Japan Wanderings, Fractal Malls and Tex-Mex

It's the weekend!  It's actually a 3-day weekend here in Japan.  Monday is a national holiday - it's Coming of Age Day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_of_Age_Day).  Maybe we'll see some Kimonos!  Anyway, with the holiday it's been super busy at the park, with huge audiences full of little kids.  Little kids are my FAVORITE..  They clap and scream and get wide-eyed with terror and delight.  It's awesome, and gives me tons of energy.. which I need, since the show count's back up to 3 full length shows and one mini-show each, every day.

Sign in the mall in Sasebo featuring... FIRE PIXIE

Yesterday morning we ventured out to the mall in Sasebo, in search of a fabric store so I can do some costume repairs.  We found it eventually, with some help from our translator-friend Ayaka.  I swear, that mall is like a fractal.  It's a mile long, and the first couple times you walk through, you think that's it.  But when you go into one of the stores you realize that there are stores-within-stores-within-stores, with dead-end escalators and hidden video arcades and restaurants and pharmacies all repeated with precise, uncanny regularity.


Found the fabric at last (and I felt SO at home in the fabric store -- I absolutely love the universal kinship between crafters and sew-ers).  After that, we hunted down Mike's, a tex-mex restaurant that caters to the guys from the local American Navy Base.  At first we couldn't find it, but after a bit of wandering we decided to ask a "local" so we walked up to the whitest guys with the shortest hair we could find and sure enough, they led us right to it.

To give them credit, the one who'd been here a while tried hard to talk us into the Ramen joint across the street instead ("it's like, cup-o-noodles only WAY better!") but we persisted and relaxed with some delicious-but-not-quite-right chicken tacos with guacamole.  Heaven.

We've got another full day today but I'm not as exhausted halfway through the weekend as I was last weekend.  This bodes well.  It may be that the weather's a few degrees warmer this weekend, or it may be that we're toughening up, or maybe it's the big enthusiastic audiences..or it could possibly be the tacos.  Whatever, I'm feeling good today and looking forward to going to work (though I may spend the entire morning in the bath tub first).

Our Commute

Fire Sculpture at the Palace

Fan Dance at the Palace

Fingers at the end of the night.  You can tell we're working.