EARTHQUAKE and INTERVIEWS and COFFEE

After a fairly quiet day which involved not much more than laundry and a stroll round Roppongi, I met my first interviewee off the site interpals.net. I was slightly nervous as I had already had a message from a Japanese guy warning me that many other Japanese guys use the site to find girlfriends. And M, the guy I was meeting, had explicity stated that he liked meet girls.

I needn't have worried however as he turned out to be a very shy, very intelligent guy who I managed to do the longest interview ever (over 40min) and that was already after talking to him for at least 20minutes. In a way, this kind of meeting was perfect for my project which invovled questions like "Do you ever meet people off the Internet that you don't know?" - kinda answered itself! Also, it illustrated just how different someone can come across online as comapred to face-to-face. Whether this is a difference in the projection of one's self or merely a flaw in the medium is still to be established - I'm inclined to a suggest that both play a part.

I went to bed knowing that I had a busy day tomorrow - THREE interviews between 1.15 and 7pm as well as a 9am start.

I only slept for 30 minutes. This was mainly due to being squashed between two guys - one who just kept rolling closer and the other that kneed me in the bum everytime I tried to move. Just as I was about to drift off, the whole room began to shake.

I've often considered what an earthquake feels like. Describing the room as shaking is exactly what happens but fails to capture the moment properly for those who have not experienced it. The best way to describe it is to imagine what it would feel like if the room you were in was picked up and put on the back of a truck going down a dirt track. Apprently it was a 6.4 but I doubt it was that strong where I was staying. There was no visible damage although reports of collapsed roads and buildings elsewhere circulated.

After my earthquake experience in which I'd almost jumped up and down in excitement (pointless as the room was already enabling such actions!), I got up to meet my CSer friend Julia at 9am for her last day in Japan. She made me my very first cup of coffee which I am sure probably did me a lot of good. I met a lady for lunch (she took me to my first udon restaurant - yum!), a student for coffee and another lady for coffee. By the end of the day, I liked coffee. Well, I liked the iced extra sweet stuff they sell. I doubt coffee snobs would let it qualify.

Nevertheless, despite near-poisoning myself with caffeine, I was semi-hallucinating by the time I got back to Yuji's. I also fell asleep onto some poor Japanese woman on the subway. Gent;e nudging gave way to small shoves before I realised what was going on.