Another busy day. I woke up with a sore throat this morning which never went away. It's not surprising since many people I've been hanging around with have been sick already.
I woke up at 9 and got up at 9:30. Host mom had done all kinds of things by then. Yesterday morning, she was noisily cleaning the stairs and hallway at 6am. She went out around 10am and I went to work straightening my room. It had become rather messy. I tried to vacuum my carpet but the vacuum cleaner wouldn't suck. I didn't find this out until I'd carried it upstairs. It's in 2 pieces and occasionally 3. It's not loud like an American vacuum. Unfortunately, it doesn't work, either.
Since I couldn't vacuum, I tried cleaning the wood part of the floor. She uses those new rag-on-a-stick brooms that are supposed to pick up all the dirt so you don't need a dustpan. I'd never used one before. They don't work too well.
I'd planned to leave at noon, so by the time I finished straightening, I had a lot of time to kill. I spent it reading my new pr0n. At noon I set out for the ramen restaurant I ate at yesterday for more gyoza. I got 10 this time.
From there, I went to the cheap department store where I got the LOOSE SOCKS yesterday. I'd seen a pair of shoes that I kind of liked that would be easier to put on and off than hiking boots, since you have to do that all the time here. I tried them on and they were uncomfortable, so I went to another store and bought more disposicams. All this had taken far less time than I had expected, including walking, so I went and sold the Kinki Kids [a very popular male duo. "Kinki" is a region of Japan, you perv.] karaoke cd I'd mistakenly bought and bought 2 more used cd's. Because cd's are so expensive here and because you can rent them, it's hard to find the used cd you want. I thought about buying a GBA but I didn't know which games to buy and I didn't want to take the trouble to read them. When I left, I still had 30 minutes before my train, but I waited at the station rather than roaming around. There really isn't much around the Kikyo station to do. While I was waiting, 2 different passenger trains came whizzing by. The first one scared me because I was used to slow freight trains and commuter trains. This train was hauling ass and it was LOUD.
I met Sarah at Hakodate station and we went to Hakodate dock and looked at big boats. I have to say, that dock is the most interesting thing I've seen here so far. We roamed around and took pictures of stuff until late afternoon. One of our stops was a large Buddhist temple near our school. We talked to a priest and looked at the shrines and calliagraphy. It was really beautiful and peaceful. I didn't think you could go in if you weren't a follower, much less take pictures, but he was happy to show us around. He was bald and wore a black kimono and geta. [traditional Japanese sandals, the kind with two raised blocks on bottom]
By the time I got home, I was dead tired. I'd done a great deal of walking. Sarah was great, too. She and I share similar personalities. I had a good day. Before I left her, we agreed to meet tomorrow morning near the naughty underwear shop.
Dinner wasn't very notable except for the fried balls of tofu and vegetables. She put some in front of me and said "these aren't meat" (they think I only eat meat despite the fact that I eat many vegetables). I said "what are they" and she sort of tauntingly said "I wonder...". She wouldn't tell me until after I'd eaten one. They were fluffy and hush-puppie-like on the inside except they didn't taste as good. I said they were good anyway to make her happy. She acted like she'd won a great victory when she revealed their contents. She said something like "you don't like tofu but I made you eat it anyway". I tried to say "I'll eat something if it tastes good" (as tofu usually tastes like crap), but I don't think I got my point across.
During dinner, host mom told me that geta hurt feet. I'd already tried them on and figured that out, but I thought it might be because I had bigger than Japanese feet, even though I actually have very small feet. But, it turns out, that they just hurt. Now how old are these shoes? Hundreds, thousands of years? And they haven't bothered to make them not hurt in all that time?
After dinner, she filled up my cooler with ice and water. She'd carried it down to the living room to fill it. The drain plug on the back wouldn't stop leaking, so hosts mom and dad turned the cooler onto its side and water started running out all over the floor. There was a heavy cotton blankety rug thing over a tatami-like mat over carpet. The cotton blanket held most of the water, but it still got through to the carpet.
After drying the floor, I watched some lame variety shows with Hiroshi. In one, there was a group of people doing dangersous stunts and getting hurt for laughs. They were wearing penguin suits and trying to swing from a rope and land on a plastic island in the middle of a pool of icy water. Each round, the mountain got higher. They were paying absolutely no attention to the safety of the people involved, as most of them took some pretty good hits and falls. After they got out of the icy water, they'd jump into an ofuro [bath] full of hot water and then do it all again. Afterwards, there was a "comedian" (very unfunny) who would attack people with his ass. I couldn't tell if he was actually farting on them or just throwing his ass at people, but the people never ran away. LAME. I gather from watching shows like this that it doesn't take much to make Japanese people laugh. And speaking of inane variety shows, members of popular acts like Kinki Kids, SMAP, and TOKIO have their own variety shows too. How many can the market support? Also, in these dumbass shows, the punchline is ALWAYS subtitled. Why? In case they don't get it? They have to hammer it home? Because it's not actually funny in the first place?