Pockets and bags of memories

This weekend was a long weekend. Monday was a national holiday called 体育の日, which means, like, physical fitness day, I guess? From what I gathered from asking one person about it, it pretty much means that some schools have the day off, and you are able to go to most of the gyms and physical fitness places around Japan for free instead of having to pay a fee. I guess it is supposed to be incentive to make people get out there and exercise, which is good... even for one day of the year.
Anyway, the reason that there was a holiday was important was because that, because of the holiday, I had three days off instead of two. Which was the perfect amount of time to give myself an excuse to visit my old stomping grounds a little south of Yokohama: Kumamoto. KK and Caty, two of my friends who are studying abroad in Kumamoto this year. They sort of convinced me to come on Thursday night, and by Friday after classes, I was on the bullet train and on my way to Kumamoto.

And just 7 short hours later, I was there!

I do not want to sound like I am complaining about the trains. I love trains. If I were to put more energy into learning about some other facet of life, it would probably be trains. They are so amazing. I like them a lot better than planes, and would take the comfort of trains and the fact that I stay (mostly) on the ground in a train over planes ANY day. Ugh... planes.

Anyway, I got there around 10 p.m. or so, and the old familiar places and feelings all came rushing back. The weather was nice and cool, which was great for Kumamoto. I remember how hot it was when I studied there. Maybe I just got used to the heat in Yokohama this summer, and am just comparing it to that instead. But Kumamoto can get VERY hot. We went to Joyful, which is the name of this, like, Denny's style restaurant near Kumamoto University, where Shannon and I (and others, too!) used to study kanji and grammar. Aww, the good old days. My friends Taiyo and Ichinose ended up picking me up from the station and then giving us a ride to Caty and KK's apartment, where we ended up hanging around the rest of the night, because we were going to wake up early and surprise a friend that I hadn't told I was going to be coming! But we ended up staying up late anyway, and being really tired the next day.

Which was fine, because I ended up seeing one of my best friends during my year at Kumamoto, Yudai! I had no idea that he was back in Kumamoto (he's from Oita, which is a different prefecture on Kyushu), and when we went to the study room where Mao was supposed to meet us, he was there working on his dissertation! So it was nice for us to be able to catch up, too, and then we got to make more plans for later. We met up with Mao and made a new friend, Yuka, and we all... well, I don't want to write about the entire weekend, but there was a lot of karaoke, a lot of me speaking fondly of the old days, and a lot of anticipation for Caty and KK and how much fun they are going to have for the year.

I think that was the most fun for me. It was great to see them getting to know Kumamoto, and seeing how they react and adjust to the things that may have given me lots of problems (and there were, because I realize now how much of, well, a 19 year-old I was then), and maybe the things that I was able to transition into more easily they might be struggling with (just because the person you're speaking to can understand English doesn't mean you can fall back on it!! 勇気を出してすべての言いたいことを日本語で言ってみようね！）. It was cool showing them how to walk through Kokaibashi to get a shorter walk to downtown from the campus, and showing them good places to eat (Komurasaki Ramen! Kumamoto Ramen is delicious! Although I may be biased).

Anyway, it was really nice to see that they were doing well, and I was glad that I could introduce some of my old friends to them, and I am glad that we got to share Kumamoto together (although Caty and I sort of did in high school already). I just know that they are going to have such an amazing time. And watching them create a connection to Kumamoto made me realize that, of course I am not going to have this immediate strong connection to Yokohama. I mean, I love the way the city is set up, and there are so many places to explore and things to do, and I am already interested by the concept of a city like Yokohama itself, but I just have to realize that that alone does not mean that making friends and finding places is going to be easy. I have to just give it some more time.

I'm excited to get to know Yokohama as well as I feel I know Kumamoto, and I am excited to for KK and Caty to get to know Kumamoto, too, and hope they will learn even more about it than me, so they can show me around next time I come!

Anyway, that's all for now. School in the morning and I need to get some rest. On the plus side, the weather looks good, which means CYCLING TO SCHOOL!!

And I found my camera. Oh, and I had lost my camera.