This is what I wanted to do in Hokkaido:
thousands of people doing a squid-dance
And this why I can't: everyone who is anyone is flying overseas in the month of August, a fact that I should have seen but due to my (what should I call it? naivete?) failed to pick up on. It's actually kind of funny how astronomically out-of-my-reach the tickets are. As Mai, the very sweet STA agent, was scanning for any possible flights, she mentioned figures around 140,000 yen. It didn't occur to me until later that this number, somewhere abouts $1300, is just for a one-way ticket that I originally paid $500 for. In the end, we realized that the only way I could stay longer would be to pay $2000 for the flight change or pay nothing and switch my return date to September 19th (somehow I know that if I purposefully miss the August dentist appointments my mom rescheduled for me yet again, our relationship will never recover). Silver lining? I felt pleased that I could say "It seems that there is no choice but to leave things as they are" in perfectly enunciated Japanese.
As I left the office, kind of shell-shocked, I began feeling very uncharitable thoughts about the world and the people in it, especially towards the Capitalist Machine that runs our lives, and those riding airplanes in the month of August (but not towards Mai. Never Mai.) I wondered what to do with the great big awful feelings that were welling up inside me. I decided on crying, but naturally, that did not work. It's like my tear ducts have a sensor for BS... they know I should have done this way earlier, so why didn't I? That option exhausted, I looked towards sterotypical and unhealthy ways to make myself feel better, including physical displays of anger, eating obscene amounts of chocolate, spending obscene amounts of money shopping, and enlisting myself in mizu shobai. Screwing up my face and returning to uncharitable thoughts seemed the easiest course of action, and it worked for a while (totally got in a staring contest with one guy), but then I forgot I was supposed to be doing it.
The good thing about this sort of situation is that it's just like a clogged drain: if you don't have a quick insta-fix handy, you can wait. Wait, and the water slowly seeps into its rightful place. So I waited, and the sunflowers became less bright. I came to remembering that I am still in Tokyo! How amazing is that? and still have almost two weeks to live it up. I realized that the extra money from the trip could now go towards super souvenirs! Yeah!
PSSD. It can be serious, but you can win.
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