12/07/2007 - 12/09/2007
12/07/2007 Friday
Today I didn’t have any Japanese class which was splendid. However we did have a trip planned to go and visit a middle school. At first I was dreading it, because I thought it would be boring and I was chosen to say something at the end and I wasn’t looking forward to that. But to my surprise I actually enjoyed the visit quite a lot. At first it was dull because they just took us to a gym, lined us up in chairs facing a large group of middle schoolers in their gym uniforms sitting on the floor. They showed us a powerpoint about their school and presented it in soft mumbled English. But after the introductions and everything we played a couple of games with them. The first game we played we had to listen to how many claps their teacher made and we had to find that number of people and sit down in a group with them. The first time it was 5, so I found 4 girls and sat down with them, then it was 7, then 10? and then 15. Our group of 15 was actually 16 but I just said “shhhh” and they all laughed. Then the passed out “tails” which were just long pieces of colored cloth which you had to loop through your belt in the back and then you run around and try to steal the other tails. Mat knocked over Austin and then stole his tail while he was down and then Calaya and Jeff I think knocked each other over. My tail was stolen by Calaya but while Jeff was freaking out about trying to get more tails I calmly walked over and just grabbed his. It was a fun game. After that we broke up into smaller groups. Austin and I were put in the same group and we answered the questions they had prepared for us. Our group had one funny kid who was really good at English but he called one of the other little girls fat to which Austin and I did not know how to reply to. We returned to the front of the gym after a while and everyone gave their final speeches. A representative from each country had to speak and I was the one for America. I had written a speech myself (revised by Hiro, thank you!) and I just read from the paper, but I didn’t stutter or anything so I think it was good. It was supposed to end there, but our bus had not come back yet so we asked to play with the kids some more. Mat above everyone else had the most fun with the kids. One in particular was really funny, he would steal Mat’s hat and all the boys would chase him around the gym trying to get it back. He also kept poking his butt, which I have a great picture of. The boy from Austin and my group kept walking around and telling everyone that he was very tall, very cool, and had 100 girlfriends. These kids were pretty great. Afterwards I went back to the apartments and packed some of my things to get a general feel of whether not they would fit. Megan came to our apartments with Calaya after her class and Megan, Calaya, Charlie and I went out for sushi for dinner again. When we got back to the apartment we got ready and left for Hiro’s apartment. There were quite a lot of people (let’s see if I can name them all) there was me, Calaya, Megan, Charlie, Chris, Jeff, Jason, Nick, Hiro, Shadow, Rob, Tatsuya, and Yusuke… I think that was it. We played some games (Mafia again) and I was split a carton of sake with Char, and I was the mayor for the first time, but by this point in the night I was already pretty gone, so it was really hard for me to remember who killed who and who was healed etc. but I think I did a good job. I had some pretty funny death stories. Like for one I said that Mat got really mad at the Japanese boys for carrying purses that he went to stab one but Calaya jumped in front and took it in the chest. At one point Charlie and I left to buy more alcohol at the convenient store and I didn’t want to find and untie my shoes so I just wore Jeff’s which were about 4 times too big for me, but it was pretty funny. We caught the last train home and while waiting for the train Calaya and I had a nice discussion about whether or not animals had souls. We got on the train and we were practicing our Chinese, but I couldn’t think and was mixing Japanese grammar with Chinese words. Then I hear, “So you guys speak Chinese and Japanese?” and turned around to find out that it was the English guy Calaya and I had talked to another night on the way back from Kyoto. We talked to him for a little bit before it was our time to get off at Chiyokawa. The time we met him before I was swearing up a storm because the trains were making me mad, so the only two impressions this guy has of me is that I say “fuck” a lot and I speak in Chinese randomly drunk on the last train… great, go me. I went on the computer for a little bit and then went to bed.
12/08/2007 Saturday
I wanted to visit some of the temples I wrote about in my paper (that I said I have visited) because I researched them and they sounded cool. Chris and Charlie said they wanted to come too but not to wake them up until after 1:00PM so I left a note and left for Kyoto around 12:20 with Calaya and eventually Mat and Megan also got on the same train with us. When we got to Kyoto Mat split up with us to find a hoodie shop he was searching for and Megan, Calaya and I got some lunch at Mos Burger. The first temple we went to was Kennin-ji zen temple, consequently the first Zen Buddhist temple to exist in Japan. It was very pretty, but we had seen enough temples by this point that we decided not to pay the entrance fee to get inside the buildings, but we did check out the gardens in the back. Then we went to the second temple where we met up with Mat again. We went to Chion-in Pure Land Buddhist temple, which is famous for being were they filmed part of the Last Samurai, having the largest gate in Japan, and having the largest bell which takes 17 men to ring. This temple was a lot cooler than the others I went to, and we paid to check out the garden in the back, but it was definitely worth it. After that we split up with Mat again and went to the Yasaka? Shrine again (well the second time for me) because I wanted to take some quick pictures. Then we got back to Kyoto station and met up with Charlie. We ate dinner at Pasta More for dinner. The main reason we go there is because for the same price you can have any size pasta you want; and its good pasta too. Charlie spent most of the time writing a story about how God created the perfect child and named him “Charlie”, on the customer comment sheet and when he gave it to the waitress they took it in the back and we could hear them laughing at it (and we did other such things through out the dinner). Once we had of fill of pasta we walked to the Starbucks nearby and sat down for a while. Charlie wasn’t feeling too good so Calaya and I went to a nearby drugstore and got him some medicine and we just basically sat around Starbucks and we went to a bookstore waiting until the time we had to meet with everyone in the station for karaoke. At 9:00PM we went to the station and about 20 minutes later everyone showed up, even some unexpected people, like Christine and Jeff, which we were all surprised to see, even Hiro (who organized it all). But it was fine, we got to the karaoke place and it was an all night, all you can drink event and it was a lot of fun. I did start to not feel so good at the end due to all the alcohol, no fresh air, being really tired and other reasons, but it wasn’t that bad. Unfortunately I also ended up spilling two drinks in the night, but one of them (or maybe both) I would have done even if I were sober). The room was quite tiny and there were 11 people (me, Shadow, Hiro, Megan, Calaya, Christine, Yusuke, Rob, Jeff, Nick and Charlie). Around 5:30/6:00 we left the karaoke place and headed home. I went to sleep at 7:15AM.
12/09/2007 Sunday
I woke up at 3:00PM, took a shower, and went to sushi for dinner with Calaya and Charlie. It was a really weird day because I woke up and it was sunny; I went to eat and it felt like a breakfast/lunch, but when we walked out of the restaurant it was dark. I pulled together the last parts of my temple paper and power point presentation but I spent most of that night looking for and downloading music and just messing around online. I started laundry around 1:00AM and then I went to bed at 2:30AM.
Today I didn’t have any Japanese class which was splendid. However we did have a trip planned to go and visit a middle school. At first I was dreading it, because I thought it would be boring and I was chosen to say something at the end and I wasn’t looking forward to that. But to my surprise I actually enjoyed the visit quite a lot. At first it was dull because they just took us to a gym, lined us up in chairs facing a large group of middle schoolers in their gym uniforms sitting on the floor. They showed us a powerpoint about their school and presented it in soft mumbled English. But after the introductions and everything we played a couple of games with them. The first game we played we had to listen to how many claps their teacher made and we had to find that number of people and sit down in a group with them. The first time it was 5, so I found 4 girls and sat down with them, then it was 7, then 10? and then 15. Our group of 15 was actually 16 but I just said “shhhh” and they all laughed. Then the passed out “tails” which were just long pieces of colored cloth which you had to loop through your belt in the back and then you run around and try to steal the other tails. Mat knocked over Austin and then stole his tail while he was down and then Calaya and Jeff I think knocked each other over. My tail was stolen by Calaya but while Jeff was freaking out about trying to get more tails I calmly walked over and just grabbed his. It was a fun game. After that we broke up into smaller groups. Austin and I were put in the same group and we answered the questions they had prepared for us. Our group had one funny kid who was really good at English but he called one of the other little girls fat to which Austin and I did not know how to reply to. We returned to the front of the gym after a while and everyone gave their final speeches. A representative from each country had to speak and I was the one for America. I had written a speech myself (revised by Hiro, thank you!) and I just read from the paper, but I didn’t stutter or anything so I think it was good. It was supposed to end there, but our bus had not come back yet so we asked to play with the kids some more. Mat above everyone else had the most fun with the kids. One in particular was really funny, he would steal Mat’s hat and all the boys would chase him around the gym trying to get it back. He also kept poking his butt, which I have a great picture of. The boy from Austin and my group kept walking around and telling everyone that he was very tall, very cool, and had 100 girlfriends. These kids were pretty great. Afterwards I went back to the apartments and packed some of my things to get a general feel of whether not they would fit. Megan came to our apartments with Calaya after her class and Megan, Calaya, Charlie and I went out for sushi for dinner again. When we got back to the apartment we got ready and left for Hiro’s apartment. There were quite a lot of people (let’s see if I can name them all) there was me, Calaya, Megan, Charlie, Chris, Jeff, Jason, Nick, Hiro, Shadow, Rob, Tatsuya, and Yusuke… I think that was it. We played some games (Mafia again) and I was split a carton of sake with Char, and I was the mayor for the first time, but by this point in the night I was already pretty gone, so it was really hard for me to remember who killed who and who was healed etc. but I think I did a good job. I had some pretty funny death stories. Like for one I said that Mat got really mad at the Japanese boys for carrying purses that he went to stab one but Calaya jumped in front and took it in the chest. At one point Charlie and I left to buy more alcohol at the convenient store and I didn’t want to find and untie my shoes so I just wore Jeff’s which were about 4 times too big for me, but it was pretty funny. We caught the last train home and while waiting for the train Calaya and I had a nice discussion about whether or not animals had souls. We got on the train and we were practicing our Chinese, but I couldn’t think and was mixing Japanese grammar with Chinese words. Then I hear, “So you guys speak Chinese and Japanese?” and turned around to find out that it was the English guy Calaya and I had talked to another night on the way back from Kyoto. We talked to him for a little bit before it was our time to get off at Chiyokawa. The time we met him before I was swearing up a storm because the trains were making me mad, so the only two impressions this guy has of me is that I say “fuck” a lot and I speak in Chinese randomly drunk on the last train… great, go me. I went on the computer for a little bit and then went to bed.
12/08/2007 Saturday
I wanted to visit some of the temples I wrote about in my paper (that I said I have visited) because I researched them and they sounded cool. Chris and Charlie said they wanted to come too but not to wake them up until after 1:00PM so I left a note and left for Kyoto around 12:20 with Calaya and eventually Mat and Megan also got on the same train with us. When we got to Kyoto Mat split up with us to find a hoodie shop he was searching for and Megan, Calaya and I got some lunch at Mos Burger. The first temple we went to was Kennin-ji zen temple, consequently the first Zen Buddhist temple to exist in Japan. It was very pretty, but we had seen enough temples by this point that we decided not to pay the entrance fee to get inside the buildings, but we did check out the gardens in the back. Then we went to the second temple where we met up with Mat again. We went to Chion-in Pure Land Buddhist temple, which is famous for being were they filmed part of the Last Samurai, having the largest gate in Japan, and having the largest bell which takes 17 men to ring. This temple was a lot cooler than the others I went to, and we paid to check out the garden in the back, but it was definitely worth it. After that we split up with Mat again and went to the Yasaka? Shrine again (well the second time for me) because I wanted to take some quick pictures. Then we got back to Kyoto station and met up with Charlie. We ate dinner at Pasta More for dinner. The main reason we go there is because for the same price you can have any size pasta you want; and its good pasta too. Charlie spent most of the time writing a story about how God created the perfect child and named him “Charlie”, on the customer comment sheet and when he gave it to the waitress they took it in the back and we could hear them laughing at it (and we did other such things through out the dinner). Once we had of fill of pasta we walked to the Starbucks nearby and sat down for a while. Charlie wasn’t feeling too good so Calaya and I went to a nearby drugstore and got him some medicine and we just basically sat around Starbucks and we went to a bookstore waiting until the time we had to meet with everyone in the station for karaoke. At 9:00PM we went to the station and about 20 minutes later everyone showed up, even some unexpected people, like Christine and Jeff, which we were all surprised to see, even Hiro (who organized it all). But it was fine, we got to the karaoke place and it was an all night, all you can drink event and it was a lot of fun. I did start to not feel so good at the end due to all the alcohol, no fresh air, being really tired and other reasons, but it wasn’t that bad. Unfortunately I also ended up spilling two drinks in the night, but one of them (or maybe both) I would have done even if I were sober). The room was quite tiny and there were 11 people (me, Shadow, Hiro, Megan, Calaya, Christine, Yusuke, Rob, Jeff, Nick and Charlie). Around 5:30/6:00 we left the karaoke place and headed home. I went to sleep at 7:15AM.
12/09/2007 Sunday
I woke up at 3:00PM, took a shower, and went to sushi for dinner with Calaya and Charlie. It was a really weird day because I woke up and it was sunny; I went to eat and it felt like a breakfast/lunch, but when we walked out of the restaurant it was dark. I pulled together the last parts of my temple paper and power point presentation but I spent most of that night looking for and downloading music and just messing around online. I started laundry around 1:00AM and then I went to bed at 2:30AM.