closing time

so golden week is coming to a close. its been a terrific week in every respect (ie: moving complete, day trips to inuyama and ise, cementing life in japan) and i really dont feel like going to work tomorrow. once i get there it wont be so bad because the work is generally enjoyable anyways.

on the negative side...ive been sick for the past 4-5 days with a cold...mostly coughing and a runny nose. whats really annoying is that the japanese have this taboo against blowing your nose in public; apparently its really rude to do so. since i want badly to be a good gaijin and avoid offending the natives as much as possible, ive got to sniff for like an hour before finding a bathroom and blowing my nose privately. its pretty disgusting but so is sniffing for a long time when youve really got to blow your nose. my voice has been out of commission for the most part too so it sounds like im going through puberty all over again.

one more thing thats come to my attention...it seems that im obsessing about the food here a little too much. seriously, its that good and much cheaper than i thought it was going to be. i dream about udon. i get really excited when i find a great sushi plate from a supermarket for 300 yen. when somebody asks me to rank the best parts about my day trip to ise, i start with "well, the restaurant we went to had this rare presentation of sushi that you cant get anywhere else in japan and i ended up having a 7 course meal" or something like that. i know i should be cooking and eating in more but its hard when eating out is so ridiculously awesome here and not that expensive either.

more later.