Japan goes well and I've found some US Internet here on a military base nearby. My mom is off buying pizza for my aunt and Popeye's Chicken for me, so I have a bit of time.

I'm having a great time with my family. My aunts have been teaching me more proper green tea preparation as well as curry-cooking technique. In between has been several visits to 100 yen shops as well as a bus tour of Nagasaki.

The layout of Sasebo is reminiscent of a European town with twisty, tiny roads in the center, though most of the buildings here are less than 50 years old. The outer perimeter of the city appears to be a fortress conglomerate of giant pachinko parlors. The inside of those parlors sound like a waterfall, but substitute little metal balls for water and add a bunch of Vegas blinging noises. Five minutes was enough to make my ears ring.

The culture here has plenty of American influence -- the city's most famous food export is the Sasebo Burger and they've added a Starbucks and Seattle's Best Coffee since I last visited. I'm still not used to seeing teenagers dressed like rappers and grunge rockers.

I just purchased some t-shirts that I wanted to share with you:

Solution
Fraud Tradition
Mount Sedge the Cobalt Blue Beard
Explicate
disunion verbal

Usally Stomack as crunches are as appealing to you as pop quizzes
But not anymore.
This year you would-be couch potatoes are posed to become
very buff spuds.

As wonderful as these t-shirts are, I think the strangest thing is seeing how popular marijuana leaf (hemp) air fresheners are. It was a bit weird seeing them for sale in a kids store next to Minnie Mouse, but even weirder was seeing a Buddhist monk driving around with a marijuana leaf logo hanging from his rearview mirror.

That's all for now.