No rest for the weary

I know you can't believe it. I'm posting two weeks in a row now. Maybe I'm back on a roll, maybe I'm not. Or maybe I just have nothing better to do at the moment.

This past Monday was Labor Thanksgiving day in Japan. I asked a Japanese friend what was the purpose of the holiday and he told me it's exactly like it sounds, they are giving thanks for working. Japanese people really love to work I guess. I then explained to him what Thanksgiving meant in American, that it was the time when Pilgrims and the natives gathered and exchanged foods and skills, like how to grow corn. After telling him this he was in disbelief because most other countries acknowledge the fact that we pretty much committed genocide during that period of our history.

Anywho, I had Monday off and pretty much sat around and Ho-san (my Taiwanese friend) came over to help me order my electronic dictionary. I bought it at roughly half the cost if I had bought it in America. After ordering that we sat around and talked and played a little bit of Wii Sports. After she left I went back to my studies.

Come Wednesday, Ho-san came back so we could check on when I might be getting my dictionary. She called the store up and they said it would be delievered that day! I thought it would be there later and I didn't have enough cash on me to pay for it (Cash on Delivery is the biggest payment option in Japan and that's what I chose). I get paid the last Wednesday of every month but not until 4:30 and the package came at 3!! Ho-san was really nice and leant me the money so I was able to pay for the dcitionary on time.

9 out of 10 times it's really easy to find out a word or kanji from my dicionary. I'm not sure why I didn't buy one of these sooner...I'd suggest buying one of these babies if you plan on going to a country that doesn't really speak English that much.

Not much bigger than my hand, and fairly lightweight.

Nice button layout, but took some getting use to.

The pad on the bottom is for inputting charaters
via a stylus that it came with. Sweet for writing
kanji to which I have no idea what the reading might be.

Not much happened the rest of the week, class went as usual. Made perfect on some kanji quizzes Friday, I somehow one upped the Chinese student again. The teacher even asked me to explain how I practice to everyone because I scored prefects thus far on kanji. I leave it to memory...guess that doesn't work for everyone though.

After class on Friday I stayed on campus for a while and talked to my friend Bob. I think we're trying to organize a trip to Tokyo Disney during the X-mas break because I'd like to see Tokyo all done up for the season. Our city, Kofu, just recently put up their X-mas lights and it has a really nice feeling downtown now. Sorry, I don't have any pics as of yet.

So Friday night we went with Steve to eat out for kind of a going away party. Our Aussie friend Melissa lied to the store people and told them it was his B-day and we all ended up getting a free round and Steve got a free piece of cake as well. Let's not forget to mention that sang his fake B-day in Italian as well. Very interesting....

This is the hat they threw on him while they sang.

Afterward, they wanted to drag me to karaoke but it's just too expensive for me right now. It's generally like 30 dollars for a couple of hours. While karaoke is fun to me, not for a couple of hours (they ended up not coming back from it til 6 AM the next day, so ya..I'm glad I didn't tag along). Before all that though they convinced me to go to a photo booth. Photo booths here are a huge deal, and they are literally huge machines themselves. We chose what as possibly the most feminine booth that was there, it translated "I want to become a beautiful girl". When you go in it's about a 5ft x 5ft space with the camera and scree to the front and a green screen at your back. Needless to say they're interesting inventions. Here are two of the ones we managed to get digitally. There were more than this and believe my they are just as funny if not better than these two.

Top row is Me, Steve, Lydia (UK).
Middle is Aza who is Mongolian (and very cute).
Bottom is Melissa and Emma (AU).

The screen prompts you with every
shot to mimic a pose it displays on screen, I
was in the middle of trying to do something
but I think it ended up even funnier.

After all that I went home and pretty much went straight to bed. I got up early Saturday morning because the principal of an Elementary School (he also teaches English at the University I attend) invited me to tour their school festival. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures. Had I even brought my camera there wouldn't have been enough time to stop and take pics the principal ran us through so fast in order to see everything. It was very interesting all these tiny Japanese children just staring up at me as if they were saying "What the fuck is he doing here?". Perhaps not so vulgar but just this look of awe would come over their faces as they would see me. Some children would say "HELLO" in English and it was really cute. I think the older I get the more I like kids because they're so innocent unlike adults. Some kids asked us some questions in Japanese and we got to answer back.

Unlike American elementary schools the direct comparisons I can make are that in this level of education there are school sanctioned sports. Whereas in America if one's parents (or the child themselves) wants the kid to play sports you have to go to city sanctioned sports like little leagues for various sports. Also, most children seemed to already be playing intrsuments, which isn't unusual so much that the number of children who could play at least one instrument was much more than the stateside number.

Each classroom had a game or event one could participate in. Instead of similar grade levels participating with each other it worked vertically. For instance there were 6 grades in this elementary school; therefore there is 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, and 6A. All of these classes would work together and do something. An example we go to experience was a miniature golf setup in one class room made out of AstroTurf and cardboard. Even the parents were able to participate on some level by bringing goods from home to sell at a bazaar in the gym, or submitting their works of art and handicrafts to be viewed.

After the tour we went our separate ways and while talking with my guide on the way back she mentioned another English teacher on campus. I'd seen him before but I always thought he was British for some reason or another, maybe because he never approached me I assumed he didn't htink I was American or vice versa. Anywho, ironically enough as we were getting our bikes at campus I hear a loud voice coming from above "Hey guys, got a minute!!"

I look up and it's the teacher we were just talking about! He came down and we talked for about an hour. He's from New Hampshire and has lived in Japan for quite a few years. Afte talking for a good while we were then invited to come along with him to talk English to a few girls from a nursing school and get paid 3000 yen (about 28 USD) for talking to them in English for an hour.

Pat and I were really hungry by this time (around 1) and we were going to go to Denny's but Steve (the teacher, not my friend Steve pictured way above) recommened a ramen place. Unfortuatnely, we couldn't find the store so we stuck with the original plan and biked through the tunnel just down the road from our dorm. The tunnel is about 780 meters long and didn't take long to get through, but it sucks if there are a lot of cars in there because it's nothing but exhaust that you're inhaling (which happened on the way back). I thought our destination was much closer, but we got to see some cool sites on the way. For instance (no pics, but don't worry I'm going back to this place since it's close by) there was this HUGE temple just on the other side of the tunnel. A huge buddha statue as well as real live monks sweeping the grounds up.

We ended up biking almost 3 or 4 miles (which doesn't sound like much, but when you're going up and down hill all the time it can indeed be strenuous) to our final destination. By this time I didn't really feel like Denny's nor did Pat. So we rode down another 100 yards or so and decided to get a table at Ootoya's. I've mentioned this place before as I ate there with my buddy Bob about a month ago. I'm starting to surprise myself with my meager Japanese language knowledge. I got us a table for two and later Steve called. So I hit the buzzer (most Japanese restauraunts have them to get the waiters attention) and got our waiter to come over. I said to him in Japanese that a friend was coming and that we needed a table for three and apologized to him. He understood exactly what I said and said it was okay and not to worry about it. Steve showed up shortly there after and we ordered our meal and then headed to my favorite place in Japan. That's right....Book Off! This was a special occasion becuase this was no doubt Steve's final visit to bookoff. He got a cheap set of a manga (made anime) of 10 volumes for 500 yen called School Rumble. He even managed to get them to give him a cardboard box to send his manga back in. I of course got a few volumes to haul back home as well.

The journey back was much harder as the majority of the trip was all up hill. It was cool outside but I ended up taking my thick leather jacket off because I was sweating like a hog by the time we got back throug the tunnel. I was going to turn to go up the hill back to the dorm but Pat kept going straight so I followed him till I caught up. He stopped at another store which I had said earlier I wanted to go to, but my body (and mind) was way too tired to still want to go. This store is largest book/dvd rental store that's closest to our dorm. The prices aren't as good as Book Off, but I leanred something fairly awesome about this store. I was searching for one volume of manga I accidently skipped in a certain series and I couldn't find it in the store. So I asked the clerk if they had it and he showed me the section but of course they lacked the volume I was looking for. He then told me in Japanese (of course) that he might be able to order it. So I follow him back over to the counter and he told me that he could order it and all he needed was my name and phone number. He then proceeded to tell me that it would come in about 12/3 or 12/4 and he would contact me when it came in. While my usage of Japanese in this country might not be completely practical, it's getting me around and helping me with what I need or want to do. I'm not at a conversation level as of yet, but as I said, I can get around.

After all that biking around we came back to the dorm and Ho-san dropped by with everything we needed to cook spaghetti so we (Pat, Ho, and I) cooked a huge spaghetti dinner with meatballs and garlic toast on the side. Pat ended up making an apple pie that eneded up being pretty tasty for his first attempt, as well as his lack of shortening. We then gathered a small group of people up and watched the new Bond movie seeing as we found access to a copy of the film. It was kind of a dissapointment but still entertaining on some level. After all that I hit the bed.

Now it's Sunday and I'm taking it easy. All I've done today is blog, do some laundry and finish my homework for tomorrow's classes. X-mas break is a mere three weeks away and I'm really looking forward to kicking back. As usual, hope everyone enjoys reading what's up in the land of the rising sun.