Come Again?

It's only fair that someone who grumps online about imports from English over here would make a stupid mistake himself. "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." (Proverbs 16:18)

So I was eating dinner yesterday with friends at a pretty good restaurant with a picture menu--standard here if most prices are under $10 a dish--and after we'd finished we decided to split one or two desserts. I went back up to the counter with my pastor, and we investigated the sweets section. What caught our eye was the subtitle of "hot ice [cream]," apparently of the green tea flavor.

The kanji characters indicating the official title were fairly indecipherable to me, but curiosity took over and led me to order the dish. For some reason, the waiter didn't understand my simple request the first time around, but I repeated my order twice and and pointing at the menu until he took it down.

Our whole table wondered how the cooks had overcome the apparent laws of physics to produce this paradox. Finally the dish was served and I saw it swish in its bowl; guess it was just heated until it melted. I took the first trial sip and was shocked at the unexpectedly bitter taste.

It was traditional green tea, no sugar included. Suddenly everything made plain, devastating sense: "hot ice" didn't imply 'cream' but a choice of temperature. No wonder the waiter was confused! Thankfully, I had just enough sense to order two dishes and the second one didn't disappoint.

All in all, I had it easy: my only losses from the false assumption were the aura of linguistic competence and $2.10 (reflecting the dollar's recent dip).

Brink of Insanity

Every once in a while I hear about people doing something very much outside the daily grind, like my uncle Willie on his periodic bike tours around the globe (currently Columbia). When my friend Matt suggested a hike to the Mt. Fuji area, I thought it was worth a day or two's adventure. Little did I know what was in store.

The two of us and the ukulele player from the contest music group started out at lunchtime with a bowl of "student discount" ramen--good carbohydrate fuel. We walked, walked, walked with periodic breaks--check out the size of the left pack--until sundown. Fuji's peak slowly drew closer.





After going to a blessedly well-stocked supermarket for dinner, we began to implement our brilliant plan of camping out in a tent with plans of continuing the next day. However, we miscalculated about the weather. Specifically, the fact that it was bone-chillingly cold.

A real blanket instead of a space tarp and tent walls thicker than construction paper might have helped, though we were all wrapped up in several layers. What drove me nuts and prevented any real sleep all night was my one personal mistake: forgetting an extra pair of socks. Nothing like feeling your toes freeze to while the hours away, trust me.

Between shivering and the not-too-comfortable ground, which had probably frozen a few nights ago, none of us caught much shuteye. We woke when the first train rumbled into town at 5:30 AM and hurriedly packed our gear up to catch the 6:05 back home; plans for continued hiking weren't exactly feasible under sleep deprivation conditions. I was able to get rested back at home and miraculously didn't catch any major diseases, save the inability to resist turning the dorm shower to 'Hot' every morning.

At least we had a nice view of Mt. Fuji (which we were smart enough to know we couldn't climb yet anyways) by the time we called it quits. I left the shot uncropped to better illustrate the 'country' environment we hiked through that first day.

Happy to stay inside the daily grind for now, and I think my toes agree.