Catching up Part 2

This post was written on February 20th by the way. I just hadnt gotten around to putting it up on the internet until now.

So. Most of the last twenty days have been spent attending mundane school and hanging out with exchange students on the weekends. However, don’t fear for my Japanese relationships. I hang out only with my Japanese friends during school time. The only reason why I don’t spend time with them on weekends or after school (except drama club) is because they are always busy studying or participating in their own clubs. Welcome to the life of your average Japanese high school student. Despite this though I’ve started really trying to crack down on them, and I’ve managed to get a couple of them to agree to hang out with me during spring break and maybe on some weekends. It’s tough work.

As for the foreigner fun, I’m not even sure where to start. Its all a jumble of awesome sauce in my memory. A lot of walks down Tanukikouji and Odori. A lot of evenings in Sapporo. One time, I had forgotten that school didn’t start until noon due to exams. I texted Tiffany in the subway station and she told me the news. I managed to persuade her out of bed and to the station to keep me company until we had to go to school. First we went to a Mister Donuts. It got kind of weird when this guy and girl came in. The girl seemed like she was either drunk or high on something, and the guy seemed like he came from the same party, but without as much stumble and laughing and coughing. Oh my god, the coughing. There was so much. And her voice sounded like there was sandpaper in her throat. She must have been a very heavy smoker. She kept stumbling around the front area and then leaning her whole body over counter. The worker behind the counter didn’t look amused. Not very scared, but nor entirely happy. Maybe even embarrassed. So that was a bit interesting. After our Mister Donuts, we decided to ride the subway lines and time how long it took from end to end. We only got through the nanboku line and half of the tozai line before we decided it was time to head for school. Riding chikatetsu is very very tiring. I don’t know why.

Another time, me and Dylan were in Tanukikoji. I know a number of interesting things happened, but I can’t quite remember all of them. This is why I need to blog right after I come home. Anyway, we went into a store owned by a Caribbean looking/sounding French guy and another guy presumably from Israel. It was a really expensive gangster-style clothing shop. The French guy seemed like he was on something, but the store didn’t have any funky smells so I wonder if his brain is just pre-fried. Or maybe that’s his personality. Who knows. Anyway, they were both really nice and we looked around a bit. Dylan tried on a pair of very baggy pants. The cost was originally 180,000 yen, but the guy said, since we were foreign, that he would lower it to 100,000 yen. A good deal I guess. If you’re rich. One hundred dollars is still pretty expensive in my opinion. After that we saw some buskers, all of which were pretty lame. Including some middle aged man in a boa dancing and singing to some obscure Japanese song with less than mediocre talent. (Still amusing though). Oh, and before we met in Odori station, Dylan had supposedly been given candy and 2,000 yen by some creepy old lady on the subway. She got off at his stop, at which point he ran away, lest he be chloroformed and dragged into some kinky ramen den.

There was also International Night. An evening where foreigners from all over the world, including a bunch of Japanese people, got together to talk about the environment and such. I have a feeling more than half of the foreigners were just given the registration forms and told to go. Like me, and all the other exchangers. It wasn’t completely boring. There were some presentations that lasted a couple of hours, and then we walked over to another building to split up into groups and discuss environmental-y things. There was some awesome Brasilian biologist in my group who looked like a detective. He wore a long leather jacket, a red scarf, long pony-tailed hair and a bowler hat. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a diamond-tipped cane in the umbrella rack of his house. He was very smart, but also very human. He swore at just the right times to add comic relief and simplicity to what he was saying. Overall, I wish he was one of my family members. After all the boring bits, there was a “friendly party” where we got to eat amazing cheese fondue and other food.

Lastly, quite recently (yesterday in fact), I went with Dylan and my host dad to a re-used sports equipment store to get snowboarding stuff for Dylan. That part wasn’t entirely eventful, but after that I had a whole bunch of time to kill before kung fu started at 6. So we went to a movie, The Lovely Bones (which was actually really good in my opinion). But the movie wasn’t the noteworthy part either. You see, I didn’t have much money with me, and Dylan had nothing except 40 yen and a mastercard that no one seemed to want to accept. So I was able to pay for my ticket, but he couldn’t pay for his. We both dug around everywhere for any little pieces of change to make up the 1,500 yen needed (including his 40 yen). Eventually we came up 200 yen short. The guy selling the tickets only offered up a ‘ganbatte’. So we started looking around for some magical fearie dust. Or a Meowth. Finding none, and beginning to feel a bit embarrassed (about five minutes of standing at the counter and looking around nervously had elapsed) we looked around for hopeful lenders. I managed up the courage to ask an elderly couple next to us, and they lent us the 200 yen. Yay! So, very very quickly and without looking back, we got our tickets and went into the theatre. But someone had already taken our seats (Sunday movies are always designated seating). So after about a minute of looking around at our seats that were already occupied, movie already playing, we decided to just sit in one of the empty frontish rows.
And I lied! The last paragraph wasn’t ‘lastly’. I just remembered some other noteworthy things, but I’ll only just touch on them.

There was Yuki Matsuri, the snow festival in Sapporo. I went to it twice, once at night with Lindsey and Kana and once during the day with Minami and Dylan. There was a guy on stage who sang, danced and stripped (down to spandex pants) during the nighttime one. The cratch area of his spandex wad covered in roses, some of which to took off and threw to the crowd. Kana caught one. During the daytime matsuri, we rode on a little kid choo-choo train (and almost got kicked off because SOMEONE put snow on my head, which I tried to through at them, but they dodged it and it hit the person behind them. Not my fault). We also made snow angels, tiny snowmen, Minami almost got sucked into a pokemon trap and so on.

I am also currently making an igloo in my backyard. I have decided to stop carving out the roof for fear that it may come crashing down on my head, but I can already nearly stand up in it. Its not done yet but at the moment it can fit about five people, all laying down. So it’s pretty big. Pretty awesome. I’ll get some pictures of it when it is done.

I went to Onsen as well for the first time when me and my host dad took a group trip to Niseko. I went with four other women, all of which were strangers. If you don’t know what onsen is, it is basically a nude hot spring. So it was my first time being naked in front of a bunch of people since I was a baby. But it actually wasn’t weird at all.