Catching Up Again

Friday, April 20 - The Milky Way

I had previously received an email from Miruku inquiring where I was at the moment. At that particular time, I had already returned to my dorm, where I would continue work on that horrific project of mine. I described to Miruku in my response that I would be tremendously busy until Friday. Since she had obviously tried to set up a meeting with me, I decided not to leave her hanging by inviting her to lunch with me on Friday. When said day arrived, we met as planned.

She came with some friends who, after meeting me, all went off to do something else. Miruku and I surveyed the area for potential foodage, and we decided to go to the upstairs cafeteria in order to perform the eating ritual. I had never been to the upstairs cafeteria before. They had some different selections, but nothing substantial. I opted to get the omuraisu, which is the Japanese way to say omelette with rice in it. After we got our food, Miruku and I talked about various things. After eating, we continued to talk about various things in the CIE. Eventually, class interfered with our conversation.

Today, we had another negotiation. We were acting as representatives of a college including the trustees, headmaster, and faculty. I was part of the faculty with three others. The negotiation went about as we expected. The headmaster fought hard for his sports improvements, the faculty fought hard for the scholastic improvements, and the trustees fought hard for the profit margins. As we were winding the negotiation up, the teacher walked in and distributed a paper that said a student was attacked on a dark path and we were advised to invest in lighting. This was a rather sneaky move to make the negotiation more interesting. We had only half the necessary money to complete the lights as our deal stood. We decided to do half the lights and add a lighting project to the engineering curriculum as well as a self-defense class.

After the negotiation, I returned to the lounge to meet Miruku and Yuki. We stayed and talked until the lounge closed at 8:15. From there, Miruku and Yuki decided to join me for dinner to prevent me from having to eat alone. We went to Roro where we continued our random chatting. After dinner, we each went our own ways since it was late.

Saturday, April 21 - The Funkytown Osaka Tour: fieldtrip tag

As aptly named by our teacher, we went on a fieldtrip for my Culture class. On the way to the station, I saw many of my classmates riding the bus too. We arrived a little early, so I talked with my classmate Sayuri for awhile until it was time to meet with the class.

Our first stop led us to the Liberty Osaka Museum, where we got to view various articles on human rights in Japan. Most unfortunely, coupled with my already uninterest in museums, all of the displays were in Japanese, hence making the experience quite boring. I had to backtrack several times in order to prevent finishing the tour an hour before those who could read Japanese. After I finished the tour, I went to eat lunch at the museum's cafeteria with Eilene and Sayuri. We had to rush since we were worried about being late for our departure time, but we ended having to wait for the teacher to finish the tour anyway.

Next, we ventured to the homeless area of Osaka. There were many people with many reactions to our 25 person group. Some people ignored us, some people greeted us, some people greeted us per person, some people commented on us, and some people tried to talk with us. After walking around for awhile, we went to an even more obscure area: the red light district. There were many open buildings, each featuring a young girl being guarded by a not so young girl. Many of the young girls laughed as we passed, perhaps out of embarrassment, or pehaps because there were 20-some foreigners walking through the red light district of Osaka.

After leaving the slums of Osaka, we began making our way to Korea Town. On the way there, we passed through several shopping areas that were very narrow, but full of people. We later passed through a fish market. Next, we stopped by a shrine, where most people sat down and rested since we had been walking for several hours straight. We then went into Korea Town, where, other than a few different names on products, everything pretty much looked like Japan.

We ended our tour at a Korean restaurant, where I discovered that all of our food had been pre-ordered by the teacher. This of course meant that I would not like much of what came my way since a lot of it was either spicy or seafood. The last dish looked like someone went to the beach and threw in everything they found without even removing the shells! All I can say is that it was a $20 meal that I walked away from still feeling hungry. So at last I found food that I don't like in Japan; except the food wasn't Japanese...

Sunday, April 22 - You Are Candy!

Today was the welcome 'party' for the freshmen. It seemed to be more of a recruiting effort from the school clubs than a welcoming ceremony. The main attraction was in front of the cafeteria, where many musical clubs came to perform. I watched a few performances until I got hungry and went for lunch. While at lunch, I was joined by Hisaka and her friend Yumi. By this time, the reality that my project was actually over had finally caught up with me, so I was in a rather hyper-active mood. Because of this, Hisaka, at one point, said that I was okashii (strange), but in a good way. Okashi also means candy in Japanese, so I proclaimed, "I'm not candy!" This seemed to be popular with my company, as from then on, Hisaka would proclaim, "You are candy!"

After lunch, we exited the cafeteria to find a heavy metal band performing. There was a big Japanese guy screaming and the guitarists were going wild. I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Hisaka and Yumi seemed to get a kick out of me thinking it was funny. After we got tired of watching the band, we wandered off toward the CIE where we were drafted by the dance team to join them in a mini lesson. I attempted to follow the instructions and eventually was able to do the moves acceptably by the end of the lesson. From there, we went to the gymnasium to watch various clubs introduce themselves. That did not prove to be very entertaining, so we went back to watching the bands perform. Some of them were actually pretty good. After we finished watching the bands, we all went home.

I met Nabil, Todd, and Einar and we all went to dinner. After dinner, Todd and Einar went home and I went to karaoke with Nabil. We tried singing some different songs since our party was small this time. After that, we headed home to prepare for the oncoming school day.