Buggin' out!

I had another fun weekend with a couple of my friends. We had planned to go to a sumo tournament on Monday, but since we had to be in line for tickets at 7 am and didn't actually go to sleep until 5:30 am the same day, we decided that sumo could wait until next weekend. It should be a really cool experience and I'm really excited for when we do go. I have actually met a sumo wrestler since coming here, but you will never guess where he's from... Ireland! Crazy right? He is a co-worker of Jenn's and is a teacher for the same company as us, but he does sumo during his time off and competes in amateur tournaments. He is so committed to sumo that he purposely gained weight for the sport, I think that's sort of impressive.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that guy's not the only one who's gained weight... I haven't bought a scale since coming here, so I don't know for sure, but I just have a feeling. I thought I'd be eating much healthier in Japan, but I didn't consider the fact that while a large percentage of the Japanese diet is fish, an even larger percentage is carbs! There's rice or noodles in just about every dish you eat and then there are also the ever tempting bakeries... I try to resist the urge, but I really have very little self control. Granted, I do walk about a mile to work and then another mile back everyday, so that might balance it off a bit, but still I am conscious of the fact that I need to exercise more. One good thing is that based on my current budget and a slightly higher cell phone bill than expected, I have started paying attention to how much money I spend on food, or in other words, I have started spending less money on food. I try to buy the cheapest foods available at the store, and salad is pretty darn cheap. Today during lunch, however, I was slightly traumatized by my salad eating experience because there was a lady bug crawling around in my lettuce. EWWW! I didn't feel like going to the trouble to figure out how to say in Japanese that I wanted a refund for my insect infested salad, so instead I've decided to start my own personal boycott of that particular grocery store. Luckily, there is a higher quality store literally next door to the nasty one, so it's not really a problem for me.

That's about the most excitement I've had so far this week (my week starts on Tuesday), but I'm sure something else random and crazy will happen very soon. I will be sure to keep you posted.