海の日

First off, have a picture of all the IUC students:

Bonus points to anyone who can spot the two people who were photoshopped in.

And here's a picture of all the folks from my cohort who are currently at IUC:

(Picture ruthlessly stolen from Danica.)

Wow, look how academic we are, oh man.

Monday was 海の日 (Sea Day), so we, of course, went to the beach!

Everyone else in Japan had the same idea as us.

Japanese beaches are bizarre, 'cause they're some kind of "social norm-free" zone.  Needless to say, the "don't show your shoulders" rule doesn't apply at beaches.  Also, after about 3 p.m., most of the kids went home and the water suddenly turned into the "adult" zone--people were making out and necking and taking off their clothes (????) in the middle of the ocean, and, uh, that's not really normal behavior in Japan.  There were also these dudes carrying around boomboxes that were bigger than me, and these other dudes who kept doing backflips into the ocean, which I guess is a common Japanese pastime, 'cause I saw an ad with a dude backflipping into the ocean the other day????

Also, apparently the ocean in Japan doesn't really have waves.  It's weird.  It's like a wave pool or something.
I just don't know how to deal with an ocean that isn't actively trying to drown me.
ALSO ALSO, the ocean is really weirdly warm????  Possibly warmer than the Atlantic?  It was really confusing.  But it also meant that I could go swimming for half an hour and still feel my feet. Wow, how radical.

Wow, look at those beach-going gaijin.

(Picture ruthlessly stolen from Danica.)

P.S. Inner tube + ocean = GREATEST COMBINATION EVER.

The best part of the beach trip was the part where I managed to apply sunscreen properly and didn't get burned at all, yesssssssssssssssss.
The weirdest part was where all of us kept experiencing bite-y feelings in the water, and we couldn't tell if we were being bitten or if there was just really sharp seaweed or if there was some kind of not-particularly-lethal jellyfish in the water.  Oh well, none of us died, so it's all good.

And now, a random aside:

I ran out of soap last week, so I went to 100 yen store to buy some more, and of course I got COW SOAP.

You probably thought I was kidding.

It's probably hard to tell from these pictures, but one side says "COW" and the other has a picture of a cow.

COW SOAP.

FINAL NOTE:

This is a picture from inside the American restaurant we went to for 4th of July.

(Picture totally stolen from Danica, again.)

(Also, these are two of my lovely Harvard classmates.  Joanna was my mentor last year, and Floris is in the PhD program.)

Can someone please tell me that that strange piece of artwork hanging on the wall is not what it appears to be?  After we saw that, everyone got really uncomfortable...