#chibia

Now put the money in the jar!!

Mumuhuila girl,  Chibia area , Angola

original characters, left → right.

@knoctua (me) @mook_othila @KKkikii @lavypoo (twitter)

SO, day 1.

I vibrated all through getting ready in the morning to picking up my sister to having breakfast out to massing through security, interspersed with random strangled vowel noises. The first leg of the trip (Edmonton to Vancouver, 1 hour in the air,) was wholly uneventful and my traveling companion ignored me then promptly fell asleep. We walked through two seperate instances what I like to call “capitalist hell” on the way to our second gate, the number of methods to separate people from their money that they managed to squish into the international flight hub of the Vancouver airport makes West Edmonton Mall look like they aren’t even trying. The second, incredibly long and rather tedious, leg of the trip to Japan (Vancouver to Narita Airport, 9 hours in the air,) was also wholly uneventful and my traveling companion ignored me then promptly fell asleep.

I watched Age of Ultron, Chappie, two episodes of iZombie, dozed (but one could barely call it that when my eyes only got to that point where they pasted together but nothing else came of it), blasted both upbeat amd mellow music without any conceivable pattern to my selections, and worked halfheartedly on a power point I’m going to present to a Senior Highschool with a very long name towards the end of my trip. Work is hard when mc Ride is screaming passionately at you but you cannot forge the raw power of hype and harsh noise into anything useful because the plane will charge you out the nose for even a sip of wifi which you need so very badly.

The Narita airport seemed to sprawl onwards as I walked through it, although that might of been the sudden 98% humidity melting my brain like a vinyl record in the sun. Also I apparently can’t read and not only did I write my declaration forms with a pencil (the only sensible writing utensil I had on hand,) but I also folded it. Happily the clerk just told me to write over what I had wreitten in ink and made no fuss about the fold.

I met my host family and a few members of the Japanese sister club in a dizzying whirl of photos and handshakes and soon enough I was paired with the Endo family to be whisked away to the Chibia province to stay with them. Now before we could go home my sieve-like mind decided to blurt out “I don’t want to be a bother, but do you know where I could get an international SIM card for my phone? I would like to be able to call my mother,” which sent us on a romp to 4 different stores; two of which were the two leading phone plan companies in Japan, one was a convinience store, and the last was a Wal-Mart like chain store that was all mirror surfaces on the inside and a total head trip to walk through. 

Happily I also managed to call off the goose chase by saying I’d seach it up later, I don’t think I will (sorry Mom,) because I don’t want to spend a zillion yen on something that’s only gonna last me a  month and I ESPECIALLY don’t want my host family to spend a zillion yen on somehting I”m going to use for a month.

We got home, I had a very odd Japanese bath/shower which cleaned me of the travelers’ musk, yet also yet left me wanting far hotter water and a back scrubby. And now here I sit on a thin futon in the guest room of the Endo household, both windows open as well as a fan going to relieve me of this horrid heat and humidity that makes everything stick together like some type of melty Salvador Dali painting mixed with Krazy Glue. There are also cicadas and I can hear them screaming and they’re probably gonna keep screaming all night long. 

In short:

I panicked and freaked out for no reason other then I am a massive weeaboo who is fulfilling their weeaboo dreams

plane rides was boring as sin, next time stick it to the (Air Canada) man and bring illegal wifi moonshine to fuel your educational slidemaking

Japanese humidity will hit you like a truck coming down a steep hill if you’ve been living in dray as bones prairie lands your entire life, but your asthmatic lungs will forgive you and most likely grow gills to accommodate

Japanese people are very short

Japanese phone companies are confusing as quantum physics and cold fusion combined

cicadas

Big love from a tiny island that was fictitiously ravaged by rather rubbery massive reptiles, Anna.