I still don't own Azumanga Daioh.
Chapter 2
The hotel clock read 4:45 when Chiyo woke up. She promptly washed and got dressed. When the small girl went to get her purse, she was surprised by her friend, who was lying in bed, smiling vacantly at a lightbulb. "What are you doing, Miss Osaka?"
She turned without altering her expression, "I woke up an hour before the day begins, so I tried sleeping with my eyes open. What do we do now?"
Chiyo looked at a schedule. "The keynote speaker begins at ten o clock, so we have about five hours."
Osaka pondered. "Maybe we could go sightseeing."
"Where do you want to go?"
"I want to go to Big Ben!"
"Big Ben is in England."
"Let's go here!" Osaka pointed at a spot on the map.
"That's a great idea. Let's get the others."
Chiyo went to the room with three of her classmates and knocked on the door. Tomo was the first to wake up. She became aware of a tickling sensation. A murmuring iterated in her ear as a pair of hands ran up and down her torso.
"Sakaki san…. Sakaki san…" Kaorin was evidently asleep, but drool exuded from a deliriously blissful smile. Tomo giggled when she realized what was happening, but her attention shifted to the door. She opened it and looked at Chiyo. "Hey, you little runt! What are you doing here?"
"Osaka and I are going to the Statue of Liberty. Would you like to come too?"
"Yeah, sure! We'll meet you at breakfast!" Tomo returned to her room, where she yelled at Kaorin and Sakaki. "Wake up! It's time to go shopping with Chiyo chan!"
"What?" Kaorin rubbed her eyes.
"Oh.. okay…" Sakaki complied.
"Hurry up! Everyone in the shower!" Tomo took her classmates by the arm and dragged them towards the bathroom.
"What are you doing!" Kaorin tugged against her.
"I have no time to wait for all of you! We have to shower now!"
"Sakaki san?"
Sakaki sighed stoically as she followed Tomo. "It would be rude to keep Chiyo waiting."
Outside Chiyo had continued to the next room. It was unlocked, so she entered. "What's happening here?" Yomi supported herself on her hands and toes while she repeatedly raised and lowered herself. Kagura was balanced above her, arms encompassing her upper body.
"Good morning, Chiyo" Yomi said between push ups.
"Why is Kagura on your back?" Chiyo observed.
"Because Yomi's too tall to fit on my back." Kagura responded.
"When you get done with this, there's something I'd like to do." Chiyo told the two about the plan and they agreed.
"Chiyo! This hotel is the pinnacle of civilization!" Osaka approached her from behind. "They have shampoo and conditioner in one bottle." She held up the bottle and put it in her pocket.
"Aagh!" Chiyo gasped. "Miss Osaka! You scared me."
"Is everyone going to see sights with us?"
"I'm about to ask Yukari and Kimura sensei, but everyone else said yes."
"Lookit that!" Osaka pointed at the doorknob. The Do not Disturb sign was hung around the doorknob.
"Um? Maybe Kimura sensei is practicing his lesson." Chiyo cogitated.
"Oh! Oh!" A familiar female voice uluated from within.
"I didn't know Miss Yukari liked Japanese literature lectures that much." Osaka scratched her head.
"This reminds me of that lesson that Miss Kurosawa gave us."
Osaka's brow furrowed. "You mean the one about sprained ankles?"
"No. Let's just leave them alone." Chiyo slipped a brief note under the door and hastened to the elevator.
"Porterhouse Steak! Porterhouse Steak! Oh How I love you! You're so great." Yukari sang and licked the room service plate. Meanwhile, she scribbled intermittently on Kimura's lecture notes. She took a bite and made another joyous sound.
Downstairs, the girls ate breakfast in the conference hall. Osaka looked around quizzically, "Whom should we pay for all this food?"
"We don't have to pay, because it's a continental breakfast."
"It's a good thing we're not on Long Island then," Osaka concluded.
"Hooray! Everything's free! Even the milk," Tomo picked up a pewter container next to a percolator and guzzled the contents until Chiyo stopped her.
"Don't drink that! People are supposed to put that milk in their coffee."
"Oh." Tomo responded and replaced the half full dairy canister.
"Don't put it back. That's unsanitary," Yomi chided.
"But what do I do?" Tomo said pensively, holding the vessel in her hand. Deciding that dropping it on the floor was a suitable course of action, she joined her cohorts at the table. She examined her fork, "Americans sure know how to eat!" Tomo picked up the utensil and gorged herself with oatmeal. Beside her, Osaka looked less enthusiastic without chopsticks to split.
She took a bite of ham, then recoiled in pain. "I bit my tongue." She stated as her fork clattered to the floor. She resumed eating with her hands.
"I don't think people eat that way in America." Chiyo said.
Osaka shrugged. "If their eating customs are crude enough to involve portable spears, I don't think eating with our hands would faze them." She licked a mote of jelly covered ham off her face.
After the breakfast, the girls took a subway to the Statue of Liberty and were soon standing on the monument's insular base.
"This is like Ame-mura!" Osaka said, looking at the titanic structure. "New York is the Big Apple, right?"
"Yeah." Kagura replied.
"Is this the Big IPod?"
"Hey Sakaki, Race you up the stairs!" Kagura bolted towards the statue. Sakaki did not respond, but Tomo sprinted to her side.
"I can get to the top before you."
"It's on!" the two darted toward the entrance.
"It's not safe to run around national monuments!" Yomi and Chiyo floundered after them. Sakaki watched in dismay next to Osaka, who stood perfectly still, enthralled by the view of the blue copper torch. After the girls were escorted off the island, they went back to the hotel. Passing by the teachers' room, they noticed that the Do Not Disturb sign was removed, but strange noises were coming from Kimura this time.
"Waa!" The teacher sat up as cold water streamed into his mouth..
"Wake up! I need to take a bath. What kind of loser sleeps in a bathtub anyway?" Yukari turned off the shower.
"One who cannot sleep by your snoring." The lanky man stood up and stretched in a serpentine manner. "What time is it?"
Yukari checked her watch. "About ten."
"What!"
Yukari clarified with a noncommittal gesture, "Relax, dude. I mean ten AM. We have plenty of time."
Kimura was far from mollified. "I must be there in ten minute! What about the alarm clock," At this Yukari remembered and shrugged.
"I unplugged it so I use my curling iron."
"I must prepare!" He ripped off his wet boxers and frenetically began showering.
"Eww!" Yukari said before exiting.
Five minutes before the deadline, both teachers were cleaned, dressed and running down the hallway to the elevator. On the ground floor, Yukari yelled to Kimura. "Come on!" She grabbed his tie and started shoving the other attendants aside. The hapless philologist raced to avoid strangulation while Yukari shouted, "Move! Move! We are important-ass scientists!" At the stage, an academic behind the lectern was addressing the council with a look of solicitude. When he saw the two Japanese guests arrive backstage, he sighed with relief. "Without further ado, we present Kimura Hiro." The Asian man bowed to them and departed. Kimura began to walk on the stage but hesitated as he saw his notes. He suddenly turned on his colleague. "What did you do to my speech?"
"I edited it! Get out there!" Yukari whispered. With a foot to his back, Yukari shoved Kimura into the spotlight. A set of soulless cameras and a vast, faceless crowd glared at him as he approached the microphone; however, he saw his students in the crowd and took heart. The pale man adjusted his tie and looked at the doctored notes. To his dismay, many of the original words were obscured by ink. He ventured forth. "Good… Morning! The role of the folklorist is often obscured in language education, but this capacity is laden with sociocultural significance" He stood for almost a minute with his typical vacant stare while he read the next lines. After that hiatus, the lecture seemed to flow much more smoothly.
In the seats, Tomo whispered to everyone, "What's up with Kimura? He's acting weirder than ever."
"Perhaps he's shy," Sakaki volunteered.
"Or hung over. Did you see him carrying Yukari last night? They must have had a really good time!"
"He wouldn't do that!" Kaorin interjected. "We had to make this speech almost ten times while he was perfecting it. He's really dedicated to this project." After the speech reached its conclusion, the crowd burst into a standing ovation. "Mr. Kimura…" Kaorin uttered, looking at him with admiration in her eyes. Such an impression was ephemeral before the teacher's closing comment, "This paper is dedicated to my beloved students, specifically the great and beautiful Kaorin!"
"Aaaah!" The spotlight decisively crept toward her. Kaorin shrieked and ran out of the hall.
At the end of the day, Yomi took the stage and prepared to speak. She was clothed completely in black and trembled as the stared at the cameras, until something from the stands caused her to smile ironically.
"Go Yomi-chan!" Tomo's scream thundered across the auditorium.
"Win that prize!" Osaka followed.
"Those other competitors are losers!" Kagura proclaimed vehemently.
"Fight, Yomi, for everlasting peace!" Yukari punctuated.
A brief uproar reverberated through the crowd at Yomi's entourage. Kimura sidestepped his co-worker to get a clear shot of the bonkuras.
"What are you doing?" Yomi broke out into a sweat as she realized that her associates were standing and waving their arms around. Each of the bonkuras was standing on her seat with her shirt partially raised. On each abdomen, one of the letters of Yomi's name was painted in ostentatious bold red font.
"We're your cheerleaders, and were rooting for you American style, because we want you to do your best!" Kagura put her arms around Osaka's and Tomo's shoulders.
"Are you insane?"
"They have a point. If you screw up, it will reflect poorly on me too! If you win a prize, I'll buy you a steak!" Yukari joined in the shoutfest that was transpiring across the room.
Yomi blushed and cleared her throat. "As I was saying, my name is Mizuhara Koyomi and my research group-"
"That's us!" Tomo shouted
"has compiled a table of idiomatic spatiotemporal expressions used across the United States. Following the research of Labov and Techner…" Koyomi's lecture unfolded. At the conclusion, an awkward silence gave way to a peal of applause. Only those from Yomi's school stood though. It was in the middle of the afternoon when the presenters from the prestigious Tokyo high school stepped into the chilly golden sunlight.
"What are we going to do now?" Chiyo asked.
"I'm hungry." Kagura said.
"Where should we eat?"
"I saw a place called the Cheesecake Factory. It's a block from the hotel." Sakaki looked up from an issue of Cat Fancy that she had purchased at the airport.
"Cheesecake is not a healthy meal." Yomi commented.
"They have other food too."
"Ok then."
As the girls headed to the restaurant, Yukari nudged Kimura. "Come on! We're going to the casino!"
"Actually, I wanted to watch the girls to consume cheesecake."
"But the casino has a wet bar, and dancers, and a Hokkaido-style buffet."
"This morning, you fell asleep in a bar. Are you not tired of vomiting?" Kimura's jaw swayed slightly in the wind.
"I've only begun to party!" Yukari laughed and bolted.
The teacher looked at the students he was chaperoning, and then he took a look at the shrinking form of Yukari.
"If you need anything, call me on my cell phone. All right? Huh?" Kimura realized that the flock of girls had entered the restaurant without him. "Chiyo and Kaorin are with them. They should be fine." He commented to himself and turned around.
Fifteen minutes later, the man stepped into the casino. Yukari was already mildly tipsy and shouting at a slot machine. Upon noticing the teacher, the young woman flashed an asymmetrical, roseate smile.
"Hiro-kun! You came after all."