What a waste!

Ehh so I spent most of the Golden Week holiday sick as a dog. I went to Japanese class today (half the class skipped) and everyone was talking about their wonderful trips to Disneyland, Osaka, or what they did with their host families. I never fully recovered from that night of clubbing, and it all caught up to me on the weekend. Still sick, but I've taken all my American medicine.

Speaking of which, medicine is surprisingly one of the few things that I've had a problem with. In America you can get basic cold medicine at a 7-11 or grocery store, but in Japan you have to find kusuri-ya (medicine shops) in order to get anything. I guess a shop has to employ a pharmacist in order to sell meds? When I got sick at the beginning of term, I went to the kusuri-ya in Shinjuku station for some cold medicine and got some not-so-effective powder stuff. My American generic name meds work so much better.

I digress -- I did manage to make it to Odawara Castle for their annual festival. Tama met us at the train station and showed us around the town.

The castle is now a museum, but we weren't interested in paying 400 yen for admission. There was some sort of parade of samurai (it was like watching Ran in real life) and a shrine-carrying. Tama's younger brother Abe (who timidly obliged to photos with his sister's gaijin friends) helped carry the heaviest shrine, which also did the most impressive run down the main street:

Props to Abe and his shrine-carrying buddies. I did it once, without the three or four turns, and don't really want to do it again.

There's more to post, but I'm tired and going to bed. In the coming weeks, I hope to be meeting up with some buddies from America and RKK Yurie for adventures around the places I missed out on during holiday.