woaaaaaah nelly!

testing...ahem...testing 1 - 2 - 3. so here it goes. my long awaited update! soooooooooo...what is new in my life. well sir, I passed a relatively interesting weekend. Well…to me it was relatively normal, but you’d be amazed what you’d consider normal after living in japan for awhile.

First off, on Saturday night I ventured into sendai city and went drinking with a few of my girlfriends. That’s normal enough, but then we were approached by a bunch of Japanese guys. Normally, Japanese guys stay well clear of us foreign girls, unless its with the random “this is a pen” statement. Granted, these guys were drunk...anyways, we ended up going to a bar with them where the conversation consisted mainly of naming off of celebrities that the other person would recognize.

Example conversation between me and a dude named Masa -
Me: do you know Koda kumi?
Masa: yes! Do you know Elton john?
Me: yeah, I know him. Umm…ayumi hamasaki?
Masa: The strokes!
Me: Koizumi (prime minister of japan…my attempt at politics)
Masa: Gu-re-to-fu ze-do
Me: Huh?
Masa: Guuuuu-retofu ZED!
Me - What?! Mo ichido (one more time)
(after a couple more attempts, I finally figure out he was talking about Grateful Dead)

Stimulating stuff eh? Masa’s lucky he’s a good looking guy, or else I might have given up with the conversation long before :-P

The next morning, we headed to kushkino to watch the horse races that were taking place at a local beach. We expected majestic racing horses flying across the glittering sands beneath the beating sun. well…we got the glittering sands and beating sun…the majesty of it all was a bit lacking. First off…the horses were more like ponies/midget horses. most of the riders were taller than their own horses. Second…the horses weren’t flying as much as they were trotting/going the wrong direction/ being dragged by their riders across the glittering sands and beating sun. everyone had a good laugh at it though. Especially when a few riders fell off their horses and had to chase them down the beach. Surprisingly, me and my friends were the only visible foreigners at the races, so we drew a lot of attention from the locals…a lot of weird attention. Some old Japanese dude starts CRAWLING across the sand towards us, and plops himself between lisa and anna. And just SITS there not saying anything, unless it was to me whom he insisted was Japanese. Even when I told him many many times that I didn’t understand, he kept going at me in Japanese. Eventually he got bored, and crawled away.

Later that Sunday evening (you mean there’s more? Of course!), we went back into the city for an easter meal that anna was hosting for our closest friends. Stephanie was there with her visiting husband, who happens to be a paratrooper/intelligence officer for the U.S. army. He was talking about the ranger training he went through (62 days of no sleep or eating), his posting in Afghanistan, leaking military secrets, etc…and then I asked the hard hitting question that was on all our minds “so like…do you read tom Clancy?” which was greeted with the requisite groans from everyone else. Walter Cronkite, eat your heart out!