So much to say, so much to do....

So it's been more than week since I've blogged. Didn't do anything too extravagant but there are some things that are definitely worth noting here...

Fist off, 1 MONTH ANIVERSY IN JAPAN! Just a few days ago (Sept. 20th) marked my being in this country one whole month. Time flies! I'd say mainly it flies because I'm doing more than I've done since I first started college. It's a good feeling, only that I hope it doesn't all go by too fast, but hey, I've still got about 8 months here total. I'll be coming back for a few weeks in March to work and visit friends and family, and if all goes well I'll be back for the second semester that starts in April. I think by the end of this semester my speaking will be really good, everything is getting better by the day but my listening and reading skills are really coming up to par. Really got to work on getting myself outside, but classes really wear me out. Guess I'm not getting enough rest these days.

Let's rewind a few days before the 20th though. As most everyone reading this blog knows I went to the winery last Saturday. I think that's definitely made me want to drink more wine. I'll note that the office we get our copies (as well as get paid at) for my teaching job they actually sell wine made by agriculture students at the university. They're fairly inexpensive, $30 being the highest out of the bunch.

Back on subject Sunday was quite the day. We went to Ogino's (the grocery store) and I stocked up on some tasty goods. Instead of blowing money on Pizza Hut, we've discovered that on the third floor of the dorm there's a toaster oven. The first time I went up to use it Emma (one of the girls from Australia) came to use it about the same time so I asked who it belonged to, and come to find out it's the Australian students. I then asked to make sure it was okay that I was using it and she said that it was fine. Which I'm really glad for because I love toast and other small oven baked goodies. The point I'm getting at is that Ogino's has pizza on what might be either be toast or french bread. The closest thing in American would of course be french bread pizza. For less than $4 I can get four of these decently sized things and it has one piece of peperoni and one piece of ham (which I've never had on pizza till now!). It takes about 15 min to cook but they are mighty tasty. I've also found that I can probably live off of bread. I go through about 3 loaves of french bread a week (less than 5 bucks in total) because I just eat it as a snack or meal.

After Ogino's we came back to rest a bit and I decided to have nice cold glass of Coca-Cola. To my dismay (as well as my own clumsiness) I broke my only glass by trying to clean it and it slipped out of my hands. So I headed down to the Hyaku-en shop (dollar store) yet again to get another glass. I picked up a few other necessities like a bread cutting knife (I wonder why...), a bag of microwaveable pop weaver popcorn, a pillow, and a few mother misc things that don't come to mind right now. I don't think I've ever mentioned this but my room came with a pillow that has these small plastic beads in it almost making it like a bean bag of sorts. One might think it sounds comfy but is in no way easy to rest your head on. Since I've been here I've mainly used my extra blanket I got with my room as a pillow and eventually stuffed my blanket into a pillow case but that wasn't enough so I thought "Hey, it's a $1 dollar pillow".

I headed back up the hill to the kaikon (dorm) on my bike but ended up hoofing it most of the way. One things I noticed on the way down to the shop though was that it was a fairly clear day and I could see Fuji the best out of all the previous days I'd seen it. Here are a couple of pics:




On that note, I would like to say that we've already planned to climb Fuji next semester. There's only a about a two month window when one can climb. Total it's about a 10-11 hour hike up and down (7 up, 4 down). You start at night and then make it to the top for sun up where you are treated to an ocean of clouds (at least that was Steve's experience). Looking ahead that will probably be the last really big outing I have before coming back to the states for good (or maybe I'll just stay...). Strangely enough, when we saw Fuji a couple of days later all of the snow had melted back off!

After taking these pics of Fuji on campus. Pat and I rode down to a guitar shop where he's thinking about buying a cheap electric to play around on for the next 10 months or so. The shop was run by a father and son, the only way I know this is because he called him his father in Japanese. They kind of looked at us strangely the entire time probably wondering what we were doing in there. Pat ended up leaving empty handed but is planning on going today (10-26-08) to maybe get the one he's been eying for a while now.

We then rode past Ogino's again and I grabbed just a few more things since we were already there and Pat bought me an ice cream. Ice cream cones are really interesting here. They come completely encased in plastic and the top comes off to reveal the ice cream while, of course, the bottom covers the cone. I kinda stayed away from them before because I thought they might taste weird being that the milk here is a lil different since it's not completely homogenized, at least to my knowledge. However, I was quickly proven wrong as they are just as tasty if not tastier than ice cream you get at the grocery in the US.

When we got back to the kaikon we were greeted by someone asking for Steve. Then it jumped back into my mind that Steve mentioned going to an onsen the next town over with someone who could drive. It was said person and he goes by "Bob". This of course isn't his real name, but I think it's really unique so that's what I call him as well. So Bob, Steve, and I all hopped into a small van (Bob's) and headed over to the top of a mountain where the onsen was. Bob told us that this onsen was actually featured on the news a few weeks before and is one of the more famous onsen in Japan. Needless to say it was much larger than the onsen I'm used to going to and it had an open air bath (outside) which had about three or four individual springs. In total I'd say there were about 50-60 people in this onsen (and that was just the men's side). I say people because some father's would bring their little daughters to the men side (I'm assuming because their wife didn't come with) and a cleaning lady came to the men's side when I went to the toilet. The open air bathes are separated by wall, one side being the men and the other the women. We went all the way down to the lower spring where we were treated to an awesome yakei (night view) of the city. On some level it's quite empowering to stand naked at the top of a mountain overlooking a city. After an hour or so of sitting around in the spring I grabbed one of the most delicious things I've found in Japan thus far, Coca-cola in a glass bottle! In my opinion Coke should not be served in anything but a glass bottle, it tastes 10x better. Here's a group pic of Bob, Steve and I at this onsen:




After the onsen I went to bed as soon as we got back. I woke up early the next morning to pick up the latest issue of Weekly Shounen Jump (週刊少年ジャンプ). To my surprise it was more expensive than the first uiisue I had bought! But only a whopping 10 yen more. Meaning I got 500 pages for a meager 250 yen. Let me take this time to explain the denominations of money they use: 1 yen coin (it's as light as play money and you can bend it with your teeth), 5 yen coin (much sturdier than the 1 yen and has a hole in the middle), 10 yen (reminds me of a penny, I usually save these up to buy my Shounen Jump every week), 50 yen (good for the occasional vending machine), 1 yen coin (pretty much the equivalent of a dollar), 500 yen coin (the last coin before paper money and is the largest in diameter compared to the rest), 1000 yen bill (10 bucks), 2000 yen bill (very very rare, apparently they can be worth more than that because of the rarity), 5000 yen bill (go-sen-en that's how you say it in Japanese), and lastly 10,000 yen bill (ichi-man-en). I'm sure there are probably more bills than this but unless I somehow hit it big by modeling (still need to tighten those abs) or by getting into film here that won't be happening in the immediate future.

After getting my shonen jump class went as usual throughout the week and I pretty much stayed in. Come Wednesday we had our second class and I think we've finally got an idea of how we're going to teach them. Simply "This is what you say, this is how you say it, this is why you sat it" set up. We thought grammar and phonetics would be useful but in the end the best thing to do was to have each student ask another student a question, that student answers and then turns to the next to ask a question, and so on.

This week also marked my very first test in my class. I only missed two questions on my listening, and missed a few on the writing. In all I still scored about 83%, Martin got a little higher, Pat didn't do as well as he had hoped, but Ali (the Egyptian student) scored a whopping 4% overall. Needless to say he's not absorbing any Japanese whatsoever even though he keeps saying he studies nearly four hours each night. I keep saying if I did that kind of studying I'd be well on my way to fluent here. In any case I hope that eventually Ali will start to learn and catch on more and more because it will be for his own benefit, not to mention our classes benefit.

Friday had a really cool experience. There was a bazaar for international students to have the opportunity to get second hand goods for free. Such as clothing, kitchenware, and stationary. I ended up walking away with a Domo-kun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domo-kun) bag that had never been used which I sometimes use a camera bag now (all the Japanese girls think it's cute as hell). I also got a really nice thick coat for the winter, another curtain to help block out the sun in my room, two t-shirts, a nice airwalk button up shirt, a tie, a pot for cooking, and a food warmer that I probably won't end up using. At the bazaar you also have a chance to win other items using lots you are given at the entrance. None of us (Pat, Steve, and I) didn't see much that we would want to lot on, but we found a toaster and with Pat's lot we ended up winning! So now we have a cute Winnie the Pooh toaster for us to use:



And of course the Domo-kun bag:


I mentioned once before I was the internaitonal representative for a BBQ commitee that was organizing a grill out one weekend. That weekend was this weekend and I only managed to invite about a handful of people (the other 2 Americans, the Germans, one Chinese student, and three of my Japanese students from the English class). Total there ended up being about 22 people or so at the BBQ. We left early to go shopping with everyone which was really fun. Later we met the rest of the people coming along so we could all carpool over to the park we'd be grilling out at. Steve and I went shopping because we each wanted to make something. Steve chose hamburgers to grill, while I chose the chicken I've been working on the past few weeks here. Needless to say it was a really good time and I go to speak a little in Japanese there as well as in English. I would like to say that Japanese people are afraid of fire. Once you get a fire going it will burn on it's own, but the Japanese feel the need to continually fan the fire to keep it going, but I think a little bit of flame is neccessary to cook... Since I was a boyscout (which amazingly enough the Japanese know about) Steve nominated me to help them with the fire but none of them listened to me so I tended to my grill by lightly stirring the coals. Everyone was really wanting to try my chicken, which made me nervous because I really wanted everyone to enjoy it at that point. So after a few things had been cooked I went for it and then handed out the first few pieces and got really good reactions. It ended up being one of the bigger hits! The biggest hit being yakisoba (fried noodles) which I must say was freaking awesome! Here are most of the good pics I have from the this outing:




Here is my first crush in Japan, her name is Chen and she is from China, it's the girl on the left. Too bad she already has boyfriend :( The girl on the on the right is Mami (or is better known as "Mommy-chan"):



Here's Domo-kun trying to eat Yumi-san (Yumi loves American televsion like Smallville, Grey's Anatomy, Supernatural, and many more):


Here's Stehpan (German student) and the other German's (Martin my classmate) tutor talking. Both German students are very cool, outgoing, and nice all around:


Steve and Yumi talking:


Here's a pic of my tutor (left), some guy who happened to be in the pic (middle), and my teacher Okumura (right):


Here are some of the foods we cooked, as you can see it includes burgers, veggies, chicken, and yakisoba. MMMmmmm....




Lastly here are some group pics I took:






So here I am a day later finally getting a day to rest and not do much more than making a grocery run, laundry and tidying up a bit in my room. I think that this coming week is going to be pretty awesome considering it's only a three day week because next weekend is the school festival which will give us a FOUR DAY WEEKEND! Another cool note is that since I'm into film my adviser is going to help me organize and have movie watching sessions on campus! I think I'll soon be having lots of new friends due to this!!!

Making Wine, Who'da thunk it....

Today was almost like every other day here in Japan. Yes, that's right. Freaking awesome...

I tried to sleep in as late as I could and eventually rolled out of bed around 10 AM. I had yet another hardy breakfast of Corn Flakes, and then joined Steve for a morning shot of Vitamin N (nicotine). We were told by Jeremy that the new Weekly Shounen Jump magazine is released on Saturday so we decided to head out so I could get some money out of the ATM and pick it up (it's a whopping 2.40 for about 500 pages of manga. Weekly Shounen Jump is more geared towards kids ages 10-20. Yes it's under me as far as some material, but it's easier for me to read with all of the furigana above the kanji.

So we hit up the closest 7/11 and I got some money out of the ATM there. I've never seen them carry Weekly Shounen Jump so I kinda browsed just in case but no luck. So we decided to roll down the street from there and hit up the Daily Yamazaki (yet another conbini). This is where I bought my first issue of Jump, but no such luck. At this point we kind of assumed our friend was wrong so I did some more research online when I got back. To my dismay Weekly Shounen Jump comes out every Monday and not on Saturdays. At least I have something to look forward to. After that we headed back to the dorm where I had very little time to finish getting ready to leave for a field trip the school had organized. They had planned an excursion to a local winery where we got to do all kinds of things.

Steve sat this one out and went to a local festival that celebrates a man from Kentucky that helped with agriculture World War II. Lots of people from all over come to this big festival including from Kentucky. However, I came to Japan to get away from America, and if I had wanted to embrace it further I would have just stayed in the States. Anyway, Pat and I hopped on our bikes around 12:25 and rode down to the station. We were the first to get there and met our teacher, Esaki-sensei, as we were trying to find the meeting area. After joining up with him we walked over to the correct bus stop and waited for the bus. After a short wait the three Australian girls (Emma, Emily, and Melissa) as well as the girl from the UK (Lydia) showed up to join us on our journey. Another student (one from Germany) told our teacher he would be coming but he never showed so we ended up leaving without him.

After a short bus ride over to the next town we hopped off and walked a short distance to our destination. This is the table we were greeted with as we walked in:


I tried a few of these, and while I usually don't like white wine there was one that really suited my tastes. The red wines weren't very dry and still had too much sweetness for me. Shortly after Esaki-sensei talked to someone at the main counter near the entrance we were lead outside where we had to hop in a van that would drive us to the vineyard. There were seven of us total so Esaki-sensei and myself hopped in the very back where they had two park benches to sit on. Another couple joined us on the ride there just as we were leaving, so needless to say it was kind of cramped.

However, it was a short ride to the vineyard and the cramping didn't last for very long. After getting out the guide explained to us what we were going to be doing and how we were going to do it. We were given scissors to cut grapes down, but we could only cut the ones that were marked with white paper. We could only cut down a full bushel of grapes and not only half or part of one. Here are a couple of good pics of us chomping down as well as a group pic:







This was probably the first time I had purple grapes to eat as well as ones that had seeds (for those of you who don't know I'm very sheltered when it comes to eating new things). They were freaking delicious though and Esaki-sensei and I couldn't seem to get enough of them. Pat had the find of the day though and we had to take a pic of it. As you can see this grape looks like an alien (uchyuujin in Japanese)! Pretty weird, eh? Plus here are a few more good ones:




After we picked grapes for a few minutes and ate our fill we headed back towards the winery where we got to smash a few of the grapes we picked. Here's Pat and me kicking some grape ass:


After smashing the grapes up we got to taste the juice from the as it was run through a filter and came out the bottom:


After having some of that tasty fresh grape juice we headed inside to make our lables. I'm no artist so mine looks like a kindergarten student did it, Pat did a really good job on his I thought. Here's a pic of the group drawing it up, as well as the room we did it, and my horrible artistry:





Shortly after we went to the gift shop where I was the only one that bought a bottle of wine. The others didn't pick one up mainly because in December the grapes we smashed will become apart of a wine that we will receive around Christmas with our handmade labels and a group picture on it! I'm not going to say exactly what I got because it's going to be a present for my big sister's B-day that's coming up. Only thing is...not sure how much it'll cost to ship back and it will more than likely take a while. I'll no doubt end up sending Lil K's (Kelsey) 1st B-day present back with my sister's present so I can save on shipping (sorry it's gonna be lil late sis!!!).

That's pretty much the extent of my day, and as I was writing this blog I got invited to dinner at Ueya-sensei's house with Steve. I'm gonna try some new things hopefully but I will have to unfortunately make it clear I'm bad at trying new things to these people, but Steve said they'll understand because most EKU students they invite over don't eat much. Hey, I love rice though so I'm going to eat that up at the least!

It'll probably be a while before I get to write about anything extremely exciting with my first full week of school starting next week, and my lack of cash to travel a whole lot. I got invited to Tokyo Disney with the Aussie's but had to pass due to lack of cash and the fact I'd been to Disney World a lot as a child. Besides while there is indeed a child living inside my body it has grown past Disney for the most part.

Hope everyone enjoys my entry this time around!

My first teaching lesson.

Well I had a lazy day and woke up around 11 AM here. I blacked out my windows because I can't sleep with lots of sunlight busting in through my big sliding glass door. After just sitting around and watching the new episode of Fringe I decided to set my clothes out for my first teaching gig later that eve. I shaved and threw some clothes on and set out with Steve to the local grocery.

Before stopping there we went to the computer lab to print off a copy of our placement test, self placement test, and syllabus for our class so that we could then later make copies at our office. We then headed to the grocery where I was almost hit several times by cars. I'm going to take yet another moment out to explain something about Japanese roads. First of all, yes they do drive on the opposite side. Really not all that confusing on that part. Here I am thinking that Corbin had some of the most narrow roads I've driven on, compared to what's here that's a freaking highway. Roads are literally almost one lane and if there's a biker or pedestrian on the side of the road with a car coming both ways one will no doubt have to get over for the other to pass. Sometimes even if there isn't a biker or someone on foot they'll still have to do it. Also, the majority of Japanese telephone poles are in the freaking road which also makes things worse. Needless to say the road to the grocery was a little busy and when you think people are going to see you on a bike, you are dead wrong (even if you're flowing with the traffic).

After escaping near death a few times we made it semi-safely to the grocery store. I grabbed my usual things like milk, OJ, pocky, chicken, but they were sold out of beef. Another note on Japan would be that food here is insanely fresh so some things (like beef) sell out extremely early in the day. The flip side to food here is that it doesn't last long at all, basically you're lucky if something is dated for more than two to three days ahead of time. One could of course put meat in one's freezer to make it last a little longer. My reading is also getting better because last time I thought I bought corn flakes I actually got frosted, which is still fine but that's not what I was going for. I ended up buying two boxes of Kellog's Corn Flakes from a conbini down the road, but that's too expensive to be getting a lot. Besides, I'm pretty sure I bought the only two boxes they had and he prolly won't be getting more. So I scored a couple cheap ass bags of corn flakes today it read on the box "Pu-re-n". Which of course means "plain".

After getting back from the store we didn't have much time because we needed to get some copies made before class. So we left here about 4:35 giving us about an hour before our teaching gig started. We easily got our copies made from a nice lady in our office. Here's a couple of pics of the room we taught in today as well as the view.




However, after the sponsor arrived she told us we would be moving in to a different room because of the onset of winter. This room pictured doesn't have air or heat so they thought it'd be easier to put us in a different room that did have AC and heat.

There are 13 students on our roster. One was already marked that they would be absent and two others who signed up didn't show. So we only had 10 to work with tonight which I thought was welcoming enough. We introduced ourselves in Japanese and then Steve plainly said in Nihongo (Japanese lang.) that from here on out we would not understand their language. That seemed to intimidate people. So we moved on to the next task of handing out the placement test which really made some people turn their heads. We asked them it rank themselves in certain aspects of the language such as grammar, conversation, listening, and vocabulary from 0 (not at all) to 5 (near fluent). No one put more than a two on their sheets and most people put a 0. So we proceeded to the placement test which I've yet to grade so I'd rather not comment on how anyone did, but they once again cocked their heads in confusion it seemed even though it was more or less listening.

We then allowed them to introduce themselves to their classmates in Japanese. We then went through the alphabet which most of them seem to know but we still helped them on some letters the worst being the letter "L" since no sound like that exists in the Japanese language it always comes out like an "R". By then it was time for a break. I grabbed a cig and walked over to the bookstore and browsed for my break. Most everyone stuck inside except for one student who joined me in smoking.

The second half of class went much better than the first bcause we made them reintroduce themselves in English. There were a few people we helped correct but we were kind of surprised that their speaking abilities were somewhat decent. Their English was sometimes broken but someone could still understand them if they needed to get around. After class ended we walked with out sponsor to the new classroom which is about 10x smaller and barely enough room for all of us. Since there are two of us teaching we are probably going to split the class up into two at some point.

Now I'm back at the dorm writing this blog letting my chicken get cold on me, so I'm gonna dig in and watch the new episode of Dexter. Hope everyone reading this is doing well back in the states or wherever you are!

It's been a long time (and no I'm not reffering to the Boston song...)

Well, I apologize to everyone keeping up with my blog and me. Been very busy the past couple of days and I can't deny that there's a large part of me that's a lazy arse. I'm also gonna warn those ahead of time that this is definitely the longest post I've ever written. I don't think I've written this much in a few years...even whilst in college....

So there's a lot to catch everyone up on so I think the best place to being is last Friday (Oct 10th). Started the morning rather early to get ready for the first day of class! My class schedule is Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Each day lasts from 10:30 to about 4:15 (with a lunch break from 12-1 and then a short break between the last two periods). The only classes I'm taking are, of course, Japanese language. My class consists of four people: Patrick (American), Ali (Egyptian), Martin (German), and of course myself (Earthling). Overall I think I know the most out of the four of us, Martin knows more Kanji than me but my vocab and speaking ability is slightly better. Patrick is trying his best and is doing well. While Ali is in last place but this is due to the fact he's never taken Japanese before and going from Arabic to Japanese is quite the challenge I'm sure. While Japanese is very different from English it's phonetic structure is very similar to our own save for a few exceptions.

Although there were some parts where all of us made mistakes overall the class was very fun and enjoyable. We're never bogged down with paperwork and we run speaking drills by asking each other questions. Our teacher GTE (Great Teacher Esaki) is really nice and seems to be a very understanding person. We soon broke for lunch and we all pretty much went our separate ways.

Pat and Martin went to the cafeteria to get some cheap curry, Ali had to take the time and pray (he's Muslim), and I went to the local conbini (convenient stores in Japan but without the gasoline) and grabbed some fried potatoes (french fries), kurage (chicken nuggets), and of course Pocky for desert! I met back up with Pat & Martin and ate with them in the cafeteria. Our lunch break felt somewhat short lived and we made our way back to the classroom. Which by the way it's only a 5-7min bike ride to campus from our dorm (gotta love that).

We did a few more rounds of questions and more vocab and eventually we took a break. I had to ask Esaki-sensei where I could smoke because unlike America you can't just smoke anywhere, and so I followed him around to the side of the building wherein he pulled out his cigs and smoked with me. Not only are there not many places you can stand and smoke in Japan but there aren't many trash cans. One might think it'd be dirty but it's not at all, rarely does one see trash lying about. Trash is quite confusing here as well in the dorm because we have to separate juice carts (pizza boxes go in this category), combustibles, glass, PET bottles (plastic bottles but you have to remove the cap and label [you're supposed to anyway]), and aluminum. The crappy part is when you've bought something at a conbini and want to later throw it away but it's hard to find a place to do that.

Anywho, after the break I went back into class and the last portion blew by. The bad part was either after all this sitting or my bike riding caught up with my bad knee. For those of you who didn't hear I did some freelance camera work before leaving the states with a company called Wazoo Sport. I was doing the field cam on the sidelines and was tackled by three players during a game. My knee was hyper extended, think of standing with your leg as straight as it can be but then someone hitting your knee and making it go back the way it shouldn't. Even after I inquired they wouldn't tell me about worker's comp so I didn't have it looked at. When it flares up it's kind of hard to walk on and I tend to limp when it does. The sunny side to this pain is that I have national health care in Japan and a doctor's visit plus xrays will run me a massive $30! However, I waited it out and it felt fine after a day or so.

After class I promised Okamura-sensei (one of the main teachers for the international program) that I would show up at a meeting where students who had gone to EKU as well as the other connecting international universities were giving presentations about their trips. I was going to bail because of my leg but I toughed it out. All we had to do is basically introduce ourselves and say something good about EKU. Therein lies my problem. I pretty much have nothing good to say about EKU other than the best opportunity they gave me was coming here, and I really couldn't say that to people wanting to go there. So I talked about how it's a laid back place (Richmond) and that Yamanashi locals would feel at home because Yamanashi and Kentucky are similar (although it is more mountainous here). We had the option to stay and attend a dinner after all the students had given their presentations but I didn't want to stay for all that and my knee was hurting on top of that. Apparently, there was a lack of people at this so called "after party" because Pat called asking me to come down and Steve's tutor (Tarou) called him as well. Steve didn't go because he had a phone interview for a job he's trying to get back in the states. Which in turn means he might be leaving us soon if he gets the job. I can't blame him as it's good money, but I also hope he would stay for the rest of the duration of classes.

Later that night after all the festivities seemed to be over Steve called me and asked if I wanted to come to Tarou's and do a little bit of drinking. I hesitated seeing as I still have some stomach problems and my alcohol tolerance is incredibly low. I don't wanna be a shut in here either though so I grabbed a beer out of my fridge and headed down the street to meet up with them. We ended up going to an izakaya (a bar/restaurant, and I can't remember the name of this one) where I ended up having a few beers on top of the two I had earlier in the eve. I stopped myself before I got any worse, but even after eating I had some problems walking at first on our way back. I grabbed some water from a 24hr conbini and prepared myself for the worst. In the end I didn't get sick for once and had a great time hanging with Tarou and Steve. We got back around 1AM and I didn't hit the sack til about 3 AM.

I got up very groggily around 8:30 AM because Steve and I planned to head to Tokyo for the Tokyo Game Show and an EKU Alumni dinner. The main reason for going to the dinner was to meet our sensei from EKU that first taught us Japanese as well as meeting the EKU president. Steve unfortunately had far more to drink than me and was very hard to wake up. We didn't get down to the station til shortly after 10AM. We thought a bus would leave about every our but to our dismay we were quite wrong, and the next train to Shinjuku station wasn't til 11:45AM. We decided to go with that because the bus is way cheaper than train, although train would have gotten us out of town sooner and gotten us there slightly quicker. Since we had plenty of time Steve wanted sustenance to quell is hungover stomach. What better place to do that at the American Emb....I mean McDonald's!!!! He orders something small and I go to order the hotcake meal, but NO HOT CAKES, WTF! I just got some OJ since I had breakfast before leaving the dorm.

(I shot this pic in downtown, it's a small scale model of the castle located in Kofu, and with my phone no less!):

Steve wanted to grab some cigars from a bookstore located further downtown, but as I said before we had plenty of time so we went. As we made our way there we found that there were festivities going on around downtown the mainstay of which being street performers or rather street bands playing all around. Steve grabbed his smokes after getting to the store and I found a manga compilation magazine that is released monthly. It was only 5 bucks and contains roughly around 1000 pages!!! As you can see from this pic it's bigger than my fist....


So we head back to the station because it's getting close to departure time when I begin to search my bag and I can't find my ticket. From here on out it began to seem like the day wasn't going to be in my favor. Steve didn't seem to think it'd be a problem because they would recognize us at the station since we're gaijin. However, they clearly told us after we asked for a replacement ticket that we would have to buy an entirely new one. Since I'm semi-strapped for cash there as no way I was paying for another. However, I went through all of my bag and eventually find it long before the bus arrived. I slept most of the way on the bus while Steve jammed out on his ipod (energetic for being hungover isn't he....). We arrived in Shinjuku around 2PM and decided to buy our bus ticket back ahead of time. Herein, lies a valuable lesson...buy bus tickets a day or two before going to your destination. The last bus out at 11PM was full and the one before (9:15PM) only one seat. I in now way brought enough cash to stay the night in Tokyo and I didn't want to use my credit card. I convinced Steve to call Ueya-sensei (Steve's tutor and ten year liaison for Yamanashi/EKU program) and ask for advice since he was coming in town. We hope that he was driving and we could hitch a ride back, but he was taking the train and said it'd be slightly more expensive than going by bus. At that point we had no choice so we decided to do that later.

We then started making our way to the Tokyo Game Show which was located in Chiba which is about a 30-40 min train ride according to the access map on the TGS site. This was true, however you have to go through Tokyo station to get there from where we were. That station is probably just as large as any major airport and took roughly 30 min to get to our train. When it was all said and done we had slightly more than an hour to spend at the TGS. I wanted to see what the show had to offer but I mainly went to play Resident Evil 5 (doesn't come out in the states until March!). We got there right before that stop letting people in and as soon as we walked through the entrance I tried to snap a pic, and as you can see it's a bad one and the guy on the right tried to stop me from taking it:


We wandered around the main entrance building (there are three huge freaking sections to this convention center) for about 20 min and I stumbled upon the RE5 booth which I did not take enough pics of and the one I did get is fuzzy. I got into line which said that it's a 40 min wait to play and I stood there for about 15 min when suddenly a few workers started counting people in line and then shut the line off without telling anyone and lead them into a line for what seemed to be a rather crappy game. So I hopped out and called Steve (we had went our separate ways because he wanted to see as much of the show as he could) and I decided to join him and his venture. We got to see some really awesome things and got a couple of free goodies like a fan and a dvd from Capcom showcasing all of their games there. Here's a shot of what I got, mostly it's literature trying to push the sell of their products:

One of the most interesting things is that they hire nice looking women in order to attract people to their booths, and I have to say....it worked for me. One girl gave me a really awesome lustful stare at the Microsoft booth and I almost fell in love. At one point near the Hudson stage area twenty or so girls came down and posed for pics:


I've got a lot more pics from the TGS and almost every booth on my flickr page so check them out. While I'm on the flickr subject I'll soon be adding another place to which I will be adding photos. Flickr has a 200 pic cap which is ridiculous and you have to pay 25 per year for pro access giving you nearly unlimited space. So instead of doing that, and since my pics are small in file size, I'm going to be using photobucket from now on. I will keep my flickr link and slide show up on the sidebar but will be adding photobucket links and apps very soon, so stay posted on that front!

After the TGS was over it was pure hell getting out of there, I think this picture will make my point:


When we got to the station it was even worse and it took around 40min just to get our ticket which is highly unusual at a Tokyo station. When we got to the platform it was just as bad and people were cramming into the train as if it were a sardine can. I mean people were slamming me into the thing. Steve and I glared at each other and were like "Let's wait for the next one" which was a whopping six minutes later. We were the first to get in the train car and grabbed two seats. It was still packed, but not as bad as the previous train and at least we were seated for a long ride back to Tokyo-eki (Tokyo station). While TGS was cool, I wish we had more time to spend there and it felt somewhat like a downer much like the earlier part of my day.

Things began to pick up really hardcore from here on out though. When we switched trains for Shinjuku I sat between two people with a seat on each side separating. A jovial Japanese politely asked me in English if he could sit next to me because his friend was on my left side. I, of course, gladly told him to take a seat. It wasn't too long after that I began to smell the alcohol reeking from this man. He soon started asking Steve and I all sorts of questions like where we were from, why we where how, how long we've been here, and what we've seen. He told us he was a lumber jack from around the world and his english was pretty decent, especially considering he was as drunk as a skunk. We told him where we were headed (the EKU Alumni dinner) and he said that if things didn't work out there that we should meet up and go drinking! We thanked him for telling us if the train we were on was the right one and went our seperate ways.

By this time we were already about 5-10min late for the start of the dinner. We grabbed a taxi and headed over to Shinjuku Hilton. I'm pretty positive it was the most posh hotel I'd ever been in and EKU shouldn't be fitting the bill for something like that when tuition jumped nearly 500 dollars this past semester (good thing I'm on a scholarship). We were kind of scared we weren't going to be able to get in because they told us we were going to have to pay $100 to get in, which I think is completely asinine to ass of a student in a foreign country. However, we were told to come anyway and that something could be worked out. I was still frightful of what that might be exactly. I'm not sure who paid for Steve and I to come but we were told by our Japanese teacher (Kwak-sensei) that we didn't have to worry about it which made me feel very relieved. We were first greeted, however, by one of Kwak-sensei's aids who helped with our kanji back in the day. She was dressed in an elaborate kimono and it was very cool, she also just recently came back to Japan after graduating from EKU in 2006 even though she's an older woman. She invited us to visit her in Kyoto which we hope to do because it's the old capital and filled with all sorts of history. Which I might add the USA has a lack of since it hasn't been around for very long, and might not live to see 300.

The only people we knew at the dinner are the two woman I just mentioned and Ueya-sensei who was present with his wife. When first seeing a pic of him Steve's mother as well as mine said the same thing "He looks like Mr. Miyagi" and much like Mr. Miyagi I would not mess with this dude. He used to be huge back in the day and still puts on quite the aura of superiority despite his age:


He's one of the nicest and most reliable people I've met in Japan thus far. We missed the opening speeches given by the EKU president (Doug Whitlock) and Kwak-sensei's as well. We did, however, get there just in time to eat! I tried a couple of new things such as sea urchin, which tasted so so, and some shrimp sushi which was pretty good. I mainly stuck with the chicken and beef as well as lots of bread. Here are a couple of pics:



After the food we all went around the room and introduced ourselves via microphone. I just said that I was a graduate in media production with film emphasis from EKU studying for a year in Yamanashi in order to gain a better sense of the culture and hopefully use that in my films some day. I of course did this in English, and Steve was forced to do his in Japanese. We ended up meeting some pretty cool people and I may have made a good contact with someone who is somewhat familiar with the business I'm trying to break into, but I don't wanna go into it too much as I don't want to jinx it completely. After that we broke down and talked in small groups and snapped a couple of pics before leaving.

Here's Steve, Kwak-sensei (THE ONE WHO HELPED ME GET HERE!!!), and myself:



Some new friends and me (Hilton worker didn't turn on my flash):


Lastly here's the EKU pres:


While talking to Kwak-sensei since she knew that we had some expenses we weren't originally told about when coming over she really felt for us and ended up giving Steve and I about $50 each. If I wasn't in her debt enough I can't believe that she went and did this for us. Steve and I are going to get her a gift and send it to her as soon as we can. To top that off, after leaving we headed down to the train station with Ueya-sensei to get our tickets and depart back to Kofu. Ueya-sensei asked if we had bought tickets and we said no that we were going to at the station. After saying that he handed Steve and I a ticket each. I was blown away, but I didn't expect him to pay for it so I had Steve ask him what we needed to pay him for the tickets. He of course said "Nothing". Which now puts me in the debt of yet another Japanese person. Kwak-sensei and he are probably some of the most respectable Japanese I've met thus far. I'll further explain this in a second...

We got back into town around midnight and we left Ueya-sensei and his wife, but not before she could give us some fresh oranges from their garden! The niceness never ends! We both hit the bed as soon as we got back. We were off school not only Sunday of course, but Monday as well (not for Columbus day!) for Sports Day. We pretty much sat around those two days and all I did was a little grocery shopping and showed Patrick where Book Off was. We both ended up signing up for a Book Off card (gotta make a lascivious joke here), wherein I can now "get off" anytime...

So come Tuesday we had to meet Doug Whitlock again because he came to Yamanashi to renew the exchange agreement between our two schools. Here in lies my problem with some people here, we waited on Okamura-sensei for thirty minutes and she never bothered to even call us and tell us they'd be late. In the end Esaki-sensei who was there waiting with us called Okamura-sensei and told us to come to the Admin building across the way to meet them. All we did was snap a couple of pics and he asked us what our majors were (even though I had previously mentioned mine...) then we said a couple of other things before departing for class which we were now almost 30 minutes late for. This was the second time Okamura-sensei has kept me waiting and while I may be a patient man I think it's common courtesy to at least call when they have your cell number and tell them that you're running behind.

Although late for class the teacher was okay with it because I told her (in Japanese) what we were doing. Class went just like Friday, my lunch was even the same (save the Pocky because I brought some with me!). Steve and I have decided to observe the American Football team this week and decide if we're going to join or not. This of course would make us the biggest people on the team if not any surrounding team in the area. The only worry I (as well as my mother) have is that my knee could possibly go out on me again, but perhaps if I wear a bracing it might be okay as long as I don't put incredible stress onto it.


That pretty much puts me to where I am right now, which is writing this blog and preparing myself mentally for teaching my very first English class tomorrow along with Steve. Hope everyone enjoyed reading this incredibly lengthy post!