Psuedo-Mexican food, toilets, paddle boats, Ghibli Museum, more toilets...

　Thursday gets its own blog post! Such a good day...

　I made it to school by myself again! But that's just the start...

　I decided to flamboyantly remain within (surprisingly) the dress code, down to the socks. I won't describe it, but check the pictures if you're interested. But enough about that....

After only 2 hours of Japanese class, Kobayashi-sensei, Hiratsuka-principal, Sakurai-sensei and I went out for lunch at this random Mexican food restaurant. The interior decorating was very accurate to some of the hole-in-the-wall Mexican food places in Austn, and the food was very good, but--it wasn't Mexican food. It was Japanese food masquerading as Mexican food. No tortillas with the tacos, white rice, salsa without chips (and vice versa)...raw eggs in the tortilla chip-less overly spicy tortilla soup. But I liked it, but it felt so out of place to be eating psudeo-Mexican food in a completely Mexican-themed place. Also, I was a little anxious about going out to lunch with my program head, Japanese teacher, and principal, but it was actually really enjoyable. I had a lot of fun there talking with them and explaining the intricacies of legit Tex-Mex, as well as demonstrating the proper construction and consumption of a taco--or as close to one as we good get (after we got tortillas...).

　After that, Sakurai-sensei and I bid a fond adieu to Kobayashi-sensei and Hiratsuka-san, andI had to use the restroom. This seems like a petty, non-unique action, but we went into the bathrooms at a mall, and after that, until we left the store, everything was downhill from there:

　　　 So I go in this (not the one in the picture, though) bathroom, and it's pretty typical, except for a buttload of buttons (heh heh, sorry) which I don't really pay much attention to until, well, I decide to try them all out. [I took a picture of another similar bathroom, and you can see for yourself what the illustrations say these buttons do.] I take 5 minutes trying them all out, to my great surprise--soon turned to extreme amusement...there are a few that streamed water upward (check the picture to understand their purpose), and one that I can't turn off called "flush sound," that blastes the sound of a flushing toilet out of the stall, to, as Sakurai-sensei later explains to me, mask the sound of whatever you're really doing in that cube. At this rate, I expect to find a button that makes the toilet sing "Thank you for your business" in 14 different languages. As reality checks back in, I realize that I'm stuck in a bathroom blasting flushing sounds and spraying water, and need to find the button that said Game Over, aka Flush-and-get-the-heck-out-of-the-stall-NOW button. I am unable to find this button, and revert to the ways of my ancestors and yell "Sakurai-sensei!" twice. No response, so I do a manual search of this stall, which involves pressing every button, until one of them jump-starts the toilet. I get the heck out of the stall NOW. I start to laugh hysterically.

　That was a true story. Back outside the department store, I tell my story to Sakurai-sensei, sending both of us into frantic hysterics, and after a little calming down on both of our parts, we rented a swan boat, which I have decided are designed to make you sore from the pedaling, which has cruelly only moved you about a foot. It was really fun, but it was not the thing for a tall skirt-wearing individual to do--I was both cramped and that close to being indecent. Horror. In this park, there was this little spring that supplies water not only to this pond, but a nearby river as well, so being the tourist I was today, I took a picture. So that's that....

　Our hour was up--literally, so we went to the Ghibli Museum, which, as described briefly in the post below, is an exhibit of Miyazaki's animation. It was really cool to see it--it showed the sort of animation he used, which involved, for example, the same cylindrical picture revolving while outside of it was a paneled tube that spun quickly so everything seemed to be fluid...very hard to describe, and no pictures in the museum! Outside, though, there was a "ticket stand" which had a Totoro inside it and a huge statue of a robot dude. I got an overpriced dust-bunny-soot-sprite as a momento, but it was nearly worth it, which is saying a lot. In regards to the picture of it, toilet is not included. It was super fun...but very hard to describe. Interesting moment--I wanted to take a picture of the button-toilet in the museum, since I didn't take one of the one in which my wild spraying incident occured, so I asked the attendant-person in Japanese...but like I said, no pictures in the museum. Later, I asked another attendant person (male, must have freaked him out that an American girl was asking to take a picture of the outside musuem toilet--but he was really nice about it) and my wish was granted. Woot!

　I made it home from there, too, so that was another accomplishment...all in all, a very good day =) But now, at the end, I am so tired and flushed. heh heh.

PS Sorry some of the pictures are sideways.