Yet another mall.

 

This was my ride out this morning.  Tami mentioned a third, larger mall that was a bit far to ride to.  I don't know if Aeon Mall was it, but I rode there.  You can see it's about 6 km (3.7 mi) from campus.  It is larger than either Fuji Grand or Youme Town, but I don't know that it was really worth the trip.  

That is, aside from the fact that on the route there I passed a beer vending machine.  It was on the other side of a busy street, so I can't be completely sure that it did really sell beer.  I cam back by a more, shall we say, circuitous route (read that as I got lost and had to double back three times) which means I did not pass the machine a second time.  However, I promise I will go looking for it again.  If it was such a machine, I will buy beer from it and let you all know.  There are cigarette vending machines, and even though I don't smoke I'm tempted to buy some just to be able to say I did.  Not many 40 year old Americans can say they purchased cigarettes from a vending machine.  People in our parents' generation did, sure.  But we were too young and they were phased out by the time we were in middle school.

In any case, one thing Aeon Mall has going for it is the main entrance.  The white pipe structure is reminiscent of the hats worn by the Awa Odori dancers.

There were also many small playgrounds on the way there.  Every time I passed one I thought of the trip we took to Dublin when Jen studied abroad.  We did lots of neat things.  I mean a lot of neat things on that adventure.  But one of the most memorable was spending 30-40 minutes at a small playground while the boys acted like elementary school boys.  No matter what happens or what is going on, we all need to find time to be a child.

I suppose what I'm saying here is Aeon Mall today was like life for me.  It's about the journey and not the destination.  

I saw some interesting fashion pieces.  In one store that is kind of like a cross between American Eagle Outfitters and Abercrombie and Fitch (I know that's almost retail inbreeding, but go with it) I saw this shirt.

It is quintessentially Japanese "American street fashion."  Before you chuckle at the Satisfactory Store too much, remember we are not much better, what with our tribal tattoos, Chinese character shirts, and Native American appropriation.

I wandered through a bookstore.  Not because I need something to read.  I couldn't read anything I'd buy there anyway.  I'm looking for a map of the US to hang in the Exchange Professor's office.  I'll come back to that in a moment.  While I was looking, though, I happened upon this papercraft model and immediately thought of a friend from high school and college.  Mike, if you're reading this post I hope you are okay with me having this association.

Now, the reason I want a map is students here do not have any concept of how devoid of buildings the US is.  I talked about this in my Comparative Cultures class and showed them these pictures.

 The first is a map of SVSU's campus and the surrounding area.  The black outline is the border of our campus.  The second is an overlay of the first on top of Shikoku University's campus and surrounding area at the same scale.  The students here know the boundary of their campus pretty well.  For those not so familiar, here it is.

The red is Shikoku University's campus.  They were shocked at how much land SVSU has.  I pointed out that if we shift things a little so the buildings overlap better, both Donki and Fuji Grand would be on SVSU's campus.  Not to mention all of the things in between.  They were even more surprised at the utter emptiness of the surrounding area.

While I was riding home I had a thought for my Intercultural Communication class.  We have a lot of color-based sayings in English.  Feeling blue.  Green around the gills.  Seeing red.  I think I'll give them an in-class project to interpret these sayings (and others) and see if they have near equivalent ones in Japanese.  Not necessarily based on color, but colloquialisms that native speakers understand and foreigners scratch their heads at.  Some, though, make sense in any language.

[Profanity warning.]

Apparently in Russian there's a saying about people who choose the most difficult way to do anything.  I've been told it translates as "picking peaches by banging your dick against the tree."  This is one that is not lost in translation in any way, shape, or form.

[Profanity over.]

I think the color ones are more strongly culture dependent.  Even there we have contradictory meanings.  Just think about a blue-blood feeling blue.

Enough of that.  Tomorrow Mark is taking me to Mt. Tsurugi.  It's almost 2,000 m high, and it's the highest point on Shikoku Island.  A few students will go with us as well.  It will take about 2 hours by car to get there, so we are leaving around 8:30-9:00 with a plan to eat lunch at the top.  I'll give you three guesses as to what my next post will be about, and the first two don't count.