The good and bad of the weekend

What a rollercoaster weekend!! I can't really get into the nitty gritty details here, but I'll give you the synopsis.

Basically, the lady, Ivon, who lives in the same apartment rental, is a bit.....unstable, to my observations so far. Friday night I accidentally ended up walking with her to Fresco as she related to me (albeit reluctantly) her life's story, though she held a lot back from what I could tell. She can't really trust anyone. She also believes she's being stalked by a dirty fat Japanese man in a helicopter that she sees hovering up in the sky over the house or over nearby somewhere frequently, though for the past few days I haven't seen any of it. Her phone was also being tracked she says, combined with her violent past and spending the past decade or so circling the globe three times or something, she has got a lot of issues. Possibly bi-polar or slightly mad I think. (keeps apolagizing for her rude behavior from previous conversations, calling me young and naive and in denial of the realities of the world, which is partly true for most people, but the way she used the term..) She seems nice sometimes but then explodes in a mess of anxiety or frustration. Never quite normal though, her Japanese accent is ATROCIOUS. Whiny to the point of me wanting to rip my ears off, and completely wrong intonation. Her English isn't far from the same mark. Anyways, fact of the matter is that she is horrible at communication and shows manipulative tendencies whether she's conscious of it or not. Better exemplified perhaps, by the following:

So she offered me a ticket to a tea ceremony at Kinato Tennmangu (big shrine in Kyoto) this Sunday (also Shichi-go, celebration of children 7 years old) and gave me the ticket last night explaining that she might not make it. I never concretely stated that I would stick myself to our arranged time of between 12-1pm meeting at the shrine, because I was no longer meeting her. Plus I had no idea where this shrine was, though a map quickly sorted that out. (Though I still got lost and ended up one block too soon off the bus.) So I finally find it and wander around the shrine for a bit looking for the tea ceremony entrance and when I find it, I see Ivon sitting with a blond haired lady in the waiting area! I tap her on the shoulder and plop down besides all smiles and stating I'm glad she made it, but she doesn't say anything. I introduce myself to the woman next to her, who is from Germany and lives across the hall from Ivon (been in Japan only three weeks or so working as a bio-chemist. Coool.) and as I'm about to skip from introducing and add Ivon in the conversation, she gets up and leaves. I ask Kristian (the German lady) why she left and she said maybe she has to use the toilet. So we continue chatting and when Ivon comes back, she sits a few benches up turned away from us. I call her name after a bit but she ignores me. Later she calls Kristian out of the pavilion and covers the side of her face when she's talking to her, everything about her body language now is aggressive and closed to me. I'm still trying to be friendly, so I just pass it off as her being moody again or something. So we're called soon to go in, and everyone files into a tiny sitting room where everyone is zaseki (sitting on feet) and mostly quiet, two people behind us kept chatting. When I finally work up the courage to ask Ivon if she's ok, because she hasn't said a word to me the whole while, she has a mini-explosion and explains that I wasn't SUPPOSED to arrive at the same time as she, that she PLANNED on then going to the ceremony at a later time to avoid me with her friend. I was frankly baffled, and asked her why she didn't just say so the night before when all she said was that she might not make it. She then made very rude gestures with her face and hands and said wasn't it OBVIOUS by her behavior the night before? Uh, not really since you're like that ALL the time. Un-trusting and withheld, like a reflex. I made a point to ignore her for the rest of the ceremony. She said something about being pretty physically fit, but I can tell that there is something terribly wrong with her head, and she should probably see a psyco-therapist or something along those lines instead of keeping running from country to country from her own misfortune. After I'm done writing this I can tell you I am never going to mention or speak to this women beyond a fleeting greeting or polite excuse to be somewhere else because I have HAD it with her manipulative behavior and poor social skills, and I don't mean that in a kind way.

Well, that felt good to get off one's chest. Because of all this nonsense I'm behind in my schedule! I'm staying up later than usual tonight for sure and getting a chunk of my paper done tonight for sure. Perhaps watching a movie in between as break. :) Though my Saturday anxiety-fueled run-around has inspired me to draw up a plan for visiting Ise sometime this next week. An overnight too so that I'll get to see the whole complex the following day. It's farther away than I thought!
God, I feel like a need to go to the sento tonight and scrub away the madness of the past few days. >< Perhaps a good mental scrubbing and a touch of yoga will provide similar benefits.

Good photos will be up soon! The fall foliage is just about at it's peak, and my is it lovely...

Alrighty then! Take care!
~Kira