happy birthday, dear moegi

thursday was moegis 17th birthday. before school that morning the first thing i said to her was "happy birthday" and her face lit up. i promised her that shed get her birthday present(s) after school. she was fine with that. little did she know that i hadnt even bought her present yet. well, except for a scrapbook.

at chapel they showed slides from haru no kodomo kai that the photography club had taken (hey, thats me). only one of my photos made it, and i cant blame them. that was before my mom sent me her SLR and when i was still using my kodak point-and-click. i know that what type of camera im using shouldnt affect the quality of my photos, but it does.

anyway, there was a picture of me but i didnt even look at it. i think i was sitting on the ground eating lunch but i cant be sure... since i didnt look at it and everything.

my team lost another volleyball game in gym class, probably thanks to me. i knew i shouldnt have let it get to me, but i couldnt help it. i tried so hard. really. and the thing is my team captain really really wanted to win. whenever we lost, which was all the time, shed run out of the gym crying and not come back for like 10 minutes, and no one would tell me what was wrong. they didnt have to, though. i mean, shes japanese.

for counseling we watched another movie, raising arizona. ms. mrozik had totally given up on us at this point and i felt kind of bad about it. like, she assigned a packet about culture shock and a "diary entry" about how we were adjusting to our lives in japan and no one did either of them. what we really wanted was someone to talk to who would understand where we were coming from, but movies were okay too.

i had never heard of raising arizona before and it didnt take me long to figure out why. it was so low-budget and cliche. i dont even remember what the story was about. something about 2 rednecks stealing someones baby. it doesnt really matter. i always forget the plots of pointless movies, like muppet treasure island, avalanche, and signs (how come pat and i are the only 2 people who thought signs sucked?).

like usual ashley and i walked to mondo-yakujin station together, but this time we got on the same train and went our separate ways at nishinomiya-kitaguchi instead. ashley wanted to go to umeda to withdraw money from the bank for the bazaar on saturday. ashley didnt know nishi-kita as well as i did so i pointed out the osaka-bound train and got on a train going in the opposite direction to sannomiya. it wasnt until i was on the train that i realized i shouldve told her to take the umeda-bound train instead of the osaka-bound. theyll both take you to the same place pretty much, but ashley was probably used to getting to her bank from umeda instead of osaka. i agonized over it for awhile, but neither of us carried cellphones so there really wasnt anything i could do about it besides apologize when i saw her next.

i spent a good 30 minutes at maiko station picking out stationery for moegis birthday present. i couldnt decide on what to buy, so i ended up getting 3 different kinds. one had a kind of grungy american feel that i knew moegi would like because she is head over heels for america, another one was all black (i gave her one of my white gel pens to go with it), and the third one was more cutesy.

after that i went to the mini coop to see what kinds of diaries and pens they were selling, but as it turned out they didnt have either.

when i walked in the door my host mother was in the middle of giving a piano lesson. there was a package from my mom waiting for me on my bed. in it was mac and cheese, fun size snickers, cooling lotion (i forgot to tell my mom that i already bought cooling lotion in california, so now i have 2 bottles of the stuff. i STILL havent opened the one she sent me), and a shitload of presents for moegi.

there was a show on tv about how once every year or so train stations will put their lost and founds together and sell everything off. remember this, itll be important later.

i wrapped moegis presents up in tissue paper and put them in a giftbag. as soon as moegi came home she opened the presents i got her. well, after she changed. who changes clothes before opening presents? seriously.

note: she didnt change clothes BECAUSE she was about to open presents, it was because it was "unnecessarily hot" outside, as i am fond of saying. but still!

anyway, she loved the american stationery, as i expected. but i think on the whole she liked the presents that my mom got her more than the presents i got her. my mom got her lots of stuffed animals and stuff like that. it was kind of embarrassing being shown up by my mom. my mom hadnt even met moegi before.

my host father got home around 6, 3 or 4 hours earlier than normal, with a strawberry shortcake.

for dinner we had a platter of sushi and a take-out pizza, 2 of moegis favorite foods. sushi was the main dish so i didnt eat very much, because i dont really like sushi and only eat it if i have to. i wish i liked it though. if you can eat sushi (or any japanese food, for that matter) the japanese will be very impressed with you. but more often than not the japanese will automatically assume that if youre a foreigner you wont like sushi or raw fish.

after dinner i suddenly remembered out of the blue that id left my gym clothes on the train, which was ironic considering the tv show id just watched. my host father called sannomiya station and luckily for me someone had already turned in the paper bag with my gym clothes inside. he told the station that id be by to pick it up the next morning.

friday, may 28, 2004

on friday moegi said there wasnt enough time before school to get my gym clothes even though we got to school a good 30 minutes early every day. she said i should get them on my way home instead.

i left a note on ashleys desk about how sorry i was that id told her to get on the wrong train and that if she hadnt made to the bank id totally be willing to float her some money. i got to talk to her later and she said that she had gotten to the bank just fine. whew.

after chapel there were a bunch of girls standing around IN THE CHURCH feeling up this one girls boobs. i asked keiko what the hell was going on and she said something like, "oh, that. well, her boobs are big. shes probably a b-cup."

a b-cup is BIG in japan? god, i LOVE this country! all it took was 14 hours on a plane and i went from flat to normal! also, the japanese love my fair skin and are jealous of me. hah!

i checked out howls moving castle at the school library. i didnt know it at the time but the new miyazaki film is based off that book.

later ashley told me that shed made up her mind to switch host families. i couldnt have been more happy for her.

that night i ate mac and cheese for dinner.