Well, here it is… Wednesday. 11:15 pm Japan Standard time… Which means most of you are going to sleep LAST NIGHT, relatively speaking, here in a few hours. Confused??

Many times in the past week I have posted Mental Xanga posts. Mental Xanga posts are like normal xanga posts, except they are in my head and therefore cannot  be appreciated for the awesomeness that they are , by you, the reader.

In any case, you should know about 2 events that have occurred in my live since my last post.

The first is that I did yardwork Saturday! Hopefully most of you remember that I live in an apartment in JAPAN, and houses of entire families rarely have yards to sit cross-legged in… let alone an apartment in japan having a yard. But I did. Well technically I did balcony work…  which is a lot like yard work, except you are in an area the size of a roach motel and about 30 feet off the ground. My goal for last Friday (my day off to appreciate the Autumn Equinox) was to basically destroy the large bamboo screen that had been decaying for years on my balcony. To understand why this is a difficult task, one must first realize that garbage in Japan is a frequent pain in my rear-end. Certain sizes, certain things, on certain days, may only be disposed of… and if you have an item that doesn’t fit into the category… like my bamboo screen… tough patootie. But I wasn’t about to let this eyesore- and quite frankly, DISGUSTING piece of rotting nastiness infested with bugs… on my balcony. I contemplated breaking it down little by little and putting small amounts of it out with my normal garbage… Shawshank Redemption style… but after 2 months, I had finally had it. So I went to the Home Stock store and bought  gardening clippers and gloves. Now the fun part…

This bamboo screen is about 8 feet tall. (remember I am only about 5) and spans about 8 feet wide. I am surprised that this enormous object even fit on the balcony. the pieces of bamboo are all different sizes, but most are about as think as a woman’s finger with some of the larger ones being as thick as a thumb. There is a hemp-like rope that  weaves in and out of each piece of bamboo and there is a rope across the span of the screen about every foot up it. so, even though it is pretty decayed, I can ‘t just rip it apart. I have to separate EACH piece of bamboo and then cut it. So, I start out working in my balcony the size of a roach motel… destroying this piece of nastiness, and avoiding the bugs… which I was surprised weren’t as many as I thought there would be. FOUR hours later, drenched in sweat… the fruits of my labor includes 3 large garbage bags full of the bamboo screen, rope and miscellaneous bugs. But even then, I couldn’t throw these bags away until Monday morning (though I snuck out and threw them away Sunday night…) it was SO nice to have a view free of that bamboo screen.

The second story might seem anticlimactic… I went shopping by myself in a town 20 minutes away. I also had my first fast food since my arrival in Tokyo. McDonalds… was a welcome visit from home! I basically had a date with myself… and I liked it!! So much so, that I am going to do it again this weekend… so that I can buy a new T.V. because YES… mine is BROKEN. And NO I don’t even want to think about how on Earth I am going to get rid of the broken one just yet. I just got rid of the bamboo screen….

On other news… sumo is over. I am sad.

And I have my flight reserved to come home!! Very happy.

That is all for now… until next time…