「紅葉」 or "It's fall. The trees are dying. Yay."

The Japanese celebrate the changing seasons like... well, like the Japanese celebrate the changing of the seasons. Partly, I think it's an excuse to party and generally make merry and, more importantly, imbibe some final alcohol before it's too damned cold to go buy beer. In any case, trees changing color is a Big Deal here. Photographers come out in troves, and festivals are had all around the city on every other day. If you imagine Leavenworth, but with 1.5 million people living in it, you have the right idea.

Anyway, I'm here, so I have to take pictures of the trees going into a coma or people look at me funny - er, funnier? I don't know.

Fine, it's an excuse to take pictures. Here's what I got today, whatever the reason.

This (above) was a place that looked nice and was on the way, so I stopped to take some test shots. It started raining just as I was finishing up, so I hurried to get packed up and move on.

Totally random trees. I photoshopped this one pretty hard, and I'm not so great with Photoshop, so there are quite a few artifacts, but if you look at it like this, it looks good enough.

Don't worry, I don't intend to put all the pictures up in this massively space-consuming fashion, but I spent a long time between taking these four and doing the post work, so they're getting the annoying treatment.

Random bridge where I took advantage of my waterproof boots to tromp around in a shallow river that runs through town and get this picture. Boots, boots. I didn't like the view from on the bridge is why, in case you're wondering.
I'm kind of kicking myself for not getting the left-side pillar, but it looks really weird if I crop out the right-side one, so...

This is one of places we've done parties, and it was my goal for heading out to the middle of nowhere. I saw some friends boating along, so I photosniped them and headed to where I thought they were going and helped pull them ashore and got to show off my super-cool waterproof boots. Muahaha. Danner boots: Mmm, mmm, good! No, seriously!

And now is time for yet another picture spam.
Really, there's not that much to be said for momiji ("crimson leaves") 'cause I think almost everyone in a temperate climate knows what fall looks like.
Random flower picture, because it was required. It's a shibazakura, which means someone thinks it looks like a cherry blossom. Kind of.

(Far left) Probably the prettiest single tree I saw, and it was a Japanese maple, which my mom seems to have some kind of fetish for, so, again, required.

Some more pictures taken while tromping around in the river. Dunno what the weed-ish things at the bottom arm, but they looked kind of wheat-y. The far right tree looks... like I need to leave the 9th grade.

Still tromping around in the not-quite-a-river, I found this random fish and about six of his buddies. I wasn't sure it was a real dead fish until I poked it with my shoe. It felt real enough. And no, I don't know why someone would scatter fake dead fish around. It's Japan; you never know.

Mun, the guy at the paddles, finally squinted at me in recognition, so I gave myself up and waved at them. They went and bought some random sweet wine and passed it around.
Some more people came, and we took a bunch of pictures, and my tripod got passed around like...

In any case, I need new similes.

Rain Suit

Here’s a picture of the rain suit until I can get someone to take a picture of me wearing it. Without a tripod, I can’t really do self-portraits, so I may invest in one at some point. Anybody got a decent one they want to donate? Carbon-fiber, maybe?

Yes, I’m kidding. Jeez, tough crowd. ね？

1. Yes, those are, in fact, suspenders. Coolest thing: they’re optional. You can take them off by unzipping them. Well, I think that’s cool.

2. They whole thing is rated to withstand… “5,000mm” of rain. I guess 5m is quite a bit of rain? I wanted it mostly so that I don’t have to old an umbrella to ride my bike, and so I can wander around without worshipping the god of umbrellas.
I don’t know why I don’t like them.

3. It’s pretty tough material. I mean, for something whose purpose is to be water-resistant. Figure… Maybe a medium-weight plastic tarp.

4. Yes, it has pockets.

a. Yes, it has enough for me.

i. Yes, that’s weird.

5. Pretty much all the openings have elastic control points that allow you to tighten them as you want.

6. The main closure on the jacket is a zipper, which is covered by a flap that has hook-and-loop towards the waist and buttons up top for better control.

7. There’s a D-ring on the bag for god-only-knows. I bought it from a fishing supply store. You never know with those guys.

If there are any other questions, go ahead and leave them in the comments and I’ll try and check tomorrow or soon. I’m too tired to think time. おやすみ。(Good night [informal])

Edit: It looks like I forgot to actually put the pictures in. The first is the massive bag that I got it in, which is about 50% bigger in every dimension than the basket on my bike. That was fun.
Also, I swear it's green. It's a nice OD green, but here it shows up grey. Go figure.

Raincoat vs. Rain "suit"

So it rains a lot here. Like, a lot a lot. Lot here should be spelled OMGRAIN, but I've left it as-is for clarity.

Anyway.

Because of the OMGRAIN that it rains here, I've been thinking about buying a raincoat. I waterproofed both my jackets and all three of my hats before I left, but that hasn't been enough, as the rain does eventually get through and neglected to waterproof my pants.

Again, no jokes please.

I understand that my options are as follows:

• $1 raincoat from the 百円 shop (dollar store)
• $40 two-piece rain suit consisting of full-length pants and a jacket.
• $70 version of the above, with better seamwork, more pockets, a better-constructed hood, and OMGREEN*. Oh, and it looks much better on me. And, for some reason, zips into a lifejacket, if you want it to.
  
• Hell, they're only $30, and you never know when your apartment might flood due to OMGRAIN rain.
  

Comments would be appreciated here, as I'm in a bit of a quandary at this point.
OMGREEN is a special color. It is defined as "Green enough that I like it, and on something cool".

I'm currently leaning towards the green one, if you can't tell.
Again, comments please!

Rain, Rain

It is raining here. I'm not kidding or exaggerating at all. Those of you that know me know that my definition of rain does not include drizzling, sprinkling, and other imitations. This is rain. I'm sitting six feet away from where it's fall and I'm still getting wet.

And it's coming straight down.

Despite that, I can see my little sprinklets of water on my laptop's screen.
It was raining decently last night, as well, and I'm sitting right next to where I was then. But last night, I made a rather moist error. See, apparently, where I had sat down was right next to the mouth of a gutter. When I sat down the ground was dry. When I put my hand on the ground to get up, there was a splash and I realized I was sitting in a puddle about half an inch deep. I don't have my camera, but suffice to say that there's a constant quarter-inch of water over all of th ground.