Monday, Monday...

After an extremely rough night of sleep (the futons were hard, and that buckwheat pillow thing needs to be set on fire...add that to the snorer in our room who woke so many of the dead that I lost count), I got up and decided that I needed to go for another dip in the hot springs. Well, I kind of had to because we didn't have showers in our room, so we at least had to go down to the bathing room. I figured since I had already out myself out there, I might as well go ahead and take a dip. By that point, I was already used to the whole bathing process. It's actually quite liberating in a weird way. Extremely liberating considering the fact that I was the only one down there so I could walk around freely and not scare anyone or myself!

I tried to do breakfast after that. It was a nice set-up, but man, there was a little dish of sardines there, just staring at me! I tried some (because I am trying everything but natto while I am here) and they weren't bad, but I'm not going to rush out and buy any soon. There was the usual rice, seaweed, pickled vegetables, etc...but the weird thing on the table today (minus the sardines) was a bowl of this pale yellow creamy liquid. The host came over and lit a fire under it, and according to Kyoko-san, our fearless leader, I was supposed to let this cook until the fire went out, and then it would be a custard. A soybean custard. A tofu custard that I would put ginger and scallions on. I tried it. I hated it. Yuck.

I finished packing things up and went downstairs. I had seen a massage chair (one of those vibrating kinds) downstairs that you could sit in. 200 yen for 15 minutes. That's a $2 massage, people! I had to do it! I couldn't read anything on the contoller, so I just pushed buttons randomly. Ah, heaven. A girl could get used to this ryokan thing, as long as they brought me toast and Life cereal instead of tofu custard and sardines.

It was time to head off to Tokyo...finally! We crammed ourselves on our little bus and it was off to Ube Airport, where we had flown into a little over a week ago. We stopped at a grocery store (yes!) to get box lunches. These were much better than the box lunches we had eaten previously. The guy who made them came out and talked to us. He had been a travel agent before he went into his bakery/deli business, and has been to the States something like 27 times. Very nice man. Kyoko-san told us that he was happy to speak English with native speakers.

At the airport, I got to eat fugu again because one of the souvenir stands was handing out samples. You can buy fugu all over the place here! It was truly taking life into my own hands to eat fugu at an airport...for free...but I did it anyway. You only live once, right? At any rate, the 24-time period has elapsed and I am still alive, so no worries. Some host families showed up to say goodbye to the people who had stayed with them. I didn't look for mine, because I had a feeling that they wouldn't be there. They didn't disappoint! Luckily, I wasn't the only one whose host family didn't show up, but I think that this lends a little credibility to my host family story. I didn't want you guys to think I was making all of that up or being overly dramatic. They just didn't come. I felt like the last kid picked at the playground or even worse, the dog at the shelter that does not get adopted, even though every other dog did. Oh well. Like I said before, it's over now, and I can close that chapter!


Eating airport fugu

The trip back to Tokyo was uneventful save for landing. That was truly the worst landing I have ever experienced. The plane kind of shifted sideways when it landed. It was crazy. I hope to neer relive that one!

My group wanted to meet right after we got off the airport bus to talk about our presentations. I am in the Culture group for our presentation, and we weren't anywhere close to being finished because of all of the cultural stuff we had experienced over the weekend. The other groups (School and Community) had worked on theirs and were basically finished. They said that we should meet that night to get it done. What? I have a half day free in Tokyo and you expect me to sit around a hotel? Forget it. The presentations weren't until Wednesday, so we had plenty of time. I had decided to go to Yokohama, and nothing was going to change my plans.

Yep, Yokohama. Remember what's in Yokohama? The International Ramen Museum! Woo hoo! It was definitely an adventure. I had to take the subway to the largest train station I have ever been in, and then find the right line to get to Shin Yokohama (New Yokohama). I only got lost once and screwed up my ticket once, so it was okay. Luckily I was by myself so I didn't look like an idiot to a large group of people. Yes, I went by myself. I really needed some alone time, and besides that, people didn't think I was serious about doing this! Anyway, after about 35 minutes, I finally made it to the museum. I had the most amazing bowl of ramen I have ever eaten there. It was so good that I had another bowl. The museum itself was a bit of a disappointment. Maybe if I had at least one more person it would have been okay. Also, the place were you could make your own cup of ramen was closed down, and wasn't there anymore! I was so sad! I was looking forward to creating my own Cup O' Micky, and those dreams went up in pork ramen-flavored smoke. It's about this time that I started to feel guilty, so I decided to head back to Toyko and work with my group. I got there right as they started, so I didn't miss anything. I managed to get my ramen in and make the meeting.

We decided in our group to pick out the pictures showing culture that we loved best and put them in a PowerPoint (sigh) that would change the slides every four seconds. That way, we could show many things and get the most info out without boring everyone to tears. We ended up with 108 slides. We really didn't feel as if we could narrow it down because we felt they were all important. However, when Debi took our presentation to the people who put themselves in charge of the presentation, they immediately said we had too many...couldn't we cut it down to like 20? What?!?! They wanted narration for each slide, whereas we were content to do a general overview and then let the pictures do the talking. Very frustrating. Debi said they cut it down to around 50 or so. What stinks is that they arbitrarily cut the slides. They don't know why we picked each one. Let me tell you, I am so ready to get away from some of these people! Too many Type A, domineering personalities in that group! I had gone back to my room after we had originally met in our groups, and Debi filled me in on most of this Tuesday morning. I started to rearrange bags and began to sort things in preparation for packing. Thursday is right around the corner!