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Published: November 8th 2011
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Greetings! I hereby declare myself to be a horrible blogger in the sense that the frequency of my publications is as low as my mother's ability to sit still. And now that I've annoyed at least one reader I shall proceed to more important matters.
The last few weekends I have experienced a great deal of things and learned some lessons. One of these is to always get a new glass at an all-night karaoke bar if yours gets broken by a stray american. But I'll get back to that in a moment.
The night in question was some time ago, three weeks if my memory cells haven't been completely eradicated by the occasional...ANYWAY, the night started off with a somewhat late welcoming party for the international students where there was food, merrymaking, a lack of alcohol and japanese tutors, male and female, dancing in what appeared to be school uniforms suited more to the gender with less hair on the legs. My conclusion is that this was freaking hilarious! Later in the evening the crowd moved on to the Omiya-so dormitories for the weekly drinking party, which unfortunately lacks music and the freedom to make any noise whatsoever outside.
However, this was also a lot of fun and eventually led to the aforementioned karaoke bar. Since we poor JAS students live outside the central Kyoto area we usually have to end the night early in order to get home on the last train. Not this night. This night we sang and sang and sang and my weakness for a mic with an attentive audience got the better of me several times. Needless to say I was godlike, even though some of my fellow students would attribute this description to my apparent god-complex, to which I usually answer: "What complex?". The glass-breaking incident was unfortunate, since I didn't drink anything, neither water nor beer, for almost 4-5 hours. I believe this to be the cause of the severe hangover that haunted me all through the following day, when I slept from 8 am to 3 pm.
The last two weekends I have suffered through two university festivals which contained no beer at all but a lot of overpriced food which were sold by student organisations. Being the only foreigners at our campus it was quite difficult to get anywhere since obnoxious students with signs constantly tried to drag us
along the THEIR stand which was supposed to be the best, making us feel like a sort of trophy. We eventually got a hold of our OWN signs and started selling crappy food in OUR language. While it protected us, more or less, from salesmen the other people at the festival seemed mostly afraid of us.
There was, however, very energetic dancing in traditional outfits by a number of dancing clubs, and some other performances, including traditional japanese music.
After the festival this last weekend we moved on into Kyoto and I finally returned to the fabulous soba/ramen restaurant where I ate a bowl of ramen that would have destroyed a lesser being, or just someone with a smaller stomach. We wandered around, checking out shops and arcades until we, exhausted, returned home. The following rainy day found me and three other brave souls on the train to Osaka, on our way to visit one of the worlds biggest aquariums, Kaiyukan. I witness penguins. They were awesome. I witnessed a whaleshark. It was humongous. I witnessed a couple of crabs. They were creepy. Finally I witnessed hammerhead sharks. They scare the living hell out of me. The otters were
I have no idea...
This guy was the master at not moving at all. cute as well, though it was tough to wade through the sea of children, or "midgets" as I like to call them, in order to get a good look.
Sadly, I wasn't in a very good mood since my curse of regular colds and assorted diseases was making its move. Finally, when I felt that every step was a battle and my communication consisted of low grunts of "yes", "no", "dunno", we came upon a small Nirvana in a cruel world. It was a Burger King. My salvation came in the form of a double Whopper with extra bacon, chips and coca-cola, which was followed by coffee from a nearby Starbucks because, apparently, Zach had led us into a part of Osaka known as "America-town". I guess his biological compass must've kicked in. Nevertheless, it sustained me for at least an hour or two before three of us gave up and went home, tired as a japanese student on some form of public transportation(they can sleep ANYWHERE). Zach stayed behind to go clubbing and was immediately punished since, for some inexplicable reason, clubs have started closing at 1 am in Osaka. This sunday I reveled in doing as little as possible and it was glorious, epic even.
That's it for now, hopefully you're not asleep by now. May you always have extra sheets so you can wash the ones you have used for two months!
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