New Music and New People

Tuesday, May 1
Today's main event was going to karaoke with my friends Masami and Nana. I had met them previously on my 'nine people in one day' meeting experience. We went to the place that I called 'the expensive one' because depending on the time and people configuration, the price can get way out of hand. Apparently, our configuration was well made and the price was actually lower than the other place's when split up between us.

This place had a few different songs than the other, so I took advantage of the variety and tried singing some more Kana songs. I wasn't very good at them since I had never tried to sing them before. Masami tried singing English songs. For the most part, I could not understand what she was saying since she was still deep in the process of learning English. Nana exercised her shyness by singing so that I could barely hear her.

After karaoke, Masami and Nana wanted to go home since it was dangerous for girls at night due to drunk Japanese men wandering around. Before they left, Masami made me borrow a CD of My Chemical Romance. This was ironic since a Japanese person was trying to get me into an American band. I took them to the station and headed home.

Wenesday, May 2
Today in Japanese class, they had a group of student teachers come in and present a lesson on Kansai dialect. My perceived title of this course was, "We're Finally Going to Teach You What the People Around You Have Been Saying Now That You're Leaving." On top of that, it was made like a super cram session so that it was quite difficult to actually grasp most of the concepts. Although the student teachers tried to make it fun, having the fun was actually more work than I wanted to do, so I was eagerly awaiting the end of the class.

After class, I went for another sid-down in the lounge where I was again constantly met by various people one after the other. I probably met another 7-9 people in one day again. Always busy I am... Even as I was trying to go home, I was followed by a new person who wanted to meet me. I wonder if I can pack my popularity with me when I go home.

While I was leaving the CIE, I noticed that two girls were looking at me. They didn't say anything as I was passing, so I continued walking. After I walked past the neighboring building, I heard someone running behind me. It turned out to be one of the girls who was looking at me. When she reached me, the first thing that came out of her mouth was "can we be friends?". This, on top of the whole running after me thing was very shocking to me, as Japanese girls do not typically act in such a way - in fact, I don't think any cultural group of girls do. After I recovered from the surprise, we introduced ourselves; I as Michael, she as Nao. Since I was hungry, I described my exiting campus as going to a restaurant. Since Nao had gone through such trouble to meet me, she decided to tag along.

As we were leaving campus, her friend Hiroko (the other girl who was looking at me) passed us on her bike. She expressed her opinion of our going to dinner as being 'fast' and my rebuttal was that I was hungry. Nao and I talked on our way to the restaurant as well as while we were in the restaurant. While we talked, I disclosed that my birthday was soon when the topic of age came up. I also expressed an interest to see Kobe again after she made known that she lived there. From our conversation, we made plans for her to show me around Kobe two weekends later. After dinner, she boarded the bus and headed home.

At the dorm, Nabil gathered the troops and we marched off to karaoke again. Such occurences seem to be the only times that Todd ever leaves the dorm other than school or buying food. I wonder why he came to Japan since he just sits in front of his computer all day. I'm over here making myself go places and he just rots at home. In fact, after we were at karaoke for awhile, he apparently got bored of singing and just sat there until we left. I don't get it, and I probably won't.