MARCH 16
It didn’t seem as though anyone was going to the park
to practice today so I went shopping. I was scoping out all the stores in Sakae
looking for an appropriate dress of some kind for the Senior’s Send-Off Party.
I brought nice clothes when I came to Japan, but those were
‘presentation-worthy’ nice clothes, not formal wear. GU has a lot of dresses to
choose from, and their LL size fits me fine. However, the styles are just too cute
for me. That and many of the dresses are really short, which is not good for me
at all. GAP also had some promising styles, but I ended up buying a pair of
jeans instead. The prices were reasonable, to say the least, so if I can’t find
anything else, I’ll probably come back next week and choose something.
MARCH 17
More shopping around today; this time I looked a
little closer to home at the Meieki Department store above the station. I knew
they had plus size shops in there somewhere, but it took me quite some time to
figure out how to reach the floor with the advertised large sizes. I did find
it eventually, but I was quickly disinterested when I saw the price tags.
Everything in those stores was hundreds of dollars, not fifty dollars or so,
but hundreds. That was way out of my budget. The shop keepers tried to talk me
into things, but I excused myself as gently as I could.
After leaving the department store I headed down to
the underground shopping mall. Maybe I would find shoes at least; I had seen shops
with large sizes for women, so it was only a matter of price and style. As my
luck would have it, there was no glass slipper to satisfy both my budget and my
tastes. Four hours of searching only to end up empty-handed once again. Now, I
feel like I need to take a break from ‘shopping’ for a while.
MARCH 18
The strain in my back has considerably lessened!! That
means I slept well last night. As for today, it was back to dance practice,
only this time I was doing some hip hop. With the new semester approaching,
it’s time to prepare to invite the new freshmen into our club. The best way to
advertise our club is with a showcase of course. I have wanted to do a showcase
again for a while now, so when the girls asked me to join their hip hop group I
jumped on it. I forgot how aerobic hip hop can be, especially when you are
practicing the same routine over and over non-stop. It was a great reminder to
myself how fun hip hop is. Break dancing is fun, too, but on a different level.
If only I could combine them in real life like I do in my head.
MARCH 19
It doesn’t look like things are going to slow down for
a while, so I took a break while I could. Started doing some spring cleaning,
but generally I just lazed around until it was time to go to training.
MARCH 20
Practice was so much fun today! We didn’t make much
progress with the hip hop choreography yet, since our two leaders are still
thinking it out, but we did have practice in the multi-purpose room again.
After moving from the small studio (where we were working on the hip hop
choreography) back to the practice room, I was shocked at the sudden increase
of break dancers.
At first, I didn’t know anyone outside of the BPM
members. Some of the faces I was able to recognize from past events, including
SOUL BREAK. I found myself a little corner of the room to keep practicing until
we moved the practice outside. During a brief break, all the guest dancers
gathered in the Mini Stop. I happened to come across them when I bought a cup
Ramen, and with one acquaintance at the table, I inserted myself into the
group. There was little communication between us until I decided to put my
broccoli in my ramen to cook. That started our conversation, and by the end of
the night I had seven new break dancing acquaintances, even one BGIRL who I
tried to introduce myself to before (but clearly failed to do).
MARCH 21
So…funny story. During training today I was left to
run the kid’s class. The teacher gave me a line out print of a flag and
instructed me to show the children how to color it. I clearly did not read the
instructions. During the coloring, I chose three bright colors that the kids
recognized very well: blue, red and yellow. I thought things went well until
the teacher came back and gave me a really confused look. She asked me, ‘Why
did you color the German flag like this?’ Suddenly, everything made sense, and
the words appeared on the page for the directions on which order to color the
flag. That’s what I get for assuming this was just another free activity; reading
instructions has always been a weakness of mine.
With that slip up against Germany under my belt, I
proceeded to go to a party at Chi and Tobias’ new apartment. Their internships
were taking place in Nagoya, so they simply moved to a different apartment,
closer to the station and International Center. Several of the upperclassmen
and international students had gathered, so we had a fun night playing
different card games.
MARCH 22
The
party-goers slowly went home on their own accord, until it was just me a couple
people remaining. Those people soon fell asleep, and then the Germans turned on
the soccer match. That meant the party was over, so I headed home at 5:30am and
slept until the afternoon. Then it was back for another day of training.
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