Yay! Life!

I'm having my first sleepover in Japan!

I'm at my friend Yasu's house in Onishi cho and he's just gone to bed and told me to stay up as long as I like playing on the HDTV-Internet hookup because he'll wake me up in the morning before he sets off to the towel factory. He's set me up with a futon and a cozy room in his place for the night after inviting me along to a drinking party with the organizers of his town's sacred annual spring festival, which I will apparently be a key member of this year as we "transform into gods" and try to break each other's shrines and stand in five-man-high pillars on each other's heads wearing lion masks. Don't ask, man, I couldn't answer. Anyway though, I've got a really good friend and a "transform into a god" date, so tonight tunred out pretty well. This is even though I got stood up for a date and shit (to be fair, it got rescheduled to coffee in the afternoon tomorrow). Yasu is super cool; I think he's the most real person I've met since comig here, and I7m thrilled that he likes me too.