Final day in Kamogawa!
Mr. Awkward slept in and flaked out on me again, although he did say he probably wouldn’t because he had homework anyway. I ended up running with Brian, which was really good because he tends to set a faster pace. Although, ironically, I had to let him go ahead of me when we got back to the hill leading up to the seminar house – I just did not have the stamina for that. He was nice enough to come back towards the end and make sure I hadn’t “died’. LOL.
I had to give my speech this morning, in which I ranted about Chiroquaky,but it went okay other than the fact that I kept saying さそう instead ofそうさ or 操作. I went first, and because the class was held in the morning instead of the afternoon because we had already finished our regular comprehensive classes, I managed to stay mostly sweat free. Some people really went all out with PPT and such, but I just made a show of writing all the goofy medical terms in my speech.
Lunch was UNA-DON!!!! Yay! Many people, for reasons unfathomable to me, do not like eel, so I stole a few extra pieces =)
At about 2pm, I went out to play tennis with Toni. It was a lot of fun, but 2pm was a piss-poor time to play, with the almost sun directly overhead and no shade to speak of. Plus, Toni ended up keeping as many as 8 tennis balls so she wouldn’t have to keep running after my wild shots. Bah.
I came back completely drenched in sweat and a little fried, but it was a good game.
I watched 恋空 for a while with Amanda and some of her friends on her laptop in our room. It’s a good drama, but they all have one of two plot-lines: Either the boy gets sick, or the girl gets sick, and they always die slowly and sappily in the hospital, and there's this ubiquitous theme of whomever is sick acting like an asshole and alienating their lover, only to reveal later that they "only did it to protect them" so they wouldn't be all weepy when they inevitably kick the bucket. That mentality seems especially common in Asian culture, and it rather pisses me off. On the other hand, I will say that the guy was particularly カッコいい, the dialogue notwithstanding, as it is even more sappy than American soaps.
Afterwards we had a farewell party upstairs in the 食堂.
O…M…GAWD!!!!
There were about four or five tables set up, each with a huge “sashimi boat”, complete with fish heads/tails sticking up in various places, as well as these huge vegetable sushi rolls wrapped in tamago and rolled in a such a way that there were various designs (flowers, pandas) and such in the center. There were also neat little sandwiches, karaage, and melons.
There was a goodbye speech and some raffle gifts given, too.
Afterwards, I talked briefly with Harada-sensei before she left. We talked about “summer feelings”…like the sound of crickets signaling the season and such. I was glad to talk to her one last time.
As people started dispersing to their various drinking/games/both, I joined Ariane, Sheila and one other person down in the multi-purpose room for ping-pong. Given my spectacularly shitty hand-eye-coordination (probably from a lack of playing such games as a child), I sucked for the first half hour, but I was actually doing pretty good after a while, and not just on accident, though I still kept hitting it too far and missing the table.
I was already laughing pretty hard because, among other entirely not-funny-in-retrospect things, people noticed I was hording balls somewhat, as per my intuitive understanding of the factthat I sucked and would therefore need lots in order not to have to chase them all the time, when Mr. Awkward and Stephanie showed up.
The four of us played for a while, and of course Mr. Awkward is making smart-ass remarks and goofing around and not hitting the ball even as well as me, so that set off another giggle fit.
After Ariane, Sheila, and the other girl left, just Mr. Awkward and I were playing, but I was still trying to (unsuccessfully) suppress my giggling, which only made it worse, and eventually I was just choking on my laughter so much I gave up. I’d already been playing for two hours as it was.
Oh well. Definitely no need to exercise tomorrow morning.
I went to bed early, but most people stayed up well into the morning, getting drunk and playing games.
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