An American Still in Tokyo-The Second Year

It snowed today...a lot! When I left my dorm this morning it was just beginning to flurry and by the time I got to school, there was a thick dusting of snow on the ground. And while we were taking our exams, snow totally covered the ground. It`s been sort of a roller coaster these past 24 hours...hearing about tomorrow`s end-of-the-semester Kura Sushi event (all you can eat for free thanks to Soka!!), then finding out that I couldn`t go because of Berlitz (I was so mad at Berlitz last night! I was wishing I had never agreed to work there), then the snow, and then finding a way to be able to go to Kura Sushi tomorrow (thanks to the snow, which Annie called a gift from God--I call it a gift from the snow gods) and getting stuff figured out as far as work. Today I saw my `boo`...got to exchange a few words (sigh)...I`m sooo living in a dream world! Anywayz, the haikus I wrote at Moss Burger got me wanting to write some more....I`m in a cheesy haiku/poem kick ;-)


Scenes from my shower (as if you wanted to know):

A bubble floats

From my bar of soap

Landing on my shoulder

While riding my bike:

While wearing blue gloves

She carries the song of the cricket

Then all is silent

Ok, so they`re cheesy...but it`s my blog and I can cry if I want to! But don`t worry....I will try not to torture. My object, after all, is to inform and hopefully entertain.

Last night, the "six-pack" (Tsveti, Tomi, Jojit, Brian, Don, and I) hung out at Moss Burger (what a wild bunch we are!). Tsveti suggested writing haikus, but I was the only one who did....I actually wrote two, so here are my silly haikus:


Sitting with my friends

Just broke my ichi man yen

Tiramisu cake

Awkward silences

When in love or otherwise

`Till someone breaks it

In the past day and a half, I`ve had two men in my room. Yes, you heard right: not just one, but TWO men. (For the uninformed: that is a big deal in the Soka dorm, not to mention forbidden usually). They were my otoosan (dorm father) and the repairman (ooh, that sounds kinky!). But before your minds go into the gutter, I shall explain: Three nights ago, I was kept awake by my heater making strange noises (loud humming noises, that is) and a strange funky smell (that`s another story). I thought of how I have kept my heater on since coming back from Nagano and figured that before going to class, I should turn off the heater and give it a break. Well, of course, I forget to, but I figured, no big deal. Later on that day, I came back, to find a pink post-it note by my name on the sign in/out board, which is usually the sign that a package has arrived. So I call my okaasan (dorm mother), and much to my dissapointment and embarassment, she proceeded to tell me that my heater was making so much noise that she could hear it from her room downstairs, so she had to go into my room (using a spare key, I suppose) and turn off the heater. She then discovered that my heater (which is right outside my room) was encrusted with ice! So she had otoosan go up to my room with a step ladder, so he could scrape the ice off the heater. He not only climbed up the step ladder but he stood on the ledge of my balcony....and this is a 67 year old man who last month had heart surgery! I wanted to die. I almost literally held my breath, not daring to move, ready to jump up and grab him if he toppled over. I was SO relieved when he finally climbed down. He told me that a repairman would come the next day at 1:30pm (or so I understood), so the next day, I was still in bed at 12:30, figuring that I would have plenty of time to get up, get dressed, and clean my room. But I decided to get up anyway, and happened to take a peek outside when I saw my otoosan, okaasan, and the repairman below my balcony, pointing up at my room! So I quickly turned away and had to get dressed in a hurry. Embarrassingly enough, the repairman came in to an untidy room, so I was making my bed and shoving stuff in the closet while he was there. Afterwards, I posted a sign to myself by the heater remote control that reads TURN OFF HEATER WHEN GOING OUT. Anywayz, my heater was supposedly fixed, but last night, my heater started making noises again and woke me up at 6:30 (even though it did not impede my almost perfect dream, which I`ll write about later, maybe), so I turned the heater off then later turned it on again, but was making noises again so I turned if off, then I turned it on again but turned it off shortly after (to go to my part-time job at Chit Chat Club) before it made more noises again. So my heater drama continues....