Not Dead Yet!

Pictures!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017965&id=1230390045&l=fe935f12ae

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Sorry I take forever to update and when I do, it's like 10 pages long. I've only had one day in which I did absolutely nothing but I never thought to do anything mildly productive. I needed a break from the usual, "let's go out for the entire day and come back home completely exhausted".

In the last few days I've managed to get a cellphone or keitai.
http://mb.softbank.jp/en/products/sharp/831sh.html It's really pretty and therefore, it is a win. The people from Softbank put it into English for me. Some exchange students keep their phones in Japanese as practice. I understand the idea of it and all....but it's weird enough using a different phone, I can't deal with it when I don't understand the language it's in. Or rather, not enough of the language to understand.

I've watched sumo wrestling as well. I was invited to come along for an all-day sumo tournament event by the Vander Haaks - the parents of a good friend of mine. They used to teach at Washington Christian Academy (where I spent middle school and high school) until their family moved to Japan six years ago. When I was 16, they provided a place for me to stay for my first trip to Japan (I spent Christmas with them!). It was a short 10 day trip and I wanted to come back to Japan the moment I got on the plane to leave.

And here I am now, in 5 years time! :D So yes, sumo. As you will see in the pictures at the top of this post, we got there super early to get tickets. We got some coffee after we purchased our tickets and after we ate, we went back inside to watch the preliminary rounds with the younger guys. They were still in training so they weren't massive yet, but they were quite entertaining to watch. After a while, we went back up to our seats (which were at the top of the arena), and I sort of passed out.

When I came back to consciousness, we went for a walk around the area we were in called Ryougoku. There were gardens, memorials, and museums and after some exploring, we had lunch. We came back to sumo again and after a while, I was getting a little bored honestly. I didn't have any favorites, as I never watched it before or taken interest really - I just knew I wanted to have the experience. But it got really exciting near the end when all the higher-ranking sumo came out and people started getting super enthusiastic. The cheering. I loved it - people screaming their favorite sumo's name, hearing kids yell "ganbare!" (good luck) at the top of their little lungs. A lot more fanfare was displayed when these sumo, called yokozuna, came out to wrestle.

There are all sorts of ritualistic things that go on in sumo, such as salt throwing to purify the ring (the ring is sacred by the way....so sacred, that women aren't allowed to set foot on it. To this day. Thanks guys.), stamping the ground to rid it of bad spirits, and drinking some water to purify their bodies as well. These are Shinto (an originally Japanese religion based on ancestor and nature worship, polytheism and animism - thanks Wikipedia!) based practices. At least they let non-Japanese men do sumo as well. There are a few guys from Estonia, Bulgaria, and Georgia (as in the country) and apparently, a lot of Mongolians as well. I cheered for Mr. Bulgaria (aka Katsunori Kotooshu...or his real name, Kaloyan Stafanov Mahlyanov) because he was the only one I knew of vaguely. He won his match! YES! Oh, by the way, his stable master (because sumo train and live in stables....) gave him his Japanese name.

So yeah. Less significant things I've done would have to be going to the 100 yen store (equivalent to a dollar store) and scoring big time on lots of cheap, but good quality stuff. Japan knows how to do it right. I'm going to take some time tomorrow (which is Wednesday for me) to get prepared for class starting on Thursday! But you know what is weird to me? We don't register for classes until the 29th - so, the time between the 24th and the 29th is like a look-and-see period....which is kind of nice but so different from UMD's system, I was a little baffled.

It's Silver Week here in Japan. The last little break before school starts. There are good and bad things about this Silver Week business. Sure, I get a few days to play and hang out before I have to buckle down and be a good student again. However, Silver Week is a holiday. And during holidays, the staff of the dorm disappear - including the cooking ladies and the maintenance ladies. No food and the facilities are not cleaned. The hair monsters that clog the drain and reside inside the showers are a huge turn-off, as you can imagine. Not to mention it reminds me of the Japanese version of The Grudge 2 (I know that the hair isn't going to start coming towards me, magically turn into a terrifying dead girl, make an awful sound and whisk me away to who-knows-where-but-I'm-definitely-dead-land but...my imagination is quite overactive. It's a blessing and a curse.) The food part isn't so hard to deal with as there are conbini or convenience stores. And they are so convenient. I've also discovered that there is a really nice Chinese restaurant next to the Eda train station, which is 15 minutes away from the dorm. Well, I always knew it was there, but I ate there for the first time with Nicole the other night and it was delicious!

All hope is not lost.