Rainy Season Commence!

Hey everyone. Sorry again about the lateness of the post. To be honest, Japan has grown less exciting over the last few months. I mean, I'm used to the food, I've gotten used to the girls wearing skirts and shorts that just cover their asses and the guys that wear Looney Tunes
jumpsuits. Not to mention work is no longer new, and I have to show up 5 days a week. Somethings never change.

But here's some new stuff that's happened over the past month or so.

For starters, Rainy season has begun today. So for the next week its going to, well, rain. All week. Probably with a few really crazy storms thrown in just for the hell of it. Apparently, I'm lucky to be in Osaka because it gets a really mild rainy season. You know, Tsunami's etc. However, mild means it's as humid as New England in August right now and aiming to get worse by August out here. Well, as exciting as rain is, I have other events...

Event #2!

I went to Nara last month. To explain Nara to you, I'm going to quote an email that I sent to Kathy Rooney a few weeks ago. Sorry for not rewrite the whole thing, but I will take a moment to edit it. Anyway, here it is!

"As for Japan, I finally went to Nara and it was beautiful. If you don't know the place, it's a somewhat rural city with many famous shrines and temples and these tame deer that eat (sometimes steal) food out of your hand. The whole thing would seem kind of annoying if they weren't deer. It's really amazing, coming from a part of Pennsylvania where every so often I'd get close to a deer only to find us both shocked and it running away. At the same time, it's kind of sad. With all these tourist around, it's almost like a deer kegger. The deer just hang around and eat, some times chase tourist down if they catch a glimpse of those special deer wafers. Other than that, they just lie around and shit all the time, much to the amusement of teenagers on class trips.

"I also saw Toodai-ji, a gigantic bronze Buddha sits in the world's largest wooden building. It's funny, but as amazing as it was, it was a surprisingly different experience as being in a famous church. I'm not sure what I mean by that, but somehow spirituality (at least Buddhist and Catholic) seem pretty famliar. Or something like that. Anyway, the sculpture was jaw dropping, but not so much as the deer."

I'm still not sure what I mean about the spiritual parallels there. I think I'm still a little afraid to explore it actually. Anyway, read "familiar" however you like there: empty or omnipresent or both.

And finally Events #3 and 4!

First of all, I should point out that my lack of blogging has mostly been because I've been writing fiction and poetry regularly again (after about a year) and submitting again (after a little more than a year). And I've got some poem coming out pretty soon in some online zines (Night Train and Word Riot). So be waiting for a selfish email in the near future demanding that you read my work.

Also, I'm going to Okinawa and Tokyo in a few months. So prepare for some more pics there!

Speaking of which, if you want to see more of Nara, go to Face Book.

P.S.

Sorry to everybody I haven't been keeping in touch with as well as I should be. Lately I've been trying to catch up (hence the email to Kathy and Martin) but the longer it's been the more pressure I feel to knock it outta the park, which makes me sit here and weep on the keyboard, so patience please! I miss you all!

-Steve