Now, that I have your attention, let me tell you about the Osaka Zoo. This was an adventure planned through Nadia for Sunday. My host family wanted to take me to Kyoto, but I'd already promised Nadia I'd go with them to the zoo, so I had to skip out on the fun with the host family (not a huge loss, I was quite relieved actually) . But in order to skip out I had to tell my host family EXACTLY when I was leaving, so I mailed Nadia via cellphone during dinner and got the reply, "around 10ish". So I got up and out of the house to meet them in Hirakata by 10 and instead got there around 9:45, making me early, which I know is stupid with a group of people that's always late. So I hung around, waited, got some breakfast, mailed Nadia and waited. Eventually I got a few replies just as I was about to give up and go to Osaka on my own and I finished up my breakfast while I coutinued to wait. Breakfast was actually kinda cool, I had a coffee from a can called, "Depresso" and some bread that was like cheese cake/pound cake that had a picture of Hokkaido (northern most island of Japan) on it. It was all quite yummy, so atleast I had that going for me. Eventually they showed up around 11. Yeah, I waited over an hour for these guys, but atleast they were super nice and apologetic. Another thing that threw me off that morning was the people that showed up where not the people I was expecting. Nadia and Drew were there, but everyone else were people I didn't really know. The total crew was: Nadia, Drew, Me, Charlene (girl from UF, but I dont know her that well), Craig (from photo shoot out), Lettica and Doug. Then there were three Japanese students: Sho (aka Nice Guy), Aki (guy) and a girl who's name I never heard and I felt bad I didn't really talk to her. There were 10 of us, so right off the bat we all got a number and would randomly count off in Japanese to make sure we were all together.
The Zoo was on the other side of Osaka so we had to take a train to Kyobashi and get off to take the JR line over to the zoo. Once we got off the train we bought tickets for the zoo, got maps and then had to walk a good half mile around this park that had huge glass walls around it. Prompting Craig to say, "If you look to your left you can see the Japanese in their natural habitat." which was funny to everyone including the Japanese folks. When we did get there we all went off to the left and spent a good four hours there looking at everything, posing and just having fun. I found out Drew LOVES zoos, just as much as she does Family Guy, The Pirates of Penzance and Rocky Horror, so aside from singing randoms songs and Family Guy quotes we had a great time looking at the animals. I tried to restrain myself on the picture front, so Flickr has most of the animal pictures I got, plus a few classics:
We wrapped up the zoo and everyone wanted to head home, but mid-way to the train station Nadia saw an arcade with a DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) machine and had to stop. We had a good time playing DDR, I challenged Lettica to some Taiko drummer, which was great, and we tried some UFO (Grabber) machines. They were still hanging out there when I realized that I'd said I'd be home in about an hour and I was still in Osaka so I split and headed home early.
Now for the Butt Pillow story. I have a bunch of posts I'm working on that just describe general life here and other random stuff that happens that doesn't fit into the category of "I did x, y and z this weekend". One of these things was going to be the bed situation, but since most of you guys have heard me complain at length about it, it's been mostly explained. You see, most of my friends I talked to that did homestay here have or had beds or cots that were bed-like objects, but apparently I'm special. My house only has one room with tatami mats, but everyone sleeps on the floor. So everynight I go over to the closet and take out 4 folded mats and blankets (along with Woofy) and lay them out and fuss with them until I can go to sleep. I recently bought a little puffy futon mat to stick inside one of the others to soften it up a bit and it helps. There's two mats that I'm supposed to sleep on with a big comforter to go over top, but since it's hotter than heck here and I don't like how hard it is I solved both issues by folding up the comforter and sleeping ontop of it and just using my blue blanket from home. When I first got here they gave me two pillows, one was like a normal cotton pillow and the other was like a beanbag from hell. Honestly, it didn't feel comfortable, it was smaller than the other one and I didn't know what to do with it, so I never used the thing.
It was last week sometime just before the Little Brother (host mom's little brother) showed up that it was getting late (11pm or so) and I'd been up in my room for a few hours either playing DS, doing homework, etc. Well, I wanted to go to sleep so I went over to my closet to get said items and pulled everything out, but I couldn't find a pillow. I couldn't find EITHER pillow. This left me sad and confused because a) everyone was asleep and b) who would take my pillow. Why would they take my pillow and leave me with nothing? That's a pretty outwardly dick thing to do. So after pondering this problem for a while and just when I was about to fold up Woofy and sleep on him I got the guts together and decided to go to my closest neighbor and buddy, Soji (host brother). I went to him because he is the closest to my room and I can always tell when he's awake (we share a balcony so I can see the light's on) and I can hear him watching TV most times too. I knocked and got a confused Soji, I tried to explain the situation and even after looking up the word for pillow, it still didn't make anysense to him either. His first response was to close the door and come back with a stuffed animal (??) of an apple, it wasn't a pillow and it's not an animal, but hopefully you get the picture. I tried to explain again and he followed me into my room and helped me sift through all the mats and blankets and we both came up empty. At this point we were both laughing at this situation, who takes a pillow? Who the heck do you ask? Well Soji had the answer to this, the only person doing cleaning around the house was Okaasan so he snuck downstairs and nudged her awake to ask about my pillow. I tried to stop him at this point because I didn't want to piss her off, but he said she wouldn't get mad. She said she'd cleaned it and forgot to put it back so we'd look for it tomorrow. In the meantime though, I could use one of the pillows from the dining/living room. Soji grabbed me one and handed it over still chuckling about the fact that Okaasan had "ninja-ed" my pillow. He went off to bed and I was left with this new pillow. Now, let me explain, this is NOT the same pillow you might have in your rocking chair, couch, sofa, loveseat, etc. This is a zuton, which is what you sit on when you're eatting or watching TV because you're sitting on the floor. I was left with what will forever be known as, "A Butt Pillow".
Not having much else to do, but use the pillow I decided atleast I could put a barrier between me and butt pillow, so I used my pink Myles Reis shirt Sean gave me as a pillow case. Sorry, Sean, this isn't a reflection on me feelings towards your present it's just that it's the biggest shirt I have and it does make a fetching pillow case. To explain to everyone who isn't in a homestay, this pillow is just fine and I still use it because Okaasan never did find me my old pillow, which is fine by me because I didn't like it that much anyway. The Butt Pillow is clean, comfy and doesn't smell bad (when I said this to Kim when I was explaining how it wasn't that bad, she said, "You SMELLED it?!", yes I sniffed it. I was going to put my face on it, I had to know if it was safe!) Still, my hostmom took my pillow and after working for a replacement I got a butt pillow. If there was one thing to start off my week wrong, I think that's it.
Now it's Wednesday and I think I'll get something to eat, I have class in an hour, and I've been avoiding snacking during the day because the scale at my host family hasn't been kind. Long story, but converting from kilograms is a pain. I've had a pretty good day today and lots of fun tests tomorrow!
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