The Long Kiss Goodnight

This week has been absolutely crazy. I've doing everything at full speed - working on my work, dancing with my circle, and saying goodbye to people. For Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I think I averaged about four goodbye gatherings a day (usually with just one or two people; I don't actually have a million friends). This saying goodbye business is taking quite a lot out of me; I keep telling people I regret not making more friends and having a girlfriend while I was here to make things more significant in my memory, but on the other hand, shit, I'd have to say goodbye to more people if I had done that. And it's already tough enough as it is.

Thursday (yesterday), I actually went all the way to Matsushima with Tanabe and Maru (two guys from my advisor's thesis seminar) to go to an onsen as a going away party. On the way, we stopped to bat some balls at a batting cage (which, I just incidentally realized is probably the reason I strained the muscle in my left forearm; I'm still dancing despite it since so little time is left, but it's really starting to kill me. Oh well, I'll rest it this coming week) and ate some sushi in Shiogama. We then proceeded to Matsushima; we walked around the little bridges and islands a bit before going off to the onsen which was really huge and nice. It was actually the hotel nextdoor to the glass museum Teruko took me to a couple months ago. On the way back, Tanabe seemed to have the idea that it would be fun to just drive randomally around Matsushima and we ended up driving down this narrow, jungle-y path that wasn't so much a road as tracks in the dirt covered in rocks. We emerged deep, deep in some mountainy countryside that actually ended up being an island. You're probably wondering how we just suddenly found ourselves on an island without realizing it, but it happened. We then drove our car up this hill looking for a certain lookout point and we were clearly going in the wrong direction since this old man was looking at us with this "where the hell are you kids going" kind of look. Tanabe ignored the "do not enter" signs and drove on to yet another jungle path, and we ended up coming to this scary, pitch-black cave. We tried to go in reverse to get back to the road, but a truck suddenly drove up on us, so we just switched on our headlights and dove into the cave. The inside was exactly like that part on the old Universal Studios tram ride where they use that spinning optical illusion to make the cave look like its collapsing around you. It was also a lot like Jurassic Park (as Tanabe pointed out). So okay, we've established that it was basically like Universal Studios, and the other side of the cave was no different. It was a private cove with a few rusted sheds, an old building with broken windows, little fishing boats, and a broken down utility truck with a cracked windshield and plants growing inside of it. I kind of was expecting either a large shark to jump out of the water and eat Maru, a tyrannosaurus to plunge out of the jungle and eat Tanabe, or the old man who was driving the truck behind us and apparently lived there to kill and eat me. Instead, we got back in the car, took some pictures of the cave, and drove away. Then it started raining so we went home.

I also saw my hostfamilies on separate occasions the last couple days. It was insane that so much time had passed since the last time I stayed in those houses, but how much it felt like no time had passed at all. Also, how frustrated I was with Sendai at that time (really, more frustrated with the whole senior citizen life I was living) and how much things have changed since then, what with my whole "I love Sendai I never want to leave" sentiments I've been spewing left and right recently.

Today, Fujii Sensei came to take away most of my furniture, including my desk which explains why I'm sitting on the floor writing this entry right now. I sold most of my stuff to this kid in his graduate seminar for 2,000 yen. Not bad since I was just going to give it away to the recycle store. Oh a note here about second-hand furniture shops here: you just give them your stuff, you don't sell it. It actually costs money in Japan to throw away large trash items, probably because of that whole this-country-is-smaller-than-California space problem, and so it's clearly a better option than that. My apartment is now in that messy mid-move stage, and its really sad. It reminds me a lot of my rooms at Penn, only I feel more attached to this room than any of those rooms. I think when the Shimizus get here today (in a now bizarre clash of my very different Tokyo and Sendai lives here in Japan) it'll be pretty easy to finish up the moving.

Tonight is the last dance event in Sendai I have the chance to go to, appropriately being held at Neo Brotherz, which is the first place I ever went in Sendai two years ago when Akira brought me here for his DJing event. I'm excited - the line-up tonight literally has some of Japan's top-ranked dancers on it, performing alongside the kids in my club, so it should be exciting. And very crowded.

On a very light note, Dave Follette let me know this exists. And not only does it exist, but it's in Tohoku, a mere 45 minute Shinkansen ride away from me. I didn't know my world so easily translated into a Water Park. まゆっぴはけんじワールドって知ってるだろう？盛岡にあるしさ。。今度、俺日本に来てるとき、皆でけんじワールドに行こーぜ！イエイ！