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Nar3: Japan

Highschool girls, karaoke, and Evil Hello Kitty
Posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2003 at 10:31am by Brett.
(Friday, October 3rd, 2003 at 11:31pm Japanese Standard Time)

A couple days ago, a group of my friends and I were sitting outside in front of the International Student Center just talking. There were about 7 of us, two of which were what the Japanese consider to be "standard" American guys. That is, they were blonde haired and light eyed, and one was pretty tall. By chance, there was a tour going on for a group of about 30 highschool girls. They were the stereotypical Japanese Highschool Girls...straight from the manga and anime. They were walking past the center to another building just beyond it. One of them spotted the group of foreigners and kinda pointed. Pretty soon, we were getting staired at...which isn't really anything new.

By this point, the tour had stopped and they were straight up gawking at us. Then one brave girl took out her cell phone, and timidly took a picture. It was all over then. Every single girl there pulled out cell phones and cameras and started taking pictures. Then, one stepped forward to get a closer shot. We started posing for them, and finally one of the "American" guys went down and hugged them for a pose. It was pretty amusing. This went on about 5 minutes before the tour guide pulled them away. Good times...

Last night, I went karaoke'ing for the first time! It was a bit different than in the States because they gave us our own little "Studio" where we made fools of ourselves in front of only our friends. It was pretty fun, actually. The best part was when a couple of us went out for smokes or bathroom breaks, and met these completely sloshed Japanese Businessmen who were in the studio next to us. They kept telling us how good our Japanese was, and then they started showing us all the karate they knew. Luckily, it was on each other and not on us...

Tonight is Friday here. I just got in from a very fun adventure with my friends at a park. We decided to go do something because Tsukuba isn't really bored-student friendly. So we went to this park in the middle of the night. (Not really middle, but it gets dark here at like 5:30 so...) We made a documentary about the hunting habbit of Evil Hello Kitty. As soon as my friend gets it put together, I'll post it.

That's really about all. Things have settled down. Oh...I'm poor. I'm very poor. I get a scholarship every month, but it has yet to come in. I need the money. I need the money last week, actually. Hopefully by Monday!