NATALIE
March 13th 2009 03:02
It was night time and it was humid when we met the rest of the group. We introduced each other but I quickly forgot everyone’s names, so I remembered them by their appearances: the fatty with glasses, the high maintenance brunette, the tall pretty faced but slightly overweight girl, the red haired waddling girl from class, the one with the bad weight and height problem, the body odour guy. We all met at the entrance to Shinimamiya station in Osaka – they’d been waiting for Trevor and I for a few hours – and in the background from a tinny radio somewhere Bob Dylan sang his own version of The House of the Rising Sun. This guy in a business suit looked at us foreigners up and down and muttered something to his companion. They both laughed.
Red haired waddling girl from class: “Okay, I want to show you boys our hostel!”
We all hired a hostel the night before the actual scholarship started to get to know each other more. The girls wanted to go cheap, which I suppose was good for Trevor and I – after our intense first week in Japan we had a combined value of ten dollars.
We went and checked in: we all had individual one bedroom rooms, which were about three metres long and were just wide enough to squeeze through. My room made a constant creaking noise and smelt like freshly released semen. There was an old TV force fitted right in front of my bed, as well as a VHS player (I later found out that a lot of people in Japan still used VHS and hadn’t upgraded to using DVDs). In the VHS player was a tape. So I turned the TV on, put the AV on and pushed the video in and pressed play. The video was of this ghost woman just screaming and screaming at the screen. My heart jolted and I immediately pressed stop and thought about The Ring. I tried to eject the tape but it wouldn’t. I unplugged the TV and hurried out of my room.
“Why do you look so scared, Dean?” One of the girls giggled.
“It doesn’t matter.”
We spent the rest of the night getting to know one another by having beers in the first floor of the hostel. Some guy joined us, also Australian, who was in Japan to find a partner. He was a crazy guy who liked to swear and take his shirt off a lot. He was a racist, too, which didn’t make sense. After talking and drinking with everyone I soon came to conclude that I probably won’t get along with any of them. I suddenly realised that I was in Japan, that I was a stranger and that Brisbane was a dream that walked off and hadn’t come back. I looked up from my drink on the table towards the high maintenance brunette, who complained a lot and decided to use Facebook on the computers rather than talk to us. As if my eyes made a Hear Me Hear Me sort of noise she instantly turned around from her computer screen and spotted me, and we looked at each other, and she let out a small crease of a smile and so did I, and the next supposed brief instance became slow and pulled behind before the universe reverted back to normal.
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Comment by Postmodern Critic
Postmodern Critic
Relativity Watch
Padsoc
Hey, you're in Japan! It's gonna be awesome discovering this beguiling and often contradictory culture...
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
ROFL Dean,
Its exactly how I remembered all the people I journey through Moscow with. Particularly the Dane with the smelly feet who took his socks of and terrorised us all with them
Been there too in Hong Kong *chuckle* had bruised knees after a week there, getting in and out the door and banging them against the metal bed frame.
((too funny))
Thansk for the laugh, great to catch up with you, hoping it all works out well...
>>reading on>>
Lilla .