Alexander's

Since my 60-80 hours week still leaves me with a plethora of free time that I somehow have to fill, I decided to join a circle this semester. Circles are ment for people that share a hobby, but are not serious enough to really spent 1-2 hours a day on it, like the clubs require you to.

So if you are not serious, then why even bother to join a circle?

Well first of all there is no photography group, secondly I get to use all the equipment the circle has, without the need to spend an hour per day with photography. This alone is great and reason enough to join a club and the third -- for some people the most important point -- is, that some circles are joint circles between the girls from お茶の水[^1] and 東大.[^2] Sadly, or gladly, depending on your reasons for joining the circle, the photography circle is not one of those joint circles and that's exactly the reason why I decided to also join the tennis club.

Do you play tennis?
No
would you like to start playing?
Well I tried it when I was little, but didn't really like it
Alex please come to the party with me. There will be a lot of girls and you will really have a lot of fun.

Ok so I decided to go to the welcome party of a club I will only ever join to go to cool, cheap parties and pick up girls. Apparently that's completely ok, since this is a circle and a lot of people can't really play tennis.

So how are these parties?

The party started at a train station. The members bring the new students to an Izakaya -- only the girls and the students that are already in the club for longer than a year can come with the first bunch. All the new boys have to wait until the best seats next to the pretty girls are taken by the older students and are then lead to the place.

After entering the place and finding my seat I realized the wisdom of bringing me along. The places next to the Gaijin and his translator were hot commodity amongst the girls of the club. Thirty minutes into the evening my friend revealed that I basically came to pick up girls and have no real interest in playing tennis. And while I started to acquire a deep crimson color the three girls sitting opposite of me decided that I'm actually quite cute.

G: Which one of us it the best looking?
A: What?
F: They want to know which one you like best.
A: I can't say that.

The girl sitting next to me grabs a pice of paper and writes "left" "middle" "right" on it and then passes me the pen with a smile.

F: Pick one. No matter which one -- you can go home with her!
A: Do you know how the Trojan war started?
G: don't worry we are all good friends.

Well no wars were started by me that night and I went home alone, but this night opened my eyes and I really think about giving tennis another try. After all I'll not be bitten anymore -- at least not by dogs.[^3]

[^1]: Teewater a girls only University [^2]: Todai - I guess by now most people already know these Kanji [^3]: I wrote this about 3 weeks ago, but only now found the time to reread it and post it. This has no relation to recent things you might have read on facebook