31) Back in Nagoya, I caught up with
an old friend for ramen. This is a
terrible photo of Kim, but the best we got of George, who had been teaching in Japan for nine
years now at that point and was dean of Kim's department at NUCB. The ramen we enjoyed that night was the best
I've had so far--a wonderful clear soup flavoured with citrus and complemented
by relatively fat-free pork and tasty noodles.
I really missed that sort of food when I came home.
32) Also at the Ryuzuki (possibly "Dragon Moon") Restaurant,
which was predominately decorated by images of cats, I saw a wonderful painting
of a dragon attended by two cute little dudes wafting blissfully in the
altogether. Here's one of them. Tee hee.
33) Below was the new
road outside the apartment. The
blackness of it was intimidating, although that doesn't come out well in the
photo. I've included it here, despite
the fact that the building of the road caused a few headaches during my first
fortnight, because I was impressed with the speed with which it went down. Now, Sufferin' Street
in Adelaide received
an overhaul thos year; it took weeks of ripping up
sidewalks, digging trenches, traffic blockages, and bad radio before it was
finished. Here, the council
workers--hundreds of them, it seemed--ripped up the old road one day, installed
the new one the next day, then came back the following week to put another
layer over the top. They made it look
easy. And when, one day, the machine
broke down and they had to work into the evening, they went from door to door
apologising--prompting a puzzled but good-natured exchange between me and a
road worker who couldn't speak a word of English, thankfully translated by one
of Kim's colleagues at uni over my mobile phone. Something similar happened a week later
during cleaning of the apartment block's water tank, when I had no water for a
day, except that this time there was no one to translate and all we could do
was shrug and go our separate ways.
34) The object of the
photo below was not the local video/DVD/CD rental store (although the fact that
its top floor contained nothing but hardcore porn did make it at least
noteworthy) but the "walk" signal visible near the centre of the
shot. Nagoya
crossing signals didn't "pip" like ones in Adelaide and elsewhere. They made bird noises. At this intersection, one way chirped while
the other cuckooed. This is a very
strange arrangement, but one I liked a lot.
If you click the picture below, you can download a short WAV file of the
cuckoo. Ornithologists might question
its authenticity, but it was close enough for me.
35) Lest anyone thinks I was
the only one with delusions of grandeur, here's a pic
of Kim enjoying the Japanese lifestyle.
Sadly, even giantesses had to iron.
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