No Mini Skirts in Japan

Today I was walking to the International Square, which is where I have been using the internet for the past few days, since it takes about a month to get it installed in this country... anyway, I was walking, and this man, maybe 55 years of age says, `hey, mini skirt, blah blah blah (in japanese)`. Of course i have no idea what he actually said after `mini skirt,` as my Japanese, i have found out, is terrible. About two days ago, another similarly-aged man, possibly the same man, said `gaijin desu ka?` (are you a foreigner?), i smiled and nodded, which was followed by `iya da ne` (thats bullshit, isnt it?) or some equivalent insult. Now, my main problem is not that these men might be insulting me, but rather that I dont know if they are, or if theyre merely catcalling, or just babbling incoherantly as a result of the alsheimers disease that must be overtaking this city, where there are more people with canes than without. I only wish my Japanese was better (or functional at all), so I could engage in conversations with these men.

So far I am not homesick, but there are some things about America I miss, like good old garbage cans on the street. Hell, I`d even settle for normal garbage disposal in my apartment. But instead, there are no garbage cans anywhere. There are soda vending machines every 50 feet or so (excuse me, that should be in kilometers), but nowhere to throw them away. At home, I have to buy these specially designated trash bags from the Mirin Drug Store downstairs, which force me to separate my trash into burnable and non-burnable. What that means, I`m not sure. All I know is that my house smells faintly of fried octopus, because I threw away an entire plate of them into my burnable trash bag after biting into one and realizing what it was. Being a good gaijin, I was trying to be adventurous with my dinner choice a few days ago.　So instead of reaching for the steamed gyoza dumplings at the grocery store, I grabbed the unidentifiable round fried puff things. Anything is good when its fried, right? I knew as soon as I bit into it that something was wrong. Using my tongue, I sort of rolled it around my mouth, and then I felt the sucker. I spit it out, and sure enough, it was a tentacle. Yeah, that`ll kill the apetite quick.