Updates from my Journal
As I’m sure everyone’s starting to realize, it’s again been a long time since I’ve made an addition to this blog. At the moment I’m too tired to continue studying grammar, but not tired enough to sleep, so I figured I would upload one of my journal entries. This is from a little while ago, so don’t be picky about dates or time expressions!
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Today is November 1st, the day I got hungry 2 hours too early.
I’d like to say that today is November 1st, the day that I woke up hungry 2 hours too early, but the simple fact of the matter is that I haven’t slept since 10pm last night.
Halloween kicked off at least 5 hours early this year, the SKP program’s Halloween party having started at 7pm on Thursday, October 30th. What followed was a night of costumes, unusually friendly and amused Japanese strangers (oddly unnerving after almost 2 months of getting used to how they really are,) drinking at Kamogawa, Karaoke until 3am, and clubbing until 5am, when it was all topped off by a tired band of peculiarly dressed Japanese and foreign-born students taking turns alternately eating, talking, and sleeping on the counter at a Matsuya. (It occurred to me while writing that that last sentence was a shameless run-on, and could probably do for some trimming, except that the night leading up to Halloween morning was a blurry stream that never seemed to end. Since most everyone who might read this blog is overseas, that sentence and a few random pictures may be about as close as I can get you to experiencing my night out. And so I leave it.)
I met Lelouche
Saturday the 31st was passed (somewhat disappointingly) in bed, groggily trying to recharge and pry my precious hours of rest from the sandman’s grainy hands after I eluded his usual rounds. Alas, much like the postal service workers, while neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor (perhaps especially) gloom of night stays the sandman from the swift completion of his appointed rounds, he refuses to hand anything over after hours. Because of said restless attempt, I assumed that I would finally be able to sleep at around the usual time with the only change from the usual being that morning would come especially early. Since I had a mind to study, this was not adverse, but rather I was looking forward to it. Well, I can dream, right?
Wrong on this occasion. Because the sandman seems to be one to hold a grudge. 10pm passed Skyping with my parents, 12pm talking with a friend who had just had a breakup. I ate ramen in the kitchen at around 1am with the others that also felt it should be about noontime, and made my way to 3am chatting with Jessie and watching go games online. Between 3am and 5am I rigged a trap and played some music sadly hoping to tempt the sandman once more, but he was listening to sweeter sounds in the rooms next door.
With 5am finally came my will, and a keener understanding of the homework that lay before me, so I bought a hot canned coffee (yes, people drink these in Japan) from the vending machine downstairs and studied grammar while the sun came up outside. And this is when I got hungry. And so, haggard and hungry, at 8 am I shook myself out of my room and into the cold to go get breakfast and do some shopping. I headed off as the sunlight matured to a full morning bloom, and spilled slant-wise through the bamboo grooves lining the rode to the store. Lost in thought, and enjoying the scene, I winded down the hill towards Marutamachi rode and through the absently blinking traffic light, all on the left side of rode. When I pulled up to the supermarket and found it closed, the first seeds of malcontent sprouted in my mind.
I proceeded, store to store in the area, at an increasingly hurried pace. And this is when I came to learn that in Japan, if it closes, it probably doesn’t open again until at least 10am. The discovery that the store’s do not share the same fervor as Japan’s tag name set me to hungry grumbling about Japan actually being the land of the rising sun and lazy shop keepers. And such being the case, I passed from convenience store to convenience store (discovering along the way that the Japanese McDonalds, or as the Japanese lovingly have named it Maku, also shares in the silly breakfast-foods-only-between-certain-hours tradition) and finally settled on a variety of small onigiri and a carton of milk from a 7-eleven.
It was my first time drinking plain milk in the past 4 years, the last time being my first fateful trip to Japan. I’m not a big fan, but I felt I owed my body some measure of protein/ fat, etc. without sugar attached.
By the time I finished extracting the milk from the blue and white carton, it was a little before 9am. Caught without music, my journal, or anything else to provide amusement, I returned home, having achieved surprisingly little with my trip out into the Japanese post-dawn world. What followed was more sleep and lots of homework– ultimately little of note. So I’ll clip this entry here.
see you next time. . .
’bout time.