So today turned out to be a pretty interesting day. Got up at 7:30am, hit my alarm a couple times, then got all dressed up for the upcoming speech that I would have to make infront of 80% of my classmates. Naturally, of the 36 speeches that would be taking place, I was #34. So, I had to wait from 8:50am to around 11:45am to do my speech. Needless to say I was pretty nervous when it finally came around to being my time to go, however once I was in to it I thought I did fairly well. Had to read from my note cards that I made probably 50% of the time, but compared to my classmates, I had fairly good eye contact with the audience. Only messed up a couple times, only because I was nervous, not because I didn’t know it. I expect a fairly good grade on it.

After the speech was over, I went back and crashed in my room for a bit. Couldn’t really figure out what to eat so I ended up munching on some rice and pocky. After watching some anime I took a short nap. Getting up around 3:30pm, I didn’t have anything else to do so I watched some more anime while writing some Christmas cards. Then, at 5:40pm, I met up with Cassidy to meet her conversation partners so that we could go out to eat at an Italian restaurant (Japanese Itallian food…I wasn’t sure what it would be like), so we sat in the lobby and froze to death for about a half an hour waiting, until finally only one of her conversation partners showed up around 6:15pm (15 minutes late). She told us that Kimi’s (Cassidy’s other conversation partner) husband’s father was in a car accident so Kimi had to go visit him in the hospital. So it was just Cassidy and I, and Hiromi and her daughter this time. The restaurant that we went to, called Cannery Row, was a cute little place that had a lot of decorative trees lining the path to the doorway. When we went in, there was an awesome buffet-style spread of delicious Italian looking food. We were seated at a table, and then (luckily) Hiromi suggested what was best to eat (since the menu was all in Japanese, and we just didn’t feel like trying to read it..). She ordered cheese fondue, and a rice and cheese dish served similarly to fondue (the name was like Rizosomethingorother), as well as two sides of spaghetti that the four of us would share. The cheese fondue was pretty good, and I don’t know that I’ve ever had before, or at least I don’t remember ever having it before. The rice and cheese combination was pretty good as well. One thing that was kinda neat/annoying about the restaurant was the fact that the waiters and waitresses, every time I went up to the buffet to get more juice or more soup, they would pop out of no where and try to get me to give them my only slightly dirty plate/cup/fork. They had a pink grapefruit juice that I tried, and it was so sour I had to add two packs of sugar too it. The deserts were also great, I got a piece of cheesecake, some chocolate cake, and some fruit tart. Hiromi was so nice and paid for everything (all 9100yen of it), and after we thanked her profusely, we got back into her car. (All the while that we were driving around, the gas gauge was on E and the empty tank warning light was on…I was thinking the car was going to run out of gas for sure.)

While in the restaurant, Hiromi’s daughter was quizzing us on some things in Japanese, and they were trying to tell us what a ‘purikura’ was. I vaguely recognized the word, but didn’t know what it meant, so after dinner we got in their car and headed out to discover what it meant. We drove over to Viva City and headed into the game center, where we figured out what a ‘purikura’ was. It was those photo machines that you stand in and get group photos made. It would be an understatement that they are HUGE in Japan, probably mostly among the female population. The four of us all piled into one and got some pictures of us posing and doing the peace sign (the quintessential Japanese photo pose), and after we had chosen all the options and the pictures had been taken, we then went out of the booth where we got to alter the pictures to our heart’s content. You could add hearts and stars, doodle or write in a date, anything you wanted. They are very cool. After the pictures printed out, Cassidy and I did some together. One of the poses we did had a background of a train, and in the effects adding stage, I added a cool foreground of the window of the train and the back of people’s heads, so it looks exactly like we are standing in a train! After finishing with the ‘purikura’ machines, we wandered around the game center some more and played a few games. Cassidy and I hit the Taiko Drum Master, and then tried to win candy in some UFO catchers (I ended up with one piece ). After wandering around some more, we finally left (passing through the movie theater on the way, which had tons of posters up for King Kong…I MUST see that…maybe while I’m in Tokyo).

The drive back to JCMU was pretty uneventful, until we were about 10 minutes away. Turning at the end of Bell Road, there were two fire trucks, lights on and everything, waiting for the light to change. We thought this was a bit strange but didn’t think much of it, until we got back to JCMU to find 3 fire trucks parked in the drive infront of the dorm building!! Uh oh. Hiromi parked the car and we ran to the group of students that had evacuated from the dorm building. We would see lights inside and I could see my room, so it looked like maybe it was a false alarm. But once we chatted with the students we found out that there had been a fire in one of the 1st floor dorms. Apparently one of my classmates was making tenpura for a little Christmas party that was going on in an adjacent room, and after about an hour of going back and forth making tenpura and then delivering it, the pan of oil was left on the burning and was forgotten. Unfortunately, it got so hot that it started a grease fire. When someone opened the door to the room, a lot of smoke poured out which set off all the fire alarms causing 4 people to call the fire department (including a cook from Coco’s who apparently raced into the building with a fire extinguisher). When Cassidy and I got into the building we found a lot of firemen and I’m assuming fire inspectors wandering around the 1st floor, inspecting the room and turning off the power/gas in the room. The hallway was covered in pink fire extinguisher dust, and the room was caked in it. The tile around the kitchen was black from the smoke, and a shelf, light, and exhaust fan have been melted. Unfortunately, the room closest to the kitchen was of the roommate that was not there at the time, and since his room door was open, everything is now covered in pink dust. Luckily, no one was hurt in there end things are more dirty than damaged, but to have your room almost destroyed the week of finals totally sucks. While it was stupid to leave a pot full of grease on full power on the stove, it wasn’t done intentionally, and I know the person that did it is feeling really guilty right now. So if you’re reading this, it was just an accident and it’s ok! No one got hurt and now JCMU has an excuse to add some nice new things to one of the rooms! Plus, you gave those us of present some free entertainment.