Mainichi Takusan Tabemono ga Tabetai

dangit. it's been a spell, has it not? i can't even recall what exactly i've been doing, had to go back to the photos to piece it all together. hokay... near as i can tell... two weekends ago, went on another trip to teach english to first and second graders somewhere in the southern corner of the prefecture. round trip alone took five hours, so it was an all day trip. the kids were bonkers, trying to climb me simultaneously while i tried to shuffle away in the ridiculously undersized slippers provided by the school. we worked on animal names and sounds, and then body parts and things around the classroom. after the kids, we drove along the coastline for a while, and for some reason stopped at a community center to make something out of sticks, nuts, hot glue and googly eyes. yeah. we also went to a little roadside restaurant that specialized in ikayaki, grilled squid, and chomped on it for a while. got back on the bus, everyone fell asleep, bus driver got lost for a while, finally made it home 3 hours later.

the pictures tell me that the next thing of note that i did was head out to the restaunt kyu in wada again last friday for more beer, hot sake, sashimi, and grilled fish et whole. that place is friggin incredible. it was an american fellas birthday party, and there were eventually twelve or thirteen people there in the corner of a room that maybe seats 25 at capacity. half the folks wanted to go into akita city for karaoke and beverages, but i elected to stay behind with the other half, who wanted more sashimi, hot sake, and yakitori. caught the last bus back to campus and watched a little of another performance night with 19 school bands. i think i was one of only two international students watching people perform. later, headed over to an intl student apartment for some top notch not so tasteful revelry, which is all i can come up with for that part of the night, adjective-wise. ended up in the residence hall lobby doing who knows what till 4 am or so, tottered off to bed.

the next morning, got up and rode out to the dang mall to get quesadilla ingredients for the "japanese conversation friends" party. this was a group that met every week to speak japanese or play some japanese games or try calligraphy, whatnot. so later that night, in the res hall kitchen, there were about thirty students in 5 or six groups making whatever food their group decided to make, there were kimchee pancakes, a japanese style pancake called okonomiake or something damn close to that, a massive heaping noodle dish, gyouza, and the quesadillas from our group. we hauled the food over to a tatami mat room down the road, where apparently tons of fun was had last semester, but this was my first time being there. we set up some low japanese tables, some floor mats, layed the fat trays of food out, gobbled it up, played some telephone type game in japanese, and generally had a fine time. a little short though, we only had the room for two hours.

last night, went out with m'ladies and the quebecers to an italian restaurant called ya-ya for some tasty pizza and a fine night out. had my japanese final today, pretty brutal, but i might have done decently. the class moved so fast, and the winter term will move even faster. i've been pretty dilligently neglecting my other final for japanese society class, due in 4 days, a paper on "how modern japanese women are changing their society" based on a book i relly want to read, but now that i have to read it, sleeping or lounging about always seem to be the favorable options. yaga. well. i will post pictures, eat dinner, and then dammit, i will read that book.

i have a hostel in the setagaya neighborhood of tokyo booked for december 26th through jan 1st. bunch of folks from school will be around, and i'll be swooping in just in time for a birthday party, i think.

yeh. this sumbitch is a long'un. i should update more often so's i don't have to type so much, and nobody has to take up all that time reading this bastard.