FEAR AND LOATHING IN SMALL OSAKA
April 8th 2009 03:59
What I first noticed about our host university were the girls. There were girls everywhere, and even if it was winter they loved to wear short skirts and carry designer handbags. They glanced at us and giggled. Some even pulled out their mobiles and began taking photos.
“What if they’re just looking at us because we’re sweating and it looks like we haven’t slept in days?”
Trevor ignored me and marched on to the head office with everyone else. Before finally finding the university, the seven of us had been travelling, lost, for over three hours. One of the girls even cried. Natalie said she missed Brisbane already and hated how short everyone was. We reached the office and were introduced to the woman who’d be running our program, Yumiko. She wore short shorts with black stockings and had a sleepy look on her face. She never smiled. Reading a piece of paper, she told us a number of things in Japanese that I couldn’t understand whatsoever. I glanced at Trevor. He was asleep.
Yumiko ushered us into a small room where we were supposed to wait for our host parents. We sat there, tired, bewildered, and one by one, as two hours passed by, each of us were taken away by our host parents until it was only Natalie and I remaining. She looked at me.
“If I have shit parents I’m going to your house right away.”
I rolled my eyes and said nothing. I’d been living independently and psychedelically and drunkenly in Japan for the past week; I enjoyed my jazz discussions with Trevor and the way we’d both survive passed midnight and find ourselves flying through flashing lights and music and Hiromi Uehara and actions of no regret. But now he was gone, taken to the home of some strange couple.
“I’m scared, Dean,” Natalie eventually admitted.
The room felt smaller, the world told us that it was a quiet place to live in. We waited.
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