Sun Chasing Traveler

Guess Who's Back, Back Again

2009-04-17T17:44:00.004+09:00

Guess who's back, guess who.....

Okay, enough with the Slim Shady metaphor. However, unlike Mr. Mathers I made a comeback, but to Japan of course and not to the world of white rappers. Though, when I think about it, is rap still alive? Rap seems to have turned more towards hip hop these days. Give me old school Dr. Dre or Snoop Dog any day.

Music aside, I am indeed back after my extended tour in the United States. For those of you keeping up with the blog I returned stateside early March. I extended my stay two weeks over so I could spend a little extra time with family and friends.

As far as what I did stateside I can't really say much. Mainly I spent time (yes I'll say it again) family and friends. I cooked a few meals for my fam which they seemed to enjoy, or were lying through their teeth. Most of my time was spent playing Resident Evil 5 which came out about a month ago, and has sold nearly 1.5 million copies to date. Tyler (one of my closest buds) and I spent quite some time playing through the game and getting all the achievements. Yes I bought it for Xbox and not my PS3, the NPD also backed up my thoughts the 360 would indeed be the better seller by outselling the PS3 version by 350,000 copies.

Aside from Resident Evil I didn't do much else. This was a nice break though. My life in Japan is usually a little busier and time off was definitely needed/wanted. I'm back now though and I had to hit the road running. I was a few days late for the prelim on signing up for classes. So, this past Monday I met with my adviser, Morita (森田)-sensei, in order to figure out what classes I'm going to take this semester. To my dismay last semester we found they would not have the next Japanese language class for me to take. So I skipped ahead and am still taking three language classes. One is designed for reading, another is for grammar and speech, and lastly there's a supplemental class I'm taking for review (extra study time). This of course left me with three more classes I needed to take. The teachers I have suggest that it's better to take art or sports classes due to the fact that you don't necessarily need to know what's being said in order to participate in the class. So I took said advice (since I might as well have fun with these classes seeing as I have a college degree already) and took some artsy fartsy classes. So my schedule is as follows (because I know you all are aching to get a hold of me so here's my timetable):

Monday: Drawing (where you...well...draw things, mainly pencil and charcoal)

Tuesday: Painting (where you...ok I'm not gonna use the same joke twice, but you paint things. First still life then we can do our own thing)

Wednesday: I did have a class but it got changed to Friday, which is awesome because now I have Wednesday off for now. For now meaning my supplement class begins next month.

Thursday: HELL (no this isn't a class but that's what this day feels like to me). First, I have Japanese in the morning. After lunch I have a class Morita-sensei helped me pick out. It's a class on Ernest Hemingway, for those uncivilized folks reading this he was an American writer/journalist. I've not read any of his works but the timing of this class couldn't have been more impeccable seeing as I've dove head first back into literature. This class is also great because we read, well in English! However, I'm sure I'll be acting as more of a tutor seeing as I'm the only English speaker in the class. Lastly, I have calligraphy! I said in a previous post we did a special class on this last semester, but that was just one class. Now I take the class every week. This should hopefully help me learn more kanji and have a better understanding of what/where the symbols are derived from.

Friday: I did have a clay sculpting class, but as I said I needed only 7 classes, this would have made 8 so I decided to drop it seeing as I don't really need any more undergraduate credits. So the Japanese class I should have had on Wednesday is now on Friday.

So far classes have been really cool. After being polluted by the horrible asshole filled American mindset I'd forgotten how nice people and helpful people are in this country. I made a new friend, Akimoto, who is Lydia's (from the UK) tutor. He helped me sign up for most of these classes. Signing up for classes isn't as easy as EKU or other US universities where you can just sign up online after having some sort of guidance or receiving a RAC number. In Japan you have to actually meet with the teacher and discuss with them about the class and get their stamp. *CULTURAL NOTE* For those who don't understand Japan does not use signatures, they use a "hanko" which is a specially made stamp that takes the place of a signature. Although, one would think it would be easier to forge a stamp rather than one's John Hancock.

My language class went from four people to a massive 18 people. As far as people I knew going into the class there were about four, Harrison (UK), Lydia, Stephan (Germany), and Rinsan who was in my class last semester. The other fourteen can easily be split down the middle seven people from Malaysia and the other seven from China. A lot of the girls from Malaysia all watch anime and every time one of them would bring a show up they liked Okumura-sensei (my teacher from last semester) would turn to me to ask me if I knew said series. Of course, sadly enough, I knew them all.

I've also failed to mention the fact that we did get new students this semester. The old Aussie's left and new ones came in. All of them seem very cool (3 girls and 2 guys). The women are über cute but being on the downward slope to 30 (albeit a few years away still yet) I feel much older than these kids seeing as well...they look like kids (save for one).

So needless to say I should have a very interesting time before I come back stateside for good. Yes, if I've not mentioned it yet I've decided to make my living in the USA rather than staying here for more than the original year. I love Japan, and I'll always have the opportunity to come back now. However, I really need to get my hands back on cameras, it's what I want to do and love to do and the more I delay that the likelihood of my chances of making something of myself in the "biz" fades away.

Now, for the part of my blog that discusses books! I recently finished Invisible Monsters by Palahniuk. I really hand it to him and his twist endings. It's possible to guess some of the ending but never all of it. Now I've moved on to a book I ordered off of Amazon (Japanese Amazon that is) called "House of Leaves". I've not read too far into it but it's already very interesting and is sucking me in. This is mainly due to the fact that the book is written in an very interesting way. I'm not a literature analyst nor do I critique it all too often, so I suggest if you're interested in it then look it up on the ole Wikipedia.

Can't say much for movies this time around seeing as I saw "Watchmen" in theaters the first weekend I was in and was utterly disappointed. If you liked this movie, then you're either an idiot or you didn't read the graphic novel. Or, I guess it could be both. Pop, pop, fizz, fizz, what a wonder feeling it is. This is how I'd describe the visuals, I'd get more feeling off an antacid. I can only fear movies will be pretty shitastic this year as they were last (Slumdog was not that good people) seeing as less projects are being green lit due to the stagnant economy.

Lastly, I would like to take time and say that although I don't really understand the need for religion I do indeed have enough respect for those who practice religion to not criticize. Unfortunately, my tolerance is wavering. For the last week I've been woken up as early as 4:30 AM by my Malaysian neighbour who finds the need to pray so loudly I can hear him through the wall. I don't have anything against the praying itself, but when it keeps me up that's another story. This person is also in one of my classes so it makes it hard to say anything to him as I will have to deal with him more than just living next to him. I've tried blasting music from my laptop at him through the wall but he did not falter, I guess I have to give him props for being able to pray through the rather unbearable Street Fighter IV opening "Indestructible".

P.S. Sorry there aren't any pics, haven't really gone anywhere or done anything to warrant me taking out my camera. Although I have to say when I re-entered Japan I was treated to some rather beautiful cherry blossom trees. It was like it was snowing pink petals, quite the site.

It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN

2009-02-23T16:27:00.009+09:00

Yes just like the Europe song....but perhaps not as awesome as a Swedish 80s rock band. The title of the blog is of course due to the fact I'll be departing from Narita in less than seven days now.Anyway...I've been down with school for a about a week now and I'm all rested up so I thought this an opportune time to write in the good ole blog.

I know I already talked about my certificate and my presentation but here are a few pics that my teacher sent to me over the weekend.

Top row left to right: Esaki-sensei, Okumra-sensei
Itou-sensei, and another teacher I don't know/didn't have
Middle row left to right: Harrison (UK), Stephan (Germany), Pat (USA)
Bottom row: Martin (Germany), ME (USA!), Rinsan (China), Lydia (UK)

Okumura handing me my certificate.

My best cheese face.

I didn't do much Tuesday-Thursday except for doing a little bit of grocery shopping and figuring out what I need to do before coming back for my stateside visit. Come to find out it's not a lot, just fill out a paper telling my dorm mother where I'm going and then go to the government building in Kofu and get a re-entry visa which will cost me about 35 bucks. Later this week I will also go ahead and by my bus ticket ahead of time to go to Narita next Monday. One of my suitcases broke on the way over but Pat is going to be nice enough to lend me one of his bags since he isn't going to visit stateside for the break.

I also want to thank everyone who helped support my family through a rough time, such as Duke and my friend Tyler. For those of you that haven't heard my father was diagnosed with colon cancer not too long ago. He had surgery last week and was recently let out of the hospital. He's doing great and the situation couldn't have turned out better! So thanks to Duke for helping out with my lil babies (cats) at home, and Tyler for picking me up at the airport come next week while my mother helps my father recover. For those of you who I didn't talk to thank you for your support and I'm glad your thoughts were with us.

Come Thursday, we left for Nagano around 6 or so. The trip was long and the only thing I did was read "Survivor" most of the way. We didn't see snow for the longest time and even when we did it didn't seem like much. Well...needless to say as we started our climb of the mountain that changed quite drastically. The accumulation was already 4.5 ft when we got there. Out hotel room was for 7 people: Ho-san (Taiwanese), Emi (Japanese), Mio (JPN), Martin, Stephan, Pat, and myself. It was a traditional style Japanese room with tatami mats and futons. Here are a few pics:

So like I said there was plenty of snow. By the time we arrived at the hotel it was 9 PM and we were all starving. The two Japanese girls wanted to go to the onsen and the rest of us decided to go to find something to eat atop this chilly mountain of Madarao. We walked about four hundred yards from the hotel to find a very small restaurant where I had huge tasty plate of spaghetti. We went back to the hotel and we all pretty much went to sleep fairly quickly.

The next morning I got griped at because I snored most of the night. Hey, I couldn't help it I had a cold. Patrick was the one that griped the most, but come to find out he snored as much as me if not more, which I found very funny. After having a nice buffet breakfast, which for me mainly consisted of bread and ham, we all went to rent ski clothes and snowboards.

I had to try on a million pairs of pants until they finally found the largest pair that fit me. Gear and all it cost about $77 for both days of playing in the snow. However, after getting on the slopes I found that my gloves weren't that great and I could probably use some goggles as well. I figure it was worth buying all of this seeing as I'd really like to do it again sometime in the near future. However, when I went to buy these things I found the most awesome toboggan of all...it was like a head of white hair with black died tips. Needless to say I was the goofiest looking fool on the mountain that day. I don't' have any pics of the actual snowboarding because we were all doing it and no one wanted to risk bringing along their camera and breaking it, myself included. And to answer your question....no I'm not good at snowboarding. It's strange because I seem to be opposite most people, I can go fast, stay on the board...but going slow or stopping are another story all together. So needless to stay I fell, or rather had to fall, quite a few times and I'm still feeling that pain. Here are a few pics of the view and some things around the hotel:

So after about 5 hours of boarding I headed back to the room on my own. I fell asleep waiting on the others to come back. I was so tired I just laid there as everyone played cards and waited on dinner time to roll around. Finally dinner did roll around it was pretty tasty. It was kinda sad because I ate from the "Kid's Corner" but it had some tasty tempura (fried shrimp), and karage (chicken nuggets). The best part was desert where we were treated to a tasty chocolate fondue fountain :D

The next morning we woke up later than the day before and headed down to the dining hall for the same breakfast we had the day before. However, before doing so we all had to stare in amazement at our window. I have to explain the situating of the room and this hotel for you to understand these pictures. We're on the second floor, and outside our window is an overhang that is on the front of the hotel. As I said there was plenty of snow and the pics above with the nice mountain views were taken from that window. Well...check this out, this was what happened after one night:

I couldn't believe my eyes, and if I ever stay in Kentucky at any point in the future I'll never complain about snow (which I never really have unless it closes stores I want to visit).

After yet another painful day of falling we all went to the onsen at different points in the day and kind of relaxed till we departed at about 5 PM. We took our time going down the mountain as we didn't have chains or snow tires. Unfortunately, right after reaching the base of the mountain one of the girls tells us she forgot her wallet. We were all kind of mad but it's an honest mistake, so we wasted an hour going back up and coming back down the mountain. We stopped at good ole McDonald's where we had some nice greasy food to hold us over until Kofu. The ride back seemed faster for some reason. Probably because I was in so much pain.

I've not really done a ton of stuff since being back from Nagano. I did finish "Survivor" finally, I kept saying I was close to finishing it to people but I had only read one hundred or so pages. I ended up reading the remaining two hundred within the first day of being at Nagano. I also picked up Neil Gaiman's "Coraline" over the weekend because I want to see the movie while I'm back in the states. It's basically a kid's book (although an interesting one) and I breezed through it in a day. Now I'm reading Palahniuk's "Lullaby" and I'm enjoying it. I've kind of put Sawtelle on hold but I'm definitely going to finish it soon. "2666" is way back there on the burner seeing as it's going to take me some time to read, so I may as well save it for the other part of my stay in Japan. I've been looking into purchasing a Kindle because I've gotten so much back into reading, it's pricey but seems quite convenient. The biggest downfall is that the books for it aren't very cheap. However, much like an iPod you're paying for the convenience of being able to carry around so much media rather than having to tout around a brick ton of books. This is especially nice because the Kindle 2 is as thin (maybe thinner) than a pencil. So all you good friends and family out there that love me, BUY ME THIS! Just kidding....maybe....

As I said before I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone since it's been pretty much half a year already, although to me it doesn't feel like it. I'm ready to get my Street Fighter 4 on with all my peepz!

2009-02-17T11:58:00.007+09:00

First off, it's been quite a few weeks since I've posted anything. To be honest not a lot has been going on of late. Starting from where I left off the only really cool thing I got to see was a end of the season festival known as "Setsubun" (節分) which means seasonal division. They are on an older calender here and spring officially starts quite early. Although, you can tell from the weather that it's really still winter here....albeit we did have a few really nice days here that were like "t-shirt weather".

Anywho, this particular Sestubun theme is letting the bad spirits out of the house and let the good luck flow in. To celebrate kids usually throw nuts at men dressed in Oni (demon) outfits whilst saying "Oni out, happiness in". I tried to take a few pics with my cellphone but unfortunately none of them turned out. The best part were the really small children getting pictures with the Oni, it's like they were making the child cry on purpose. It really look detrimental to the kid's health, but hey it's their culture.

Other than that I've not really gone out and done anything that warrants pics or awesomeness. As a nice present for our Japanese class coming to an end our teacher, Okumura-sensei, was nice enough to drive us and pay for our meal at Red Lobster!

One thing I did really enjoy was that we were given a special caligraphy class one day where we were taught how to paint different kanji via brush and ink. I really enjoyed it and it's great kanji practice. Here are a few pics of the work I did during the class (I'll probably be taking the actual class next semester):

This is the kanji "Ryu" for Dragon that I asked
the teacher to do for me.

I've been doing a lot of prep for a presentation for my class that we all have to do at the end of the semester. I ended up doing mine on Akira Kurosawa, who I believe was and still is one of the most influential directors of film. It went rather well and afterwards I recieved a certificate of completion in front of everyone, which was a good feeling.

As far as filling my time I usually just come back to the dorm and chill out of late because of all the test prep as well as my speech prep. Though, school is over now and I hope to be able to get out and do a lot before the break is over. Although, besides playing too much DOTA (a mod to Warcraft 3 for PC), I've been reading a lot and piling up books to read after I finish the ones that I'm already reading.

As I said before I'm reading "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" which is progressing rather slowly. I truly enjoy the book but for some reason it's taking me a while to wade through. Another book I picked up shortly after getting the aforementioned book was "2666" by Roberto Balano. Tis a weighty read of nearly 1000 pages >.< I've not read too much into it so I can't really reveal anything about it. Since I thoroughly enjoyed "Knockemstiff" by Donald Ray Pollock, I decided to pick up it up because author Chuck Palahniuk thought really good of it. However, then I recently started thinking while I loved the movie Fight Club, and enjoyed the recent Choke, I'd never read any of his books.

So I decided to start off with "Survivor", needless to say I was blown away, with fiction like this I find it very hard to put down. So I caught the Palahniuk bug and ended up purchasing all of his fiction works except for "Snuff" which I cannot currently find in Japan.

While the lack of "Snuff" does make me sad, I'll be able to buy it soon because I'm going to be on a plane back to the states in less than two weeks. I'll fly from Narita at about 5 PM on March 2nd here, then travel back in time and arrive in Louisville at 8 PM March 2nd. Not a bad three hour flight if I do say so myself....I wish....my trip will actually be like this: 3.5 hr bus ride to Narita, 2 hr wait before flight, 13 hr flight to Houston, 3.5 hr layover, and then about a 2hr flight to Louisville...jet lag cometh.

Needless to say I'm glad I get to come back and see my family. Next on the list will be my friends :D But then of course there's my prized possessions....MY KITTIES!
It's going to be a well deserved break and I'm really looking forward to everyone, so if you're reading this blog and wanna get up with me when I get back either dial my old digits after March 2nd or send me an email!

Tokyo, Disney Sea, and Kyoto PART 2 of 2!

2009-01-10T22:57:00.027+09:00

Well here we are again. Yeah, yeah...I know it's been like a freaking month but I've been a busy guy here of late. Class has gotten a little bit harder so I'm trying to keep up. I've also been looking for all kinds of English teaching jobs (part-time and full-time alike) as well as searching for a school to possibly go to for a my master's here. However, still about six full months here so just kind of have to wait and see what happens. Even if I can't end up staying in Japan it will still have been worth it all.

Before getting full force into the rest of my journeys I would like to talk a little bit about film. Sorry, but this is what I do. So please bear with me on this one. For those of you who don't keep up with me all too well it's more or less my dream to make an awesome film. Mainly I would love to make an awesome realistic drama. Some examples of something I would like to make possibly could resemble Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa) or Let There Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson). Basically the study of the man, human emotions, or just plainly put, the human mind/heart. I watch at least one film a day no matter how good or bad it might be. The more I cram into my brain maybe I can have the ability to portray the thoughts and feelings I want to through picture and sound.

Last week before going to Kyoto I watched almost three films a day. A few that really stood out to me were "Slumdog Millionaire" which is directed by Danny Boyle of "28 Days Later" and last years "Sunshine". This film isn't the best thing ever but the story is quite interesting and the setup is very good. The only bad points I can call out are a slow final act as well as some chase scenes coupled with odd music making it feel like more something that would be playing on MTV.

Next up is "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". SEE IT. Yes it's very long and yes some of the shots are a tad too soft a times, especially composite shots. However, I think this small draw back only leads to adding more of a storybook feeling to the film. It's a very sad, yet heartwarming story about a man who ages backwards. Brad Pitt plays said man and does a great job doing so. Kate Blanchett does a wonderful job as does the remainder of the cast. The film runs nearly three hours credits and all, so if you decide to go to the theater for this one prepare yourself for a long one...

Next is "7 lbs" starring Will Smith. First, I would just like to say...I don't like Big Willie. Ever since Fresh Prince I've just never liked him. However, he tends to do well in dramatic roles. The film is unfortunately a tad too predictable which made it hard to get through. It's more or less a film to watch if you've got some extra time on your hands.

Next, is "Che Part One". Unfortunately, I have not seen the second part as of now but hopefully soon I will be able to view it. This movie, as the title should more or less indicate, is about Ernesto Che Guevara. I'm sure at one time or another you have seen a picture of him seeing as it was actually named one of the most famous photographs in the world. For those of you who don't know Che was a famous Argentine Marxist, revolutionary, author, physician, and guerrilla leader. Che was among the revolutionaries lead by Fidel Castro whose intention was to overthrow the USA-backed Cuba by Fulgencio Batista. I even read his book entitled "Guerrilla Warfare" a few years back. Needless to say even long after his death more than forty years ago he become an enigmatic figure for countercultures. The film stars Benicio Del Toro (Traffic, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Sin City, and upcoming remake of The Wolfman) who of course plays Che. It starts out by taking you in and out and of interviews and events that happened (or rather may have happened) during a short trip to the USA using black and white, whereas the color portions of the story take place when he decides to join the revolution and that's the jumping point of the main story taking place. I'm truly interested in this person so maybe without such an interest it could drag out in another's eyes. Including the second portion this film will be close to four hours long in all. I guess that's possibly why the split it into two parts. If you like history or a good examination of it then you should check it out, it comes to limited theaters in the USA very soon.

Now with this last film I hope not to offend some of the readers on this blog. "Religulous", which takes a look at modern society coupled with the complexities of religion and the type of thoughts that it can spread. Bill Maher takes you through a journey talking to various people of all walks of religion from all around the word. I myself am not too much of a religious man. Would I like to believe there is something more after this life, yes who doesn't. However, my scientific mindset always leads me to believe otherwise. Bill never tries to sway any one's beliefs, but only points out things about religion that just doubt add up. As I said this movie wasn't made to sway beliefs or offend, only to raise questions instead of blindly believing in something without being able to question it. If you're an open minded person, religious or not I think this is worth watching as some very valid questions are raised, as well as religious thinking being compared to what we believe is a very logically thinking world today.

Now back to Disney Sea, last time I left off around the point where we had just gone on an Indiana Jones ride in jungle portion of the park. We made our way back to the center of the park to view the one show I wanted to see "BraviSeaMo". The videos (as always loud) won't explain that much but basically it's a story of a god of water and a god of fire who share some sort of passion for each other. While the story isn't too clear the effects and music really made this show worth watching.

Afterwards, we had some time before we could use our "Fast Pass" tickets (mentioned these in the last post) for Tower of Terror. So we decided to walk around for a bit and we ended up at a castle built on the outside of the volcano in the center of the park. There was an attraction there but it closes after dark. It's some sort of walk through attraction where you solve puzzles to get out. Seemed really cool but the line was always really long and there was no fast pass for it. So we toured the castle itself which had all kinds of neat things to see like a pendulum moving back and forth hitting small chess pieces down, optical illusions, and a small pond where (if you pay 100 yen) you can guide a boat around the world while trying to avoid other boats and sea monsters. Here are a few pics from that area.

Forgot to mention I went on the
20,000 Leauges Under the Sea ride...

After this, Ho and I refilled our popcorn and headed to find some place for dinner. We ended up at an Italian restaurant where I had pizza and she got some sort of pasta. During this time the final show of the night was going on and we could watch some of it from where we were sitting. As we finished eating we got to go outside and see the final fireworks go off and this is about the time most people began to leave the park.

Then...it was time. Time for the Tower of Terror. I'm not scared of rides like this, but maybe I should after all the bad stuff that's happened stateside (such as the loss of a head as well as some legs). Ho-san cannot stand rides the least bit. So knowing how bad this one was going to be it took me nearly half an hour or more to convince her to come on the ride with me. She even wanted to leave the park with me there and have me find my own way back to the hotel. The whole time before the ride she was breathing really hard and just gripping on to me. I actually thought the ride would be worse but it's really easy on you for a free fall type of ride. However, it was still enough to scare the living piss out of Ho-san. I wanted to buy another picture (like I did from the Indian Jones ride) but she wouldn't allow me to and rushed us out. We then made our way to the exit, shot a couple of pics and left.

We got back to the hotel and we pretty much hit the bed. I hadn't done that much walking in quite some time and was a little sore. Ho-san then thought it would be a good idea to put two heating pads on each leg. I was soon falling asleep when about 15 minutes later I woke up and my legs felt like they were burning off! Little did I know these pads were medicated. I tore them off but the burning stayed there for a while, Ho-san helped me wash my legs off with a wet cloth and there was so much of the medication on my legs that her hands started burning too!!!!
Needless to say I will never use those things again, or at least not that many. We were going to do some more things but the next day one of my problems, out of the myriad ones that I have, kicked it and would have made it difficult to walk around as much as a had on the previous day. I still wanted to go to FujiTV and such but Ho-san thought it best to just head back to Kofu early and get some rest. Before going I had to get me some Krispy Kreme donuts and I spent a whopping $20 for dozen of those delicious bitches. The wait was about 45 minutes, but the upside to this is that they serve you free donuts in line :D

After getting back from Tokyo I pretty much sat around and played Xbox (beat Prince of Persia and Gears of War 2), watched a bunch of movies (most of which I mentioned), and read a little bit. A few days later Pat came back from America and we sat around playing some Xbox. Shortly after I left for Kyoto with my buddy Bob.

Kyoto is a pretty awesome place to see Japanese history. I saw all kinds of Temples. I took nearly 300 pictures whilst there. Some places you couldn't take pictures so it was kind of disappointing. One of my favorite places called "Sanjyuusangendou" (三十三間堂) housed a huge amount of Japanese national treasures. Most of these treasures are statues that represent Buddhist deities. One of which is Kanon, and they had hundreds of this one statue. It was just amazing too see that many artifacts in one location. I also visited some more popular temples such as Kinkakuji and Ginkakuji. However, my favorite of all of them were temples containing "chi-tenjou" which translates to "blood ceiling". A lot of my teachers didn't even know what this was and Bob told me it wasn't too popular with the Japanese people. However, I found it very interesting. During the time of Tokugawa, he left his castle and it was attacked and held under siege for nearly two weeks. After they knew of their immanent defeat, as honorable bushi (samurai) would do, they killed themselves. About 300 to 400 killed themselves that is. Since the lord was away for so long when he came back to the castle the blood and oils of the dead bodies had stained the floors. Due to some circumstances, those of which I did not understand, they could not be given proper burials. So as a monument they put the floor of the castle into various buildings and temples throughout the area. This happened about four or five hundred years ago. I saw two locations with this and in one you could even clearly make out a bloody hand print. Maybe some people think it's morbid, but it's history and that's why it interests me.
Here are pics of a lot of the temples I went to with Bob.

This is actually a man made sand structure.
I can't imagine the patience it took to make this.

Lil Buddha is cold

Evil bunny.....

Make a wish....

As you can see in this picture as well as previous
ones there is like a carpet of moss in the garden.
Needless to say it was pretty awesome looking.

Panoramic of Sanjyuusangendou (三十三間堂)

Busy street in Kyoto

Some Japanese history about the blood ceilings

Old Japanese outhouse >_<

My green tea and me. The other thing is mochi,
it's a candy type thing made of rice, it's not too good
in my opinion anyway. By the way, this is green tea
people not the crap you buy at Kroger, that is
not in any way green tea.....
This tree is like 750 years old or something.
Reminds me of the Mana tree from SNES's
Secret of Mana.....

BLOOD CEILING! Why someone hasn't made
a heavy metal song about this, I do not know...

Random palm tree in the mountains, even
Bob got a good laugh out of this one. I wonder
what it's doing so far away from the coast ><

This sign looked funny to me....

Kyoto Tower obervatory level

After sightseeing for a full day we checked into our hotel in Osaka. After taking a refreshing shower we met with Bob's old college buddies as well as one of this professors for a sort of party to bring in the new year. I threw back a couple of beers, had some sashimi (raw fish), and lots of other cool things to eat. My palette has certainly widened since coming to Japan as I only ate chicken, beef, bread, and cheese before leaving the states. Maybe I can finally get a little healthier now.

After having fun with Bob's group of people we walked down to what Bob called the "dirty minded" place. There's a red light district in Osaka where old ladies sit near the street where young (well sometimes a little older) girls sit behind them. They invite you to come and talk wit them and basically arrange an agreement on how much you will pay for this girl's services. I've seen prostitution in America but never on such an open level such as they had there. Sorry ladies, but there were a few girls there whose beauty was so unattainable that I'd have to pay for something like that. Not that I did tho, I still hadn't received my loan money at that time, but I might have been tempted had I already had the money. Guess there are larger forces at work keeping me from doing bad things. Oh, and sorry, you can't take pictures because there are patrolmen walking the streets. I was the only foreigner in sight as well....

We left the red light district and went back to the hotel and crashed for the night. We woke up the next morning and went back to Kyoto to check out a few more temples and such and topped the night off with Kyoto Tower (I'm beginning to think that Japan has a tower in every city because they have a short person complex). We then started our hellish journey back to Kofu by bus. I didn't mention but I took an overnight bus there and back from Kofu. It was pretty much pure hell. The seat reclines nicely but for a gaijin there's just not too much space to relax. However, coming back was much better as I was very tired and managed to get a few hours of sleep.

A week or so after that Ho and I went over to Isawa to check out the "ashi onsen" (leg hot springs). I assumed it was some sort of onsen like any other where you pay to go in but these are actually around the station and bus stops of Isawa, they also had onsen for your hands.

My Kappa (legendary humanoid turtle being
in Japanese lore) friends and me chilling out.

A leg onsen near a bus stop.

Look at them hairy legs, Ho-san told me she
doesn't have to shave her legs....somehow I
have a hard time believing that....

Contemplating life while soaking the feet.

Just me and a funny hat....

Since these trips not a lot has happened. I went for an interview at a local language school to get a part time job. They called me in but then told me they were fully staffed. How strange is that. They did add that things are always changing because of students coming and going so I might be teaching again very soon. My Xbox also broke down whilst in the care of Patty. I don't think it was his fault but he was nice enough to help me pay for shipping it back to the states. Microsoft is going to fix it for free thankfully, but now I must devise a way to get it back to me seeing as Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5 come out somewhat soon!

I also managed to hack my PSP with the help of a Pandora battery and probably have near 100 games on my external. The great thing about hacking a PSP is not only the custom firmware and all the things you can tool around with, but you can take PS1 ISOs and convert them to a format that the PSP can play. So I'm about 35 hours in Xenogears again (probably my third play through of this lengthy, yet awesome game).

I also started using Amazon in Japan to order things for a generally cheap price and only about $4 for same day shipping! Gotta love being in a small country. I ordered a new book to read since I've been looking for some good fiction of late. I sold out and went with what most critics thought was one of the better fiction works of last year, David Wroblewski's first novel "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle". Wroblewski's attention to detail and the way he constructs the story is quite enthralling. It's very Hamlet-esque in many aspects, and you gotta love ole Bill and his greats. I find it quite hard to put it down at night when I start reading. For those of you who like works of literature and fiction you should check this one out, and as sad and lowly as it is...this is my first book in which was chosen as part of Oprah's book club...at least she has good taste in books I guess. Another book that I bought on release last year that I think is worth checking out is Donald Ray Pollock's "Knockemstiff" which is a story about all sort of backwater hillbillies and deviants in an imaginary town with the same name as the title.

Well I'm sure there's enough to digest here so hope you enjoyed it, and hopefully next time I'll change the music around. The semester break is a mere three weeks away and I'll have about six weeks off to do some more exploring. Hopefully, if things work out I'll be going to Nagano to ski the weekend after we get out of school. I can't wait!

Tokyo, Disney Sea, and Kyoto PART 1 OF 2!

2009-01-02T02:52:00.024+09:00

It never fails. I'm extremely late on the update. I've been extremely lazy during this break. It started out the week of Christmas and I've not been doing a whole lot since then.

First off, I wanna mention the music that I added to the blog. It's a few Japanese songs I've been listening to of late, the first song that plays is background music to one of my favorite shows "Samurai Champloo". The second and third songs as well. If you feel like listening to a really sad song I'd recommend the third on the playlist. The 4th is from the most recent Gundam 00 and plays on the radio around here all the time. Finally, the last song is from another of my favorite shows currently running in Japan by the name of Soul Eater. If you have cookies enabled on your browser it will save the volume settings, so if you don't want to hear it then just click it off and it should stay off the next time you visit.

The break actually started a little sooner than it should have. Monday the 22nd was our last day before the break. Patrick and Martin had already left for the states and it was just me and the Chinese student that day. We both sped through the material as it wasn't that difficult, just a little verb conjugation with some new forms at the end of the sentences to say something differently or to quote someone. The teacher let the both of us out early because I told her I was going to Tokyo for a few days and was catching an early bus. She was very cool about, especially since we got the material so well. She also gave us a small Christmas present with a few snacks, a small loaf of bread, and some candies.

After that I grabbed my things and walked down to the station to meet Ho-san. I arrived a few minutes early so I sat around eating donuts from one of my favorite bakeries in town and had a smoke before departing. Soon there after Ho-san showed up and we only had a few minutes before our departure so we just sat and talked about what we were going to do when we go there. We then hopped on to the bus and I played a little bit of "Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core" on my PSP and listened to some tunes with my iPod before taking a small nap. I woke up about an hour later and saw it was pouring down the rain outside. I was hoping it wouldn't be like that the following day considering that I'd be going to Disney Sea.

After arriving at Shinjuku we caught a train to the area our hotel was in. Unfortunately, Ho-san didn't really know where the hotel was so we walked around in the downpour until we actually stopped and asked the police and even then we ended up circling the hotel once before finding it. In the end we got there safely and that's what matters.

The room isn't much bigger than this
right here......

After drying off we decided to go to Akihabara which was very close by. As you all know I talk about this place all of the time, and the reason for that is because I love it. It's totally my kind of place, filled with games, manga, anime, movies, and every type of electronic device you could possible ever conceive.

Before looking around or doing any shopping we decided to grab a bite to eat. We couldn't really think of anything extravagant so we ended up settling on KFC since I've not tried it since being here. It actually wasn't all too bad, they even had a turkey dinner if you wanted to pre-order it, but one small turkey would cost about $60. I'll have to try the crispy next time though seeing as the regular was a little too soggy for my tastes.

Think I ate enough?

We then did some looking around. Ho-san was amazed at my knowledge of Akihabra seeing as I'd only been there one time previous to that. I'm pretty decent with directions, especially if it's a place that I like. We walked around to the Gundam character good shop where I bought an awesome Gundam 00 tshirt that says "Trans Am" (no this isn't the car, it's the name for when they put their machines into a certain state giving them more power, although it is quite a funny name) on the front and on the side of the chest it has the Celestial Being (the group the Gundams work for) logo that glows in the dark. What can I say...I love this shit...

We then turned the corner where we went into another character goods shop where I found a few cigarette lighters with one of my favorite shows on it, "Neon Genesis Evangelion". The show is more than ten years old but still has huge popularity not only here in Japan but in America as well. I also bought some "Maid Cookies" that you're supposed to have with tea, but I don't drink hot tea and the cookies are just as good without it I'm sure.

After that bit of shopping we headed back to the hotel where I noticed that there was a certain company that had an office where I was staying....(For those who don't know BT is one of the leading ways to illegally download movies, games, and music these days)

That's right folks...Bit Torrent Inc...

After that we took showers, watched a movie, and then slept to prepare for the long day that would follow...

We got up around 7:30 AM the next morning and starting preparing to leave for Disney Sea in Tokyo. It's a park that's more known for it's shows that take place on a man made lake in front of a man made mountain. Here's a few pics of me sleeping on the train...

After a short trip on the train we got to Disney and people were flooding in to the park. We then took a Disney Monorail to get to Disney Sea. It was totally Mickey'd out people, check out these handrails.

And yes...even the windows are shaped like Mickey...

After a short train ride we found ourselves in front of Disney Sea where we snapped a few pictures of the things you get to see on the way into the main area of the park. And yes...I do love Wall-E...

This looks familiar......

It's the resorts 25th Anniversary,
what good timing I have :D

These pics are cool and all but after entering the park you get to see the main point of the park which is in the center of everything:

We then had to chose where we wanted to go first. We headed over to the Journey to the Center of the Earth ride which is actually inside that huge volcano from the previous picture. However, it was a two hour wait....They do have something very useful in this park though, "Fast Pass" tickets. These tickets allow you to visit the ride at a later time and you get to go to the head of the line. You can only have one Fast Pass every few hours so this allows you to maybe get on a few more rides instead of missing out on everything.

Since we couldn't ride that we decided to head over to one of my favorite Disney Movies' area...ALADDIN! There was only a carousel as far as rides were concerned, but I wanted to see a 3D light show I had read about in a tourist magazine. So we waited in line for about 45 minutes before we were lead into a dark room with a huge vase in the middle. After sitting around for a few minutes we were surprised at when something would occasionally peak it's head out of the vase and look around at you. After the doors were shit and everyone was in a snake popped out of the jar and started telling a story about a small boy who found the lamp and his master (who is a magician) took it from him and used two of his wishes to gain wealth and power. After this short story we were lead into a large theater where a the evil magician came out and performed his tricks all the while keeping the lamp under lock and key so that the Genie wouldn't steal the performance from him. The Genie was all in the 3D and had some really cool affects like bubbles and such coming at your face. In the end the boy frees the Genie and the magician accidentally wishes himself away. Here are a few pics from the area as well as the what little we could shoot inside...

After that cool little show we tried to think of where to go next. I really wanted to go to The Tower of Terror so we decided to head there next and maybe grab some lunch before or after. Unfortunately, there was quite the wait, so we decided to eat first and then by the time we were done we were able to get our second Fast Pass, and then we would have to come back later in the evening in order to use it. We ate at an American style restaurant and I had my first steak in Japan, and it was pretty tasty. Really expensive...but tasty none the less...
Here are a few pics from the area that The Tower of Terror was in, which is also known as the "American Harbor" area.

Here's a pic of me looking at The Tower of Terror, and thinking "I'm totally gonna kick that ass later"

Tasty caramel popcorn. $12 for the can,
and $5 for the refills. We got like 4 refills :D

Cool janitor looking guy that would mime things
and had sounds when he would pretend to clean and such.
Sorry, I should have shot a video of it. Funny stuff...

After all that we decided to catch our first show at the lake in the middle of the park. The show was called "Legend of Mythica". I didn't think I'd be into it, but I have to say it was pretty cool and I can't imagine the amount of organization that goes into things like that. Here are a few pics as well as one of the videos from the show. Remember the volume is always obscenely loud on this vids for some reason...

There's actually one more video that I would love to have uploaded but there is a 100MB limit for videos and this one was a mere 15MB over the limit. Unfortunately, it's the best video I have too because later they bring out about 4 more huge floats, one that is a dragon, and my favorite which was a gryphon that had flames shooting up out of it. Hope these videos do the show a little bit of justice though. The other two videos later in the blog should be very enjoyable however :D

After the show we walked around a bit and refilled out popcorn. We then got to use our first Fast Pass for Center of the Earth. It was a great feeling becuase we didn't wait for more than ten or fifteen minutes. I didn't think the ride would be very cool, but it was interesting. It takes you through the volcano and you see all the fantasy creatures one might find in the Earth's core. After seeing a huge monster the cart propells you up a huge hill and then you know what comes next......a huge drop! Ho-san was crying after it was all over because she seems to hate anything that scares her.

After that we headed to the back of the park which housed a sort of jungle (maybe Aztec) aesthetic. We waited in line for about an hour and a half to ride an Indiana Jones ride, unfortunately it was based of the new movie, but it was still cool. After that I bought a few things for my lil neice and a few things for myself. I got a picture from the ride as well because I thought it was funny I have this huge grin on my face while Ho-san is burried in my arm and you can't even see her face! Here are a few pics from that area...

In the words of Gizmo..."Bright lights, bright lights!"

Oh, Scrooge, if only I could swim
in coins like you could in Ducktales....

Cool Lights at night!

Best. Gloves. Ever.
Even Mickey needs a smoke break....

Sorry, but this is where I have to cut it short....these entries take a little more time than you think and when adding videos it can take a really long time depending on the file size :( So I'm going to cut this in half and update the rest of my Disney Sea/Tokyo trip in the next entry. I also will have some good pics (I hope) from Kyoto. I'm leaving there tonight on a bus ride that will take 8 hours! After that we'll (Bob and I) will do some sightseeing, check into our hotel, and then go to a party in Osaka. Sunday we'll do a little more sightseeing around Kyoto and then hop a late night bus yet again back to Kofu and I'll be back here Monday. I'm probably going to have to miss class because of it...but as bad as it's sounds...I'm kind of apathetic about it. My Japanese isn't bad, nor am I doing poor in the class. I've realized even in one year there's no way I could master the language. So, as long as I keep up with my studies I think I'm allowed to enjoy myself when the opportunity arises! Expect a decent video of the other show we saw at Disney Sea this next post!

Almost there....

2008-12-21T16:38:00.004+09:00

Well been a somewhat eventful week this week. The biggest thing that happened was probably that EKU has once again delayed my loan, mainly due to their constant mistakes as well as their own stupidity. Worst of all they say that it's my fault which I will take partial blame for being that I started the process so late in the semester. However, I didn't know I was coming to Japan for sure until August (you're supposed to sign up for aid in the spring) and I didn't really know I could get loans until October by learning it from Pat. Anywho, everything should be worked out in a few weeks so I'll be able to do a little bit of traveling while I'm in the country, as well as have enough money to get a small boost out in California when I come back stateside. I'm sure a lot of people think I'm crazy for going out that way, most movies aren't made there but that's still where all the big wigs are and if I want to get into the production side of things I need to try my best out that way. Of course there are lots of film schools in Cali as compared to the big Zero that are in Kentucky. Who knows though, I'm still in Japan for about 8 full months so I might always find a film school to go to over here!

Anywho, Monday I didn't do much other than class and then come back and sit around. I tried to study for my test the next day but I just didn't have it in me and was constantly distracted by friends talking to me on the internet that day. I ended up with a high listening score, but a mid B on my writing. Of course I made perfect on all my kanji this week. So Tuesday was pretty much just the test and I relaxed by playing some games and watching a movie or two.

Come Wednesday I don't have classes so I woke up late and ate a breakfast/lunch with Pat and Martin at the grill. The lunch-ladies there know me now and know that I always get my chicken and meat without the sweet and sour sauce they put on it. After that I picked up my pay check and paid some bills. Later that night was my last class for teaching English. I had my students write short speeches and give them in front of class and then made them answer questions from the students. One of my students, Yumi (whom I also think is a beautiful girl), did the best seeing as she's spent time out of the country and really practiced her English. I had another student just run his Japanese through an online translator and I had to correct everything he had written (I had the students send their speech texts ahead of time for corrections). After the speeches I paid for pizza for all of us and we ended up getting pepperoni, BBQ chicken, and dried tomato sliced pizza. I ordered three large size pizzas but they ran out of L size crust and they gave us two mediums which equals out to be a lot more pizza. Between the 8 of us we managed to finish it off though. I bid my students farewell and then headed back home to do a little bit of homework.

Thursday, Pat and I woke up earlier than usual and skipped our first period to go to a nursing school to speak English with some of the students there. We were picked up by taxi near campus and drove about 10 minutes over where we met with a few other students from the area. One student that went with us was from Malaysia and he was pretty cool. Another girl we met there was from Iowa. Then there was a guy from China who was pretty much trilingual (if not more). We would sit and take questions from the students while eating snacks and drinking hot tea (yes I burnt the shit out of my tongue once again). It was really fun and the girls kept asking me if I had a girlfriend and when I'd say no they would all be like "GET ONE IN JAPAN!". The last table was the most fun as I met a really cute girl who liked to talk about anime and would just keep saying this one characters name over and over from Gundam 00 "Setsuna F. Seiei!!". Maybe she thought I looked like an older version of him or something, I'm not really sure. Here is a pic of me and the last group I was with, the girl I was referring to is to the right of me with the stripes.

Afterward all that Ed (the man from Canada who invited us there) said his goodbyes and gave us a small amount of money for helping out. The taxi took us back to campus and then Pat and I rode our bikes down to Hinata's for a nice small Japanese lunch. Our teacher delayed class so we weren't actually skipping first period. While I enjoy this teacher's class I knew there was no way she could finish the lesson no matter how hard she tried. So I ended up not going, and I ended up being right about her not being able to finish the lesson. That night was really fun because we decided to go out to eat with Ho-san, Cho-san, Martin, and Pat for a small going away thing since Pat and Martin flew stateside to do some Christmas stuff as well as Martin being able to see America for the first time. We ended up eating at the same Italian restaurant that we held Steve's going away party at. For a massive 1500 yen (about 17 dollars) I ate an entire pizza by myself, shared spaghetti with everyone (with chili sauce no less), three orders of garlic bread by myself, and then we all shared ice cream and cake at the end. Needless to say I was ready to explode.

Afterward, I convinced everyone to go to the puri-kura (photobooth) where I think we had a good time. We didn't get any digital copies of the pictures so we had to scan them in so they may be a little blurry. Here they are:

I think this is one of the funniest.

This one is pretty good too, gotta
love my bunny ears as well as the
weird face Martin is making.

This is the one I designed the most.
Gotta love the cat border I put on,
as well as the awesome afro I gave Martin.

Somehow Martin manged to lean
out of this one. While those bunny ears
might not be placed correctly I gotta say
they almost look real.........

And the last one, I looks the most
ridiculous because I'm the only one
trying to mimic the pose they put
on the screen before taking the pic.

Needless to say I have a lot of fun with these things. And they're very cheap as well only like 400 yen for a lot of pictures.

Friday was lackluster as I went to class all day and ate at the grill for the second time this week. I found the last two volumes of Full Metal Alchemist (鋼の錬金術師) that I needed to complete my collection, so I was very happy. I was also pleased to learn this week that they will be airing another season of it in Japan coming this April! This anime is very popular in America, but the manga is almost entirely different from the anime, and the new season is supposedly going to stick more closely to the manga which makes me excited. A lot of people in America look down on you depending on what your hobby is, here it's not a big deal. You can't base what a person does in the free time on what kind of person they actually are. Some people might think it's a little nerdy to do some of the things I like but in Japan there are people way older than me that are into this kind of stuff. My point in case in America would be that I've always played videogames in America and was ridiculed by my peers and was always told by my mom that I would eventually grow out of it. Well I never did, while I don't buy as many games as I once did, I still love playing games as much as I did when I was a kid. However, now games are becoming more popular than movies and are high grossing forms of entertainment. So now who's the nerd.....

Well it's the weekend now and everyone has gone somewhere for the break. Most the people I hang with are either in America or on the north island of Hokkaido visiting Sapporo (where I hope to go as well one day). Even with my financials the way they are I've got good friends like Ho-san who are going to help me enjoy myself in Tokyo even if I don't have much cash right now. My buddy Bob paid for my bus ticket and hotel to go to Osaka and Kyoto during the new years so that should be pretty awesome as well. I must have a way better personality than I thought to make such awesome friends like these! Expect an update mid next week because I'll be back from Disney Sea, Akihabara, Tokyo Dome City, Ueno Zoo, and Fuji TV so there should be lots of pics and a big update! つずく。。。。。。

頭がいたい　－ My Head hurts

2008-12-16T22:04:00.003+09:00

Howdy from the land of the rising sun as usual. Been a minute since I've updated but there's not been anything extremely exciting to talk about. Not that there will be in this post but there are some upcoming things that should be rather exciting.

First off I hate EKU, it's as if the place is run by people who never even made it through high school. It takes so long to get a response from someone and even then it's not a straight answer and you're left guessing. I am of course referring to my loans I applied for in order to stay over the entire year here in Japan. Everything is supposed to be worked out already and I should be receiving my funds fairly soon via mail. However, I looked over my account and it says I will owe nearly $400 dollars even after my scholarship pays for my school. The only differnce between this semester and last is that I applied for loans. I somehow doubt I'd be charged for loans so there's not telling what this magical charge is. So I'll ge calling them tonight, wasting even more Skype minutes on calling their stupid asses. I've also been informed from my USA chap (Pat) that when he applied for loans that he had to chose either for his loans to be disburst through his bank account or the new debt enhancement card through EKU. I refer to a new scam the school started this past semester in which the school give you your school ID, but guess what...it's a credit card too. How craptastic is that? I think they want kids to owe them for about two lifetimes now, and that's totally helping our economy.

Since I'm on a roll here I'll take a little time to gripe about the economy. Since being in Japan the US dollar has dropped in value almost 20%. I now lose 10 dollars for every 100 dollars I take out. Which in turn there is no tax here so in actuality I guess things could be worse, but to be safe as soon as I get the loan money I'm going to try and take a big chunk out in order to avoid possibly losing more as the US dollar makes a .5% drop nearly every week, or sometimes more than that. But I'm sure Obama will help make everything right! Doesn't matter whose ass got elected they've got a shitstorm to attempt to clean up. I don't however believe feeding stimulus packs into our economy will help anything other than get rid of SSI and any kind of retirement I could possible hope for in the late future. Of course I think one thing that just might help America is if they learn to stay the fuck out of other countries' business. No one treats me with spite or disrespect here but they all say the same reason why they dislike America if at all, because we can't keep out hands out of other peoples shit. If you think the Iraqi war is about freedom you need to wise the fuck up.

Ah, well I think I've griped enough about the world for today. I'm venting after having an extremely crappy day. Having a day long test every 8-10 days is kicking my ass. It's like having someone take a corkscrew to your head, pop your cranium out, and take a funnel and pour in mass amounts of language. Needless to say I've managed to kill a bottle of excedrin in less than two months, getting at least two migraines a week on average now. I ended up making 47/50 on my listening, 10/10 on my kanji, and for my writing I've yet to get back the score but I'm fairly sure that I made lower than I usually do seeing as I didn't study too much the night before. However, having so many A's so far a low B or high C isn't going to hurt me, and if I really wanna be a douche bag I can look at this in such a way that grades don't really matter, because I've already graduated! However, I do want to learn this language, I know that becoming fluent in a year will be difficult but I'm sure to pick up quite a bit of the language. I can easily get around with the vocabulary I have now. I continue to surprise people that I know so many words and kanji after reading so much manga and watching so much anime (I've cut down on it in recent years though).

I'm more than likely going to Disney Sea next week (no it's not like Sea World ppl). It's more for adults unlike Tokyo Disneyland. Other than that I don't really have a lot planned for my Xmas break. I was going to go to Osaka right after New Year's but the round trip ticket is 150 bucks, plus the cost of hotel and such I'd end up spending around 250 at the least. That would only be for one night so I don't think it's really worth it. Of course the other reason being I don't have my loan money yet so I can't really make plans like that. At the very least I'm thinkin about heading over to Tokyo by myself to kind of wander the city and probably hang out in Akihabara (electric central/nerd central).

A few of us are making plans to try and go to Nagano during a short break we will get during mid January. I'm really looking forward to it seeing as I've never tried to snow ski before. I can waterski but I'm quite sure it's very different. Nagano is actually very close to here, but for some reason we don't get much snow. I need to snap a pic of a view I get every morning, I get to see the snowcapped Southern Japanese Alps if I look to the west on a clear day.

Nothing really mindblowing has happened to me of late unfortunately. Hopefully, once I get passed all this shitty buearacracy I can have some cash and relax for a little while anyway. Well hope everyone enjoyed this blog completely void of anykind of pics. Wait....I'll add some, but let's just hope she never sees these or she'll kill me. This is my Taiwanese friend Ho-san whom I'll be going to Disney Sea with, she'd definitely kill me if she knew I threw this up on the internet :|

No rest for the weary

2008-11-30T15:35:00.005+09:00

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.

Insanely Long Blog Post

2008-11-22T19:59:00.018+09:00

Well, I know I said a while ago I'd be updating the blog very soon. That didn't work out to well as most can see. We didn't go to Shousenkyo because it ended up raining and it's kind of hard to hike and "peep" at leaves when there's rain in your face.

However, we (Pat, Steve, and I) weren't really that disappointed seeing as we had a long week and could use the time to rest. Good news came later that day when Martin (one of the Germans students) ended up bringing his car back from Tokyo and we actually ended up going to Shousenkyo on Wednesday without the school.

I'm going to rewind a little bit before this past Wednesday though. Last weekend, as I do about every weekend, I went to another hot spring with my buddy Bob. This hot spring was a lot more modern, however much smaller than the one I went to a few weeks before. Both hot springs over look the city at night and it's an amazing view. The water at this hot spring was not only an ass load hotter, but color of it was red! I was told by Bob that the water comes out naturally from the spring like that. I'm guessing there are a bunch of dead bodies buried under that mountain or something....

After the hot spring we decided to go eat somewhere. We were going to hit up a restaurant by the name of Otoya's, but Bob left it up to me because there were a few choices in the area and we had already eaten at Otoya's. So I did the thing any typical American would do in Japan...I decided to eat at Denny's. However, to my dismay the menus, for the most part, only had Japanese style dishes. I found they had some spaghetti on the menu so I ordered that and some bread to go with it. It ended up being the most delicious spaghetti I've ever had, but that's not hard to beat considering I've only eaten it a few times. The only downfall to the meal is that they only give you a thimble's worth of parmesan cheese.

Afterward we walked across from Denny's and visited one of my favorite stores in Japan. That's right everyone, I can't help getting off...at Book Off! I'd been searching for a couple of books that I managed to find finally at this distant Book Off, I always love asking the people in Japanese if they have something or not. Makes me feel like I'm learning something useful in my classes...aka how to spend my money. I have a fairly modest manga collection now, and I'm going to have to bring most of it in a suitcase when I come back during March, so I can start my collection all over again when I get back.

Here's most of my manga, and yes it's all in Japanese...

Meron Pan( melon bread), the best snack...in the world.
Doesn't taste like melon though, and maybe that's a good thing.

Oh and for those who didn't know previous to this post, I've been accepted for Financial Aid through my school so I'll be coming back to Japan to study for another 5 months after my short stay in March. I was getting really stressed out over it, but everything seemed to work out in the end.

Back on track for this week. We started kanji this week, mainly this will be the best refresh for me thus far whilst being here. I learned around 400 kanji stateside, but as we all know if you don't use it...you unfortunately lose it. And rather quickly I might add. So it's come time to finally buy an Japanese/English electronic dictionary. They can run all the way up to $400 or $500 dollars, but I found an awesome deal on the internet for a decent model that will run me around $160 total. I really need one of these especially since I'll be here for another 9-10 months.

So during my mid week break Wednesday, Pat, Martin, Ho-san (a girl from Pat's adviser's lab), and I piled in to Martin's big van and took a short drive to do some leaf peeping. I dressed a little to lite as later on the wind picked up and got very cold. We took about a 4km hike up a mountain side and got to see all kinds of sites. This isn't so much something I can describe so I've tried to narrow this down to a good few pics out of the hundred and forty pictures I took.

Here's a pic of the guys: Martin, Pat, Me

Interesting rock formation. The sign said
it's supposed to look like a set of ears.

I've got too many of these river pics...

Left 2 Right: Ho-san, Me, Martin, Pat

The colors in the fall leaves here are just
down right stunning I think.

This mountain looks so colorful I could just eat it.

The red leaves are my favorite.

Gotta rub that belly for good luck.

A horse carriage that would go up and down the
mountain. This horse is so huge it puts Clydesdale
horses to shame. On all fours it still had about 6 inches on me.

Another great pic of the mountainside.

Front 2 back: Martin, Pat, Me

Cool Owl statue at one of the
rest stops atop the mountian.

We're totaling holding this up.
Pat even has a stat bonus of x49 strength.

Group shot in front of a shrine. It had this
huge stone inside of it, not really sure what it was.

Yet another awesome pic of the leaves.

Me taking pics of the surroundings,
Ho-san caught this one.

Definitely one of my favorite pics. I really
wonder how the rocks were formed in such a way.

How cool is that statue behind us.

Getting playful with my camera.

We stumbled upon a portion where you walk
under an overhanging rock and we found all
kinds of 1 yen coins stuck in the cracks.
Apparently you do this to make a wish. The
most expensive wish we found was a 5 yen coin.

Cool little waterfall. Pales in comparison to
Cumberland falls back in the good ole Corbin.
Still yet it was very pretty.

Cool closeup I got of this spider.

Small shrine next to waterfall. People leave
coins and food for the deity or the dead.

Awesome red leaves.

Not sure if I already posted this one. They
look the same, but I can assure it's a different area.

Mediation is the key to preserving one's mind...
Or something like that...got a lot of stares from
the natives when they were taking this one.

Almost looks like it's on fire. On fire with the
flames of creation...how deep is that....

We started getting really goofy later on....

This one takes the cake though. WARNING
this picture may contain an ugly face not suitable
for the average person to see:

So yeah, there's still like 100 plus more pics I could throw up but these are some of my favorites.
After seeing this I'm really freaking pumped up about coming back before the end of March to make it to the Sakura viewing. Sakura is what we know as Cherry blossoms, they hold a similar event in D.C. every year. Except in Japan it's like a country wide thing, and everyone comes out to do it.

After a tiring trip from leaf peeping I went and taught my English class and the numbers seem to keep going down. But hey, I still get paid the same, and I can't blame them for not coming because:
A. They didn't pay for the class.
B. They don't get a grade.

Thursday I was bad bad boy and stayed home and didn't attend class. I studied all day for my test on Friday which I ended up getting the highest in the class on the listening portion as usual, and we'll get our writing results next Tuesday. We also had two Kanji quizzes on Friday as well. For those of you who don't know Japan has three scripts which are Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Hiragana is the main form of the Japanese language, Katakana is a script used for adapting foreign words (I hate this because some things are so hard to figure out even if they originate from American, i.e. New York will read like "Nyuu Yokuu"), and lastly is Kanji which is adapted from the Chinese script. Kanji is written the same in China as it is in Japan but it has different meanings all together. Ironically enough I actually got a higher score than the Chinese girl on the Kanji quizzes which suprised me, being that it's not my native language and all. I got perfect marks on those if anyone is wondering ;D

After all that studying and tests we were beat, and we all stayed in Friday night. Well for the most part, Martin drove us to the grocery store where we bought items to prepare for a cookout we had today (Sat. Nov 22). It's so nice not to have to freaking bike everywhere now that Martin has a car. I still bike to everyday places but far away trips are much easier now. Too bad he'll be in Tokyo next semester...

After grocery shopping I came back and did my usual chicken, and Pat made a homemade pizza. Now the interesting part about this is that he didn't use a recipe for the dough/crust what so ever. He used to work at Papa John's and just tried to do it from scratch. While it wasn't the best pizza I'd ever tasted it was pretty awesome for a first attempt, and mind you an first attempt without a recipe. We through pepporini and chicken on ther which a crap load of mozzarella, and that cheese (enough for one more pizza of the same size) was like $6 bucks. Milk is cheap here, but cheese is not.

Pat and I then played some Warcraft 3 together and I ended up going to bed around 5 AM. I got up at about four hours later to start cooking for the event they were holding here at the dorm. Everyone seemed kind of mad that we weren't done cooking till almost 11 but no one told me that I needed to have my dish ready BY 10 AM (the start of the event). So Ho-san, Pat, and Me cooked my chicken I'm famous for here and of course it was gone within five minutes of putting it out, mind you that's 8 chicken breats worth of chicken gone that quickly.

Other than that the whole ordeal was somewhat lackluster, there was some dancing they tried to get me to do, but I had to pass on that. The coolest thing they had out were Taito drums which I'd yet to see or hear in real life. These guys who did this were awesome. Here are a few pics from that event.

Ho-san, Martin, and Pat digging in. Behind
Martin is Stephan (the other German student).

Pat and Emily. Looks like Emily is falling asleep.

Part of the dance circle, next to the drum in back
is Kentah. He's one of our RAs and is very cool.

Dance Circle from afar.

Cookout setup.

The girl in stripes is Melissa who is from
Australia. She is braver than I for joining that circle.

In the middle of the dance circle stood this woman.
She lead the dance and you had to mimic the moves she did.
Also, in the back to the far right of the pic is Rin-san or fellow
student in our language classes who is from China.

Everyone got a chance to hit the
drums, even kids!

The master at work.

Group shot that I think I took a little too fast...

I think the volume is high on this video so be forewarned:

Needless to say I've had a lot going on and that's why I don't have much of a chance to post lately. I've got a three day weekend and we're going to the lake to relax and chill out tomorrow. My next test isn't for another two weeks so I don't have to stress out for a while. Hope everyone enjoyed this horribly long post!

Larger update forthcoming.

2008-11-11T21:13:00.004+09:00

Been out of touch with ye ole blog here. There truly hasn't been much to write about seeing as classes have really begun to bog me down. I'm still not learning any new things per say but there's so much review being slammed on us at once I have to keep up so I won't end up falling behind later.

Took my second test and scored 38/40 on the listening portion and 89/100 on the writing part. Overall that's in the low 90% but I'm still pleased with it as I made the highest score in the class.

There are a couple of things I could write about but I'm going to save that for later this week when I have more time to blog on about it. The school is taking a trip to 昇仙峡 (しょうせんきょう)[Shousenkyou], which is a very famous spot for viewing the leaves in Autumn. The info sheet I received about this trip was title "Leaf Peeping", and somehow that just sounds perverted....

Oh, how I can't wait to peep at you leaves.....

So like I said, should be a big post coming this weekend. Stay tuned!

じゃ、まった！！！

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

2008-10-23T23:35:00.024+09:00

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....

2008-10-18T17:20:00.009+09:00

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.

2008-10-15T20:30:00.004+09:00

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...)

2008-10-15T00:20:00.013+09:00

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!

It begins....

2008-10-08T18:49:00.006+09:00

Got up early this morning and skipped breakfast yet again, I guess old habits don't die hard. I've truly learned how to conserve space, and found that tacks can be one's best friend. This is the wall next to my bed which I hung my glasses, a small travel alarm clock, my remote for my air conditioner, and lastly a picture of my cute lil niece!

Well today we had an opening ceremony for classes and they're supposed to start tomorrow but the teacher said my hiragana is good enough that I won't have to attend til Friday. We all dressed up and went down to the International Office about 1 PM. I was hoping to be fed and my stomach could be heard growling through the whole event. Unfortunately, there was no food being served and it was more or less a get together to introduce ourselves as well as getting to know our teachers.

That part only lasted about thirty or forty minutes and then we separated into our respective classes and spoke with one of our teachers (I have 4 total). Our teacher that handled our group is called Esaki-sensei and for the last few years he's been called GTE (Great Teacher Esaki). This refers to a famous drama in Japan that came on quite a few years ago about a man who wants to teach but his past of being in a biker gang looms over him but does everything he can to show that he's a good teacher; the show was called GTO [Great Teacher Onizuka]. After he showed us our books (which are going to cost me twice what a certain someone told me they were going to originally cost) we grouped up to go on a guided tour. When the tour was finished Ono-san met us again and handed out our student IDs!

Before going on the tour Ono-san (a very nice lady that handles all my paperwork here) told me the courthouse called and my gaijin card was ready! After that we took an hour to look around campus and were shown the computer rooms we could use, copiers, printers, the cafeteria, where I pay my rent, and lastly the doctor's office on campus. By that time it was almost four in the afternoon and the court house closes at five. I grabbed Steve (although it ended up I knew where to go and what to ask for myself :D) and we headed down to the courthouse and grabbed my gaijin card.

From top to bottom that's my card to gain access to the dorm, my gaijin card, and lastly my student ID:

After we grabbed that we finally decided to try something I haven't had before. THE MEGGGGGA MAC! It's a freaking huge burger at McDonald's their version of a Big Mac. Three pieces of bread and four meat patties. Of course it comes with other things but if you know me I like my burgers plain. Which they are fine with making but most people don't ask to take something off a burger, but hey I'm paying for it so I'll get it the way I want it! Needless to say it was tasty considering most of the foods I eat aren't that greasy these days.

We then headed down to the arcade where I got my ass kicked by someone playing Street Fighter 4 and then played a game that caught my eye where you use turntables to play along with the music. It was surprisingly fun but hard. I got out of there spending no more than three dollars, and unlike US arcades that money goes a long way for a decent amount of playtime. Before we knew it it was dark (before 6 PM). We headed back to the dorm and not soon after Jeremy asked us to go to the onsen so we tagged along. The water wasn't very clean this time in the outside onsen and the water seemed to be slightly colder but still relaxing none the less. Of course it could be the times I've gone before I've been completely worn out and dehydrated but I won it over this time!

So now I'm back in the dorm writing this blog and I'm probably going to finally get off my arse and cook some real food for the first time. I'm thinking toriniku (bird meat/chicken) and gohan....

PS My goatee and 'stache have already been complemented on. Maybe it's because I'm older it doesn't look as stupid when I tried this a couple of years ago......

Placement test, getting my Book Off, and Castle grounds

2008-10-08T01:41:00.005+09:00

Yawn, it's late over my way but I got back out after being shut in the past few days and did some things around town. I'll start off with yesterday and work my way up to today since I've skipped a day blogging due to my supreme laziness.

Yesterday my day started a little earlier than usual because I had to go to campus to take a placement test in order to sign up for classes. I made a few mistakes on the test at first because they gave us instructions in Japanese, and while may listening might be okay when it comes to specifics I still have a hard time if I can't pick out the noun and subject. The room was packed with Japanese and foreign students alike. Some who seem to have been here for quite some time as well as first timers such as myself. Within ten minutes of starting the test two people sitting a seat over from me got up and walked out and said they had no idea what they were doing. I guess being raised in American school systems we're taught to at least try, especially considering some of the test was multiple choice.

Time flew by without me knowing it and to make matters worse my contacts starting drying up on me. Patrick (the other new comer from American I've mentioned before) finished his test with about thirty or forty minutes to spare. I wanted to take my time and use everything I had, or at least thought I had. I did what I could and ended up with ten minutes to spare. I honestly expected nothing more than a zero out of this test considering my katakana and kanji aren't that great, but I can read hiragana alright and have a decent vocabulary. After that me and Patrick went down to the Hyaku-en (dollar store) so he could pick up some living necessities. I got some more kitchen supplies such as large cutting knives (for a dollar!) to cut meat and what have you. I also picked up some supplies such as pencils, a pen, and more paper since school is starting in a couple of days.

We headed back and got a call from our teachers who were angered we hadn't picked up our test scores, but once again there was some confusion because we weren't told in English when to pick up our scores and my tutor said it'd be the 7th to pick it up and not the day we took the test (the 6th). That being said I'm going to comment on the misconception that the Japanese are anything BUT punctual. Every time I've gone to meet someone I've always beat them there, and when I went to meet one of my teachers about this English teaching gig on campus she was thirty minutes late...so I think me being late for picking up a test score can slide. Patrick, a German student, and myself walked over to the office after talking to one of our sensei to get our scores. I ended up making the same score Steve did the first time he took the placement test which isn't great, but I didn't make near as low as I thought. I made higher than the two who were with me when I picked up my score and for some reason although I made higher they put the German student into Intensive 2 (intensive meaning they throw a lot at you so you can learn more, not advanced) and put me into Intensive 1. Another Brit squirmed her way into Intensive 2 somehow even though she didn't do that well (not sure what her score was, but it wasn't enough to move her straight into Intensive 2). Her explanation being she wasn't sure what was going on in the test and if she had more time and knew what was going on she would have done better. I hate to be an ass (well not really it's kinda in me to be one) but if you didn't understand the test why in the fuck (excuse my French) does one think they would do better in a more advanced class. In the end I wasn't going to push my way into Intensive 2 as I think I can have a better learning platform by starting my Japanese from scratch. According to Steve I more than likely won't be challenged until the first couple of weeks pass by because it will be solely review for me. While I did come here to learn the language better at least I won't be under a lot of pressure for a while, and it will also give me time to settle in to my little teaching job I'll be starting next week.

The rest of the day was very lackluster and the only other time I left the dorm was to grab a beer with Steve at the convenient. Which still feels weird to me because he's under 20 and buying alcohol here. I stayed up really late and didn't go to bed til 3 in the morning and had to get up to meet my tutor at about 8:30 in the morning. Needless to say I had a hard time getting up but I made it there right on time. I needed my tutor to sign off on my part time job and turn in my class schedule form. It's so sad I've been here for a couple of weeks now and I'm still doing paperwork. The bureaucracy here is horrible, but I'm sure it's just as bad in America (if not worse) for foreigners. In the end I couldn't turn my forms in for the job because my gaijin card isn't ready and I need a copy of it as well as my alien registration number to complete the paperwork. So there might be a chance I won't be able to teach the first week. I personally don't see anything wrong in teaching one week and the forms would undoubtedly be completed by the second class. They seemed very against it when I said that though. When I got back I had me a nice unhealthy breakfast of Coco Krispies and OJ. After having a smoke with Steve we decided to go down to the castle grounds of Takeda-shingen and hit up Book Off again.

The center of town is situated around the station and is about a mile or slightly more from the dorm. As I've said before getting there is quick because it's downhill but that ride back is helping me drop the pounds I tell ya. We hit up Book Off first and I realized that there's a Denny's right next to it. What a combo, cheap book and crappy food. We always take our time in Book Off for a few reasons: there's a lot to look at, even with Steve we can't read everything, and Japanese people loiter like no others reading manga off the shelf without purchasing. Of course due to the ware and tear on manga because of loiterers that have a dollar section of manga that might not be in great condition but it's not like anything is torn out, just the paper might look dingy because it's been flipped through or is kind of old. In the end I always have to ask (in Japanese!) where the manga I'm looking for is. This week I got one of my favorite shows (recently made into a movie) that has a manga, and is called DMC (Detroit Metal City). It's about a kid who moves to Tokyo to go to school and join a trendy pop band. In the end he can only join a death metal band and it's a very funny comedy, almost a parody of sorts. Unfortunately, the manga does not have furigana (hiragana over kanji) and makes it harder to read. Scratch that, it's pretty impossible for me to read unless I use my DS Kanji dictionary and that takes a lotta time.

The other manga I grabbed were two volumes of "Shikabane Hime" which just started airing on television this past week. From this manga I learned there are two companies that specialize in putting furigana in their books. This will really help me learn new kanji, all the while increasing my reading ability as well as my vocabulary. Steve grabbed some more volumes of Tenjou Tenge (hard to translate but the best we can make out of it is "Heaven and Earth" or something like "As it is in Heaven as it is on Earth" kind of like a Japanese idiom of sorts) which I think is a great read but no furigana for me.

After leaving Book Off Steve wanted to explore but the day was overcast and it looked like rain (which it eventually did much later) and I wanted to hit up a park that once was an old castle ground for a warlord that once made Kofu one of his main bases operation. Although the sun wasn't completely shining the park was clean and very beautiful. It's also a great vantage point to see the rest of our city we live in. Those were pretty much the only pics I took today and here are a few. To see the more check out my flickr (always under my "Who" in the sidebar on the right). Won't have any pics of myself for sometime I'm sure, so I'm doing something different and am going for a mustache and goatee. Wonder how that will end up turning out...hopefully not as bad as my horrible ghetto peace signs I throw in my pics...

About where the city meets the mountainside way back in this picture is how far away the dorm is. I hate going uphill >.<

New apps, Ogino's, and bailing on shabu shabu

2008-10-05T12:24:00.006+09:00

Well, I thought I'd actually take a little bit of time and customize this blog to make it a little less boring. I added clocks so people can know what time it is over here in comparison to where they are. I've also added a followers link so that I can see who's actually reading my blog! Lastly I threw up a Japanese art panel just for the hell of it.

My day was pretty lackluster for the most part. I got up pretty late and then I went down to Ogino's to get some groceries. I was going to take the plunge on some expensive peanut butter when I realized for some reason they have all sorts of different jams and jellies, but they don't have grape. Which I find extremely odd because people grow grapes around here like nobody's business. Which leads me to my historical tidbit of the day; Yamanashi was the first area to which Japan started making wines. So one might easily assume there would be grape jelly but no such luck. I bought my first bag of rice and I splurged and bought some of the more expensive kind, but I like my rice! Also picked up some bacon (6 slices = 3 USD) as well as some chicken. Unfortunately I don't have a skillet yet so I can't really cook anything at all...Steve said I might be able to take his smaller skillet he inherited from one of the Brits.

After doing all that shopping I headed back up towards the dorm where I stopped off at the bookstore and picked up the latest volume of One Piece, yet another manga. However, this one has a bigger meaning behind it than the previous ones I've bought, this manga is geared towards probably ages 10-15 and because of that they inserted what's known as furigana (small hiragana text placed over the kanji) which makes Kanji very easy to read if I know hiragana (which I do for the most part). Basically reading manga can really help practice ones knowledge of hiragana, katakana, and eventually kanji when I learn enough.

When I got back to the dorm I pretty much just sat around for a couple of hours not doing much other than cleaning up and straightening my room up because it becomes very cluttered very quickly if one isn't careful.

I heated up the last of my Pizza Hut in the fridge and was questioned by one of the Chinese students "Pizza everyday!?" and I respond with "Ya, pretty much..." Soon after eating Steve suggested we start playing Go. I know the basic rules so we started a game. Steve more or less gained the upper hand early on and we soon realized where to move and where not to move on the board in certain situations.

While playing Go I got to meet Emily from Australia which I think was one of the last people to greet here in our dorm. Jeremy (also from Australia) stuck his head off the second floor and asked if we wanted to celebrate his b-day and go to shabu shabu. Steve and I both agreed and we all got dressed up and went out at about 6:30.

Leaving the dorm is always so great because it's downhill to town all the way, coming back the hill isn't steep but enough to make one tired and/or build lots of leg muscle. Speaking of getting around I took some pics of my bike and me to satisfy one of my friends back home. After showing him he immediately commented it looked like a woman's bike due to the curved handle bars and the basket. There was only one bike at D2 (a department store similar to wally world here) that had straight handle bars and it was like 20 bucks more, and every bike comes with a basket seeing as most people use a bike as a primary mode of transportation one will eventually need it to carry things. Besides it's great for getting groceries back!

Apparently there's a disease in Japan that makes you throw peace signs when taking a picture, so I make mine look as ghetto as possible. Some how I don't think it works for me....

Anywho, we got to the shabu shabu place and it seemed to be a small family run business and they only had two small private rooms and then a larger seating area that could probably hold about twenty people or so. Immediately I kind of felt something was up, and then after being seated I know why I had a funny feeling. We sat down and the woman helping us asked if horse meat would be alright. I've been more open to it and I thought it'd be okay, but then we opened the menu...There we found that the smallest set meal started at about 50 USD not including drinks, taxes, and service fees. So one would probably easily spend upwards of 70 bucks, but the next meal up was about 100 USD. Albeit I could have done it, but really people...who wants to spend that much on one meal?! Well apparently Aussie's and Brit's who have nothing better to do with their money. I'm not looking down on them for doing it, it's just that after moving here I've become very conservative with my cash flow and can't seem to understand why one would pay more than 50 for a meal. Steve agreed with the outrageous prices and we apologized to our friend for not staying and that we would meet everyone at the bar to celebrate then.

So Steve and I road our bikes to find somewhere to eat and since we kind of had it in our minds we'd be spending about as much as we did on yakiniku the other night we just ended up going back to the same yakiniku place! I pretty much had the same thing as before and I tell you I love their special sauce they soak their meats in, the only difference is I didn't pay 4 USD for a beer and got a MEGA (said it on the menu) gohan (rice) which I could even finish because the bowl of rice was about as large as my head. After the delicious yakiniku we road around to find me a pack of cigarettes and for some reason on the south end of town multiple places do not sell tobacco so we asked where the closest place was and a guy was nice enough to actually walk us over to the closest hotel and even ask a hotel worker to let us use her TASPO to get cigs. TASPO is a system still kind of new in Japan so that minors can't by tobacco or alcohol due the fact it asks you to scan a special TASPO card. After having a relaxing smoke we walked into a pachinko parlor where I quickly lost another ten dollars, but at least I can control myself and not spend load when I go in one.

So we then finally got to the bar and waited on our friends we had to bail on during shabu shabu. I ordered a Breztel (this bar was big on Oktoberfest) which is bascially a pretzel with butter injected into it, damn fine beer snack if you ask me. I only had two beers but the others drank like there was no tomorrow. After playing darts a few times as well as playing pool the night quickly wore down and so did one of the Brit's that came along. I think she just had a little too much a little too quick. Needless to say she had to use the bathroom which turned out to be a problem becuase there's only ONE bathroom in the bar and it's unisex. So when a women went in they couldn't use the stall and men could barely squeeze past the mob trying to help our friend out. Eventually the manager came and said something to them in the bathroom although I'm not clear as to what it was. Eventually the other girls dragged her out and up the stairs and they decided to leave, and although I'm no lech without women it's just a sausage party.

Steve, Jeremy, and I didn't stick around for too long so we departed soon after the ladies. Jeremy wanted to get money out of an ATM but the closest conbini didn't have an ATM machine he could use. We walked into a Canadian's bar, and I gotta say the dude running it looked like Iggy Pop and scared the shit out of me. Jeremy was so drunk at that point he began hitting on two girls sitting nearby, then a very hot waitress came up to him and asked him to go back to his seat. I felt horrible because we didn't order anything and Jeremy and Steve just wanted to hit on girls in a bar that had no more than 8 people. They glared at us the whole way out and I felt bad. I told them I was done after that and I was heading back to the dorm whether they were or not. They did indeed follow and we made it home safe and sound. Another note about Japanese culture is that there are no PI (public intoxication) laws here so one can stumble about as they please at night just so long as you don't hop into a car. I stayed up for a few hours after getting back and eventually hit the sack around 2 AM and didn't get up til noon today.

Hope everyone enjoyed my first bar adventure as much as I did!

Manga, picnic, Fuji, xbox live, and onsen

2008-10-02T23:10:00.007+09:00

I want to start this post out with a laugh so I'm sure anyone reading this will get a kick out of this picture. This is what happens when Americans move to Japan at first.

Leaning Tower of Pizza Boxes! These aren't all mine so don't get any ideas! This is how much pizza we've had between the three Americans in the past week though, and I still have two boxes in my fridge to add to that pile later...

I didn't have much to do school wise today so I got up at 8 AM and kind of lazed around until Steve got up and suggested we go to the bookstore. It's aptly named "Book Off" while I could probably make some vulgar jokes about this Steve stopped me and told me of a hardware store...that's right, named "Hard Off" which is pretty much a joke in itself.

The bookstore was two levels and the first level was comprised of videogames, cds (lots of American music in there), and manga. I believe the second floor was more traditional texts such as fiction and nonfiction reading.

For those who don't know Manga is basically Japanese comic books that are done in black and white due to the fact coloring is an incredibly tedious process and this allows for quick release of a series. Now this sounds nerdy but I assure you while I was in Tokyo even a middle aged business man could be seen reading manga. Unlike comic books manga genres range from fantasy, to action, to love stores, and then even slice of life. I found four volumes of manga in the 100 yen section and one newer volume that ended costing me a total of about 7 bucks. When I say volume it's not like a twenty page issue of Spider-man it's about 200 pages per volume. I bought three volumes of a series called Amon about a boy who has been possessed by a demon during the end of times and struggles to take control of himself in a decaying future. Then I got one volume of Majin Devil, which only had one volume because the artist ended up getting a deal on another of his series, it's almost the same premise as Amon yet set in current times and takes a twist on what Vampires could be, and I actually read this one in English a few years ago in the states.

Lastly, I got one of my favorite manga which is supposedly being made into a movie in American called Berserk which takes place in medieval times in a fictional place. The setup is that this guy, Gutts (actually Gattsu if pronounced phonetically from the manga), goes through a horrible series of events during his childhood (including prostituted out at one point to another man) that ends up hardening him to the core, but find a group of friends that ends up taking a liking to him and he settles in. Later the leader of said group of friends, Griffith, betrays his commrades in arms by agreeing to let them be the sacrifice to demons so that he can gain God like power. The main character, Gutts, ends up surviving the sacrifice but is branded for life and evil will always seek after him, a women they both cared about also survives but is traumatized to the point she's completely insane (she was raped by Griffith during the sacrifice). So it's basically a story of revenge in which Gutts travels the world in order to find Griffith although as powerful as he may be now and enact revenge on him. It's a very cool anti-hero story and while Gutts is a typical badass who wields a sword larger than himself he has many layers as does the story itself. If done right in America it could possibly be one of the best action movies made. However, we know this won't happen, therefore I'm going to hunt down the writer of the manga and make him sign over the movie rights to me...

After buying manga we rode back to campus where we met a group of students from Australia to go to a picnic across town. We rode our bikes for about 4 miles or so on the other side of town to where we were treated to my first view of Fuji. I ate fries (very popular item here in Japan and sold hot at most convenient stores) as well as katsudon (basically chicken nuggets), and Pocky for dessert! After eating one of the girls threw out a blanket and we just relaxed and talked about things we like and how horribly racist Corbin is. After chilling out for an hour or so we hopped back on our bikes and road around the park to see what was there. It was very clean and a very nice place to relax. We took a side road and found some cool looking decor outside of a home on a hill, but Kofu was the opposite way so we turned the caravan around and headed back towards the dorm.

After what seemed like the infinite bike ride we made it back and I had a thought to go to the onsen up the road, but no sooner did I think that Steve said we'd be leaving for it in 10 min. So we grabbed our bathing necesities and hopped down to the onsen again. I weighed myself again after all that work and then sitting in hot water which made me lose more water weight now doubt, and I weighed in at about 180 lbs. Hopefully I'll hit my goal of 175 soon and then I can start working out again and perhaps gain back what little muscle mass I once had a few years ago.

The bike ride back from the onsen is almost as refreshing as the onsen itself because it's completely downhill on bike the whole way back and gives the body a nice breeze to cool down with. So after getting back to the dorm I figured out a way to get points on my xbox live account with my sister's help. Now I can once again buy songs for RB2 which I love doing. Thanks Kim and the first song I got with a few of those points was of course "Under the Bridge" from the Red Hot Chili Peppers's album "Blood, Sex, Sugar, Magic". Kim was the one that originally got me into them years ago and now they're one of my favorite bands, too bad I never got to see them in concert though. Who knows though...maybe they'll be in Japan sometime!
Paying my deposit on my dorm tomorrow and activating my national health insurance card here (a whopping 20 bucks a month for uber awesome health care!). More over I need to study for my placement exam which I will no doubt do horrible on Monday...

It's been a while, but....

2008-10-02T09:22:00.004+09:00

I've finally gotten fully acclimated. At least I think I am now. I've been here for a week and a half and I can finally stay up past 10 PM (not that I need to be with school starting next week) and I finally had my first Japanese meal!

The night before last we got a small group of five to go down to a Yakiniku place next to our town's station. Our international group was comprised of cool guy from the UK, a guy from Australia, a Japanese guy who plays American football, Steve, Patty, and me. Yakiniku is basically fried meat, and you order it by the plate full. Some places do a buffet as well like you pay for two hours and it's all you can eat during that period. The exception here is that you fry the meat yourself! Which is very similar to a fondue I used to do back stateside.

Our Aussie buddy had to reserve us seats as each group gets their own private section to be seated in and they set hot coal grills in front of you for cooking directly under a vent to suck out excess smoke or smells. The atmosphere was the most awesome thing I'd seen yet with all sorts of paper lanterns and a wooden flooring inside, but the best part was the new age Japanese hip hop rap playing inside. While I'm not lecher, the women in this establishment were all very young and beautiful in their kimonos. Since we did not go to a buffet it was quite expensive but since it was my first real Japanese meal experience I didn't want to cut myself short so Steve joined in on buying the tokubetsu (specialty) meat which was about 13 USD for eight slivers of meat. Although expensive I feel it might have been some of the best meat I've had in a long time if not ever! We ended up getting another small plate to ourselves (not the specialty and half the price), as well as some rice and beer. Needless to say I won't be eating there much because it ran be about 30 USD after taxes and the service fees. Come to find out there is no tipping here in Japan because everyone is paid at an hourly rate.

I got my Xbox live hooked up and it works like the rep said it would when I called before leaving the states. However, for those you who play games, one must add points to download small games (generally about 10 dollars). For some reason upon moving to Japan I can't order points through my debit card. I ended up wasting a dollar of Skype minutes (ya it's not much but I didn't buy it for this) calling Xbox live to resolve the issue. This will mark my first blog vent if you will. So I must first say this: I HATE OUTSOURCING.

The woman I dealt with on Live support was definitely from India and English not being her primary language. Now I never usually cuss people out because I worked customer service for shitty Kroger for nearly ten freaking years and I know that their job sucks. However, these are supposed to be the people with answers. She kept telling me I had to change my address on my Live account to my Corbin addy (it was still on my old Richmond one) in order for my billing to match my account. I did that in two different places but to no avail. Her only excuse was that Xbox live updated two days ago and that there's some server error, but it was only an assumption and not a real answer. My deductive reasoning tells me that I cannot add points because I'm attempting to add points from Japan, but hey what the hell do I know. I ended up cussing occasionally (not at her but about the situation) and eventually asked her if someone in the USA bought me a preloaded Xbox live point card (sold at Gamestops, Kmart, Walmart, and surely many other chains) and gave me the scratch off number from the back if it would add points to my account. She quickly said yes and I hung up on her seeing as I had wasted too much on my Skype anyway. So for all you awesome readers that have gotten this far, please feel free to donate to the "EJ Needs Xbox Live points for mini-Arcade games and Rock Band 2 Song Foundation". We except point card donations in twenty and fifty dollar increments.

So now I'm going to an ATM in order to pay my landlady the deposit I owe her for my dorm room, and maybe drop of my visa work forms. I ended up taking the English teaching job which will pay me 50 dollars per two hour session. I'm teaching the class with Steve and we have about 15 students as of right now but may go up to twenty. Our classroom has two large chalkboards and instead of desks has about six or seven leather couches and a few leather seats. I have to dress up hardcore as well, but I brought a lot of nice clothes and now have an excuse to wear them. Hope everyone is enjoying my blog thus far, and if some people reading want to talk one on one please feel free to comment on my blog posts and keep in touch!

PS Sorry for no new pics, but I recently discovered a warlord's castle a few blocks away that I'm going to hit up. We're also going out to picnic if it's warm today and maybe have some cool pics of all the international peepz here.

Best day, ever?

2008-09-29T18:52:00.002+09:00

So ya, this probably was one of the coolest days I've had so far. Unfortunately it rained all day which was of course a downer. Steve and I rode our bikes to campus to meet with my tutor and my academic adviser at about 9:30 this morning. My tutor met us and told us that we couldn't meet with the adviser till about lunch time. We then decided to grab some breakfast (although I had an apple and OJ earlier in the morn) at the campus bookstore. I grabbed two small OJs and Pocky!

We kept going to Steve's academic adviser so I could meet him, but he was in a meeting with this students. After walking back between the international office and his adviser's about five times his meeting ended and we walked in. His name is Ueya-sensei and his English was pretty awesome, but he wanted me to speak in Japanese. Sadly, my speaking skills still have not leveled up, but my listening is still awesome and getting better. They served us coffee while we waited and I didn't think it'd be that hot and I burnt the living shit out of my tongue. After talking to Ueya-sensei we went to meet with my tutor, Gan-san.

We met Gan-san outside building J (buildings aren't named after ppl) and we walked up to meet my adviser. My adviser is very nice, Morita-sensei, and he's a French language teacher. They put me under him because I'm interested in cultures and they felt he has a broad understanding of them. We (Patrick, Steve, Gan, Morita, and I) all went to the cafeteria where I finally ate some Japanese-like food, CURRY! I actually liked it too, although I didn't completely mix in the curry with my rice. I gotta pace myself. Morita-sensei nominated me to be the US representative at an upcoming BBQ we're planning! My first committee!

Then the fun really started, Steve finally stopped being mother hen to Patty and I. There was only enough room in Morita-sensei's car for four people so there wasn't even enough room for Steve anyway. We jumped in the car and headed down to the courthouse to get my gaijin card (it's not actually called this but when you say it like that they know what you mean). Unlike Steve and Patrick I had my visa and I didn't have to pay for my gaijin card. Morita-sensei soon left us to go back to work on campus and Gan-san continued to help us out.

Patty and I went to the one place that has Iphones but I figured it wouldn't be worth it because most Japanese phones are ahead of the Iphone other than the majority aren't touch (and the Iphone her would not work over in the US). We hit up a couple of phone places to figure out plans and what have you. Finally we ended up at a store named AU where we both got our phones. Here's the skivvy on it, I paid NOTHING at the store, my phone was free, and my monthly bill is about 32 bucks! I signed a two year contract (why you ask?) because doing so actually cuts the bill in half. Meaning I would have to have paid about 60 a month for the plan I have, there is a cost for cutting the phone off before contract but even counting what I have to pay to cut off I'll end up saving about 150 on my bill for a year! The phone I have is made by sanyo and does the following: still photos, video (video conference as well), infared (nice for sekigaisen [transferring phone number and name to another phone instantly]), mp3s, email, internet, TV, and probably more shit I have no idea about.

Gan-san left us while we were still setting up our phones, but we left shortly after she departed. It was still raining when Patty and I left AU, and we walked backed to campus to get our bikes. Patty still doesn't have a tutor so we stopped by the international office. Patty still doesn't know his tutor, but the good news for me is that I already have a part time job! Two people would have been nice they said but although Patty was standing there they didn't even offer it to him, I guess because they know my listening skills are at a decent level. In the end Steve told Okamura-sensei that he'd like to try and do it, which means less money for me, but it's only one day a week for just a few hours for 50 bucks, so I figure that will pay for my rent, phone, health insurance, and internet each month!

Steve made hamburgers tonight and we've decided to make that a weekly thing seeing as they were very very tasty (and cheaper than McDonald's). Later we grabbed a few beers and tried to play Rock Band 2, but Steve had to help a Chinese student with their English. Emily (one of the Japanese RAs) ended up playing with me for a bit which was fun, but in the end I was too tired to play after Steve was finished. Now I'm off to bed, catch yuns on the flip side!

Onsen!!

2008-09-28T19:44:00.005+09:00

Well I'm fully unpacked finally!!! Took me a few days but I've got everything where I want it and still have some empty cabinets above my bed. Steve and I went down to town today to go to the Hyaku-en (100 yen) shop. They are very similar to American dollar shops, they sell a lot of necessitates one would definitely need. For example for less that $20 I got a spoon, fork, spatula, trash can, two binders for school, marshmallows (yay), straws (I drink OJ out of the carton here), a glass, plate, bowl, sponge, chopsticks, and HOT CAKE MIX! An interesting note is that most places have you bag your own items, assuming you got more than just a few things.

After checking out and bagging my items we headed back to our backs where we were treated with a special surprise...that's right...another arcade! We played a gun game together, Time Crisis 4, but I only went in to check if they had Street Fighter 4. Mind you, the reasons I get excited about SF4 are that it's the first fighting game I ever played and got decent at and that it does NOT come out in the USA until February or later. After playing and quickly losing our game we made our way back to our bikes. We set off for Ogino's, the local super market, where I invest in some milk, cereal, bacon, and two more liters of OJ! Steve is going to allow me to use his rice cooker for my rice as well! If not for Steve I'd probably way behind in being able to do things myself here, so I told him once things settle down (financially and socially) that I would hopefully be able to treat him to a not so expensive dinner.

We headed back to the dorm where we finally got out the ole Xbox 360 I brought over to play Rock Band 2! I only have the guitar and microphone right now but it's still fun none the less. Steve hogged the guitar and I sang most the time. A few people walked by and gave us "wtf" faces. Eventually a two of the Aussie girls looked down from the second floor down into the lobby area we were playing laughing their asses off. Patty hollered at them to come down and a girl named Melissa came down and sang a Blondie song for us and she did great! RB2 is definitely going to be the American mainstay in the dorm and we're gonna get some alchy and have a party with it soon!

Anywho, after playing Rock Band 2 we decided to do one thing I've always wanted to do. Go to an onsen. Onsen means bathhouse but is used to refer to most hot springs. Here in lies the biggest culture shock I've gotten while here, having to strip down naked and bathe with other men. I actually had no problem with it, but I can see if someone weren't 100% confident in their sexuality and coming from a more closed bathing atmosphere (like America) one would find it very wierd. I also encountered what I believed to be a Yakuza (Japanese mafia) there. He had tattoos on his arm (tattoos here are a big sign of Yakuza) and had an eye patch. I had a towel in the floor and it he picked it up and gave it back to me, so pretty nice for a mafioso I guess. We first dipped into a more spa/jacuzzi type bath with bubbles and shortly after moved to the outside bath which I thought was much more relaxing. The unfortunate part to the bathing experience is that you seem to scare off most of the locals. This specific onsen we went to is only about a 5 min bike ride from the dorm and costs about $3.75. After having such a great experience we've decided to go to another onsen this coming week across town that actually overlooks the city. It as an interesting experience but a relaxing one that I wouldn't mind at all doing again, very soon. In the end we ended up weighing ourselves before leaving, I was curious as to if I'd lost any weight while here. Well, I have, and it's a shitlaod. I last weighed about 195 or so and now I weight in at 183! I've been eating shitty American food most of the time too, it's mainly not drinking soda and biking around everywhere!

Moving in...

2008-09-26T16:48:00.007+09:00

Woke up sore from Steve's floor, but thankfully that's the end of that. The landlady rolled in later than we though and she said she wouldn't let me move in until she had the opportunity to clean up more, apparently the last guy who lived in this room was German and didn't clean the floor before leaving. So we went down to the nearest convenient store and I got some plain bread (no melon-pan today), some orange juice, and a kitkat bar for sugar intake.

We then walked over to campus (less than three blocks from the dorm) and I got to meet my tutor Gan-san who is a girl a few years younger than me. She didn't speak much English but I understood some of her Japanese and what I didn't Steve was there to translate. We didn't get to finish our goals of the day because the weather was bad and she did not have a vehicle. I still have to get my gaijin card at the courthouse, get my hanko (stamp/seal they use in place of signatures), get a bike, and look into getting a cell phone. We decided to meet on Monday to take care of all these things. So we left my tutor and hoofed it back to the dorm where we sat around Steve's room and debated ordering more pizza, which of course we ended up doing. I'm not going to lie, it's expensive but I don't eat it all at once and this time I spent extra to get a large by myself and I calculate it will last me a total of three meals. I will probably run out and get a bike tomorrow and grab a few groceries so I won't rely on ordering expensive ass pizza all the time.

Shortly after ordering the pizza the landlady (Yamamoto-san) knocked on Steve's door to tell me she finished cleaning. I quickly moved my bags in and am still unpacking into what little of a dresser I have. I live in a corner room, meaning as far as sound is concerned I need to worry about whomever is above me and then Steve who is right next door. Patrick is also on this floor just three doors down. Oddly enough the person in between Steve and Pat is nicknamed "Naked Lee".

I have to say that being here is quite intimidating as the people here are genius level and above. According to my IQ I'm at the lower end of that genius spectrum. According to one of the RA's in the dorm we are getting students from Germany, the UK, France, Cambodia, and Egypt. Currently on this floor we have a Chinese dood (Naked Lee) and a few Malaysians (which Steve refers to as the Malazys seeing as they don't keep our kitchen very clean). Getting moved in and getting my keys to my mailbox, room, and kitchen locker was quite liberating as I've not had any sort of personal space for nearly a week. As good of friends as Steve and me might be we agreed that getting out of each others' space was a good thing. So now the reality sets in that I have to bust my ass from here on out with my Japanese language. My listening skills are great, my speaking is crappy, and my writing is horrible. I have one week to study for my placement exam and while I'll probably end up in the advanced class (advanced here meaning intensive catch up) I don't want to look like a complete fool...

Great Tokyo Experience

2008-09-25T16:04:00.006+09:00

First note, I now have a Flickr account where one can see all my pics instead of having to look at my slideshows or random single pics. I will put my flickr addy under "The Who" on my blog's side bar so in case someone doesn't use bookmarks it will always be there.

Unlike the previous days we did a complete day of walking around and doing things, meaning we didn't take a break back at the hostel or anything. We started by hopping a train to Roppongi which famous for it's night life. From there we walked about half a mile to the rather large Tokyo Tower. It's actually taller than the Eiffel Tower but weighs half as less. It's the largest self supporting steel structure in the world and serves as an antenna for about fourteen local radio and television stations. You can pay just to go halfway or you can pay about 6 bucks more and it allows you to go to the very top as well. We of course paid for the top, and when we got into the elevator for the top we were crammed like sardines with about 10 other people in a rather small elevator. Steve seemed like he was kinda freaked so I asked if he was scared in Japanese and he said ya, about the same time the Japanese people started saying they were scared. Then a message comes on in Japanese and English stating that you should not be alarmed by the weird sounds that might emanate from the elivator are merely safety devices activating which kind of seem odd to the both us.

When we reached the top we were treated with a spectacular view of the city. Seeing the city from that height really put into perspective why this is one of the largest cities in the world. I literally could not see the end of the city as you can tell in some of the pictures. Unfortunately I still could not see Fuji and haven't yet, but Steve says on a pretty day from certain spots in Kofu it can be seen.

After leaving the observation deck we somehow thought it would be a cool idea to walk back down the stairs from the midway point, I somehow feel now that was a mistake as my calves still hurt a day later. We grabbed some Baskin Robbins ice cream and headed on to find something else to do. Didn't have much direction so we jumped a train to Shinjuku (pretty much the main station point for trains and buses in Tokyo) and walked around. I found a Krispy Kreme and even in the middle of the day there was probably a 30+ minute wait for the sugary goodness so we immediately passed and tried to find other sources of sustenance. We walked around the station and stumbled upon something Steve hadn't seen yet in Japan, a Wendy's! This was my first beef experience in Japan and I have to say that it was lackluster, the beef seems to be of a lower grade and was only so-so. The fries and Pepsi at least were good!

By this time it was time for us to start the true purpose of the day, begin our trip to the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka which is on the outskirt of Tokyo. It finally had to happen after three days, we got on the wrong train! It wasn't too big of a problem because I noticed it before Steve and we got off really quick. Because of this it made us about 10 minutes passed when were supposed to be there. Luckily the museum is not a tour and we only hurt ourselves by being late, meaning we just had less time to look around at everything. The biggest downer to the museum is that we could not take pictures inside. Besides that, the Ghibli Museum is a must see for any tourist in Japan. Being I want to make movies one day, although probably not animated, I have huge respect for Miyazaki (creator of Studio Ghibli). It was like a kid in a candy store with some much to soak up. The best exhibit inside I wish I could have taken pictures of was a mock up of Miyazaki's studio which was incredible with all kinds of drawings and storyboards from a plethora of this films.

After hitting the outside exhibits and getting pictures we journeyed back to the first floor where every 20 minutes there is a fifteen minute short film (which is impossible to find outside of Japan) which we were treated to. There are a number of these short films and the museum rotates them around every so often. My reading is bad and Steve's isn't great but he said the title was something along the lines of "The Day I Received my Planet".

The following is a description of the short film and is kind of long, so if this kind of thing bores you then skip past to the next paragraph:
I could understand a vast amount of the dialogue save a few heavy parts. It's a story about a boy who seems to have lost his way or perhaps is a runaway and he begins to stay with an older lady helping out with tasks such as farming and selling huge daikon radishes at the market. On his way to the market his motorbike breaks down and he assisted by a mole and a from who take the radishes in return for helping and also give him a seed for a planet. After getting back home he rushes to plan it in a pot and then goes to sleep. When he awakens the next morning he finds that hovering above the pot is a small ball of dirt hovering just over where he planted it. It also had a few satellites (or moons) going around it. The child then notices a rolly polly bug on the new planet and leaves it be, always showing this great care for life. Another day seems to pass and the child goes to the market and makes it all the way there this time and sells his goods, we see the Frog and Mole again but they leave the child be. The whole while this is happening the woman the child lives with "Ninia" seems to be trying to find the child a home. The boy returns from the market with a perfume bottle of water and gentle sprays the ball of dirt and a cloud begins to form around it and electricity lightly shocks him and he laughs. After the clouds form around completely it begins to rain on the small planet. The next morning he find the planet looking like the real thing, and he finally shows what he's accomplished to Ninia. At that time a family comes to finally take the child away, and the child leaves the care of the small planet which is now inhabited by a small family of rolly pollies with Ninia. Shortly after while staying in his new home he is visted by the Frog and Mole yet again and they say he has to come quickly with them or he's going to miss something important. He tags along and is brought to a place in space where there's a river of stars and planets running through the universe as if this were the birthplace of all things. Ninia is seen waiting for him in a dress holding his planet. They tell him that he must releas the planet into the galaxy so that it can one day become a true planet and sustain more life than just the small bugs. The frog and mole tell him he can return in sixty years to see how his planet has progressed because the river flows back through. The child is happy for his planet and releases it, but tells Ninia that they will never meet again because it's so far into the future. Ninia then tells him she has been alive over 200 years because she's a magic user (witch might be too harsh). The boy departs with the Frog and Mole and the film ends.

The visuals and music alone were moving enough to make me cry. While the story isn't sad so much the message and the care for all life we must have really impacted me even in short fifteen minutes of time. Steve said he felt like that was also one of the most moving things for him as well. After the film we exited the museum and made our way back to the hostel.

We woke up this morning checked out of our hostel and headed back to Kofu. We made it safely back, and I finally had my first piece of actual Japanese food, Melon-pan (melon bread). It's basically sweet bread that is actually really awesome. I'm now hiding in Steve's room until he gets back from taking a placement test or whenever the landlady leaves for the day, whichever comes first. I think we're going to explore Kofu a little bit and grab some eats later, but I finally get to reveal to Yamanshi University that I'm in Japan (Only one staff member knows I hid out here for two days and wanted to keep it a secret) and move into my dorm room which I think will be next door to Steve. I've already made a new friend, albeit from America, named Patrick. He admits that I have a little more Japanese under my belt but I'm still glad to have someone around who also has minimal Japanese language because Steve's knowledge is somewhat intimidating to me as of now. I'm sure we're both going to do fine and catch up quickly! Hope everyone enjoyed this HUGE freaking entry but there was a lot to pack in!

Temple visit and more Akihabara exploration

2008-09-23T18:58:00.002+09:00

Today Steve and I got up and ate at McDonald's yet again. Can't get enough of that homey goodness of hotcakes. Soon after we took the train at Akihabara a few stations down to Asakusa where I visited my first Buddhist temple. There were lots of foreigners around, myself included, but it was a hot spot for the Japanese people as well.

Steve and me wandered around the area of the temple for a while and then we hopped a train back to the hostel to rest our legs for a while and I took a nap. We went back to Akihabara and attempted to play Pachinko. Think Plinco from Price is Right but way smaller, and you insert a 1000 yen bill ($10) and you get about 150 pachinko balls and you can only control at the speed at which the balls fall down hitting pins and bouncing around and the goal is to get it in this very small hole. Once a ball makes it in the hole the machine turns into a slot machine and you end up getting more balls. Gambling is illegal in Japan so you have to trade in any balls you have left over for prizes, however there is an excepted loophole where you take a special voucher after trading in your balls and you take said voucher to an exchange station generally across the street or in the alley (I've yet to experience this) and you give them the voucher and they give you cash back. Of course being the first time Steve or me every played we lost 10 dollars in probably less than 2 min, so we decided to stop there. It Steve's first experience gambling and he wasn't happy, I've lost far more money than that gambling on slots, but I'm glad we stopped at 10 bucks.

After losing our money at pachinko we wandered around Akihabara even more and I found a cheap mic/headset to use with my PC because my mic doesn't seem to be working as well as it probably should. We then made our way back to the hostel, but stopping at yet another arcade on the way back where we saw some interesting games like Rambo, Aliens, and a Half Life 2 arcade game. I only played a Silent Hill gun shooting game as well as Aliens for a buck. We then got some pizza from dominoes, and we ended up getting 20% off since it was at night and take out. Meaning we ended up paying like 13 bucks for a pretty small pizza. So now we're just chilling out in the hostel room and I'm gonna log off for the night. I'm going to start using a slideshow app for big trips like this to get a lot of pics in one place, hope those of you tuning in enjoy!

Tokyo Journey

2008-09-22T15:22:00.000+09:00

Woke up and ate at McDonald's. 450 yen for a hotcake breakfast, which got me three pancakes, a hasbrown, and a very very very small orange juice. It tasted a lot like the McDonald's in the USA.

One awesome thing I found today on the way to the station was something Steve hadn't found in the last six months, freaking Pepsi! It tasted slightly different and seemed a little bit sweeter. Coke seems to be the larger staple soft drink here. Which reminds me of the ads around Tokyo for "Boss Rainbow Coffee" with Tommy Lee Jone's old ass on them.

We then took a two hour bus ride to Tokyo after breakfast and we drove by Square Enix's character goods shop so we backtracked and tried to hit it up but they're only open a few days a week and tomorrow is a holiday so they were closed today.

On the way there I made Steve and the other US exchange student, Patrick, go into an arcade with me so I could play Street Fighter 4. Tekken 6 was there was well and looked great seeing as it was being played on a special HD arcade station, unlike the Street Fighter 4 machine.

We then took a short train ride and had to make one station change. I have to go ahead and say at this point is that being a gaijin (foreigner) you get an assload of stares even in Tokyo. The majority of which don't seem to be very nice looks, one guy even honked at me and Steve earlier to day as we were walking to the station. After the train we pretty much found the NINJA easily and they were very helpul at checkin. Steve and I paid 200 for the both of us in a private bunk bed room which isn't exactly spacious but it's secure and the AC is sweet. Mind you my half was only about 100 bucks (which actually I covered the 10% deposit a month ago and didn't ask Steve for anything in return) for three nights stay, it's very clean here and as I said before the staff is very nice and helpful.

I'M HERE!!!!!

2008-09-22T06:49:00.000+09:00

So I've finally made it. The flight was pretty horrible, I didn't sleep at all during the journey. By the time I made it to Narita it was pretty hard to stay awake. I had no problems going through immigration or customs. Easily switched what USD I had into Yen and bought a bus ticket to Kofu and had to wait an hour for it to arrive.

While I was waiting two police officers came up to me and asked me if I spoke any of their language in Japanese. I knew what they were saying and I could have actually responded in Japanese, but I figured had they thought I spoke any at all they would start using vocab I haven't picked up at all so I told them I didn't know any. I had to show them my passport and tell them where I was staying and why I was here, but they were very nice and thanked me for my cooperation and went on their way to stop random foreigners elsewhere.

The bus arrived shortly thereafter and I finally started falling asleep during the bus ride, but I knew I had to try and stay awake so I wouldn't miss my station. In the end it didn't matter because I actually got off at the wrong station, it was only one station early and it wasn't that far off from my final destination but it did probably add about $10 to my taxi ride to the dorm.

Which leads me to my other piece of bad/weird luck, there's only one Japanese person affiliated with the university I'm attending that knows I was coming in a little sooner than when I'm supposed to move into the dorms (Sept 26th), so I crashed with my friend Steve who's been here for six months already before leaving for Tokyo today. However, you're not supposed to have guests stay with you in your dorm room, so I'm about to sneak out in a few to make it look like I'm just arriving in order to not get Steve in any kind of trouble. So here's the bad luck part, one of the main teachers I'll be dealing with ironically saw Steve as we were getting out of the Taxi at the dorm and now knows I'm here. Hopefully it won't be such a huge deal, especially considering I'm only having to do this twice, one of which will be the day before I move in but maybe they'll let me move in a day early.

That's it for this blog, I'll try to make things a little more truncated from here on out. Sorry there aren't any pics yet there was a Typhoon when I flew in and it gets dark here at 6 PM so there wasn't anything really cool I could do with my camera. I'm leaving for Tokyo in just a few hours so hopefully I'll be updating later tonight!

First steps

2008-09-20T09:59:00.000+09:00

So here it is, a damn blog...I figure this page will hopefully be helpful to those wanting to see what crazy shenanigans I'm getting myself into over in Japan. I figure it will be nice for friends and family to check out, especially those who don't have Facebook or Myspace.

I fly out of Louisville airport in a mere 7 hours. That flight will last 2.5 hours, and then I have three hour layover in Houston (which I'm glad Ike didn't completely take off the Earth). After what will hopefully seem like a short layover I will be taking a 13 hour flight to Tokyo. Unfortunately, the journey doesn't end there. I then must take a bus ride which will last three hours to Kofu.

For those of you just joining me on this journey the majority of my stay will take place in a prefecture (kind of like mini-states) of Yamanashi in a town called Kofu. I'll be attending the University of Yamanshi with the main goal of attempting to learn the language back and forth, up and down (seriously top to bottom reading). School doesn't start until October 6th, so I'm going to have some time to acclamate myself as well as get back what little language I picked up at EKU.

So after getting to Kofu I'll be staying one night on a friend's floor then me and said friend will be leaving for Tokyo the next morning. Unfortunately, I won't be able to move into my room until the 26th of this month. So I'll be in Tokyo for a couple of days after that. I used an awesome site called hostelworld.com to book a couple nights in Tokyo. I highly reccommend this site to anyone who will be traveling outside of the country and have little luggage. Of course I'm sure anyone reading all of this so far is thinking, "Wow, that shits gots to be 'spensive." Fortunately, I found a clean hostel with good ratings for a massive $30 dollars a night! I won't lie though...I mainly picked this hostel because it was called "Khaosan Tokyo NINJA". Yes, a hostel by the name "NINJA" (gotta capitalize that for emphasis). http://www.khaosan-tokyo.com/en/ninja/

I hope that all friends (and friends to come) as well as family will keep up with this blog and stay in touch seeing as it will be six whole months until I return. So for all my friends that wanna blow it up when I get back mark down March 2nd on the calenders because that's my return flight during the semester break!!!

For all the people I didn't get to say goodbye to, GOODBYE!!! Stay safe and keep in contact!