you know nothing about japan if you are unaware of the number of japanese people that have addictions to something. of course, the two most popular are pachinko (a gambling game which *apparently* takes skill, and looks like quite a lot of fun really :p) and smoking. the amount of chain smokers i’ve met since i’ve been in japan is quite outrageous. that includes most of my host family’s relatives and friends.

so i was quite pleased to find out that neither of my host parents smoked or spent their nights in pachinko parlours. unfortunately, my host mother has recently picked up an obsession with these bead-filled dolls manufactured by mogu.

sounds quite harmless right? it started with a single pink human-shaped figurine which sat in the living room, and acted as a pillow when you lay on the ground under the kotatsu table. you can imagine how surprised i was when my mother came home with a bag full of various size mogu dolls, which she bought as presents for close friends and relatives. i got a nice blue one which stays in my bed and keeps me company.

that was roughly one month ago. she has now been to the factory (we like to call it that anyway – i think its just a shop with lots of them for cheapish prices) which produces these dolls 3 times, and is already planning the next 2 trips. i *do* have a feeling there was another trip which i was never told about… but that will never be known.

today she brought home some new faces, including this cute black dog. its ears feel very nice :p.

so you may think its quite an innocent addiction… but with each of these dolls costing between 1500 and 4000yen, it really is an expensive one.

we were on the way to school when i looked up at the sky and saw a strange line drawn along the sky from one horizon to the other. i didn’t really think much of this – probably just a plane having some fun.

but then on the way home the same line was there – about 2 hours later. there was also some strange cloudish formation to one side of the line. i don’t know how it got there, but it looked quite impressive anyways

update: my host mother said she saw two helicopters flying *very* close together this afternoon. beau says the trail was left by a military plane, which is quite likely with the military base located so close by. i’m kind of sad i didn’t get a photo of the helicopters though

daniel’s bathroom got attacked by flying ants. there were seriously thousand of these little insects crawling around the bathroom and quite a few hundred in the kitchen and other rooms nearby. they seemed to be landing, shedding their wings and crawling around. craziness. luckily his mum was on her way home and i think it has been sorted out now.

on my way out of his house, i went to open the bike fence only to find that a group of bees have made themselves at home inside the tiny hole compartments inside the fence (!). so daniel if you read this, you might want to check your fence for the bee hive inside it sometime ^^;.

just for a little bit of testing, i’ve set up a shoutcast stream straight from jp radio. i have it set to Kiss FM at the moment, and encoding at 96kbit stereo. feel free to have a listen if you are that way inclined. i’m not sure how long i’ll keep it up – it depends if people actually want to listen, and whether i can get a better aerial for this radio, and pick up some of the better stations.

the shoutcast addy is http://202.225.241.228:8000/listen.m3u

oh i forgot to mention how fscking hot it was today – hitting a maximum of 26° at 1500, and a humidity of 64%. while it doesn’t sound that bad, temperature is a relative thing and this was the first time anyone in the country felt this kind of heat in quiiite a while. apparently its cooling down over the rest of the week, with some rain near the end/weekend.

it was quite an unexpected surprise when i woke up at 11 and got told we’re going for a picnic at my host mother’s home town. it is actually an area still within the himeji region, but its the furthest west you can go before it turns into the next prefecture. the area was vastly covered with grass or crops, and surrounded by green hills. about 40 minutes drive.

their property was huuuge. they actually had a full size garden, and a house that would compare to those we live in in australia. they also had a huge plasma tv, although the reception wasn’t all that good.

after the barbecue, we went tamanegi (onion) hunting! this involved riding on the back of this 3-wheeled card on roads so thin i was really scared that my dslite would end up in a pool of water by the end (along with me). but after a 5 minute bumpy ride, we arrived at a field of onions.

i didn’t really help with the cutting/picking, but was left in charge of transporting them back to the crate. my hands smell like onions still even after washing them 3 times ^^;. it was a good experience though .

this guy knows his fires. he totally owned up the barbecue and later on the dead plants.

today is children’s day in japan. while they say “children” this is actually the day for boys only – there’s one for girls in march. the traditional thing to do is fly these fish-shaped kites outside your house if you have any young males in the house.

we decided to make a trip to the local zoo. imagine perth zoo, but with about 1/8th the real estate. this means a lot of animal in a small amount of space. it was quite interesting, but you’d find it very hard to spend over 2 hours wandering around.

a lot of the animals didn’t look happy, but i guess thats what happens when you put them in a tiny cage in a zoo. pictures were hard to take with cages so strong they looked like something more fierce than racoons and deer should be inside.. ill put the rest up in the gallery tomorrow.

i need more practice at item battles. they are quite interesting though! if anyone else has tetris leave me your friend id.

i think we went a bit overboard with donuts yesterday. but i won a bag of some kind in the scratchy competition thing . mister donut is goooood