Evidence

I have decided to at least link to some pictures here. I'm sure you noticed if you made it even this far down the page, but now there are thumbnails of pictures I've taken of things that bore documentation while I've been around and about. For the most part, they were taken with the camera on my phone, since it's usually the only one on me when I happen upon these curiosities. There's a decent chance they'll be updated more often than this blog. It's the way of my world.

Explosive City Pride

Annual Fireworks-by-the-River tonight. That's probably not what the event is really called, but I can't read the banner. While reading through my employee handbook to find out how many days I can request off for New Years' travel I discovered that today was Labor Thanksgiving Day. I guess that's why they did it. This was my second fireworks (hanabi) festival in Japan, my first being just weeks after my arrival here at Lake Suwa, about two and a half hours by train from here (videos from that one featured below, I didn't make any visual records of tonights lightstravaganza). I have to say I was partial to my own city's. First off, it was very close. I live about a mile, I'd say, from the river, and the banks were the scene. Almost all the seating was free, on a long berm hillside just off the bank of the river. So I was much closer than the Suwa fireworks, in fact, I could see some of the launch platforms. I also have an exponentially greater understanding of what is going on around me at this point in my stay here, which I'm sure helped with the experience. Also, it wasn't RAINING like it was in Suwa. If it had been, it would have been miserable, because unlike three months ago it's almost-winter cold. Unfortunately, I didn't find any vendors offering ¥300 beer tonight, but I didn't look very hard. The river of people in the mass exodus after the show has me convinced that damn near all of the 200,000 Naganoites were there and although it was dark and I'm reasonably certain there would be no cultural stigma against being spotted drinking by students, I decided I'm not quite past my own ingrained response to the situation and opted to keep the money in my pocket for a better time. The score, therefore, lies as follows:

Suwa - 2 (1 for cheap beer, 1 for skillful smiley face and heart shaped fireworks)
Nagano - 5 (1 for no rain, 1 for abundance of free seating, 1 for closeness to home, and 2 for well-timed firework/music collaborations (one of which was the James bond theme))

With a slightly better understanding of, and ability to listen to, the language I managed to figure out the salvo system I noticed last time. Looking back, I suppose I didn't get around to posting on that occasion. The deal is this: Rather than a short strung together display with a big finale at the end, fireworks here are numerous rounds (i think we made it to 51 tonight) of awesome displays, each worthy of being a finale in any western fireworks show I've seen, puncuated by short periods of announcements, relative quiet and darkness while the next round is set up. And this time, probably partly because I have lived in Nagano for long enough to recognize businesses and partly because there was a loudspeaker across the sidewalk from where I was sitting, it dawned on me that the announcements were lists of sponsors. So I guess individual companies or small groups thereof can pay for salvos and get their names said on a loudspeaker. Fireworks are the go-to celebration here. There are so many fireworks festivals across the country year round. I'm glad I have gotten to see a couple of them.

Oh yeah, the videos from Suwa (toward the very end; i didn't record some of the more original explosions unfortunately):

Field Trip

Today I had a company mandated health check-up. It was kind of a bare-bones physical, only testing weight, height, a simple urine test (collected on an industrial length Q-tip with a large head), eyes, blood pressure and respiratory, and taking an x-ray. It was my first metric physical. It felt a little weird, but overall a positive first encounter. Most of the nursing staff didn't speak any english, so I was generally just guessing when I was asked questions. For the eye test I needed to know the words for up, down, left and right. Luckily, I knew all but down and my helpful coworker filled me in on that one. My first eye test in another language. It was such a minor occurence, I'm not sure why it felt significant to me, but I liked it. Then came the doctor, who spoke enough english to tell me that (despite having lost the expected “foreigner 15-20”) I'm overweight and I need to diet. Thanks, doc, you've opened my eyes. He wasn't rude, but he was blunt. And I liked it. Maybe I'll even start exercising – this has at least inspired me to intend to do so.

Other news from last few days: accidentally scared a 3 year old with a couple of the creatures I had prepared for our Halloween-themed lesson today. switched to the winter clothes-drying method and tried out the in-wall fan unit in the shower room. I stretch a bunch of tension rods between the walls and hang all of my clothes in there and leave the fan on with its built-in timer (which I assume I used correctly due to the lack of shrunken or still wet clothes this morning). Novel, not sure if it is any more energy efficient than a tumble drier, though it does retain those endearing wrinkles air drying is famous for. Most importantly, I bought a couch at a secondhand shop, and through a hefty battle with my own japanese and the undying patience of the clerk, arranged to have it delivered. My latent lounging life springs back to its former vibrant potency on November 8th.

The Hurdle

I've been living in Nagano for a month now, Japan for a week more. Little has changed over this time in most respects. I am used to my job now, though it is still in a moderately transitional phase as I try to normalize all of my lessons. I am planned about a week ahead. I eat sushi for multiple meals a week. While I can order drinks with relative ease and mangle my way through placing a food order (generally with the gracious assistance of my index finger and an extensive pictorial menu), my Japanese has improved at the stalling crawl of a weekday rush hour on Hwy 101 out of San Francisco. The most important recent addition to my "vocabulary", for lack of a more aptly diminutive word, is "to" (pronounced toe), meaning: and. Now when I want more than one item from the menu, which I invariably do, especially at izakayas, which are a sort of appetizer restaurant/bar (it's almost like they knew me before I was here), I can fill the confusing silence while I flip pages with this little morsel, making me (and my ever-patient waitperson I'm sure) eternally less uncomfortable with the extant hideous communication gap. A very small step, especially remembering that in this moraic language, to, as one sound, is depicted by a single character from the syllabary.

I have picked up a few other words here and there, but by and large when I am spoken to in Japanese my brain freezes over, my vocabulary is quartered and my ears cease to relay information properly to the icy mess between them. It doesn't help that it is most commonly spoken at roughly twice the speed of sound, allowing for the conversion to km/h. Zannen. What a shame. Another useful catchword, particularly when playing pub games.

I have procured a copy of a Japanese textbook that is the text for a free twice-weekly class I'll be attending once a week as of this Monday. It will be a good low pressure place to practice using what I have learned, since no matter how comfortable I am with thank you, please, yes, no, OK and my numbers, they can only take me so far conversationally. So since I've had the books for about two and a half weeks now, I just have to study 3 more chapters before starting on chapter 5 in class on Monday. Some things don't change.

Home

My apartment is set up to a rough approximation of the way I want it and most of my things have found a home somewhere on the premises. There remains only a small coffee table's worth of belongings as yet unsorted, and I can live with that for a while. Can and probably will. I am now firmly over the initial shock of being instantly illiterate, literally and culturally. Staying in Okayama for a week was immensely productive in terms of my adjustment to this new place. I see it as a kind of purgatorial quarantine, not of me from Japan, but of Japan from me. My world had just been turned upside down and I was so off-kilter from the experience that I couldn't even bring myself to eat at a restaurant for several days. I spent most of the week hiding from the foreign world beyond my door. By the end of the week I was finally moderately at ease with my surroundings and ready to learn how to navigate this society, and then it was off again on a bullet train, away from the small support group of people undergoing the same changes and challenges I was. During the times I was awake, I went through a lot of the same emotional up-and-downturns that I had felt as my plane neared land again this side of the Pacific. More muted versions thereof, but from a similar vein. This time I was going alone to the place that I would begin to live alone, trying my best to fit in in a place that I never will. It was on the train that I realized the real usefulness of the week of training I had undergone. Yes, the company policy and practice had been impressed on me and I was given the opportunity to get back in to dealing-with-kids mode, but the most productive feature of this week was to ease me in to Japanese society. I didn't really even shop that week. I wasn't on my own and I didn't have to try to figure everything out unaided. Which is not to say that I do now, for my coworkers and budding friends have made it abundantly clear that they are close at hand should I need them, but a week to adjust without the added pressure of my first few days at a new job and alone in a new town did me more good than perhaps I can describe. I think that this function of the training week is not accidental, and the company is to be commended for their foresight in planning the arrival of new teachers this way. I arrived in Nagano ready to meet my new boss and the newest iteration of my life, ready to satisfy curiousities and make new explorations.

Okayama was vastly different to me than Nagano. Both in the personal experience and as a city. I suppose that should not come as a surprise. I was hesitant to put much time or energy in to exploration in Okayama, knowing that I was only there for a week and would then have to do it all again here in Nagano. It felt overwhelming, but maybe that was more a function of the new half of the globe I had found myself standing on. It did not feel like the same sort of place to me that Nagano feels like, and I already feel at home here. It's probably all a result of some subconscious block that refused to let me feel settled until I arrived where I was really going. Now I feel fine.

I have been in Nagano for a week now, training under my predecessor, who handed me progressively more classes to plan and teach over the course of the week. He has been invaluable to me, as I may have already said, both at work and in my Nagano education. I have gotten used to having him around, and just in time, because now I am a fully fledged employee and teacher and he is unemployed, soon to leave. I have only learned how to live in Nagano with him here to rely on, it will be a different experience yet living here without him. The changes come a week at a time, and each one alters the way I am living.

Parked in Nagano

A lot has happened since my last post; I packed up and moved from my temporary home in Okayama on Sunday morning and, after 5 hours spent across two shinkansens (bullet trains), am slowly unpacking in my new home for the next year or more. I spent a majority of my travel time sleeping to make up for all of that foregone the night before in favor of karaoke. It had to happen sometime, when better than my last night with my first friends in this new country?
After arduous negotiations headed by Tim, the only one of us here long enough at this point to undertake such a task, we were booked for 2 hours all-you-can-drink. We started at 3. The room was just big enough for the four of us and our drinks and microphones. There was a phone on the wall to call in drink orders and a large flat panel television on the wall. This, as I understand it, is the norm for such an establishment here. We belted out Pixies, Weezer and other favorite tunes for a couple of hours, and I was sure I was going to be hoarse for days (turned out not to be the case, thankfully). It's definitely a fun way to (sp)end an evening.
Back to the shinkansen. Although I slept for a majority of the ride, I was awake long enough to discover that most of Japan is covered by a lush green blanket with clusters of housing or sprawling cities dotting the countryside. It really is beautiful. All of the cities seem to be situated on the flat ground, although mountains (hills?) abound. Nagano debuts itself around a bend from the top of a ridge that must nearly encircle the city, atop which the tracks run. One gets a sweeping view of the cityscape as the train hooks lazily around it and down the side of the ridge and on in to the city. It looks much bigger than I had been picturing. Coming from a town of 200,000 I was not expecting twice that to be so much bigger, but I'm kind of excited that it appears to be. Santa Rosa gave me much, but in the end it felt too small for my taste. I thought maybe the weather would be different here than Okayama. I was wrong. Well, maybe slightly less humid, but still stiflingly hot. And it seems I'm the only one in the country that sweats, but I do enough of it to make up for the rest.
My predecessor is doing a very good job of getting me acquainted with the city and the job. He is strikingly similar to me, and I'm sorry that he won't be around longer. But I got his old apartment, so I guess I'll settle. I can see the building from work, but not vice-versa. It's about 3 blocks away. It's a very nice new building, the first time I've ever had to buzz my visitors in, replete with a video display on my wall for me to make sure I approve of their behavior before agreeing to have them up. It is small, as I had been warned it would be, but it feels homey. The entryway is a hallway that contains all of the household essentials: washer, fridge, kitchen, bathroom, and bathing room (separate room from toilet). This hallway leads to the room, which has a long closet, a bed, shelves and a desk and a couple of low tables. I have a nice balcony with a good view of the mountains that even came with a snowboard and snowshoes. A string of english teachers for my company have lived here, so each new occupant inherits a bunch of stuff (generally anything former teacher(s) didn't want when they left) with the space. Today I started unpacking/arranging in earnest, and it feels much better already, but there's a long way to go before it's all set. I am getting mini tours of the notable establishments in the area, and have been introduced to the locals. And by locals I mean other foreigners. The grocery store situation here seems much more amicable. I have applied for all of the necessary papers as a foreigner and even gotten a cell phone (which I am reasonably certain is smarter than me).
Today was my first day of work at my branch. My visage only caused one child to burst into inconsolable fits of tears, but it's only my first day. The rest seemed rather taken with me, but it's probably just the beard that seems magical. It's going to be challenging work, but I'm very much looking forward to it. Working with children is at once laborious and refreshing. I'll have to leave it at that, I've got lessons to plan and I've got to be to work promptly at noon tomorrow.

Security Blanket

I find myself unprepared for complete immersion in a foreign (to me) society. I don't really think anyone can be truly prepared until they have experienced it. The feelings that follow are not original, almost everyone that expatriates must at some point undergo a transition similar to this, but they are new feelings to me, and those are what I came to find, so I'll expound. I thought I was ready for it, have thought that for a long time – yesterday I found myself wondering if I was. There are so many little things that no one, and I mean NO ONE, can realize they will miss until they're gone. Like that movie with Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins that I flipped to and couldn't understand the dubbed dialogue or even the title, which escapes me to my horror (wifi aided edit: Bad Company). Although I have spent the better part of the last 6 years complaining about the utter consumerization of American life, it occurred to me today while I was watching Japanese commercials interrupting some Japanese gameshow that understanding the language and writing in something so mundane (and in many cases, evil) as commercials is very comforting. This is, of course, symptomatic of the larger, all-encompassing issue of my (near) complete illiteracy in the society in which I now live, but it stands up as its own anathema. Even though I generally hate most of what is being said, I took for granted my ability to comprehend it and even form an opinion. Which is not to say I have not formed opinions about the clips I see on Japanese TV, because I love them, but I might not feel the same way if I had any idea what they were saying. It is more comfort than you might know simply to understand the things you hear and read at every given point during your day, even if you choose to ignore them or, as in my cynical position, dislike them. I did learn that Waterworld will be playing sometime soon on the same channel as the Chris Rock movie. Wish I knew when to tune in.

Every day of training I actually feel more comfortable with the material, and I'm getting used to the workday. I'm less tired every day – in the morning and after work at night. It's midnight right now and I'm still alive and awake enough to write this, whereas last night I took a nap at 10:30 and turned it in to a sleep when I woke again briefly at 11. But my brain feels a bit muddled. Even now I am having a terrible time trying to remember some word that I love to use that I want to use, which I will hopefully scrounge up from one willing source or another when I arrive on the interweb in a matter of minutes. Before I continue, let me say my discomfort, like this brain fart, is not consuming me, nor will it last forever (edit: ANECDOTE). Don't read too much in to this and go getting worried or sad, because there's no cause here for either. But it's worth documenting, for you and for me.

And fear not, for I am enjoying myself more and more by the day here and learning how to exist here, but there is a general unease, for lack of a better word, that now travels with me as I go about my business. Everything I do now requires exponentially more energy in the form of concentration (and for my training in the form of energy) than it has for many years. I tried to go grocery shopping yesterday, and I did make it home with enough food to last me the rest of my week here in Okayama, but even that was a challenge. Everything has pictures or little windows allowing the shopper to see what they're considering turning in to their dinner, but the array is so vastly different than what I'm used to, and something else new has dawned on me: during grocery shopping we often rely on details printed on the package to make our decisions between products with slightly different features. Are these eggs fertilized or un-? I hope un-. Safer not to buy. Is this particular fish safe to eat raw? Better not guess. I came home with a package of shiitake mushrooms (must've misunderstood something; they cost twice what I thought I read), a frozen pack of pre-made gyoza, a chicken breast, some lemonade (lightly sparkling, to my surprise), a just-add-water curry, and some instant rice. Very tasty stuff, to be sure, but I was rather daunted by their acquisition. When I laugh at myself now, which I do many times a day, it's as if I'm laughing that I thought I could handle this gracefully. When in Japan, do as the Japanese do, and the Japanese are definitely laughing. I find myself clinging to the bubble of familiarity that is my co-trainees (and roommates, currently) and even my trainers. It is the only place I feel truly comfortable right now, and it will disperse itself at the conclusion of this Saturday evening.

Pride and Prejudice

At the end of training tonight our trainers told us about a tasty pizza/pasta restaurant nearby and recommended their calzones. So Kirk (co-trainee) and I decided to give it a shot. We found the place okay, it was just past the mcdonald's on the other side of the hall, also happened to be just next door to a dried octopus hanging outside some restaurant like a wearied kite, presumably enticing hungry customers in to its sinewy embrace. Yes, table for two (used fingers not words). The man made sure we understood the no smoking policy and took us directly to a table around the corner in the very back. I thought if it was a western food establishment it would be good for business to see westerners enjoying the wares. Silly me. We managed to order a beer and a calzone apiece with little incident, despite not knowing what ¾ of the words our waitress said meant. When she brought my calzone she said something long-windedly, the only bit of which I understood was “gomen-nasai”. Somehow our meals had not arrived at readiness at the same time. We worked past it. The calzone was all it was promised to be, and when we were done we thought the leftovers might make a nice lunch tomorrow. I thought I had remembered something about taking leftovers not being a good idea around here, but I wasn't sure and I had enjoyed my calzone enough to want to continue enjoying it tomorrow, so I agreed that Kirk should try. Which he did. She made a noise and said something quickly before leaving the table. Several looks back at us around the corner and a few minutes later she came back and said something that seemed to be in the affirmative and took our plates. Well. Guess we learned our lesson on that one. We got our leftovers (after several more minutes waiting), we got the free after-dinner tea our patronage earned us, and we even got cards for a free drink the next time we come in. But it was clearly not the thing to do. All we could do was laugh to ourselves, pride already swallowed. I'm going grocery shopping tomorrow.

Training was long. I went to bed too early last night and woke up at 7 this morning, almost 2 hours before my alarm was set to go off. Dammit. I have been looking forward so much to not having to be at work until 10 or after (I got my real schedule today and I start at 11 on Tuesdays, 12 Wed-Fri, and 10 Sat), and now that it's here I'm still stuck in 8-5 work mode. Dammit. It's going to be difficult adjusting to this thing I've been craving. The training is intense, but the trainers are doing their best to only put pressure where pressure is necessary. The atmosphere is convivial; jokes abound, even if they are downright hokey. Wearing slippers for most of my day is so awesome. It is SO much more comfortable than shoes all the time. I have already noticed my feet continually looking uncharacteristically clean. We have a lot of work to do tonight, a sample lesson to prepare and packets to read. Singing ditties is a considerably more significant portion of this job than I was led to believe. Every transition between activities has its own song, some of them two. It all feels very overwhelming right now, but I know it will fall in to place when I'm actually having to do it. Preparation only takes me so far, as I learned when I moved to Japan after mentally preparing for it for so many months.

Bars Don't Close Here

Last night I wandered/barhopped Okayama with Tim (the guy who's been here for a year already) and Alex (co-trainee) until 4:30 in the morning. And when I say barhopped I mean two bars that cater to and are mostly populated by foreigners. There is no last call here. I think I'm going to like Japan. The beers are small and cost the same as pints in the U.S., but it's Japanese beer. They also import a bunch of liquors to these bars and charge ¥600 a shot for such delicacies as Canadian Club and Old Crow. Jack Daniels costs the same. The “original cocktails” are mostly varied combinations of orange juice and sugary liqueurs, the only name of one I can recall I deciphered as “Toeface”. The bartender at Aussie Bar didn't particularly understand why we wanted a straight shot of tequila. Needless to say I did not order any original cocktails, but this morning (read: 3pm when I woke up) I drank some of the so called orange juice that had been provided for us by our generous company, which by all outside appearances was just a normal carton of OJ. So I was surprised to find that I could see through it as I poured it in to my mug. It looks, and tastes, like Tang. Anyways I think that last night is just what I needed to feel a little more at home here. With the exception of a morning spent trudging through the rain and humidity to the historic castle and famous gardens that reside here in Okayama (to but not in – we weren't ready to pay) with my co-trainees, I had mostly been hiding in my room and only leaving to have halting interactions with convenient store workers as I floundered my way through a purchase, living in a state of utter culture shock, which I hadn't even realized until I tore my way out of it a little bit. This was my first time actually going out and sitting somewhere and just sort of letting it sink in. Granted I was still totally in a safety net since we only went to gaijin bars where the bartenders speak decent enough english (at the bar Pinball one of them put on a video of his Blues Brothers cover band Skull at one of their performances and told me he loves Elvis before telling me his name, which I promptly forgot) and there was almost no one out on a Sunday night, but even that made me feel a little more like I'm here and still a person. I'm sure bonding with a couple of new friends didn't hurt either. I woke up feeling contented and ready to try my hand at something new. I am still pretty crippled by the language barrier and my lack of understanding of the culture in which I now live, and it's going to take time and serious effort to improve that, but I feel more prepared to deal with it today than I did yesterday or the day before.

So I made my first venture in to a Japanese restaurant (other than Mister Donut for breakfast yesterday). There are lots of pictures and plastic models of all the dishes at all the restaurants, for which I am eternally grateful, as even with them I still rarely know what it is I'm about to eat. So I walk just inside the sliding glass door of this restaurant and immediately to my right is a big thing that looks like one of those lottery ticket machines in the grocery store, and the only english on it is a big arrow that says “Take Out” pointing to a blue button just above the several rows of other buttons. Mercifully, there was a poster with pictures and names of dishes plastered on the window, even a couple of english names. So I picked the “Beef over Rice Bowl” and managed to find a button with matching characters on it. I put in my money and pushed the button and out came my change and a little ticket, which I took with me to my seat at the wraparound bar that comprised the seating area. The nice lady came and said something I didn't understand and gave me a glass of water and ripped off the perforated half of my ticket. Shortly thereafter I had a steaming bowl of food that smelled like exactly what I wanted to eat. This picture had been the biggest on the poster, I think it's their flagship dish. Cost me ¥480 and came with a bowl of miso soup that I burned my tongue on, and I'm stuffed. I'm working up to actually having to interact with a waitperson for the duration of a meal.

Training starts tomorrow.



addendum: as I am sitting on this bench rereading this before posting a stream of men in black slacks and white dress shirts wearing yellow nametags just poured out of a nearby Reception Hall and walked down the stairs behind me. This train station is connected to the convention center. Last night as I was packing up to leave it was an outflow of professionally dressed women from a different nearby door. OOH man even more men than the first salvo, this time wearing jackets and slightly varied shirt colors, the Hall must be huge!

Made it!

It's 4:12 pm here in Okayama and I finally figured out a name for my blog. It'll do. And without further ado, the post I penned last night before falling asleep technology-in-hand:

I just finished eating a tartar sauce/fried fish-product(?)/cheese cube sandwich and some pizza flavored chips from the convenient store and am now back in my home for the next week. We've probably been here for about an hour now and I am reaching deliriousness, so I probably shouldn't take up that offer to go to a bar with some future coworkers (who didn't just arrive from halfway around the world), but I did want to write down some thoughts from the day before I lose them in the death sleep that is about to ensue.

The flight was not bad, I watched a couple of movies a couple of times, slept a bit, ate some airplane food and talked to the 19 year old sitting next to me, all of which passed the time well. Over the course of the flight, I ran the gamut of emotions that I have been feeling about this trip over the past few months twice over. Apprehension, doubt, reassurance, excitement. Add elation. It was strangely cyclical. It's like I've been going through them all on tighter and tighter timelines until the last one that took about half an hour for the whole thing. My first thought when I got off the plane was “it's HUMID”. I had plenty of time to reflect on this in the un-air-conditioned customs line. Got my bags and promptly confused myself and was waved down and hurried out of the baggage claim area by a very short lady wearing a mask. By the time I found the trainer who was waiting for us my back was drenched in sweat and there were huge dark patches of the stuff on the front of my shirt, and I was literally dripping with sweat. Great first impression, I'm sure. Forward my bags to Nagano, have my first taste of how little Japanese I know at the counter. After changing shirts we got on a bus that ended up suspiciously vacant that was to take us to Okayama, where I'll be training for the next week. There are only 4 of us in my training group, which I understand is exceedingly minimal, but we had a good bus ride gleaning information from the trainer, with a 10 minute rest stop break to separate the two halves of the 3 hour ride to get here. I bought fries out of a vending machine. Ate half of them, two of them were cold in the middle. They were just convenient store french fries. It is so humid here. The bus was hot too. Got here, got the spiel, went out for the aforementioned snax, and briefly bonded with the aforementioned coworker (well, same company at least, probably won't see much of him during my year though). I already saw some funny signs, including a truck for some unknown company whose name was abbreviated ASS on its side. I can read Hiragana and Katakana, I just have no idea what any of it means. And thus far my conversation has been strictly limited to “arigato”. Who knows how many people I've already offended. I have the next 2 days to do what I want, and I guess I'll probably just try to explore Okayama, most likely look for sushi. I am holding on to “Wakarimasen” (I don't understand) and “Gomen-nasai” (I'm sorry), and I'm sure I'll be needing them both almost constantly for the next little while. I haven't reset my watch yet, so although it's now 1030pm here, I know that it's 630am in Santa Rosa. Weird. I'll have to post this on my tomorrow when I go to the Seattle's Best a block from here that I have been informed is the nearest free wireless. I've already had the urge to take pictures of half a dozen things, but I'm just trying to be a little patient. There will be unending sources for pictorial examples of what I'm living around. Anyways I'll start tomorrow.