Man, it's really hard to remember to keep up with this when I don't have internet access at any time I want. Fortunately, classes are pretty standard and boring so I don't feel like you're missing much by my forgetting.

Classes this week were more of the same. The music class is still terribly intimidating, I must say. I spent perhaps four hours today translating words I didn't understand and I only got through half of the songs that we've listened to, so far. I have a list of about 200 words that I've looked up. I'm still going to try to get through the other songs, even though I don't think I actually will have to know the content of the songs. It'll make me feel better about the class and whatnot to have done some studying.

When I have internet next (which won't be until Wednesday because of the holiday, even though I'm writing this on Sunday night), I think I will try to take the time to look up some French music history so that I have a better idea of what's going on in class. There's supposed to be a test at the end of it and it would be hard enough without the language barrier. My friends and I will definitely be studying for that one together, because they're all better at this than I am. They shall be my salvation.

Yeah, so today was a pretty lazy day. I like having a really lazy Sunday, especially after yesterday. We went to the beach yesterday. I got up at 6:22 (it would have been 5:45, but I was still drunk from the night before and never actually heard my alarm clock. It's a wonder I woke up at all) to leave at 6:30 because we had a 30-minute walk to the train station before our train left at 7:15. Fortunately for me, I got to sleep on the two-hour train ride before we got to Biarritz.

The ocean and the beach were absolutely beautiful, and the weather was too nice. It was very sunny but not very hot, which means that I got a beautiful sunburn. It's impressive, but I think the most impressive thing is that I got the same sunburn as Jennie and Elizabeth, but whereas I didn't use any sunscreen, they used spfs 30 and 50, respectively. I wish I had actually thought about it, though. Usually, it's hot and I can feel myself burning, but not yesterday! Oh well. I had a great time, though.

After we headed back, we made plans to go to the club, but Elizabeth and Jenna live so far away, they had no way to get there, so plans fell through. Actually, pretty much all of our plans with Jenna and Elizabeth fall through because they live so far away. You'd think they'd get used to it and actually stop making plans that they can't follow through, but they haven't gotten there yet.

So anyway, last night was uneventful, but that's okay. And then today I did nothing but look up 200 words in the dictionary while translating about 20 French songs and read the entirety of my cheap fantasy novel. I needed a break from Harry Potter et le Prisonnier d'Azkaban. It would have been too much French to read that interspersedly while translating songs.

but yeah, it's really nice here. I would like it a lot if things stayed open past 7 pm. I mean, it really sucks to have to have everything planned out in advance, especially since our plans with Elizabeth and Jenna always fall through and so I'm left with nothing to do for the evening. I've gotten really good at the solitaire game on my computer.

Anyway, I'm gonna go to bed now because we're doing weird stuff tomorrow. Because Tuesday is France's national holiday (think 4^th of July), the university technically isn't open tomorrow. That being said, we're still having 'classes' in that we have a mandatory learning activity that involves something along the lines of a scavenger hunt downtown. I'm not particularly excited about it, but what can I do? I'm not sure if I'm supposed to take my lunch or not, now that I think about it. Oh well, I can always buy stuff for a sandwich at the supermarket.

Anyway, I think that's it for now. I don't really have much to tell you that would be of interest, so I'll try and upload this on Wednesday or whenever I next have internet.

Much love

Matthew

---

So today was the 14th, which is their national holiday, but they're smarter than we are and all go out and party the night before they have off. I was stupid and took about 200 pictures of the fireworks. I just kept clicking the little button and taking lots of pictures of the fireworks, which don't come out well in pictures. I only realized how stupid this was, though, afterwards when Sean mentioned that he got a nice video and I realized that a video would have been a much more effective way of documenting that. Oh well.

So we got up early this morning to take an 8 am bus to Gavarnie, which is a little town down in the Pyrenees, so that we could hike the mountain and see it and whatnot.

So. Absolutely. Gorgeous. It was so beautiful. I took lots of pictures that you're not going to get to see until I'm state-side again, because of my lack of internet, but it was almost definitely my favorite part of this trip so far. Also, I'm going to be so sore tomorrow. After an hour-and-a-half hike to the waterfall, it was a twenty minute climb UP the side of the mountain to get to it. It was exhausting, but it was definitely worth it.

I took a risk and drank the water from the natural spring. Hopefully I don't get sick, but whatever. I only found out after I drank it that there's been some sort of problem with the sheep getting sick or something. Scary, but it's too late to worry about it.

It was a most wonderful day, I have to say.

Oh man am I going to be sore for the next few days, though. So very sore.

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So I'm surprisingly tired for how much I slept today.

It's really hard to update while I'm here. I don't have internet in my room and it's terribly inconvenient to go to campus to use their internet. Actually, it's really hard to do anything in this town. Pretty much EVERYTHING closes at 7pm. No kidding. There is a grocery store down the street that's open until 9, but all of the other stores close at 7. The campus closes at 6. There are some restaurants that open at 7 because people tend to eat later here than at home, and of course the clubs and bar are open. That makes it really hard to do things. I have to make sure I have my food for dinner before 7. I have to have all of my homework done before 6. If I want to spend time with some of my friends here, I have to do that before the last bus takes them home at 7:30. The buses don't run on Sunday and nothing opens at all, so I can't do anything but stay home, pretty much. It's crazy hard to do anything.

Well I'll stop complaining about stuff I can't do anything about for a while and tell you how things are going, maybe. Classes are really weird. I don't know exactly what to make of them. Parts of them are really easy, like when she actually tries to teach us grammar. I already know what I'm supposed to be doing, when it comes to all of the grammar she's been teaching us; I'm just not great at doing it spontaneously. I can do it when I think about it. However, she uses a lot of complicated vocabulary and she speaks really quickly. I know I'm not the only one who has problems understanding when she speaks.

Oh! There are four Swedes, a Russian, and a Spaniard in my class, which makes it really interesting. I know that all of the Swedes speak English, but I don't think that Irina or Noelia do. It makes us have to be able to get our meaning across in French. We've had some good times butchering the language trying to explain things.

There's also a class on Tuesdays and Thursdays that I'm taking about French music. It's even more difficult, because we listen to songs in French, which is harder to understand than spoken French because of the different intonation and whatnot. Also, the teacher in there speaks even faster. Even the students in the topmost group (of which I am definitely NOT) had to ask her to speak more slowly so that they could understand. I was decidedly lost. It got better after they asked her to slow down, but I'm still not catching all of what she says.

Outside of classes, things are pretty good. I like my host family, even though I don't interact with them very much. I'm so busy all the time in the afternoons getting things done and then I walk home after everything closes (fortunately, I'm walking distance from both downtown and the university).

I have to admit that I'm not sure of my dynamic with their son Charles. He's 22 and attends the university. Michelle (my host mom) keeps inviting me to go with him when he's going out with his friends and he always explains what they're planning on doing or whatever, but I still feel like I'm intruding terribly, because he wasn't the one who invited me, you know? It's kind of weird, but he's always nice enough about it, I suppose.

I went with a few of the Americans here to the club last night (it was only three of us because everyone else who had been with us was too drunk and tired to go anywhere). It was fun. We ran into the Swedish students there, which was good, because it was Markus's birthday (well technically not anymore, as it was 1 am, but it was close enough), so I got to wish him a bon anniversaire and whatnot. I walked home at 4 am and it would have been fine, but it was kind of misting outside, so I was getting wet, and even worse, all of the droplets sounded like footsteps behind me in my sleepy, late-night paranoia. I'm never walking home in the rain at night again, that's for sure.

Oh, I guess I should mention that before all of that yesterday we went to the Basque country, a cultural area in parts of Spain and France. It was pretty interesting. I saw the church where Louis XIV got married and walked on the beach (we were only there for an hour and a half, so I didn't go swimming, but I got myself wet in the Atlantic before exploring other parts of the city). At one of the shops, they had a music-box that played the Theme from Love Story and it's been the only time I've gotten homesick the whole time I've been gone, in Japan and France. Even worse, I found out while we were drinking later that Noah had bought it because he pulled it out and played it and I almost cried.

I'm really glad that he bought it though, because he bought the last one, apparently, because they didn't have any when I asked, and it would have been bad for me if I had gotten one.

I'll try to update this tomorrow when I go to the university. I'm gonna try to go early and catch up on my internet-stuff, because I haven't gotten on since Friday, and I haven't had time to peruse everything that I normally do since before we left Paris a week ago. My google reader is going to be horrid!

Love

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So, my first full day in France. I got up at about 8:30 to head downstairs for the breakfast provided us in the hostel. It was a baguette with butter/jelly and cereal. I must admit, it was simple, but I've had far worse breakfasts.

I managed to make it to the hotel and found the guy with whom I'm rooming while here in Paris. We ate lunch and then we went to the Musée D'Orsay. I took pictures (I'm surprised, actually, that we were allowed to take pictures). We came back and actually met with most of the other students before we headed out for the evening.

We didn't do very much, really. We walked by the Sorbonne, but we didn't actually do much there. The only place that was actually got to interact with very much was the Gardens of Luxembourg, but interact is a very strong word. It was pretty boring, I must admit.

Dinner was interesting. We walked to the Latin quarter, and there were about five bajillion restaurants. We ate at a little Greek place. Well, we got food there and walked back to eat it at the Notre Dame. It was so delicious, I was done by the time we got there, and it was only about three blocks away. I had a little pita gyro. Mmm.

Yeah, so other than that, we spent a bit of time hanging around the Notre Dame, but we didn't go inside because we were going to have time to do that the next day.

Also, I'm totally just giving up on trying to make the entries long like they were in Japan. Sorry, kids.

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So I made it to Paris. I don't have a phone yet, because they didn't have any at the airport. I have no idea, now where I should go to get one. I'll ask someone with the program when I find them tomorrow, I suppose. I don't really want to have to try to find it here when I go exploring after I post this and check the internet.

The plane was really delayed. I guess they had some maintenance that they had to do and there was a part that needed to be replaced, so we left two hours late and I didn't get here until 9:30 (as opposed to the 7:45 planned arrival). It's just about 12:30 here and I've finally made it to the hostel where I'm staying the night.

I'm a little confused as to how the wifi is supposed to work. You have to pay for their computers with an internet connection. Now, it says the wireless is free, but you have to get a password and username from the front desk and it says something about billing on the page, but I don't know how they plan to do billing, because they don't know who has gotten a password and username. I'm just going to have to trust that it's going to be free like it says.

Paris is expensive, from what I've seen so far. I got the expected terrible exchange rate at the airport: 200 USD->115EUR. Fortunately, the rest of my withdrawals will probably be muh better exchange rates, because I'm not getting terrible commissions and all sorts of other hidden costs. Either way, I needed the money as soon as I got there, so I'll have to live with the terrible rate I got.

Um, I think that's about it for now. I haven't had anything terrible happen to me yet. I had a decent flight and I have a place to stay tonight. I've already got some practice on the metro, so I can get to where I need to go, tomorrow. Here's to hoping!

<3

Matthew

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I give up. I lost at least one day, but I think two. I'm definitely too lazy to check the itinerary, and at any rate, it's probably not accurate anyway. We changed plans all the time on that trip. (Also, I made it home alive).

The only thing I remember that we did do on this/these day(s) is our visit to Kamakura. Kamakura is a little village on the coast south of Yokohama that was, among other things, a strategic holding of the first Shogunate.

The things we went to see were a few specific temples. The first one had a buddha statue that came from north western Japan. It was a big statue that the other place (whose name I can't remember) threw into the ocean to bless wherever it landed, which happened to be Kamakura. It was a nifty little thing to see. It was golden, but I don't know if it gold when they sent it,or if it was wooden that was later gilt, or what. It wouldn't have floated if it were solid gold, though.

We also went to see a GIANT BUDDHA STATUE. It was made out of bronze and we got to go inside of it. Apparently, there used to be a big temple all around it, and what makes this buddha so special is that, in a series of catastrophic events, the temple was completely destroyed, except for the buddha statue. The buddha statue, legend has it, didn't even move, in the midst of the temple falling in on it.

Huh. Apparently, I remember more than I thought I did.

We also walked down what was the main walkway through town during the time of the Shogunate. It slowly shrinks as you walk along it, to make the rest of the city (and specifically the temple at the end) look bigger and more impressive.

There were some weird shops on their strip. The most important things were the coffee shop, which is cold-drip coffee (rather than percolated or hot-drip), which takes 8 hours to make each cup, I think. It was really good, though, I have to admit. I'm not sure it was worth how expensive it was, but it was better than the average cup of coffee, for sure.

Also, there was a lot a lot a lot of purple sweet potato there. I guess it's a regional specialty, or something, because that day I got purple sweet potato ice cream twice, as well as two different purple sweet potato croquets and a purple sweet potato muffin. I think it may be my new favorite flavor, which is terribly sad if it's a regional thing that you really don't get anywhere but in southern Japan.

Anyway, that's the day that I can't remember ^_^;;

It's kind of sad that I have to hope to be done before I go to France, because I'm not done already.

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So on the next morning we got ready to move to Yokohama. It was very exciting, in that terribly boring sense. There was a lot to be done. We took a taxi to the train station and then manhandled our luggage through the stations and whatnot. I think I mentioned earlier that Hutch and Nathan were temporarily lost to us when their taxi driver mistakenly too them to the wrong gate.

We hustled onto the big fast train that skipped about 15 stops between our departure and destination, and then we switched to the little train that would actually take us to the station near the hotel. We then had another taxi take us to our new hotel in Yokohama, the Yokohama Central Inn.

Apparently, our hotel was on a mall, in the traditional, mostly-outside sense. There are so many little shops, and in Japan, it's pretty much a rule of thumb that they all have everything ever ever ever. I have no idea how people decide where to go when they want something. It's crazy and scary.

After lunch on the mall, we went to a Yokohama baseball game. Now this whole baseball thing... still terribly boring. The Yokohama team lost. The first inning was terrible. The pitcher walked hitters four times. The other team got three hits and six runs. It got more even after that one inning, but they were never able to recover. I got some nice sun and had fun reading some of my book. This was way back at Stranger in a Strange Land (which I have now left far behind in my reading-age).

After the game, we lost Pate and Hutch in the crowd. It wasn't really a big deal, because we really weren't far from the hotel, so we weren't really worried they would get lost. After about 20 minutes of looking and waiting, we called the hotel and they had just headed there, so all was well.

We ate on the mall again. I swear that stupid place changes every time I walk down it. I had such a hard time getting any sense of bearing at all. I don't remember what we ate, but I don't think it was anything spectacular. It was probably some sort of katsudon.

Anyway, we went to sleep really early that night, because we had to get up super-early the next morning.

Short, I know, but I think I may give up and cut way back on length so that I actually finish these in a reasonable amount of time.

<3

So the next day, we had to get up to leave by 6:30. Much earlier than I would have liked. Anyway, we got up and headed to the fish market. This was very different from the fish market we got to see in Shimane. We were watching them cart in huge, huge, frozen tunas. I think the biggest one I saw was about 127 kg. That's about 280 pounds, for the metric-impaired ^_^. But yeah, they were auctioning off these giant tuna.

While it was kind of interesting to watch, we were they for way, WAY too long. I lost interest a full hour before we left, and I'm pretty sure I lasted longer than mot of the others. I know that a few of them were bored in 30 minutes, and I would have been okay leaving then. But no.

On the way back, we stopped for a really nice curry lunch. It was very good. I think it's some of the best curry we had here, and I've eaten a lot of curry. It was award-winning curry, and I can see way. I also (not there but in the area) bought some curry soda. That was a disgusting mistake, but I tried it, and I have the bottle as a souvenir. Crazy.

We stayed in the area of the curry place for a while and shopped on this back-alley-type strip. It was pretty scary. Some of the shops looked really nice and had nice things, and some of them looked really questionable and like if I went in I wouldn't come back out alive. I was pretty ready to leave.

On the way back, I actually finished Stranger in a Strange Land. I think I've already mentioned how much I loved it. Definitely going on my list of favorite books. I'm glad I brought it with me. After we got back, I put it back in my suitcase and fished out the other book I brought, the Time-Traveller's Wife. It's about a guy who has a genetic disorder where he inadvertently time travels.

I napped for a little while, but we didn't do anything else of note that day. We wandered around the mall area here again, and I probably ate somewhere along the way.

<3

On our third day in Yokohama (including the day we arrived), we got up for breakfast at Gasto, which has a western-style breakfast menu. Oh my goodness my eggs over easy were so delicious and I hadn't realized how much I missed them and that they would be so tasty when I had them. There was much rejoicing.

Then I went back to the room and finished getting dressed in my suit for a formal visit to the main campus of Kanto Gakuin University. It wasn't nearly so intimidating as our visit to Shimane University. We had a nifty bento lunch with some of the Study Abroad people and the University president and a few students. It was pretty relaxed, actually.

We had a brief 'tour' of the campus, but none of the students giving us tours actually attended on this campus (KGU has three campuses separated by majors: this was the economics/business campus, our students were all from the Liberal Arts campus (being English and/or Linguistics majors), and then there's also a law campus).

Most important part of the tour? There was little shop-area that had murasaki-imo (purple sweet potato) ice cream. I think it's my new favorite flavor. It was so tasty and made me happy on the inside.

After that, we came back to the hotel. This mall was so confusing and I swear the shops changed every time I walked down it.

Tyler and I had another sushi-train dinner. It was more expensive than the one in Shimane, but at least it was better than the one in Tokyo. I was pleased. I ate a lot of shrimp and wasabi, that's for sure.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I'm going to have to try to reconstruct the next day's events from the pictures and the itinerary after we get back, because I forgot to write it down that night, and so I don't know what we did.

<3

So there you have it... three days all rolled into one!

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Sorry about that, guys. I've been keeping this running document of journalage open on my computer at all times so that I remember every time I get on it, but the day before yesterday, my computer restarted itself (I still have pretty much no idea how it happened) and the document closed. I only just now remembered that it wasn't open and therefore I hadn't been writing in it.

So I'm pretty sure we went to Akihabara the next day (or the next day I have any notes for, at any rate). It was really interesting, because there was so much <i>stuff</i> available, but all of the most interesting things were electronics, which I really shouldn't buy if I can help it. Most of them aren't likely to work in the US. I couldn't buy any video games, because apparently (according to the internet) the only region-free systems are nintendos portables (Game-boy/DS stuff) or the PS3, neither of which I have.

I still don't understand why someone ever thought that regions were a good idea. I need to go ahead and buy a region-free player at some point, too.

Anyway, so after we spent an excessive amount of time in these stores, we went to one of the little bookstores across the street. There really wasn't much there.

We went to the Sony building, too. They had some of their newest stuff for display. I think the most interesting was a camera with a really good panorama setting. Just hold the button and turn the camera and it splices it all together for you. It's nothing particularly new, but it's still interesting.

We spent the afternoon wandering the Ginza district. Now, I have to tell you that Ginza is probably the most expensive strip in Japan. Seriously, ever big name is in the Ginza. I can't afford Armani, so why we spent over three hours there, I'll never know.

Instead of going straight back to the hotel like everyone else, I took care of more important matters and went straight back to Shibuya to find my jacket, because I didn't want to have to wander Shibuya alone at night. UTTER FAIL. I had a google map and I asked about 10 people and they still couldn't agree on which direction I should go.

Gah.

So after I've been wandering around for almost an hour, I finally ask someone about my age (I've mostly been asking the cops keeping an eye on traffic), and of course she knows where the goth bar is. She didn't speak very good English (that is, it's about the first time that I've felt that my Japanese may be better than a student's English), and I didn't know the area well, so she couldn't explain how to get there. She decided to be super-nice and lead me there, even though that's not where she was going at all. All I really know is that her given name is Ayaka. I'm kind of sad that I have no way to contact her or anything to say thanks again, because she was gone by the time I went into the bar, got my jacket (total SUCCESS) and got back outside.

So I make it back to the train station and get on the trains home. I make the necessary transfer, because I've done this several times now from Shibuya to Kamata, and everything is fine. Then, suddenly, everything stops. The train makes a normal stop at Ooimachi, but doesn't go again. The train isn't going any farther. I had no idea what was going on.

Fortunately, it was a problem easily solved. I just got off, walked across the platform to the rail on the other side, and the next train took me back to Kamata where I was supposed to be. All safe and sound.

Tyler and I went to a nummy curry place for dinner, and had a relatively uneventful night drinking in the room before we passed out for the night (in the very tired sense, not the extremely drunken sense).

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So on the next day (I don't even remember what day of the week these were anymore, and it's too much work to bother checking in the itinerary), Tyler and I got up and I ate Mr. Donut, first thing (I was not a big fan of the breakfast provided for us in Tokyo). It was decent, I suppose, but it was relatively expensive and t wasn't worth the price, I don't think.

Our train ride that day was a little longer than the ones we've had before. It was long, but worth it. We went to the Ghibli museum. It was really interesting. I was very sad in that they didn't let us take any pictures inside at all, but that's okay. The ticket was pretty cool, though. It was a set of three frames from a random Ghibli movie. I got a set of frames of Sen (the other one, not Chihiro) from Spirited Away (In case you don't remember Sen is the nice mother-figure that works for Yubaba). Anyway, I like it.

The Ghibli place was all really nifty, though. We got to watch a little movie that, apparently, you can only watch there. It was really cute, a short film about a girl who goes camping, or somesuch.

There's also apparently a new film out here (but not in the US yet) called Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, I think. However, they won't work back in the states, so sadly, there's not really any point in trying to buy it. Also, new movies are really expensive here. It's about $50 to buy a newly-released movie. Even used movies and older movies can be really expensive, here.

Also, very sadly, Howl's Moving Castle was apparently rather unpopular here. Maybe it's because it was based on a British Novel? I dunno. I couldn't really find any good HMC merchandise in their gift shop. There was tons of My Neighbor Totoro, which is, unfortunately, my least favorite of all of the ones I've seen. There was a fair bit of Kiki's Delivery Service, and very little of the rest of them. Oh well.

It was also interesting to look at some of the other stuff they had there. They had some of the concept drawings for a lot of the movies, and especially some of th more recent ones. There was a whole room of HMC drawings, which I suppose makes up for the paltry amount of merchandise available. There was also a lot of stuff advertising Ponyo, which I suppose is only to be expected, because it's still new here. I mean, they got HMC to the US in six months, so if we don't have Ponyo yet, it's probably really, really new (I would just check wikipedia right now, but I've got flikr open and uploading pictures, which means that I won't be able to use the internet for pretty much anything else for the rest of the night.

Anyway, after the Ghibli museum, we went to see what was going on in Harajuku, because there are usually a lot of live performances there, for the public. However, it started raining. This was very unfortunate, as I had forgotten my umbrella, and was therefore getting very wet as we walked all the way across Yoyogi park for nothing (no one plays in the rain, which was obvious, as we could see all the way across the park, but we walked across it and back, wherein I got very wet and very irritated).

Since we couldn't hang out in Harajuku, we went to Shinjuku to go shopping instead. Now, I'm kind of tired of shopping at this point, because we've spent about 10 hours in shopping districts over the last three days, but I really don't have much of a choice. Even worse, while we're shopping, I literally walk away around a corner for three minutes and everyone leaves me. I spend the next 30 minutes calling people and running up and down stairs (it's an 8 floor building so I assumed that they had just moved floors) before one of them finally answers and says that no, they've just left me there alone. PISSED.

Tyler came back to find me, but I was pretty pissed at that point, and didn't want to be alone in downtown Tokyo, but didn't really want to be with any of them either, so I was very poor company and felt only slightly vilified by it.

We went to the Hard Rock shop because some people wanted merchandise from there. I made a poor decision (in retrospect) and decided against a Hard Rock Tokyo shot glass, but I can't really find a good one elsewise. Anyway, it would have been really expensive, so we didn't eat there. Instead, Tyler and I went to what we found out only once we got our food was a rather lacklustre diner. It was probably the worst gyoza I've ever eaten.

The last thing we did before we went home (this was by far our longest day yet. We were out until after 9:00) was go to Tokyo Tower. We went up to the tallest part, even (well, everyone except Tyler). We were 250 meters up. Yeah, that's right. I went up 250 meters to take pictures of Tokyo. I could feel the floor move under me and everything. It was really terrifying. The elevator from the middle level (where Tyler stayed at 125 meters up) up to the top had lots of windows. We had to watch everything around us while we were getting up to the top. Terrifying, but I did it.

When we got back, I did some laundry. As I was cleaning up the room from putting the laundry away, I realized that I wasn't really sure where my jacket was. Searching high and low on both mine and Tyler's side of the room proved useless. So I figured I might be able to tell where I might have left it based on my pictures. My pictures were rather inconclusive (I had a picture where I was wearing my jacket but my next picture was about 18 hours later, and therefore a bad judge). So I decided that I would check Pate's pictures on Flikr. He has a lot more pictures than I do. Anyway, my internet chose that exact moment to die. By which I mean the internet in my room didn't work for the next 36 hours or so. Fortunately for me, there was a computer downstairs that was free to use, so I checked and determined that I did, in fact, leave it at the Lock-up bar in Shibuya.

That was a nice night. </sarcasm>

Anyway, long entry is long. Good night.

And I'll have to post this in the morning, because flikr is only halfway done uploading, so I'll have to leave it overnight.

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So on Thursday, we started the morning by going to the Japanese parliament building (well, I suppose it's technically a Diet building, but I have no idea the differences between a parliament and a diet and so I'll use parliament because I know what that is). It was pretty boring. I mean, it was just the building where they vote. We got to look at the emperor's waiting room through a plexiglass window, and we walked by a bunch of the committee meeting rooms, but we only went into the big voting room and only in the viewing gallery.

After that, we went to Tokyo station and ate lunch. It was crazily huge. We got there just before noon, and it was a close call. About the time that we got our food (which came rather quickly, too), the entire place filled up with tons and tons of people. After lunch, we had about 30 minutes before we needed to leave, so we wandered around the station and looked at some of their little shops. I was glad to be so full because some of those sweets looked absolutely delicious (and rather pricey).

Next, we went to NHK studios, which I think is like Japan's PBS or something like that. They had sets from some of their shows there, and we got to see one of their informational programs being shot live (It was about some new law, if I remember what Fukushima-sensei told us). They had some of their technology stuff on display.

There was a really cute little area where it effectively greenscreened you and put you on the TV with a little bird character and the two of you did a short little travel. It was obviously aimed at little kids, but it was still kind of fun (and I feel like a little kid a lot, with how little Japanese I know, I have to ask Fukushima-sensei or one of the Japanese students what things mean or how to do something about every two minutes)

For those of you who may know what it is, this is where they do domo-kun and whatnot.

After all of this, we went back to Shibuya, this time with the Count. It was much less intimidating in the bright afternoon light (rather than in the bright neon lights). Also i had a much better idea of what was going on the second time I was there. I had a better bearing on the area and whatnot. More shops were open that day, so we got to look around. I bought a jacket, some pants, and a shirt all obnoxiously brightly-colored.

We ate dinner in a restaurant on the 7^th floor of a department store. It was a little expensive, but at least it was tasty. I had some weird hamburger bun barbecue thing (Japanese take on American food). There was also an omelet thing. I was very happy to have eggs. Afterwards, I had some yummy blueberry soft-serve. Good stuff, yo.

After all of that walking, I went back and took a hot, hot shower. I even plugged up the shower and just soaked in the hot water in the tub for a while. It was wonderful. And then there was wonderful sleep.

This was a little short, I admit but I'm done. <3 I'm loading pictures on flikr right now and it's making my computer obnoxiously slow. The connection here is so slow and it's making me really regret not keeping up with my uploading before now.

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So for once, I actually have no recollection of our planned activity for the day, and I didn't write it down in the rolling document reminding myself of all of the key events for the day, so I'll have to refer to my handy-dandy itinerary, and hope it makes sense.

Okay, I remember this stuff now.

So the first thing we did was to go to a sumo museum. Most of it was pictures of the grand champions or whatever. There were about 70 of those. It was a pretty small area such that I hesitate to actually use the word 'museum'. The only other thing in their that I really got much out of (what with the majority of stuff being in Japanese) was that they built a new sumo stadium in 1985, or something like that. I guess they had been using the old one since about 1917.

We messed around their little gift shop for a while. I enjoyed looking at all of the ridiculous shirts that they had there as souvenirs. I didn't buy anything, though.

After that,, we went to a very special restaurant. We went to a place owned by a former sumo wrestler who made sumo-food. I don't remember what it's called, but it's basically a huge vat of stew that was pretty much absolutely delicious. Fukushima-sensei ordered two pots of stew for the eight of us, and my side of the table didn't even manage to finish ours (between four of us). Count Fuku asked, and apparently sumo wrestlers eat one pot by themselves, twice a day. Crazy!

At least I understand how they gain so much weight. Now I just have to figure out how they can manage to eat that much without getting sick.

After that, we went to a museum of Japanese history. I think it was actually mostly concerned with the Japanese Edo period (beginning in 1600). It was very interesting. I don't really know how to represent a museum, though, in a way that would be very interesting to the rest of you. I suppose you'll just have to look at the pictures, if I ever get them up (it only now occurs to me that I could be uploading pictures from my camera right now, but I don't think I will because I'll want to take my camera with me when I head out to dinner, which won't be too long from now, hopefully).

The museum had some really pretty stuff. I liked a lot of the ukiyo-e artwork, and there were some nifty displays on woodblock printing. The WWII display made me feel like such a asshole, just for being an American. It was creepy watching Tokyo light up at the map of what got firebombed when. I didn't stay there very long.

After the museum, we headed back to the hotel. Tyler and I split off and wandered to the grocery store. I bought some milk and cereal, because the hotel's comp breakfast was kind of lacking. There were very few options and most of it was pickled. I did go pretty much every morning to see if I liked what they were offering, but it was usually to no avail.

It is here that I realize that I need to be more specific about what and where I'm eating, because I'm increasingly having trouble remembering those things. I took a nap, and thus everyone went to dinner without me (I have no idea why they didn't wake me up), so I went to a sushi-on-a-conveyor-belt restaurant that was, unfortunately, much more expensive than the one in Matsue, but it was still tasty.

After that, we went (as a group, but without sensei) to Shibuya. This involved riding the trains. I got to ask people in the train station to point out the kanji for Shibuya on the pricing plaque, then we got to look for the kanji on the big sign with all of the routes. I was very prou of myself, because I got to find our route through the different stations (we had to change trains). We managed to not get lost, and all on our own! We met up with Shino, a Japanese U of A student, whom I had met (she's a friend of Kyle's sister), and with whom Nick was friends, and hang out. We went to a nifty little theme-bar-club place called the lock-up. It was very dark and whatnot; I really liked the atmosphere.

It was a lot of fun, for how short it lasted. Unfortunately, we didn't find out that there was a 500yen/person cover charge. While it's not that much, we were only staying for one drink because Shibuya was a big scary place and we wanted to relax. I would have been fine with a cover-charge if we had been staying for a few hours, but we were only there for 30 minutes and so the cover charges came out to over 1/3 of our bill, which wasn't cool. After that, we wandered around for a little while before we headed back to the hotel for bed.

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Internet's being stupid. I don't know when I'll actually get to post this, so I'll just kind of hang out and type it up.

Monday was okay, I suppose. First thing, we got up and took a ride for about 45 minutes on the bus to a little place on the lake. There, we got tickets for a glass-bottomed boat tour of the immediate area.

It was really nifty. That being said, I'm not sure why they used a glass-bottomed boat. Most of the time, we were going too fast to see any thing. When we were idling, the engines kicked up too much to be able to see anything. It was better just to look over the side rail and look into the water.

I had a lot of fun on the boat ride, though, and took lots of pictures. We went to Jizo cave, which is the cave where the spirits of children who died young or were stillborn go. Jizo is a spirit which takes care of them. It used to be said that you could see the footprints of small children if you went early in the morning.

There were no footprints there, but we saw lots of the stacks of stones set up by the mothers of the children who had died. I think that they were originally supposed to have been made by the children themselves, but that part of the legend eventually died. I don't know what the stones represent, though, if they're not the playthings of children, but whatever. It was pretty brutally depressing, though. Some people had taken things like a favorite toy or drink or clothes and left them out to comfort the child. I felt kind of morbid, looking at all of those dirty, exposed toys. I felt like I was invading something private. I tried my best not to get any of the toys in my pictures.

When we left the little cave, we went to a fish market. Tons of fresh fish everywhere. There were also crabs, squid, eel, octopus, and all sorts of other things. The live crabs were huge (and crazily expensive). There were lots of really busy Japanese people with knives and live creatures and it was just a little scary, but I survived. I ate a sample of some weird clam concoction that I felt it was better not to ask questions.

Then we went to a kind of Gegege no Keitaro amusement area. There were lots of shops selling GGGnK merchandise, and there were stamps outside most of the shops for you to collect. I only got about 11, because I stopped to eat. I'm pretty sure that Fukushima-sensei went around and collected all of them, though. I think there were somewhere around 30 stamps or so. There was also a Keitaro (the main character)-costumed guy walking around with whom pictures were taken. I had a pretty good time, but again, it would have been much more interesting if I had had any idea what the show was about or something.

While we were there, though, I did find one thing of major importance. They had wasabi ice cream.

Bad idea.

As much as I love wasabi, that ice cream was gross. It really did taste like wasabi, spice and all, but it was kind of weakened down (so that a normal amount of ice cream was as spicy as a normal amount of wasabi for sushi), but it was also sweetened, which was absolutely disgusting. I made everyone around me try a bite, and then I threw it away. Blech.

As that night was our last night in Matsue, the Shimane University had a going-away party for us. It was a lot like the first party, only really sad because we all knew we were leaving. The Shimane students got so many nice things for us. They made picture books and certificates and all sorts of little things like that that made me feel like a horrible person for not doing anything particularly special for them. At least the food was once again absolutely delicious.

After that, a lot of the kids wanted to go drinking one last time. I didn't really feel like drinking, but I had nothing better to do so I went along anyway. I just ended up falling asleep, so I came back before they were all ready to go, but I didn't mind having gone.

It didn't take long for me to pass out.

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So Saturday and Sunday were both pretty boring and uneventful, really, so I think I'll just dump both of them into one short entry.

Saturday was supposed to be our free day, so (though I have no idea why) the Shimane students planned an outing for us.

Now, this is not to be ungrateful, because they were amazing hosts and did so much for us while we were there, but I really just wanted a day to sleep in late and not have a schedule and relax. They had our day start with us leaving the hotel before 8 (after having partied and drank with them the night before) to go on an hour-long bus ride up to a nearby mountain.

It was so foggy we couldn't see 20 feet in front of us. So much for the view that we were after.

Instead, we just got to go to a dinky little museum which was interesting, but not particularly so.

We then went to a special milk-dairy-farm place thing. I really don't know. We stopped there for ice cream, but it was milk-flavored ice-cream (by the way, soft-serve stuff is the good stuff here, and the ice cream is usually pretty lacking. It kind of goes against everything I've ever thought about soft-serve). There was an adorable little cow mascot, though.

We then stopped by the beach, but it was foggy and a little chilly. We didn't really even get to play in the sand, much.

It was just pretty boring, I hate to say. On the way back, we stopped at this weird store where they had lots of samples of everything, but nothing that I particularly wanted. There was also a gegege no Keitaro (a very popular comic, here) shop upstairs where we spent way too much time, considering that none of us Americans have ever seen any of the comic to have any attachment to it.

We didn't get back until like, 6. I was very disappointed at my harried, annoyed, early, boring day.

Sunday had an even longer bus ride. It was two hours each way. I definitely had some nice napping, even if it was terribly uncomfortable in the bus.

We went to an old silver mine. It is absolutely underwhelming, especially considering we spent four hours of our day in transportation for it. SO NOT WORTH IT. That's really all there is to say. Lunch was pretty tasty, at least. But really that's it. Also, we went into the cave; I had to duck all 150 meters that we were allowed to go in.

After we got back, we went out to dinner. We went to a hibatchi-type thing, I think. They had coals on our table and we ordered raw food and cooked it on the grill. It was pretty good, but more expensive than I would have gone for on my own. Curse me and my inability to tell those kids in Matsue no. I ate pig tongue (it tasted like pastrami) and pig cheek (It just tasted like pork). It was all tasty, at least.

I feel bad that this entry is going to be so short in general and it's even worse considering that it's two days, but I really didn't have much fun and so those two days really aren't worth talking about very much.

I'm still really enjoying Stranger in a Strange Land, for some current news.

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Pate's Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/35053858@N08/

I think Friday may have been my favorite day in Matsue (I can sadly say this now, as we've moved to Tokyo, which is pretty much the saddest thing ever. I loved the time we spent in Matsue). The first thing we did was to go to the Adachi Museum of Art and it's adjacent gardens.

Not even kidding it was the most beautiful thing I've see on this trip so far and all of Japan has been pretty epically beautiful. Seriously, though, the gardens took my breath away (although 'gardens' may not be the right term and 'landscaping' is actually a more accurate description). I took tons and tons of picture of the, which I'm having serious trouble getting to upload, unfortunately. They'll get up there at some point, though. Anyway, the gardens were absolutey amazing. It was a very nice museum, to be sure; I loved some of the art, but it just can't compare to those gardens.

We were there for two and a half hours and it wasn't enough time at all. I could have just stayed there all day and sat looking at the landscaping. It was absolutely beautiful.

Inside was some very nice artwork, I must admit. I think my favorites were a series of watercolors of 'inai-inai-ba' or 'peek-a-boo.' There were some nifty ceramics and lacquered wood pieces, too. There was a huge, golden chest of drawers that was really nice.

After we finally left the museum, we went to a nice Buddhist temple. It was very peaceful and serene. After a few minutes of being in a huge group,Pate and I got tired of it and decided to explore the temple area on our own (it's not an actual building, but a big collection of little stone shrines). We wandered off on a side path taking pictures of all of the shrines an wooden walkways and stuff. Then, I happened to notice a cat lying down about 30 meters away. I point it out to Pate, and it gets up and walks directly away from us. Jokingly, I suggested that I thought it wanted us to follow it, and since we had time, we did.

The cat wandered its way to a small shrine off a branch of our little path. As we approached, it stopped to scratch at a tree. Joking that it must be important, I stopped to take a pitcture of the tree. It didn't turn out. I tried again, and no. I changed the flash and it got better, but I never managed to actually get a good picture of that tree. In retrospect, I should have walked off the shrine to go look at it, but I didn't.

Still, on our way back, we found this nifty giant statue of a turtle. It was one of the niftiest things we've come across by accident. I took a few pictures of it, because it was so awesome.

We did another revision of our translation once we got back to the hotel, based on Fukushima-sensei's suggestions. Looking over the English didn't take nearly as long at a time as trying to do the actual translationy bits, and afterwards, Minako ferried us to Hiroki's house to have a bit of a party.

We stopped at Jusco (think somewhere along the lines of Harps, maybe) and got some food and drink, and went to Magi's house for the night.

Much fun involving takoyaki and alcohol ensued.

So at Hiroki's, we made takoyaki, which is basically like cabbage and batter, fried, with a bit of meat inside. Technically, the 'tako' of 'takoyaki' means that it's made with octopus, but we also had ikayaki (squid), ebiyaki (shrimp), ...beanie-weenie-yaki?, and natto-yaki. I mostly stuck to the shrimp, I must admit. I'm not the biggest fan of that gummy octopus/squid texture, and natto kind of scares me... it's made from fermented soybeans, if I'm not mistaken, and not in a 'making wine' sort of fashion.

That's about it for Friday, really.

In other news, I've finally started forcing myself to take some time to read while I'm here. I feel much more relaxed for it. I'm reading <i>Stranger in a Strange Land</i> and absolutely loving it. It's set in the future and done well enough that you really can't even tell that it was written about 50 years ago. I'm just under halfway through and it's absolutely wonderful and I'm so glad I decided to pick it up!

<3
~Matthew

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Thursday was (surprise) another really busy day. The first thing we did was take a bus to a paper museum place. We watched a short video about how they make that paper in the little town there every year, completely by hand. The timing and the plant growth are so crucial that everything has to be done by hand and they can only make a few batches every year.

We then learned the actual process for making paper (the easy way, though) and we each got to make a sheet of paper. I keep trying to figure out what I want to do with mine, but I have no idea. Everyone's paper came out really nicely, so I want to use it for something nice.

Their little museum thing was kind of nifty, but nothing particularly interesting, except for the lamp they used, but that's kind of different.

After our paper had some time to dry, we went to Izumo's Yaegaki shrine. It was very forested, so it was nice and dark. Yaegaki has a legend that the little pond is prophetic. You make a little “boat” out of paper, and then put money on it and wait for it to sink. The longer it takes to sink, the longer it will take you to find the love of your life, and the further away it sinks the harder you have to look. Mine took a moderate amount of time and wasn't unreasonably far. It's also supposed to be good luck for the couple if one of the newts in the pond touches it when it sinks. I think this is really good for me, because one of the newts actually swam to the surface to touch my little boat.

We then had an o-bentoo style lunch (lunch-box style... kind of). It was pretty good, and a lot of fun. We then went to see the kofun, the pamphlet for which Tyler, Michael, Pate and I translated as our honors project, here. It was a lot of help to be able to see them rather than just trying to visualize from a half-translated pamphlet. It didn't help that the kanji of the pamphlet were so difficult sometimes that the Japanese students didn't know and Fukushima-sensei didn't know and there was even one that the internet didn't know, so we had to guess.

We then made the trip back to Shimane University to look at their collection of Lafcadio Hearn's works. It's impressive how obsessed this town can get over him.

We also stopped to look at the current display by the flower-arrangement club, of which two of our Shimane University friends are members and had stuff on display.

After that, Minako and Ryoko were super-nice and took Tyler and me to the beach, 20 minutes away. We pretty much just frolicked on the beach. None of us had swimming gear, so we really didn't do much more than walk around in the wet sand but it was a lot of fun.

We ate dinner at a buffet in the mall.

Seriously, the best buffet I've ever eaten... and only 700 yen. The food was so good I ended up eating four plates of food and two of dessert. Not even kidding. There was a chocolate fondue, for crying out loud! What kind of $7 buffet in America has a fondue fountain? None!

Before bed, we took advantage of our new understanding of the Kofun and finished up our rough draft of our translation to turn in to Fukushima-sensei to revise for us.

Seriousy guys, I'm so sorry I'm behind...I just haven't had much time to myself to breathe. I think it may get a little better after we leave Shimane. We've gotten to know these kids so well and they've done so much for us, I feel bad ever turning them down. Hopefully, I'll have more time to catch up in Tokyo.

I'll be honest, though, and tell you that it gets increasingly unlikely.

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Hrm. I'm having trouble figuring out what my notes mean, for Wednesday. I went to a museum, but I also went to museums on Thurday, Friday, and Saturay, so it doesn't really help much. Oh! I remember now. It was the historical museum. It was pretty interesting. A lot of the point of the museum was to show that they aren't actually sure how big the Grand Shrine in Izumo used to be, so there was a showcase of about 15 different designs that they think it might have had at various points in its history, and comparing it to other shrines in those time periods. At one point, it was the biggest shrine in Japan, and over 45 meters tall, apparently.

There were a lot of other nifty things in the museum, too. Tyler was especially fond of their stone collections, and we liked their bronzes. It was very nice.

Then, we actually went to the current Izumo Grand Shrine. It wasn't as spectacular as it once was, apparently. It was pretty, though. We wandered around a bit, and then there was this weird thing where you threw coins at the ceiling, and if they got stuck there, it was good luck. I threw two coins and they both stuck. I was the first person to get one to stick out of our group. It was fun.

Ok so after that we went to a lighthouse on the cost. It was a very pretty ride and everything, and the lighthouse, if I remember correctly, is the tallest in Japan. You know what I did? I took that staircase to the top. You know what else I did. I WENT OUTSIDE ON THE TALLEST LIGHTHOUSE IN JAPAN WHAT WAS I THINKING OH MY GOODNESS IT WAS TERRIFYING BUT I DID IT.

((For those of you who don't know, I'm a little afraid of heights, by which I mean ridiculously terrified)).

We were far enough away that we ended up taking the train home. Fortunately, since we're not in Tokyo, the trains weren't very crowded at all. I actually had enough room to lay down and sleep for a while.

At the station in Matsue, they have a footbath. It's like the onsen-spas that they have, but it's just hot water to soak your feet. It was very relaxing.

Then I took a nap. I have taken so many random little naps since I've gotten here, but very few of them have been in a bed. Mostly, they're just passing out while traveling. It was nice to get a good solid nap in the hotel room.

After our nightly meeting, people decided they wanted to go out. I was pretty tired, so I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go or not. I guess they took this as a refusal, because they left me when I went to go put on shoes, and Tyler didn't answer the phone when I tried to call him. Fortunately, Michael had slept through the meeting, so I went with him and we had to ask the front desk for directions to a bar in broken Japanese... I'm sure he thought we were drunk, rather than just tired and annoyed.

Anyway, we got directions and actually managed to find the place without particular incident, so we hung out, even though I didn't drink anything that night. It was still a pretty good visit, so I'm glad I decided to go.

And that was Wednesday.

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Okay so sorry I'm so behind but it's been busy and it's hard to turn down these invitations when the people here are going so far our of their way to make things nice and we're only going to be in this town for another three days.

I think I'm so far behind I haven't updated since Tuesday morning, and it's Saturday evening here now... wow. I have a little list of the things we've done since then, but I'm not sure it'll really help a whole lot in remembering. We've done a lot of stuff.

So on Tuesday, we got up and went to Rihaku, a local sake factory which is rated one of the best in Japan (#2, I think). It was pretty interesting, I suppose, but I'm not really into that sort of thing, so I didn't have too much fun. They were super strict about our hygiene, though. We had to wear their special shoes (which, by the way, most of us couldn't fit our feet into. If they'd had backs it would have been a big problem) and we had to change them twice. We also had to disinfect our hands at the beginning and twice throughout our tour.

After that, we went to Karaporo and made wakashi, some Japanese sweets. We made a 'plum' and an 'iris flower'. The plum was just dark anko (sweet bean paste) surrounded by bright green anko, and then given a line with a chopstick. The iris was some anko made without bean-skins (so it's a little more expensive) and sugary anko that was made into something like sprinkles. I think that there will be pictures that will help you understand better, if I ever catch up on my journals and have time to post them.

Lunch that day was pretty good. There was some tempura and udon and some really, really delicious gratin. It's probaby the best gratin I've ever eaten.

After lunch ,we learned how to do their tea ceremony. It's just a pretty simple set of rules, rather than an actual 'ceremony' how we might use the word. We ate our sweets with the tea. Matcha is very bitter, so they eat sweets to offset it. It was pretty fun, and very interesting.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Jappaned lacquer store, again, and I bought a clock with a picture of the island in Lake Shinji. It was pretty expensive, but I think it was very worth it. I'm very happy that I got it.

Once we got back to the hotel, we finally buckled down and worked on the translations that are due tomorrow. We spent a long, long time on them, Tyler and I. We worked on it for over 4 hours before we went out for dinner. We ate okonomiyaki, which was surprisingly good when you consider that it's mostly grilled cabbage and mayonnaise.

Man, being here is making me have to be a lot less picky about my food. They eat a lot of picked foods, a lot of mayonnaise, a lot of mushrooms, a lot of squid and octopus (I hate their gummy texture)... it's very difficult, sometimes.

After that, like every other day, I got back to the hotel and passed out.

Sorry I'm so far behind. Tonight, we're going to eat and do some karaoke before I go to bed. I may try to do another entry after karaoke, but I make no promises.

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I really need to figure out a better time for me to write these entries because I'm tired of the getting up really early thing. It would be a lot easier if we came back to the hotel more often so that I could just do it in the afternoon, but we often don't come back to the hotel between 9 am and 9 pm, and I'm always exhausted by the time we get here and go straight to sleep. Even when we do come back, I can't work on it because I don't have enough time before other people leave again, and I don't want to be stuck here in the hotel by myself while everyone else is out exploring and everything.

Ok. It's Wednesday morning now, just about 6:15 am. On Monday morning, we went to the local university, who helped plan our trip. There, we met with a lot of the university officials. It was very official; we all had to wear our suits and things like that. It was pretty intimidating. We met with the president of the University and the other people that helped make sure that we got to do everything that we have since we got here.

Even scarier, we ate lunch in the cafeteria on campus. That means that we were in with hundreds of students in Japan with very little idea of how things worked. Fortunately, there have been several students from Shimane University who have been so, so good to us since we got here. They've done so much for us, and some of them were eating with us, so they showed us what to do.

We took a short jaunt through a couple of little convenience stores here. Surprisingly, they're usually a lot more reasonably priced than in the US.

Then we went to a japan lacquer shop (the type of lacquer is called japan). They had a lot of really nifty stuff in there, from chopsticks to clocks to chests of drawers. It was really pretty, but a little expensive. We even got to go up to the workshop and learn about the japan lacquering process.

There was a clock downstairs that I really kind of wanted, a painting of the island in the local lake (it's Lake Shinji, but I can never for the life of me remember the name of its island). It was very pretty, but more expensive than I was willing to pay-- about $100.

We stopped back by the University because Hitomi was going to meet us at the library at four, and then we went to dinner.

We went to one of those sushi bars with a conveyor belt. It was so delicious. They're small plates, sure, but I had somewhere in the neighborhood of ten plates of sushi, plus some stuff that we shared as a table and my dessert parfait. I felt pretty good.

Then we went out drinking.

(I'll be nice and suffice it to say that I drank more than I ever have before)

So that was Monday, which is kind of weird to be telling you, because that sounds like yesterday to you, but it was actually the day before.

Anyway, I need to take a shower and get ready, because I actually haven't done today's reading yet.

<3

I don't like how it's so difficult to get on the internet in this hotel. It's not supposed to be complicated, but my computer has such a hard time finding the wireless networks. I've literally been moving around my room for the half hour I've been typing this trying to get my computer to see all of the networks in this hotel. For 30 minutes it has only been able to find the sixth-floor network. I don't know what changed, but all at once, it found the OTHER EIGHT FLOORS all at once. I have absolutely no idea why it couldn't have done that in the first place so I didn't have to type all of this up in my word processor, but whatever.

~Matthew

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I'm running a little behind today, so I may have to go ahead and post this before I actually finish telling my whole day yesterday, especially considering that I have to shave and suit up in the next hour, as well.

Actually, I'm behind again. I went out drinking last night, and all of us had a really good time.

I'm going to take about 15 minutes or so (because that's all I have, really), and try to describe some of what I did the day before yesterday.

The day before yesterday was a really big celebration here. The Horan Enya boat festival only occurs once every twelve years, so celebrate the successful prayer that miraculously ended a drought (which I think lasted twelve years, explaining the wait). First, we went to the shrine where the prayer took place. They were having a sort of opening ceremony to walk down to the boat. They were all wearing traditional costumes and playing music and things like that.

After that, we walked over to the river, where the actual boating began. There were lots and lots of boats. There were five main boats (blue, green, yellow, orange, and red) which had teams of men to row them on the river, and celebratory dancers with the big, colorful costume, on both the stern and bow. There were about 15 little boats, too, that were just kind of wandering between them. I'm not sure what purpose they served. Those boats were motorized, though.

We ate a buffet-style lunch at a place that we're pretty sure is called 'Vikings' even though when people here say it it sounds closer to 'Biking.' It wasn't anything particularly special.

After we ate, it started to get a little rainy, so we went up into one of the parking garages on the river to watch the festival some more. The boats kept dancing and circling their way up the river very slowly. We were very lucky to be able to see it; it's a long wait for the next one.

We then proceeded to a little arcade-type place with pachinko and other little games like that. I didn't play many games, but I had some fun with the air-hockey there. It randomly shoots out extra pucks so that you may have to play with two or even three pucks on the table to watch. It's kind of crazy, but a lot of fun. We also did one purikura, which is like a photo booth, but they have it hooked up to a computer and you can do all sorts of editing and manipulation afterwards, adding little things and whatnot. It's kind of girly, but Tyler and I had three girls here with us who wanted to do it, so we did. It was pretty fun, though.

We ate dinner at Sati, the local mall, again. We wandered around a bit, too. It was kind of interesting, but you can only find a mall so interesting when you were there the day before, so it was a little lost on me.

Next, we left Sati and went to karaoke. SO. MUCH. FUN. Seriously, we had a blast. There were maybe 20 of us, and Fukushima-sensei, our teacher, came too (He sang Elvis). It was a lot of fun. We're definitely going to have to go again, sometime. I sang some ABBA (SOS) and some Savage Garden (I Want You). All of the American students sang Bohemian Rhapsody, too. It was absolutely GREAT.

Well, I think that's probably good for now. I'll have to recount yesterday's story later, because I have to finish getting ready for today. I'm still a little drunk, but I feel pretty good. Kind of ironically, we're going to a sake brewery today.

Anyway, I hope all is well at home

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