Man it's been a long time since I've posted last. Every time I thought about updating the task just became more daunting because it feels like I've been doing amazing things every day. Now that I'm being punished with a cold for having too many adventures and not enough rest time, I guess it's time to catch up.
The other night my friends and I went out after visiting the sister campus of our school. It was pretty late and we wanted to find somewhere to eat. We looked around, skimmed through a few menus, and laughed and joked around the whole time (remind me to take a picture of the "blead" sign).
Then, out of nowhere, a man opens the door of a restaurant and, in one fluid motion, both asks if we're looking for somewhere to eat and hands out some menus. We were all too startled to think of an immediate reply, but after looking at the prices we definitely wanted to find some way out. I asked in Japanese if we could take the menus with us and he said yes; my friend said we would think about it. Then we scurried away. He definitely looked like he was waiting for an opportunity to spring out and do his thing, because that "konbanwa" with a smile was definitely rehearsed. Poor guy. He probably thought he could snag a big group of foreigners and ring up a hefty check. I'm sorry, Konbanwa Man: we're all poor exchange students.
Let's rewind a bit, though. As I said, we had just come back from the sister campus of KGU, which is somewhere in the mountains. Japan is pretty much made up of mountain and beach so that's not a very good description, but we took a 45-minute long bus through some winding roads so I couldn't keep a sense of direction if I tried. The commute was incredibly scenic, though, and when we arrived we were welcomed by a rainbow.
We had a lot of fun with the Sanda campus people, not as if Uegahara is full of meanies but we were a bit overwhelmed by our first "Coffee Hour" experience in which the school attempted to shove all of the exchange students, plus any interested Japanese students and some high schoolers who needed to find 外国人 (foreigners) to answer their homework questions, into a tiny lounge with barely enough food to feed us all and speakers that couldn't handle the sheer number of people.
So Sanda~ (sparkles and sunshine and rainbows) left an impression on me. I want to go again if possible. The volleyball circles meet there but uh, a weekly trip would be a little much, thanks.
