Shimanesque 1

"Rain, huh?"

"Yep. It's coming down pretty hard, too."

"I hate the weather here. It's depressing."

"C'mon, it's not that bad, really. Besides, I like to think of it as welcoming me back."

The trip back to Shimane this time was different than the last time I went back. First off, only two months had passed. Second, I hadn't planned on making a trip back during Spring Break because things were going to be really busy here at Starfish High. Third, the last trip back really forced me to accept that I was living and working in Muroran and that was the way things are going to be for a while.

So on Monday the 20th, I drove to school, attended the End of the Year Ceremony, helped with some cleaning, finished up some last-minute fine-tuning with grades, and then hopped in my car and headed for New Chitose Airport.

I flew to Tokyo on a Pikachu Plane. I kid you not.

My Pikachu Pokemon Plane.

A wide shot of the same plane.

After arriving at Haneda, I transferred to my plane to Yonago and flew on in. I arrived at Yonago Airport at about 7:30, and my friend Mr. Nishikori came and picked me up. Before heading back to his place in Hirose, I asked him to make a stop over at the Yonago Cosmo, the CD shop where the majority of my ALT salary was spent during my three years in Hakuta.

Why stop there? Well, I still have friends who work there that I wanted to see, and...

I wanted to see this.
The Johnny Cash display in all it's glory.

Shiba did an amazing job of putting this together. I can't praise her enough. It's beautiful. It has the CDs that I recommended. It has the Mark Romanek DVD collection with the "Hurt" video. It has a live video of a concert in Toronto in 1994. It just looks amazing. The only complaint, and this is nitpicking, I realize, is that the display is in a hard-to-find location in the store. I can understand why it's where it is, but I think there would be some more sales if it was somewhere else. Even so, according to Shiba, there have been a few sales of CDs, and a lot of people have stopped and read through the whole display. Awesome.

Nekko (she works in the DVD section), Shiba (who made the display), and I.

My comments on "Walk The Line", in the same form that I sent them. I wasn't able to bring my thoughts together into a coherent essay, but Shiba used them all the same, and put together a nice little display card. Notice the "Great Thanks DK!!!" on the bottom right hand side?

Shiba, you rock in many ways, shapes, and forms!

After taking some pictures and saying goodbye, Mr. Nishikori and I headed out to his house, where I had a big (if somewhat late) dinner with him and his family. Good times, plus I got to watch some of the Academy Awards ceremony from this year (hosted by Jon Stewart...yay!) But I was pretty tired, and so was everyone else, so I hit the sack pretty early.