Nothing Jolli about this one! #Japan

Thanks to Okada-san for the photo!

On one hand, I love Atsugi because there's a lot of nature here. It's a "suburb of Tokyo," after all; i.e. it's far from being a mostly-concrete jungle. Lots of trees, not so much wide roads and consequently, not so much cars. And consequently, not so much pollution. Lots of fresh air. Plenty of stars are always visible and bright when it's a clear night sky. At Downtown Atsugi (Hon-Atsugi), there's enough variety of stores and restaurants and pubs/bars and entertainment if you're missing the city life. But even there, the buildings aren't even 10 floors high.

On the other hand, there really are plenty of bugs here. You know it's summer when they start to appear. Yes, mosquitoes, cockroaches, cicadas (which they call semi here), bees, flies, ants, spiders. Bats even. Well, spiders are probably around the whole year round. But anyways. Here's a bug that is really huge; its body is about 2 inches long. And it was hanging out just outside the restroom (toilet) doors on our floor. My friend took this photo about 2 meters away with a zoom lens. Meanwhile, I just use the restroom on the next floor. Around this time, people here are encouraged not to use air-conditioning, and so instead, we leave doors and windows open for natural ventilation. I only hope it doesn't fly to our office room!

There is nothing Jolli about this one.

Busy?

Nothing much interesting happened this Tuesday...  Except for the attack of the small green flying bugs!

Anyways, I had my tinolang manok for lunch and adobo for dinner.  The tinola was better, tastier than the nilagang baboy I had yesterday, but it's just not the same old tinola from back home, which has green papaya and sili leaves.  But, it's not bad.  I still love it.  Better than nothing, definitely.  Thank you, Lord.  Now, the adobo is better than my previous one - less vinegar.  But actually it doesn't look at all like adobo because I think I put too much tomatoes.  My mom says to put two tomatoes so I did just that but I think tomatoes here are larger than the usual tomatoes back home.  One other difference from this version to the last is this time, I used liempo, or pork belly.  Actually when I bought it, it was one big piece and I had to cut it up and it was the first time I ever cut up meat!  Anyways, one other thing with liempo is that the fatty parts are intertwined with the meaty parts, so it was a little difficult to separate them (because I usually don't eat the fatty parts).  But I really loved my adobo.  Went well with my fresh greens and tomatoes salad - no need for bacon bits or dressing.  The adobo sauce was more than a sufficient alternative.

Anyways, those small, green flying bugs - they were all over the place, on the 3rd floor of our building where we students have our offices.  When I looked out the floor-to-ceiling glass window in the evening, I thought they were rain drops.  Can you imagine rain drops on your glass window?  They're that small, and that plenty.  Well they are generally just there but a few, maybe 10%, are able to fly into our corridor and occassionally when someone opens our room door, into our work area!  Anyways, it felt like something big and bad was coming that's why these bugs are retreating here.  Apparently...  Rain was coming.  Not so bad.

All these different bugs you can find here, they all are bugging me; I don't like them.  But I guess they are harmless; I haven't had any bites or illnesses or what.  But whenever I see one I try to send them to heaven right away, especially what looks like a mosquito.  I'm most afraid of mosquitos because of their potential to carry diseases like dengue!