Day 5

August 7th, 2012, Afternoon

You could probably say that my time spent at Waseda last year was not spent on making very many friends. I met a lot of people, did a lot of stuff, but as far as making friends that I continued to talk to throughout my exchange until now, there were few. Perhaps it's because I didn't like the idea of joining a club or circle (I'm not a group oriented sort of person), perhaps it's because I can be pretty anti-social sometimes ( I do enjoy doing my own thing), or perhaps even because I can be hard to get along with (I get along with me just fine at any rate). I don't know. That isn't to say that I didn't make any friends at all. No, no. The ones I did manage to snag into my friendship loop were worthy people that I am proud to call friends. And it just so happens that one of them I got to hang out with on Tuesday! His name is non other than Yuji Saito!

The cool thing about Yuji is that he's cool. No, seriously, he's able to get along with just about anyone (even this cranky, anti-social american) and you can always count on having a good conversation with him.

We met up at Takadanobaba (the usual meeting place for Waseda students since it's close to the university) and we decided on Ramen for lunch. Ippundo ramen (a famous ramen restaurant)  to be exact and it was delicious (oh how I missed you Japanese ramen). We shot the shit for a while, walked to Waseda so he could check up on his financial aid for next year, walked around Baba, went to a shop called The Vanguard- something-or-other where I bought THE COOLEST set of chopsticks imaginable, then grabbed a drink at Hub Pub (an English pub were foreigners and Japanese people who want to hang out with foreigners lurk).

The other cool thing about Yuji is that he is coming to PSU this fall for a one year exchange! I actually ran across his file at work a couple months ago and got super excited but forgot to tell Yuji about it at the time so when I told him I saw his file he got creeped out haha.

It was a good afternoon

Random Temple near Waseda

According to Yuji, each temple/shrine is dedicated to
a different god. I didn't know that.

Yes, oh yes. I did. 

August 7th, Evening

After Yuji and I parted ways I headed back to Ikebukuro to meet my host mother for dinner. We went to this place where my host sister is working part time. It's like a bar but only older folk go there and it's run by a little old lady who was damn sociable and she made us a kick-ass dinner (which she doesn't do for customer's usually, so this was a real treat). Apparently the little old lady and my host father are friends (he goes to her bar to drink a lot apparently) and thus why Miyuki got a job there and why she made us dinner. She also went to Miyuki's wedding. Pretty cool place. She also had a karaoke machine so I insisted that my host mom sing me something. Luckily, she obliged.

She also insisted that I sang and since a couple other costumers had come in by this time I decided to retain the old-time ambiance of the place and  so sang a couple Beatles songs. It was great. 

August 7th, later in the evening

At about 8:30 Okaasan and I left and parted ways at the station because I had made a plan to meet up with Tim in Shinjuku.

I arrived at our designated meeting spot (I took him to it yesterday and he reassured me he'd be able to find it again) and waited. I was 20 minutes late but I let him know that I might be late so just wait for me in THIS SPOT. 

30 minutes went by and no show. 

I walked around a bit because maybe he got lost, but nothing. I walked over to the subway line he should have arrived on. Nothing. Walked back to our meeting spot. Still nothing. Went over to the Starbucks so I could use the Wifi to check that he didn't send an email cancelling or anything. Nothing. So I sent him an email on the off chance he'd see it and went back to the meeting spot. An hour later still nothing so I go check my email again and low and behold he replied stating that he looked around for me for about an hour, couldn't find me and so went back to his hotel at 9:30.

I arrived there at 8:50.

I told him to wait for me at the spot, not go looking around for me. waaaaait. But he didn't and I was too tired/frustrated to care anymore but at least he wasn't wandering around Shinjuku lost and confused like I thought he was. So I went home because it takes about an hour to get back to my place and that was that. He's now on the other side of Japan on an island called Sado Island, preparing to teach English to either elementary school kids or middle school kids. Who knows how long he'll be there. At least we hung out a little bit yesterday though, if only for a couple hours. 

I don't understand how people met up with each other back in the day before cell phones. 

Jamie