Random Photos

A restaurant near our home.  Notice the sign - "Don't mess with Texas."  All the servers wear cowgirl attire...

The ever popular mop walking socks!

Fun things to make with little sausages...

Sorry, this photo needs rotated but I got lazy.  This is a toilet brush with a mirror so you can see under the rim.  Those are my fingers in the mirror.
Simon, a fellow teacher, holding a very large citrus fruit.
It's comparable to a grapefruit I think.  Simon is from
Australia, lives here with his Japanese wife.  Jaxon affectionately
calls him "Australian Dude".

Say yes to the dless!  This brochure came in the mail.  Yes,
it is advertising wedding dresses...I mean dlesses.

Our very own black swan!  First one I have ever seen.  This one swims in the canal that surrounds Marugame Castle.

Just love this one - it's from the zoo.  The big cat cages go over the walkway and are open fencing - meaning
that if you are standing below it and kitty has to go, you wear it.  



A special machine just for washing shoes.  Crazy!

A knee patch on one of my students shorts.  No, he's never been to
Washington, or even out of Japan for that matter.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Surgery

I started my period when I was 11 years old.  I remember going to the nurses office at school that day because my lower back hurt so badly.  It felt like nothing I had ever felt before, but was a feeling I would become quite familiar with.  Imagine there being a bowling ball inside your body, resting on your tail bone.  It causes pressure just sitting there.  That was a good day.  The bad days were when that bowling ball was being ground into my back - from the inside trying to find a way out.  Later, when laboring with Lily, that same feeling was there.  Lily was upside down and her head was resting on my tailbone.  The contractions that drove it deeper into the bone were killers.  So all those years of imagining my inner bowling ball were not that far off! In those first few years of cycling I would often seek out the hardest surface I could find and just lay on it, trying to flatten my back into it.  Our living room floor usually did the trick - a cement floor with a thin layer of
Read more

Back to Seattle

In January we saw our local endocrinologist for the first time.  He was lacking in eloquence and was quick to condemn the process that we had taken to get to him, however, he assured us that he was going to get Lily to a good place.  Since seeing him she has been on a consistent does of thyroid meds in hopes of regulating her body and beginning to feel better.  Unfortunately, she's not feeling better.  Her symptoms are exactly the same.  Dr. W ran two sets of tests.  The first included and ANA test which measures whether or not autoantibodies are present. This is the 2nd time this test has been run and for the second time, it is positive.  By itself this does not diagnose anything, but it indicates that further testing is needed.  You can read more about it here .  In any case, his suggestion is that we go back to Seattle Children's.  We have an appointment for a full rheumatology and endocrinology workup on April 25. The second set of tests should be back tomorrow.  He was t
Read more

$$Tokyo$$

If you google the most expensive cities to live in worldwide you'll find Tokyo somewhere in the top 10.  I looked at a few last night and Tokyo was actually in the top 3 on 5 of the lists.  Now, one list claimed that you'd have to shell out $5,000 to get a 2 bedroom apartment in Tokyo.  I'm sure there are plenty of such apartments, but there are also less expensive ones so you can't believe everything you read. But, it is true.  Living here is very expensive.  We rent an 860 ft2 apartment for approximately $1100 a month.  If we want to rent a parking space that is another $115 a month.  Our utilities, including internet but with no cable, are over $400 a month.  All that for utilities and our apartment does not even have central air or heat!  Groceries, gas, train tickets, they all add up too of course.  Groceries vary in price from store to store and season to season, but it is not uncommon to see 4 apples for $6 or a quart of milk for $3. Here is the baffling part
Read more