Sand, rummage, and shoes

Sorry this blog entry is late again.

Last week was Golden Week here in Japan, so I had a five day weekend due to many national holidays that were bunched up together. Many (and by "many", I mean "most") ALTs traveled, but (as I mentioned in the last entry) I pretty much stayed home.

I was kind of glad I made no particular plans because I was sick for about half of it. I got better in time to drive down South a bit to see the ocean and go to the Sand and Flower festival. The flower aspect of the festival wasn't that impressive in my opinion, but the sand sculptures were pretty amazing.

I'll update my album with pictures from that. Sorry, I've been kind of slacking when it comes to uploading pictures lately. I'll force myself to catch up... uhh... soon!

Today I went to a rummage sale in Kagoshima city. It was a lot bigger of an event than I expected. There were maybe 100 booths or so. I was hoping to buy a full length mirror, but sadly all of the ones there weren't for sale (not that I asked every single booth that had one). Anyway, I was pretty excited about this rummage sale because I hadn't been to (or seen) one since I moved to Japan.

So one thing about lately is what aspects of my Japan life I plan to keep up after returning back to the US. An example of this being taking off my shoes when I enter my apartment.

A couple times semi-recently when people have decided that one or two steps into the apartment wearing shoes shouldn't make a difference, I found later that I could see EXACTLY where the shoes touched the floor. I realized then that it really DOES make a huge difference in how much dirt is brought into the house.

The thing is, though, people who ask folks to take off their shoes in the US are sort of considered to be (for a lack of a better word) anal. I don't want to be viewed quite like that, but I also feel like a "no shoes" rule makes lots of sense.

I think I'm going feel torn on quite a few things when I move back to the US.