Greetings. On Thursday I'm heading to Australia until March 12th, so there may not be any updates until then. But worry not, for I have not abandoned ship!

Anyway, I will leave you all for now with another collection of humorous photos of things in Japan. Enjoy!





Thanks to Matt for these: Get the Gaylord special, at the Gaylord Indian restaurant.



Self-explanatory, and very thorough. Again, courtesy of Matt :)



Matt also stumbled upon this Asse Sale, not too sure what's going on in there...



So, I was walking along a side street in Nanba, Osaka, and I see this out of the corner of my eye.
What would you do?



Yeah!



I suppose you'd have to be as geeky as me to get this one. (I'm looking at you, Nibor...) So if you don't understand, don't worry, you have a life.



Get away from me, creap!



I found this, and couldn't believe that there is actually a reason for this thing existing. Only in Japan...



A hair care product. It must work, because that's exactly how I'd describe the hairdos of many of the young Japanese around here...



And finally, these are socks. 4ft long socks. Labelled "sensible socks". I had to buy them.

Today I went for a lovely walk to Arashiyama Park, which is the least park-like park I've been to, but it was pretty and there were lots of herons.



On the way, I encountered an interesting building, that turned out to be a bakery/cafe. I wasn't heading anywhere in particular, but I followed the road, and noticed a bit river with lots of nice things, and that's how I found the park. Walks like that are always fun, and if I walk too far, there's always a nearby bus/tram/train to take me back again when I'm done.



This is what I noticed from the road. It's like a big, wide riverbank with lots of little food/souvenir shops, buskers, children playing and people fishing.



It also has lots of water birds :)



And statues of the water birds :) (these were near the station)



And boat rides!





Yes, it was a dull day, and it even started hailing down at one point, but Arashiyama does mean 'stormy mountain'.





I found a cute shop near the river, selling bears, Totoros and music boxes, all of which were going at once, seemingly non-stop, playing different tunes. Either that or it was a CD of music boxes, going all at once, non-stop, playing different tunes. Mr Bear got sick of it so he went to sit outside.





A rather early blossom, I do believe...







I then headed down the street where I saw a few pretty buildings, then I got the tram back to where I came from. A nice day.

Japan is stupid.

Argh, I was shopping downtown today when after a while I got really hungry, so went to buy a tiny, sealed-type sandwich (no mess) before I passed out. I found a nice quiet corner near the entrance to a department store, and quietly and discreetly began munching away at said sandwich.

The dirty looks I got! Eating is generally frowned upon in public, but there was nowhere else to go, and it was pretty necessary. But at least 5 people walking past managed to frown at me, and even shake their heads, before I was done. However, nobody even batted an eyelid at the people beside me who were smoking, blowing fumes everywhere and giving everyone cancer. No-one ever pays any attention to the hundreds of people who stop in corners at any one time to have a smoke.

A harmless sandwich! How, how was that hurting anyone?!

These people really need to get their priorities right...