TTSRHW

Tokyo. Train System. Rush Hour. Wow.

the museum exhibit was excellent, though pictures were not allowed. the reason for this was the spiffy limited edition artbook. i wanted it, but wanted neither to spend the money on it or to carry it home. i got some clearfiles and postcards instead.

now i stand inside the sapporo tv tower. if it isn't the tallest building in town, it can only be eclipsed by like two buildings. i wanted to come up here during the snow festival, but didn't have the money at the time. now, i wish it were a sunny day. even with clouds and rain that can't decide if it wants to fall or not, the view is great. it really underlines the fact that the japanese all seem to have black, silver, or white cars, though.

generating futures

the thing i have planned for today is a visit to a particular art exhibit. details on the nature of the exhibit will come later when i wrap up the blog because i want to try to take pictures of it for a friend. for now, let us just say that i got here with a decent amount of ease, but am here an hour and a half before the exhibit opens. oops.

bus noriba

i sit at the kushiro moo building, still unsure what its name means or what its primary purpose is. the night bus to sapporo leaves from here, though, and it is that bus which i await. this is my last blog post from kushiro. i am about to set out on the first trip i have completely planned on my own (and successfully executed, rather) on my own in japan. i have one thing planned for sapporo tomorrow; it won't take all day, so i am gonna have to find something else to do with the rest of it. that doesn't bother me at all.

oh boy

the train station i got off at does not have a machine for purchasing tickets. it does, however, have a schedule for return to kushiro eki. if i fail to find mariko i still win exploration.

i sit at a train station, my english degrading further as i wait for a train that will take me to the general vicinity of a park where i can supposedly meet mariko one more time before i leave. i say supposedly because google maps makes the park look big, and i don't actually know anything about why she is there except that it has something to do with her work.

i wait at the bus stop for the bus that will take me to my last tea ceremony lesson with ikushima sensei. i was gonna wear my kimono today, but i got to the point of putting on the belt and realized it would be just too hot. winter kimono, summer day? no thanks.

Instant Camp / Firework Show to End ALL

Got off the bus with the drama club on Wednesday only to find out that the bus stop was a decent walk away from the place were were going, Yamahana Autocamp. Having done the walk, I would guess about a mile. (I'm no GPS system, though, so don't take my word for it.) The walk was uphill part of the way and downhill part of the way, and plagued with bugs the WHOLE way. Wasps, bees, mosquitoes, butterflies, and cicaidas, to name the ones I know where there. Man, cicaidas are loud. I was the only one surprised by them.

When we got to Yamahana, we were a bit early for check in so we goofed off by the main lodge. Played a variation on the Japanese version of the kids' game Red Light, Green Light that involved a lot of silly poses and explanations for how, exactly, that silly pose had something to do with fireworks or whatever had been called out. Good times.

After we went to our cabin, three of the girls started making dinner (curry rice, and man was that tasty). Most people went to the hot springs while dinner was cooking, but Haruki was feeling a bit ill, Shirakawa was watching the food, and I was damned if I was gonna go to a hot spring in that heat, so we stayed behind. I slept. Haruki Slept. Shirakawa did something in one corner. It was a nice, lazy afternoon. We had dinner, then did stuff with fireworks. It was pretty much all sparklers, since anything with a decent chance of catching the grass on fire was forbidden. There were these tiny fireworks that did neato sparkly things in your hand that I actually liked way better than the sparklers.

Then we all went up to the second floor (which had been off-limits to all but a few until then) to find it set up for ye olde drinking party. They surprised me by starting off with some stuff for me -- a plaque that everyone had written a bit on, including one guy's mini Suzumiya Haruhi fanart for me, some pictures that one guy had printed out for me because I ended up not having my camera with me when we were doing group pictures after the play, and (from the people at my school, specifically) two Japanese scripts with English translations in them. All of these things were bloody awesome.

It was followed by a round of self-introductions, which I've become convinced is one of maybe four drinking games the Japanese have. The second drinking game they have is to use the superlative votes everyone came up with and have the winners drink. The fourth is to have everyone take guesses at fairly random questions and have the losers drink. I leave room for a fourth drinking game because I'm sure there is one, but until the trip with the drama club, I had only ever seen self-introduction as a drinking game.

After that, people pretty much drank, munched, and eventually fell asleep. I ended up watching an anime on TV (yeah, the place had a TV) with Hirokawa at some point before sleeping on the tiny couch. That couch was really comfortable in spite of being tiny.

In the morning, we packed up, cleaned up, and left. Another hellacious walk back through the bugs later, we hit the bus stop and went back home. All in all, it was a great deal of fun.

Yesterday, Yuuji, Arima, and I went to Obihiro. Obihiro is a bit south of Kushiro, and is Yuuji's hometown. It's also home to a fireworks show every August that is famous throughout the country. Yuuji said it's about the 4th biggest yearly fireworks display in Japan. One of the newspapers siphons money towards the budget for it all year, and it's a multi-billion yen (multi tens of millions in US dollars) operation.

It looked it.

It was the most impressive fireworks display I've ever seen in my life. There was a local radio DJ MCing and about half the time was taken up by the MC and advertizing, but the other half of the 70-minute show was all fireworks. Thousands of fireworks. Big fireworks. Holy cow fireworks. It rocked.

Yuuji had wanted to drive me and Arima around town (which is why we left Kushiro at like 10 in the morning), but his car's alternator died when he stopped to go to the bathroom about 3/4 of the way to Obihiro. Luckily, it stopped just down the road from a car service/gas station, so they got his car running long enough to get us to Obihiro, but between that and the annual visit to the family grave he went to with his family the tour didn't really happen. We did get to see Yuuji's old high school on the walk to the fireworks viewing grounds, but apparently there were a lot of things he didn't get to show us. Our return to Kushiro happened in his older sister's car, who's apparently psychotic about keeping the inner car clean. There was a tray on the floor in the back seat to put my shoes in when I entered the car.

well then

so i am cramped on a japanese bus for a long ride. heading to an instant cabin place with the drama club. they handed out pieces of paper with superlatives on them to be done on the bus ride. i had to ask the meaning of most of them. the most interesting part, however, was writing in kanji on a bus.

Flight and Vexation

Apparently (probably because they waited so long to make the reservation), they couldn't get me a seat on a flight out on the 26th. So I'm leaving the 27th.

Depart Tokyo: 8/27/06 at 15:35 via Northwest Arilines
Arrive Seattle: 8/27/06 at 08:35 (Gotta love worm holes!)

Depart Seattle: 8/27/06 at 10:20 (Here's to praying I make the flight in time)
Arrive Anchorage: 8/27/07 at 12:53 via Alaska Airlines

And to top it all off, I am pretty much screwed on finding a cash advance in this town.

So

So I fail at blogging. I just don't always keep up with it.

Anyway, last post was about how the teacher gave me the kimono I thought I was buying. The kimono is gorgeous. I would show you a picture, but I am on a school computer so I don't have it to upload. It's dark green with a gold-colored sakura pattern all over it. I love it. I'm still flabbergasted that Ikushima sensei just... gave it to me. I don't think I can pay the woman back for everything she's done for me.

The play is also over. Has been since a few days after my last blog post. I screwed up the lighting again, much to my dismay. Since then drama club has been an on-and-off thing, and mostly not the big combined deal. Just random theatre games and whatnot. I taught some of the guys here at my college the warmups from back home, and they thought the Chairman Mau excercises rocked. :D There's also a plan in the works for the combined club to go to a cheap group trip resort type place. We rent a cabin, hop in some hot springs, and generally have fun. Looking forward to that, though we are looking at fitting in about twice as many people as the cabin was made for. I think that makes it more fun.

The history class test went better than I expected. The reason for this is that the teacher made a separate test for the exchange students (as four of us were taking the class). First question was what did we learn in the class and the second was which of the art pieces he showed us did we like most and why. YAY! When he walked in with these double-size pieces of paper covered in just LINES, Matt and I looked at each other horror-stricken -- but it turned out not so bad after all.

Shortly after that, we the exchange students were informed that we were expected to participate in "International Night", a party that the school traditionally throws every year. As the teacher explained the party further, I realized that it was gonna be like the one they held for the Okinawans last semester, only less interesting. However, this is the first thing that I've been asked to do here that I absolutely didn't want to do. It's also not a big deal, really, so I didn't try to squirm my way out of it or anything.

It turned out more interesting than I expected, with them showing us how to make okonomiyaki and having tasty food. The Australians and I dressed up for the event because we felt like it, even though we knew no one else would. Matt fully dressed up in a suit, and Thomas wearing a suit with a T-shirt and no tie. Me in my kimono. Turned out Yuuji and Arima from Gaiken also went to the international night, a fact that didn't surprise me. :D They were like "DUDE, sweet kimono!" It was awesome. I also had a teacher from last semester fail to recognize me in the kimono. That was also awesome.

Monday night, Gaiken had an end-of-semester let's-all-go-to-the-all-you-can-eat-yakiniku-place deal. The place is a decent clip from the school, so they chartered a bus for the event. The bus was small and the people were many, and there was much conversation. A girl who went to UAF shortly before I came here and just got back recently brought a guy with her from UAF who seems to be her boyfriend, from the looks of things. He's a fire science major who's just here for the summer and has limited Japanese -- just enough to make silly jokes and keep up minimal conversation. I've never met him, but it seems from talking to him that the only real thing I have in common with him is that I get along with fire fighters rather well.

During the bus ride, I was at one point engaged in conversation with some of my Gaiken friends about a topic which I currently don't recall. During this conversation, I used the Japanese rough equivalent of, "But yeah...", at which point my friends all went O.O *GASP*. I instantly got a little freaked out, and asked if I used it wrong. They said no, that it was just the opposite -- that I had used it so perfectly it sounded completely natural.

(I win Xmas.)

Earlier in the day on Monday I had called my ISP about cutting off my internet around the 18th of this month, but apparently my options were end of July and end of August, after I had already left Japan. So. I now now longer have my own internet connection. Crappy school internet, ahoy!

I have made a great deal of progress towards uploading photos to the internet. They are, in fact, mostly zipped up and uploaded. I just don't remember the URLs at the moment, or I would list them. I want to set up a photo gallery somewhere at some point, but not yet. Blarg.

Realizations of the Period

1) You cannot use credit cards at the Japanese Postal Service.
1b) It's gonna be interesting sending stuff home.
2) Part of me really wants to go home. I figured out why. Everyone treats me like a girl here. I am so used to being one of the guys that it's been really getting on my nerves.