Friday November 21, 1997: 11pm
So mom phoned last night after I'd gone to sleep and I ended up only getting about 4 hours cuz I just couldn't get back to sleep afterards - so I've been in one of those zombie states all day. And it's been raining... got nice and wet on my way home from work because I was POSITIVE that it wouldn't rain when I left the apartment this morning. Well, I guess that's why I'm not the weatherman.
Saturday November 22, 1997: midnight
Cool! Just talked with Levon for about 40 minutes because it was her bday yesterday. Now I'd set myself a time-limit before I called, so that I wouldn't have a heart attack when the bill arrived. 20 mins tops. For sure. Well, once it got to 20, I thought, oh, just 10 more minutes can't hurt - but after 10 I still had so much to say! I couldn't possibly hang up then! It was just so much fun to talk with her and hear what's up in Waterloo (it was snowing - hee hee). Anyway, I have no self-control whatsoever so 40 minutes it was.
Sunday November 23, 1997: 8:30pm
It was just really nice out today, so I decided to go for a hike through the Tama hills. It seems as though everything died in the last week - the trees, the leaves - things are getting bare. But I got my chance to shuffle through fallen leaves and have a nice walk in a pleasant temperature.
Ah and I finished C&O 230 tonight. Finito, done, over with. Until next summer, that is. Tomorrow's Labour Thanksgiving (how efficient, to combine 2 holidays into 1!) so I'm going to Gumma with Wakako-chan and friends. We're supposed to go to an onsen, so I'm a tad apprehensive. It's just this whole socializing in the nude thing - I am just NOT used to the idea! Well, I'm going to make sure I enjoy myself.
9:15pm
An update on my bathtub. It truly has a mind of its own. Yesterday it changed back to its psycho-hot temperature ways, which peeved me considerably, as I'd been thouroughly enjoying my warm showers lately, and was not looking forward to returning to scalding myself, or resorting to freezing cold showers (because I figure its' better to be a popsicle than be boiled alive). Long sentence. SO, I was determined to fix the thing. If the hot-water/gas fix-it-dude could do it then darn it, so could I! As it turns out, it depends on the water pressure, which I can control by adjusting the amount of water coming out of the shower head and tap. Ah hah! So now it's fixed, and I'm wondering what could possibly go wrong next!!
Monday November 24, 1997: 11pm
Gumma day. Wakako-chan, Yodashi-san, Kon-san and I set off in Kon-san's car slightly after 9 - Wakako-san having gotten 4 hours sleep and Yodashi-san only 1 -- made a quick pit-stop at a McDonald's drive thru for 2 egg muffin breakfast specials, and we were on our way!
A short introduction... Kon-san is a friend of Wakako's from work. She's 26, married, and works par-time. Really nice. Yodashi-san is a friend of Kon-san's, so she and Wakako hadn't met yet. She's 23 and an art student at a university in Tokyo. Actually, it's quite cool 'cause she's taking "Textiles" which is exactly what it seems - the art of making fabric and different patterns. Quite neat. Anyway, she was hilarious. She started off the morning demurely asking us "may I... may I smoke?" and by the end of the day she'd progressed to "I smoke! NOW!!". hahahahaha
So we're heading to Gumma - the amount of chatter in the car at a surprising level considering the total amount of sleep of its occupants, and also that we didn't all know eachother. At first I was mostly just listening - trying to follow the conversations - but as the day wore on I got more talkative.
Gumma is up in the mountains north-west of Tokyo - took us 2-some hours by car to get there (no traffic), so pretty close. And woah, the mountains up there are WEIRD. They look like one of those lie detector graphs - straight up straight down up down and gee, I've never seen anything quite like it. Also, Gumma is considered "the country" in Japan, and although it was still very populated, the buildings *were* spread further apart, and they rarely got taller than 3 stories. This was quite a pleasant change - I hadn't realized that Tokyo seemed so squishy to me.
Our first stop in Gumma was this humungous grocery store - actually, it wasn't humungous at all compared with Canadian standards, but I guess I've gotten used to my short-n'-sweet grocery store in Hino, so even I went "wwwwoaah" when I walked in. I can't wait to do my first grocery shop back in Canada, I'll probably faint from the excitement of having so much selection! Ok, back to this grocery store, we bought veggies and stuff to make our lunch. I always have fun in grocery stores.
Then next we went to an old age home (!!) because Wakako's grandparents live there and she just wanted to drop by for 20 minutes or so while the rest of us were just going to wait around the parking lot. This was really nice though because the weather was clear, and the temperature cool, and Kon-san brought some badminton rackets so we hit the birdie around a bit. When we tired of that, we started to draw things on the pavement with stones - such as a map of Canada to show them where Ottawa is and stuff (my version of "where is Ottawa?" is drawing a circle that encompassing the area from Lake Ontario up to Hudson's Bay, and half of Quebec, and saying, oh, it's somewhere in this area... I nver *was* good at Canadian geography) And they showed me some kanjis. We attempted an "only speak English" conversation (a must-do to any Japanese person, it seems) but it got quiet pretty fast, (well, except for me of course!) so the Japanese dribbled back in. After, hmm, maybe an hour or so, Wakako came out so we drove up some more into the mountains, to Kon-san's mom's place, where we were to cook our lunch.
Now this house is cool. As it turns out, her mother designed it - but I was admiring it way before I found that out. First of all, it's in the country, so there were lots of trees and lots of lawn around it. Now that I think about it, that's the first time I've seen lawn and trees like that in Japan! Oh, and the inside of the house was all in wood - just like a cottage. And they had a grand piano! My dream!!
Oh, so I guess it's Kon-san's mother and grandmother who live there now. Her grandmother is so cute - for lack of any other word. I mean, she was reeeeal old, and moved reeeeal slow, but she was really nice. Oh, she kept on falling asleep while eating lunch. That was pretty funny.
The cooks were Kon-san and Yodashi-san, but mostly Yodashi-san. Wakako and I tried a bit of juggling (the mother brought us out bean bags for the purpose) and some other stuff - and then it was chow time. We were all STARVED. Mmmm... good food.
After lunch we bummed out a bit, and then left to drive even MORE up the mountain (my ears were popping at this point) to go to this wonderful temple. It was quite neat - waterfalls, precariously placed boulders, trees, moss, stairs, torii gates, shrines - it was all there. We walked around, then it was starting to get dark so we made our descent to the car and headed on back to Tokyo. Quite the fun day!
Tuesday November 25, 1997: 8:30pm
I finally got my bike fixed. After almost 6 months of biking around on a flat tire, I got the darned thing fixed. And woah, do I ever *fly* now! On the way to work this morning I almost got thrown off numerous times due to my unexpected high speed.. I love it! Plus, it cuts my to-work time in half! hahahahahaha!!
Stupid me, I just put my rice on to cook but I forgot to put in the WATER, and so the beep to tell me the rice is finished (from my rice cooker) went off after about 10 minutes, and I was thinking, Gee, that was quick, and when I go to dish myself some grub... rice kernels. Darnit, I'm hungry!
Wednesday November 26, 1997: 5:50pm
Wow this is just craaazy weather. It's been raining all day, but the wind has *really* picked up and if I didn't know better I'd think a typhoon was coming. BUt there aren't typhoons in November, right? I'm taking my chances and goin' to calligraphy.
9:30pmOnce again I was doing my kakizome tonight, so no surprises on the calligraphy front. Actually, I did a really good one today and Sensei kept on saying how good it was so soon enough I had to believe her. (of course, I messed up on signing my name, which is the very last thing you do... duh duh duh) It's so much fun! Today I was the only one there - presumably because of this freaky weather. Ah, even Sensei said it looked like a typhoon (key word being "looked") Oh, we had a really long conversation before starting about - vegetables. Ya know, the common topic. Anyway, she was telling me how Americans put too many pesticides in their fruit that no Japanese (including her) will eat them! Especially pregnant mothers, because they don't want their kids being born with extra limbs. Then she asked me what *I* thought, and I was like, well, American produce is kinda hard to avoid in Canada.. hmm. This subject came up, of course, because of her stranger-than-fiction Amercian-grown grapefruit that just *wouldn't* go bad no matter *how* many months she had them.... uh huhhhh. I must say that nothing at sensei's is ever really expected!
Thursday November 27, 1997: 10pm
A bit of current info on the Japanese economy. To put it in broad terms, it's in a slump. To put it in correct terms, it's going downhill and gaining speed while it's at it... you know that with the Canadian dollar at a 10 year low, you'd think I'd be happy with the exchange rate. Well, in the last week, 2 of the major financial institutions in Japan have gone bankrupt, which obviously doesn't help my situation at all, and so I'm just a tad peeved!
But on the bright side, it must've been at least 24C today. And I think that's the only bright side I can see currently. ARgh.
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