Early Halloween

Last night was the Mukaijima Gakusei Center's Welcome Party / Halloween Dance Party. I volunteered my services for decoration and preparation throughout the week, and bartending during the party. Because the Gakusei Center is run by Kyoto City as a means of increasing exchange between foreign and Japanese students, we recieved large amounts of funding for this party. That is, Saturday morning we went shopping and spent around $400 on alchohol alone, not to mention another $200 on snacks, and probably a couple $100 on decorations earlier in the week.

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the preparations and the party. Surprisingly, I was the only American who helped out. The main contributors were a bunch of Japanese, a German, a Finn, and some Chinese students. It was really great that the common language among everyone was not English, but Japanese. It's wierd sometimes to talk to a Caucasian person in Japanese, but it's fun too! Anyway, we decorated the basement very creatively, using lots of black lights and colors that glowed. And then last night, I dressed up in my fairy costume, and became a bartender. It was great! When I get back to the States, I am definitely going to do this as a part-time job. Mixing random things and talking to lots of people makes for an interesting evening. Of course, I also did some dancing, exchanged compliments on costumes, and answered the same questions about myself at least twenty times. The party was so successful that it started at 8pm and didn't finish until 3am. A long, but pleasant evening. The most suprising thing, however, was that after the party was over there were at least ten of us to take down everything and clean it all up. It took us a week to make the room look nice, but only 30 minutes to restore it to its former ugly state.