Miyakonojo

My camera came a few days ago. So I took some pics Friday and Saturday. You can see the first set by clicking here. It's some photos of around my city and a few pics of from Friday's night out. A bunch of current ALT's and new ALT's got together for a welcoming party.

The other set which you can see by clicking here, is from Saturday when some friends of mine took me out to go see Kagoshima. It's a city to the west of me, about a 90 minute drive. There is a volcano and such there. It was hot. Very very hot. Not Tucson hot, but still hot enough.

I'm not so used to the humidity here. Overall its not as bad as Tucson, but in Tucson you wouldn't go outside all that often. I'm used to sweat evaporating as soon as it appears and buildings having their AC set on permafrost. AC isn't so cold here. They try to help the environment by using less energy. But then they go ahead and burn their garbage pretty much wherever you look. Often it stinks so bad because some dude has a bonfire going down the block. They pretty much separate their garbage into 3 things. Recyclable, burnable, and non-burnable. From my understanding, burnable means "Hey Daryl, this'll burn durn guud *her huck*" Where as the logical approach one SHOULD take is "While this will burn, it is covered in lead paint so I probably shouldn't throw this into the bonfire" Sadly, I don't think this is given any thought. I could be wrong though.

There are bees like mad out here. Lovely Japanese Giant hornets. The size of humming birds. I thought it WAS a humming bird. They can actually spray you with caustic venom, that also calls in every other single Giant hornet in Japan to come kill you. Something like 50 people a year die this way. Don't matter if you have an allergy or not to these bastards. I was thinking hiking was a nice hobby to pick up... now I'm thinking Flamethrower 101 is a good class to enroll in.

Notice my work car in the set of photos. I was driving the same day I took that photo, and a Bee came and overtook me. My car can't even outrun insects here. Sigh.