after roughly 7 hours of careful observation i found, out of thousands, 4.5 decently good looking asian men, and 2 truely good looking asian men.

subtitle:(All of which were likely shorter than me)

Have I, as of yet, mentioned the spider situation? I don’t believe I have.

In America, spiders exist. They frequent the out of doors, and often creep into our basements and garages for warmth. For the most part, we tolerate their existence. This occasionally leads to confusion, as some of the spiders take this condescension as a sign of weakness to be exploited. They take it upon themselves to venture into the higher worlds. They are promptly destroyed. There is no mercy for the insolent, in America. In America the spiders are annoying, crafty, and their guerilla tactics can leave the target very shaken, but for the most part spiders are not thought of, except in the brief moments following an attack. This is not the case in Japan.

Were you aware that in Japan to see a spider in your house is good luck? Moreover, that killing said spider is bad luck… yes that is right, in Japan there is an overly abundant population of completely undisciplined spiders! They live completely without fear of the humans. They go everywhere and anywhere they deem worthy of their presence and rather than curve their habitats to suit the humans, it is the humans who must curve their behavior to suit the spiders. They take over the homes unchallenged; they build giant webs over commonly frequented walking paths, and dangle from tree limbs to the detriment of unwary bicyclers. And have I mentioned yet that the spiders here are huge? I have a picture of a particularly large one soon to be uploaded on my facebook. The cities of Japan are ruled by spiders; they are the emperors and they have no fear. Their webs literally blanket the city in a glossy film. In America, you do not think about spiders until they attack, and their greatest weapon is the surprise by which they attack. Here, however, it is not a fear of surprise, but rather an ever oppressing knowledge that you cannot escape them. I hate them with a passion that could never be matched in America. I am not Japanese in this respect, and I will show them no mercy! I cannot win this war, but I will sure as hell take some down with me!

On a somewhat lighter note (lighter being loosely defined) I had an interesting day. I walked up the side of the mountain (some videos of this coming to a facebook near you) to see a temple and a god house. It was somewhat disappointed, although I did get to experience my first brush with heat stroke (a companions, not my own). I also got to see lots of very large and very creepy bugs, including a bee that was literally the size of a fifty cent coin (at which point it occurred to me that this was really when I should have been carrying my epi pen). Afterwards I came home and changed in time to head off for Osaka. It was now 3:30 and I was told we wanted to be off by 4, so we would get there around 5, maybe 5:30, when we would meet up with ppl. Instead of making the first train (which we easily could have done) they decided to get McDonalds. We take the next train, one half hour later, and after about an hour we get there. Everyone is excited and hungry. We stand in the terminal for about half hour looking for some people who are somewhere on the other side of the ticket takers before someone comes up with the bright idea to go over there and get them. Now we are all expecting to get food, we are talking about it, it shouldn’t be long. We are going to eat, then hit up a bar, then they will go clubbing and we will go home (the club ids to get in but the bars don’t). Except that our guide takes us the long way to get where we need to go, and doesn’t pay attention so we get lost twice. A trip that took no more than 20 mins on the return, took us roughly an hour and a half. So now we are all pissed off but once again food is on the way. He, our guide, promises us cheep udon close by… and by close by he means a half hour walk. We go past maybe 30 restaurants before ppl just stop and ask wtf is going on. Interestingly enough, no matter how many times we asked where we were going, or how much farther it would be, our guides just ignored us and kept walking until at some point Nathan (the good looking one) just gets pissed off and heads for the nearest McDonalds, followed closely by his friend John. Now the guides haven’t stopped, and they’ve walked up two flights of stairs, but no one else is following. I run up half and yell at the guides to stop and ask how much longer it will take to get there. The guides confer for about 5 mins and then state that it will take about 15 to 20 minutes longer. It is now my job to negotiate between two somewhat hostile parties. In the end we decide to split up and meet back at the top of a different set of stairs (I should point out that the McDonalds and the other restaurants were part of an underground mall and that the top of the stairs was the street). Having decided this, I go back downstairs to the McDonalds because I feel absolutely bad about having left those two behind. When I get there, however, they are gone and nowhere to be seen. Likely, they went up the first flight of stairs in an attempt to follow us, which they said they would do. Now I’ve lost all of the other parties and am completely alone. Without thinking I order from McDonalds ( ) eat quickly and spend half of the hour I have to kill looking at the other stores, until they all close. Then I’m wandering the streets of Osaka, looking in the most likely places for my other group mates. I do actually end up finding some. Half of the people didn’t bother to return to the meeting place after the hour past, including the two guys who were supposed to guide us home, and including the two boys who got left behind. I return home with two girls who were wearing terribly impractical shoes and could barely walk which was perfect because neither of them had bothered to bike to the station, so the 15 min bike ride became 45 min walk through the dark spider infested streets of Japan. We only narrowly avoided walking straight into the clutches some sadistic giant who, apparently, loves to build its web in the middle of the sidewalk and has taken other JCMU casualties before. So at the end of the day I’ve spend 20 dollars to go 6 hours (4 there and 2 back again) to eat a crappy Mc chicken sandwich and drink coffee with way too little sugar in it (in Japan they ration condiments). To top it off we managed to lose the closest thing to eye candy this place as to offer and the only guy who seemed to both enjoy and encourage my company. .. whoot.