Swimming in goodness

It has been raining literally without stop here for at least the last 36 hours. In fact, it's all starting to blur together...I can't even remember when it started! Oye!

Today I went swimming with the school's swimming team. Foolishly, I asked everyone I could find whether or not the swim team practiced in the rain. The answer--a lot of strange stares and "Yes" answers. Hmmm. I guess the rain would have little effect on swimmers, now wouldn't it?

The coach is an extremely cool individual named Mr. Itoi. He is quite possibly the most athletic-looking person I've ever met. He competed for Japan in the Olympics in swimming a few years ago, and now he is a teacher at the school. After my first couple laps, he came over and complimented my swimming style, even saying that--gasp!--it reminded him of Michael Phelps, the American swimming phenom. Naturally, that felt pretty good.

After that, however, was 150 meters of pure kicking. My feet and legs must have been defective, because even the girls were outpacing me 2-to-1. I looked like a limp dog swimming upstream with its paws tied together. It was embarassing. After that, I just decided to hang out in the unused side and just 'do my own thing' while the real athletes honed their swimming prowess. But hey! No shower required tonight!

Also, in a completely unrelated note, a couple days ago I had possibly my most satisfying linguistic moment thus far. At 10:30pm, I got a hankering for a MOS Burger (the local hamburger chain...pretty good actually), and knew that I had to have one. I managed to successfully navigate through the Japanese website, type in my city's name in Chinese characters to find the hours of operation, as well as locate a diagram of the hamburger I wanted, complete with ingredient list. From there, I translated the ingredients, taking note of which ones I did NOT want (still quite picky when it comes to my burgers). I biked down to MOS Burger, ordered with quasi-proficiency, and enjoyed a hamburger just the way I wanted it. I was even able to answer when she asked me if I wanted it for here or to go--a question that has stumbled me many times.

It was sublime.


For your reference, here is a photo of the delicious MOS Burger (literally "Mountain, Ocean, Sun"). It's a little pricey, and a little small, but man is it good.