10:57pm セミナーハウス
天気：晴れ
Just finished watching the Star Trek movie with Rachel and Sarah, on Rachel’s laptop; it was pretty good, though a little corny in parts. Today was cold, but at least it was, for the most part, sunny… I got up at about 10, and made pancakes for breakfast; for some reason, they didn’t come out very well at all. I got to uni a bit after 11:30, and sat down as a side dish to the Rach(a)el sandwich; Katie was the sandwich filling. We continued with keigo in speaking, and also heard our last speech; we’ll be having our oral exams next week, which I’m not looking forward to. After class, I went downstairs to find Katie and Sarah, and Katie was in the process of getting her new laptop; her former one was blue screening constantly. So, I accompanied her to the CIE office, where she found out that she needed to pay the tax in order to get the post office to send it to the uni. Since she didn’t have the exact change, she decided to just go pick it up from the post office directly, later in the afternoon. That sorted, we went upstairs to our respective classes; I talked with Peter in the hall for a while before getting seated.
We continued with Soka Gakkai in Religion, and learnt more about Nichiren Buddhism, Soka Gakkai’s associated political party (Komeito), and what Soka Gakkai members believe in; the power of their chant apparently. It was all very interesting, and again, the sense of foreboding lurked in the background. The professor also told us some of the conspiracy theories surrounding the possible connection between Soka Gakkai and our Kansai Gaidai; the dean of the CIE is in fact a Soka Gakkai member. It seems very much a cult of personality, where Ikeda (current president and founder of Soka Gakkai International) is an idol, placing himself among the ranks of Martin Luther King, and Ghandi. And yet, for all his awards, all his dialogues with people in power, none of us foreign students had ever heard of him before; his presence really isn’t felt outside Japan. Well, except for in China… oh and guess who else is a member of Soka Gakkai; Orlando Bloom!!! I found this quite interesting. And yeah, it is definitely a religion; they do a lot of praying and chanting as frequently as possible.
After class, Peter, Jeremy, and a guy from Denmark whose name escapes me, met with Katie, and we went to Makkas to get fries; this month, all sizes (S, M, L) are 150円!!! We got there just before it closed at 3 (since the Gaidai students are on spring break they have shorter opening hours), and all enjoyed our fries, sitting with the professor; I’m sure she appreciated us disturbing her quiet time. Everyone had stories to share (especially Peter), and we had quite a good long chat. During that time, I couldn’t help but to notice the Japanese girls, hip-hop dancing right out front of Makkas. Jeremy had devised a cunning plan for just this scenario. Just as Katie came back from getting the information about her laptops whereabouts, we all went over to the window the girls were in front of, and Jeremy passed as all a piece of paper with a single number typed on it, ranging from 1 to 10; and what did we do? As the girls danced, we held up the numbers in unison to mock judge their performance. As soon as they spotted us, they all burst out laughing; and so did we. They even took a few photos; it was hilarious.
Happy with our fun, we split up, Katie, Peter, and I going to Fresco for supplies. Although, when we got there, Katie was the only one who actually bought anything; I realised I had no money left, and Peter technically didn’t need anything since he’s in a home stay. From there, we rode back to the Seminar House, and Peter got reacquainted with Otousan and Okaasan; they didn’t recognise him without his long hair and beard. Bumping into Simon out front, we decided we’d go get shoes today, since we were both free. So I said goodbye to Peter and Katie, and I was off again; I guess I was feeling industrious. When we were coming up to Sanko, Simon insisted that we bike along the road as opposed to the path, thinking it would be faster, and I flat out rejected it; so we had a race. In the end, I technically won, since he had to go around and under the train track to get back around to the main road, closer to where we were headed. Actually, when Simon went under the tracks, I lost him for a while; we eventually met back up. Then we were off again, following the tracks east for a while, and then crossing under, and heading south. I had never been to this area of Hirakata before, and it was really interesting to see; it was almost like the outskirts. There were so many restaurants along the way, and heaps of community vegetable gardens. Finally we reached 靴 (Kutsu – shoes), which turned out to be a branch of the same store in Midori. But whatever; it was much bigger, and had some great discounts.
After a quick browse, we settled on buying the 990円 shoes out front. Yes, they were cheap rip-offs, with “triple win” as their logo (which I think is actually really cool), but they would serve their purpose as gym shoes; we were most satisfied. After paying for them, we were on our way back home; as soon as Simon found his bike key (well, actually I found it for him in his bag). We decided to chance a different way home, which turned out surprisingly well; we came back to the street that Sanko’s on. This way was also much quicker and much less roundabout. I decided to go to Sanko, since it was right there, and Simon joined me. I picked up the necessary ingredients for tacos tomorrow night, and also got some great, cheap meat. We decided to also take a look at the gym (actually go inside this time) but it was already closed; closes at 5. Getting home, I unpacked, and then rested until dinner time; about 7 o’clock. I had the leftover yakisoba, and added some of the meat I bought today; I also got to try some more of Julie’s vegetable pancakes. After dinner, Rachael and I went down to the lounge to set up for the movie, and Sarah soon followed. We also watched the bloopers and deleted scenes afterwards, which are always enjoyable. Well, time for bed; I had a wonderful day today. Starting gym tomorrow…
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