Man, something smells good! And my stomach is empty. It always smells better than it tastes. Last night, she asked me what I wanted for dinner tonight so I said chahan. It looks like that is what we'll have.
They were really late getting home today. I got home around 5:30 and they didn't start showing up till 6:30 and someone else came with them. They gave this other person some money, and she left. I was going to show them my shodo creations from class today, but things looked too hectic. This is a big weekend for festivals and I guess they've got their hands full. They're helping with the potato festival I have to go to on Sunday. Port festival starts tomorrow, too. They hold it every year in celebration of Commodore Perry's arrival. I think it is a tragic thing and can't imagine celebrating it.
Bren was in a really bad mood today. We are doing a project together and neither one of us was in any mood to bother with it. For lunch, we found a convenience store with some kind of restaurant in it where all the food was really cheap. It wasn't good, but wasn't bad either for the price. You could also buy instant crap and get hot water from them and eat it there. It was really weird. We had to hurry to shodo class because our first choice of restaurant was packed with tourists and we didn't even want a meal. We'd both eaten something from bread lady earlier.
Shodo class was pretty cool. We did lots of silly stuff and then practiced writing a single character a lot. Then we were given stiff paper with a gold edge that you'd hang on a wall or frame and we wrote our character. Everyone's character(s) turned out really well. Shodo Master said we were very good. I love mine and can't wait to do more. I brought home lots of rice paper and my practice characters.
Got money today! After shodo class, I went back to HIF to check the mail basket and my money order was there. I didn't know cashing it was going to be such a big deal. You can't do it at these big-assed banks. You have to go to a big post office [in Japan, most personal banking functions are actually handled by the Post Office. Checking accounts, savings accounts, ATMs, and apparently cashing money orders]. Apparently, little branch ones don't do anything worthwhile. It didn't matter anyway, because I didn't have my passport with me and she said you have to show it to get the cash.