Saikin ni Jikan ga Nai Yo

yoisho! i have a minute here before i wash some dirt offa me to mention a few happenings from the last few days whatnot. i'm tired and i have a little bit of a cold, though, so this might turn out a little weird. last week, mother dear showed up with a friend on an extremely windy day, and we wandered around to whatever sights came to mind getting battered around by the gales. went to a big city market with sea animals and plants for sale and consumption and i was able to talk with some of the obaasans working there, and even managed to translate a little bit. also went to a few museums and the kanto festival center where i attempted and failed horribly at hoisting a kanto pole meant for 9 year olds.

the next day, mother and the friend came out here to the school for a tour and also for the chance to embarrass me in front of all the people i've met since i got here. they happened to come on the day when all the new students move into the dorm, so things were ridiculous here with boxes being passed everywhere, nervous families running around, staff and student supporters handing out instructions and gesticulating and explaining, and i had to stop the little tour i was giving a few times to carry refrigerators up to the fourth floor and suchlike. walked around to all the buildings and went to our immense new library, with brand new , buffed hardwood floors, huge windows, wide open lounging areas, and a huge main room with exposed rafters fanning out in a big circle over the bookshelves. it actually makes me want to study there. so. yes. mother and her friend took off, and i think i carried a few more things and met some folks and who knows what else went down that day.

the new students tried to settle in, and were given little informal tours around the dorm by upperclassmen, and i had a chance to meet a few of them that first night. the day after move in, there was a greeting party in the cafeteria with tons of food set out on tables with a number and letter stuck to them. everyone who came in to the cafeteria drew a paper with a number and a letter on it from a bag and went to their assigned table. so everyone met and talked first at the number table for a while, then switched to their letter table to meet some new people. met a lot of people that night, exchanged some numbers, and made plans to go on a walk the following afternoon.

the next day (or thereabouts, maybe it was two days later, i can't remember at all. everything over the last week has been mushed up and mixed up and swirled around.) met in the lobby with all the people who wanted to go on the walk, which ended up totaling 14, 12 new japanese students, m'self, and a guy from england, and wandered off to the woods behind the sporting complex. we broke into the big track stadium for a little bit, and then ended up bumping into a long bridge over a gorge that none of us knew was there. followed the path over the bridge and around the base of a large hill, right behind the airport where we saw a few planes take off. when the path looked like it was never going to end, we decided to turn around and come back to the school, a three hour round trip.

also in there was a surprise invitation to the home of kitaichi-san, the really friendly old feller that works in the dorm office. a few students piled in his car and bought a whole mess of food at a market and then went back to his home to cook and eat together. kitaichi-san's home is friggin amazing. it's huge by japanese standards, all the rooms connected by modernized versions of japanese sliding doors, and a main room with a tall ceiling that can be viewed from the second floor. he and his wife have a huge, custom made table in the main room with a fire pit in the center for grilling. they heated up wood out in front of the house and brought it in by the bucket load, laid out metal grids, and started cooking all the beef, pork, fish, shrimp, oysters, and vegetables we bought at the market. kitaichi-san and his wife sang old old traditional japanese songs to each other across the table and looked at eachother like they just got married yesterday. it was so incredible to watch them interact. so i got to spend another evening in a japanese home with two people who seem like they've been totally in love for over 40 years. i had to almost block out thinking about how far beyond any of my expectations the whole night was, because i would have totally lost it, and crying and eating at the same time is nearly impossible and kind of gross.

other than that, i've been staying up late talking to new students, catching up with people that have been gone, and meeting people from australia, new zealand, hungary, norway, thailand, taiwan, korea, austria, denmark, and the u.s. sometime soon there will be more talking, more walking, a bike ride, and then classes start theday after tomorrow. i think i'm going to try cramming as many classes as possible into my schedule, and see how that goes...