Saturday July 19, 1997: 1:40pm
Wow, well today has been cool so far. First of all I got a phone call from Yamaji-san about tennis this afternoon. As it turns out, we'll be playing from 3-7... gee, by my calculations, that's *4 hours*. Lots of tennis! It's a good thing he called me before I left for my run -- there's no way I would last 4 hrs if I ran as well.
Next, I got a phone call from Jon! I could tell that it's been awhile since I've talked to him because I didn't realize it was him until, like, the fourth "Hello!". Anyways, he's BOOKED a flight! cool! I'm getting a visitor! Well, we talked for a long time; I don't want to see his phone bill!! But it was great to talk for real.
Oh, and I finally heard from Jason... he'll be down to Tokyo tomorrow morning, so maybe Simon, Jason and I will all go to the beach, if I figure out how to GET to the beach, of course... Anyways, I'm off to play some mega-tennis now...
9pm
Well *that* was quite the experience. Tennis. Ok, first of all, I thought these courts would be close, so I gave myself half an hour to get there. Boy was I EVER wrong... it took an hour and a half to get to where I was supposed to meet Yamaji-san. Great, so I'm an hour late. I was pretty sure that he would've left already, but he was actually there! Wow, that's pretty good. So we introduced ourselves, and headed over to his car (Porsche!) to drive to the courts. And with our luck it doesn't start. So we cabbed it over to the courst. Now this is my first experience with cabs in Japan, you know, and even though I'd been warned, I was still very surprised at how the cab doors open and close automatically. Cool. Oh, the meter started at 660 yen ($8) but even after a 10 minute drive (slowly) it had only gotten up to 740 yen ($10) or something. I guess that's OK. Anyways, I didn't have to pay :-)
So we started playing tennis at around 4, which was fine with me (being an hour late, that is) since I knew that I'd have my chance to get run down in the next 3 hours!
When we arrived, there were only 4 people there, and they had one court. These are all people from Yamaji-san's work, so they're all architects. At the time, 2 women were playing. One is obviously very good, as it turns out, I think she's the one organizing it. Her name is Otodera-san, I think! Or was it Okodera? Darn, I can't remember. Anyways, for the first hour we all just rallied and it was great! They're all very good - consistent and they hit semi-hard. Just the perfect level.
After an hour we got a second court, and more people showed up. We started serving practice, and then we played some matches. That was really fun. I mean, we played doubles, and there's nothign more fun than playing doubles with people who actually KNOW how to plaly real doubles. Like these guys kenw where to serve from, where to stand and move, ,stratigies, etc. Fabulous! They were such high-paced games, I love it! So we played right up until 7 and it made me pooped. It was lots of fun though. And Tsuzumi-san drove me to a station along the Chuo-line, much closer to my house. On the way he invited me to join them every month when they do their tennis practice, and also to join their tennis camp which they have in the fall and spring.
Anyways, I got home just now! That's 7 hours since I left home, just to play tennis!
Sunday July 20, 1997: 2:30am
Well there's no way I can sleep now - I just got a call from Levon! Yeah! I pick up the phone thinking "Who could it be at 2am?" - momentarily forgetting time changes of course - and I'm greeted with the unmistakeable "SHARPIE!". Oh, it was GREAT to hear from her. Wow, 25 minutes just passed so quickly .. there's just so much to say and so much to ask. 2 Canadian phone calls in one day - I feel so spoiled!
10pm
Well it has been a day. I found Jason in the Tokyo station at 10:45 - yes, I had a bit of difficulty finding him since he was hiding on me (twit). It didn't look like Simon was going to show so we set on our way to Enoshima - the beach! It took us about 1hr 15mins. to get to the Kasane Enoshima station, so that's pretty good. We were both hungry so we decided that the first thing to do was to go find some ice cream (lunch, of course). This actually proved to be difficult, but we walked along tthe main road which is parallel to the coast, and that was cool. There were a LOT of beach girls and surfer dudes. As Jason put it, the Japanese Baywatch (or did he say Babewatch? Hmmmm). Jason was looking for a bathingsuit, so we stopped in a few shops along the way. Finally we gave into a McDonald's shake (they had them!) but ended up finding some ice cream later. And Jason found a swim suit so we went to the beach.
Now the beach is pretty cool. It is very long and wide actually, and not exactly empty. I guess you could call it crowded, but we could still easily find a place to lie down. So we put down the mega-towel and bummed out. Oh, and the weather was perfect! Sunny, sunny, and sunny! And there was a cool breeze from the ocean... very neat. The beach itself had quite a bit of garbage on it (due to the large number of people), but I think the water was clean.
Oh, we tried the beach treat, which was basically a HUGE snowcone, in a bowl. Very good for the beach. And a typical half-hour line up - but, ya know, we had tto have the experience!
So we left the beach at around 5 to walk to the station, but when we got there, there was a huuuuge lineup for the tickets! So we decided to walk around the shopping street for awhile. This street is so cool - they were playing Hawaiian music on loudspeakers! It was so funky.
Anyways, after walking for a bit, we thought we would just keep on going until the next station because hey, if we follow the tracks how could we *possibly* get lost? Yes, I'm still a believer in this theory.. and besides, we got there fine. Hmm.. took the train home, saw some fireworks... and not much else I guess.
Monday July 21, 1997: Ocean Day: 10pm
Well today was great! I went for a run in the morning and while I was out, Jason went to the grocery store and bought stuff to make PIZZA (we couldn't possibly go a weekend without pizza!) so we made those. Ya know, the English muffin kind. They were really gooood. Mmm! Oh, and then he also bought some cookies n' cream ice cream, which of course is the perfect ending to a pizza lunch!
Later on it the afternoon we went over to Toyoda to the depaato (dept. store) there to look for a wedding gift for Jason's to-be-bro-in-law. And guess how we got to Toyoda? Yes, that's right - in the true Japanese fashio we double rode my bike - Jason driving and me sitting on the rack at the back. It was fun! It took me awhile to get used to, but really great. Hmm, so he found a gift, and I got my second batch of pictures developped, and then we headed over to Hachioji to see a movie called Mononoke Hime (either "Mononoke Princess", or "Person's Feather Princess", or "The Removed Princess" -- I can't figure out the translation). It was great! My very first anime film (Japanese animation) and I loved it! Sure, I couldn't understand a word throughout the whole film, but I had no problem understanding the storyline. And the music was really good too. I'm so impressed. Of course, I cna't afford to see movies too often, unfortunately!
Oh, and Jason made pancakes for dinner - right from scratch! They were pretty darn tasty.
Tuesday July 22, 1997: 9pm
Hmmm.. a couple of cool things happened to me today.. first of all, on my run this morning I saw that lady who literally yells "Ohaiyogozaimasu" at me from 10 meters away, no joke. Anyways, this time when I saw her, she actually stopped her bike and waited for me to run up! So when I get to her, I stop, and she hands me a note. THen she asks me (she's very excited at this point) if I speak Japanese, and if I'm a student, etc. She says that she's always wanted to talk with me... and do I have time? So I'm like "Sure! Anytime!" So next time I see her on my run (I'd see her everyday if I left at 6:15) she's going to give me her telly number. A sort of on-the-run transaction. Wow, that's crazy! Could be interesting though... I was guessing that she's around 35 or so, but after tonight I could be waaaay off. Why? Well tonight I found out the age of my Tuesday night Japanese teacher. I thought she was about 30 years old - seriously - but as it turns out, she's 50! She has a daughter older than me! Wow, that really shocked me.
Oh, and she was pretty excited to teach me tonight because she hadn't taught me in about 3 weeks, and she said that she couldn't wait to hear how I'd improved. Uh... oh oh!
Oh yeah, today at work was a mix of good and bad. I was really getting things done and everything was going smoothly - until lunchtime. Then I ran into a bug that I could NOT figure out for the life of me. It got me SO annoyed. Finally, at 5 o'clock I fixed it. Then suddenly I'm in a great mood again! Oh, but I was very absent minded today when I got on the train for my lesson (Jason's using the bike today) and I got on the train going in the wrong direction! Argh. So I had to get off at Tachikawa and retrace my steps. Sometimes I'm a real twit.
Wednesday July 23, 1997: 10pm
I had such a productive day today. Wow, in the afternoon I was really on quite a roll - just churning out that copier interface. Cool - it felt good.
Tonight at calligraphy I had a really great talk with Sensei. Just about stuff. I'm still finding it really hard to speak, but I'm doing it much more. I figure that the more I talk the better I'll get - even if I still make loads of mistakes.
Today's hiragana was "odori" (a dance). And the kanji was kikou (the stories you tell about a trip/vacation, I think) Anyways, they were cool. And tonight's treat was a green roll-type thing made of peas (!) and filled with white stuff that was actually rice!! Strange sounding, but it tasted really good.
Thursday July 24, 1997: 9pm
Hey they've forecasted Typhoon #9 for tomorrow. Yeah, here they number their tropical storms instead of giving them names. It's been quite awhile since Typhoon #8 (the one I went out in) - I was beginning to think the season was over. Ah well. I'm always up for a storm.
Oh, tomorrow night is a party for Hidaka-san because he's been promoted to Manager of our team. That should be fun!
Friday July 25, 1997: 11pm
Well I just got back from Hidaka-san's congrats party, and it was fabulous. We left the office at about 6:15 or so, and got to the restaurant in Kokubunji by 7. It was called "Viva Japanesque" - a Mexican place. It was very cool - very much Mexican. The owner came out to serve us, and I thought that she spoke Japanese a bit differently. As it turns out, she's Mexcian (I couldn't tell by loking at her until I'd found out) but her Japanese was flawless. I mean, she was rattling away with us and she had the whole language down perfectly. It was quite inspiring. Then, to top it off, whe spoke to me in English, and it was spoken so perfect - with quite the American accent. wow. Smart lady. Then she guessed that I was a veggie, and told us how her daughter, who lives in the States (that explains the great English) left Japan only 2 weeks ago, and her and her husband are veggies so this lady was quite used to cooking for begetarians. So she said she'd make special dishes just for me! Wow!
Then the woman who came out to serve us drinks was as gaijin as you could get - tall, blonde... this was getting strange!
OK, so there were 8 of us there - I was the only gaijin, which ended up being pretty good because they'll speak Japanese around me, but not if there's too many non-speakers around. I decided to drink this time, since at the past parties I haven't (well, at least I haven't at dinner) and that completely surprised Hidaka-san. He was like "Wow, I haven't sen this before!" We all got a good laugh out of that. Well, I couldn't turn down the chance to try Mexican beer... and... yes, to drink *tequila*!!
We had some pretty strange sounding food.. for example, we had cactus pizza! But it was fabulous! Then again, I *do* love any type of pizza.. mmm. It was great food and great drinks (you're never allowed to have an empty glass) and great conversation. We were there til about 10, and by that time I think we'd all had our fill. When it came time to pay, they told me that I didn't have to. Wow, these guys are so fabulous! I'm not sure why it is that I didn't have to pay... I was told once that there's an old tradition that the youngest never pays, could that be it? Well, whatever it is, I love it! I can't believe that I don't have to pay to have such a great time.
On the way home I got to talk with Hirose-san (the runner - he ran 19kms just tonight before dinner!) and I found out that there's a half-marathon in January that he thinks I should run. Cool! This is my chance!! I'll have to start training, but I can make time for that. Oh, I'm so excited!
That typhoon hasn't hit yet - they've bumped it til tomorrow. Knowing the weather reports, it'll probably be Sunday. That's fine, I had nothing planned anyways.
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