Bah-bah bah BAH BAHHH (I’m Lovin It)

So i’m sitting in a Mcdonald’s, drinking a diminuitive banana milkshake.  (No, the picture above is not the McUdon. Come on ppl) Ahem… It’s ten pm thursday here which means that it’s more like nine am thursday where you are.  Looking back it’s been a pretty good day for me, and i hope you all enjoy it as much as i did ;P

James and i finally had some time to go see a number of the shrines that pepper my corner of Nagasaki city, (a city which I’ve heard takes two hours to drive across.)  We took the tram downtown to walk through mazes of memorials and snap pictures of worn down temples.  There was a chance to see what (if i remember right) is the oldest stone bridge in japan. We saw it. We walked on it, and you know what? It felt like HISTORY.

Then there was some non-culturally relevant stuff, a walk through hamanomachi – a covered shopping district, and a meal at Cocowalk – one of this area’s three large malls.  The night ended with a stroll back to my shitty shoebox sized dorm, futon shoved under one arm, pillow under the other, tram-card in my teeth, smiling at the locals on their assorted bikes and motor-scooters.

I’m a little amazed how quickly this place has gone from foreign to familiar… I think I said before that it feels like years since i’ve been here.  The official count: 10 days.  Sorry I didn’t write!

A lot has happened, and I know a lot more is going to happen, but in the meantime I’ll try to catch you up. Let’s start at the beginning….