Plan B

Happy April! I hope that you're as happy as I am that spring has come. Here, have some celebratory sushi.


The other day, a few of my students took me to a park for a picnic, and this is what we had for lunch. I'll give a gold star to the lucky reader who can figure out what's odd about this sushi.

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Since my med school interview at the UW last October, I've been patiently waiting in the dreaded "competitive applicants pool" for a final decision on my application. And man, five months is an awfully long time to wait...

The UW's final admissions committee meeting was two Fridays ago, so I figured it was safe to assume that I would learn my fate early this week.

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Almost a week after the meeting, despite obsessively checking my e-mail and the UW's rather unhelpful application status web page, I still hadn't heard a thing. No phone calls. No e-mail. No snail mail. I was beginning to wonder if I ought to be watching out for skywriting or a singing telegram when my status on the UW's website finally changed to "A decision has been made on your application." (Now really, isn't it just a bit cruel that the website doesn't tell you anything more detailed than that??) Feeling so nervous that I thought I might vomit, I called the UW admissions office and found....that I have been put on the waitlist.

At least I haven't been rejected (yet), but I don't particularly relish the idea of waiting another three months to find out whether or not I can get in. It makes it awfully hard to know if I should cross my fingers and hope for an acceptance, or give up on this year and start looking for a job.

Anyway, I figure it's always best to have a plan B, so I've started to do a little job-hunting research. My first source? The kids at my Friday night English lesson:

Me: Hey, I think I might have to look for a new job for next year. What kind of job do you think would be good for me?

K-chan: Um...umm......oh! I know! Maybe you could work in a convenience store?!

True. I certainly could. I've bought enough convenience store bento lunches in my day that I know all of the pertinent convenience-store-related Japanese phrases! (あたためますか?) I wonder if convenience stores give out working visas.....

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This weekend was the spring festival in downtown Matsuyama, so I dropped by the shopping arcades to take a peek at the annual parade. The parade is called daimyo gyoretsu, and apparently it's a re-creation of the processions that daimyo (feudal lords) had to make to Tokyo each year to pay their respects to the shogun. These processions happened around 200 or 300 years ago, so the clothes the people in the parade were wearing were pretty different and cool looking.

Here's the daimyo:



...and the daimyo's samurai bodyguard accompanied by his own personal umbrella holder:



Apparently the archers weren't important enough to merit gigantic umbrellas. :( I dig their outfits though. Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how those bows work? Wouldn't your arms have to be super long to pull that huge bowstring back far enough for the arrow to go anywhere?



Here are the ladies in waiting (I think...??) I would hate to have been a girl back then. My students tell me that it took many months to walk from Ehime to Tokyo, and I think I probably would have gone crazy wearing a kimono and walking in little tiny strides like this for days on end....



Last but not least, here are the guys who clean the chandeliers in the daimyo's house. (This one is for you, Mom. ;)



After the parade passed by, I walked out of the shopping arcades toward Matsuyama Castle and enjoyed a stroll in the beautiful weather.



The cherry blossoms are in full bloom now. They're pretty, huh.



Every day on the news here, there's a whole segment devoted to reporting the places where the cherry blossoms have started to bloom. They even calculate the percentage of buds that have opened on a certain representative tree in each famous cherry blossom viewing spot. It's really a big deal. The people in the picture down below are having ohanami, a sort of cherry blossom appreciation party. People spread blankets under the trees and eat lunch together.



Here's more cherry blossoms near the moat around Matsuyama Castle.


That little boat in the background always sits in the moat, but I've never seen anyone use it before. Quite mysterious. I plan to live inside of it next year while I work at the convenience store and study to retake the MCAT. (笑)