Twice.

It's amazing how integrated politeness is in this culture, and mannerisms in this language. If you say any random phrase in the language, you probably included a "please" or "I apologize" or something like that in with it. One of the first things they told us when we came here was "forget what your parents said about not talking to strangers". There are no "strangers" here, you can talk to anyone on the street as if you knew them personally... Japan is the closest thing to a Utopia I've ever seen.

June 30th

Mitsuda house

The train was packed more than usual today. You don't know the meaning of "awkward" until you find yourself smashed up against an old lady on a running train.

Our classroom moved back to the skyscraper today (it's been in the other office next door since monday). Bryce never showed up, I hope he's alright. In class, we finally started studying something I don't already know much about, the "-te form" of verbs.

For lunch I had what turned out to be a packaged white bread kiwi, melon, and whipped cream sandwich with the crusts cut off. I also got to try some of Danielle's blue mint chocolate chip ice cream. Jennifer also managed to dump some soy sauce, guess I'm a trendsetter. Oops.

After school, Kage, Victoria, and I stopped in Ikebukuro again, and went to the manga store. After spending some time looking around (and discovering that there was more than one floor), I got around to translating the name of the store. "Ikebukuro Adult Comic Store". That kind of explains their rather wide library. The top two floors were evidently the interesting ones, but I couldn't work up the lack of integrity to visit them. Denis would kill to be in this place...

I watched a Doraimon ("Dry-mon") special today... interesting show. If only television content was like this in the states, it might be worth the space an antennae takes up. The show was funny, but the punch at the end was hilarious... Take and Hide could have been put up against Celeste as far as gas levels go.

Cripes... time's been moving like lighting for me. Only by thinking of how far away the WCF is can I slow it down to any reasonable rate, and even that technique is going to stop working fairly soon. Germany or Argentina? As much as I like Kahn, I'd love to see Argentina take home a cup. Find out in the morning, bed now.

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