Business

Yesterday I was so tired all day.  Maybe it had to do with the fact that I stayed up late doing homework and such, but either way, I was so tired.  I couldn't wait to take a break and go home.  I had a hard time keeping awake during classes.  Especially since my first class is kind of a boring lecture class.  The second one though, we had a quiz so I needed to be awake for that one.  I hope I did ok and didn't make tired mistakes.  I tend to do that.  But I did my best that I could anyway.

After school, I was super excited to get back home and do my homework and just go to bed.  I was really tired and I had been feeling so rushed all week and now I finally had some down time.  Or at least I thought I did.  

I wore my bunny stockings to school because I thought it would make me smile and feel better everytime I looked at my legs, and I was right about that at least.  Unfortunately, many people wanted them too and kept asking me where I got them.  I told them where they were from and a couple wanted me to take them there.  Being the nice person that I am I said sure, I'll take you.  Eventhough what I really wanted to be doing was taking a nap after school.  So, it ended up being only one person I was taking to the shop.  Then after I took her there and she bought her pair, she asked if I knew where a craft store was.  Since I frequently shop at 0l0l (remember, its pronounced Marui) I told here there was one in that store on the 7th floor.  She asked about a dollar store too, and I also know where that is for the same reason.  She asked me to show her that place too so I took here there and showed her the dollar store first and ended up buying some nail polish, then took her to the 7th floor.  She asked me to help her find a sketch book because she couldn't read what they said in Japanese very well.  So once we found one and she bought some charcols, I showed her where the check out line was and told her I was leaving.  Before I actually left, she showed me a picture of the most recent picture she had drawn, I was amazed!  She is soooo talented!  She had taken a photo of an xray she saw at a doctors office and drew it when she got home.  She rubs the charcohl on her fingures, and uses her fingures to draw rather than the charcol.  It was quite impressive. 何!安いくつがあるの?私は安くて新しい靴を見つけた!

I get back to my room and all I want to do is just take a nap.  But I read my homework and wrote my essay and looked up the location for my paper in history then tried to take a nap.  yeah, that didn't work so well.  I couldn't get to sleep.  So being frustrated I do the only thing that can make me feel better since I have no access to either an ice rink, or a piano, and that is go shopping.  I decided to further explore the shopping center/plaza/mall behind the station a bit more.  It turned out to be a good choice because I found the candy I have been looking for since I first arrived and I found brand new shoes for $10!  I was sooo excited about the shoes.  I was wanting a pair that were cream colored and that's exactly the pair that I found.  I was so excited!  And really cheap no less!  I originally wanted ones with polka dots on them, but they didn't have my size so I just got the ones without the dots.  Sizes here are weird.  I like the numbers better.  It makes more sense to me that way.

After I make my purchases I head back to my room.  I was out less than an hour so I still had time to take a nice hot bath and head to bed.  And just as I was about to get the water started, I here I knock at my door.  It was my "neighboor" Adiah.  She wanted to practice speaking Japanese with me.  So I let her in my room and we talked briefly in Japanese, then I gave her advice on how to practice speaking Japanese to an actual Japanese person and what has helped me when I dont know exactly what to say.  Then we just started talking about other things, and it got deep really fast.  I think she really needed to talk to someone.  I could tell half way through to conversation that she mostly just needed someone to listen to her and chat about things.  Before we knew it, 2 hours had gone by.  There goes my nice refreshing hot bath and getting to bed earlier.  It was 11pm at this point and I wake up at 615am every morning.  I quickly took a shower and went to bed.  

The next day I woke up feeling exactly the same as the night before.  I was exhaused and really tired.  I just wanted to go home and sleep.  But after school today, I was going to the Meiji Shrine.  That's one of the things I have really wanted to do when coming to Japan was to see Meiji Shrine.  I was really excited.  A group of about 80 of us went together from my school.  

The trees were just marvelous and I think its funny how there is a random patch of greenness in the middle of the city.  As it turns out, the trees that are around the shrine are not native to the area.  They were all donated and planted.  The area was originally a flat plain which mainly consisted of bushes.  When the shrine was built, people donated over 100,000 trees to be planted.  

They take us to the temple and we had to purify ourselves by washing our hands and mouth with the water from the natural spring.  Spring water is really tasty by the way.  We get into the temple and we are told that we cannot take photos while insdie the shrine beause they want to keep the practices in there sacred.  I'm not sure they want that or how they can even practice Shintoism because there is no written text.  Why wouldn't they want to record what they do to teach others?  It makes no sense to me nor do I fully undersand why so many Japanese believe in Shinto.  Anyway, they performed an ancient shrine dance while playing horrendous music, (i'm sorry, it sounded like crap.  It was like they gave 3rd graders instruments for the first time and said play).  The dance was nice though.  After the dance they purified the room by shaking bells over everyone.  I almost wanted to tell them to stop because they are making no sense but that would have been really rude.  We then were given a bag with info about the shrine's history and a chalk like cake that is just too sweet for my liking and we got to drink a sip of sake before leaving.  I was looking forward to that actually because I wanted to taste sake that wasn't used for cooking. (>.>)  It was actually pretty good.  For one girl, it was her first time drinking alcohol of any kind and just kept coughing and said she would never drink alcohol again.  I told her sake wasn't exactly the best drink to have for your first time.  I suggested that she try a mixed drink since they taste more like fruit than anything else.  Her 20th birthday is coming up in a couple of days and in Japan, that is the legal age for drinking.  But they don't card here so I'm not sure she really needs to actually wait until she hits 20 to buy her first drink, but anyway.

Afte the shrine I went back home.  I am just really tired so i think I'm just going to head to bed right now.  There is no point in staying up any longer.  Its just too much right now.