cuddle my cuttle

niigata is a port city in the northern honshu region of japan. russians like to come here to buy used cars and bicycles. there are a number of russians staying in my hotel right now! they are tall!
today i went to the niigata city aqarium and had a delightful time paying penance for past wrongs. you see, the last time i went to an aqarium, it was the monterey bay aqarium. it was 2 days before i left to go to europe for a year, and i had a wonderful time, mostly becuase i made friends with some cute little cuttle fish. cuttle fish are really cool becuase they can change color and are smart, able to communicate with one another using their 4 tenticles. they are also the source of sepia, like all those nice sepia tone photographs. so, hanging out in the monterey bay aquarium, playing with the cuttle fish by signaling to them with my fingers was like this magical little goodbye to california and the untied states, and all other fun oriented times in the near future.
because, then i was in europe. on spring break, i went to venice with my then-boyfriend, a trip that turned disasterous for many reasons. firstly, the place where we stayed was inhabited by the horrible contiki travellers (if you've ever traveled, you have probably encountered the contiki tour to that destination- the age 18-35 let's-get-drunk-and-fuck-in-the-hostel bunch). then, i got feverishly sick, bedridden at said contiki inhabited camp site. then said boyfriend tried to leave me at said campsite while he went sightseeing (i pursuaded him agaist such a heinous betrayal). but then, the very worst, most traumatizing event of venizia 2004 was the ill foreboded trip to the glass making island of murano, where by horrible horrible mistake, we ordered cuttle fish for lunch.
then-bf, being the waste-not/guilt-ridden crusader, suggested that we eat the cuttle fish to do their sacrificed lives justice.
it was a bad bad trip. and to finish any bad trip properly, when we tried to develop our film in budapest, we recieved it back with no pictures, totally exposed, with the simple hungarian excuse, "rosz" ("bad!").
anyways, today i set things right again, here in niigata, where, again, i played with the cuttle fish and later saw them on a menu and Avoided ordering them!
the aquarium was awesome though. fist of all, did you know that sea lions actually sound like lions? (i mean, yeah, obviously, that's why they're called sea lions, but i guess i forgot or something?) there was this Huge sea lion that was 3 times the size of the others- the size of a hippo or something- and it would come out of the water, all massive, and jump up 7 feet onto a platform. i can't even really convey how amazingly gigantic this sea lion was, but i will say, i've seen alot of sea lions in my lifetime and this one will go down as Freakish.
there is something amazing about giant mamals that can swim: next i saw a dolphin show with these cute squealing dolphins that could do lots of tricks and jump really high. there's something better about seeing such shows with little wide eyed japanese babies squealing with joy by your side.
so niigata has turned out to have desirable offerings after all!