Stuff

Alright new philosophy; I will blog whenever I feel like it. I think it’s worked for me so far.So I left you off at bowling. Bowling was fun. It was me, Dylan, Tiffany, Lindsey, some Japanese guy that we met at international night and female person that he knew. We met at the eki, and walked to the bowling alley. It was the same alley that me and Yuriho went to. I’m not sure if I wrote about that night but it’s irrelevant. Basically, I suck at bowling, really really badly. As a joke, I put my name as “jesus” on the game sheet so that it appeared on the monitors. In a funny coincidence (?), whoever I stood on the platform, whoever was bowling at the time would either get a strike or a near strike. So I was dubbed a lucky charm, and forced by Dylan to stand on the platform whenever he bowled, working my mighty holy magic to give him a good score. Too bad I wasn’t a lucky charm to myself. After bowling, we did purikura, and went to McDonalds. That time was cut short for me, but that’s another story and it doesn’t even really matter.

After that night, me, Tiffany, Laura, Lindsey and Emmi planned to go to Rejaspo but the bus never came. So we ended up going back to the eki instead. Some un-noteworthy things happened, I was able to borrow Laura’s awesome camera, and after Tiff and Lindsey left the rest of us decided to go to Odori and take pictures. Well, it was more like a hyper and excited Rachael wanting to go to Odori to take pictures with Laura’s camera. But we ended up getting caught by the tv people, making signs for our countries, and waving on tv as they did some mother’s day thing. That took a long time. Oh, and we were stalked most of this time by a really creepy mentally sick person is a bright orange jumpsuit and a little hat, worn at the very back and left tip of his head. At one point, the supervisor for the tv program had to get him away from us because he was getting a bit close. After the tv thing, we did go to Odori and took pictures, and watched a band play on the street. It was nice.

A little while before all that, I went to asahiyama zoo, which wasn’t that exciting. I just think I should mention it. That was the last night that I spent with the Sagawa host family. When we came back from the zoo, my two host brothers were over and we all had supper together and talked. It was pretty fun. I nice last supper kind of thing. I really like that family - they were so laid back about things, which is a bit rare in Japan. Luckily, my last family is also laid back about things.

I now live with Sasaki-san. They parents are fairly young. They have three kids - older brother and sister and a younger brother. My younger brother is really strange, and introduced himself self as ‘James Chan from Singapore’. Something out of his English textbook. Everybody in the family loves English. Sometimes I kind of wonder if I’m only here to help them learn it. But they’re a good family. It’s nice to have a family with kids around my age.

Last week was kind of busy for me. On the 11th, I went to look at Sakura with my host dad and some of the rotary people. We went out for sushi after, and it actually wasn’t that good. It was a really fancy sushi place, because of course, being rotatrians, they HAD to go to a big fancy place. We got very little sushi, at long intervals, and it was all pre-set so no one could order what they wanted. Most of the stuff was really gross. Like raw shrimp turned inside out with the stomach and veins popping out everywhere. And fish eggs. So I didn’t eat that. And whale. They all kind of sneered at me when the whale was brought about because, right now a lot of foreign people are mad at Japan for hunting the whales. I agree with the foreigners. The Japanese say it’s a traditional custom but come on, when an animal is being endangered from hunting, I think you give a little leniency to your customs. Whale isn’t even that great anyway. They talked a bit about the anit-whale-eating people, doing impersonations and making them sound like idiots. I told them straight out that there are very few whales left and that they take a long time to reproduce and grow to adults, and that the species will die if Japan continues, and that going without whale meat is a very small price to pay for the continuation of a species. And basically told them that they are being egotistic asses if they think that having whale in their diet is more important than a species living on. Long story short; they shut up about the whale thing. On the 13th, I was a makeup model for a makeup contest. It was actually really fun. I felt like a really model or something, with one girl doing my makeup and the other doing my hair, being served chocolate and stuff. And I looked completely different when it was done. We took a bunch of pictures, and I exchanges mail addresses with the two girls because they were interested in having me model for their hair salon’s magazine. Yeah, I know my future career now. (Jokes). Yesturday was the Naganuma festival. All of the rotary kids went to Naganuma for this gaijin festival thing, with little kids and stuff. It was pretty fun. I met some girls from the town but, living so far away and with only two months left, there’s not much hope for new friendships starting. My host dad drove Dylan there with us and so when we got back we went to see sakura again, because the first time I saw it the weather was really crappy and I forgot my camera. By this time all the pink sakura were gone and it was just the white ones left, by that was ok. Me and Dylan went under this river bridge thing to get pictures, and we saw a hobo nest! It was so strange. There were poles and pieces of wood for the walls, and blankets and bags of garbage and stuff inside. And, I’m not entirely sure, but I think there was someone sleeping in there, because as we were making out escape I heard some grumbling noises. Exciting stuff.

Finally, today I planted flowers with some of the rotary members. It was nice to be included in some sort of volunteer activity, but really, Japanese people have such a lack of common sense. I won’t even get into it, but let’s just say my group got their flower planted done about forty minutes earlier than everyone else. After that, me and Dylan went to the Mitsui shopping outlet park place, a long 45 minute bus ride on a ghost bus that almost didn’t exist, out of the heart of Sapporo and into backwater landscape of dirt/snow hills and car dealerships. But the shopping was fairly good. Most places, guy’s clothing stores don’t exist, but I think in mitsui there were more guy shops. A lot of expensive places, but some cheap stuff too. I really want to go to a good second hand store one of these days. I miss you, beloved Value Village. So, that was the last two weeks or so. I guess I’ll see you again next time I feel like it.