If I had to describe the last four days in one word, it would be...

OW.

Wait, that's not it, let me try that again.

OW.

No, that's still not quite right. One more time...

OOOWWW!!!!!

Let me go over this in more detail:

Wednesday was the beginning of all the madness. After classes, I went to the first Soul Run practice. (For those of you that don't remember, this is a traditional fisherman's dance from Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island.) IT WAS FREAKING INTENSE. We spent two hours practicing the first thirty seconds (give or take) of the four minute dance, which involves a lot of squatting and jumping up and down. For those of you that are interested, there's a video of the club's performance from last year here. And yes, I WAS doing that for two hours on Wednesday. OW. My thighs were EXTREMELY displeased.

After that I wandered over to Katie's apartment with her and hung out until about 6:50 when I had to head over to head over to ICU for the Taiko workshop. (This involved me riding tandem with James which was actually LESS successful than when I rode with Lisa... which should not have been possible. But hey, it got me to school, so, you know, whatever.) There, we watched the group's performance from last year and got psyched up for this year. Then they took us into the club's main practice room where they proceeded to teach us the last half of the last of four parts of the piece Kazematsuri (風祭り/Wind Festival), of which we'll be playing about half at the ICU festival in about two months (six weeks? I'm actually not sure). Even though we only practiced for about forty minutes, my arms were pretty displeased with me. I didn't get back to the house until about 9:00 which was kinda obnoxious but, you know, whatever....

Thursday was just class, but because I have a 4 hour seminar in the afternoon I was at ICU until 7:00 and didn't get home until after 8:00.

Yesterday (Friday) was Soul Run Round 2 which was WAY fun but still a bit painful because I still hadn't totally recovered from Wednesday--ugh, it was BAD. But the former president (who's kinda cute, btw) praised my enthusiasm (read: how LOUD I am) because the boys I was learning the dance with were failing at shouting and I was the only one making noise when we were supposed to. It made me happy. :D Also got to chat with Anna-Marie in the evening which was WONDERFUL, aside from the bit where I kept her up until something like 2 or 3 in the morning her time. SORRY, SUNSHINE!!!

Today was weekend Taiko practice, for which I had to get up about half an hour earlier than I do for classes. Practice started at 9:00 in the morning and we were there until 12:30. The current members taught us the rhythms for (portions of) the two songs we'll be playing (Kazematsuri and Kakeru) and, because we're all awesome and figured out the patterns faster than they expected, also taught us some of the dynamicsfor the song--crescendos and the like. It was tons of fun, of course, but I'm going to be in SO MUCH PAIN ALL WEEK. My arms hurt in places that I'd forgotten had muscles since I quit soccer almost three years ago. Plus, there's a lot of body motion involved in the dynamics, which means there's a lot of bouncing up and down and working my thighs even MORE, on top of yesterday's Soul Run practice. Seriously, my thighs are going to be SUPER STRONG by the time I'm done with Soul Run/Taiko/riding the bike everywhere. But, hey, I'm learning a bunch and having a blast, so I'm DEFINITELY not complaining. :D

In other news...

I REMEMBER WHAT I DID LAST MONDAY!!! I went over to Tachikawa with the woman I met at the Fuji onsen about 6 weeks ago. (Gosh, has it really been six weeks since Fuji? Sometimes that feels like ages ago, and sometimes it's just yesterday) She took me to see a temple (I'm 99% sure it was Buddhist) and showed me around. I didn't get a chance to take any pictures though, because I was too busy trying to figure out what was going on, but it was absolutely GORGEOUS. After she showed me around the temple that she usually goes to, we went to the central temple and got me (and the entire Bessesen family) signed up to be associated with the temple. Yeah, I hadn't really intended to do that, but it was another one of those "she's shoving a piece of paper in my face whatdoIdowhatdoIdo?!?!" moments and, as before, I just kinda went with it. So, yeah, it was cool. Also, there was a REALLY cute guy helping us out when I was getting signed up, so that helped. :D

After that, I met Okaa-san at Asagaya station and she took me out to Ikebukuro to see her friend Hiroko perform--she's an opera singer. This was just a vocal performance though, not a whole opera. It was WAY fun, although we were out kinda late. And, yeah, that was Monday. Kinda can't believe I forgot about that... *sheepish*

ANYWAY, I think that's all from my front. Oh, aside from the fact where apparently I didn't communicate my schedule to my host family well enough and am now missing school on Monday to go to Hiroshima. Whatever, IT'S HIROSHIMA and MONDAY'S A FREAKING NATIONAL HOLIDAY, so WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE SCHOOL ANYWAY (ICU's just being LAME), so I FEEL JUSTIFIED. *nod* So, yeah, I guess you guys know what the next post is gonna be about... :D Won't be up for a few days though, so JUST SIT TIGHT!!!

Take care, all!!

~ Anna