Matsuri

Title: Festival

Sunday, 12th

Sunday Morning I woke up to this outside my window.


Not 10 minutes go by and Abby knocks on my door, I get dressed and we go investigate. Kanae, my roommate, tells us that its not for any special reason so we wouldn't be offending anyone if we went. We practically ran down there. First thing we saw was the stage area where there was a Taiko drum performance!

Yabai! (really REALLY awesome!) And as we walked around vendors gave us free stuff, a bag with tissues, a reusable grocery bag that zips up to this tiny thing, and these plastic fans (it was really hot)And then something I didn't expect. There was a stand with the Boy Scouts! I went over and told them that I was a Boy Scout too (as best I could) They looked so shocked! I sat down and tied knots with them, Lol.


and right next to them was the Girl Scouts, they ushered us over as soon as soon as I got up from tying knots. We sat down with a bunch children and made octopus out of thread, bottle caps and googly eyes.



They handed me some flyers, and I'm pretty sure they were inviting us to a scouting even later in the month. We walked around more.



And, just for Bill.

They wouldn't let me take a picture of the car, but would take a picture of me on the bike. :) It's a polaroid.
After that we were pretty tired so we went back to my room to sit in the air conditioning for a while, which turned into hanging out with my roommate Kanae. She does an audio broad cast on the internet to practice her english, people listen to her channel and comment. We did a few with her, like as guest sort of. I was actually really fun we did it for about 2 hours before we all realized how hungry we were. She then took us to a cheap, but great, restraunt a few blocks down. I got this noodle dish that resembled spaghetti only it had shrimp and crab in it, real crab, not imitation. And I only paid about 6$.
It was 9 o'clock and it was totally bed time.

Monday, 13th

Today was some basic orientation, going through the rule book and paying the housing deposit. Then we went to get our Alien Residency Cards, I guess foreign policy is a lot more strict here than it is in the US. Actually got a chance to talk with more of the International students. Gotten to be good friends with Song, Abby's roommate, and her friend from Korea Han. Neither of them speak a lot of english, but we've been getting along fine. Han came up to me and pooked me in the stomach, and said what sounded like choke. !!! I repeated it and made a gesture of choking myself. She practically screamed no in Japanese and then tried again, so I said 'poke' with a lot of emphasis on the p. Not that one either. We tired again, she was saying Joke. She and Song had to sit down they were laughing so hard, and that made us laugh really hard and make everyone in the office look at us. It was an important lesson in rhyming.
And one of the girls,I actually can't recall her name at this moment, we have the basic conversation of 'where are you from' and stuff. She's from Clinton! 20 minutes away practically my entire life and I meet her for the first time half way cross the world!
After that we went back to campus to pick up a bunch of Nagoya students that helped us at the shopping mall. Telling us what brands were the best or cheapest. I got some dishes, trash can...blah, blah basic necessities. But on the road we saw...the most adorable garbage truck I think I'll ever see.


And here's a flower for Mom.