Pre-Conference Adventures

Sunday, I did a little shopping, and played in the arcades. I tried to find the conference's location using the map I got from my supervisor. After about half an hour of confused meandering, I realized it was the same place as last year. Relieved, I headed for Coco Walk, the new mall I'd visited when I came to Nagasaki last month.

Even though it had been open a month, Coco Walk was packed with people. The floor plan is remarkably similar to American malls, which is to say it that most if it looks exactly like every other mall I've been in. The mall is a stop on all the local bus routes, necessitating an underground parking garage and mini-station. For some reason, Red Cabbage (a local grocery store chain) decided to open a store in the middle of the shopping mall. I'd think they were crazy, but the place was full of people. Oh, and there's a Ferris wheel on top of the mall.

On the walk back, I ran smack into Rachel and Mutia, who were heading to Coco Walk to check it out for themselves. We stood around talking for a few minutes, when we were met by Joe and Guy, two friends who were heading to Coco Walk too. Deciding the company was worth seeing the same scenery again, I tagged along with the group.

We gravitated toward the arcade, and spent about twenty minutes gawking at a Japanese guy playing the Taiko arcade game... using his own drum sticks. Zoe found us, and I walked around with her and Rachel. We found a shop that seemed like a cross between Hot Topic, Spencer's, and a candy store. Rachel bought beer-flavored candy that actually wasn't bad; I bought mayonnaise-flavored candy that was every bit as awful as you'd expect it to be.

Joe (our Joe, Ninjo), Kim, Rose, and Gavin had found a "soul food" restaurant during their August orientation. It's called Hustle Heart. At their recommendation, a bunch of us went there for supper: the seven present Tsushima ALTs (minus Joey, gone to Hawaii for his birthday), Mutia, Zoe, Rachel, Jacob (from Atlanta), Brad (from Minnesota), and a guy whose name I can't remember but reminded me strikingly of Cord.

It wasn't until after the conference that I realized a huge reason this made me the happiest I'd been in months: this is exactly what we used to do in Myers. Chuck and I had our main group of friends, and (especially at the beginning of junior year) we'd head to the dining hall, recruiting people as we passed by. Groups of friends would join our group, and we'd have a good 10-15 people crammed into one round table for dinner. We'd do the same thing almost every night, and the group was seldom made up of the same 10-15 people--it'd be the usual seven or eight, plus a random mix of friends we met along the way.

That's exactly what we did in Nagasaki. We had a core of people whose friends would call them, ask what was going on, and usually meet up with us. The attitudes and atmosphere were strangely similar to what I felt in Myers: lots of people, each with completely different characters and situations, brought together for one purpose and, for most of us, staying in the same place. (A large group of us stayed at the Toyoko.)

That evening, before dinner, I was in the lobby, standing in line to get my key, when Laura and Nathaniel arrived from the Goto Islands. I met them last year, but couldn't place their names. They had only a little trouble remembering mine, which made me feel more than a little bad. Nathaniel reminds me of Dennis Miller. When I think of Dennis Miller, I think of the sarcastic and pessimistic guy from SNL and HBO, because I haven't paid any attention to him since then.

Anyway, the restaurant was okay. I ordered the "italian spaghetti," which turned out to include barbecue sauce and hot dogs. The roughly fifteen of us headed next to a bar called Panic Paradise, which we found last year. Rose and Kim decided to call it a night. At the bar, I met Carol, Eleanor, Lawrence, Sarah, and Sue, all of whom live near Sasebo, which is where Mutia, Rachel, and Zoe are. Zoe decided the best way to teach me how to play Othello was by destroying me at it. Maybe she wanted revenge after our epic chess match in Bali.

After Panic Paradise, I went to karaoke with Jacob, Sarah, Eleanor, Carol, and Rachel. We meandered our way to a particular place they knew of that had, of all things, free soft-serve ice cream. Zoe found us later; apparently the group she went with ended up at the same karaoke bar, in a room upstairs. Rachel picked awesome karaoke songs, like Under the Sea, Baby Got Back, Stand By Me, A Whole New World, and The Sign. It was easily the most fun I've ever had at karaoke.

I got back to the hotel at 2. The conference was officially beginning at 9 that morning. As I got out my suit and dusted off my shoes, I realized I'd forgotten to bring a dress shirt.