The wrong kind of walk in

Yesterday was very easy, I only ended up teaching one lesson all day because my other student canceled due to a headache. I also had my Japanese lesson at 4 and a Video Chat at 5, but that still means I only worked about 2 hours all day(3 if you count some paperwork and stuff, but being taught Japanese doesn't qualify as work). Even with such a slow day, something interesting still managed to happen. As I was walking back from my lunch break someone behind me said something to me in English. On the streets I am normally surrounded by people who can't understand what I am saying and who would never dream of trying to communicate with me, so when I heard the English naturally I turned around to see who was speaking to me. Turns out it was a very drunk Japanese work man who knew a very small amount of English, but that did not stop him from talking to me/following me as I walked back to work. He quickly figured out that I was a teacher because A) There are only so many things a white girl in Takashimadaira can do, B) I forgot to take my company name tag off (this is a mistake I will never make again), and C) About 5 seconds after he started following me I was standing outside my school. It was the last part that made things tricky because it was around this time that I realized he didn't intend on leaving. The only way into my school is by elevator and there was no way in hell I was going to get on an elevator alone with the drunkard. I saw an older, professional looking man approach the elevator and tried to get him to go up too, but he wouldn't get on so when the drunk guy turned his head I just ran away for a second and hid in a bank next door. A minute later I came out and peeked around the corner. Both men where gone so I took the elevator up to work, but upon entering the school I discovered Drunky McDrunkerson had made his way up and was talking to my co-worker. I felt bad about leaving my co-worker to deal with him alone, but we both knew he'd never leave if I stayed out there so I went and shut myself in my classroom. Even with me gone it took my co-worker about 10 minutes to get the guy out of the school. A few minutes later the older man who I tried to force onto the elevator showed up, he told my co-worker that he saw me down by the street... apparently I'm good for business, 2 walk ins in 20 minutes... I'm just glad one of them walked out.

Pizza can be inspiring

It was a good weekend, not too hectic for a change and I am totally okay with that! I got to sleep in both days without feeling like a complete slug... okay, maybe I was kind of slug-like today, but I cleaned my apartment (I even vacuumed) so I would tend to consider that a major accomplishment. Yesterday I went to my manager's party and my audition, both events went fairly well. The party was first and oh my goodness, there was SO MUCH FOOD. Every time I thought there could not possibly be anymore to eat they would bring out another dish. I honestly have no idea how the majority of Japanese people have managed to stay so thin because they certainly do know how to eat! I guess they must have some sort of whacked out metabolism that they decided not to pass on to me... oy, it's so unfair. In addition to eating ridiculous amounts of food we also enjoyed playing with the animals that the family owned. They had a parakeet named Poppy and a rabbit named Cinnamon (after a manga character). I didn't really care for the bird so much because it kept landing on people's heads and I was afraid it might make a mess in my hair. The bunny, however, was very cute and small, well at least small in comparison to my mammoth of a rabbit, she wasn't nearly as cool as my bunny because she wouldn't sit still to let you pet her... Dommi will sit for hours. The party started around noon and I didn't leave until 4:30 to go to my audition, but I was still the first person to leave, apparently Japanese parties are all day affairs. I think the audition went pretty well, it was a very laid back atmosphere and the director said that she thought she could work with my schedule so I'm crossing my fingers. She also said "well done" at the end so I'm going to take that as a good sign since she could have just said "thank you". I will find out in about two weeks if I have been cast so I will be sure to let all of you know as soon as I hear. It is a spring play so even if I am cast the rehearsals don't actually start until April. (The audition was held very very close to Tokyo Tower, so I took the photo at the top while I was there.)

Today was quite relaxed. Jenn and I decided to have a movie night here at my apartment so that was fun and cheap. It worked out well because she had the microwave popcorn and I have the microwave. In addition to the popcorn and the snacks that I bought, we decided to order delivery pizza from a chain called Pizza-La. Easy right? Yeah... not when you don't speak the language. We decided that since Jenn knows even less Japanese than me (which basically equates to no Japanese) that I should be the one to make the call. I have never in my life had to prepare more for a delivery order. I wrote down the pronunciation of each food we where ordering, thank goodness we were only ordering two things, then I wrote out the words for all the numbers of my address. When I made the call I prayed that maybe someone there would speak a little bit of English, but no such luck. I made it through ordering, giving my address, and choosing tomato sauce versus some other unknown sauce, but then she asked me something else and I got stuck. Luckily, Jenn suggested the word keitai, which means cell phone, when I repeated this to the girl she excitedly proclaimed "HAI!!" which means "YES!!". It took me about a full minute and a half to get through my 11 digit phone number since I am still not so great with my numbers. Once everything was complete the girl confirmed my order, address, and phone number, but it took another minute or two to hang up because she kept saying ok and thank you and other nice things that didn't make sense to me, so I wasn't sure if we were actually done. I can't tell you what a relief it was when the delivery person arrived and spoke English! Still, I must say that I felt kind of proud of myself when I hung up the phone, it was the most Japanese I've spoken since arriving here and it definitely inspired me to keep on learning.

Waiting for Sunday

Yikes, it's ridiculously cold in my apartment! I think I'm going to make this a fairly short blog just because there's a good possibility that my fingers may freeze to the keyboard within the next 5 minutes. This week has been fairly mellow, which is fine by me. I started my work week off with 2 days of advanced training. I enjoyed the change of pace and it was nice meeting some new people from around the region. I had actually met one of the teachers before at the Higashi Kanto End of Year party that I wrote about in December, so it was also nice to see a familiar face. We all went out for drinks after the second day so that was fun. Our trainer, aka my boss, also came out with us which was cool, but it still feels strange for me to go out with my superior. I know it's not really that uncommon, even in the states, but drinking with the same person who could technically fire me still weirds me out a little. During the training I met another teacher who is interested in acting and who majored in drama. She just finished performing in a play at a theater that puts on shows in English and she informed me that they are holding auditions for the spring show, Ring Round the Moon, this Sunday. I asked her how she was able to attend rehearsals with her work schedule (the same as mine, 1 - 10 pm Tues-Sat) and she said that all of the rehearsals for the previous show had been on Sundays and that she just took a few days off for the performances. I would absolutely love to get involved in a play while I'm here, so I emailed the theater manager for more information. He didn't know what the rehearsal schedule was going to be like yet, but he told me that the spring show is actually being directed by an English Teacher. Most Eikaiwa (English schools) run on similar schedules, so that means there's actually a chance that I could attend the rehearsals. I've decided to at least give it a try and signed up to audition this Sunday evening, so wish me luck! I scheduled the audition time for Sunday evening because during the day I am going to a farewell party for my manager being held at the house of one of my co-worker's students. I am very excited to see the inside of a Japanese style house and to try some traditional Japanese food. I am also a little excited because the daughter of the woman hosting the party is actually my student and she is going to show me her bunny! I know some of you are probably sitting there rolling your eyes thinking, oh my gosh Leila is such a dork, but I really miss my pets and this is as close as I'm going to get until I get home! Okay, going to crawl under my covers now because I can't take the cold any longer! Goodnight all! (Really good day to most of you, but whatever!)

SUMO!!!!!

I am tired. I woke up at 5:15 this morning so that I could buy tickets for Sumo Wrestling by 7:30 am, which is when I was informed I had to get there. Turns out the ticket booth didn't even open until 8:30 am, so I could have slept a whole extra hour! It's okay though, because my friend Ivan and I were the very first people in line. After we got our tickets we went and got some breakfast and then spent the entire day at the Sumo Tournament. It was AWESOME!!!!! They started with the low level guys in the morning and then progressively brought in higher and higher ranks. The tournament ended with competitions between the highest ranking wrestlers, the really famous ones you see on TV. Ivan and I seriously got way more than our money's worth. We paid about $20 for the crappy nosebleed seats, but since it was a Monday (fewer people) and no one really seemed to care that much, we moved down to the lower balcony seats that are actually worth between $60-$100. People did come to claim their seats a couple of times, so then we just moved to different seats in the same section. The view from where we were sitting was great and we could even hear the wrestlers breathing at one point! It's hard to explain the details of sumo wrestling, because we didn't even quite understand, but it was still ridiculously fun to watch. Every time a new set of competitors was about to enter the dohyo (the ring) this little singing man in a crazy costume would stand in the middle and chant a song in the direction of each wrestler, then the wrestlers would climb up and do this crazy side kick balance thing that sumo wrestlers are sort of famous for doing. I recorded one of the earlier matches so you can see what I'm talking about. The beginning matches weren't too exciting, but the later matches with the higher ranking professionals were extremely intense. The wrestlers were wild and since the dohyo was raised off the floor by about a foot and a half sometimes they would fall off and go toppling into the audience. I seriously thought someone was going to get crushed by one of these massive guys. Every time it happened the entire audience would gasp and then check to make sure that the old woman who the 400 lb. wrestler had just landed on wasn't dead. In addition to the video I have also included a couple of pictures. I am sort of in love with this picture of myself (which is somewhat uncommon), I just love how the sumo guys look in the background, it almost looks like a backdrop! The other one is a circle of all the highest ranking wrestlers before they began competing. Okay, seriously tired now, work in the morning, going to bed.

I love the Japanese... I just don't like hospitals.

I have now had the chance to visit two different Japanese hospitals within less than a month's time... lucky me. This time, however, I was the patient. Don't worry I'm ok, it was nothing too serious. Normally, I would just go to a doctor's office, but in Japan they don't really have doctor's offices, or at least not many of them. Basically, if there's anything wrong with you at all then you just head straight to the hospital. I'm not really a huge fan of this auto-hospital system, but I didn't really have a choice in the matter. There's also a hospital about a five minute walk from where I live, so it would have been ridiculous to try and track down a doctor farther away and then have to make an appointment and pay for the train ride to get there. Still, there was the tricky issue of communication, and that was pretty tough, since I know absolutely no Japanese beyond greetings and "what's this/what's that?". So before I left for the hospital I stopped by work and did some "googling", which was extremely helpful. I found a website with all sorts of medical information and charts in English and the exact same charts and information in Japanese (you could choose the language that you wanted). The site had 2 pages of information on my specific problem, so I printed them out and circled my symptoms. When I arrived at the hospital I took out the papers and pointed at the key words. I knew exactly what was wrong with me from the start and I just needed to go to the doctor in order to get the appropriate antibiotics, so that also made things slightly easier. What really kept me from becoming completely overwhelmed, however, was how incredibly friendly and helpful the Japanese people are. I had noticed it to some extent before, but my belief that they are seriously some of the nicest people in the world was confirmed today. The staff went completely out of their way to make sure I got treated properly, in fact I think they may have fast tracked me so that I got through before some other people did. Rather than pointing to where I needed to go and just hoping I'd end up there, someone walked with me to each section of the hospital and they tried so hard to use the extremely broken English that they knew in order to talk to me. After I got through and paid, they gave me my prescription and one of the hospital attendants walked outside with me. I thought she was just going to point me in the direction of a pharmacy, but she actually walked me all the way there. It wasn't really that far, but it was down the street and around the corner and she was just wearing a flimsy sweater so I'm sure she was freezing. I was dumbstruck because no hospital staff, no matter how nice they are, would ever do that in America. Not because Americans are rude, just because it would never even occur to us to do such a thing in the first place. When I arrived at the pharmacy the attendant left and a minute later I was handed a form to fill out. The form was completely in Japanese. I sat for a moment and tried to figure out some of the basics, like my name. I managed to get that down in katakana (one of the 3 Japanese character sets) and circle the kanji for "female" which I recognized from other forms that I'd filled out with my manager's assistance, but then I got stuck from there. The woman sitting next to me noticed that I was staring intensely at the blank form in front of me and immediately offered to assist me. She helped me calculate my Japanese birth year (it goes by what emperor was reigning at the time of my birth) and wrote my address for me, because I had it with me but there was no way I could write out all the kanji. She tried to help me answer some of the questions, but her English wasn't good enough to translate, so then she went and found a pharmacist who actually spoke a little English. It was seriously mind blowing how helpful everyone was today and I am still so incredibly grateful.

Buggin' out!

I had another fun weekend with a couple of my friends. We had planned to go to a sumo tournament on Monday, but since we had to be in line for tickets at 7 am and didn't actually go to sleep until 5:30 am the same day, we decided that sumo could wait until next weekend. It should be a really cool experience and I'm really excited for when we do go. I have actually met a sumo wrestler since coming here, but you will never guess where he's from... Ireland! Crazy right? He is a co-worker of Jenn's and is a teacher for the same company as us, but he does sumo during his time off and competes in amateur tournaments. He is so committed to sumo that he purposely gained weight for the sport, I think that's sort of impressive.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that guy's not the only one who's gained weight... I haven't bought a scale since coming here, so I don't know for sure, but I just have a feeling. I thought I'd be eating much healthier in Japan, but I didn't consider the fact that while a large percentage of the Japanese diet is fish, an even larger percentage is carbs! There's rice or noodles in just about every dish you eat and then there are also the ever tempting bakeries... I try to resist the urge, but I really have very little self control. Granted, I do walk about a mile to work and then another mile back everyday, so that might balance it off a bit, but still I am conscious of the fact that I need to exercise more. One good thing is that based on my current budget and a slightly higher cell phone bill than expected, I have started paying attention to how much money I spend on food, or in other words, I have started spending less money on food. I try to buy the cheapest foods available at the store, and salad is pretty darn cheap. Today during lunch, however, I was slightly traumatized by my salad eating experience because there was a lady bug crawling around in my lettuce. EWWW! I didn't feel like going to the trouble to figure out how to say in Japanese that I wanted a refund for my insect infested salad, so instead I've decided to start my own personal boycott of that particular grocery store. Luckily, there is a higher quality store literally next door to the nasty one, so it's not really a problem for me.

That's about the most excitement I've had so far this week (my week starts on Tuesday), but I'm sure something else random and crazy will happen very soon. I will be sure to keep you posted.

Yay yay yay for omiyage (if read correctly that should rhyme)

The Japanese have many traditions and customs, obviously I haven't learned about all of them, but I am starting to become familiar with some and so far my favorite one is the giving and receiving of omiyage. "These are customary gifts typically given by someone upon returning from a trip to be given to family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, business associates, teachers, classmates and any other person socially related to the returning vacationer" (Wikipedia). Perhaps I should rephrase... I enjoy receiving omiyage. So far in the past week I have received from my manager a lovely pencil case from South Korea, from my co-worker a huge colorful scarf from India that matches the picture frames in my apartment perfectly, and from two of my students an assortment of tea and face scrubs also from South Korea. There is also a large assortment of food in our school lobby that students and co-workers have brought from all over the world (people travel a lot during the New Year's season here). I do not currently have enough money to travel, but when I do I will also be expected to bring omiyage home for everyone at my school. That's the part that I am not so thrilled about. The Wikipedia definition is not an exageration, people seriously bring stuff back for EVERYONE here, and if you don't you're considered to be extremely rude and unthoughtful. It's not that I don't enjoy giving gifts to my friends, I actually really enjoy doing so, but having to spend money on every single person I've ever met in Japan seems like it might get a little pricey. Well, I plan on doing most of my traveling after my contract has expired anyway, so I probably won't be returning to Japan once I've gone on any major trips. It's also normal to bring back food or candy for the majority of the students, so if I go on any smaller trips while I am still here, I don't have to put too much thought into what I get. The only people I need to put a little more effort in with my gift giving decisions are my co-workers and since there are only three of them I think I can handle it.

Speaking of co-workers, today was my manager's last day. I forget whether I mentioned in any of my previous posts the fact that she is quitting. I'm kind of sad about it because she is very sweet and really knows what she's doing since she's been with the company for two years. I'm also nervous about having to adjust to a new manager who might not speak English and might not really know what he or she is doing (most likely she). I don't think it will be too bad though because I have my other two co-workers to go to for help, some people aren't so lucky. A friend of mine works at a school where it's just him and one other person who functions as both the manager and JET (Japanese English Teacher). I don't think I'd like that very much at all, it just seems so lonely.

Well, I'm suddenly quite sleepy and since tomorrow is Saturday I have to be at work earlier than normal (it starts and ends 2 hours early so it's still the same amount of time). I have been staying up way too late for no particular reason as of late, it's a habit I carried over from home and I don't think I'm going to kick it any time soon. So it goes... enjoy your weekends and leave me comments, because I still get really excited whenever I get any.

Quirks and perks

Every night when I walk home from work, I pass the local police station. Ordinarily one would probably not find passing a police station to be very interesting, but of course, this is Japan and the Japanese have found a way to make everything interesting. They have succeeded in jazzing up the police station by installing an armed guard outside of the station entrance at night. What is he armed with? A stick. Okay, to be fair I think it would actually qualify as a pole. Still, each time I walk by I just can't help but think how ridiculous it is. I mean it's true that you could severely injure someone with a giant wooden pole, but if a person was really that intent on invading a police station, I think there's a good possibility that they'd be carrying a gun. Then what is the cop going to do? Whack the gun out of his hand with the giant stick? I also get the feeling that if I ever decided to approach Mr. Stick Man, there's a good chance that I would be whacked just because he'd know that it would be the most excitement he'd have for the entire evening (the police men never look very happy while standing out in the cold with their poles). Tonight I tried to make eye contact with the guard standing there, but he freaked me out so I looked away. They always look so serious! Because everybody knows that guarding a police station with a stick is very serious business... Grrrr.

In other news, I paid my first Japanese bill yesterday. It was an electricity bill and I paid it off at the local 7-11. That's right, in Japan you can pay your bills at convenience stores... it is freakin' awesome. Actually, they're not usually called "convenience stores" here, they are called "conveenies" which I think is rather cute. You just bring your bill up to the cashier at the conveeny, she/he scans the bar code, and you pay it off in cash. I think this payment process should be listed in the dictionary under the definition of convenience, because it doesn't get much easier than that. I suppose writing out a check isn't that difficult either, but if you are anything like me, then there is always the stamp issue. I never, I repeat NEVER, have stamps when I need them. This results in the obnoxious task of driving to the post office in order to buy one measly little stamp to put on the freakin' envelope. None of this would ever happen in Japan, however, for a couple of reasons: 1) I do not have a car in Japan, so it is impossible for me to drive to the post office, unless I hail a taxi 2) There is no such thing as personal checks in Japan, so I would have nothing to mail in the first place. Ahhh Japan, there is no way in hell I would live here forever, but temporarily I am enjoying its quirks and its perks.

My lazy day

Not too much to report, because I literally did nothing today. I did not take one step outside of my apartment and it was quite nice. A friend who stayed with me this past week introduced me to the wonderful world of downloading and it is just lovely. Tomorrow I am planning to meet up with Jenn during the day and Hiro in the evening, so I don't feel too bad about being a useless mass today. In my mind, one day of lazing around is nice, but two days is pathetic. That's why I was so excited to come to Japan in the first place; by the time it was finally time for me to leave I had spent close to three months doing a whole bunch of nothing. For anyone else who has ever done nothing for that long, you probably know it gets old fast. I am not completely in love with my job now, but I have no serious complaints and it gives me something to do. It's crazy how the days just seem to fly by. I cannot believe that in just a couple of weeks I will already have been living in Tokyo for two months! I just hope that life continues to go by at the same pace because if so, then getting through the rest of the year shouldn't be too difficult. I have, however, been missing some of my friends from home over the past few days. As I've mentioned previously, I have made a few friends here, but they're different, and obviously I don't feel as close to them because I'm not. Sometimes I miss having friends that I don't feel stupid around when I decide it would be a fun time to make faces in the mirror or to tell one of my random camp stories (I haven't actually stopped telling them, I just feel more dumb while doing so). I realized that I've known all of my closest friends from home for at least five years, so the concept of forming new ones here within this one year seems slightly overwhelming and at times even impossible. Even so, I'm doing my best to meet new people and form new relationships, because you never know what might happen or who you might become friends with. I'm still sometimes blown away by some of the people who I love so much now and who I know love me back, because no one would have expected it from the start.

Hey guys, here's the link to my webshots (click webshots) it has a bunch of photos from this and other weeks since I've come to Japan. I still need to go and put all the titles and comments on the photo's because I spent forever doing it and then my computer screwed up and deleted it all and I didn't feel like starting over. I'm also posting a cool video from inside the gates of the Imperial Palace so you can see how excited everyone was. Enjoy!

Five crazy days

These last five days could possibly qualify as the craziest five days of my life. So much happened that it's difficult to remember it all, but I'll do my best to describe the highlights and major events of the past week. The insanity began on Saturday morning when I went to meet James at Ueno Station. I got to the station about 45 minutes early, but we did not leave until close to an hour after he arrived because I couldn't find him. The station wasn't that big and it was just a loop, so I told him to meet me by a specific exit and thought that would be simple enough, but when he called to tell me where he was I couldn't find the exit he was near. I checked the map and realized there was a whole other section to the station that looked just like the area I was in. I assumed it was just another level, but when I took the escalator down it just brought me back to the tracks. I was so confused, it was like there was an alternate train universe that I could not find the entrance to. Turns out, the other section of the station was about a quarter of a mile down the road and I never would have realized this if it hadn't been for the fact that I'd been to Ueno once before and kind of remembered seeing trains in that area. After we eventually found each other we headed back to Takashimadaira, where we wandered around for a while and realized there really isn't that much to see in Takashimadaira. I took him to my sushi place for lunch and one of my chefs asked if he was my boyfriend, we explained "just friends", but I think it's an understandable assumption since he's the only person I've taken with me to the restaurant so far.

Later that night we took the train down and met up with Jenn and our other friends from training who were visiting. We decided to go into Roppongi and find a club or bar to hang out in. Since it was already about 10 pm by the time we decided what we were doing, we basically had to commit right then and there to staying out all night since the trains in Tokyo stop at midnight and don't start up again until 5 am. When we arrived at Roppongi it was like another alternate universe, except that this one looked just like America. Everywhere you looked there were foreigners, the Japanese literally became the minority in their own city! As we walked down the main strip, we realized that not only were there a lot of foreigners around, but there were also a bunch of people trying to solicit the foreigners. I'm not sure why, but for some reason a large quantity of black men seem to have settled in Roppongi and taken over all of the strip clubs and gentleman's clubs. Every five steps or so and one of them would come up to Jenn or myself to try talking one or all of us into entering their club, then they would follow us down the street as we tried to ignore them. Jenn taught me the "pretend to talk on your cell phone" trick, so that managed to get rid of some of them. We girls weren't the only ones getting attention though, the guys we were with were repeatedly grabbed by girls who would say things like "I'm sad" or "Want a massage??" I didn't think the guys would mind the attention so much, but they even seemed a little freaked out at times. Eventually we found a place to eat and then we paid for an extremely overpriced karaoke room and sang our hearts out for a couple of hours. After that we went to a bar where I talked to some guy in the military who was from Texas, but then one of my genius friends thought it would be cool to try and steal a beer from the bar and got us kicked out. The beer stealing friend disappeared and after trying to call about 5 million times, we gave up, got some McDonalds, and then headed back to Jenn's apartment where we slept until the afternoon. This was just the beginning of a very screwed up sleep pattern, which would explain why I am currently writing this blog at 3:55 in the morning.

When we finally left Jenn's apartment we headed for Yoyogi Park in Harajuku to see all the people who dress up in crazy costumes and go there on Sundays to show off what they're wearing. Unfortunately, we got there too late so most of them had left, but I did see a few girls dressed as Lolita's, a whole group of people (men and women) dressed up as Rockabillies, and one guy wearing a sort of mouse costume. After getting crepes in Harajuku (the crepes here are fantastic) and shopping in a massive 100 yen shop called Daiso, we all headed back to my part of the city to get Gyu-kaku, the amazing barbeque meat that you cook at the table. We went to the karaoke place under my school, which is far more reasonably priced than the place in Roppongi, then we somehow crammed all 5 of us into my tiny apartment for the night. All my friends raved over my apartment because it's so new and said they were very jealous, well, all but one since he has basically the exact same apartment as me. There was the issue of size however, and one of my friends actually decided to sleep in the storage space beneath my loft, he basically had his own little cave. We slept late again and then headed back to Jenn's to prepare for the evening, New Year's Eve.

Since we first came to Japan, Jenn had been complaining of a tooth ache, but during the week that we all spent together it got progressively worse. While she was at my apartment she called an English translation line to get information on dentist clinics in the area and tried numbing it with whiskey that we bought from the local 7-11. The woman on the line also told her to get a certain pill that she said would help ease the pain. Jenn picked up the pills on the way back to her apartment and we discovered it was the most foul smelling medicine on the face of the planet. Even after trying it and confirming how gross they really were, she still managed to convince two of the guys we were with to taste the nasty black pills, so everyones breath absolutely wreaked! After getting ready, we headed to a club in Shibuya where one of Jenn's coworkers had gotten us discount tickets. We had a couple of drinks and danced for a bit, but Jenn's tooth pain got extremely severe and we decided that she needed to go to the hospital, so I hailed a taxi and James and I took her to the Emergency Room. We couldn't fit everyone in the cab, so the other two guys stayed in Shibuya. I was sure that we were going to be at the hospital for hours, but we actually got in and out within about 45 minutes. Unfortunately, the timing still wasn't that great, because we were standing at an ER reception desk when the clock struck midnight.

The medical staff at the hospital didn't really speak English, but thank goodness James can speak some Japanese and they had a book with Japanese-English medical phrases and questions. They couldn't do too much since they didn't have an oral surgeon on staff, but they did give Jenn some real painkillers that actually helped a little and didn't smell so bad. After leaving the hospital we headed back to Shibuya, but Jenn decided to go home, so James and I got out at Shibuya and she took the taxi all the way back, which with the outrageous Tokyo cab prices cost her about $70 for a 20 minute ride. You would think that the night would be about over for us at this point, but in my memory, this is actually when it really began. We met back up with the other guys and discovered that Tokyo is a truly amazing place to be on New Years. You just walk down the street and shout "HAPPY NEW YEAR" and strangers will shout it back and give you hugs and high fives, it is absolutely fantastic. As we headed back to the club where we had first been, the guys called out "Happy New Year" to a group of Japanese girls walking by and as we all gave each other high fives we realized that they were actually the same group of girls we'd been dancing with at the first club. They invited us to join them, so we went with them for some truly outstanding Ramen noodles and then they took us to an absolutely wonderful dance club. The club was filled with almost all Japanese people, which was quite a change from the primarily gaijin clubs I'd visited so far. The people on the dance floor were so incredibly friendly, and unlike clubs that I've been to in America where the sole aim of most guys out there is sex, here the guys actually seemed happy to just dance. Guys danced with guys, guys danced with girls, girls danced with girls, everyone was just happy to dance and be with one another and it was so much fun and truly unforgettable (Photo 1, me in Shibuya by the famous crosswalk).
The guys and I spent the next day recovering at my apartment and then met back up with Jenn that night. We took it easy on the first night of the new year since most places weren't open anyway, but still we somehow managed to stay up way later than we should have just because none of us ever stop talking. We got up abnormally early on Jan. 2 so that we could go to the Imperial Palace (photo 2, side building at palace) and see the Emperor of Japan make an appearance. The gates of the palace are only opened to the public twice a year, so even though it meant losing some sleep we decided it was worth the effort and we were very right in thinking so. There were thousands of people who came to see the Emperor and the security checks were pretty intense. Most citizens of Japan love the emperor (photo 3), as Jenn's friend put it, "He is a living god," but the communists despise him, so security is definitely necessary. We had a pretty good view when he stepped out of the palace, and when he did the crowd just went crazy, everyone started cheering and waving their Japanese flags and it was very moving, definitely one of my favorite parts of the week.

The last night with my friends was similar to the other party nights: clubs, karaoke, food. We did get invited into another Karaoke room by a group of Japanese people after our time was up, so that was sort of cool. One of the guys decided to try sleeping at a capsule hotel for the night (I have no idea why he would want to) and the rest of us made our way back to my place after the trains started up again. Even though I really enjoyed spending time with my friends, I was kind of glad it was the last time we all had to cram into my apartment. As a person who has grown up with just a sister and mainly female friends, I have a new found respect for those of you who live with husbands, boyfriends, or brothers. After five days of living with my 3 male friends I really just couldn't take it anymore . Don't get me wrong, they are all very nice, but put them all together in a small space and you get very repetitive fart jokes, ridiculously hot living quarters because someone decided to turn the heat up to 31 degrees celcius (87.8* F), and a big mess. I know that in a few days when I get back to my normal schedule I'm going to miss my friends and the excitement of the past week, but for right now it's nice to just relax and have a little time to myself.

Happy new year everyone, I hope it's a great one.