bicycle+umbrella!=dry

This is what I want to eat when I get back home... I missed having a long weekend for memorial day and was looking at pictures from previous years'. Grilled steak and onions and bread and pasta. Also, Ann's camera.

I have no idea how Japanese people can ride their bikes holding an umbrella in a slightly more than light rain and get to their destinations relatively dry. I wasn't soaked, but it's a good thing I was wearing those north face hiking pants that dry super fast. And I walked down the hill with the bike because it just seemed too dangerous to go down a 45 degree slant using only one hand. The front-brake hand only too. But it had stopped raining when it was time to go home from class. I should have walked, but it didn't look like it was raining... Scott mailed me so I knew, but I don't think I could have walked there without getting all sticky from the humidity.

Grammar is the most boring day - compounded by the fact that last night I was at Francisco's room until about 11:30 trying to plan Javier's birthday (I can totally understand not wanting to be in charge of your own party, esp. since he's always the one in charge) and changing the plan repeatedly. First we were going to go to one Brazilian all you can eat meat place in Shibuya. But then I found out they closed the end of last month. So then we were going to go to a different Brazilian place, but then there were objections that to go out to eat that late in Tokyo meant that it would be too late getting back and not everyone wanted to go dancing afterwards and it was 4000 yen. Last night after much debate between me, Fran and Felipe (who only got roped into organizing because he speaks Portugese so he was going to make the reservation) we decided to go to the Outback Steakhouse (not much more vegetarian friendly than all you can eat meat, but at least then they won't have to pay so much) in Makuhari and then do something ambigiously afterwards,and since Makuhari is only 30 minutes by bike, people can go home whenever they want to. I still think we should make a reservation since there will be somewhere between 20 and 30 people... so pretty much I wanted to fall asleep the whole time the teacher was talking about causitive-passive verbs- ie you were made to do something. I guess. All I know is it has the rareru at the end and I cannot say that at a normal speed.

And we're giving Javier a rotissiere chicken instead of a cake. At midnight. I guess it is a hispanic thing. I just want to go to bed at 8 like I used to though :/

Scott and I went for curry for lunch... so good but so unhealthy. I shouldn't have looked at the calorie information on the back of the menu. But that breaded fried pork chop was good. And I probably won't get curry again since there are only 50 days until I will be back!

brr

So I didn't end up going running Sunday morning because I ended up going to a salsa bar and then to a different dance bar with a bunch of people. It was in Chiba so we went by bicycle. I met a girl from Canada at the second bar who is friends with Jesse, who also came with us. At the salsa bar this Australian guy tried to tell me he was from LA and then that he was from New York, not Australia...

Me: Where are you from?
Him: LA?
Me: You don't sound like you are from LA, you sound like you are from Australia.
Him: New York?
Me: (with eyebrows raised) ...
Him: Where are you from?
Me: Chicago.
Him: Oh. Yeah, I'm from Australia.

And then I made an escape. Why would he say he was from America when he had such an obvious accent? I must have not sounded so blatantly midwestern as usual... At the second bar there was more people dancing, but the highlight of the night was two people making out in a corner that people were taking photos of. They seriously needed to get a room. Also, possibly go to AA if they were that drunk to not notice everyone was watching them. We got gyros on the way home (which for some reason are called donar on the sign and everyone but me and the egyptian girl calls kebabs. A kebab is meat on a small skewer... not a giant roast on a rotating spit.) But it was really good. Not the most breakfasty thing though.

It was a lot cooler and less humid today than it has been - I think it was only around 70 as the high and quite windy. Tomorrow's supposed to be cloudy and about the same... I almost wish I hadn't put all my long sleeved stuff in my suitcase already, just to get it out of the way.

Yes, we have no bananas

Actually, that's not true at all. I was going to maruetsu to look for a new tank top and the vegetable store had giant bunches of bananas for 300 yen. I took the biggest one - 16 bananas. I've eaten four today - two plain, one sliced with cream cheese and one mushed up with cinnamon and then chilled - it's like pudding or something. Very tasty.

I didn't have any luck finding a shirt at Maruetsu or Saty - they all had really high necklines and while I wasn't looking to show too much cleavage, I also was not looking for something that literally went to my shoulder bones. It's summer. Also, if they fit on the top part they were gigantically loose around my middle, and if they were about right at the bottom, the top part didn't fit right... not too snug, but it gapped funny. Which usually means go down a size...

I was going to go to Lalaport,the mall in Funabashi but it was really sunny and I didn't feel like putting on sunblock. So I didn't.

I went for a long run (I went about halfway to Makuhari, so like 2 miles one way) and I remembered why it was much nicer to run at 5 am rather than 6 pm - there are no bugs flying around to accidently breathe in the morning. I guess tomorrow I'll go in the morning.

I hate the rain

It makes everything all wet. And it's been raining heavily since 7:30 in the morning. It's 8:30 at night now.

And it makes my flipflops dangerously slippery going up or down hills...

Scott got a pizza

And then decided it was too big for him to eat alone so he gave me some of it:) It was very yummy but now I am full... I just want to curl up and sleep. I haven't been this full since Christmas.

Tomorrow I attempt to make barbeque for Francisco. I have come up with an accompaniment - cole slaw. We'll see how it turns out.

sleepy

Had too much candy today. Also, I ate rice with spaghetti sauce and cheese. For dinner, I had an onion with spaghetti sauce and cheese.

I talked to a girl from Bulgaria too. We were both walking to school and she got to the stoplight a bit after me and rather than pretend we didn't notice the fact that there was another white person standing there we talked to each other.

That is all.

I still cannot speak Spanish

But after this weekend I am sometimes understanding obvious statements and my knowledge of swearing in Spanish is greatly improved. It'll be nice to go to Japanese class where I theoretically can understand it all. There is something ironic about this...

So on Friday I went to ask Javier a question and then we were talking about class when this kid from Brazil, Felipe, calls Javier that he cut his hand while cutting garlic and that it wouldn't stop bleeding. So we go over there and Angel (from Mexico) is also there and so we go to the hospital because Felipe is convinced he needed stitches. I made him put his hand up in the air and by the time we got to the hospital (all of five minutes away) andthe nurse takes the paper towel off his fingers it had sort of stopped. But they put disinfectant on his hand so that was probably worth going to the doctor for. Somewhere along the line Javier waslike, do you want to go for sushi for Olivia's birthday. Olivia is the girlfriend of this guy, Jon, from Spain. She teaches at the German school in Yokohama. I had met her a couple times before but I hadn't really talked to her.

So Jon came to the dorm to get a couple people to take in his car to go pick her up from their house and go to the restaurant while everyone else went by bicycle. Me, this girl from Mexico, Hassibi, and this girl from Egypt, Nora, went with him. At the sushi restaurant (which had the sushi going around on a conveyor belt) they put us in two huge booths (there were 8 people in ours and this Korean girl and I were the only ones at the table who did not speak Spanish. All the other non-spanish speakers were at the other table). I wasn't very hungry since it was like 10 pm by this point and I had eaten pasta with cheese. But I had some tuna sushi, one that had tempura shrimp in a roll, a hamburger sushi (definately was not a beef hamburger, it tasted like spam almost) and one that was egg with a little rice stuck inside. After eating we all went to a Kurt Cobain (from Nirvana) themed bar that is right near the station. So that was fun.

Saturday there was a plan to go to the largest club in Tokyo (which everyone was calling a disco in English, but it was not a disco-disco). Amazingly the plan was followed in a timely fashion (the plan on Friday was to eat at the sushi place at about 7:30 or 8) and Jesse (Canada), Francisco (Cuba), Nora and I left at 10:45 to take the train there, while Javier, Jon, Olivia, Jose (Costa Rica) and one of Olivia's friends came in Jon's car later. We got there a bit before them. Francisco was very funny on the train, he insisted that Nora and I sit between him and Jesse for protection. I am not sure how much protection we needed in a mostly empty train. But it was nice of him. When we were waiting outside for them to get there we noticed that the air smelled really nice and tree-y... it was in a really industrial area and there were several wood warehouses and it smelled like cedar. Much nicer than the rest of Japan that smells like smog and dust.

The club was quite large, there was one room that was hip-hop rapstuff, but later it changed to more 80's music, a really big no smoking room with techno (but the strobe light was a bit too strobey to stay there for more than 15 minutes at a time) and an outside deck with a very small pool (no one was in it) that had reggae. A bunch of us had been outside for a while and then went back in and were inside for I don't know how long, but when Javier and I went back outside it was getting light out.

Again with the Latino machismo, they insisted that Nora and I go back in the car with Jon and Olivia and Olivia's friend and they would wait for the train to start again (but it was like 5:30 so there was only 15 minutes or so till it started). So we got back at 6. It was scary being in the car for the first 5 minutes on Friday but on the way back this morning it was making me miss America, just being in a car and listening to radio in English (the army base in Yokohama broadcasts cnn and music).

I took a nap. Before I had realized all these other plans were happening I had asked Arlen and Diana if I could go with them to church because it was ascension thursday. So I went in Spanish to church with them. I liked it better than the American catholic church, I think, but I didn't really understand anything that was spoken, but looking at the book and seeing the words helped. I never realized how different Spanish looks than sounds. It was very odd, the music part of the book just had the words and no notes. They explained this is because they always use the same songs and no one can read music. I guess they used to be afraid to talk to me because they didn't want to make mistakes in English, but now they seem to like asking me questions. They came to the bar on Friday and I talked to them a lot there too.

I bought some bacon and green beans and had that for dinner. It was yummy.

not dead yet

going for sushi for the birthday of a girl I do not really actually know. Long story how I ended up going, I'll write it later.

some poor admininstrator is going to have a very bad day

So when I went to the school doctor on Tuesday they told me to go to a regular doctor and then take the reciept to the office of the international student center and I'd get the money back. Yoshino(the teacher who went with me to the doctor) told me the same thing. So yesterday afternoon I go to try to get them to give me the money and pretty much they tell me they can't give me the money because they have to put it in my bank account. And no,they can't put it in someone else's bank account for me. I was kind of mad about this then, but now I am really pissed. It would be dumb for me to make a Japanese account just to get 25 dollars back, especially since I'd probably have to pay to both open and close it. And they decided they couldn't put the money in my regular american bank account because there would be fees for them to transfer the money overseas. Today I am going to go to the health center and yell at someone in very slow plain English until they apologize profusely. If I had known I would have ended up not getting the money back, I would have just taken some aspirin and been sick. I mean, I know it's not very much money and it would have costed the same amount at home, but it's the point of the matter. And anyways, at home I wouldn't have gone to the doctor because I would have had to make an appointment and I always get better if I make an appointment for being sick.

So this morning I was thinking about it, and I looked in the book they gave us at the beginning of the year and nothing says you need an account to get the money you spend on health care back, and now I am really pissed. I mean, I'm sure it's not whoever I will end up bitching at's fault, but they better apologize profusely and at least try to figure out how I can get the money without a bank account....

Hell, I'll even yell at them in grammatically incorrect Japanese.

grr...

yes, I know.

You and my mother, especially, David :)

didn't die while asleep

So I guess I am not allergic to the antibiotics. My temperature was only 97.8 under my arm this morning, and I feel a lot better than yesterday even. They didn't take my blood, David, only some stuff from my throat... My head hurt too much to remember to ask about the results, although I did start asking about the medicines, because it seemed like an awful lot. I have the prescription sheet of what the medicines are, but they are all in Japanese. It's only 5 days' worth of medicine, though I have to take it 3 times a day. I will certainly take it all. Well, except the stuff to make my nose not run, since it wasn't running in the first place.

The last time I had a really high fever I think was senior year of high school.. I remember watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off on tv and then arena football came on... but the remote wasn't working so I couldn't change the station. :/

sick :(

So this morning I went running and it was really humid, so I figured that was why I got tired faster (combined with not having eaten breakfast yet). But in Japanese my head started to hurt a little and when I got home I took my temperature and it was about 100. So combined with the sore throat that had sort of gone away after running but was coming back and the fact that I did not feel like eating at all (and usually I run home after class to eat ASAP because I'm starving by 10:45) I decided I had better go to the doctor. I went back to school and went to the doctor's office but apparently there is no doctor on Tuesday, only nurses, and they refused to look at my throat and told me to go to a regular doctor and I could get the money back. They didn't do something so helpful as to, you know, find me a doctor to go to. So I was just going to go home and take some aspirin (which I hadn't because it would have made the fever go away) but I decided to go tell my history teacher that I was feeling kind of sick... By this time I had sort of convinced myself I must have strep because of how much my throat hurt. I found my teacher and told her about the doctor being closed and I was getting really frustrated and my head was really starting to hurt a lot so she found a doctor in Inage (it was about two blocks from here) and one of the other teachers went with me. The doctor's office had a form to fill out what was wrong, and one of the options was "an increased desire for sweet food". I didn't check that box. They gave me a thermometer to take my temperature while doing the form and it was 37.6. I wasn't particularly concerned because it doesn't sound very hot to me, but the teacher looked really surprised at it. I figured out onmy phone afterward that it was 103.4. So I guess there was a reason my head hurt so much. The doctor looked at my throat and took a swab thing to test for strep (which she guessed it was). But it ended up not being strep... so I guess that is good. I got some other antibiotics but I am not sure what sickness I have. But I feel a lot better already, and it's only been 6 hours. I also got some other pills, but I'm not taking the decongestants (as I don't have a runny nose) or some mysterious powder that is supposed to be a fever/pain reducer. I managed to convince the pharmacist that I did not need 3 days worth of ibuprofen, especially since I know for a fact that it has no effect on me. I am taking the fourth thing I got, after I looked up what it does in english (I looked up all of them to see what they really were and they all seemed like legitimate drugs, but a little excessive for a sore throat) - they had said that it was to make my stomach not hurt from the antibiotics, but really it is to replace bacteria in your intestines that might die from the antibiotics. Although it said it was lactic acid so maybe I could just eat some yogurt and have the same effect. I feel a lot better but I think that is from the aspirin I took.

Also, my appetite has recovered, so I must be feeling better. Needless to say, I didn't go to history class and I didn't go to information science either. They didn't tell me not to go to school, so I guess we will see how I feel in the morning (and if I write the paragraph for Japanese class).

run run run

So yesterday I went to a party and salsaed with, among other people, a kid from Iran (he was not very good, especially compared to the hispanic guys, but he was very enthusiastic). After salsaing normal music came on and I don't think I've danced that much since high school dances. It was a lot of fun. I ended up going because Javier (from Argentina) came and asked me to go with them to a korean drum thing in the office building at lunchtime. Besides, the party was in my building, so I wouldn't have been able to sleep until it was over anyways. Which was 2 am. But oddly I was not tired at all.

I consumed more than usual yesterday, which was okay because I think 5 hours of pretty much nonstop dancing compensated for it, but I was actually motivated to go run today. I ran all the way to school without stopping! Well, only for the traffic lights. Which kept changing as soon as I got there so I didn't really get a break. But I feel accomplished! I'm really slow, but I will get faster pretty quickly because it's really much more comfortable for me to run at a much faster speed than I can keep up for as long as I ran.

baseball game...

So there were some signs to go to a baseball game for 500 yen and Silke and I decided to go. We walked to school to find out that we would take the train to Inage station and then take a bus straight to the stadium. We should have just ridden the bikes! Oh well. I don't really have the patience to watch baseball, but everyone kept asking me for explainations because I was the only person (besides the Japanese kid who was our leader and he didn't speak enough English to explain the rules) who knew how to play baseball. Mostly it seems people know soccer. Anyways, so the sign had said to meet at 5 or 6 and I looked up the schedule and the game was for 6:15 so we went for 5. About an hour after we got there a second group of kids showed up, and Jesse (from Canada) was with them, but by that time they were getting bored and stopped asking about the rules (just when someone else could have explained them, and probably better). I brought some rice chex but I was really hungry and also got some french fries - but servings are so small here that it was really probably not all that bad. After the game (Chiba won 9-5) we took the bus back to Inage and then the other kids were going to go eat - but it was 11 at night and I was both not hungry after the fries and falling asleep because it was 3 hours later than I usually go to bed. But it was pretty fun. I took pictures and put all of them here.

blah

Nothing interesting has happened. Or even remotely noteworthy.

I went running yesterday.

My history teacher has moved the final up to July 17.

Today in information science we had a talk about medical training technology and the kid who presented it took us to his office and we got to try out this thing that lets doctors practice sticking an IV in someone's blood vessel. It was cool because you could poke and feel where the bones were by how much resistance the wand was making. There was also a liver that could be twisted and lifted so you could see the gall bladder.

Tomorrow I might do laundry.

I blinked

And all of a sudden it is definately summer. Today it was bordering on downright hot -I wore jeans onmy first voyage out to the grocery store and was very happy to get back home and put on shorts. And I've had the door open all day. It's supposed to be cooler tomorrow because it's going to rain a lot, but if today was an accurate taste of what's to come (considering it is only the first week of May) I can't foresee wearing pants many more days at all.

beach

I went to the beachtoday after putting on much sun lotion. It was pretty crowded, actually, but I laid on my towel and read for 45 minutes and then I stood in the water for a little bit. It wasn't that exciting to go to the beach by myself. Tomorrow we shall see how good a job I did with the sunblock and if I have any bright red spots I missed on my back. My arms look a little darker already but it was spf 45 so I don't know how that is possible. The picture is really me last summer at North Avenue with Ann, but I was wearing the same suit and sunglasses. The sand here is a lot darker than in Chicago and the beach is narrower than at home too (but that might have been the tide being most of the way in.

The humidity rightnow is 88%. No clothes will feel dry for the rest of the summer I predict.

I ate too many cookies

And now I feel fat :(

Spiderman

Scott and I went to see Spiderman today - 3 days before it starts in America. We went to a theater in Chiba, so it was pretty close. Since it was raining, we took the train. For some reason he thought there wouldbe huge crowds so we got there to buy our tickets at 1:30 for the 3pm show. They had assigned seats (but I went first and didn't know what the girl was asking so we just ended up with what she picked). We were about 2/3 of the way back, so further than I would have picked but it was fine. The subtitles were a bit distracting for the first couple minutes but I stopped even noticing them after a while (it was with the original English soundtrack). I liked it a lot, but I didn't read any reviews or anything, so I had no idea what was supposed to happen.

I ate half the lamb yakiniku for dinner. It was tasty, but a little game-y for my tastes. I've never been comfortable eating "wild" animals, like buffalo(although I have gotten over my qualms about that after eating a really good spaghetti sauce with ground bison instead of ground beef in Jasper in Canada) or elk or antelope, even though what they have in restaurants is farmed. The lamb kind of reminded me of venison. It was good, but having tried it I think I will stick to buying beef or pork and not more lamb. I'll have the second half tomorrow for lunch.

I'm kind of tired, I need to try to sleep longer in the morning. I've got laundry hanging inside so hopefully that will block some of the sunshine tomorrow. I'm looking forward to 80 and sunny!