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!
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