Anyway, I just thought I'd throw out a few spring thoughts.......
Tollbooth Chicken
Sounds like a cost effective way of manning the tollbooths, but the "chicken" I'm referring to is the game to see who chickens out first. Who are the players?? Drivers and the tollbooth gates.
Japan has an extensive highway network to go with their expansive rail network. The roads are rather well maintained and well laided out, which makes high speed cruising rather easy. However, the highway networks require tolls and they can add up. A car trip from my town to Tokyo costs over $10CDN each way.
Luckily, you can get toll passes that you put under your dashboard so, when you drive up to a booth, the toll is automatically charged to your bank account or credit card, and you can go on your way.
Signs say you should approach the toll gate at 20kmh just in case it doesn't lift in time and you smash into it. But some people do twice that speed and seem to have full trust in the system to get out of the way before smashing in their windshield.......... freaky.......
I personally like the idea of slowing down................ because you can then blast all the way back up to highway speed as you come out of the tollbooth........ yeah!.....
........... if only I had a car......... then, yeah!........
Cheery Cherry Blossoms
No doubt some of you might know Japan is well known for it's cherry blossoms (sakura) trees. They even have what's called a "hanami" (hana being flower, mi being miru or look) which is basically a little party/picnic where people go to parks and sit under the sakura trees and..... do picnic-y things..... drink, mostly haha......
If I'm honest, I never understood what the big deal was. I mean, Vancouver has cherry blossoms and while I do think they look nice, I never gave them much though. They were just...... there......
Looking at the trees here, I've noticed a couple different things.......
First off, the weather is different. Vancouver's drizzle tends to weigh the cherry blossoms down. Or cause them to fall and stick to my car, which of course I had to hose off heh....... Here in Japan, it rains less so the trees look flufflier somehow.......
The other thing is the mindset. When everyone's harping about how beautiful they are, you tend to take a few extra seconds to look and realise, they are rather nice. It's just I never gave them much more of a passing glance in Vancouver and, thinking back, I do think that in the right day, Vancouver cherry blossoms are just as nice.......
I took this picture by the river that runs behind my house. There are parks around with rows and rows of well maintained cherry blossoms and they're really nice. Too bad they only last, like, two weeks.........
Oh yeah...
One more thing I'd like to add........ I've been stocking up my desk at work and I realised that the key to looking productive is to never to have a brand new eraser. An unused eraser is the rubberized equivalent of never having done any work.
So, even if you buy an eraser, spend a few minutes at home erasing so when people see it lying around on your desk at work, they'll think, "Wow, that guy must be working hard....... look how much erasing he's done......." =)
5 comments:
A used eraser could also intidate how bad you are at your job.. ie. how many mistakes you've made...
True haha........ but then, if all the mistakes are correct, then it's all good, no?? hehe =P
oops........ "all the mistakes are correctED"....
I just realised the irony of this second comment haha..... oh well..... =P
when wil and i were driving on the highways in the states - they have a million toll booths as well.
you could either have a pass stuck on your windshield - which is prepaid - or you stop and pay cash... the prepaid lanes - you can just drive right through. a sign will light up when your pass gets accepted - and you just drive - there isn't a gate that comes down. i think if you try to blow past without paying - there's an alarm that will sound, and the cop stationed on the other side will pull you over right away. but yes, downshifting to 2nd gear, slowing down for the toll, then redlining it as you accelerate is fun!!
If you're trying to run a tollbooth, why would you stop just because there's a cop on the other side?? Wouldn't just blasting though at full speed mean the cop can't chase you quickly enough anyway?? haha.......
Although I suppose those half-width gates the Japanese use aren't going to do more than crack the windshield so it doesn't make THAT much of a difference heh....
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