Hana Mizu

stellar and grand, this evening. a little bit of snow, a liberal ammount of illumination bouncing at us from the moon, and i spent some quality time with a girl i met at the hot hot christmas thing when i was prancing around in my ill fitting santa suit, and a friend of hers. she doesn't know a whole lot of english, and i don't know a whole lot of japanese, so we've been sending half cryptic phone messages to eachother for about a week trying to meet up somewhere. she told me about this place she wanted to meet, and i had to go print out a map of the city and search for it. found it, highlighted it, took the train out tonight, and it was a simple 15 minute walk from the station. turns out the meeting spot was a long abandoned movie theater off in a corner of the business district. spotted her rolling past on her bike, and we walked down the street where her friend was waiting for us. the friend knew about a tiny old itallian restaurant down a side street, so we wedged ourselves through the door and up some narrow stone steps to a table overlooking the bar. the owner, who was sitting at the bar talking with folks, said "bona sera" when we walked in. our table was like an old foot locker or something, and we sat on fluffy scruffy couches. we ordered a friggin fantastic pizza and a couple mugs of beer each. most of the conversation centered around how utterly frustrating learning a new language can be, and they both had pocket notebooks that we were writing english and japanese phrases in. also pictures of raccoons, foxes and noses. found out the japanese term for runny nose just translates as 'nose water', which i think i found a hell of a lot funnier than they did. time was eaten up, and i had to go run for the last train. great to be able to establish a connection to people outside of the isolated, maniacal little island this school can become, and i hope i have a lot more chances to hang out with them.