This past week was a blur. It was pretty much a routine of going to work, watching commercials, eating sweet sweet sushi for lunch then going home and sleeping. Not to say that this is a bad routine but it got a little repetitive by the end of the week. There was one memorable moment during the week though.
That moment was playing Pachinko in Yokohama. Julie and I went into Yokohama on Tuesday night and went to a Pachinko parlor that I had passed every day on my way to work. I had been yearning to play pachinko for forever so I was excited to finally satiate my urge. Pachinko is a game that looks like an upright pinball machine. You launch small metal balls to the top and watch them go down through a series of pins hoping that it will land in one of the few small trays that would ultimately lead to you getting more pachinko balls. You pretty much do this until your ball supply runs out or you can cash in your balls for prizes. I put in the minimum 1,000 Yen ($10) and promptly lost it in under 5 minutes. I, apparently, have no skills at Pachinko and was defeated efficiently by the machine in less than 10 minutes. The atmosphere of the parlor though, is what made it really fun. The volume level on the machines are cranked up to a deafening level and there is a man on a loudspeaker constantly yelling at you in Japanese to play more pachinko. And also, it is customary to chain smoke while playing as it is thought to improve one's focus, or lead one to a quicker death so that the pachinko machines will get less of your money. I found that it created a thick oppressive fog that lent to the terror I started to feel as the man on the loudspeaker yelled at me from seemingly all directions. So I left "Silk Road" with ten dollars down the drain and an interesting experience under my belt. Now I know that if I'm ever feeling too good about myself and need to be brought back down to my proper place, I'll be sure to travel back to silk road where my money is waiting to be swallowed in an abyss of cigarettes, shreeking machines and yelling men.
This weekend was my favorite part of the week. I went out with the family to their beach house in Shimoda. Their house is really nice and cozy with two stories and is placed on the steepest hill I have ever seen. We had to get a fast start in the car to actually carry our momentum up the hill to their parking spot. The surrounding view was beautiful, though. The hills surrounding the house were covered in dense trees and it seemed like we were in an almost tropical setting. Shimoda itself, is a small village with a huge amount of beaches within a very close proximity. We got up around 8:00 on Saturday and hit the beach early, as the waves a perfect size for body boarding as well as surfing. I tried out the long board a couple of times but I just couldn't get myself to the right point of the wave to pop up. This lead to several falls, rolls and concerned looks from the other Japanese surfers around me. So needless to say, I stuck to the boogie board for the greater part of the day. It was also an incredibly hot and sunny day so I got fairly burnt. Everyone was fatigued from the long day on Saturday so we only stayed for about two hours on the beach on Sunday before heading home.
We started home, to Yokohama, at around 2:00 because Sunday is "Umi no Hi" or Day of the Sea. There were fireworks scheduled for around 7:30 and it is only supposed to take about 3 hours by car to get home. Needless to say everyone had the bright idea to get home for the fireworks so it took us about 7 and a half hours to drive all the way back. It wasn't all bad though. We managed to find a good spot on the highway where we could see the finale of the fireworks so we pulled over and watched. Overall it was a fun week and I'm sure I'll be heading back to Shimoda later in the summer. Keep those comments coming and thanks for reading my tome of a post.
"What? Where? Why?!" These are some questions you may be asking yourself as you see this picture. The where is that it is a picture painted on a protective screen pulled down in front of a streetside vendor. I found it while walking out of Yamate station; another station very close to my house. "But why?" you ask. Let me tell you that I asked myself the same question and, after much consideration, I have a few theories. I wondered, could it be a misplaced reference to the popular Beatles song "Hello Goodbye?" Maybe there is an identical bird somewhere else in Japan cawing "Hey Jude." We'll never know. 
