will i ever be rested again?

but now i am a graduate of Nihon University and acting tour guide to the fam, who crossed the Pacific for a little sight seeing.

Last Thursday me, Tip, and Koji rented some bikes and set out on a full day adventure of touring Tokyo's big 6 Universities (Rikkyo, Waseda, Toudai, Hosei, Keio, and Meiji). We were lucky it didn't rain until the latter part of the day and was sunny, even though i came away with some unsightly tan lines.

a few things:

• bikes in japan are evil. sidewalks are crowded, people are unpredictable, and a heavy front basket leads to severe unbalancing of the bike
• a defective bell is quite dangerous as people don't know until you are about to crash into them that you are actually there.
• squeaky brakes may save your life, but they are loud enough to disturb Beethoven
• some campuses reminded me of Vic and UC, which made me sad
• vending machine strawberry milk has an interesting taste
• waseda's fruit smoothies are awesome, even though they cause brain freeze with each sip
• when protesters are about, so are the police, leading to very crowded and difficult to navigate sidewalks
• crashing into construction pylons hurts
• if your attendance in a class is bad, your attendance is required. this also means that after sitting in class for 3 hours, if is very hard to get on that bike again and go the required 5 km to return it
• people sweaty from biking should have a shower ASAP. however, this is not always possible and one may be required to wait several hours until the opportunity presents itself.
• for one not used to it, biking is very tough on the derriere
• bikes with one gear suck

Friday was the closing ceremony. After a couple of hours of class we headed over to Honbu and took our seats. Stacey and Eric were late, so we held the ceremony for them and practiced how we were supposed to accept our certificate- a combination of bows and walking, etc. They ended up missing the ceremony but the rest of us had a tearful moment of two for Hosaka sensei's speech of the semester in review (including how some of us decided to go to Izu during a big typhoon. we all bashfully looked down in shame...) and then Ping gave a speech about his experience, which was awesome. The volunteers came out in droves, which was awesome. At the buffet we all ate and drank (there was fruit! FRUIT!! only if you have lived in japan will you appreciate this sentiment) and took pictures and cried and made general nuisances of ourselves.

that night we had one last bash in Shimotakaido (sans Haydn and Tip, who had left for home right after the ceremony). How we managed to fit 40+ people in a room built for 20 or so, I will never know. We met an underage guy from Barcelona, ran into Chloe and Will again, and spent many hours of merriment.

And, in my opinion, sake tastes like how i imagine warm nail polish tastes. Just saying.

But then it was back home for me, to finish packing and to figure out how i was going to get to the airport to pick up the fam.

Saturday I took an hour taxi ride to the hotel with my masses of luggage filling the cab trunk. From then it was an express train to the airport where i waited for two hours for the rents and bro to arrive. We then got our rail passes and hopped the very cushy green car on the airport train for our hotel.

In the past few days the only japanese i have spoken is ordering food and asking for directions. Oh, the life of a tour guide!

Some moments of our Tokyo Adventure so far:

• edo tokyo musuem was freaking cool. like, i am amazed at how much stuff they have recreated in there. too bad most of the exhibit explanations were in japanese...
• going back to bekkan and seeing the staff and introducing them to my parents
• getting on a very long train (after getting on the wrong one and having the conductor help us out) to see mt fuji but then having it be too cloudy and not seeing it at all.
  
• shopping with the parents around. makes for an interesting experience as they look at japanese fashion...
• being the only one who speaks japanese is interesting. like, a lot of pressure on getting shit done right.

And then yesterday we went to Kyoto! Only one day, but it was still a fun day.

• the bullet train is freaking fast. and if you travel in the green car, you are set for comfort.
• lots of walking hurts, but is cheaper than taking a taxi, even though we had to bow to the taxi's lure b/c one simply does not have the energy or the time to walk 8km.
• Inari shrine is amazing, one has to wonder how the hell they get all those torii gates up on a mountain.
• younger brothers are annoying
• kiyomizu-dera is huge and beautiful. but after a while, you have seen one shrine/temple, you have seen them all
• happening on a huge graveyard, by accident, makes for awesome scenery
• frozen ice and ice cream are never as appreciated as they are after walking around in 30 C heat
• dads buy you swords. chris has a katana, i have twin swords. why? b/c we are cool. be jealous. i just hope we don't have any problems in customs.
• having everyone else in your family see a geisha and you not? that is le suck.
• gion is beautiful. when you step into the streets, if feels as though you stepped through a time portal.
• i wish i could build a golden temple to live in all by myself. i would totally put it on MTV's cribs. yeah, i be pimpin'.
• sleeping on the bullet train is kinda weird. you can still feel how fast it is moving so it makes it feel you are running a marathon on crack in your brain

and today i head out to ginza to meet some friends for cake.

le awesome