Something I forgot to mention yesterday… I was on TV!
I don’t normally watch TV these days because it’s sort of a waste of time. I could say it’s good Japanese listening practice but even then, most of the time I get bored with the programming and I start doing things on my computer so the TV just becomes noise in the background. I only watch a couple of particular shows each week.
Anyway, I decided to get a pizza for dinner from Pizza Hut because it had been a while since I had last eaten pizza. Because I need both hands to eat pizza, I can’t really use the computer, so I decided to turn on the TV. For some reason, I stopped at channel 6 (I think), and after a few seconds, they started doing a news story about Keio University so I kept watching.
They started talking about how Keio had reopened for its classes after a week of closing due to the measle outbreak. This was Saturday which is a pretty unpopular day for people coming to classes anyway. To be honest, I think only foreigners come to class on Saturday because we have no control of when our morning classes are and we have strict attendance rules. Japanese students have more control over their classes and can miss many more classes than us so they never come on Saturdays.
Anyway, on TV, as they were talking about how Keio had reopened, I saw myself!
That morning, I had been walking with a friend of mine to class and we saw a guy standing at the gate holding a large camera pointed right at us. My friend waved at the guy and we both laughed and walked past him. I completely forgot about it after that. I suppose the guy liked my friend’s wave, because he followed us with his camera as we walked past him and into the university building. As they talked about Keio’s reopening, that video section of us walking was shown.
Also, there was another shot with my Middlebury College friend Tyler walking with another guy from our dorm. It’s curious that they included so many foreigners in their shots. Either it’s because it seemed interesting to them or more likely, because foreigners were the only ones going to class on a Saturday.
Furthermore, that was the day of the Keio-Waseda baseball game. Since Keio University and Waseda University are such rivals, we had all classes cancelled after the 1st period. This gave even more incentive not to show up. I would have skipped but I have already skipped Saturday classes twice this semester. Technically, I can skip two more times but… I suppose I’d rather save them.
In any case, it’s pretty remarkable that I haven’t really watched TV for the past couple of weeks and the one time that I turn it on, I not only turn it on 30 seconds before the one minute clip comes up about Keio, but I also happen to change to the right channel at just the right moment.
If I had never ordered that pizza… I would have never known. 