I met up with the other two guys Tuesday morning at Rokkomichi, and we set off again to catch the bus and head up to the college.
Today we were working in a different room, but mainly we had the some type of work. We wrote and performed speech after speech for the cameras. Today the professor and his assistant weren’t so interested in the content of the speech, only that data was being collected.
After an hour or so he kind of sensed that we were burning out a little bit, so we changed the format and did a “Crossfire” style debate. One guy would be the moderator and introduce the topic, and the other two would take opposing sides and go for the throat. Robert, the balding Scot who works at the college, was a little unfamiliar with the format, but once I dragged his parents into the argument, blaming them for his poor debating skills, well – he started to take notice.
It was fun to do the debates, and take these fictional roles and arguments. Sometimes you would be arguing for something you personally against – you never knew how it would work out. That made you really stretch your brain for justifications for your arguments.
After lunch we went back at our own impromptu speeches, and recorded about 30 more. Then the professor, Kato-sensei, let us go home a little bit early. We were pretty tired afterwards. The mental exercises you go through are pretty intense, but we were also physically exhausted.
I left Corey and Robert at the station and made my way to Sannomiya, then took the Portliner from there to Kobe Airport. From Kobe Airport I took a bus to the ferry terminal, and then a ferry across Osaka bay to the Internation Airport. From that ferry terminal I took another bus to get to the airport itself, and then finally I was there. It was a lot of changes, but it was pretty cheap because Kuniko had gotten some free tickets for us.
There wasn’t a whole lot to do at the airport. I studied Japanese, used my handheld PC to surf the web and check my email, and just watched people walking by. I had some butaniku for dinner, and then went down to the arrival area to wait for the plane to show up.
It came in a few minutes early, and after everyone came out together as a group. I had to wait in the wings until everyone got organized. There were a couple of speeches and some pictures, and then finally Kuniko started looking around for me, so I walked over.
It was really good to see her. She looked tanned and tired, so I helped gather her gear and we eventually caught the bus to catch the ferry etc. etc. On the way home Kuniko told me all about the trip, and it sounds like they did have a good time. We didn’t get home until after midnight, but we were both too tired to get into the souvenirs, so we went straight to bed. It was a school night for me and Kuniko – she needs to go into work tomorrow to solve a few issues that came up while she was on her trip.
