I've been away from lj for too long. I should probably do some retroactive posts, at least about my thoughts on Pirates of the Caribbean 3. The short version: I liked it a lot more than Dead Man's Chest, although Chow Yun Fat was underused. And a scene explaining a major plot point was cut out of the final version of the film, so the ending that the writers intended is only vaguely hinted at. Today I vacuumed, did laundry, and packed a box of books to send home, then went on long bike ride in the rural outskirts of Morioka. I'm sure that I confused a lot of farmers by randomly biking by them as they worked in their fields. I discovered a new temple and a new shrine in the course of my wanderings, and visited some places that I hadn't been to since last fall. I'd seen the shrine that I found today before from a car window, but I only stumbled on it today. The building had nothing special to recommend it, but it was on a hill and I got a great view of the surrounding countryside. The temple had a statue of Jizo-sama surrounded by statues of babies with had freakishly large heads. They looked more like bald nude midgets. I've also been rewatching some episodes of Sailor Moon S. I'd forgotten just how trippy it was, especially with the bizarre monsters created from everyday objects. And the lesbian subtext is extremely entertaining (They're really just cousins, though. Just like Achilles and Patrocles...). And Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune are as cool as I remember. It's amusing that the same Japanese voice actor does the voices of Sailor Uranus and Shinji from Evangelion.