Hot stuff

Forgot to write about one interesting experience in my previous entry...

We went to a park here in Kyoto and they had a lot of booths along the paths that were selling souvenirs and food and stuff. I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a kebab stand. Kebab here in Kyoto. Simply amazing. Of course I had to try one. The guy selling them was from Iran and he made some small talk and gave me a little bit more than is usual because us non-Japanese folk need more food since we are bigger. Nice guy. He asked me if I liked strong food and I said yes. If I would have said no, then I wouldn't be writing this. He said he would give me one drop of a sauce he had, called 'Sudden Death'. ... The name is pretty much a dead giveaway, but I decided I'd go for it. I saw where he had put the drop in one corner of the kebab and I decided to try the kebab first and then go for that sauce spot later. I was talking with the people in my group and took a bite, forgetting what I was going to do. I chewed a little, then looked down and noticed that little red spot in the kebab was gone. About 0.5 seconds later my eyes started watering, I felt I was choking, I couldn't talk and I started coughing. What is more, I got an instant hickup. I never get hickups. It was weird as hell how the body responded to that. Fun stuff.

What I can't really percieve is that this sauce is only 100.000 Scoville units... The strongest tasting sauces on the market go up to 16 MILLION units... Crazy.

Og svo á íslensku. Tjekkið á þessu! http://web2.toto.is/fritest/afr/keppendur/kep19844.htm

Ekki bjóst ég við að þessum upplýsingum væri haldið til haga. Í þessu hlaupi var Daði í 2. sæti á eftir einhverjum gaur sem reyndi svo mikið á sig að hann fór að æla. Props go out to that guy.

Vitlaust heimilisfang þarna í þessum upplýsingum en vá, að þetta sé ennþá til einhversstaðar finnst mér nokkuð magnað.

Iceland sucks and you know it

Daði and Steini visited Japan from the 18th of March to the 26th and they decided to say hello to me too. They managed to get themselves on their own from Tokyo Narita airport to Kyoto station where I greeted them. Nice job, guys. We had lots of fun for those 8 days. 5 nights they spent in a hotel in Kyoto and 3 in a love hotel in Tokyo. OK... it wasn't a love hotel. We managed to get some things done during that period, like visiting monkeys, seeing some Kyoto sights, going to Hiroshima, watching live Sumo down in Osaka and last but not least.. getting drunk in Tokyo.
There are some pictures up of this, but Daði and Steini have all the interesting pictures and the bastards still haven't sent me any...

Watching Sumo from the stands was pretty muthabuttfucking cool. Sumo is actually a pretty awsome sport to watch, if you know the rules, which aren't that many. Basically only 2 rules actually. Don't touch the inside of the ring with anything but the soles of your feet or you lose. Don't touch the ground outside of the ring or you lose. Pretty basic, but damn interesting to see the explosive power those guys have. What is most interesting to see is how they are willing to sacrifice themselves when the result of the match is going to be about even, for example in cases where they both tumble out of the ring at once. Watching those 150+ kg guys almost hang in mid air while waiting for the other one to touch the ground outside of the ring first. Amazing stuff.
Have put up some pictures of that too.

D & S were pretty unlucky with the currency exchange thingy... While they were here, the Króna/Yen ratio had never been worse. One Króna was about 0.8 yen during that time. Now it has gone back down to about 0.7I remember back in October/November when the Króna was 0.5 Yen. Doing a little calculation, then for me, in the end of March, everything cost 60% more than it did back then. Buttfuckingshit that is. Still cheaper than that good for nothing island in the North-Atlantic. I don't want to return.

After D & S's visit, there was a 5 day interval and then we headed for sunny Okinawa! Or we thought we were heading for sunny Okinawa. Actually the first day was good, then it rained and was cloudy and finally the last day was good. Okinawa just took us in every hole without any lubricants. It hurt. But the stay there wasn't bad at all, only the weather was teasing us. We managed to do stuffs and have fun. We stayed in Naha, the capital, for 3 nights and then in Chatan, a town little to the north of Naha, for 2 nights. If I was to go there again however, I would do things a little differently. Apparently the best beaches are not on the main island and so you have to take either a boat or another plane to get to those places. There are a lot of little islands down there... I won't bitch and moan about this trip, it was fun, despite the weather not being ideal.
You know where to find the pictures.

Sakura, or 'Cherry Blossoms', are a huge deal in Japan. Those are trees that bloom in late March, early April. They are very beautiful, I give them that, with their white, pinkish flowers. When we got back from Okinawa, they had mostly done their thing in Kyoto, but we managed to reach the end of it. We took a stroll down the 'Philosopher's Path' and you can see some pictures from that trip in the picture gallery.

And today I had my first haircut since I got here. First haircut in about 6-7 months. It had gotten a bit out of hand...

So, that was a short summary of what I have been doing for the past month or so. School has already started again and the first week is already over. Nothing on the agenda for the next 4 months except for school. I should be back home (*sigh*...) in late August.