成人式

Monday I woke up early to go to the Seijinshiki held in my neighborhood. This is a festival held every year on the second Monday of the year. It celebrates the people who came of age in the previous year. When I registered for my alien card, I think I was entered into a database of all the people living in the area. Therefore I got a letter inviting me to the party. My host family told me I should attend because it is basically a once in a lifetime event. The attire was supposed to be formal so I ended up wearing my black pants and my blue blazer jacket. It really doesn't count as a suit, but I'm a foreigner so it's alright. In any case it was cold outside so I wore my hat, scarf, and coat.

When I got to the town center I saw tons of girls wearing very expensive kimonos. The guys were not so dressed up at all (a suit or something here or there) so I did not feel out of place in that respect. I did feel out of place by the fact that I was a foreigner and did not know anybody. I must have heard "hisashiburi" (lit. it's been a long time) probably 50 or so times throughout the day. It seemed that everyone was traveling with a group of 20 or so people which made it hard to butt-in and talk to them.

I went to the auditorium for the 11am presentation. Some guy started off the presentation by talking about how great it is that we are all adults, that we can now he considered legal, and that we need to start figuring out what to do in the future. Afterwards the higher-ups in town introduced themselves and also made a little speech of similar intentions. A video was shown next with 3 famous people who came from the neighborhood wishing us good luck. I did not recognize them, but could tell that they must have been famous by the "awe" feeling in the crowd. Finally, there were a group of cheerleaders from the local university that put on a show. They were really good. We are talking holding someone up 3 girls high good. I would have taken a video, but the battery in my camera was starting to go dead.

After the presentation was over, there were booths handing out various things to the kids congratulating them. Some of the better gifts were mochi and donuts. I ate them both by myself trying to scout out some people to talk to. While sitting down some people sat next to me and I started up a conversation. They were floored that 1. I could speak Japanese fairly well and 2. I was also legitimately attending the party. On the way out these two girls took my picture so I had to return the favor ^_^



Sadly I did not actually make any friends at the party. It was just so hard to meet people that already had a huge group of friends!

Afterwards I headed to Shinjuku to meet Mike. He wanted to hang out while we still had a chance before finals. We picked up a quick bite to eat at the eki and went to Ueno. Once there we visited the Museum of Science and History. They had all the animal skeletons, space exhibits, and activities. It was really fun, but by this time the battery in my camera died so I only got a few pictures. We really wanted to go to the robot exhibit next door, but it was approaching closing time and was really crowded. I plan on going next week when I have free time.

We also went out to rotating sushi afterwards. Ueno has some really good places that are 128 yen for every single plate on the belt. It was delicious. We wandered the streets of Ueno for a while before returning to Baba. I wanted to play Aquarian Age for a bit. I ended up convincing Mike to get a Konami card as well. It's a little red IC card that saves your data on a bunch of the arcade machines. I got home around 9ish and ate some delicious Oden with my host family.

Today I had class again. Ugh. I failed to read the chapters for today in Genji as I had a paper to write for the same class. This caused me to pay even less attention than normal. She is expecting us to read over 200 pages to finish the book this week! Impossible I tell you! I also picked up a copy of Haruki Murakami's book "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" for my song class. He said there would be an essay relating to the book (probably 30% of the test grade) so I figured it would be good to pick up. I was planning on reading a couple of books by him anyways, so this gives me a good excuse to start.