It is the rainy season here. Definitely rainy. It usually pours for at least 2 hours a day, then drizzles. If it's not raining it is insanely humid. I can't get my clothes to dry and the paper that I leave out on the table starts wilting. I played frisbee in the rain for 6 hours on Saturday and my shoes haven't even started to dry. The shoestrings are still dripping! Ridiculous.

The most common kind of toilet in Japan is the Japanese-style squat toilet. However, with the large number of foreign tourists coming to this country, major stores and businesses have installed Western style toilets too. The department stores have almost exclusively converted. While using one of these restrooms the other day, I noticed a button on the wall that I had failed to see before. On reading the sign I couldn't decide whether it's use was ridiculous or thoughtful: If you push the button there emits a noise which sounds like the toilet is flushing, for those moments when you might be embarressed to have other people hear your toilet usage. This is possibly an example of the supposed excess politeness of the Japanese.

A quick summary of the last half of May:
*My mom came to visit me for a week. I took her to most of the famous places in Kyoto. This involved lots of walking and biking, which she wasn't too happy about, but I think I forced enough Japanese culture on her to make at least a decent impression.
*My friend Anna came to stay and we had a lovely little party in my apartment.
*The school took a field trip to Hiroshima, the city where the US dropped an atomic bomb. We went to the Peace Museum and the A-Bomb Dome, one of the only buildings remaining after the blast. Afterwards, we went to Miyajima, an island off of the coast. There is a really beautiful torii (Shinto shrine entrance gate) in the water. We stayed at a really nice ryokan (Japanese style inn) and enjoyed the pleasures of walking around in yukata (light kimono), and eating wonderful fancy Japanese food.
*I went camping in the middle of Shikoku during a typhoon. I walked across a few vine bridges, hiked in the mountains, and camped next to a roaring river. It was nice to get out of the city for awhile.
*Anna and I spent her last night in Japan at a club in Osaka. Shou creams, dancing all night long, curry for breakfast, and sleeping on the train are just a few highlights.
*Last night we went to Takigi Noh (torchlight Noh theatre) which is outdoors at the Heian Shrine. It was 4.5 hours long, the first half being okay, the middle boring, but the last two plays were the best. One was a comedy about demon mushrooms (a comedy), and one about a demon spider. The last one was cool because the spider actually threw out webs from his fingers. By the time the play was over there were "spider webs" covering the whole cast and the entire stage.