DAY 30 and 31

Last class today.
Last full day of the program.

Today's class was pretty much a wrap up of everything ever.
Lots of things spilled over into this day - and overflowed, even.
The first thing on the agenda was to write thank you posters (Japanese style) to many groups that made this program possible.
It took longer than necessary, since some people wanted to put elaborate drawings and stuff.
We also had to present the last of our assignments.
Today was supposed to also be the final.
I didn't expect it to be take-home.
Which you think would be cool, but when you think about it, it just provides me with more work in my extra days.
Shiggity.

So between 1:30 to 6:30 I messed around in the room and then I went up to Valerie's room to do some work that I needed to catch up on and also the take-home final.
We ended up not doing a lot of work, I was watching the Olympics and she was reading the posts that I made.
Assuming she saved the address, she might be reading this right now.
Hi, Valerie!

Anyways, all of us were to meet at TSM at 6:50, so I got ready early.
We all eventually assembled.

And went up.

I don't know if you remember but there were a couple of live house rooms in the upper part of TSM.
Our farewell party was held in one of them.

It was a very bittersweet moment.
Some of the Japanese students were there, but not all.
Kengo couldn't make it after all, cuz he wasn't there.
Kiyoto, Ikumi, Mana, Shiori, Nobu (first time mentioned on this page), and Ikki (who arrived way later) were all there.

We all grabbed our drinks and toasted to a successful program.
KANPAI.

There was all sorts of food.  Pizza (weird ones, too...I think I had a shiitake one), salami, bread, salad, and other things were all spread out.

We were all eating when suddenly, a show was put on.
If you watch some anime or are familiar with Japanese things, you might have an idea of what a "hero show" is.
If not, this is gonna seem pretty weird to you.

The announcer came out and enthusiastically presented the situation to us and told us our cues.
When all of the sudden...
BAD GUYS

SHIET.
WHAT DO WE DO?
Don't worry.
The heroes will save us.
And they did.

Giant fight broke out.

And the heroes saved us all!

Following that performance was a performance from an idol group originating from TSM called Moe 7.  Yeah, I'm not making this up.

They gave us all sorts of cool things after (and I got my Moe 7 folder signed by all of them later).

And I took pictures with both groups.

And Yoshimizu-sensei, who happened to show up.

Following those things, was a quick word from each of us students up on the stage and the presentations of the cards we made.  And our "graduation" diplomas from the program.

Also, the vice principal of TSM made a quick presentation.

And then I got pictures of everyone.

Wobbuffet...

I'm gonna very quickly summarize the next hour.

Deciding to go to karaoke and actually going.

So we decided to do all night, but you could leave any time you wanted.  It just cost less.

It's so cute how people think they can sing Queen songs.
I heard the worst butchering of Bohemian Rhapsody in my entire life.

In other news, Ikki is a fucking beast ass singer.
Kotarou mentioned this to me on a previous day trip, but I forgot until now.

This went on until 2ish, and I decided to head out because I was beat and I was getting annoyed slightly at the karaoke (not the Japanese students, they actually sing well).


Eric headed out with me.

We pretty much packed for the rest of the night/early morning.

I went to sleep at 4:30.



...And THAT'S why this post is late.
And kind of lackluster.


I set an alarm for 8:30.
I heard it go off and I turned it off.
I put my head down for a second and next thing I know it's 9:30.
Check out time is at 10.

FUUUUUCK.

So I hurry the hell up and pack everything I can within 30 minutes while simultaneously trying to be as careful as possible and not forget anything.

Valerie, Cheryl, and Lauren already left by the time I woke up.
I knew this because Lali came to my door to dump a bunch of food on me, since I was staying here for another 3 days.  While she was there she told me they were gone.
Which made me sad, because honestly, they were the coolest girls in the group.

After packing, we went downstairs and ate our last breakfast at the hotel (for most of us).
Some people weren't leaving right away, like me, and we left our luggage with the hotel while the rest of them left.
I almost caught Nathan choking up I think.
I can't blame him.
This has been such a life changer.
I don't care how cliche that sounds, but honestly it's changed my life to the point where I'm seriously considering living here for a good amount of my life.

Eric and I said our goodbyes.
And so did Demetri and I.
It was sad, but I have a feeling I'll see them soon again.
Demetri wanted to organize a Boiling Crab get-together when we all assemble back in SoCal.

Kanno-san and Doug (not sure if I mentioned him before, but he's one of the staff) escorted them out to the bus station in Kasai.
90 degrees bow to Kanno-san.
He's been such a help to us and I feel like he's been underappreciated.  But I really do cherish him.

Me, Shunya, Maaike, Kevin, Jamar, and Oochi-san (another staff that's a BIG help that I don't know if I mentioned yet) were in the hotel lobby.  All of us were leaving at a later day than today, except for Shunya, whose flight was at midnight.
Jamar leaves in 3 weeks.
Kevin leaves on the 12th.
Maaike is here until September.
And me...3rd of August.
Lali leaves tomorrow.

After some hanging around, they decided to go out to buy tickets, and probably go out to eat.
I didn't go.
I wasn't really prepared to go out anyways.  Remember, I rushed out of my room and packed everything really shitty.
So they went out while I stayed in the hotel lobby to work on my final.
I couldn't check into my new room yet since I could only do that after 3 PM.
It was 11.

Pretty much I spent my time going on FB, making sure I could stay in contact with my new Japanese friends and doing my final.

Also, I'm not sure if I mentioned this before...
Remember Ikumi and Mami from the festival and karaoke around 2-3 days ago?
I've been emailing them and trying to meet up with them again, since I'm here for extra days.
So in the end, I have a date out with them on August 2nd!

Anyways, I finished my final and I went to go get something to eat at the convenience store as usual.
I just kind of hung around the lobby until 3.

I gathered up all my belongings and checked into my new room until August 3rd.
I got a new view.

I could see TCA from my room, which reminded me of Kengo and Miyu and Mana and Ikumi and everyone, and I got sad.

For the next few hours I did my manga paper.
It was no sweat!
Just time consuming.

I wanted to go to Kasai for two reasons.
1) Supposedly there's a cool arcade there.
2) I needed to find the bus stop I would be waiting at to go to the airport.

So I left.
On the way I got a katsudon at that one place where I forgot my camera.
Well I didn't forget it this time.

Oh by the way I forgot to mention.
REWIND.
Back when I was waiting around in the hotel lobby, Doug came back.
He was looking for Kevin, but Kevin and them left already.
Doug said he had a present for me.
From Eric.
It was his Pasmo.
With 2000 yen on it.
I asked Eric about it later and he said there was no time to cash it in for his money back so he just sent it to me.

So I used Eric's Pasmo for my travel.

I got to Kasai.
I found one of the things.
The bus stop was right there.

I wandered all around Kasai, but could not find the arcade.
Well...hell.
I was already out so I still wanted to play games.
So I took the trains to Akihabara.
AGAIN.

Street Fighter machines were dead as usual.
When will I ever learn.
I played 1 person, but other than that nobody else was really playing.

So I played 200 yen worth of jubeat and got out and went back to Nishi-Kasai.

I saw Lali in the lobby on my way back up to my room.
But I wasn't sure.
It was.
She came up to my room later asking for directions on how to get back.
I helped her out, since she's leaving tomorrow.
This was probably the last time I'll see her, since she's leaving early and she doesn't go to UCI.

Everyone's gone.

Well...
anyways...
The game plan for the next 3 days.
Tomorrow: Go to SkyTree.  Ikumi told me to go check it out, so I'm gonna take pictures and see if I can get to the top.  Maybe stop by Nakano for souvenirs.
Day after tomorrow: you already know.
Day after day after tomorrow: LEAVE. (T-T) FUUUUCK.


I luv this country too much.

DAY 29

Today I was supposed to go with Kanno-san and a group of peoples to go see Tokyo University.
It was going to be a tour by an alumni!

Guess who slept in?

The tour was at 9 AM, and I just couldn't wake up for that.

So instead, I woke up at 11 or 12.
Demetri woke up around the same time too.
I'm always ahead of him though.
You know the drill.

Go to konbini.
Get food.
Get back.

Pretty much this is what happened from 12-5:
Watch Olympics.
Talk shit.


 Eric came into our room somewhere in that time frame, I can't remember exactly when.

At 5, we were to meet Kengo!
One last time.
He wanted to give us something from him and Miyu (Miyu was gone, she's in New Zealand now).

Me, Eric, Kevin, Nathan, Demetri, Josh, Shunya, Maaike, and Alison came down to meet him.
After we were sure that nobody else was coming, Kengo revealed a bag.
What he took out of the bag was something super awesome.

This was something that he and Miyu both put effort into.
I don't think I can accurately describe with sentences, or paragraphs for that matter, how this made me feel.
We couldn't thank Kengo enough for this priceless gift.

The problem was...who was going to keep it?
It wasn't like we all lived in the same place back at home.
After some debate, however, we decided we would give it to Professor Hall.
It seemed pretty fair.

Kengo said he was free at the time so we decided to do something.
We couldn't really think of anything so we decided to ask Kengo what HE wanted to do.
He didn't know either.
So someone suggested we go to a park.
With no better ideas, we went.

Demetri and I talked with Kengo a lot while we walked to the park.
It took a while to get there.
It seemed like kind of a lame thing to do with our (potentially) last day with Kengo, but he seemed ok with it.
We got to a small park near a river.
Remember the river from DAY 0 at the high school?
Same river but just further to the side.

We spent some time hanging around the park doing stupid shit like going down slides and climbing trees.
It was pretty fun and I got some sick photos out of it.

It was kind of weird just to hang around an obscure area like that so we walked along the river into the more familiar parts that I walked in on DAY 0.

...and then the not-so-familiar parts.

We were headed back in the direction of the hotel but we wanted to do more things with Kengo.  Everyone agreed that we were all sort of hungry so we decided to go back to that one yakitori place (the first group dinner we had here).

On the way back I passed by this insane parking job.

By the time we went to yakitori, our group was reduced to me, Kengo, Demetri, Nathan, Maaike, and Eric.

We ordered a decent amount of food.
Overall, another fun time.
I paid for Kengo's portion just cuz he's that kickass and I wanted to say thanks like that.


Like I said before, this was potentially our last meeting with Kengo.
He wasn't sure if he was coming to the farewell dinner tomorrow and said it was a maybe.
Busy man.

So Kengo and I have this inside joke with each other involving a high five, but it's kind of complicated to explain here (if you ask me when I get back I'll tell you then).
I posed with him with a high five.

Fuck yeah.

Awesome dude.

Even if this is the last time I see him this trip, I will do my very best to make sure it isn't the last time I see him ever.
I WILL come back to Japan.


Back at the hotel was back to reality.
We had two essays due soon so I half worked and half messed around and watched Olympics and stuff.


Tomorrow is the last official day of class and the farewell dinner so that the program comes to a close.
It's been an awesome time here, but I'm not quite done with Japan yet.

DAY 28

Today took an unexpected turn.

I woke up today to the sound of my phone.
Half asleep, I tried to grab it, thinking to myself that I didn't set my alarm for today, which I didn't.
It was my mom calling.
She could tell I just woke up and told me that she would call back later.

After like 10 minutes, I woke up anyways, because I couldn't really go back to sleep after that.

Got something at the convenience store.
Again.
I came back to Demetri scrambling around in the room.
He was trying to go to an aikido class that he was looking at.
It was a free class and it was somewhere around 30 min away.
But he overslept.
He didn't tell me anything about it the night before, so I had no idea to wake him up for it.
He then bolted out the door.

I skyped with my mom later, to make up for the call that woke me up.
I was telling her about the things in Japan.
Then Demetri walked in again.
He wasn't gonna make his class so he came back.

So I wrapped my call with my mom and then got a phone call from house keeping.
Demetri and I left the room while the hotel took care of our room.
Meanwhile we were in the lobby working on our essay.
In about 2 hours I was able to do around 3 pages (our essay has to be 5 pages).
Productive day.

By the time we got back to our room, I got a message from Nathan asking if we wanted to go to ramen.  Demetri and I were down, so we went with Eric, Nathan, and Josh.

We talked about the festival at the Sumida River going on today.  The plan was to leave right after we ate, and that way we would be able to catch the fireworks going on at the festival.

I thought a lot of people would be going.
Eric came into our room dressed up in his yukata.
I choked with laughter.
And then I asked him who was going.
He told me only me, him, Maaike, and Josh.
What.

I had to convince Demetri to go, which was kind of easy.
Then it was time to convince all the girls.
Eric went up there previously and had no luck convincing any of them to go.
So I went upstairs with Demetri and we used our 100% super effective persuasion to get Valerie, Cheryl, and Lauren to go. Shunya was also going too, we just didn't know it.
So we all went to the festival, which was held in Asakusa.

We were running pretty close on time, so we tried to book it as fast as possible.
As we switched from the Tozai to the Ginza line, we noticed an abundance of people in yukatas.
And we got on the Ginza train.
With each stop, more and more people piled in.
I was literally pressed up on the glass.
It was almost as bad as the day we went to Nikko.

We finally got to Asakusa, and then EVERYONE got off.
Professor Hall wasn't kidding: it was as crowded as Times Square on New Years.

...although in this picture, it doesn't look as crowded.

I noticed that the SkyTree was pretty close by and had pretty lights spinning at the top.

We were walking around for a while looking for a place to camp out to watch the fireworks.

Suddenly, BOOM!

The fireworks were starting and we were still wandering around trying to find a good spot.

Finally we decided to camp by some area.
But the view was partially blocked by trees.
I suppose it was a little better than some views that other people got, so we just had to take what we could get.

Here are my favorite photos from the fireworks show (which lasted an hour btw).
I'll only include a few since it's less fun to see photos of fireworks than to actually see fireworks.

The finale was explosive.

After we were certain the show was over, we hurried like hell to the train so we wouldn't get caught in the crowd again, but it happened anyways.

We got caught in a line to the subway eventually.
The streets were so crowded they only let a certain number of people in the station at certain time intervals, as not to overcrowd the station.
We were just kind of stuck there.
Then one of us realized that we didn't have each others' real phone numbers (not that I care since we all have FB anyways, except Demetri).
So we went around exchanging phones and shiet, putting our contact info into phones.

Demetri had Shunya's phone at one point.
When Shunya gave him the phone she was behind him.
Without him noticing, and not on purpose, she moved to the front of our group.
When Demetri was done with the phone he turned around to give the phone to Shunya again.
Instead, he offered it to some Japanese girls behind him, who giggled at him.
Embarassed, Demetri finally gave the phone back to Shunya.
But that action kind of gave us an excuse to talk to these two girls.
We told them that we were from California and as many details as we could tell them about our trip here.
They were very fascinated and we kept a solid conversation going with them.
One of them was named Ikumi (like Ikumi from Jikei) and the other one was named Mami.

We also found out that they lived in Minami-sunamachi, which is just one stop from Nishi-Kasai.
Which meant that they were heading in pretty much the same direction as us.
During the train ride we talked about a lot of things with them.
Mami really liked anime, so I talked about anime with her somewhat.
When I told her I liked things like Lucky Star and Nichijou, she laughed and called me a "maniaku".
I have no idea what that means here, but it's the third time I've been called that here.
I'm just gonna assume it's a compliment.

Also, on the train ride back, someone brought up karaoke.
I think it might have been Ikumi, but I'm not sure.
Most of us were down so the plan was to go to Nishi-kasai to do karaoke.

When we got to Nishi-Kasai, we all took a group picture.
Shunya, Josh, and Valerie left us (we lost Cheryl and Lauren in the crowd of people at the festival, I forgot to mention).
The rest of us went to 7-11 since some people wanted to get some money from the ATMs.
Then we went to a nearby karaoke place.

Ikumi is in the red yukata btw.

We had a good mix of songs.
The first one we did was Evangelion.
FFS, nobody knew the lyrics in Japanese so we ended up forcing the mics on Ikumi and Mami.

We had some English songs and some Japanese ones.
It was really funny because when Ikumi's and Mami's J-pop songs came on, they had to stand up and move the tables out of the way and do the dance with the music videos.

This is Mami btw.


Some noteworthy events in the karaoke room:
- I already mentioned the dancing with singing that Ikumi and Mami did, which just totally just owned us.
- I had to solo What's Up People (Death Note OP 2) without knowing the actual Japanese lyrics and just ended up screaming random shit into the mic.
- Lots of Disney songs, which the two recognized.
- Ikumi had really good taste in music btw.
- They actually had Caramelldansen in the karaoke.  And we sang it.  Or at least, tried to.
- Nathan and I tried to sing the Lucky Star OP.  It was fast as fuck and super hard.  Mami tried to help us out as best as she could.
- By the time I sang We Are (One Piece OP 1), I could kind of keep up with the pace of the Japanese letters and sort of sing along, which made me happy.
- Mami sang an enka which was fucking cool.



We ended up staying in there for like 2 and a half hours.
And was super fun.
I'm very grateful to them for hanging out with us.

After we paid and left the building we exchanged mail addresses and such for future contact.
Mami had a FB, but not Ikumi.  She said she would make one though.

They had to take a taxi home, since the trains were closed at the time.

When we said our goodbyes and headed back to the hotel, I had to process in my head what the hell just happened.

We met two strangers on accident and through series of events, we ended up going to karaoke with them for two hours.
That's fucking awesome.

Olympics started I guess.
I watched a tiny bit of it when I got back.
Of course I had to cheer for Japan since I was IN Japan.