Journal lingqi's Journal: September 24th, 2003 7

September 24th, 2003 (6:24pm)

It seems to me that Japan has, over the span of this four days that I was gone, turned from summer to autumn...

When I left, it was about 30 degrees outside; the glaring sun beating down on you with rays that does not match the calibur of mid-august (well, not this year, but any other reasonable year), but still quite potent at precipitating a state of perspiration. However, this two days it is about 15 degrees and the sun is nowhere to be seen. At merely 5:45 (pm) the sky is navy, and only half hour more nothing but a starless pitch remains...

Interesting tidbits:

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I have a pretty neat flashlight, Inova X5 (5 very bright LEDs for bulbs - a hefty 40-50USD pricetag), and I carry it around all the time. Every single time at the security checkpoints in the airports, they'd ask what it was - and this time from China it was no exception.

I did my usual routine and turned on the flashlight, and as usual (for fun) I shined it into the inspector guy's eyes (it's surprisingly bright for some LEDs).

The inspector flinched, and said in a an annoyed but partly whiny voice (translated from chinese) "well you don't have to shine them into my eyes, you know" and took it for further inspection.

Before I know it, he was calling to to a lady-inspector on the other side of the metal detector "hey -_-_-, look over here!" and shining the light into her eyes with a gratified smirk...

heh; some people never grows up.

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I also ordered a pizza yesterday because a pizza-la advertisement was stuck into my mailbox, and I really had no urge to drive out somewhere to sit alone and eat.

3,400 yen for a "large" pizza (36cm diameter), plus 430 yen for a thing of limited-time clam chowder; plus taxes; plus a free ham-taro based bowl thingy for free.

After studying in detail the menu, I called them up and gave the usual information (I was surprised that my japanese sufficed), and when I asked about the amount of time it would take for the delivery, I was told nonchalantly it would be 60-90 minutes (!!!). I have never missed the "30-minute delivery guarantee" from Domino's...

With everything said and done, 4,020 yen and 75 minutes later, the delivery-man knocked on my door (well, actually he called me first because they had my room-number incorrect). Extra-polite as usual, he showed me and asked me to verify the free bowl was the one I wanted (actually, of course, I couldn't care less which one it really was), and showed me a nicely packaged pizza and a box with what I assumed was clam chowder.

Maybe it's me, but he seemed to be confounded that I was the only one who would be eating this pizza (and chowder).

Anyway - it was a half+half seafood (no, really) and meat pizza. I suppose it's just as well, because for such a high price I think it would be terrible if we were limited to one topping arrangement. While it was a very good pizza, I think something similar* would have costed at most 18-20 dollars in the US...

*well, in the US I'd never find a seafood pizza with shrimp and squid etc, so I guess I mean "with a similar wealth of toppings."

For a pizza that is supposed to satisfy "3-5 people," I finished half of it, and the clam chowder.

Actually, I don't think I should call it "clam chowder," because it was more like clam-pot-pie... I am not sure why it's called clam-chowder (or why it's so expensive), but I really wish that people here would be more clear on the distinctions here...

The only other thing that is worth mentioning is my horrid look when I discovered that my fridge does not fit a standard pizza-box! well, not without sacrificing a lot of the door-storage space anyway... Which, I thought, was weird - aren't fridges designed to fit pizzas, and drinks on the doors?