Umbrellas

When I was growing up in Worcester, umbrellas were for sissys. Cool kids didn't mind getting wet...more than that, it gave them something to bitch about. Plus, everybody had cars, all you had to do was run from your car to the mall, school, house, gas station...whatever.

After moving to NYC, sans car, I began to understand the benefits of umbrellas. Not that I liked them...although maybe nobody LIKES umbrellas.

These days, in Tokyo, I have 3 umbrellas: 1 at work, 1 at home, and 1 compact one for rainy season. The season consisting of a month+ of on & off again rain. Not a happy time for anyone in the city.

Here in Japan there is another type of umbrella: the summer UV parasol. I see them every sunny day. You would imagine that it is mostly popular with women of the elderly persuasion, but there you would be wrong. It is quite a mixed group, of course there are the older women, but you also see many many younger women with the summer umbrellas. Even my girl has one, and she is NOT old. She also just told me they are expensive!!!! (13,000YEN) Yikes!

Men in Japan never use the summer umbrellas...nor shall I.

Humor

Post #0001

So I was thinking that this might be harder than it looks.....and maybe not as fun. But I will try. I'm curious if my sense of humor....such as it is....will come thru on the wide wide wide. I mean, I'm not a comedian, but it seems people have a good time when they are around me. (And not ALL of them can be laughing at my shoes!!!!)

Humor in Real Life:

I was at a conference for work. Inevitably, there was a lunch break. Great! Too bad i now have to find a place to eat at the same times as 100 other people. Anyways, I located my one friend, but.....6 other people had located him as well. Nice guy that he is....he said we should all eat together. I almost went my own way....but I thought THAT would be childish. So they we 8 are eating lunch. Now my one friend knows I'm not a huge fan of people. But I'm doing my best to have a pleasant conversation with these people. Mostly that means me not talking. So, this being Japan, the conversation eventually turns to the small apartment issue. Now, at the time I was living in the postage sized room that most Tokyoites would be used to. But this one girl was saying that her apt was big, but cold. She was going on that it was so bad. And other people joined in debating the cold vs. small apt issue. I just said, "I'd rather live in a big apt with my jacket on." Much laughter. I then proceeded to say nothing much the rest of my lunch. My friend later told me it was killer, not say anything, nail’em with a joke, and then disappear again.

Now, I’m just not sure how that kind of thing is going to translate to this site.

We shall see......