So, i got some ninja socks the other day. They are strange but cool. I have finally realized my childhood dream of becoming a ninja turtle. The socks have the big toe separated from the little toe, which is cool, because my foot looks like a deer hoof when i have them on. Not only that, but i can make the peace sign when i take off my shoes. There are matching pairs of ninja shoes that i would dearly love to be able to wear, but they only make the damn things in tiny (relatively) shoe sizes. I'm gonna have to find a ninja footwear shop/big and tall store. Japanese men like to wear these things both out in the field when farming and also when they go snooping around in the woods mushroom hunting. It's a popular pasttime here, the mushroom hunting. Now is apparently the season for it and groups of about 5 men will go tromping through the woods in their ninja getup to sneak up on the wily matsutake mushroom which is nearly as expensive as the european truffle. I saw some in the store the other day and it was like 12000 yen for 3 medium sized nubs of mushroom. Apparently this is kind of a bad year for the wild mushrooms, however and they have been very rare.

This brings me to a little aside:
Who was the sorry bastard who discovered which mushrooms were poisonous. Did troops of fungophiles just put whatever they found into their mouths until some of them dropped dead? "Hmm, well Yoshihara-san bit it, Kawasaki-san, Kobayashi-san, you guys alright? Sweet, put those ones that you ate on the good list." It just seems lika ballsy sort of proposition to be a mushroom taste-tester. But hey, this is the country that brought us mugu.