my dokomo-dake (the little NTT Docomo mushroom that was hanging on my cell phone a few posts back) hanging on my back, asking me if I knew what it was. It took me a second to realize what he was doing, or that he was even talking to me – as my iPod was on.

I take out my head phones and mumble some Japanese. The train started moving. They ask me where I am going – I reply Sakura….and look up at the map as I can’t remember the name completely..gicho. As always seems to be the case – they are going there too. They continue to talk to me in Japanese and I continue to reply in Japanese – the best that I can – I had forgotten my dictionary at home and the noise of the train moving along drowns out a lot of the syllables for me. There was a lot of laughing and questioning on both sides.

They wanted to go drink – since there are very few foreigners that live in Shounandai (I think I’ve seen 3 maybe 4 and they have all been seen at the station). They gave me their business cards. When we arrived at Sakuragicho they wanted me to join them for lunch. I politely refused and we went our different ways. I no longer have their cards, as the companies they were for looked a little shady.

Overall though it was a fun expereince. I got have a conversation in pure Japanese. I also had a fun case of – about 3 minutes after saying something far too complexly – ‘ah crap that’s the grammar I should have used – I knew that – it expresses my thought much clearer and precisely!’. Such is life here recently in Japan.

With the earthquake in Peru there was a chance for my town to get in the news! At about 1am Fujisawa-Shi issued an earthquake warning – over a zillion loud speakers. Which was wrong. A little scary for me as I didn’t know exactly what was being said and half-alseep! Check it out!