Tired

I’m feeling quite fatigued today, even though I was responsible enough to go to bed at a reasonable time.

That’s something that doesn’t make sense about getting older. You start to make these minor changes in the hope that you will, in fact, preserve energy or feel better than you would had you decided to be irresponsible. And then your body just gives you the middle finger and you’re all “Hey, I’m on YOUR side” and then your body starts reminding you about every single time you haven’t taken care of it until you just admit defeat.

12 Years a SlaveĀ was pretty good. Not sure if it was worthy of the best film nod, though. One thing I don’t understand is why it ended where it did, when it sounds like the life Solomon Northup lived after being reunited with his family was also worthy of being part of the film.

After sumo finished up on Wednesday, the group of us headed to a town famous for kushikatsu (deep-fried everything on sticks) named Shinsekai.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, there’s several pictures of animals on the walls of the local train station, which afforded me the opporunity to do this.

This happened

What you can’t actually see in this photo is the koalas that we were trying to imitate behind my right shoulder. Well, you can see a little bit of paint on both sides of my head. Instead it just looks like I’m groping Luke and he doesn’t seem to have too much of a problem with this fact.

And in the very same train station, this happened.

Hippo

I’m quite fond of this photo, but I’m not entirely sure why. There are so many wondrous things I’ve seen and encountered since being here, yet the photo of me pretending to have my arse bitten by a hippo sums up so much on one hand, but absolutely nothing at the same time.

Jump forward a couple of hours – deep-fried goodness on sticks, alcohol and more alcohol – then home to sleep off the effects of said alcohol.

Earlier this week, I purchased this book.

BOOKNESS

This book translates to “Phrases you won’t find on an English exam” or as the CD is titled “The Book of Nonessential Vocabulary”.

It is hilarious. There are phrases in English that are so wonderfully random and off-the-wall that you end up reading them several times over just ot make sure you read it right. The fact that the layout of the book is so firmly tongue-in-cheek awards it several more praises for its self-awareness. And it makes for a great conversation piece with Japanese people because the phrases – well, some of them, at least – make even less sense in Japanese.

Well, that’s another 40-odd minutes of writing done. Until tomorrow!

2 Replies to “Tired”

  1. Hi…is Greg following a second or third koala?? Your body can feel tired then reenergise years later so don’t sweat on momentary lapses…laughing myself silly at your happiness at being bitten by a hippo??,! And 3. Can think of a million names for the book which are Aust or world wide not nice…when you analyse stuff like ‘hit the frog n toad’. ‘goin to a rubbidy tub for a bite’ and gotta get home as the’ trouble n strife’ ll have the ‘grub’ ready we are really just as silly..?

    1. Greg was trying to hug the koala that was behind me. Maybe someone else got a better shot, but I’m not sure.

      Maybe my explanation of the book wasn’t quite good enough. It takes certain vocabulary like “murder case” and has a sample sentence saying “Sorry I was late, I was caught in a murder case.” and there’s a photo of a guy high-fiving another person while he is wearing a suit and karate belt. Very non sequitur and random.

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