Walkabout

Today was the second of two days off. It's special when we get those.

Yesterday I went to Hiroshima so I could check out the floating torii gate at Miyajima. It was hot, of course, but it's much better when I'm out and about than doing shows all day, so it was very bearable. However, my camera decided it would take its behavior to another stage of annoying. Now it seems to think that the connections on my tele/macro lens are faulty and need cleaning. when I get home, I'm going to screw the Best Buy warranty because I don't have two week to send my camera out and wait for it to come back. I'm going to a camera shop and ask them to clean and check everything.

I decided to try grilled oysters (yakigaki) because – hey – when am I going to have the chance to have grille oyster street food in Japan again? Might as well take advantage of the opportunity.

They were nice enough, but I still maintain that oysters are overblown as a seafood. Then again, I prefer shrimp and crab and I think lobster is nothing special, either.

Today after I wrote out some postcards and washed my hair, I went out to hit up some errands and decided that I would walk around a bit and go places i haven't gone yet on foot. When I'm in another city or country, I really like to just take off and walk and see what I can find. Or if I've gotten an idea of where a specific thing is, I go to look for that and see what's around there.

I just walked and reached the Book Off, which is a used and new media store. Holy cow. Let's get this out of the way: they had a used Lightning Final Fantasy XIII edition PS3 in stock. I scored a couple of things (Jamiroquai's Return of the Space Cowboy and Fullmetal Alchemist Complete Best, both for ¥250 or $3) and successfully kept myself from buying a couple of others. I win! It helped that I had found a Boom Boom Satellites CD used, but for $15 (most new CDs in Japan cost about $40) and Ghostbusters on laser disc for an associate.

It was a hot day, but since I wasn't working, it was manageable. I just walked around, rolled up my sleeves and passed by Japanese women with their sun sleeves, umbrellas, and face visors on, scared of getting sun and *gasp! shock! horror!* a tan! The heat's not so bad when you can simply enjoy it and just be.

Today was a good day.