Apologies for the hiatus. It's been an absurd and hectic week. As a follow up, I'm glad to report that my urinary tract is infection free and functioning as fine as frog's hair.

On Friday last, I had my final official tsugaru-shamisen lesson. We reviewed in preparation for the annual Oyama-kai recital, which was to take place the next day. After waking groggily on Saturday morning, I packed away my instrument, gathered all of the bits and pieces of the official kimono, and headed towards Persimmon Hall by bus. After becoming familiar with the Kyoto Shi-Basu system, I realized how much more advance the Tokyo To-Basu is. They recently installed systems that allow you to pay with Pasmo or Suica, the IC cards that were originally reserved for use with the JR train system. The machines give you exact change, have a pretty screen, adjust for reduced fare at the press of a button, etc. It was fabulous. I was very tired, due to staying up way too late the night before watching Battlestar Galactica, but I got there on time and met up with my people.

After waiting outside the entrance for a while, we were allowed to enter the venue and proceeded to storm the dressing rooms. The facilities were spacious and clean but the preparation rooms were definitely not made to hold twenty people each. Seeing as there were over three-hundred performers participating, things were pretty packed. We succeeded to get dressed and prepare our instruments without too much trouble, aside from occasionally bumping elbows and stepping on people's things. Rather than a proper show, this annual event is a semi-informal, day-long recital. I went on stage about six times, five times between the 10:00 and noon and once for the finale, which landed around 4:30. After the performance, the lobby was transformed into a reception of beer, tea, miniature crabs and edamame and I suddenly found myself surrounded by tipsy Asians. I was amazed by the speed of alcohol's influence.

On Saturday night, I started my descent into a terrible emotional funk. My mom came back from Australia and I got all pissy and freaky. It was a combination of pre-menstrual insanity and the anticipation of graduation and transition. I realized that I'd miss my friends here in Japan, that I'd probably wasted a lot of time avoiding to get to know them properly, and there was just a bad cocktail of things on my mind. I was on the verge of crying a number of times but couldn't do it properly.

Monday morning rolled around and I found myself getting irrationally angry at little things ("fat girls shouldn't wear clothes made for anorexic models" or "camo shouldn't be worn outside of the woods") and once the angriness subsided, I was left in a spazzy, weird state in which I was not only in a state of constant physical discomfort but also mental unrest. It was unnerving. By the end of the day, things were a little bit more normal. On Tuesday, we finished watching an incredibly moving and powerful movie in European History. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is a 2005 film based on the transcripts of the interrogation of the key players in the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. Again, I reached a point where I was tearing but couldn't properly cry. This made me really frustrated, since two other girls in my class were bawling their faces off and I'm usually the one cries during movies. I fear that all of this pent up crying is going to cause me to implode around graduation and have a proper emotional meltdown.

I bought a dress today to be worn under my graduation gown. I hope it works around the collar area, seeing as I have no idea what our gowns look like. Tomorrow is a research day in Shibuya with Ophey for a Japanese project. Sunday might be a work day to finish an English project with Monica. After Tuesday, I will have no work, with the exception of studying for Chemistry, my only exam. Wooooo. High school is almost over. Exciting and scary.