Powertard Break

IMG 1280, originally uploaded by sleepytako.

Taken from inside my rental car. Best Engrish ever?

淡路島日帰り

IMG 1257, originally uploaded by sleepytako.

I got a long weekend off from work so I rented a car for the weekend. Fun stuff. Well, on Saturday I went to Awaji island with my co-worker Joe and his lovely wife Izumi. We went to a strange English farm themed park where the main draw is Koala bears, who are dressed up in suits with English flags on them. We got to play around there, see some animals, pick potatoes, do archery, drive go-karts. Overall it was pretty good. After that we continued to drive around the island to find a place to watch the sunset and smoke a cigar. I also wanted to go swimming but as it's not summer yet I was afraid the water would be cold, but it wasn't at all. This was the first time I've gone swimming in the ocean in Japan and it was great. I want to go back! The other Japanese on the beach sure got a kick out of the crazy swimming gaijin too. After that we hit up an onsen and I was able to get Joe to go in with me, but Izumi declined. We went there on the Takoferry (octopusferry), but came back driving over the Akashi-Kaikyo bridge--the world's longest suspension bridge. Quite an amazing experience. Thanks to Joe and Izumi for coming out. I had a great time and I think they did too.

Other glory:

A grumpy pink pelican who would munch on the kangaroos who would came by him.

Engrish!

Engrish 2 times!

Joe loosing at pinball.

You can view the 淡路島日帰り set for all the photos!

I'm using Unix at home...

IMG 1125
Originally uploaded by sleepytako

...to hold my bacon!

(File under nerdy engrish.)

I had lunch!

Not a normal lunch however. I had lunch! One of Yuko's old customers won a heap of money betting on horses and gave some to Yuko and her sister with instructions to go out for a good lunch. Well we had a good lunch. A really good lunch.

And dessert.

Ah! A snake!

IMG 0928
Originally uploaded by sleepytako

Coming into work yesterday morning check out what I found sunning its green body where I like to park my bike. A cute green snake. First one I’ve seen in Japan.

Kansai Onsen Review is up!

I finally set it all up, the blog I've been working on to the neglect of this one. Kansai Onsen Review is a blog where I will post reviews, explanations, history, culture and anything else that's related to bathing and hot springs.

All of my additional information about how to take a bath and stuff like that is still in the works but my reviews have started. Three reviews are up now with more to come. I've been to at least 50 around Kansai so there's a backlog of them to get posted. I'm still working on going back to the ones which I haven't taken decent photos of also.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks!

http://kansaionsen.blogspot.com/

p.s. I'll keep updating this blog with random other non onsen related junk just like always too!