14 August 2007 · Comment [1]
I'm in Kyoto, being super stressed out about how to get back to the Tokyo airport!
It’s a pretty straightforward process to get back to Tokyo for my flight on Thursday morning, but the thing is there’s a huge festival in Kyoto with huge, flaming Japanese characters on Wednesday night and I want to stay here long enough to rent a rowboat and row it around the flaming character in the middle of a lake while little kids sail lantern boats on the lake and I don’t know how to do it! Nurrrr. There’s some kind of night bus that leaves at 11 that would work probably but I can’t read the all-Japanese website to figure out how to book a ticket and also the ride takes 7 or 8 hours and then that’s cutting it close for the flight. But I think I can take a bullet train over to the airport so it should be manageable. But why do you care about this? Ha ha, you don’t! I’m just typing to myself at this point basically. But I guess it serves to show you what it looks like inside my head every minute of every day. Someday I am going to crumple into a jiggling mass of stress. Let’s watch a video! It’s from a song that was the best thing to come out of the Whitsunday Island trip, besides the stingray:
Also there’s this one song I keep hearing around Japan and it was all over Thailand and it’s stuck in my head like 23 hours out of every day but all I know about it is that it goes “la la la la la la laaa la la laaa la la laaaaa la la la la la la laaa la la laaa la la laaaaa.” But with a melody. And I definitely do not know how to ask anyone in Japanese what it’s called. So far the only phrases I really have down pat are “excuse me” (sumimasen) and “thank you very much” (arigato gozaimas). Mostly I just point a lot. Also other white people are always really eager to talk, which is nice unless they’re jerky Americans in bars who talk about how they’re so cool because they steal from Walmart. Oh also that night, the American guys when downstairs to dance and I went with them but I haaaate dancing so I just stood there watching the hootchie mamas bootie dance on the bar when this Japanese guy and his Korean friend came up and started trying to make conversation. And they seemed nice enough, a lot like non-jerky EECS majors at Berkeley, but the music was so freaking loud and their English wasn’t so good and my Japanese and Korean are basically nonexistent so they’d be like “DO…YOU…LIKE…MUSIC!?” and I’d yell what like five times until I understood them and then I’d be like “YES” and then they’d be like “WHAT…BAND…DO…YOU…LIKE!?” and then I’d yell what a million times and then say something like “UMMM THE DECEMBERISTS” and then they’d be like “I’VE NEVER HEARD OF THE SUNBURSTS” and then I’d be like “WELL THEY’RE GOOD” and after five minutes of this excruciating awkwardness I bolted out of there. Maybe it was rude but I will never ever see them again and it was infinitely more polite than like asking them to leave me alone.
Holy crap update! David bought me a flickr pro account for graduation and he just resent me the information and I updated it and now there can be infinite pictures!!!! So amazing!! I’m gonna go update a whole ton of terrible pictures. It’s gonna be great. One sec.
Yaaay! Infinite photos! I’m clearing off my memory card and storing it all on flickr now! This is so awesome. Now I can keep bad pictures on my camera forever! Let’s talk about some of them!!
JONO RUSSEL
July 2, 2007 – August 13, 2007
Aww Jono, I miss you! Oh curses, I just passed the three hour limit and now it costs a dollar for every 15 minutes. Paying for internet is such a weird and icky feeling. Plus I better get off before I spend all my time in Kyoto on the internet. But I’ll probably be back soon! To write about all the freaky pictures I just posted. Also, the stitches on that zombie girl in the last post were just glued on, in case you felt the urge to get grossed out. Okay, later!
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« I'm in Thailand, being sweaty and gross, yaay!» Sweet sassy molassey, I do love wasting time on the internet!
Aww, that’s such a nice picture of Jono!! Are things going okay now that you’re on your own? Where do you go next?
I miss yooou… I’m glad when you come back to the States you’ll only be a short Chinatown bus trip away <3
— Catie · Aug 15, 09:15 AM · #