Okay, So There Was Stuff To Do

Alright alright so I found some things to do. It turns out that everything was fine; in my room, there were two sweet gay boys of Mexican persuasion (Rrricardo and Gustaaavo) and a nice Australian grad student named Ben who was was studying robotic engineering (what what, dad! we talked for like half an hour about robots and japan and traveling etc etc). He looked like a nerdy Prince William. My friends arrived in the night too, so I wasn´t alone, either. See, Mom, Everything Always Works Out.

So it turns out the Russian boys were...get this...SLOVENIAN. Last night we were all sitting in the lobby, my friends and these boys, and it turns out they are on Slovenia´s National Karate Team. The first thing they asked me was Where is Slovenia and I was like, ¨Eastern Europe?¨ and they were disgusted and said it used to be part of Yugoslavia. Well How Was I Supposed to Know. I think I should get credit for knowing the general area. Then I said , ¨So what brings you to Tokyo?¨ and they said ¨Äirplanes.¨ har har.

Then one of them goes, ¨Do you know Ahmed the Dead Terrorist?¨ And Max, I am like oh man this is that Youtube ventriloquist act and sure enough IT IS. So we broke the ice with the Slovenians by watching Achmed the Dead Terrorist on Youtube. It´s amazing how much Youtube can bring people together all over the world...NO JOKE.

So after we had a good laugh, my friends and I were going to go to a jazz club, and we invited them all to come. Well we couldn´t get in because it was so packed so we went to a nice little bar/grille joint and everyone had three beers and i had wine. (Of all the various alcoholic beverages in the world, I find wine the least offensive.) So we ended up making friends with the Slovenians after all. Yay.


Today, I was hungry and wanted an afternoon snack so I stopped by this hopping joint with a horse race on the television. Apparently this was a Horse Race Yakitori Restaurant which basically means everyone eats yakitori ravenously and then waves their little shishkabob sticks angrily at the TV and say things like ¨What the hell number 5! What the hell!¨ I got plopped at a table with a Japanese man who looked to be somewhere around 60. He had the scratchy growl of a man who has ruined his voice half from smoking and the rest from yelling at TVs. He heard me talk to the waitress (¨I don´t need anything else, thanks.¨) and he said ¨Your Japanese is good. What brings you to Tokyo?¨

So I told him that I was touring Asia with other students and studying along the way. He said ¨Where have you been in Japan?¨ and I said ¨Kyoto. I saw lots of temples,¨ and he let out a whistle and said ¨That place has temples coming out the wazoo.¨ (*in the Japanese equivalent.) I said ¨Yep!¨ and we chatted a little more. When my food arrived, he said ¨Don´t you drink sake?¨ and I said ¨Sake? It´s barely four o´clock!¨ and he laughed. While we were speaking he had been pulling at a loose thread on his sweater, and finally the waitress saw him and came over and swatted his hand away (¨Stop pulling at it!¨) and clipped it with some handy scissors. You could tell he was a regular.

Then I told him about how my family was probably moving to Tokyo and he was excited. I said you´d be working on robotics, Dad, and he said ¨Tokyo is the place to be for that.¨ After we chatted a bit more and I ate a bowl of yakisoba, I pulled out money to pay for my meal and he was like ¨No, no, no. Let me.¨ and i said ¨no, no, it´s fine,¨ and was fishing around for a coin in my purse and he said ¨No, no, really!¨ and he yelled out to the waitress, ¨Hey! I´m buying this girl lunch!¨ and the waitress said ¨Really? Sure thing!¨ and he pushed the money back at me. He said, ¨Come back tomorrow and we´ll chat again!¨ And I said sure and thanked him. I won´t be there tomorrow, but it seemed better to just say yes.

(So the thread story reminded me of a night at my host family´s house in Toyama. My room was next to the living room, so one night after I went to bed I heard the mom and dad bickering about who got to take a shower first. They couldn´t decide so they played rock paper scissors and the mom won, and so after 20 minutes or so I could hear the dad snoring really loudly on the couch and I wondered, aww I wonder if she will let him sleep because he had such a long, hard day. So when the water turns off, I hear the pit-pat of the mom´s feet padding softly towards the dad and this is what happens:

Pit, pat, pit, pat. pause.
SLAP.
¨BATH TIME, DADDY!¨

I laughed so hard I had to stick my face in the pillow. It was great. The End.)