Fun fact: Even Asians can’t always tell each other apart. According to a website that shows people of various Asian backgrounds and asks the user to distinguish between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, the average score was a mere 7 out of 18. So don’t worry, you’re not racist (well, you might be, but not because you can’t tell them apart (saying “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these” is not an official method)).
I chose this title knowing full well that Jackie may be the only one who gets the reference.
This week I’m going to apologize to all of the innocent people I may have hurt or killed while swimming due to the powerful gleam that shot from my white chest Pale Force style. My arms are probably the most tan they’ve been in years since it’s much harder to not go outside. Lake Biwa is less than 5 minutes away by bike (of course I’m not walking there), so we can swim pretty much whenever we want. Whenever we tell people that we went swimming there, the usual responses are [really!?], [is that OK?], and [is it clean?] ([] indicates translation). The answer to all of those is yes. It’s like Lake Michigan (Lion’s Park side) except you can see mountains in the background. Also there’s no dropoffs. I haven’t gotten burned again yet (which is kind of unusual nowadays), though I’m getting a farmer’s tan that I’m trying to get rid of.
Japanese places have very interesting choices in the music they play, especially when it comes to American music. There’s pretty much no rap ever (thank God, Buddha, Hylia, Morgan Freeman, etc.), and most of the radio I hear is a mixture of current Japanese songs and almost current American songs. The most common American song I hear now is that one that rips of Take On Me (I get excited when I hear that intro, then realize it’s the crappy one). However, it’s more often the case that they play much older music. One of my friends commented on hearing Beatles music way more often here than in America. The other day when we were waiting outside a restaurant in the mall in the station, I heard a song that I recognized (from Tommy Boy): “Don’t You Remember You Told Me You Loved Me?” followed by Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” (Shrek 2). When we exited the restaurant, “Hollaback Girl” by Gwen Stefani was Playing. I prefer older music, so I’m not really complaining, it’s just an interesting thing. Another time, a hamburg restaurant we went to was playing music that had to be from the 50’s at the latest. Even the 7-Eleven has an elevator-style “Daydream Believer” constantly playing.
This week I also learned that Maki actually reads all of this, which is pretty impressive since the last entry was about 3333 words. I almost feel bad because I have a tendency to frequently and verbosely express my inner machinations with innumerable deviations that are often banal and nonsensical to one who’s unfamiliar with such terminology and cultural references (じょうだん 笑。よく長い言葉をつかって、ごめんと言う。）
Friday
We went to Gifu, which is close to Nagoya (and where Kanari lives). A station near us had awesome piano stairs that played notes when you walked on them! As usual, by the time we got checked in and down to “downtown” Gifu, most interesting things were closed, so we walked around and checked out this cool street that was meant to look like Japan did a long long time ago. There was even a phone booth that Maki said was hundreds of years old (actually, I (correctly) guessed the age and she replied with, “yeah, sure.” or some equivalent). Near the river there was a maze that you could walk through, but it was only a foot tall (2-3 if you count the bushes), so it wasn’t very hard to cheat at. At first I thought there’d be a tiny Minotaur there (come on, you have to at least heard about the Minotaur’s maze), but when there wasn’t, I realized that it was better for this.
Saturday
Saturday morning we went to Gifu castle, which was on the top of a large hill, so we had to take a gondola up. I was disappointed when I learned that it was the skiing kind and there wouldn’t be a small Japanese man in a beret and a black and white striped shirt. This was the main castle of Oda Nobunaga. Sound familiar? You’re right! He was the first and most b.a. Japanese warlord and the one who first united the many territories (or whatever they were called) of Japan. According to the signs and Maki, Nobunaga invaded a city, changed it’s name to Gifu, took over the castle, and married the daughter of the guy whose castle it was. That is how you conquer Japan (or part of it). Most of the buses had pictures of the warrior version of Nobunaga looking awesome, but in the castle, his portraits seemed a bit “cute” (long eyelashes, kinda flush cheeks, etc.). As we were walking down the mountain, I heard a kid yelling 「やっほー!」(yahoh!). Maki explained that this was what you yelled when there was an echo. The next time he yelled “yahoh,” I did the only reasonable thing and responded with “Polo!” Maki said nobody would get it. I explained I didn’t care and that it was for my own amusement. At the bottom of the castle was the Squirrel Village. At first I didn’t care because I’ve seen a million (not hyperbole, I’ve counted at least that many) squirrels, but it turned out that it wasn’t simply a big park with a ton of squirrels (remember there are almost no wild animals, especially not squirrels). However, it turned out to be a little enclosure filled with 20-30 squirrels (and a rabbit and chipmunk in cages for some reason). You pay $2, then they give you a special gardening/welding glove and when you get inside they sprinkle some squirrel food on it so you can feed them. Normally I’d expect petting zoo-style where they just walk up and eat from your hand, but these are squirrels. Almost immediately one jumped on my arm, tail facing my shoulder, and he started eating (yes he, don’t ask). Another decided that he wanted some food, too, so he jumped on my shirt (again upside down) and tried getting to it. When he couldn’t reach, he turned around, ran over my shoulder and onto my camera bag which was on my back. Unsure of what he was doing back there, I lowered the bag so that he was able to get down. We spent the rest of the time trying to trick the squirrels into thinking we still had food (you could only feed them once because otherwise they’d get full and wouldn’t eat). It worked for a while at first, but then they were too full/lazy to jump on us to check again. On the way back, we saw this really old guy dressed as a samurai. I told Maki that he probably used to be a real samurai. She reminded me that the samurai lived about two hundred years ago. I agreed that that seemed to be how old he was.
After the castle, we started walking to a garden when it started raining. We got there and decided to sit under a roofed pavilion thing. Then it started pouring and thundering (the Raijin (that statue with the hair like Heatmeiser from ‘Year without a Santa’) was angry). We tried shielding ourselves from the rain, but because of the wind, there wasn’t much we could do (we had no umbrella). Although it was a nice break from the 90° heat we’d been experiencing so far, it was very unpleasant. There’s a Japanese word “mushiatsui” which basically means it’s too hot and sticky (twss). Eventually it stopped and I was unable to tell how much of me was wet from sweating and how much was from rain. Near the castle was the last thing we had left to see in Gifu (pretty much, there wasn’t all that much to do): the Daibutsu (giant Buddha). He was more relaxed than most of the Buddhas since I could take his picture (sans flash) and he was giving the OK sign. When he was made thousands (maybe just a few hundred) of years ago, they had to cover the entire body with Buddhist sutras (prayers). However the main Monk there didn’t have many students, so he was forced to travel around Japan collecting them (to collect them was his real test, to build Buddha was his cause). Eventually he did it, but since it took like 25 years to build, he died before it was finished. Around the Buddha were a bunch of little figures that looked like a massive jury and a bunch of pictures that allegedly tell a story. Since Maki didn’t know the story, I had to tell it to her (I just happened to know it and definitely DID NOT make it up ;)). That wasn’t a wink, my smiley avatar got something in his eye.
That night we met with the previous exchange students (sans Kanari) and the girl we’ll host this fall again (again meaning we met them again, not that we’ve hosted her before). Because it was the weekend, we were told that we could only stay at the izakaya for 2 hours, so we’d have to go somewhere else after. After a little more than an hour, a big group of people came and sat at the table next to us and almost all started smoking. I already had a headache and two of the others started coughing, so we left early and went to Purikura (remember that special picture booth that makes people look girly?). They had a bunch of girly magazines so you could mimic the styles, and Shun kept showing me the women and making me guess how old they were. That’s a really hard game (especially after air-brushing). A lot of Japanese chicks don’t look old for a long time. After, most of us went to Starbucks and talked there for the rest of the time. Due to most of the ATM’s being racist, I had not been able to find one that would accept my card and spent my last 450￥ (1¢≈1￥), so I had to start stealing borrowing money until I could find one that worked (the next day). Why didn’t you just use your card? I would have, but Japanese people rarely use card and instead stick to using coins and bills. It’s kind of hard for me to understand that the coin is worth $1, so I think I have a tendency to “waste” them more often than normal dollars (especially at the game centers). I also decided that instead of constantly converting from yen to dollars, I’m just going to pretend that 1￥=$1 and that everyone is super rich (e.g. this hamburger is $1000). Is it really that hard to divide by 100? Someone’s feeling fat and sassy today. No, but when they count in Japanese, they don’t insert the comma after the thousands. Instead they do ten-thousands. Essentially do thousands, ten-thousands. ten-ten-thousands, hundred-ten-thousands, thousand-ten-thousands, hundred-millions, ten-hundred-millions, etc.
Sunday
Even though it was Tanabata (star festival), there weren’t many celebrations going on in the area, so instead we saw Monsters University in Nagoya. The theater was at the top of some mall building, so we had to take a bunch of escalators up to get to it (the elevator was taking way too long). In addition to normal popcorn, you could get a bucket of caramel corn (also waffles). They also had booster seats for the kids, which was a good idea. We saw the version that was English with Japanese subtitles. Once in a while I’d look at the subtitles, but they were in a funky font, so it was kind of hard to read (also there were some kanji I didn’t know). After the movie, we checked out the mall across the street and found some Italian place to eat at (this time I had spaghetti since we had eaten at a pizzeria on Friday). The pizza is good because it’s Itialian pizza, but I miss classic delivery pizza. Also normal bacon :cry:. I started getting a Caesar salad at the restaurant next door because it’s one of the few normal salads, but mostly because there’s little pieces of real bacon! I guess if it makes me eat healthier… I’ve lost almost 7 pounds since I got here, which I don’t notice as much, but I’ve been told “you look like much less of a fata 
now” a few times (I might be paraphrasing). Luckily for the past month, I’ve had one of the best friends I could ask for helping me through all of this and dealing with a lack of the American food I’m used to. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, and I love you, Cap’n Crunch 
Next week: I travel to Kanazawa for a three-day weekend (we have school, I’m just skipping (JUST KIDDING MOMMY)). It’s Umi no Hi, which translates as Ocean Day (though I guess is more commonly referred to as Marine Day). Kanazawa is known for a famous garden, Geisha houses, some onsens (outdoor baths), old temples (that are preserved since we managed to not blow them up), and a NINJA TEMPLE!!! Will I go to the onsen? Will the thought of a bunch of old naked Japanese men (no young people ever go) and the heat prevent me from doing it? Will I dress as a Geisha? Will my ninja skills be enough to get me through the temple? Find out next time on The Gaijin Chronicles! Dah dahh dadahhh da dahh duuhhh!