Metcha Yabai Yo Ne Kore?

feel a little lax in my reportings of late, i've got stuff from a couple weeks that i have yet to mention. the last few days have been another hectic weird semester ending jumble of people leaving, going crazy over finals, and because it's the end of the school year for the first year students, they all have to move out of the dorms and into the independent housing on either end of the campus. so they've been all over the place, charging down hallways pushing carts stacked with boxes and little personal refridgerators. i said goodbye to about seven people over the last two days, a bunch of us mopey mofos waving at the car or bus carrying away someone i felt like i was just getting to know. it's a hard way to have to meet people. yag. so this will be kind of a lonely break, with most people either returning to their country, or the japanese students either off to their hometowns or holed up in their new apartments.

what the hell else has been going on? two weekends ago, there was a school trip to the lake tazawako yuki matsuri, or snow festival, which was actually at a ski resort on a mountain a mile or two away from the lake. we showed up in the middle of some ridiculous cold and wind, a precursor to the blizzard that showed up later that night. the weather was so bad that the festival had to be cancelled. there were supposed to be fireworks and giant paper baloons being released, but there was only a short taiko performance and a little time to wander around eating festival food and looking at the enormous snow sculptures of japanese gods of luck (i think) and one of ultraman. we got back on the bus, and our consolation for the shortened trip was a few rounds of karaoke on the bus' built in system.

i also went out for another night at rakuichi, the nomihoudai place i really like because of the wide open set up allowing for a lot of chances to meet people at surrounding tables. four of us went, and we just had some beverages and talked and farted around for a while, then returned to school. nothing monumental, just a good night.

there was also the all school snowball fight the morning after i returned from the internet cafe. i had just enough time to get myself to temporarily stop stinking with a quick shower, then headed over to the big sporting complex parking lot where the yukigassen (snowball fight) courts were set up. there were about four barricades wedged into the snow on each teams side, all of them about 3 feet high and 3 feet wide. there were about 10 or 12 teams of 7 or 8 people each who had to put on colored vests signifying their team, and matching specialized yukigassen helmets with plastic protective visors over the eyes. it was set up like capture the flag, each team had to try to advance toward the other teams flag without being pelted by a snowball. our team played, i think we may have won, then we watched the other teams play and frigging froze solid. after the fights, some people talked to a local television crew, then we all headed to the dining hall of the sports complex for a huge hot lunch, about 100 students in all.

also went out for a pretty good night of karaoke with one of the higher level japanese language teachers and some of the language students, and invented a beverly hills cop two drinking game. drinks everytime that stupid song plays, once for every time eddy murphy laughs, and a big swig whenever anyone says "we gotta talk".

so that there's my convoluted, half asleep rendering of the last few weeks of my life. tomorrow, i go to akita station to pick up a little special someone called CARLS QUINN who will be here for 4 or 5 days, sleeping on a wafer thin futon in my dorm room. so much crap i want to show her, i caint goddamn wait! this means i have to vacuum the damned floor. yosh! my head don't work, i need to climb up to bed now...