Arrangements

I got up this morning with the resolve to keep myself on my toes all day. A third of the way through Yamada-sensei's class I failed this resolve. I'm almost sure I'm fighting some sort of cold, or maybe I haven't been eating enough. I basically have no energy despite getting a full night of sleep. I managed to drag myself through class even though I had forgotten my notes as well. Both Yamada and Dr. Hayashibara were checking to see if I was alright. It also didn't help that I didn't understand anything today in Yamada's class as she was using the dreaded videos and tapes.

At lunch I grabbed some food and basically chowed down as much as I could to get some energy back. After eating a sat down with An and talked with her. She brought in a travel magazine of Niigata for me today. I couldn't understand it but I could at least flip through the pictures. We talked through till the end of lunch until I had to go to culture class.

Today's culture class was Ikebana, or Japanese flower arrangement. Joy had her ikebana sensei come in and show us how to create flower arrangements before giving us our shot at them. I put mine together without too much deep zen thought like one should use in ikebana, but I think it looked pretty good. Not that I know when flowers look good or not. When I finished I took some of my leftover flowers back to the cafeteria where An was studying. It was felt ridiculously childish to give a girl flowers but Japan does that to you. We talked for an hour before leaving for conversation partners. First we stopped by the cafeteria side room to show her my ikebana.

At conversation partners we worked with several new terms. I learned quite a few useful things today, despite the fact that Alex and Seth kept working with complicated terms. Despite this, conversation partners just flew by. Afterward we hung out in the hallway with An and Hitomi for a while before everyone wandered off to various places and events. I sat with An and talked with her until 5:00 when she had to catch the bus to go home. We talked about our careers and what we would be doing in our own countries once we graduated.

I went back to the apartments and relaxed with Nate, Mariko, and a few others until 7:00 when we met Yuu outside to go to a pizza party at Saizeriya. We took a big group consisting of most of the JCLP students along with about 5 Japanese students. Dinner was fun and filling, and of course many pictures were taken. Afterward we all walked over to 7-11 for no real reason other then to maybe scare the shit out of the clerks. I found some little Gundam trading models that cost a leg and a half to have imported in America. I bought a couple just for the hell of it.

More proof that Japan rocks, I got these at 7-11.

We walked back to the apartments where Alex, Mariko, Abe, and Yuu went into my room to do some drinking while I took my laptop and hung out at Seth and Mike's along with Andrew and Dani. We kicked back and joked around until my laptop died and I headed home to finish this out. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow, and I hope for the rest of the trip.