Moments from memory - Oct 11 and 12th

So, I don't rightly remember much of what happened in the week following my first trip to Geidai, and my photos are pretty sparse, so I'll just have to make do with what I have.

On the 11th, I apparently went to a Japan study thing, where we learned some slang and nomikai terms from the Niji no Kai people. Of course, I already knew most of the terms, but we still had fun anyways. When the group thing was over, we all went over to the bungaku-bu campus (near Toyama park) to eat at the cafeteria there. I sat with Aiko and Hanna, who was still upset (or joking) about how I didn't seem to remember her when we went to Yabusame the other day. From now on, when I see her I'm going to pretend I don't know her. After eating, I ran into Shun and Peta in the main cafeteria, and we went around practicing our "jama." Robert (not Granite Bob) was macking on like, five girls from Keio, so Peta and I went over and introduced ourselves and got in the way. Eventually we tired of the games and I left with Toru and Derek, and we stopped by the front of the gymnasium to watch the Waseda Breakers practice before splitting up to go home.

I went home and Hans came over with his laptop to help me try to recover and back up the stuff on my hard drive. Up until this point, my computer had been unusable (hence the tardiness of this blog entry). Fortunately, we were able to recover pretty much all of my data, including the photos I had taken during my first month here. I breathed a big sigh of relief, and we started backing stuff up onto DVDs. Hans got a free dinner out of the deal, and as usual, we had some lively dinner conversation. Unfortunately, it was getting late and Hans had to catch the subway back to his place. I walked him to the Oedo station near my house, since he wasn't sure where it was, and he jumped on the train. He was supposed to transfer at some point so he wouldn't have to take the long way home, but I think he was worried that he had already missed the transfer subway, and he stayed on the train. Well, apparently the train stopped somewhere south of Ginza, and he was stranded at like 1 in the morning. He found out where he was, and started walking towards home, but eventually jumped in a cab that charged him way too much. Crazy night for Hans.

On the 12th, I had a lot of time to kill between classes, so Hans and Jessica (from my Japanese class, originally from Chicago but studying out of Oregon) and I escorted Hilary to the kuyaku-sho in Shinjuku to pick up her gaijin card. We jumped on the Seibu-Shinjuku line, since the Seibu station is closer to the kuyaku-sho than the JR one. She got her card, and we all headed back to my house, so Hans could get his laptop. We recovered everything, and everyone took off as I tried to reinstall windows on my computer and see if I could make this mess right again.

As a bonus, check out the awesome Engrish bag Jessica has. In case you can't read it, it says "Terrific Power! Storage Case. You are freer than whether to use with what kind of use."