Gifu and gadgets

This weekend was move-in weekend for my partner, now officially an ALT in Gifu with a rival company. I had a mild case of apartment envy (hers has a loft--a loft!) which very soon developed into a case of department store envy. While the last thing I need in my life is more stuff and less money, I really enjoy looking. It's a weird but fairly wallet-friendly quirk I have: I like to look at colorful or pretty displays but can't bring myself to buy any one thing from said display because it won't look as good alone. Catch and release shopping. The pens stay in their natural rainbow habitat. Anyway, there are lots of nice places with nice displays for me not to buy things from in Gifu.

It's also a really beautiful city, though different from what most people think of when they think of pretty Japanese cities. Most of the architecture is new and pretty much all the temples and castles I saw were recently refurbished--very, very shiny and orange. A river runs through the city, and I learned that cormorant fishing is a nightly occurance, at least in the summer. Cormorant fishing has fascinated me for a long time and I really, really want to see it. The city is also punctuated by rugged, forested mountains. It looks like a brush painting, and I wish I could go back in time and see what Gifu was like before it was bombed, or even before the Meiji Restoration. (It's not necessarily a well known fact, but a fair number of castles and old buildings were torn down in smaller cities throughout Japan during the Meji Restoration--the 100 year old high school I work at stands on the ruins of Toshie Maeda's castle.) Also, Gifu has bamboo forests. They are awesome.

Seeing Erin meant learning all manner of new things about my fancy cell phone. The nice front display panel I thought was just a clock? It's really a touch screen. With a features menu that includes a compass. There is a feature that allows me to scan receipts for monthly budgeting. There is a feature that scans kanji and finds them in a dictionary. There are at least five different menus. The camera has more options than my digital camera, including editing software that will give the photo subject bigger eyes, a smaller face, or fairer skin. (Yes, this is problematic.) There are enough widgets to make the app store gawk and blush. I'm a little terrified of what I'll find next.

Generally, I've found that everything I've wanted to organize by hand in the US, a machine in Japan will do for me. Budgeting? My phone scans receipts and the ATM prints my balance and transaction record in a little book every time I visit. Keeping organized? The calendar on my phone can pretty much go to all the events for me. I have no doubt that the phone secretly laughs at me as I try to figure out interprefectural train schedules.