So.. Three weeks....

Wow... Three weeks ago I arrrived in Japan. Only three weeks!! This time three weeks ago I was stuck in Tokyo Station, attempting to catch a Shinkansen...
Anyway... I've managed to type up Thursday through to Saturday. So, only a week out of date... I may miss out Sunday and Monday as I'm pretty sure nothing exciting happened...

On Thursday I there were people there, filming a J-drama about boy love. So, Helen and I started walking around trying to find them… Then we gave up because we couldn’t find them, and decided to go on a bike ride instead. Just before we left Helen decided to take some pictures of the main building… And there they were. On the roof. Some rodie guy leaning over the wall and waving at us. Anyway, after this excitememnt, we left. It was a really nice ride. We rode to the end of the main drive and saw some really beautiful scenery. We’ve decided we should go on bike rides more often… Maybe even down to Shirakawa one day. When we got back they’d started filming right in front of the refectory. As we walked up the steps we bumped in to one of the actors, he bowed and I said “ohayo gozaimasu…” all confident and stuff and he replied politely. As soon as he was out of earshot I squealed excitedly. Oh god, he was so pretty. So petite and elf like… His hair clips in and everything…. Yay for fangirling. After this, we just watched them filming for ages, taking loads of pictures and fangirling some more. At work, they were filming just outside of the window. I can’t wait for the drama to come out so I can be like “I was in the background there, behind the window, watching the back of their heads!”
Anyway, after lots of distracted working Helen and I managed to hunt down two of the actors and asked for a picture. Only one of them would though (I think they misunderstood and thought we only wanted a picture with one of them…). After the picture was taken Mel just said “playboy”, to which he was like “no, no, no, no, no!” And we all laughed a lot… (It amuses me especially that his limited English vocabulary includes playboy).

On Friday I felt really gross for some reason… I don’t know. You know those days where you just don’t feel pretty and you don’t want anyone to look at you or anything? Yeah. That was one of those days. Unfortunately, I had to go to work… At 6:30am. Work was pretty generic. Fangirls screaming “kawaii” at me… Then telling me it means “cute”. Chefs scaring me with their glares… Or laughter. The chefs scare me a lot.
Oh, and on their second day of filming… All of the pretty boys were there… Not just the two. Helen and I went to the relaxation room for our morning break where we met Mansell and told him all about it. We then saw the pretty boys sitting just outside the door, on the benches. So, after much persuasion by Mansell we went and asked for a picture (guess what Ayano’s phrase of the day was on Thursday?! =D ).
“Sumimasen, shashin o totte kudasai.” (excuse me, please can I take a picture?)… They all looked quite scared and bewildered by us… But agreed and came inside and we got us some pictures of us with pretty boys… Mansell took the picture for us… And the moment he said “everyone move in closer.” I loved him forever. The guy stood just to the right of me was standing really close. Yeah… Very childish fangirling, but I don’t care! Although I still felt very gross and especially unattractive stood next to these boys.
I finished work at about 3pm, and as soon as was humanly possible (considering everyone else wanted to use the shower in which all my stuff is kept), I had myself a bath. I used my mango body wash as bubble bath and filled it loads with really nice, hot water. I then had a shower and cleaned myself before getting in. Oh god, it’s awesome. Japanese baths are really deep and shorter than Western baths. It was so nice to sink into the mass of bubbles and not have to lie right back to enjoy the sensation of hot water lapping at my neck. Friday night was the staff party, so I got changed into something pretty and made a bit of an effort with my make-up… This made me feel a little better. But I still felt really glum… I have no idea why.
I was stood at the entrance, about to put my shoes on, considering not going at all and just going to bed early, when Kenny came in and I told him I didn’t want to go… So he offered to walk me there. Kenny gained 10 points.
When I arrived at the party, I started off feeling really out of place. Everyone had already been there for a couple of hours and had started on the food and drinks long ago. They were already sat in groups, talking and laughing and I felt like such an outsider. I got myself a bowl of soup and sat myself near James, Helen, Mansell and Mel. It wasn’t long before everyone welcomed me and we all got chatting. This was good… This made me feel very happy.
Since “chess night”, I decided to drink as little as possible. I never want to feel like that again. So, I had one cup of some weird grape flavoured beer type thing which was surprisingly nice and watched everyone around me getting drunk. Oh god, drunk people are hilarious… Especially when you’re tipsy and the most sober person in the room. Helen spent the whole night giggling at me. The chef was the best though. Apparently he’d had about 5 glasses of whiskey. He was completely out of it. He kept groping people, men and women. A good few times he’d come over to me and say “beautiful, beautiful!”, before grabbing my hands and talking really quickly in slurred Japanese. At one point, he decided to take a picture of me with Helens camera. He took one picture, then decided to sit somewhere else, fell off the chair and took pictures of me from the floor. After the party at the pavilion (mausoleum) closed, we all headed to the pub. This added more hilarity to my night. Everyone was struggling to walk, using each other to stay upright. As we walked along the road, I kept turning around to tell people that there was a car coming and that they had to move out of the way. It was fantastic. I spent the rest of the night chilling out, watching everyone around me and attempted to get an early night. Due to various different things, I didn’t get it.
But I’m glad I went to that party.

On Saturday morning we had a fire drill. Hm, do you think they organised this carefully to coincide with the morning after? It was brilliant to see other people all hung-over and tired, and me feeling brilliant. For the fire drill we had a Japanese fireman explaining the dangers of Hydrogen Sulphide gas with someone translating into English. It was great fun, we were all sitting on the floor of the sports hall, everyone giggling and talking quietly between themselves while the teachers talked. I felt like I was back in school.
It was quite interesting anyway. Apparently there have been lots of cases of people going to hotels, making hydrogen Sulphide gas in their room and using it as a method of suicide. It smells like rotten eggs and is colourless. If someone creates Hydrogen Sulphide gas we need to stay as high up as possible, as it’s heavier than air. We can’t go into the room in which it’s created. We need to get everyone in the building out and up wind and all neighbouring houses need to close their doors and windows.
We then learned how to use the fire hose. Way fun. Push button, open cupboard, two people grab the hose and run for the fire while one other person stays by the wheel. You then shout back to that person and they open the valve while the other two fight the fire. So we split into two groups and on the other side we could just see people running around shouting “fire, fire” before pulling out the hose and blasting it at Shakespeare. Then the people on our side did it… Oh, it was so fun. Some guy was walking up the main courtyard just as they turned the hose on while Yuta was holding it. It was hilarious, this guy was running away, desperately trying to avoid getting soaked while Yuta struggled to control the direction of the water.
Anyway, we went back to work and for some reason I spent the rest of the day feeling progressively moodier and moodier. Um… Yeah… I eventually cheered up though, so it’s all good.