飲み会 and Black Fail

Apparently, I've gone blog updating crazy.　　I mean, for serious - every day since June 4, minus yesterday.

Rachael came to Okazaki to spend the weekend with me, and on Saturday night, we met up with my old students from the office English class I used to teach for a 飲み会　(nomikai - drinking party). Madness ensued.

Apparently, I make Naoki crazy, because, according to the new guy in their class, he was totally normal until I got there, and then he went completely insane. I really missed him, though, and Ryouko and the whole class really, so it was great to see them again.

Then Megumi got drunk and told us all about how she is learning karate. I made the mistake of jokingly telling her that she should practice on Naoki, and:



She was definitely way more into it than the picture shows, by my picture taking skills are definitely not to be noted.

Anyone who knows my knows how much I absolutely LOVE making 変顔　(hengao - funny faces - Kristen and I and Martin and I have huge collections of them). Apparently, Naoki is also a fan of the hengao, so we must have spent a good half hour or more just making stupid faces.




Naoki and I were definitely the best at 変顔

It was seriously awesome to get to see them all again and see that they're doing well - WHY does their class have to be on Saturday? I got to speak Japanese the whole night, too, which was awesome (well, except at the end, when I lost my voice and then couldn't talk anymore).

After, Glen (also known as Takeru), who is the new teacher of their class, came over to my place after, and we had a pseudo dance party je sais meme pas quoi at my place, with just the three of us.



Glen somewhat fell in love with the posters I have on my wall of 三浦翔平　(Miura Shouhei)　and 山本裕典　(Yamamoto Yuusuke) - I mean, naturally, who wouldn't?



Good times were had, and we danced and acted like weirdos until about 3 AM. I was naturally reminded of that song by the Unlovables "Dance party for two, me and you," except that we were three (on a side note, I miss the Unlovables - won't they put out a new album soon?)


Because no post would be complete without a music video of some sort attached.

Then today Rachael and I went and hung out at Aeon for a while, and we were talking about how I'm old and my hair is all grey, and she was all "Maybe you should die it," and I was all, "Yeah, maybe I could do black." So we bought some black hair dye and tried to dye my hair back, but unfortunately it was a mega fail (I really didn't know you could ever fail with black), and my hair pretty much didn't change colors at all. :-( (and by pretty much I mean it is still exactly the same color as it was before I started)

And I realize the complete pointlessness of this post but,. . .I believe in pointlessness. Yes.

and on that note, お休みなさい。

Disaster

The other day I was saying something about how my favorite kind of music is really sugary, bubblegummy, poppy punk rock, and Alexis replied with something like "I don't believe you. Every time I hear you listening to music, it's that folk metal or whatever."
And I realized she was right. I'd been listening to so much metal that bubblegum punk was slowly taking the backburner, and this saddened me.
So since then, I've been rocking out to the awesomeness of bands like the 20 Belows, the Yum Yums, the Riverdales, the Queers, the Ergs!, Screeching Weasel, etc. . . And not to be forgotten, of course, the Unlovables.
And I was reminded that, like there is a Southpark episode for every life circumstance, there is an Unlovables song for every Audrey life circumstance.

And right now, the song that describes my life is Disaster, even though, for me, my life is totally not a disaster.
Go here and listen to it, and I assure you, you will be rocked.

Anyhow, things have been fairly uneventful since the last time I wrote.
On Wednesday, we had a big test that was the same as the placement test that we took when we first got here.
We got the results back on Friday.

That orange circle that you see is where I was when I first got here. The pink circle is where I am now. I feel happy because I super advanced a lot (more than the other people in my class, as their original circles were all way bigger than mine). I missed one question from the things that we did this qusarter, and I feel really stupid about having missed it. Immediately after turning in the test, I rethought about it and knew I got it wrong. As for the things I wasn't supposed to know (i.e. that we didn't cover this quarter), well, no shocker, I didn't know them.

Wednesday, after the test, I had dinner at the student village (that's, like, the real Yamasa dorms) with some people I know over there. Laura made the most scrumptions vegan spinach quiche, and I wanted to eat ALL of it, but unfortunately I had to be nice and share. Also unfortunately, the last one got burned to a char. :-(


Laura with delish quiche!


On Friday night, I went over to Lyn's again, and she made a delicious cabbage potato stew, and it was DELICIOUS. I seriously love having people cook for me. We watched Naussica in the valley of the wind, and it was fabulous! It's one of my favorite Miyazaki movies (maybe they all are one of my favorites?), and I was happy to watch it again. Especially as it was super rad to understand some of it.

Saturday, I skipped French teaching (I know, I know, I am horrible) and instead went shopping with Martin for a bday gift for his lady friend. And then we took pictures of us jumping around in the rain.



Apparently Martin and I love taking pictures of ourselves. It reminds me of hanging out with Josh back at NYU, and it is fabulous fun!

Saturday night, Alexis, Jenny-Lyn, Lauren, and some others went over to Aoi Hall/Zig Zag (the school bar to which I can't really go because you're allowed to smoke inside), where they had screens set up and were playing the Japan/Netherlands World Cup game. The game was pretty much boring and actionless (well, until the last 20 or so minutes), and Japan lost (::sob::) but good times were nonetheless had.


Jenny-Lyn, Lars, Laura
I know, I know, I suck at taking night pictures!

It was weird to ENJOY going out and being out and talking to people I don't know again. I feel like I turned into this weird anti-social hermit while I was living in France, and living here is turning me back to myself, when I had previously just thought I was getting old.

And that is all.
(Except that I also apologize for the ridiculous size of these photos. Picasa is STILL not working with my connection, which is ridiculously annoying, and photobucket is screwy. Can anyone think of a better photo hosting site?)