Don't make eye contact

I forgot to post yesterday. Whoops. Not that it really matters, I can sum up yesterday in a few sentences.

I had no class cause it was Friday, so I met the Japanese girl I tutor at 1. The session ended at 3, and students were already setting up for the University Festival. They also decided to move all the bikes parked in front of the building I was in, to make room. The girl I tutor asked someone where they put them, cause I had no idea where my bike went. The wheels were locked, but they somehow carried it up a hill and a bit away from where I was. I finally found it and went home. Tori and I went to Tsukuba Center after that, and I attempted to buy sneakers again. Unfortunately they don't really carry anything above a US size 6 here, so I'm afraid I'm out of luck. We watched the finale of a Japanese drama we'd been watching after we came home, and then I came home and watched tv until quite late.

The University Festival started today at 10am. Apparently they decided that no one within a 2mi radius should be asleep while the festival is going, so they fired off cannons at 10 exactly to signal its start. It was able to wake me up fully after I'd been hitting snooze for an hour. We got ready, and Tori, Amanda, and I went to the festival around noon. It basically consisted of a couple performance stages, with various performances running from 10am-10pm, and a lot of food stalls. That's more or less a Japanese festival it seems.

I'm gonna go on a tangent here about the food stalls. Because they are very different from America. In America, stall workers will just sit there and more or less let you take your time to choose and they expect you to walk up to them. Well here in Japan, especially college students apparently, the food stall workers are very aggressive. They take shifts at the greeter by the stall holding the sign, but they don't just stand there, they run up to you if you give their stall even the slightest glance (sometimes even if you don't look), as in, they stand right in your path, and try to get you to come to their stall. If they're not running up to you, they're constantly shouting into the air something along the lines of, "how about some [fill in the blank food]?" and it makes me wonder how their throats don't get sore. It's rather troublesome really, sometimes you just want to look without being bothered, and walking through the food stall sections is a chore in itself.

We sat near one of the lakes and watched the performances there most of the day. In the beginning they had this show for little kids, which was highly amusing, and because it was meant for kids we could actually understand all the Japanese. We wandered around for a while after that, and eventually bought some lunch. After buying lunch we went back to the performance stage, and eventually met 2 of our other friends there. Various modern dance groups were performing for about 2hrs. And they were all really good too. Far better than the average American dancers at college level. It was really fun to watch.

After them it was mostly just various bands and singing groups for the rest of the night. Tori went home before 5 or so, but I didn't want to leave, so I stayed with the others. We mostly stayed near the stage, but ventured out once in a while when we got tired of watching. We saw the juggling club perform at one point. They're really good too. The one kid was juggling knives. Unfortunately it started to get really cold after dark (it's fully dark at 6pm here), so eventually we ducked into the Starbucks in the library and I bought overpriced hot chocolate out of desperation for something warm. Starbucks closed about 10min later, and the workers at the counter gave us and the other customers a very obvious stare down, so we left. We wandered back to the stage afterward, and the others soon left. I decided to stay a little longer and just watch the performers. I finally couldn't stand the cold anymore (it was in the 50s and I only had a light jacket and flip flops) around 7:45 or so, and headed back and took a much needed hot shower. The festival's still for two more days, so I imagine I'll be repeating a similar day tomorrow and the next. It beats sitting in my room all day.

Just watched the new episode of The Office where Jim and Pam get married. Quite possibly the most awesome and touching episode yet. Further proof of just how great a show The Office is.