In the past 5 days I have done many things.  I have felt like I was going to get sick.  I have gone to the former pleasure district of Kyoto and noticed that it retains none of the professions that used to be practiced there (or so it seemed), I’ve nearly gone crazy due to the jingles they play in large chain stores, and other things of that sort.

Life is starting to become normal.  It’s normal that I wake up at 6:20 and eat breakfast.  Commuting to and from school is normal, all the things that I do every day that I didn’t back home have become normal for me, as has the fact that I’m in Japan. 

Things worth noting this past week is that I made a Japanese friend.  On tuesday we had a thank you lunch for the Doshisha students who assisted us during orientation.  Only a few showed, but some of my friends and I ended up talking to this one guy who was really cool.  We ended up having lunch a day together a day or two later.  I haven’t heard from him since, but I plan on suggesting we play smash bros together.

I found some decent engrish, finally.

Today I went down to Osaka, with the intention of going to the Pokemon center.  Online it said that it was a seven minute walk away from the Hankyu Umeda Station.  Ok, I thought, easy enough.  I got lost for two hours, just walking around Umeda station until I finally found it…and was sorely disappointed.  “But Simon!” I hear you say, “How can you have been disappointed by the Pokemon Center?!  It’s the Pokemon Center!!”  You are right to ask this of me, because by all rights it should be a bastion of awesome.  Alas, it is not, for all it contains is merchandise related to the latest pokemon release: White and Black.  Oh, and Pikachu.  But that’s it.  No pokeballs.  No Mudkip Plushies.  No cool shirts with one of the hundreds and hundreds of other pokemon on them.  just a lot of plushies of the most recent starter pokemon, and a couple of other odds and ends.  I was severely disappoint.

So now the question arises: how do I spend my time while here?  A dumb question?  Maybe.  But what do I do with the 3-4 extra hours I have in between Japanese and Visual Arts on Tuesdays and Thursdays?  What do I do on Fridays after Japanese when people are on field trips and I have 4-5 hours to kill before they finish and are free to hang out?  Even when everyone is free early in the day on Friday, what do we do?  What about weekends?  What if I don’t have much homework?  What if I have a day to kill, like today?  As of right now I’ve already spent a bunch of time doing standard things like exploring temples and shrines and just wandering, so what else is there to do?  Maybe I’ll walk around Kyoto wearing a white t-shirt that says, in Japanese of course, “Talk to me.  I’m nice.”