New Sentimentality

It's been awhile. School and a solidifying social life are to blame!

Last week, me and 3 guys took a series of trains and buses to the far side of Kyoto for the harvest moon viewing festival. Apparently there were about a million festivals during the same weekend, because back in seminar house 1, nobody seemed to have any idea what was going on where.
"I'm going to some stone lantern festival in, uh.. somewhere."
"Me and my Japanese friend are heading over to Osaka (vague. Osaka is huge.) for this all-you-can-drink thing."
"I heard there was a huge one in... Japan."
"I don't know when we're leaving. Or when we're going. Or who is going. Or what's there. But we're going!"
Of about 25-30 people who expressed interest in making the trek out to anywhere, only about 7 of us ended up even leaving the seminar house. I suspect that many of them had no intention of doing so in the first place.

This is disappointing. We have three or four 3 day weekends this semester, and it seems like all anyone wants to do on days off is sit on their butts in the dorms. This goes for any weekend!
"Hey, it's so nice out. You wanna go somewhere?"
"Ehhh, I don't really feel like it... I was just gonna chill here."
'Chill' has become the new linguistic excuse for 'be boring as hell.' We did not come to Japan to the majority of our free time making butt-shaped dents in the tatami flooring.

On a related note that will not seem related for at least the next paragraph, I'm in Tottori-ken right now, staying with my friend and personal hero, Jessica. Jessica graduated from my department/college this past spring, and is half the reason I stuck around in Albany for commencement weekend. She's been pretty much the proverbial guiding light since my freshman year of college - majored in Japanese, minored in Linguistics, did a semester at Kansai Gaidai, honorary PhD in Ass-kicking, and now teaching here with the JET Program. Basically everything I want to be, but better! Ha ha.
Anyway, several weeks back, Jessica suggested that I come out for a weekend and get some fresh air during one of the long weekends. Well, the original plan was to do this last weekend, but Bryan had been going on and on about visiting for my birthday since the Pleistocene Era, so I'm here now. Unfortunately, this isn't a 3-day weekend in the sense that there are 3 non-consecutive days off. (Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday.) So yeah, I'm skipping class today, but man, if you could see how beautiful this place is...

You know what, why write this post now, while I'm still here? What a waste!
BRB PARADISE