Not the pictures you need; the pictures you deserve.

There wasn't much going on today outside of class, but I felt like taking some more pictures than I would have normally.  I guess they can serve as a way for everyone to see what a good time I have here every day, even when all I do is school.

To begin, I ended up missing some of class this morning because I desperately needed coffee.  While getting said coffee, I ran into Sakiko and we talked for much longer than we should have.  She wasn't in class, but I was, so I probably should have left.  But I'm in Japan, SO INSTEAD WE TOOK A SKIPPING CLASS PICTURE.



I only missed about ten minutes of the three hours, though.

In the second half of Japanese class, the teacher kept telling me she was going to check my speech I have to read, but always left the room when she had time to do it.  When she finally sat down with me, she had me read it an kept interrupting me with the next word every time I paused for more than a second, even if I did so to fix some grammar on the document itself.  So I essentially made no progress on that.

Then it was lunch time!  Nana had noodles and we all decided it would be best if I took an unflattering picture of her eating.

My spot for lunch, however, was with my normal lunch group.  Sakiko was there again, and I decided to take some goofy pictures.  This one was almost normal, but I said something stupid so she'd react and ruin the picture on purpose.  We all laughed about it.

Yukiko is on-and-off about wanting to be in pictures.  Half the time she'll throw up a peace sign before you even know she saw the camera, because she's just that Japanese.  Knowing whenever a camera is being pointed at you is a common super power over here.

You may have heard that we like making Yukiko say "Peter Rabbit" in her best American accent.  It's hilarious. Because of that, with Ayaka's help Yukiko briefly became Peter Rabbit.

And Misaki also tried, but it's different when you use your own arms.

And then Ayaka jsut wiggled her fingers around Yukiko's head like it was a crystal ball or something.

Ryouko doesn't like pictures.

And I was trying to take a too-close shot of Ayaka's face to make everyone laugh, but she started spinning this bottle in way, which resulted in this.

Today was also the day Wesley and I had signed up to go see the school's tea ceremony club do their thing. It was happening on the second campus, so we had to wait for everyone to show up before getting into the van that would take us there.  While waiting, we noticed that this quote is in the corner near the window.  No one knew why, because no one ever goes into that corner and the only reason anyone ever goes on that floor is to work in the office or enter/leave the building.  

Here's the van.

Second campus is much nicer-looking, but it's also a bit empty.  At around the same time on the first campus, there would be a good amount of students left over, but on the second campus everyone had more or less gone home already.  Also, the architecture and often the furniture were very 1970's, so the whole place was a little eerie. 

Below is the room where we actually had the tea ceremony.  If you don't know what that is, it's essentially a long, drawn-out way to make tea that, to put it lazily, is practiced as a form of non-religious meditation.  The tea is made from a powder rather than a bag, and tea ceremonies have been going on for a very, very long time.  You have to do stuff like "present the best-looking side of the bowl to your guest", an it all takes a very long time.  I've actually seen it all before, but not in Japan, so I had a very pleasant time.

The last few pictures were just more of the second campus, in case you couldn't tell.  When the van took us back to school, the driver ended up letting us out right next to Sophie and her Cambodian friend.  His English is severely unpracticed and it's a bit hard to talk to him because of it (he wouldn't use Japanese).  Though I left my bike at school, I walked Sophie part of the way home because I am nice.  While we were waiting for the train to pass, she wanted a picture taken of how the red stop light made her hands look like this:

She's funny.