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Published: July 15th 2007
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Aww man, I forgot to write about the past two days! Its a good thing I didnt do much, or take a lot of pictures.
Day Four- So day four I found out a Typhoon was coming to Osaka. Ive never seen a typhoon in my life, so I am kind of excited/ freaked out! It was all over the news and public broadcast messages were made fairly often. It is supposed to hit the fifteenth.
I sat around, didnt do much, and then I found out we were going to play tennis with Kie's grandmother. We drove in the rain (as always) to her apartment, and out comes this little ball of energy waving her hands, talking a milion miles an hour, etc. And i find out it is the grandmother! She was really nice, really patient with my lack of Japanese skills, and was very warm-hearted. We went to the indoor tennis courts (three of them) and we took one and did a warm up game. Next thing I know, I was in a court with three other people I didnt know, one of them was a coach. I was getting lessons! So I tried talking to the other people. and was faily able to do so. Its just when they talked back to me thatit was extra hard to understand. I worked really hard, got a good sweat on, and changed my clothes and left. We then went to Kies aunts house. Her english is pretty good, although she doesnt get to speak it much, so she wanted to make "lesson times" with me so that she could practice her english. We had one the next day. After that, we came home, had dinner, and just lounged around until we went to sleep.
Day Five- More forecasts of the typhoon, I saw what it did in Kyushu, and it's pretty creepy: floods, rubble falling on things, etc.
Day five was much like day four. I just lounged around for a while, and then at around 11 we went to an elementary school to help out. The thing was, though, there was almost nobody in the school do to typhoon warning, I think. So we left, and I learned a new word: zannen. We went home and just stayed around, had some ramen for lunch (it was really good, and now I can slurp really loud, too!), and then Kies aunt came by and we talked in English about family, language, etc. She is a lot like me. She has been studying for a while, but cant speak well, and is always using the dictionary!
After the lesson was over we went to a shrine and a temple. What a crazy experience. It was raining, and we slowly walked past the shrines to different kami (we visited the eye kami). In front of each shrine, kie, her aunt, and her dad, would stand, back straight, in front of the shrine, clap their hands together twice, and with their hands still put together bow a little. They gave me some little money to put in the "offering" thing, which I did. I didnt really see it as bad, I was doing it on their behalf. But when their dad asked me to do the prayer, I just said "Sore dekinai
", it was fine with them, and we just moved on. One of the shrines had thirty three images on them. These thirty three images were supposed to represent thirty three different shrines all over Japan. We then went to the temple. It was very big and ornate, and it was really interesting to go and look at everything.
The entire time I was there I was afraid. Everywhere I looked, I felt evil. Near the end it was almost suffocating me, so Im glad we left. Almost the entire time I was in prayer. So yeah, for any of my Christian friends, I would definitely recommend going, as long as you prepare yourselves beforehand.
Now comes the really fun part. We went to an arcade. They are incredibly different from ones in america. Here, everything is bright, clean, and colorful. They had a lot of games where you bring certain trading cards (like sports cards of pokemon cards or something) and you can play games against someone else automatically on the screen. Its amazing! The entire time I was wowed and amazed. I played a game, Im gonna called it taiko drum revolution, where you have a taiko drum and two drum sticks. You beat on the drum at the tempo and at the times it tells you on the screen, all coordinated to music. Its like dance dance revolution. That was great.
So we spend a ton of time there, time flying by, and then we go home, have dinner, and then go to sleep. I studied some kanji before I went to sleep, and Mrs Tanaka helped me with it. It was great!
Today the typhoon is supposed to hit. I dunno when, but it might.
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