“Tadaima” Blue Welcome. ”ただいま” is something you typically say when you come back home at the end of the day. It basically means, “I’m home!”.

Lily pond in Tokyo’s Imperial East Garden (皇居東御苑 - kōkyo higashi gyoen). I also just uploaded this and a bunch of others as prints, here! It’s so crazy how time flies, I was just texting a friend whose birthday it is that I remembered it was this time last year that I was just getting ready to go  on my big adventure to Japan. What an amazing time.

Don’t $@#! With These Monkeys. I recently put these guys up for a mini student art exhibit that coincided with a Theatre festival here at Bishop’s.

“Koi Closeups” Blind-eyed blue fish.

“Koi Closeups” Fish Kiss. Updated version with some dust spots removed. You can buy the print in my shop!

More bumblebee.

Bumblebee on lavender stalks. Near Mount Fuji, Japan.

Cute couple in a VW bug. Kyoto, Japan. May 2012.

Cool wall I found at an abandoned elementary school up in the mountains in Yamaguchi. I like to imagine that children maybe used it to play games, once upon a time.

I will if you will.

I’ve already decided to make and effort and not let this blog turn into a huge compilation of funny Engrish. It could all too easily be done by spending twenty minutes in ANY Japanese supermarket with a cell phone camera. But, for now… seachicken!

One thing the Japanese people really have to be complimented on is their excellent availability of fresh fish in supermarkets throughout the country. I mean, they have huge tanks of freshly caught (and some still alive) seafood merchandise. Truth be told, I’m not a huge fish fan, but it’s still a very impressive display.

From what I’ve seen during my two days of shopping for groceries here, I’ve come to realize that fruit in Japan is a tad pricey. A dollar or so more per item than what I’m used to paying in Halifax. However, this melon really takes the cake (no pun intended). This is just a plain ol’ canteloupe, like you’d buy at Superstore or Sobeys for $5. And this plain little ol’ melon costs the equivalent of $30 CANADIAN DOLLARS. And that’s a good price, for Japan. Boy, if your mama brings home a melon, you’d better have something really nice to give her.

Orange egg yolks. Oh, Japan…you and your little quirks.

According to this chef on Yahoo Answers, it’s because of the different diet/breeds of chickens in Japan; and also because they don’t use any antibiotics while raising their poultry… he seemed to know what he was talking about, so I’ll buy it.

This is the clever system of ghetto-rigged plugs I’m using to run power to my laptop in Japan. Conveniently, unlike Cuba, their voltage is actually lower than in North America, so if you plug something in, you don’t have to worry about it blowing up without a power converter. On the downside, things like laptops and cell phone take a little bit longer to charge, and your hairdryer probably won’t get as hot as it would in NA. Also, their plug sizes are juuuuuust different enough to sometimes make plugging thing in a bit tricky. In this case, my mac laptop’s cable has a grounding prong that Japanese outlets aren’t built for (Japanese outlets are just two small, straight rectangles, which fit most small-sized north-american plugins without grounders). So, my solution was to sort of squeeze my two prongs into a thin outlet adaptor that lets my grounding prong hang outside the actual outlet. Convenient? You betcha. Safe? … yet to be seen. Let’s just say I won’t be leaving my mac plugged in during any electrical storms.