I know this may be getting tendious for some people, me babbling on about life in Japan and whatnot, but I’m going to do it anyways! So here’s three things that happened today, which span the set of human emotions.

Today at breakfast my host mom told me she was sad that I had no friends. It’s true I have been spending a lot of time to myself lately and not going out, but that’s really because everyone else drinks everynight. Plus I don’t have anyones phone numbers and they don’t have mine, because I got my phone late. People in the group like me, and we hang out at campus. I tried to explain this to my host mom but it was lost in translation. She started saying how I came all the way to japan and I should enjoy myself and make as many japanese friends as I can, and that I should talk to the organizor of Japan studies. The truth is, I really like my downtime as it gives me a lot of time to work out and reflect on my Japanese experience. I would like to hang out more, but I really don’t have the money or the desire to get wasted every night. I think she said this because she feels like I am sad, and that they have to plan stuff to do with me because I don’t have other people to do it with. I tried to tell here that I really don’t mind exploring the city on my own, sometimes I enjoy it more because I get to do things at my own pace. Anyways, it was a really depressing way to start my day.

 Then, in class it got a whole lot better. Well sort of. There is this really really annoying girl named claire. Oh, but her nickname is hikaru! Which is literally sunshine in japanese. I guess claire meaning is sunshine. But anyways all the japanese people are weirded out by it. But she crosses the border between participating and interrupting. She always asks questions that cause like 10 minute explanations because she keeps on asking more clarifying questions. And she has no volume control. But anyways, after break we go into small groups with waseda students. I was this phyisics major from carleton who is a pretty funny guy, who absolutely hates claire. We were all so frustrated by the direction she causes the class to go into that we decided that we were going to at least have fun. We seriously degraded into a middle school class with a substitute. It was that bad. We were giggling and shouting, not paying attention at all. Then like with 20 minutes left in class, my waseda partner slid all his stuff  to the side, slammed his elbow against the table and said, “Okay, let’s go.” We had the most epic arm wrestle that ever existed it lasted like 2 minutes because I kept almost winning then laughing, then he would take advantage and almost win but I would come back. The lead switched places at least 4 times. The whole class was watching. We all got homework because of it, but omgz, good times were had.

Finally. I tried to cash travelers checques but the signitures looked too different so they freaked out and it took like an hour to cash them. I had to sign them a third time and give them my passport and they compared the 4 signitures and decided that they were similar enough to give me my money. ARGH! Japanese people, actually caring about signitures. They do the same for credit cards. I would explain more but I only have 3 more minutes of meganet left!