What a crazy two days it has been! Woo, I am bushed. I was just about to go to sleep when I remembered I hadn't blogged in a long time. I've got some great pictures. Let's go back in time, shall we?
Saturday
Breakfast and then I returned to my room. I was messing around, playing HP games, waiting for the Chubu support group to come pick us up for the party they were throwing when I received a phone call. It was Mrs. Gohto. A little back story is necessary here; the dorm is watched over by a slightly elderly couple- the Gohtos. They are so cute, but they don't speak a word of English, so understanding them is a bit of a challenge for me at times. Well, there I was, in a one-on-one conversation with Mrs. Gohto. I got a little nervous, but, amazingly enough, I understand every word she said! She told me everyone was waiting for me outside; I didn't really know how to respond, so I just said yes, ok. Well, I rushed out of my room and down the hall and put on my shoes quickly, but luckily, our Japanese escorts hadn't arrived yet. They arrived a few minutes later and, because it was raining, we went into a cafeteria to party. There were some onigiri (rice balls) and weird, unholy cheetoh-dorito hybrid corn tubes, but they tasted like an American snack, so they weren't so unusual. We mingled with the Japanese students, most of whom spoke English to some degree of functionality, so we communicated in Japanengrish.
After the party wound down, we proceeded to our next item of business-getting cellphones. According to Greg King, our local connection, the au store in downtown Nagoya was sure to have the best deals. So we took the bus to the train station, took the train to the subway station,
and took the subway to Sakae- a MASSIVE department store.
Let me lay it out for you- 9 floors, 3 sub-basements, a bazillion restaurants, 50 times as many shops, a smattering of goths (sorry, no pictures of those, but I really wanted to,) and crazy fish smells. Pictured is the Crystal Hiruba- the Crystal Meeting Place. It's a pretty crazy glass fountain. Once we found our way out of the mall, we headed for the au and met the colonel on the way...
Unfortunately, at the au cellphone store another, less popular Japanese past time reared its ugly head- xenophobia. This experience was more annoying for me than anything, really. They waited forever to serve us, took a long time to serve us, made us wait to get our cellphones, and, although the prepaid cellphone people got theirs, the contact people were denied as they were only going to be in the country for 6-9 months. While some of that, I'm sure, is just the way the store operates, but there was a distinct feeling of unwelcome. It was just a gentle reminder of how the Japanese, while enchanted with western culture, feel cultural superior to it. That, of course, is a generalization; not all Japanese are hostile toward outsiders, but it's generally accepted that Japan as a whole is more exclusive to foreigners (denying them rights, discriminating, etc.) than the whole of the US. Well, enough gritty reality, let's get back to awesome reality! We had dinner at this awesome awesome awesome awesome authentic toufu restaurant. We even had to take off our shoes and everything.
Man, the food was good! That's toufu on skewers covered in red miso, rice with vegetables, the soy bean remains from soy milk, silken toufu, and this strange yam jelly that was really chewy, and miso soup (but that had clam shells in it, so I didn't eat it.) It was good, but it was a different taste than I'm used to. I was exhausted after such a long day, so as soon as I got back to the dorm, I went to bed.
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