New Friends

I have some truly amazing new friends. They have helped me to see new things in a new world. They come from such different backgrounds but we've still bonded together through this experience of being in a foreign land. Specifically, there are four of us Americans and four French students who have come to study architecture. We share the same classes and I actually live directly across the hall from one of them.

Batiste and Laura from Paris, and Axel and Margaux from Bordeaux are easily some of my best friends here. They are full of life and have taught me that I can never properly speak French. After a week, I am still unable to say the "r" in Laura's name or the "gaux" in Margaux's name properly.

I've sat on a teeny tiny balcony with four of them drinking vodka and suntory whiskey overlooking the Japanese skyline. The significance of suntory whiskey is that Bill Murray's character in Lost in Translation, promotes the brand, Suntory Whiskey. So since we're living in Japan, and since Batiste technically moved here to meet his Scarlette Johansson, we have no choice but to drink Suntory Whiskey. Together we've wandered the streets of Ijiri at 2 AM into a tiny Jazz bar and spoken for 3 hours with broken Japanese with the bartender's nearly nonexistent english.

They've cooked us dinner, and we (the American's) bought the beer. It was a good night of friendly exchange between 4 Americans, 4 French and 3 Japanese students. The Japanese students knew French because they have studied in France for a year, and the French and Americans are learning Japanese and it was such a strange meal with the constant simultaneous exchange of Japanese, French and English happening all at once.