I can't seem to catch up with this blogging thing anymore...

Okay, sumo.

My program emailed us a couple weeks before the tournament saying they would buy us tickets to see sumo if we wanted to pitch in 1000yen. Since the tickets were 4900yen this was a super good deal. I decided to go since, hey, I'm in Japan and sumo is a very Japanese sort of experience.

It's a rather interesting sport though like baseball you get a few moments of motion and excitement followed by waiting for something to happen for a while. This is because they do their sumo stomp thing, look at each other, walk to the side of the ring so they can throw salt on it, look at each other, throw more salt, stomp, throw salt, stare at each other, then finally they actually wrestle. It's a very slow process. So I actually left a bit early since I got bored... I have some pictures for you though.

These are the top-ranking wrestlers I think. Sorry it's a bad picture. I was at the top of the stadium...

Here's an actual match. If you step outside that ring you can kind of see, you lose. You also lose if you fall down.

Following sumo was a week of school, normal hanging out, and babysitting. Nothing to report there. Then the weekend happened and it was pretty busy. Saturday I hung out with my friend Caitlin in the Baba area (the are near Takadanobaba station for those who don't know my Tokyo slang). And guess what? We got haircuts! Not a great picture I know, but I'm not very good at taking pictures of myself. Caitlin and I tried to get one of us together but it was so windy that day that you couldn't actually see what our hair looked like.

Sunday is the really exciting bit though. We went to DISNEYLAND! By "we" I mean Lydia, Rachel, Sacchan (he did karaoke with me, see the Golden Week post if you don't remember), and Hide (don't worry, I haven't mentioned him before since I didn't know him).

Sadly, the weather was not ideal, but it managed to not rain (probably because we all brought our umbrellas) so that was good. We went on the Star Wars ride, drove little cars and little space shuttles, went on Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Snow White ride, the Buzz Lightyear ride (where I totally sucked at shooting stuff), and probably a couple other things that aren't surfacing at the moment. We wanted to do Space Mountain, but it was closed! For renovations or something like that. Sad.

Here we have a photo of our group in front of the Mickey statue. From left to right is Sacchan (his actual name is Satoru), Hide, Rachel, and Lydia. Look like we're having fun, don't we?

Here we have Belle and her prince on one of the parade floats. Now let me tell you how Japan and America are way different. This picture was taken from a sitting position. Seriously. About three meters deep was apparently the "sitting section" to watch the parade. People just sat on the ground (or more commonly on sheets of newspaper so they could take their shoes off...go with it). Then behind this "sitting section" was the "standing section". Lydia, Rachel, and I discussed how in America everyone would be standing and trying to get the best vantage point, but everyone at this parade was super polite. I love that about this country.

Also, Belle appears to be a foreigner. I wonder if it's a fun job? Because I would do it. That or drive one of the giraffes that were in the Lion King section of the parade.

And here we have Sully waving at us. I like it when I get good pictures like this. A lot of my photos from the parade are a tad blurry due to the whole moving thing. I took several videos too since that was easier, but they take forever to upload so they aren't all going in here. Sorry, I'm an impatient person.

And finally we have a lovely picture taken at night. It actually came out a lot better than I thought it would. I was worried the castle wouldn't show up. As it is, it looks rather pretty and fairytale-esque I think.

Sadly the wind was super crazy and it got rather cold. We were going to watch the light parade, but with the wind like it was, we figured it would be canceled (they almost canceled the other one earlier and things had only gotten worse). Instead we left a bit earlier than we had planned. However, lot of fun was still had.

My favorite ride was Splash Mountain. I really like the steep drops so even though it was a bit cold to be splashed, it was still super fun. I actually didn't get very wet though Hide, who was sitting next to me got splashed pretty good.

So, there. I am now caught up with my blogging! No more! Until something else interesting happens I guess.

I am going to give you one video that I took during the parade. The floats and stuff were so cool!



Ja ne!