Atatakai Suupu Ikaga desu kaaaaaaa?

hi dudes. gotta squeeze out one more before i head off to effing tokyo tomorrow. i'm going to tokyo. tokyo. tomorrow i will be in tokyo. ashita, tokyo ni imas. this has been the craziest week and a half since arriving here. every day has seemed frantic and crammed with as much stuff as could be crammed into the day. what those things were, i can't quite recall, so i'll have to browse the photos for a bit here...

there was a wacky party last monday night in the baitshop-like place next to the convenience store. one of the japanese students decided he wanted to have a party there for all the international students, so he sent out an all school email about ten hours beforehand, and the place ended up filling out pretty nicely. there were beverages and de-pantsings and i rode an old crusty treadmill that was sitting in the corner. talking, whatnot, party things.

said goodbye to some americans i had gotten to know pretty well. when talking with the japanese students seemed tough, or i was going through a "too squeamish about somehow offending someone" phase, there was always this group that was having the same hard time, and i could relax a little talking to them. so they got on a bus for the station with charles hubert and the two other quebecers, and now they're back in the u.s. charles is spozedta come back in the spring, though.

went bowling with the remaining americans and two japanese girls, drank some chu-hi, this fizzy fruit flavored shochu based thing, threw the ball a little too hard, ate the new japanese mcdonalds thing called the mega tamago, three patties with an egg brick and some pepper sauce on top, brilliant. what the hell else? back to the photos...

hina came by and tried on my santa suit the day before she left. we talked for a while here, and the next day i helped her pack up her and her roommate ai's stuff, then hauled it over to the shipping spot in a big wooden rickshaw. right after that there was a big school party for the students studying abroad and the foreign students here who returned home. tables layed out with all maner of tabemono, some musical performances and speeches, talking with as many people as possible, getting a little frantic making sure i could get around and then discovering i didn't have a whole hell of a lot to say. it was too crazy to stay organized and whatnot in muh brains.

at some point last week, there was also a little show by the guitar club. we played some songs individually that we had picked out, mine were two neutral milk hotel songs that i managed to hack and warble through. pretty embarrassing, though.

i also dressed up like goddamn santa four days in a row. once for a preschool in the area, where i danced, handed out presents and took about forty hunnerd pictures. turned out to be fun, even tough i was kind of dreading it all week. the next time was for the bet i made with m'ladies. i told them that if they found a santa suit, i would wear it, thinking they'd have a hard time tracking one down. they went out the next morning and picked one up at the mall right away, so i had to fulfill my end of the bargain and wear it during a super appetizer extravaganza the ladies were having. so i sat around in the ratty thing eating little pieces of bread with ham fashioned into a flower perched on top. times three and four in the santa suit were for an event in akita city called "hot hot christmas", a bunch of booths selling food, and a little trailer bed stage for performances. most of the booths were run by aiu students or akita university in the city. i was on the damn stage in front of everybody for a performance having something to do with a masked super hero called "santa man" battling a dude in a cape called "black santa", and then i pop out at the end and ask them to help me deliver presents. i dunno. the whole thing was in japanese. while i wasn't in the santa suit, or struggling to get the hell out of it in a port-o-potty, i was selling soup and a japanese rice puff snack called dongashi, or meeting folks, or dancing, or trying some food and whatnot.

so, i think that was my week. i'm tired, dangit. i spent today, christmas damn day, doing laundry and finishing a final report. i gotta get up in six hours for the bus to the station, so i'm cutting this off and going to friggin sleep. i'll take my journal to tokyo and then put it up here when i gets back.