Look at me Hoola dance!

*Note, this post is about Thursday, but written Friday; no time to write, and no internet to upload*

So, after sitting at Starbucks for a while, I left. Didn’t drink a single drop extra of the coffee. 300yen wasted…
I don’t quite remember WHERE I went (and I probably didn’t know, either). I think I just decided to walk. Walk, walk, walk. Got off track (if there every was one), and ended up somewhere. That’s as close as I can get. Somewhere. Just looking. Then I thought I would go back to the park. Did I mention that? Sannou Park.

Why are people jogging at 2.30 in the night? For some reason, they were. On the contrary, they were probably thinking for themselves “Dafudge is a tourist doing here? She an idiot? Lost?”. I don’t blame them. I tried to get a few moments of rest on a bench, as my feet hurt BADLY from 6 hours of walking with all my baggage, though it got too cold, pretty soon.
I did a little math, and found that I’d now gone 34 hours with only about 4 hours of sleep. Gweatness. Going from lying down to sitting up was enough to make me sick again, but I was cold, so I could stay still for long.

The rest of the night was spent walking a little more, and around 4.30AM I headed for a tiny shop for some breakfast. 4.30AM!
The train station had finally opened a few hours later, and I found a train for Oita. 6.23. Didn’t get too sick this time, as far as I recall.
Arrived at Oita, found a train for Taketa, and a couple of hours later, I was finally there!

I really wanted to go to the onsen (hot spring bath) first, but it was closed – so I had to go greet my host family (I’ll just call them that) with greasy hair. Ohwell…

Nothing has really changed during these two and a half years. I found the the shop very soon, took a look inside, and there was Shinji. I approached slowly, probably with a bit of a smirk on my face. He the looked up, said “konnichiwa~!”, and then looked at me a little puzzled… Then it hit him!
Shinji: “Could it be…?”
Me: "”Long time, no see!”
Then he gave me a big smile, a big hug and said:
”I didn’t recognize you at first! You’ve gained weight!”

Well, it isn’t quite untrue…

ANYWAYS! Shinji saw me, and a few others I recognized saw and greeted me as well. Shinji quickly rushed me in their car to take me somewhere. That somewhere was where Reiko was. At an ikebana class (flower arrangement). In my less than optimal condition, I was introduced to 10-20 people there, all people I hadn’t met before (except Reiko). I was sat next to the flower arrangement teacher; a very nice, quite young man, who had a very calm voice. We talked about – surprise! – flowers and ikebana. I know ikebana is flower arrangement is, but I never knew about the philosophy and thoughts behind it (I’ll tell you if you ask; it may be a little boring).

Long story short, the teacher offered me the arrangement he’d made (honor!), and Reiko took me with her home. I was then offered lunch (and I was super hungry. Hadn’t had anything since my breakfast at the ungodly early 4.30AM).
”You came at a very good time!”, Reiko said. “We’re having sort of a mini-festival tonight, because a god is leaving our home today, and moving on to someone else’s!”
- Just my luck! And I really mean that in two ways. Opposite. It’s super awesome and fantastic that I get to (and that they let me) participate in such an even, but it could barely have been on any worse day!

It was awesome. It was truly amazing. You thought Japanese were quiet, maybe even a little stiff and boring? –WRONG! I had a blast with them! They truly aren’t scared of making fun of themselves. Reiko has 9(!) siblings, and I' met at least seven of them, now. One had an input in the festivities, dancing and singing in a sort of archaic Japanese, comical way.
We also had an absolutely STUNNING meal. Three kinds of sashimi (sliced, raw fish), fried salmon, Japanese potato salad, steamed tofu with something I didn’t remember what was called, but was a savory sauce with vegetables, miso soup, rice and tsukemono (traditional Japanese pickles).

Everyone was very impressed that I apparently eat just about anything; usually, there’s quite a lot of things many foreigners don’t like. There’s nothing I refuse to eat, and so far, I haven’t really come across anything I didn’t like. In short, I’m not picky.

Since it was a weekday, it didn’t go on into the wee hours, but that was just good for me – I was absolutely KNACKERED! I caught myself, doing an input by a guy doing sort of  a quiz done in archaic Japanese (thus I didn’t understand any of it), I must have closed my eyes for a second, and suddenly realized I couldn’t hear anything (i.e., I was off to Dream Land).

At the end, we sang a few songs (read: they did; I just read along, and yes, I could read most of it *F yeah!*).
After that, pretty much nighty-nighty. This post is already quite long. Next will be pretty much all pictures! If I have this much to tell every day, I’ll never get done writing!

… I’m forgetting something, aren’t I? Hoola dance. Yeah. One of the women amongst the guests apparently thought it would be an absolutely brilliant idea to include other people in HER hobby – hoola dance. Being super exotic as I am, they threw one of those hideous flower wreath over my head, and dragged me up to join. It was more humiliating for me to reveal my non-existent dancing skills in front of so many people I didn’t know. Never will it happen again.

I don’t dance, I don’t sing, and I rarely ever wear dresses. Finish.