Happy Weekend

This is just a quick note to say how much fun I had this past weekend! Friday night was my friend Liz’s 28^th birthday party, and we had a delicious meal and then sang karaoke for two hours (I am getting to be a pro at this karaoke thing). I saw old friends I hadn’t seen in a while and met new folk at well.

I spent almost all of Saturday shopping in Saitama at Costco and the outlet shops there with Emiko and Hitoshi. I didn’t find anything for me but I bought some presents for other people. Saturday night was much needed chill time.

On Sunday I Skyped with my parents for the first time since Christmas, then cleaned my house and did the laundry I’d been neglecting for weeks. In the afternoon I went with my friend Saori to the Takasaki City International Relations 20^th Anniversary Party at the Takasaki View Hotel. There were about 300 people there—my community center Japanese teachers included! Even though it was a foreign relations party, I’d say easily 97% of the clientele were Japanese. Of Takasaki’s 4,000-ish foreigners, about 20 came. I saw two or three other Americans, an Iranian family, a Pakistani (?) family, and one person each from Peru, the Philippines, India, and China, but the whole event was conduced in Japanese. It was a relatively fancy affair; almost everyone was wearing a suit, and I felt kind of underdressed in a jean skirt and Civil War boots. Luckily, though, after the fancy hors d’ouvres, belly dancing show, and more speeches, my new friends and I joined in a Western-themed folk dance! I could have sworn the music they were playing was “Little Brown Bug” (“Ha, ha, ha, hee, hee, hee, Little Brown Bug is full of glee . . . ") as we twirled around and clapped hands just like it was 1850. The one downer from that day was when I went up to the man from Peru to tell him in my immaculate, flawless Spanish that his Japanese was very good, but once I was facing him I could only gape at him awkwardly as all of my espanol ran out of my brain like water. I couldn’t think of one thing to say. His refusal to answer me in Spanish also didn’t help, so I talked to him in my stumbling, terrible Japanese, inwardly cursing myself for not being able to summon at least an “Hola.” What is happening to me?

Even though I had that moment where I wanted to cry, I got over it quickly enough. The median age of participants at this party was maybe 45 (not factoring in children), so the few 20somethings of us that were there all banded together quickly. I met all kinds of cool people at the party: a guy from Idaho with a weird name that started with “Z”, a cool girl from Ghana studying design at one of Gunma’s universities, an ALT in Tomioka (maybe?), a Japanese boy who speaks English (!), two 28-year old Chinese guys, and two 16-year old high school girls who randomly starting hanging out with us. We had a lot of fun chatting and playing silly games at the party. When 5:00 struck and it was time to go, we carried our party on to Glime Bar, the tiny place I frequent.

It really is tiny, with just one room and two tables, and the fourteen of us (we were joined by other folk, and the high school girls didn’t come) barely fit. But it was so nice! I helped the owner carry drinks to everyone; I was driving and so just drank ginger ale. I love being surrounded by new friends and old friends and it was just a wonderful, wonderful night all around. We’ll have to do it again sometime!

This week is shaping up to be super busy, too. Even though I thrive on it, I probably need to find some time to chill, too . . . naaaah.