OK!

Now with an appropriate amount of sleep to back me up, I can update this thing! First of all, let's start with Tuesday!

Class went well, it was our first Japanese culture class. The professor is really nice, and the class is taught in an amusing mix of Japanese and English. Japanglish. Yeah. Afterwards we went back to Hayama seminar house, blah blah blah, and later we decide to go out for ramen for dinner. So we're walking along our merry way to the ramen shop, when out of no where this old Japanese man and this younger American guy come up to us and ask us if we were the exchange students living in the seminar house. We say yes, and the old man says something about how the caretakers are his friends and that we have to come with him RIGHT NOW to the festival for our welcome party. Turns out there was Hayama's yearly festival going on that night.
So we're all but dragged off to the festival by this old guy, who turns out to be a professor at KGU, and his American friend who is... I want to say in the military band. We end up getting food and beer/soft drinks (ew beer) and take it to some... picnic area by the beach where the professor's friend sings us some really traditional songs. Like this:

It was all sorts of awesome.
After listening to him sing, we went off to... the professor's father's friend's house and had a meal with them. I want to say that they're fairly wealthy, because there were tons of food like octopus (delicious) and sashimi (expensive raw fish, also delicious).
Afterwards we went to see the festival parade, which involved an incredibly heavy looking shrine being carried on the backs of a ton of people. But of course, I didn't bring my camera. We were just going out for ramen, after all! So I tried my best to take pictures with my phone, which doesn't take the best night pictures, but...

The parade coming toward us. Urgh, low quality pictures D:

The shrine. I believe it was a Shinto shrine. Yeah it totally was.

The shrine again.

And again.
Since those pictures sucked as far as quality is concerned, here's a nice shot from google of the same kind of shrine:

Yeah, it looked like that. Awesome. By the way, google-image searching 'shinto portable shrine' totally gives you some images from Japan's fertility festival.
Go ahead and give it a search

After watching the festival, we went back to the person's house and ate a bit more, then were escorted back to the seminar house. We got a bit lost on the way, because the professor had had a bit to drink and was chatting on the phone the whole time haha. But we ended up being invited to a party at their house at the end of September, then to a Halloween party at their house as well.
It was just... really crazy! We were really confused as to what had just happened, but really really glad that we had decided to leave for ramen at that particular time.
「一期一会」ということかな

Just a clarification; it was not a creepy situation, it was an awesome one.

Now for yesterday!! So recently Japan was hit by a typhoon. I believe its typhoon number 13, actually. So I was really excited to see rain was expected! Now, in my little google weather watcher thing, it showed me a little picture of a sun covered by a cloud with some rain falling from it. So, that's what I expected. When we left, I had a rain jacket on (thanks KC!) and it was just sprinkling a bit. By the time I got to campus, it was just raining lightly, and it was SO HOT in the rain jacket. DAMN hot, in fact. But THEN when we took a break for lunch...

Hellish invasive rain!!! Regardless of rain jacket or umbrella, we got wet anyway. It continued on like that after class and the whole way back to the dorm! Nice. It was fun though, Emily and I bonded through singing indecent rap songs in the rain. I really have been quite gangsta these past few days.

Then finally last night, we went for ramen. And actually got to eat ramen.

Delicious!

OK so now we're caught up! Soon I'm leaving to go get some lunch before economics. Ho hum, economics. It's really cloudy right now, and considerably cooler (according to google) than the past couple weeks! Wow has it really been that long since I've been here already? Wow...

Well! Mom, Dad, Grammy, Papa, and Eron: Thank you sooo much for my package!!! I miss and love you all!! ♥♥

Well, now I'm off! Hopefully something more interesting than economics class will happen today, otherwise tonight's blog will be really boring.