Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun.

[shikamachu]

Saturday, June 27.

Today was the day some of the students were taking us to Harajuku and Shibuya for some tourism-slash-shopping.

So I woke up all kinds of early today (although my alarm clock totally didn't go off, which was lovely) and sort of had trouble deciding what to wear (one of the things I wanted to wear with the other things I wanted to wear that day was in the wash, so I tried to substitute it, but like, there’s no mirror anywhere in the house, so I wasn’t sure. I went with it anyway only to find out later I shouldn’t have. I mean, it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t awesome.

I ate breakfast in a record-breaking five minutes (and considering that this breakfast the biggest one they’d given me, I was proud of myself ^___^) and practically ran out the door and all the way to Tamagawagakuenmae. From there I met up with ‘Texas’ (Momoka) and Ayumi. Yuuya came a few minutes later and we skipped off to seven eleven so I could grab monies.
I was a little annoyed since no one tells me anything (like where we might be headed off to and when. -_-)
I could have been in a better mood. I feel bad about it now, but I was kinda pissed all day. No one was really sure where they wanted to take us and they couldn’t really agree on anything..
Spit it out people, If you want to go somewhere, just SAY SO! AUGH! Oh the passive aggressive.
If you want something, tell us. We’re following you and on a serious sensory overload tripp right about now, so don’t ask us. Also, how the crap are we supposed to know where anything is anyway? We don’t live here so we don't’ know what all is here in the first place.

A few stations down we met Rory and made our way to Shinjuku, playing with the DS Mii’s the whole time (Texas made one of me, Rory. And Yuuya. His was dancing weirdly. 0_0)
Rory is diabetic, and hadn’t had anything to eat yet, so in Shinjuku we stopped by a Starbuck’s or something to fill him up. It was there that I realized it was almost eleven already (the trains kept stopping and not moving for long periods of time, we also kept regrouping at weird intervals awkwardly trying to figure out what next to do (which is a really Japanese thing to do.)
Right at eleven, it occurred to me that Alex had probably been waiting at the Harajuku Bridge for a half hour already (she has no phone, so we told her we’d meet her at ten thirty in Harajuku)
DAMN
See. I Iove hanging out with people, and although usually incredibly punctual, Japanese people have a horrible problem with deciding what to do, especially when they’re trying to show people around, which makes them late for shit.
I actually suppose that makes them not punctual at all.
It’s a lie.
And so is the cake.
Its just that organizing things is really…not….happening.
And it’s not just one group of people, or any particular people. IT’S EVERYONE.

So we finally make it to Harajuku, where poor Alex had been standing in the sun for forty minutes and finally got this thing started.
We walked down the fashion street a bit, not really looking at a whole lot (we all have widely different styles. I don't’ think anyone else wanted to poke their heads into the Gothic Lolita shops other than Alex and I. I think the frills would look nice on Rory though….)
Memories of last-year’s fashion project start taking over.

Right around Omote-sando we find a Shop called Kiddy-Land; which specializes in selling character goods like Domo-kun, hello kitty, and Ghibli or Moomin stuff. My current favorite thing ever is Mameshiba. Tiny bean…shiba-dog that pops out of whatever you’re eating to tell you gross facts about koalas or something. SO MUCH MAMESHIBA WAS HAD!

There was also More Ghibli than I can shake an onion at.

Speaking of onions, after that we headed to Akihabara, because Yuuya thought he might scare us with crazy Otaku (It failed, by the way. It just so happened I knew Akiba better than all of them put together, and I haven’t even been there in four years -_-) where in Sega-land we saw a Onion UFO catcher (what’s that even have to do with vocaloid?)

There we also played some Taiko, where I win instantly. I‘m good at games where I hit stuff. Useless talent #586
As much as they threatened us with it, our Japanese friends ended up being too scared to try a maid café, so the Tully’s outside the Yodobashi Camera it was. Mmm Acai Swirkle take three.
In one of the thousands of game centers Akiba is home to, we tried a ‘how strong is your grip’ machine where Rory beat just about everyone by 20 kilos.
ln fact, Rory’s left hand alone could crush my head. SCARY.

All around there were these little gashapon machines we all tried. I found some gaysball (Ookiku Furikabutte) gashapon take TWO (I’ve already got the entirety of the first serries they made. Now they made a second. It looks like there will be more, considering the characters they used -_-)! No don’t make more! I had all of them and now I don’t! 0_0
Osessive compulsive toture.
No matter how many 100yens I stuffed into the machine I Couldn’t get Mihashi -_-
The available characters for this round were kind of strange. (Why no Mizutani? He’s way more popular than Suymama and Oki….They’re probably going to make another one…Haruna’s in it though….?
I tried a bunch of times and ended up with about three of each lame guy. Seriosuly SUYAMA? Oki? Even NISHIHIRO?????? (He doesn’t even play! He’s not a starter. His cheekbones are ridiculous! He looks like he’s like, some 40 year old laid-off salary man!)
My not Izumi and Mizutani? At least Kanou? -_-????????????

We went to a bookstore afterwards and found a book of Japanese slang, and I totally accidentally read this part from a book that was something horribly profane out loud because I didn’t bother to read the translation first.
BAD IDEA.
Yeah, don’t do that.
That’s a bad idea children.

Towards the end of the day, Ayumi was fidgeting frustratingly about something, so when we finally got her to spit out that she wanted (she didn’t want to impose on us, but her telling us that she wanted to do something, just to take it back later was FAR MORE IMPOSING) to talk to Alex and I in a café about some boy issues, we went up to the top floor of a department store where we got omelet rice and a coke float and proceeded to find out what was on her mind.
Long story short, she likes this guy, and wanted to know if the one time he smooched her was a greeting or not.

Apparently people think Americans are like... European or something, and kiss people as a greeting.
UH NO.
No really, if some American guy is your friend, and he asks to go out paces with just you, and then after a few times kisses you goodbye not under the influence of alcohol, HE LIKES YOU. Probably.
YAAY!
This was apparently six months ago though, and because she was surprised, she hadn’t really contacted him since.
Dude lives in Japan, so he almost definitely knows how shy Japanese girls are about physical contact, so he almost definitely knew what he was doing. We let her know that unlike Japan, American guys say they like you through actions. They won’t say they like you in words first. That’s much too embarrassing, but cuddles? That works.
(Not like I would know, Diana learns these things from bad teenage soap operas.) Alex was able to fill in what my encyclopedic knowledge of T.V. dramas lacked.
But in any case, luckily she liked him too, and wants to confess to him, but is now worried that it’s too late. I mean, it has been six months and she hasn’t seen him since, and they’ve maybe sent like three emails to each other.
On snap.
Not looking good there.
We suggested they go to a café or something, and because ALL (straight) American guys sit with one hand resting on the table, ready to be snatched, we suggested she do just that, while saying she likes him.
If that didn’t work, it’s also conveniently Matsuri season. Take him to a Festival with fireworks and confess there! Stun him with your Yukata stylin! We call it:
PLAN Hanabi KISSU!

In the train on the way back she showed me a picture of the guy. She had good taste. Some vaguely sporty looking neither pasty nor blonde dude from Arizona.

Also, she has good taste in Gyoza,
GIANT gyoza!
Gyoza the size of my head! She showed me a picture of that right after the dude. I’m way more interested in food (priorities). It was amazing. We really need to go there. I promised I would come back in the summer so we could do that. I need Gyoza the size of my face to be stuffed IN my face.

I also learned a deep dark secret about Japanese girls.
At some point in time she was comparing her skin tone to mine (Not sure why, I mean, I don't’ really get the fixation on pasty-pale-ness. In America people think I need to get out more. In Japan they think it’s great. )
Whatever the case. Yeah, white people are white. No use angsting over it. I think its cool not everyone looks the same, and besides, often Europeans have bad complexions that end up looking unfortunately pink and blotchy. My high concentration of Black Irish and residual Native American gives me yellow and blue undertones, so I don’t get all that pink but, as I pointed out, I AM really hairy…

Ayumi was like….”What? Japanese girls just shave their arm-hair…”
“WHUT? I always thought we were just born with extra body hair! You guys CHEAT BY SHAVING? Who the crap shaves their arm hair anyway? Legs? Yeah, Pitts? Yeah, Arm? Why?”
Also, they shave that invisible hand/knuckle hair no one ever thinks about, and their bellies.
OH.
Wait? Those places even have visible hair? Now I’m paranoid. Do I have hobbit hands?
All this time, It wasn’t us. It’s really not.
(An equivalent exchange of information. We tell Ayumi the mysteries of the American boy’s heart, she lets me know Japanese girls have arm hair after all)
Alchemy’s property of equivalent trade would be made of sadness right now. Someone would seriously loose a limb here.

Sunday, June 28

I have not had internet since Thursday. This is officially a problem.

Later on they apparently restarted the modem, so it started working again. FINALLY. Augh internets. It’s worked fairly reliably since then. Apparently it just needs to be rebooted every few days. I guess since no one types anything out in Japan, email is done on phones, and the girls don't ever have research projects, they don’t really use it all that much, which explains why it doesn’t get restarted all that often.
Silly College students and our entire lives on the internet….

I did some homework (I wrote the backbone for my article on Japanese teaching, but it’s really hard, I’ll need more information… A lot of which I won’t get until the end of the program because we’re visiting the other schools then. Up to now all I really have is the new information and the textbook from the intensive English class.)

Last night Yuuka had a nightmare about Crayon zippers running away (AWESOME). I had to conclude that it was just about the best nightmare I’d ever heard of. Apparently it was epic. They couldn't’ decide whether it was about people in Crayon suits unzipping things or something named ‘Crayon Zipper’ that got away from her.
Whatever it was, she was traumatized.
I want to know if she remembers if her dream was in color or not, and if so, what color was the Crayon?

Towards the afternoon it was threatening to rain again which would make it having rained almost literally everyday since my arrival in Tokyo. I decided that was the last straw and took a few hours to go down to Machida to buy some rain boots.
It was the end of Spring sale going on right then too, and is apparently one of the largest sales they have in Japan, so I took advantage of that to get some really awesome blue rain boots and the most ridiculous and unacceptable pair of platform heels complete with American comic strip graphics I’ve ever seen. Thank you Shibuya 109. I also decided I needed another skirt to get me through the summer, as I‘ve noticed NO ONE wears pants here after the middle of June. When I do everyone asks me if I’m hot, like pants are suffocating or something?
Uh, ok. Skirt it is then.
Seattle isn’t a very good climate for them, so it’s hard to find really cute ones. I like skirts, so I‘m really happy they’re all over the place here.

When I got back the family asked if I played video games.
Ppppffft, “do I play video games?”

Only ALL OF THE TIME!

I don't’ know how I’d suffer through really long train rides all over Japan without my DS.

Upon the good news they whip out the Wii and we have an Epic Wii sports battle. The mom and older sister are bizarrely talented at Wii Tennis, While I’m much better at Bowling and prevail at Wii Baseball (I use the pitching to it’s best advantage, although my hitting isn’t awesome, I played a no-hit-no-run game for my pitching. Shutout like whoa. I have amazing imaginary ball control, and am a master at change ups. HIllarious because in real like I throw like a girl but hit like a slugger. Useless talent #157, sports that involve hitting things with something) the dad and younger sister are master’s at Mario Cart (the mom and I were schooled SO HARD. Oh god I’m so bad at that game. I’m good at like, every other racing game other than Initial D (complicated beyond belief) and Mario Cart (not good at items.))

Over midnight coffee there was much learning about the difference between devil, akuma, or purgatory and hell in Japanese culture.
I’m not really sure how that happened. I think they asked about siblings, which I kind of have a hard time answering because American families these days are over complicated. I mean, I definitely have an older sister, Xina (same parents) but since then, my mom has divorced and remarried twice. Because of health problems she never had another kid herself, but her current husband had a son from his previous marriage named Dante, who is (or was up until recently) completely unaware he wasn’t related to mom, my sister and I.
COMPLICTED.
He’s really cute, and just about nine now, So I count him as a brother but, I have no idea how to explain step-brother to people.

Anyway, We were talking about name meanings because they didn’t know our names meant anything and it came up that ‘Dante’ is kinda Synonymous with ‘Purgatory’ (Book. I hope we all already knew that) and a lot of people use the name Dante for ‘son of the devil’ or whatever in their horrible vampire fiction. I think its an awesome name, but its kind of like how the name Romeo is unconsciously related to Shakespeare and unfortunate romance or given to ladykillers, even though its a super widely used name in Italy still.
Jeez, literature is powerful like that.
Anyway, my host father was super surprised I knew the word for purgatory in Japanese. As well as a whole bunch of other mythological things there is sense in me knowing.
I didn’t want to tell them that I learned them from Inuyasha so I just told him that like, I knew strange, unnecessary things about Japan and mythology in general, which is also true.

For dinner we had my host family’s specialty pizza. It was pretty awesome. Apparently they really enjoy making up different pizza combinations. My favorite was Pizza Curry! Although I was really fond of the pineapple bacon and the Seafood Corn.

Later there was Atsushi (Eyelash dude) surprise chat! Contacted me about nothing in particular which surprised me. Alex keeps edging me on to flirt, like I’d know how to do that at all.
We talked about food, because it’s the easiest thing for me to talk about. Apparently he’s some master curry chef, blending his own spices and everything, and said he’d make it for me sometime. AWESOME.
He also said he’s take me to Comiket this year.
MORE AWESOME
The only like, what the biggest anime convention IN THE WORLD.
Yeah.

Anyway, I’m apparently now 14. Too giggly.
After all that, I had to beat two poke’mon gym leaders consecutively to still my beating school girl heart or whatever.
Comikeee~eet. <3

Monday, June 29

I didn’t have anything to do at the school until almost noon so I ended up being around the house and in the way.
Even though I stayed up until stupid late messaging about stupid nerdy things (because I’m now in middle school again) I ended up not being able to sleep past like…eight thirty.
Something about laundry rustling outside my window might have helped with that (this might have been the last good laundry day in a while, according to the almost always opposite weather forecast -_-
Anyway, as much as it’s almost definitely wrong, the most ridiculous amount of laundry was done today.)

So I ended up making it downstairs not long after nine, which totally wasn’t my plan (I was thinking…um…ten. I don’t like hanging around stupidly with nothing effective to do) and I ended up being drafted into helping around the house, which was fine. Gave me something effective to do. That was well planned. Almost too well.

When I wasn’t helping, I watched T.V., where almost every channel was playing the special promotional video of Thriller (The one that’s kinda long) and every five seconds or so the mom would talk to me from upstairs so I would go see what she was doing.

Most of what she said was fairly inconsequential, like, ‘I’m doing laundry now!’ And, ‘I’m starting the machine now!’ And, that ‘drying things in the sun is the best was to do laundry.’

We also talked about methods of laundry in West VS East, and why Westerners scoffed at hanging laundry outside.

One of the major reasons I personally think it’s kinda weird is because I’ve always lived in dirty gross cities where the air quality, especially in the summer, isn’t fit for humans being outside for extended periods of time, let alone drying your clean clothes in it. Breeze? Ha.Try refreshing exaust fumes.
This isn’t really a problem in Seattle because it rains a lot (which is why we can’t dry our clothes outside there, but the air is nice) and that cleans the air, what with all the droplets attaching themselves to some dirt particles (mmm condensation nuclei) but in D.C. and L.A., the two places I lived for the longest, there’s almost always some epic drought going on where it doesn't rain ever.
Also, especially on the east coast, there’s crazy humidity. Literally every-day 80% or higher humidity, fresh air is actually a health hazard.
I’m not kidding; starting in like, late April we start getting air quality warnings. Yellow is ‘okay’, Orange is ‘Try not to do any strenuous activity outside’ and red is ‘don’t go outside unless absolutely necessary’
We would miss entire recess and PE periods in elementary school to code Red Warnings, and they’re especially bad in the high summer. Like Japan has Sun Burn warnings, we have Air quality warnings.
For us the idea of doing laundry outside, especially in the summer, seems grody.
The air is still okay in Japan, but I have noticed that in the summer it smells kind of dank due to the almost mid-Atlantic humidity levels.

Also, drying outside doesn’t allow for Fabric softeners to intervene, which makes everything starchy, and not smell as good.
Also, its slower.
Dryers also shrink things back to their original size. Vital to my shirts.
There’s also that ‘depending on the weather’ concept that’s inconvenient.
We also don’t do our laundry everday. Usually once a week. There isn’t enough outside space for that.
There’s all sorts of reasons we don’t dry our laundry outside.

I mean, I don’t particularly care either way. I think its kind of nice to line dry actually. Its less expensive, more eco friendly, and has a nice ‘outside smell.’
I’m a little skeptical of the effectiveness of doing laundry in a city like um… Tokyo (seems counterproductive), but we’re kind of off to the side in a more rural area, so the air quality doesn't seem that bad. It’s also the rainy season, so it smells kinda nice most of the time, despite the constant threat of surprise showers.
Or…”SURPRISE! No underwear for you! Showers”, as they’re now known.

Anyway, my host mom and I talked about random things until I left. I occurred to me that I think she’s probably bored during the day, but the kind of random constant chattering gets to me after awhile. Especially since I‘m kind of talented at amusing myself.

Anyway, after breakfast at nine-something and then lunch a little after ten thirty, I was pretty stuffed >_<. Mmmm, leftover pizza curry makes me happy though..

I skipped off to school, although it wasn’t raining so my outfit was wasted, I really wanted to sport my new rain boots.(Darn lying lierface weather people. It best rain tomorrow.)

We had a short planning session with Riley around lunchtime where we decided on when and where we would go for the third week in terms of visiting the Elementary and Middle school divisions as well as planning some short presentation to give to students in various classes.

We then had Oda’s Applied Linguistics class. I remember Oda’s Seminar from last year and all the help he’s given us throughout both this year and last, and I enjoyed catching up with him after the class ended.

Outside Oda’s class we found the blonde DJ lookin’ like guy from the Second year required English communication class. He has a total man-crush on Rori and like, almost plowed right into him in a glomp of happiness.
I also kind of recognized one other guy from last year, who also kind of recognized me. Apparently we took the manga class together last year (and he remembers me as the gaijin girl that likes manga, and that’s also how he introduced me to his friend. AWESOME. Because that’s how I want everyone to be introduced to me -_-;;;;;; Oh hell, he’s a nice dude.

We weren’t really able to follow Oda’s class, which I didn’t feel too bad about given that the Japanese kids didn’t follow it either. In any case, Oda’s always REALLY passionate about whatever he’s lecturing on, and at one point fell into the pull down screen in a spazztacular excitement seizure, which snapped us all out of our snot-bubble daydreams.
Halfway through there was an unintelligible group activity about communication I’m still not entirely sure the aim of

Wow, No one came to Chat session.
We were Kinda hungry so we stopped by the ‘Rindo’ (cafeteria’s name) but there was no food left. Epic fail.

Because we ran out of things to do, and I only left my house three hours ago, we decided to head over to Machida to do some window-shopping and play at the arcades like some Truant High schoolers.
I saw Yuu-chan, the younger host sister at the station making her way back from Cram school. Ouch, kid is only 9 and goes to cram school two or three times a week. I’ve never seen her play outside with friends or anything.

We’ve decided the fancy hair gel guys wear here is Bear Wax. Don’t ask.

Later that night, after my shower when I was coming down for my ritual late-night coffee with the parents, I saw them discussing something very serious.
Apparently the older daughter Aya, in her second year of middle school, got bad scores in most of her subjects. Best was 77, worst was 36. Ouch. That’s kind of painful. I know she’s really bright but it’s entirely possible she’s the type to freak out for tests.
I wasn’t clear on whether these were her actual class scores or cram school scores. In any case, it sounded serious.

Oof.

Tuesday, June 30

Way to NOT wake me up alarm clock, so very super awesome if you. Good thing I wake up every 50 minutes whether I like it or not after five in the morning due to pebble-filled pillow and the horrifying crows frolicking with the garbage and the neighbor’s surprise parrot outside my window.
(Surprise as in: SURPRISE! Last weekend the crazy Russian people across the way bought a parrot. An apparently traumatized parrot they try to eat every morning. That's the only conclusion I could come to that explained the horrible sounds coming from across the street.)
Yeah. So…About a half hour later then I wanted to get started, I got downstairs and ready for breakfast about 15 minutes before I had to go. My host mom is all like:
Diana! When do you have to get to school? And I was like:
Oh, um .>.>; y’know, like…15 minutes from now.
She’s like

“oooh I see….

WHUT?”

Super champion Olympic speed breakfast. I then proceeded to run out the door in my awesomely fashionable rain boots since it was FINALLY raining!

The first class we had was the first year English Communication class with riley. We did family interview thingies, where we confirmed our earlier statement that American families are ridiculously complicated and that we have many more words for family relationships than they do.
See, Japan has the standard, mom, dad, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandparents, cousins….
But they generally don’t have shit like Step Dad, Step brother, half brother, the nonsensical godparent dealio….ect oooh, complicated American relationships.

We then talked about things family members did. We explained that generally in a western setting, the question ‘What do you parents do’ which is a completely inappropriate thing to be asking someone when you don’t know them that well. Even if you do, it’s strange. “What do YOU do?” is fine though.
We proceed to ask about parents jobs anyway, because in Japan it’s a good question to ask. Its personal, which is weird, but its less personal than hobbies (Huh?) so….Ask we did:
There was one girl who wasn’t really able to answer the question. She was like. ‘I know my dad does SOMETHING” but I’m not really sure where and how the money gets to us.”

0_0

I seriously think that girl might just be yakuza, or a nobility branch. (Tamagawa is a rich-ish elite-ish school. There’s more than a few old families and pop-star grandsons of prime ministers that go there…)
…Then we promptly talked about boys, because she DID know what her boyfriend did -_-;;;;;;;;;

….yeah.

Then we had our not-‘Japanese lessons?’ (complete with a question mark at the end on our schedules, no really D:) hour upstairs….It ended up dissolving into Pokémon and Origami. Which counts I guess. Japanese culture, there we are.
We then had Lunch, followed by a combination intermediate English class with the business department for a food anthropology guest speaker (OMGPONYTA AWESOME) where much gushing in my head was done.

The guest was a Bulgarian woman working as a Food Marketing Expert that received her degree in Food Anthropology.
A lot of the lecture was on food traditions, new and old, focusing on ‘invented culinary traditions’ such as ‘sukiyaki’ (Meiji era, Originally from Spain), Curry (brought to Japan from England from India) Tonkatsu (Germany) and Shodoshima’s olives (Also Meiji)
Meat in Japan in general is recent, at least that is widely consumed starting literally in the Meiji and beef widespread starting in the Showa.
Interesting. And great for my food project ^^

After that there was another one of those lovely Japanese sessions planned (two in one day is overkill guys) which we promptly decided to skip in favor of massive group Karaoke in Machida. Although it had originally started as Alex and I, Ayumi soon found out and somehow before we knew It there were like….ten people
Huh? Uh, okay.
I’m usually not in favor of karaoke groups over six people. It just gets bananas 0_0
But whatever. I’m not sure where all of these people came from, and it somehow included our band mates too (How do they even know them? They’re all freshman).
I don’t even know how they knew about it 0_0????
Well whatever.

I love Ayumi, but upon arriving at Machida she asked to go to a café kind of abruptly, and for no conceivable reason. Like, we get there and she was like “where would you like to go?” and I was like..
“Uh…Karaoke. Where we were…um…going? Right?” I was under the impression that was why we were all here.
She was like “Wouldn’t you like to go to a café”
And I was like (not particularly, no, but…) “Uh, sure. You wanted to go to a café? We can do that, yeah.”
I guess.
Sure.
Mmmm, passive aggressive a little? Possibly.
Like “Oh hey I’m thirsty can we grab a drink at a café?” would have worked better than trying to convince me that it was, in fact, ME that wanted a drink. Rori knew of a Starbuck’s so off we went.
Given it was after three thirty and I was originally planning on being home at six, I was like…Uh…..
And karaoke? Like. With all fifty thousand of us -_-????
I kind of super didn’t get it. But ok.

And then when the other people asked “why are we going to Starbuck’s…?”
I was like “Oh, Ayumi wanted to go to get something…’

….Which she then feverishly denied “What? All of us! Not just me, If it’s just me…”
….
*facepalm *
…
Well whatever. I suppose we could all use a drink so it’s cool I guess.
Ayumi and some of the other girls did the whole protecting our table thing while the rest of us ordered drinks. There were nine of us, and five went to get drinks.
FOUR stayed behind.,
Why four? That’s like, half. Yarisugi much? One or two makes sense…
But…
Especially since Japanese girls generally gingerly sip their tiny drinks as it’s completely against Japanese culture to diss your food by rushing and not entirely enjoying it.
So, as you guessed, there was a lengthy period of waiting while the afore mentioned four girls finished their tiniest of Frapaccinos.
Oh, then we waited for a girl to come from the school.
So it was after four thirty when actually we got going.
Because we’d been delayed by over an hour at this point,
Some of the girls, and the Guitarist, all ran away before karaoke anyway (Why waste the 420 yen to come all the way out there for overpriced coffee?

We get to karaoke and decide on an hour and a half, which just leaves Alex enough to time to meet Yohei back at Tamagawa by 645, and for me to feasibly be home by seven o’clock dinner.

Then I found out apparently I’m the only one willing to sing.

Well, that’s not awkward at all guys.

WHY DID YOU ALL COME??? AUGH.
Alex won’t sing in front of that many people in Japanese, especially when following me, so she didn’t do much without serious coaxing. No one else wanted to sing alone and none of them knew any real songs in common to do a group song.
To sort of break the ice we did ‘totoro’, ‘country road’, ‘Rouge no Dengon’, Maroon5, cutie honey, and some pink Lady. If nothing else, EVERYONE EVER knows Ghibli songs, or they fail at being in Japan entirely. Like, you’d be exiled forever, no questions asked.
That sort of worked for icebreakers.
Other than that, I sang mostly weird ass anime shit.
I got the drummer to duet a One Piece song with me.
YAY!
That was fun
Dude’s not all that of a bad singer (I guess they only need a singer because he can’t drum and sing at the same time?) Really, dude must have perfect pitch, even if he’s not great now, your voice is technically a muscle, it can get better. His voice isn’t super interesting (quirky) or anything, but he could do middle of the road singing-style rock, which works for punk. Not trying to reason myself out of the band here though ^^. )

Today was the second day in a row of watching host sisters making their way to or from Juku cram-school at the station. This time it was Aya the older sister. ^^

Went home after seeing Alex off with Yohei. They ended up going to an udon restaurant or something. I hope it goes well.

Before bed I played a bought of Versus Super Mario with Yuu. Epic Phail. I’m okay at platforms but she’s a demon 0_0
She wiped the floor with me. I had fun though. It’s cool that DS’s allow you to battle each other wirelessly. I don’t know why I hadn’t tried that before. Technology fail.

So, I’ve noticed my Internet is getting exponentially worse with each passing day since they’ve rebooted Mr.Modem

Wednesday, July 1

Wo! Sleeping in. I all got down stairs at what I consider to be a really reasonable sleeping in time, teetering on a little too late, ten-ish.
The mom all was super awesome and took me out to eat at this restaurant chain breakfast place where they apparently serve a Nagoya special breakfast that is pretty much really nice fluffy toast with homemade sweet cream butter topped with adzuki.

OMG BEE CREAM it was delicious.

I was a turd and ordered at hot dog, because I was unaware of the awesomeness that is Nagoya Adzuki toast.
But I really liked the hotdog ^^
The mom told me that no one else in the family really liked to eat there, because it was too much for breakfast.
I can see that.
I ordered what I thought was coffee with cream in it, and it came out ice cream My definition of ‘cream’ differs from Japan’s sometimes…
So yeah I can totally see it being a little over the top for breakfast.
Yup.
Perfect for eleven o’clock brunch though.

We talked about all sorts of stuff, like Ebola TB, HIV/AIDS, and other pleasant breakfast topics like…
Uh….
Small pox?
No, this all came about from talking abut Native Americans. She kind thought they were only situated around the grand canyon until I let her know that there were a million tribes with their on unique cultures all over America, but lots of them were wiped out with small pox.
I forgot how we started talking about Native Americans. I think it had something to do with the weird state names

Oh yeah, It came about when we were talking about strange family relationships (Again. She was trying to figure out how America got so weird) and what we call grandparents. See, Aunts and uncles you usually add their names because you will often have a bunch. Like Aunt Rebecca or Uncle Steve. Grandparents too, so you don’t confuse them
In Japan, you call them based on where they live. Like ‘Aomori grandma or Osaka grandpa.
The name ‘Bop’ for my mom’s dad confused her to no end.
It’s cool. It confuses Americans too. ^^, That one’s weird, even for Americans.
Anyway, I said something along the lines of “ Calling Grandma ’Massachusetts grandma’ would be WAY too long. “And that’s how we started talking about strange native American location names, because Massachusetts didn’t sound much like English to her.

School started at one so after a call from dad I meandered over there (By the way, creepystalkeringstalkerhat called me at like ten, asking if I as going to go to ESS club. Fuck off dude. No! Didn’t you hear me two weeks ago when I announced to the whole club that I was going to be gone for three weeks? No? He should’ve, dude was stalking me that day too 0_0. Ew. WTF is wrong with this guy?
Some to think of it, he only called me on Wednesday last week too. What wrong with this guy’s short-term memory?

At one we had a chat session, which again dissolved into origami. I got some Origami Shuriken! In many colors. That was fun.
I fail epically at Origami though. Like, I'll crumple a piece of paper, and make a rock. That’s my best one.
One girl made a whole bunch of super intricate swans holding hands (wings..?) and tiny, tiny origami we then proceeded to cover Rory with.

Before the next class, Rowland’s Fourth year seminar, there was a mandatory Drug lecture because some student was busted selling a few weeks ago.
OH NOES weed! They even went as far as putting a big anti-drug propaganda sign in from of the school saying ‘Don’t do drugs! They’ll make you go CRAZY!”
I mean WHOA.
I’m not a fan, but what’s with the official lectures and 60’s propaganda?….Wow.
I can’t wait till they get a whiff of Evergreen >_>;;;;;;
I believe we’ve been in the top ten schools for ‘High Times’ Magazine….(no really, that magazine exists. We sell it at Barnes and Noble. I didn’t know they ranked schools like that though. D: Can’t say I’m full of school spirit for that y’know?)
In any case, the four of us all took D.A.R.E in Fifth grade, so we know the shtick. We hung around for the 20 minutes it took officials to officialy tell everyone in the most official way that Weed is Officialy not-okay.
Wow that’s special.
I suppose Americans, even those of us that haven’t bothered to try it, are really desensitized to drugs. Especially Marijuana. I mean, I’m aware of various controversy and all of that, even if I’m not super aware of exactly how deep the drug culture is (I only just found out what meth was when I moved to Olympia. I super thought it was some sort of foot cream or something. Apparently it started in Oregon. Thanks Discovery Channel special on Drugs! Now I know what the hell people at my school talk about. Here I thought it was slang for some horrible disease (pretty close, actually)) But anyway, I hear about a kid being busted for weed in Japan, and I’m like ‘oh, that’s rare.’ but then I find out he’s expelled, blacklisted from all universities, and probably not going to be able to land a job anywhere but 7-11.
WHU?
That’s overdoing it a little…He didn’t even have all that much on him. Isn’t Marijuana legal in lots of countries? I’ve heard it’s no worse for you than tobacco and Japan is ALL over that shit.
But Japan doesn't really, and has never really, been that into drugs. Opium was kind of bad during the Meiji sort of, but it never was as widespread as drugs are…pretty much everywhere else. 0_0
Anywho, I really don’t know much about the matter, or have any strong feelings either way (I suppose it's a recreational hobby for some people, but I’d rather just draw or something. More productive, and I can do it anywhere, and csn have as many on me as I can physically carry.)

Slightly belated, we finally joined Rowland’s Seminar. The seminar uses movies to illustrate cultural differences and there was talk of stereotyping and assumptions. We saw a clip from a Movie about Elvis called ‘Mystery Train’ which I now super have to check out. We then watched and discussed another clip from ‘Lost in Translation’, a movie I’d first seen only about four years ago, and at the time I already knew it was ridiculously stereotyped to the point of being offensive in a few places.
It was a very interesting class, and it brought up some very interesting cultural views and differences in how people from different countries travel (Both movies involved people travelling to another culture and being consequently lost).

After class, we had our ‘Yay you’re exactly halfway through’ party in Machida at the TGI Fridays (we went there last year too) for the entirety of three and a half hours. There were still a lot of foreigners there. In fact, there were no normal Japanese people. They were all toting some manner of foreigner, the overwhelming majority of which were Military guys from the nearby base (Which you can tell by the haircut, build, and general volume 0_0)
I ordered a burger, but because the lady was expecting English and I uh…Speak Japanese, she misunderstood me and gave me the wrong order. That was fun. There were some girls there I hadn’t met before (I don't’ know where they came from, but they were nice) and a bunch of them talked about boys for several hours on end. After an hour or so of that, I got kinda bored (I have nothing to talk about there -_-.) so Rory drew smiley faces on our hands while Alec flirted with Nou-chan,
After the party thing, the girls tried to get me to karaoke at nine thirty. Way not good for my voice, the whole…late night singing after shouting over drunken Marines in a burger-bar dealio. It was also a bit late if I wanted to get home at a reasonable hour. Ten is already pushing it. Had the girls at the other end of the table nixed their ice creams, things might have been good. Otherwise; it wouldn’t have been 25 dollars a person and it would’ve taken a WHOLE hour less, allowing for karaoke.

I called host mom from Machida all like “coming home now’ (Machida is just about ten minutes away) and she was like ‘be careful’ but didn’t say anything about like, picking me up at the usual bus stop, so I figured because It was so late (ten thirty), she was already in her pajamas or something and couldn’t come, so I all started walking home myself. I was more than halfway home, when she pulled up beside me like ‘oh no, I was going to pick you up’
Whups.
My bad. Phail. Thinking about it, there’s no way she’d make me walk home 20 minutes by myself at ten ^^’’’’
That’s dangermouse.

The host dad seemed kind of weird today when I came back. Like, at first I thought he was mad at me or something, since, although he said welcome back he otherwise didn’t respond at all to me or anything I said, or even acknowledge I was there. But then he suddenly did talk to me (about marshes in Vietnam none the less?) but then went back to silence.
So, I took a shower and when I got out, I heard doors closing a little harder then I thought was necessary. That could be any number of things though, including me being WAY over sensitive. I went downstairs like normal to grab milk. The dad was all lying on the couch alone watching the news, so I grabbed milk and sat down at the table silently. I finished I said my usual ‘good night’ and went upstairs but got no answer
….Which is weird for Japan.
I guess he could have been attempting, or already kind of zoned out for sleep? Maybe his back hurts today (entirely possible if he’s on the couch.
I’m going to go with that.
The mom handed me the laundry upstairs from her room like usual.
It was still ever so slightly weird.
It’s possible he was just REALLY tired I guess. And I know I’m too sensitive. Overthinking like whoa. There probably isn’t anything wrong at all and I’m a crazy person.

Thursday, July 2

Boo, NOT sleeping in. I did that amazingly amazing trick of turning the volume of my DS alarm clock all the way down in my sleep.
I’m getting disturbingly good at that. Seriously needs to stop. 0_0
Consequentially, I got started about a half hour later than I wanted too, but luckily since it was raining my outfit was already decided.
YAY!
I got dressed much faster than usual so I made it downstairs by my target…um….downstairs ‘maniau’ time.
I got out the door with no mishaps, but still in a surprisingly foul mood.

I’m honestly not sure why, but I was just in a DANK mood all day. I mean, I had serious energy issues at the beginning of the daybut…hot damn something was chewing my chapstick all day.
It doesn't help that even though I seriously love Suzuki sensei, the French Teacher, talking to her is one of the most painful activities I can think of. There’s a serious disconnect on more than a few different levels.
I think some of it is probably that she’s French, and her basis of communication is Frencherific, but she’s been living in Japan for…like, a million years and has built her family there, so there’ that weird sort of Gaijin living in Japan for a long time thing that makes them strange (I have it, I’m sometimes assertive like an American, and have no no strong feelings either way at the same time. The two cultures conflict in me all over the place. ) Except her’s is the French combative decision-making discourse with the Japanese lack of wanting to make decisions without everyone’s consent evasive action holy war.
I also think some of it’s just her. The facial response is just…incorrect.
Like, she never responded accurately for ANY culture. And, even when she asks me to translate for her from Japanese to the other Americans or something, she never seems to like what I say, even though I’m just being as efficient as possible (I do have to say, I use a lot of slang, so she, in all honesty, probably hasn’t the foggest what I said. I talk like I write (in my blog anyway. I write better in real life) so…well.
Yeah.
I’m not entirely confident y’allz be getting the full cookie all up in here.
Heck, I don’t think I do either. XD

Quote of the day (think heavy French accent): WHERE IZ ZA ZOOM? (There were some camera adventures.)

The class itself went pretty well. It was the same non-verbal communication class we attended last year. Same deal where we recorded it on film (badly, and without the zoom.) This year it was maybe a little more organized, although needlessly. We got pre-prepared index cards with a gesture on it like ‘call me’ or ‘I don’t understand’ and we were to then charade the appropriate gesture for it. The goal was to see the differences between gestures by country. The thing is, most of the recent gestures like ‘call me’ were the same, also sometimes our gestures didn’t overlap at all. Like, Japan has a lot of gestures for boyfriend, girlfriend, and general gayness, but America doesn’t particularly. We have a crap ton of violent gestures though. Also a bunch for telling people off or shame on you, and a surprising amount of suicide, but not so much with the sex, which every other country has more of. Lack of overlap there.
We explained that a lot of that is due to our weird clash of militant puritan competitiveness. Our gestures assert physical power over something, but mostly steer clear from sex unless they’re kinda of subtle or obscure.
It was an interesting set up, because the charades were pre-determined by the class, we found that there were more Japanese gestures than we saw last year. Last year we made a giant list and asked them if they had equivalents on the spot, where they didn't’ have time to plan. Japanese kids don’t work that well under pressure I find. They panic and go into silent mode. Sudden changes of plan aren’t encouraged.

So all in all, zoom function aside, this worked a little better than last year’s I think. We also found some Japanese gestures we RELLY didn’t have any equivalent for, like the entire concept of ‘Batsu game’ (Penalty game, it’s a thing here) At the end we were able to show some of the ones we weren’t originally able to show, like ‘world’s smallest violin’ or America HUGE arsenal of suicide gestures (always popular)
Japan also has a lot of Salary-man related gestures we don’t particularly have. I mean, we use cut-throat for getting fired, but we don’t have things like ‘overtime’
Whoa.
Hardcore.
In a comb-over old man kinda way.

Rowland’s intermediate English class went well. I had a hard time getting people in my group to talk. How much is it to ask that they be a little more proactive? I mean, we traveled over seven thousand something kilometers over here, the least they could do is open their mouths to talk, or even chew gum to break the crippling silence. We were talking about just the general ‘hometown’ and ‘hobby’ stuff. We also had some discussion about the differences of Japanese colleges and American. Especially Evergreen. Things like how clubs works and the difference between degrees and majors as well as campus life and scavenging for food.

There was a mini Japanese Lesson…. session ….(ugh rhyming) that day, which again entirely dissolved into nothingness and origami. This time we were having whiteboard drawing battles! I won at Pikachu, but Alec is retardedly good at Ponyo. It was just about the only time we’d seen Shun this year, as he never otherwise stopped by. Weird, considering he and Yoko were two of the most active last year.
Come to this of it, we didn’t See Yoko ever either. 0_0
Maybe they’re fourth years now? Possibly. I really don’t remember what years everyone is. It’s a big deal, and the way you primarily identify people here, but in America, especially Evergreen, it completely doesn't matter. Like, I’ve been in school for technically just about three years, but I’m actually a senior credit-wise because I’m an overachiever.

We went out with the band to get a preliminary recording done in hopes of showing it to some executives to get an audition. Or better yet, a contract. I’d like that. Means I’d have a job when I graduate uh……soon. 0_0

Because we don’t know all that many songs in common, the first stop was a Karaoke place where they had me sing a bunch of songs I was confident with. Tomoya had a little portable recording thingie (Because he’s part of the music mafia. His mom’s a pro pianist, so he has all this stuff just lying around 0_0)
After that finished we headed off to the studio where we did preliminary recording of Sweetness and Sk8ter Boi, except that Alex had forgotten her guitar that morning, and so did the guitarist which…
…..Completely failed. We were able to borrow one, but they drew the line at the one failure cake, and didn’t allow it to be paired with Ice cream. Both songs are heavy on the rhythm guitar, so it really didn’t work out.

Everyone was super surprised because I was giggly today. Honestly, this is actually how I usually am, I’m just usually not this amused in Japan win the company of other people (serious lack of jokage contributes to this. When I can’t have someone to point out all the silly things to, it fails. It’s like, when I’m with my Japanese friends, they don’t really see why a Gyaru-O’s hair could make my day). I amuse myself okay, but I only really laugh when there’s stupid inside jokes with people. That’s the best kind of Joke. Anyway, Alex, Rory and I had more than a couple bouts of giggle-death, which put me in good spirits, even if it ended up scaring the crap out of our Japanese friends. I like laughing to the point that it hurts.

We got out of the studio right around six and the guys suggested we grab food, since there was a super high chance we wouldn’t make it home in time for dinner. (We were supposed to have curry tonight ;_; *sniffle *) I let them know I’d be out for dinner, which was fine, since curry keeps forever. The five of us headed to the most Denny’s-like place in all of Japan (Because the Denny’s in Japan are actually pretty nice) named GUSTO.
Wow.
I had some sort of hockey puck-like hamburger thing, with an unnecessary sunny-side-up egg crowning it in all its majesticly cheap glory. Alex and I, to pass the time when the guys were talking about something or reminiscing about high school or whatever, read some poster that was laminated to our table fashionably.
For all the kanji we didn’t know, which was most of them, we just inserted ‘shinyokohama’ . Hilarity ensued.
The guys stopped talking and just cracked up for about ten minutes straight with our obsession with the ‘oishii omizu’ sign. The thing stuck to our table ended up being something about new products from Shinyokohama being shinyokohama’d at shinyokohama, with special shinyokohama in Shinjuku shinyokohama.
It was pretty funny.

I got home a little before eight, and there was a really interesting T.V. show where they put a whole bunch of famous people in the middle of Shinjuku on a scavenger hunt or some other kind of bizarre fake mission to save the world. Then they sent some freakishly scary MIB guys after them. These bufftacular guys were ‘hunters’ and their job was to catch the soft, out of shape, famous people before they finished their mission. If someone lasted the entire three hours or whatever it was, they would get a million yen. They had a device that allowed them know where the hunters were if they got within a certain radius, (Although it was a pretty limited field, so although the hunters didn’t have a tracker for the players, there were enough of them by the end that it wasn’t really an issue for them. The hunters were all also apparently ex-olympic track stars and REALLY FREAKIN’ FAST. Once they saw you, there was really no getting away. Poor comedians and D-List actors…)
A bunch of them were only caught because the cameramen following the people are entirely too conspicuous and make it impossible for them to hide at all. Even the ones that wouldn’t have been seen otherwise, because they were around the corner or something, the cameramen gave away their position, what with the giant sound pole and them taking long shots and around the corner shots for effect.
It was kind of disappointing in that aspect.
In any case, one woman made it all the way though. She’d also participated in a bunch of the missions (Something tells me there was producer interference….hmmm…)

Friday, July 3

I got to sleep in today. I kept waking up and around like, five or six, and was fine then although I forced myself back to sleep, but then at the time I was actually supposed to wake up, nine, I was all like NyoooOOOOooo, and refused to get up.
Typical.
So, I throw on some clothes with the continuing problem of having no idea what I actually look like, which is always rather dangerous (I ended up looking kinda retarded. Yay) and headed out for School.
First thing we had was another deserted chat session, which turned into a rather successful lunch. Mmm. Chicken lunch special thingie….

At one was Riley’s extensive reading class, which is one of my absolute favorites.
I just like anything that uses the words ‘extensive’ and ‘reading’ together. ^^
The students had prepared small group presentations where they took Japanese folktales that had been translated into English and created summaries of them to retell to us (because we couldn’t just read the book they came from….? That might be why they were translated in the first place.) There were about six different groups and they told us stories like Momotaro and ‘The old man and the Sparrow’ (Which was one that I didn’t know beforehand.)
After they told us the stories, we would then retell what we understood back to them to make sure it was correct.
All in all, it was a really fun class, plus it gave the students a chance to practice reading comprehension as well as speaking in public, both super useful skills you don’t get to use all that often, but when you need them you REALLY need them.

At three we had Hidai’s Comparative Culture seminar where the students also had presentations, this time about Japanese culture.
The presentations ranged from Hina Matsuri to Furikake and everything in between (We were given sake, Shochu, and Furikake packets as presents). It was really helpful especially to Rori and Alec, who hadn’t really had any formal cultural training to learn about these things.
Today was the first day where the Evergreen students really got something tangible out of the classes. I mean, we really enjoy helping out with the English classes and all that, and sure there’s some cross cultural communication, but this was the first time we really we sat down and presented to about things we otherwise wouldn’t even have known to ask about.
Like Katori Senko.
Who’d ask about that?
But it’s very Japanese.

I went home and there was a documentary about this director who exclusively does old people movies (65 and older, this includes everyone on staff, not just the actors), his titles include ‘tanbo the musical’ and ‘Easy (Ojiji) Rider, the tanbo’.
AWESOME.
I need to see these movies.