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Published: June 25th 2005
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Prayer Flags
Prayer flags from a local temple. It's saturday and William and I are dead. Not in the death, "head towards the light sense", but in the "it's only 2 and we've been up and biking since 8 this morning" sense. Our friends Breandan and Pascal told us last night that they wanted to go to Okakazi castle early saturday morning. William and I had similar plans so we planned told htem we'd join in. The problems start arising when brendan clarifies his definition of early.
"Yeah, that sounds great guys. So what , meet at the train station at 8:30?"
Put into context, class does not start until 9 during the week. Brendan is crazy. This has been decided, yet William and I decided that we would go anyway and have a good time hanging with our new freinds, who are quite an interesting bunch. Brendan is a 25 year old michaganer with an insatiable lust for anime; Pascal is a native Belgian for whom Japanese will be his 5th lanaguage; In other words, we are in good company.
Well, "are" is the incorrect word. "COuld have been" is more accurate. I overslept due to my addiction to late night japanese television (that blind
guy who had the daytime television show also has a prime time music show that featured the backstreet boys last night... it was beautiful) and i missed my appointment with william ot go eat breakfast. So william treks down to my hotel, drags me out of bed with 15 minutes before we are supposed to meet htem, and we bike our butts north as fast as we can... but we left the map in the hotel room in our haste... so we spent half an hour looking for a train station that may or may not exist. The man we asked in the soba shop seemed to think there was one, but when we followed what we thought were his directions, we ended up staring at a big empty lot.
Regardless, William and I went to Okazaki castle and had a good time by ourselves. For you Japanese history buffs out there, you know who you are, Okazaki castle is the birthplace of Tokugawa Iyeyasu, the man who united all of Japan under his sole rule and thusly started the Edo period and the ensuing 200 years of peace. In other words, he's a big deal. William and I
Ladle, Ladle, Ladle...
Not made by me or out of clay, these wooden ladles are outside of every temple we have visited. were thoroughly impressed with his blade collection. I think i'm going to start a blade collection when I get back home. I've always thought I needed something quirky and esoteric to leave to later generations of John Timothys. I have thought about a lot fo cats, but they're overdone and Samuel Clements already beat me to it. A nice Edo period blade collection will do it I think... Meeeemoriiies...
Of course, trying to return to campus was also a disaster as we got lost looking for a money exchanger. Generally, being lost is not something I am comfortable with. Partly because I must have some innate machismo that only comes up reagrding sking directions, but I can't do it. I just can't. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that even if i humble my self to asking for directions, I probably won't undertand what they are telling me anyway. It's an awful moral dilema that i find myself in, a lot like sophie's choice... well, ok , not relaly at all like sophie's choice but i digress. Roughly an hour ago, you may recall me saying that i said I "genreally" don't like being lost. Well, i have
All the Bikes are Falling Down...
William knocks over al of the bikes in the bike rack, regardles of his +3 Dodge modifier based on his initial Agility Score. come to discover that being lost in Okazaki is growing on me. This afternoon, William and I found a Retro-Hipster store that looks like it imports shirts from good will and sells them for 25-30 dollars a piece. That's a nice profit margin. We also fell into a few more temples and they are still pretty amazing. You'll be biking ina heavily developed commercial district, you'll bike past a mini martt and BAM... ancient temple that dates back hundreds of years.
School wise, classes are going to be good for us. The first day of schol was more orientation based. They gave us a tour around campus, showed us how to seperate our recyclables, and oh yeah, gave us an hour and a half long written exam followed by an half hour oral exam. They don't really joke around here at Yamasa. That's not to say it's not fun here. Far from it. Class is very enjoyable. Our teacher, Kawashi sensei, is very hip japanese woman of about 25( most peolpe aroundhere seem to be a little older than william and me, roughly 23-30 yrs old). She is very nice even when we are butchering her native language. We
Tea House
We awkwardly left this establishment as we were unable to decipher if the tea serice was officially over. had the pleasure of watching this horrbily dated moive in her class in which Takahamasan wanted to date Suzugisan, but that darn Mamedasan kept butting in to their date... That crazy Mamedsan, when will he learn that three's company and ... wait, sorry, that's wrong. I just miss John Ritter.
In terms of classmates, William and I have found some pretty decent folks around here. One thing that I really like about this school is the international base of its students. It is a lot like Amherst in that way, but there are so few of us, that there is no room to go off and form cliques. Take last night for example, William and stop watching tv with Shiho, a Japanese born American who goes to Columbia, to go to the student pub. There, we spend the evening with Brendan, pascal, Elizabeth, a 40 year old french woman, Hakim, a Taiwnese born student from England, and Michelle, a recent college graduate from California who detests Michael Jackson solely due to the increased traffic that beseiged her city due to his trial. Then William knocked over all of the bikes in the Bike Garage. Sorry if that was an
John is a Shogun
..and has been all along. abrupt change of topic, but I just wanted everybody to know that William knocked over everybody's bikes. I'm including a picture.
-Lightning Round-
-Hot and sweaty is becoming a way of life.
-The man who invented bicycles is a genius.
-William can't figure out how to win the marble in the juice game.
-I have bought so much Final Fantasy 6 merchandise that I frighten myself.
-I am also the proud owner of a Japanese copy of Norweigian Wood by Haruki Murakami.
-If you havn't read above mentioned book, do so now.
-Stil trying to figure out howto play Sangokusei Taisen.
-I won 200 game tokens playing a slot machine with only one token.
-They weren't redeemable for money, so I blew them all on a game called Dragon Treasure II
-When I want to take a show, I have to switch a lever that moves water from the sink to the shower.
-We have become regular customers at a local Soba shop. They recognize us and it's nice.
-They probably recognize us becasue the first time we visited, we couldn't open their door.
William wants me to talk about how attractive all of
And So is William
... but that's not really much of a surprise. the Japanese girls find him, but I refuse to do so.
-John
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avi
non-member comment
woah
i am so terrifyingly jealous of your adventures its almost as bad as if i had spent all my money on final fantasy 6 figurines, which are shot hot by the way. jtim, why are you in a hotel and not w/ william? william, why did you knock those poor bikes down, what did they do to you? both, where did you get bikes? etc. love, kisses and hugs, your faithful misiter of the left -avi