Just Like You're Checking If You're Alone

Hello once more from the city of ancient temples next to a thousand and one convenience stores. It's been a pretty relaxed week. In fact, I didn't receive a single homework assignment until Friday afternoon, but I did find out I have a character test on my birthday (the gift that keeps on giving). Outside of lazy school days, I have had similarly lazy school evenings. I haven't been cooking as much as I used to. I eat a lot of toast and jam. And raw fruits and vegetables. It's difficult to say why, I guess these things are just what is simplest and cheapest here in Japan. But if there has ever been a time in my life in which I have been getting my five fruits and veg a day, this would be it.

Wednesday night we had a dance party at I-House II, the much nicer (and more expensive) version of I-House I. It was quite humorous, actually, and in the end much of the party was I-House I people making a lot of noise in the rec room of I-House II while the actual residents huddled in their rooms out of possible fear or resentment. The pictures are all quite silly, so I have decided instead to include an older picture from the first karaoke outing I mentioned because it is possibly the only picture in existence of the entirety of the SKP study abroad crew.

I am at the very very rear throwing up a peace sign in my newsboy and pink button down (and I wish you the best of luck in locating me!) But yes, quite impressively, I can tell you the name of every single person in this photo. And equally impressively we all came to this karaoke building together, on bicycles. A gaijin parade, if you will.

This weekend has been quite lazy. Yesterday I attempted to locate the ward office with a friend, which is a government office where we were hoping to acquire the equivalent of our Japanese "green card". In reality we spent about two solid hours biking through the backstreets of Kyoto, through tiny alleyways, parking lots, and one lumber yard, and we never did find that ward office. Overall it was an enjoyable bike ride, if not a fruitless one. It certainly brought me face to face with the realization that there are many cities in the world where it is clear that, at least at some point in time, they were designed on a grid. Urban planners in Kyoto obviously had something quite different in mind. What exactly, I cannot be sure.

Hmm. Not to begin some sort of trend in which I end every post with a reflection on the differences between here and back home, but today I have been pondering a bit. Perhaps we don't know each other well enough yet, or maybe it's just not normal, but no one ever hugs here. I haven't had a hug since the day of my flight. And maybe it's just a southern thing or perhaps an Ole Miss thing or maybe it's just a people-in-my-circle thing, but back in the states it seems like when I run into a friend, when I say goodbye at the end of the night, when I'm headed home for the weekend, I always get a hug. At the end of a party or gathering, in fact, even if I didn't know people that well they'd usually go in for a hug. And it isn't even that I'm a touchy feely person, I am usually quite the opposite and feel sort of awkward hugging strangers. But in reality I really wouldn't mind one. At least every now and again.