Imperial Palace Day
Today I actually woke up kinda late. I didn't get up until 9am, and that was only because it was raining pretty hard. I had to get up to shut the windows. Which was good since I had to meet my friend at 10am. I was late for the first time when I was in Japan. I didn't get to the bus stop until 10am, which was when I was supposed to meet my friend. The bus ride was 15 minutes like usual, but the bus was actually late.
I found my friend waiting right where I told her to wait for me. It was pretty cool. I haven't seen her (RSri) in a long while. It's a weird feeling to see people that you haven't seen in a long time. We got on the train platform to go to Tokyo Station. The Tokaido line was very late, which could only mean that there was an "accident." So we used another line to get to Tokyo. By the time we arrived there, it was starting to get hot again. But not as hot as previous days. It was more comfortable.
We stopped at the Ochanomizu Train station and got off to walk around. I took a tour of Meiji university. It was pretty cool, I hadn't walked into a Japanese University before. Japan likes to build universities up high, which is a contrast from building it wide like they do in America. The university was about 23 floors high. It had a good view of the city too. I also took a tour of the cafeteria, which isn't that special, but I did see a lot of girls in high school uniforms. I thought that was kinda weird since it was a university and high school is out on summer break.
Then we proceeded to the National Veterans Shrine. We took pictures a little, and walked over to a castle like area. There was a small stadium which was showcasing Judo and Kendo. We watched for like an hour. It was interesting and there was so many kids doing it. I mean the whole stadium was filled. There had to be at least a couple hundred people there. I'm not sure how many, but there were a lot. It's a very common sport in Japan.
Afterward, we headed to AM/PM to get something to eat and drink. I bought a lot of food since I was starving because I woke up late and couldn't eat breakfast. I bought a sandwich with pork cutlet, pound cake bread, sushi, and gatorade to drink. The first was just average, but the other two were pretty good. We found spot to eat right outside the Imperial Palace. We talked for a long time. It was interesting, I was enlightening my friend of how I was going to teach my English class, and about Japanese politics. It took a good chunk of time. We talked about other things of course.
It got kinda late so we started to walk to Tokyo Station. It started to rain a little, but never ended up pouring. It was a really fun day, and I'm glad that I got to go there. I felt really at peace. The views were great, even though the moat around the palace was disgusting. The walk home from Ofuna station was pretty good too. I stopped in the Oh Plaza! building to the 100 yen store but it was closed when I got to that floor. It was a bummer.
When I got home and opened my windows, I noticed the moon. It was kinda weird because that was the first time that I had seen the moon since I've been in Japan. It reminds me of a lot of things from San Diego.
After that I got started on my 7/11 dinner. I bought cold soba noodles with a soy sauce dip. It's a very traditional dish that they eat in the summer. It wasn't that bad actually and enough to make me full. I just went out to throw out the trash and decided that I should update my xanga before I fell asleep. At first I thought I've been losing weight, but I really think that I've been able to remain the same. Even with all the walking and eating of Japanese food. That's not a really good sign for me since I thought I'd be losing weight.
Tomorrow I will be heading to Yakumo high school and working to get my Certificate of Eligibility to turn into my working visa. It better be done tomorrow because I don't have any other time to take care of it. It will be too late. Actually it is already too late. I was lucky that I could change my schedule around to fit it, but now I really won't be able to. I'm about to go on my Japan Journey all over the place and I physically won't be here to take care of it. Problem is I don't know where to go and when to meet EK. He better e-mail me or I'll be pissed. I didn't want to put my trust in him, but now I'm afraid that I will be let down and suffer the consequences which will be a lot. There is a lot riding on this contract on his end and on mine. Ok, I will go do something else now, I might watch a movie or fall asleep, we will see.
