Hello My Life

Catchup Post #1 - Escape from Tokyo!

2009-01-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

Alright, it's finally Christmas break for me and I'm done totally relaxing, so I'm going to try and catch up blogging for the last month I was in Japan! It was a big flurry of excitement and adventure and finals, so there was no way I could blog at the time! Here goes =)

So we last left off at the Tokyo Toy Show, which was pretty cool! A weekend or two after the Toy Show, I went to go visit my best friend Sada and her boyfriend David! They had studied abroad in Kyoto last year during the Spring semester and were back there again staying with their friend Sae before Sada went up north to Aomori to work at an archaeology field site (wow!). So I took a few days off from school plus the weekend to go visit them! Since they had been there for a semester before, they already know all the great places to take me =D I was sooo super excited to get out of the city and actually see some historical Japanese culture! And being in Japan together was one of my and Sada's dreams =D

So how did I get there? By bus! Kyoto is a pretty good distance away from Tokyo. You can take the Shinkansen (bullet train) I think, but it's majorly expensive! Instead, I took the night bus! It's a bus that goes during the night and is therefore cheaper than the regular bus. The total for the round trip was about $116. I bought my tickets online and just printed out a piece of paper and took it to the station! I was surprised how easy it was. I got really nervous waiting for my bus though. There were so many different buses and they each had a different name, I was scared I'd miss mine! It came right on time though and I got on just fine with my luggage and everything.

The bus was totally awesome. It was three levels, and it was a woman's only bus! Japan is cool about that sort of thing, probably because there are so many lecherous men in Japan it seems.. but on busy mornings, some trains make the first two cars of the train ladies only because it gets suuuuuper crowded and there are a lot of cases of men taking advantage of the situation to grope women >_< class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">decker night buses too, but as a foreigner and a woman it made me and my parents feel a lot better about me traveling alone to be on a women-only bus =) Plus there was like nobody on it. I was on the third floor and there were maybe three other women there!

The windows all had curtains so you could sleep, the chairs reclined super far, and they gave you slippers and a blanket! It was all pretty sweet =D I had a hard time sleeping, as I usually do in that sort of situation, but I really enjoyed looking out the window to see just how Tokyo connects to the rest of Japan, and getting my first glimpse of Japan outside of the city. I got to Kyoto a little earlier than expected, and it was really early in the morning (like 6:45), so the train station was pretty much closed. I tried to go in and use the restroom, but discovered something about Kyoto culture: public restrooms don't provide toilet paper in Kyoto! I think this is a pretty common Japan thing actually, but Tokyo is so modernized/westernized that I never ran into this in Tokyo. In Kyoto, people usually just carry around the free tissue packets that advertisers are often handing out, and there's also usually a tissue packet vending machine in the restroom. I also learned that most public toilets in Kyoto are the traditional Japanese "squatter" toilets, which I do not like at all! I think I only used those twice my whole time in Japan, and it was only in the locker room at school. Ughh it was majorly gross! So with not much else to do I just waited around for Sada and David, and they showed up pretty quickly! Hooray! I was so happy to see them ^^

We did so much on our first day that I'll leave this post for now and start a new one for Day 1 in Kyoto!

New Website - Japanotes.com

2008-10-24T20:49:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! I got back to America in one piece, and I'll try to write a recap of my last month in Japan sometime soon, but in the meantime I'm here to announce the new website Nick and I made! It's called Japanotes, and it's a database for all the websites that feature anime and video game sheet music. We're indexing all the songs on those sites so you can browse or search them and easily find the song you're looking for! Be sure to check it out at www.japanotes.com!

Tokyo Toy Show

2008-07-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

Finally! It's my pics from the Tokyo Toy Show like....three weeks ago, haha!

Tokyo Big Sight! It's a crazy looking convention center! I think the top pyramid parts make up one large hall.. but all of the toy stuff was actually below all of this.

There was a big saw art piece over to the right... not sure what that's all about, haha.

It's a pretty big sight after all!

Stroller parking lot. I found this pretty interesting =)

One of the toys that won in this year's Japan best toy thing, the Unicorn Gundam, or some such.

This toy is HOT right now it seems. Japanese girls are big into things that have a dessert motif. I think because they want to appear cute and sweet, that's what their fashion is all about right now, and desserts are also cute and sweet. So this toy gives you some kind of mixture that you put into a decorating bag and design your own little dessert toys and accessories. Mom, I thought this one would be particularly interesting to you =) Notice the how-to sheets down there that show you how to use the different tips! There were ones on how to do different borders and lines too.

Some examples of what you can make.

Puzzles were also really big at the show. I was surprised! They were especially advertising these reeaallly tiny pieced puzzles.

Such tiny pieces!

They also had these 3-D food themed puzzles where you have to fit the blocks together to make some sushi or whatever. Some of them were kind of lame, like... fit these pieces of pineapple together in this glass the right way to get....a glass full of pineapple?

This one just made me laugh. This UFO thing kinda hovers magically in midair or whatever and wows your friends, but the whole setup and commercial was just full of these white kids being overdramatically impressed/surprised/frightened over the mystery UFO. Kinda reminded me of something you'd see on American TV, where you have to call in the 1-800 number, sorry no CODS (do they still even have those commercials?)

These were way cute! This whole booth was movie-based toys =) Tiny batmans!

Star Wars nesting dolls!

They also had really realistic figures, like this Joker!

I like to freak people out with this photo! Creeepy!

I'm too young to really remember Popples, but I remember some of my older cousins having their stuff, so I was really surprised to see them here! Are they making a comeback in the states? Maybe they're just hoping to market to the super sugary cute Japanese crowd right now.

View from the escalator (that you had to stand in about a 5 minute, roller-coaster style line for), where you can see all the families watching the act on the main stage (usually a young lady singing and acting with characters in costume, like Hello Kitty)

Yaay a Speed Racer booth! Small children could get their photo taken in the Mach 5! If only I was a small child..

Yeah you keep looking for a Trixie doll in there, little girl. You're not gonna find her.

Speeeeeeeeeeeed!

Hey! It's a Blue Dragon! From the new game, Blue Dragon!

Zomg Speed and Trixie Barbies! Two of my favorite childhood memories combined! These are probably on the store shelves in America, but I'm never in any store that might sell toys so I just saw them at the show!! They look great!!!

Aaaahhh I haven't really wanted a Barbie doll in a loooong time, but... it's Trixie!! Maybe when I get home I'll go find one.. She looks so cute and mod!

Speeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!! Speed > Ken. I wonder how his hair looks!

An R2-D2 USB port! There was a Darth Vader head one too.

Power Rangers! They're still big as ever over here it seems! These guys were just mannequins, but there was a big stage to the right where they were acting out a battle for the little ones!

I thought this was cool. You go in this cave looking thing, which is the booth for this card game. Then they have these tables where you can sit and they teach you how to play! It reminded me of an anime called Angelic Layer where they kind of do the same thing, really help you get started in the game. It seemed like good marketing =)

This time, a red dragon! For that card game.

So they have these win-a-card little games around in the arcades and stuff, and I think you have to play some little game and depending on how you do you get some trading cards or playing cards for your series? They had a whole bunch set up here. It was fun to see the different types of people lined up. Kind of older kids to adults for like the DBZ, Naruto, and that monkey thing.. then younger kids... mostly boys, and then on the right was stuff like Pretty Cure 5 where it was all just little tiny girls lined up, hehehe.

So that was the toy show! Nothing crazy innovative or whatever, but it was fun to go see =)

3 Months!

2008-06-26T01:14:00.000-07:00

Happy 3 Month Anniversary to us!

In celebration, here's that photos-only post I promised =) Photos of the Tokyo Toy Show will be next post!

The view from the 8th floor of the library, where I usually like to study! It's beautiful when it's not raining =)

A crepe from the crepe place in the station. The insides were great, but the crepe part was kind of tasteless.

A big lion statue on a building! This is in Kawaguchi, next to the arcade I usually observe for my class.
Here's some of the food from the really nice 1st year lock nomikai!

Ansen and Kay choosing drinks

Hunter and Jiro

Me and Diana!

Me and my new friends Emi and Mai!

My knees after learning the lock routine. Yeaah.. there was a ridiculous fall that had no trick to lessening the pain, except to not do it much until the day of the performance. Oof. Needless to say I bought kneepads after that.

The eel dinner I got with Greg and Jen for our two month anniversary!

Hunter and Kay

This is a famous statue in Shibuya of a dog named Hachiko. The story goes that after Hachiko's owner died, the dog continued its routine of waiting for him at the station every evening, for 10 years. The Hachiko statue is a well-known place for people to meet up when they leave Shibuya station.

A big ad for the new Indiana Jones movie in Shibuya.

Ansen in line to get into Studio Coast for our performance, eating a bento like some busy salaryman!

Studio Coast, aka ageHa! Party People!

Jen and I after a VERY long week and performance day... my makeup turned into zombie eyes.

Speed Racer poster in Ikebukuro station, woooooooo!!

The ice cream place that Jeannette and Julie and I went to in Ikebukuro, called Milky

This isn't the one we got, but if I go again this is the one I'm getting.

Everything was star-themed! I thought this lamp tower thing next to us was really cool..

..so I took two photos of it!

Jeannette and Julie!

Our crazy ice cream dish! I think it was the Gemini? It was banana-chocolate themed. That spaghetti looking stuff on the outside was some kind of banana foam! Weird! And those brown things seemed to be azuki beans without any sweetening......you can pass on those if you get this dish, haha. Whose crazy idea...

Cute!!

Hahahaha

We also had to get two pieces of cake so we were all paying customers. This is the aftermath. I should go back and steal that star-shaped dish........

Come see scenic Kawaguchi! You can see this crazy water sculpture from the train, so I went to go check it out!

Turns out there's a huge nature trail in Kawaguchi and it's really pretty! Here's a waterfall they made I guess!

On an unrelated note... I was disappointed when I bought these Country Ma'am cookies and opened them up only to reveal that each cookie was individually wrapped. Sure, I guess it keeps them soft. Sure, I guess it makes them easy to put in a lunchbox or something. But for as particular as they are about separating trash and stuff like that, they suuuure don't hold back when it comes to packaging. (They were delicious though. Thanks Country Ma'am, whoever you are.)

Happy Happy Happy: 3 Weeks of Happiness!

2008-06-20T03:03:00.000-07:00

Jen made me promise to blog tonight, so here I am =) Things got really busy right after my last post with our G Splash performance and midterms, but now they've calmed down and I actually have some free time! It's been hard to make myself get back to blogging though, thus the absence so far. Hopefully I can get back in the groove!

First of all I want to say a big big big thank you to everyone who responded to my last post. I was just feeling so frustrating and overwhelmed with all those thoughts, and being able to express them helped in itself, but reading everyone else's thoughts and input made me feel so much better. It really helps to be able to see a lot of different perspectives on an issue like that, and I was so touched by everyone's support. I also had no idea so many people were reading the blog! =) So thank you very much to everyone who responded. I still haven't got it all figured out yet, but I at least am not consumed with troubles thoughts about my existence anymore =) I think I've resolved to just enjoy my time while I'm here and start figuring all of that future stuff out once I get home and can actually make some headway on it.

And speaking of enjoying my time here... things have really picked up! But before I get into that, let me hit you with some highlights from the past over-a-month!

I made a friend! So we had a big nomikai for first year lock at some point in May (I can't believe I didn't really blog since the first practice! That just shows how busy it kept me I guess!). It was at this craazy nice pub/grill that one of the first years works at. It was $30 for only like 3 hours, so we were all a little skeptical, but it was crazy fancy food and they just kept bringing stuff out! We definitely ate $30 in fancy food. Plus it was all-you-can-drink, but luckily they had this amazing mango juice that I had a few of since I don't really drink. It was delicious! After a while, everyone got up and was mingling around the bar, so a few of us went over and I started talking to a girl we had met earlier named Emi. The standard "What department are you in" question took us pretty far! We hit it off just chit chatting and when we both complained about how smoky it was by the bar, Emi suggested we move over to a little table to talk! We had such a cool casual conversation, it was a lot of fun, and the very best part was that she agreed to help me with my Japanese and me to help her with her English! She was so super sweet and I like her a lot. We emailed a few times after that, but I haven't emailed her back in a while so I need to do that tonight and ask her to lunch or something!
Two Month Anniversary! We couldn't believe it, but May 26th was the sannin's two month anniversary for being in Japan! (Even more unbelievable: 3 months will be next week!) So to celebrate we walked over to Warabi and found a sort of traditional looking place to get dinner together. The selling point for this place was that they served eel, which is Greg's favorite! So we all got eel on rice dinner sets! It's not just like... plain old eel sitting on some rice though, they cook it somehow with some kind of marinade and it actually tastes really good! I especially like how the sauce or whatever made the rice taste. It was a nice dinner! The best part was there was this older Japanese couple sititng near us, and the old man was just tickled to death when all of us gaijin got our cameras out to photograph our eel dinners, haha. I also broke my no-sweets pact that day by buying ice cream with everyone on the way home. Ooooh well we knew it wouldn't last.
G-Splash Performance! Finally, the weekend we had all been working for! The week before the performance (on June 7th), we had to start coming to practice every day, including two all-day practices. Several of us were getting preeetty frustrated with the club at that point (things like.. if you're late, they make you stand up while they give a speech about how being late hurts the group, having to buy costumes and in general drop tons of money on the club, they say practice is over at 8 but keep you til 9 listening to critiques from g splash alumni and giving announcements, general wasting of time at practice, etc. see Jen's blog for more, and pics of that weekend!) but I think the performance made up for most of it. We performed at Club ageHa, aka Studio Coast, where a lot of pretty big concerts have happened (MADONNA.) so that was cool! The place was crraazzy huge. We were first to perform and maybe about 70 other school dance groups performed throughout the day. It was a big rush, and even though we didn't get to dance very long, it was a neat experience overall. Jen and I could only handle staying through the second of three blocks of performances before we just had too bad of headaches and too strong of a desire to go home. What I liked most about the day was seeing this sort of dancing student subculture of Tokyo. I can't think of anywhere in America where I would've seen that many student dance groups gathered together (well, street dancers like that), and they had some open dance floor times when it was just a bunch of good dancers dancing together in a club, so that was neat =) You can see our performance at http://www.g-splash.com/moviestr/14th.html , just make sure you scroll on the right to the very top video called 14th Spring Party 08. The genres go: Hip Hop, Girls, 1st year Hip Hop, 1st year Lock (that's me!), House, Lock, Ending.
Midterms! =( So unfortunately, that everyday rehearsal week fell right in the middle of midterms week... I ended up with a 65% on my grammar midterm (which was kind of a ridiculous test to begin with... basically memorize 5 reading passages and you have a shot at getting a good grade..) which I absolutely blame G Splash for, hah. There just was no time to study, no time to even recoop enough to stay awake long enough to study. Most days during practice, you'd see me studying vocab or something during the breaks, but it didn't help much. The listening and speaking midterm was actually a breeze, though we haven't gotten grades back for it. Kanji on the other hand was absolutely awful. We haven't gotten that one back either, but it was a lot of basically having to call up the kanji without much to jog your memory... just like... an example sentence with a blank, and what would fit well in this blank? Or, a similar word or something.... and there was an entire bakc page that pretty much everyone failed on. I really don't understand these teachers and classes. Almost every week, at least one of them will test us on something like a new reading passage or kanji questions, and afterwards they say "That was kind of hard wasn't it? Yeah, that was maybe a little too hard, even Japanese people would have trouble understanding what the author is trying to say here/which kanji is best to put here." but they don't seem to be making any changes to the material they give us. A lot of times they come across as if they've never taught this class before, or never taught this level of students before. They just seem unprepared and like they don't really know what's appropriate to teach us or test us on or how to get through all the material they've scheduled for one class in time.
SYTYCD STARTED!!! So I mentioned So You Think You Can Dance in my last post I think, and I'm finally all caught up on the episodes! At first I didn't really feel a connection for any of the dancers this year, but that was just because I hadn't seen them perform yet! I'm really in love with Mark of course, he's just amazing and so interesting, and he's perfect with Chelsie! I also love Matt's crazy legs and toes, he looks so graceful and cool in his dances! I keep getting Kourtni (or however you spell that) and Kherrington mixed up.. and Jessica hasn't really made an impact on me yet. We'll see how the girls end up! *SPOILER WARNING* I was not happy that Marquis went home last night though.. that "too many tricks" excuse is bull crap. Neil's solos were nothing but spins and kicks and jumps and flips, and he made it to the top 4. I thought Marquis gave a beautiful solo and I saw moves I'd never seen before. I think just having to be the male partner in dances like the waltz and salsa, he didn't really get a chance to express himself. He was so quiet and technical that he reminded me of Danny a lot. I think he probably would've gotten a lot farther if he hadn't been paired with Suzie... A lot of people were saying Chris should've gone home last week, but I really like him.... after Thayne's lukewarm performance in the prince routine this week I defintiely expected him to be gone. *sigh* I'll miss you Marquis!!

I think that's all the highlights! So why have things picked up for my life in Japan? G Splash is over, that's why! Practice until the dance camp in August is all optional, and I'm not going to that camp, so practicing would just be for my personal benefit, so I'm not going! Jen and I quit and it's (almost) final! Life just seems so much brighter now! I'm glad a did a club and all, but I'm REALLY glad it worked out so it was only for half my time here. Now I can go home fairly early in the day and not feel like I have to rush home to eat and go to bed, or finish my homework. I can stop by the magazine store on the way home. I can go explore the nature trail at the stop before my neighborhood. I can wear heels and a dress to school. I can take just a purse and a small bag for books on the train and not squash people with my backpack (or get a backache from carrying books, clothes, and shoes all the time!). I can do so many wonderful little things now and just enjoy the fact that I'm living in Tokyo! Hooray! (And my grades are picking up too!)

Tomorrow I'm going to try and make it out to Odaiba (a man-made island in Tokyo Bay that has a ton of crazy stuff on it) for the International Tokyo Toy Show! It's supposed to rain all day, but.... it's toys! I'm going! Then the next week is either Mt. Fuji and then Fuji Q Highland (a theme park at the bottom of Mt. Fuji) with SADA MY BEST FRIEND!! or GOING TO VISIT SADA MY BEST FRIEND! XD Sada is coming to Japan and I get to escape the city for a weekend in Kyoto! Hooray!! I'll either go that weekend or the next, depending on schedules and such. At some point Jen and I also want to make it to the Studio Ghibli Museum (Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki are responsible for movies like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Howl's Moving Castle. The museum is apparently magical). So yup, I'm cramming all my Japan travel into my last 6 weeks here. Woaah, last 6 weeks!

I'm trying to decide when it'll be an appropriate time to let my brain switch to thinking-about-band-camp mode. I get really really excited when I think about the new band season and how fun and exciting camp is and meeting all the new first years. I'm a section leader this year and I'm really excited about the responsibility, but I have a lot of thinking and planning to do to be able to step into that role. Up until now I've been making myself not think about camp because I know I'll get carried away thinking about it and lose focus on studying and what I'm doing here, so I think I'll still wait a little longer to give in =) Although, there's only two weeks between when I get home and when camp starts!

If I have time on Sunday I'll try and maybe post a photos-only post to get you all caught up on photos! All these super long text-only posts are too boring and hard to read, so thanks if you made it through =) I think I'll do some homework now!

Contemplative Month

2008-05-30T05:53:00.000-07:00

Woooah I haven't blogged in like 3 weeks! I've been so busy during the week and then the weekend just never seems right for blogging somehow.. it takes so long and I forget a lot that's happened during the week and I feel like I should be studying or something instead, but right now I'm kinda down and frustrated so I don't think I'll be very good for studying! Sooooo just a warning, this became a super super long post with not much to do with Japan and a whole lot to do with me contemplating my existence and future, soooo.... if you're looking for "We ate *eel* on rice the other day, isn't that wacky?!" you can just go ahead and not read this one ^^;;

The last three weeks have kinda stabilized in terms of my schedule and stuff. Japanese class is getting more predictable which means I know better what parts I need to study for the tests so I'm doing a little better. I've still been frustrated with the whole learning process though. I know I need to spend a lot of extra time studying to catch up for the proficiency test in the fall, but I feel like.. a sponge that's already completely saturated and nothing else is gonna soak in right now. And the stuff I'm studying in class feels so far beyond what I have a foundation in that it's like not even that wants to stick, so everything is just being sort of thrown at me and it feels like not much is really staying with me. I know that doesn't change the fact that I have to do as much as I can while I'm here if I wanna finish my major easily when I get back, it just gets to be really overwhelming emotionally sometimes.

G Splash practice is Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, though it's gonna be every day for next week since we have a performance on Saturday. I'm still having fun, but there have been a few annoying things with that, mostly in just the way the practices are run, lack of information, and the amount of money they expect you to spend on the club. After club fees, two nomikais (meet and drink parties, pretty much the only way to get to know people in the club), performance fee (what?), and buying my "costume" for our performance I've spent almost $200 on this club. I understand that I'm paying for the experience, and the lessons, and meeting new people, it just seems excessive. On the upside, I did get to know this really nice girl at the last nomikai and she's absolutely perfect in that she wants to help me with my Japanese and wants me to help her with her English. I'm very excited for that =)

Speaking of dance, So You Think You Can Dance Season 4 started last week! I got totally hooked on that show last summer and it's the only thing I'm going to let myself watch on YouTube for the rest of the semester. I totally love it. I got nostalgic and started watching some videos from last year, and I really wish I could do the sort of moves Danny and Neil could do. They were both suuuuper trained in ballet. I kinda might like to take some real dance classes once I'm back in the states.

Watching that show really inspires me because of the way the people there can control their bodies and move so beautifully, but at the same it gets me so depressed and confused in a lot of ways. Once I start reading about how they've been doing dance for so long and worked so hard at it and now they're amazing dancers, I start wondering what I've done with my 21 years here. I've kind of gotten into some hobbies here and there, I was pretty good at music for a while, but I've always struggled with knowing that I've never really found that "passion" for anything. I've thought I might have found it a couple of times, but in the end I never keep the dedication or interest. I've always been extremely jealous of those kinds of people who find something, anything, that they're absolutely in love with doing and dedicate their lives to it and work really hard to become great at. I think this is different from the "What are you gonna do for the rest of your life" vs "Most people go through a lot of different professions in their lifetime" discussion. I feel like that discussion is for one type of people, the me type, and then there's the other people who find something they just must commit themselves to because they're so passionate about it.
I've always been a creative person. When I was little I always said I wanted to be an artist when I grew up, and I was always drawing or making something. I gave up that goal in high school on the basis that it didn't really seem like a practical profession where I could support myself, and I was getting irritated by my art classes then. I've played piano and French Horn since I was very young, and at about the time I moved on from my artist dreams, I decided I should probably go to music school for college since I wasn't really interested in anything else. I really really really didn't have the discipline or passion for it though and I couldn't even practice for my weekly lessons as it was. Then I really fell in love with my Chemistry class for a while and thought that would be my thing, I had encouragement from all around that someone who was a scientist and creative at the same time could go far. Chem II really kicked my butt unfortunately and I realized that dream was just a passing whim brought on from a really good teacher.

Then I discovered brain machine interfacing, a type of new technology that links up a person's brain waves with a computer so that you can basically command a computer or robotics with your thoughts. This was right when I was starting to apply for college, so I applied to the engineering departments of all my potential universities. I really had no background in math or science though, and all my extracurriculars were in the humanities, and in the end I had two offers: 1) University of Illinois couldn't let me into their Biomedical Engineering program, but I could choose another area and transfer later, 2) UVa suggested I apply to the College Arts and Science instead. I chose the second one for financial reasons, with intentions to transfer to the E-school after a year, but my C- in Calculus 131 first semester quickly made me realize that just because I got an A in AP Calculus at my tiny high school didn't mean I was actually able to do any math.

I was also taking a Psychology class then and really really liked the teacher and content, started working in that professor's lab, and was pretty seriously considering a psych major. My grades were pretty dismal in that department too, though, and I didn't really think I'd like a career as a researcher or professor. By this time I was really enjoying my Japanese classes and learning a new language, so in the end I decided on a Japanese major because I was getting the best grades in those classes and it was the only homework I looked forward to doing. At the time I remember telling my mom "Choosing the Japanese major is the most sure I've felt about anything since I came to college." At her encouragement though, I also picked up the Media Studies major to add some more marketable skills to my resume.

I still haven't been able to answer the question of what I'm going to do with a Japanese major after college. At one point I was thinking that working for a magazine like Shoujo Beat (an English manga magazine) would be a lot of fun and use both of my majors. I think one of my big turning points in my philosophy on what I should do with my skills and career, however, happened when I went on the NYC Media Studies trip in January of this year. We went to a lot of different media places like magazine and newspaper publications, and heard from a lot of people in the media business. At this point, some feelings I had started to notice during the fall semester were becoming more defined. I started feeling very strongly that I didn't want to just work on another magazine to be put out there for someone to buy, or make another TV show for someone to watch. I think to put it simply, there's already enough consumerism in the world, and I don't feel like it would be a very justifiable use of my education and skills to just add to that. Nobody needs another magazine or TV show and there will always be people out there to make more without me in the group too.

My time in Japan has made that feeling even stronger, after visiting places like Shibuya and Shinjuku, and Harajuku, where consumerism is the very heartbeat of the city, but now I'm starting to question my position on creativity and art as well. This thought has just been wracking my brain for the last two months, and I don't even know how to begin to think about it, but more and more I'm just feeling like... art is selfish, hobbies are selfish, who am I to spend my time and energy and abilities just on things that are fun for me or something that I enjoy doing, when I've been so blessed with opportunities and have the power and option to use my existence to help others and the less fortunate. Some might argue that doing art and music is a wonderful thing that gives back to people and inspires people, etc etc, and I do feel it's a wonderful thing and its something I've loved my whole life, but what about those people who aren't in a position where they have the option of enjoying art? What about people who are barely making it day to day, or who live in a place that doesn't even have drinkable water anywhere nearby, or whose homes have been destroyed by a natural disaster? Is it really ok for me to use my education and stable financial condition to play on the computer, draw pictures somebody might like, become a dancer, sew myself some silly costumes, or have a career that can only help the people who don't really need it that much?

I feel responsible, and I feel guilty for being so far away from accepting that responsibility right now. Thoughts like these make me wonder how I made the decisions that got me here, learning a language I don't intend to use once I've graduated, just living day to day, spending money, using energy, the ridiculous things I've spent money on, the food I've thrown away, the sweets I've spent too much money on, the shoes I've bought, the pointless research I'm doing on game centers for my class that isn't going to help anyone, the time I'm wasting. I know none of these things change the situation I'm in and the fact that I just have to get through this semester and get home, but I can't shut these thoughts off somehow and they fill my head every single day and are just making it difficult to stay focused and positive.

I feel like a lot of people might tell me that it's crazy to feel guilty about doing things for yourself, and that I'm setting myself up for a miserable life to have that expectation of myself, and I agree that you'll go crazy without having things you just do for yourself and your own gratification, things you're interested in. But I don't believe in myself making a career out of it, as much as I enjoy art I don't have the passion for it first of all, and I don't believe in it as a justifiable career for me. Yet at the same time I watch these shows and see other people in artistic careers and just start longing for the things I might have done like that, or the ability to express myself that way. I need something in between somehow. Something that lets me truly help others but in a way that is satisfying to me. Now that I think about it, in all of my essays for study abroad programs/scholarships, when asked how I wanted to use Japanese in my future career, I said I didn't have any idea yet, and the only two things I did know I wanted to do was to help people and be creative. I think I'm just starting to understand the depths of those feelings now.

I would hate to say all these things and then say that I'm just being completely static here in Japan and not living in accordance to any of those life philosophies I believe in. I try and use as little energy as I can in my room, I've stopped buying sweets on a regular basis after I realized how much money I was just wasting away on them (particularly after I foolishly bought a really expensive piece of cake because it was a whole 10% off), when researching the game centers for my paper I don't really play any games while I'm there, I always give something to the homeless guy by my school if he's out, but that's about the extent of what my time and opportunities allow right now. I feel very stuck here, almost tricked. I tricked myself into coming here and now I have to finish what I've started whether I like it or not.

I'm not sure where I'll begin to look for jobs or career plans once I'm back in the states.. it's a matter of finding that passion in some kind of service. It's clear with my moves from art, to music, to chemistry, to biomedical engineering, to psychology, to japanese, to something completely different, that I am very very quick to fall for an idea and then abandon it after not too long. I'm just going to keep praying as hard as I can that God will show me the way to the most appropriate jobs for me, the ones that will make me the most happy and use my abilities as well as possible. Over Christmas break I started developing this feeling that I feel very powerful. I have my education, I have my financial stability, I can write, I have a computer, I can create, I have the venues and abilities to influence. I hold a lot of power and so do a great number of people in the world, I just don't think we realize it. I have an amazing power, I just don't know how to control it, or where to use it yet. I just know I have to use it somehow for good. I could try and ignore it and go back to the way I've lived most of my life, but I'm not sure I could. I think I could be happy in waves by ignoring it, but I'd have to keep trying to justify it to myself and make excuses, and I think knowing I was doing that would just make me unhappy.

I also want to say that I don't think these feelings apply to everyone. If your passion is art or dance or making a magazine or movie or TV show, then go for it. I know a lot of artists, musicians, actors, and other people who are doing things I could never do and I think it's a perfect fit for them. I think if you have a passion, that sort of trumps everything, there's no way you could try and do anything else and be happy. Maybe it's that I don't have a passion for something so specific, but my passion is for using my abilities in a certain way.

Sooooooo, that was a very long and personal post, which is kind of weird I guess, but it's been something I've been wanting/needing to talk about for a long time and I'm interested to see what others think about it. I guess I'm also trying to justify to myself why I can't seem to concentrate on anything and I'm getting lost in thought so often these days, and feeling frustrated. I think prayer is the answer for me, I just have to remember it and trust God and not get so caught up in my own emotions.

I should be about the same level of busy as I am now for the rest of the semester, so I'm not sure how much more interesting blogging I'll be doing from here on out, but if I have some time or something interesting happens, I'll try and post! Thanks to anyone who read through all this, and I'd be interested in hearing if you have an opinion on it. I hope I don't sound too serious or dramatic or whatever, I think just being here in general puts all my thoughts on hyper mode and emotions seem more extreme. Having an hour on the packed train every day with nothing to do but stare out the window and think might have something to do with it too!

Some things other people wrote that sound a little better:

"My mind races with all my longings
But can't keep up with what I got" - Bright Eyes, "Road to Joy"

"I noticed tonight that the world has been turning
while I've been stuck here, dithering around
...
I noticed tonight that the world has been turning
while I've been stuck here, withering away" - Keane, "Can't Stop Now"

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight." - Proverbs 3:5-6

"In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps." - Proverbs 16:9

"Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails." - Proverbs 19:21

"Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle." - Proverbs 23:4-5

"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy." - Proverbs 31:8

"Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." - James 4:17

"Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet; so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed." - Hebrews 12:12-13

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own: you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body." - 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

3 Day Week

2008-05-11T03:53:00.000-07:00

I have been toooo busy/lazy to blog!

Tuesday

After my big day of travel on Monday (haha) I stayed in on Tuesday and rested up since it was the last day of Golden Week and all. And I studied! I continued studying kanji and such and kind of did my homework. Yawn, I don't think anything important happened on Tuesday.

Wednesday

School again, ho hum.
We got our kanji tests back from last week, and I got a 44% on my kanji test. Yep you read it. I studied for like 8 hours for that thing. I think the key is to have studied properly for the quizzes and reviewed in between, and I had forgotten we had quizzes and not reviewed, thus the 44%. The cool part though was that I totally aced the kanji quiz we took Wednesday, so don't worry parents and teachers, I'm trying to get back on the right track =)
At lunch I went and picked up my hanko (stamp with your name on it for signing things) which is totally sweet. The guy at the shop is so nice though, and when I showed him my pickup slip, he was like "Ah! Wilson-saaan, Wiilsoon-saan" in kind of a sing-songy voice while he looked for my hanko, haha. After he found it, he started asking me things about America and New York and 9-11, and maybe about how he knew someone who died in 9-11.. I wasn't really sure, and I didn't really know what to say, so I left pretty soon after that.
I had some stuff to do for my other class so I didn't try and do the bank thing that day, and did class stuff instead.
Hometime after that, or so I intended. Instead, I ended up finding a place to get a haircut! I went to a place called "Wiki Wiki: A Beauty Shop" (that's right Mom and Dad and John, I went to the beauty shop this week! =D ) I knew I wanted it shorter, but I thought I might try and go for way shorter like I've always been wanting to since I'm in a foreign country and everything.
The haircut guy was soooo super nice and awesome, and talked to me a long time about the style I was choosing and my concerns about it and stuff. Then the whole time he kept coming up with things to talk to me about and he was just really nice and cool =) It was the second longest Japanese conversation experience I've had here so far. I've really gotta fix that somehow... but being in class with foreigners all morning (and sometimes afternoon) and knowing if I don't go home and do my homework and study I'm gonna keep getting 44% on my kanji tests, I'm really not sure what else to do..
My haircut turned out great! I was a little unsure at first if I really liked it or not, but I've been getting lots of nice compliments. It takes a little effort to style in the morning, but it's not bad at all. I feel hip and fresh. I'll put up pics some other time.
After haircut, I met up with Hunter, Greg, and Jeannette for dinner, except Jeannette and I didn't want what the guys picked so we ditched them for Mos Burger. I had a big late lunch, so I just got some chicken nuggets (JUST 5 CHICKEN NUGGETS COST OVER 300 YEN THERE, UUGHH MOSBURGER WHY)
Finally home, homework, you know the drill.

Thursday

Class, yeah, whatever. We had a test on the last unit.
We presented our research topics in ethnography which was way cool! Three of ours were on some aspect of arcade gaming, so that was neat, and the class had a lot of good input. I love that class!
Then I went home, and that's about all I remember about Thursday!

Friday

Class. We got back our chapter tests from last week, and I got a 66% on my chapter test. *Sigh* But, again! I felt a whooole lot better about this week's test. I finished early, I didn't feel stumped by anything, etc etc.
I tried to get a bank account at Mizuho bank after that, but the lady was saying that I had to be living in Japan for 6 months to get one? I don't understand at all, Hunter and Teresa both got accounts at the same bank... I need to go back with some better dialogue prepared or a Japanese person or something... maybe Yuujiro could help me out.
I went to Harajuku and did some clothes shopping that afternoon and some other stuff that evening.

Saturday night was the first real G Splash practice, woo! We did cute little self-introductions for a long time, and then the rest of the night was all basics training. They kept saying like, we know this is boring, but you really need to learn it!! It was nice, we seem to have a nice group =) And we foreigners have decided that on Tuesday practices, we're not allowed to talk to each other! (well, for as long as we can stand it anyway) Only to Japanese people!

The rest of this weekend has been ok, but suuper rainy. And now my room is suddenly super cold again and it's making me just want to lay in bed all day! =/ Arrrg it seems Golden Week didn't recharge me as well as I had hoped it would.. I need to get my head in the game, I know. Bleh.

Local Travel Day

2008-05-05T05:18:00.000-07:00

I actually left DK House today! Wooo! It took a lot of effort for me to make myself, haha, but I had to go out and do something for golden week, right?

I got Yoshinoya for lunch on the way to the station and then headed for Akabane! No matter what route we take to...pretty much anywhere, we always end up stopping in Akabane or even transferring trains there. It seemed like a pretty hopping place, but we had never visited, so I made that my mission today! The verdict: Akabane is a pretty cool place! A little ways down the road out of the station, there's a covered street of shops and restaurants called LaLa Gardens. It's really long and had lots of cheap food options and some cheap clothing stores too. The best part, there's a DAISO store there! It's 5 floors! Daiso is a 100 yen store that was one of the places I went all the way to Harajuku to find and turns out there's one right in our backyard, haha. I saw one on my way back at the Kawaguchi station too! There was also a small arcade so of course I had to stop. I thought I saw a woman who was going to play some games, but when I followed her in she was just going to play the slots =/ This arcade was pretty small, but it made it a lot more accessible and friendly-seeming than the one in Shinjuku. There was only one Tekken station, and I challenged a guy and lost =/ My little percentage thingy on my profile is just gonna stay at 0% forever I guess, hah..

The entrance to LaLa Garden

I did some frivolous shopping at Daiso (a bottle of nail polish and two sets of little sock thingies all the girls wear with their uncomfortable shoes to make them more comfortable) and then did some more Akabane exploration. There was a big nice park! It had a really pretty fountain and playground stuff for the kids. The playground stuff here is neat and kind of unique, but most of it is just big concrete animal shapes or whatever, painted a million years ago so they look kind of sad now.. Still not much grass to be found in this park either.

It's a giraffe slide!!!

Woooaaahh!

Camel, Lion, and Squirrel stand watch over the sand pit.
Watch out little buddy!
Hahaha bear in a boat.

I walked back up and under the train tracks to the other side of the station and found a Baskin Robins (I was so tempted to get something... they were having a sale so a 400 yen item became like 240 or something amazing, but I wasn't hungry enough to really justify a whole ice cream cone) and then... Ito Yokado! Haha, it's the big one we can always see from the station. It's the span of the three story one in Warabi, but it's 6 floors! Woah! I was looking for some clothes there but didn't really find anything.. There was a whole clothes mall sort of place across the street though, but it was a little out of my price range.
You know you're in Ito Yokado when you see the glowing underwear mannequins. For serious.

Back to the station and it was time to move on. I needed to do some field research for ethnography, so I went on over to Akihabara. This was my first time going, and to those who don't know, Akihabara is known as Akihabara Electric Town, mostly because you can buy electronics there for cheap. There's also supposed to be a lot of anime stores and such there, but I didn't venture very far into the city before I found a SEGA arcade. It was full of all sorts of different people, lots of girls =) some foreigners.. I saw two people playing the same crane game win digital cameras within 5 seconds of each other! Every now and then I try and win something out of those, but I guess I don't have the touch, haha, and then I think about what I could've bought with that 100 yen I just spent....

There was a pretty big line of Tekken stations on the 4th floor (which was pretty much boys only, as usual. One girl watching her boyfriend play I guess when I left), and after watching for a while, one of the stations opened up with no challenger on the other side! Woo! I jumped in and happily played up to stage 3, trying to sort of train and figure out how the game works a little better, before some guy challenged me =/ I beat him once, but then he destroyed me ~__~ He would hit me with the same move at the beginning of the fight and I would pretty much be done from there. *sigh*

Then I saw that they had the Gundam game on this floor! It seemed kind of crowded, and since it was Akihabara of all places, I felt kind of intimidated, but I saw a little boy and his grandpa buying a card for the boy to try and play for the first time, so I felt more confident and got in line behind them. When it was almost my turn, I got up some confidence and asked one of the guys sitting next to me: "Excuse me, it's my first time trying to play so... are there any important details you could teach me about?" and got the becoming-standard "Err... you're first time playing..um....it's difficult to explain..umm..." look. His friend asked what I'd said, and he told him I wanted him to teach me about the game. I told him I had done the training but not played a game yet, and he looked at my card and said something about that the fact that I had done the training ok was amazing? Iiii'm not sure that's what he said at all, but I think he was trying to reassure me that it would be fine, which was nice, but after that he was pretty much done talking to me. He did say if I wanted to play with them I could wait for the next round, so I did that.

The game has a headset sort of thing where you can talk to the other people on your team. I'm actually not sure if they were on my team or not, but it seemed like it. It was hard for me to say much and I couldn't understand most of what they were saying... except lots of "Sorry" at the end when we lost, haha. I think I said "I died already" and "It's hard to move!" It's a fun game, but it's so hard to get the hang of the controls. Listening to them yell and get frustrated was funny though. My first game I got 4 points but my second one I got 20, so I guess I'm improving a little!

Afterwards I tried to like, initiate some kind of dialog with the two guys by hanging around as they met back up with some other friends waiting for the game. I told the one who had helped me, "It was hard!" but he just smiled and bowed a few times, so I left. I've gotta figure out what to do to get more socially involved with these people if this research is going to go anywhere. It's just weird to me because I know if anyone ever asks me or Nick to help them out with a game that we're really good at, or explain something, it's hard to get us to stop talking about it, because we're excited to share what we know and explain the ins and outs and make sure they have fun. Maybe it's just the nature of this game in particular.

I thought about looking around Akihabara some more, but it was starting to rain a little and I was getting a little tired of walking around. I'll probably go back sometime to check it out since it's fairly close to school. On the way home from our station I got a 7-11 spaghetti dinner which was OK. I'll definitely be eating a lot of Italian pasta when I get back to America =) I also enjoyed some of the Oreo's I bought last week! That's something nice to have here. I ate soo many Oreo's before I left because I thought I wasn't going to get any in Japan, haha. They are kind of expensive though, so that wasn't totally unjustified =)

Now I've painted my toenails (with regrettable results on the first foot unfortunately..) and blogged so I think I'll work on some studying and maybe get a game plan together for tomorrow's studying since it's the last day of golden week! As Nick said, the best part of a four-day weekend is the three-day week that comes after it, so I'm not too worried about this week =) That's it!

Kanji Power Day

2008-05-04T06:40:00.000-07:00

I can feel it.... the kanji power! More on that later..

Today I got up and went to church. It was really nice out today, kind of cool and a little overcast. I wore a white dress with pink flowers and my good old pink sweater with my other good old white strappy shoes. We continued reading from Acts today, and it seems like that's how the sermon works at this church. I wish I could understand more of it, but I think he's just elaborating on the lessons learned from the chapter we read from the Bible. There was a cute moment for me when the Jr. High girl next to me had to help me find the chapter in the Japanese Bible... I still don't quite understand the page numbering ^^;; Haha, and one of the greeter ladies in the front hall said something like, you weren't here last week, I thought you had returned to America! hehe =)

I had big plans today to try and do some local traveling since it was nice out, but instead I just ended up talking to Nick for a long time and watching Naruto together online ^^; Then after he went to bed.. I took a nap! For like 2 hours! I was supposed to go eat lunch, but I took a really long nap instead, haha. And by the time I got up it was already like 3, so I decided to postpone lunch until dinner and try and get some studying done in the meantime. I did a little bit but somehow ended up laying in bed again, this time contemplating the state of my existence. Then I fell asleep for another two hours.

After a little more studying, I decided to get some dinner since it was late enough for dinner! I did do a little bit of traveling by exploring a part of our neighborhood we hadn't been to before. Here's what I saw!

A grocery store, smaller than Yaoko but maybe a little closer to us
An A-frame house with a blue roof
Two little girls riding unicycles (!?)
A much larger grocery store! Probably the same size or a little bigger than Yaoko, but with a huuuuge parking lot. It made me feel at home.
A tiny little stand-up fast food place. It seemed to be selling sort of udon/rice/etc sets. I might get it for dinner sometime.
Lots of people who, in general, looked a LOT more normal and laid-back than I'm used to seeing. Everyone was wearing jeans and a comfortable shirt. This was very reassuring since all I see every day are materialistic college students who put a lot of effort into their appearance. It was nice to see that once you get out of the city, things seem to go back to normal.

I checked out the big grocery store without any real intentions to buy anything, but I ended up buying three things.

Gum.
My first souvenir! This one is for my dear Eba of course, who I'm sure will not mind that it came from a grocery store. I won't say what it is, but it's super cute and I know she'll like it. I thought about getting one for myself, but it's not really the type of thing I would buy for myself, so I'll just be happy to have it out in my room and I can look at it for a couple months before I give it to her =) (unless I decide that it really is too cute and I must have one as well)
Rose?/Roast?/Something like that Katsudon set. I needed dinner and it was starting to get dark out, and I saw this dinner set. They sell them at Yaoko and I had been notoriously waiting for "something really good to happen" as an excuse to spend the 580 yen on one. Well, this one was marked down 100 yen since it was getting late in the day, and that was good enough for me. (Plus it's Golden Week!) I had been prepared to spend 480 on a large gyuudon anyway, so I felt justified. It was pretty good, and had kind of a different flavor to it. I guess that was the rose/roast/whatever. It wasn't spectacular though, so I'm glad I wasn't eating it in celebration.

Back at the ranch, I thought about my reasons for studying Japanese, and how they seem to be becoming fewer and fewer. The other day I told Nick that I feel like I need to start treating learning Japanese like it's my job while I'm here, and I just have to do my job. I think for the most part right now, I want to get rid of that feeling like I'm struggling to stay afloat every day in class because of kanji and vocab. I hate feeling like I'm the only one who doesn't know something in class, and it's not a feeling I'm used to. I feel like the only way to correct that this late in the game, however, is some hardcore dedication.

I'm not sure if I have it in me or not, but I decided to go ahead and turn on the Naruto music and buckle down with studying kanji tonight. I learned the first half of this week's new kanji for Wednesday, and also went through the first lesson in the Basic Kanji Book I bought the other day. Learning the new compounds and reinforcing the old ones gave me a little bit of a feeling of accomplishment, like I might actually be able to remember and use some of them. I feel like to get where I need to be, I would need to be constantly reviewing the kanji we're learning in class, and then try and do at least 2 or 3 lessons in the basic book a week. Somewhere in there I want to study grammar from the IJ book too so I'm not missing all that for the placement test in the fall.

It's sort of my nature to really decide to dedicate myself to something, stick with it a few days, and then forget about it. (With the exception of a few small, habitual things I've been able to change or make a habit of doing, like drinking only water at meals and reading the Bible every night) So even if I feel pumped up and think to myself, "Ok, I'm going to study kanji for at least an hour every day, and study IJ grammar every other day," or even a smaller more manageable goal, I can't truly believe that I'm going to do it because there are so many other things I can think of that I've abandoned so easily. But when I did think about this plan, I felt for the first time that I might actually make a good grade in Japanese this semester, learn something, and have a chance at passing the placement exam when I get back. It's just scary knowing I've been here over a month and I can honestly say I haven't really learned anything. It might just take a level of dedication I'm not capable of committing myself to, I'm not sure yet.. I think I might have had a better chance if I had been here a year ago when I was feeling more "into" learning Japanese, or maybe if I was in Greg's class where I would get the feeling that I was learning and I was progressing, and not that I was just barely hanging on. We'll see how this all pans out I suppose.

For now I think I'll look at the IJ book until Nick gets online and think about what strategies I can use to make a new Japanese best friend once lock practice starts next week. And eat my next piece of tiny cake.

A Good Day

2008-05-03T04:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of the things I got done today!

Slept in
Almost did a handstand a few times!
Used the traditional just-sitting-in-front-of-everyone shower station things in the shower room (although nobody was in there)
Did leg stretching exercises for 40 minutes
Organized my class papers and wrote down assignments for next week
Bought groceries
Finished Kanji worksheet for Wednesday
Wrote about half of task reading worksheet for Wednesday
Made online Kanji flashcards for Wednesday's quiz
Wrote some emails
Contemplated my purpose in life
Drew a picture
Ate a tiny piece of cake (for golden week! it says so on the box)
Watched some Naruto with Nick
Thought some more about my purpose in life

That all chalks up to a good day in my book =) Why can't every week be Golden Week?

I <3 Friday Day

2008-05-02T18:38:00.000-07:00

Friday morning was finishing up homework on the train morning, and I got it all done! Awesome! Then we had Kobayashi sensei for the first half of class. It was fine and normal at first, but then we were supposed to move on to using the grammar book which almost nobody brought, including me, aaand apparently we were supposed to have already done the like 6 pages of exercises in that book, which almost nobody had done, including me. I don't ever remember him telling us to do those before hand and we did them in class last week... I was panicking the whole time because he was calling on people to read the sentences and what they filled in the blanks, and not only did I have no clue on most of them, they were all full of kanji I didn't know! So as soon as I knew I wasn't called on for one sentence, I would rush to start looking up all the kanji in the next sentence in case he called on me. Miraculously, out of like 6 pages I didn't get called on (I think maybe he was trying to stick to the people who had actually done the exercises in advance, and I clearly looked like I hadn't, haha), but needless to say I didn't learn a THING in that class because, once again, looking up kanji overrode listening to Kobayashi's helpful grammar points. *sigh*

I got to take a nap during the break between the two halves of class which was super nice, and it felt way longer than 15 minutes =) The second half of class wasn't bad at all. It was the ridiculous Noguchi sensei who always says something or does something hilarious. That class always seemed to be too laid back and drug out though. We did some simple listening practice for a loooong time and then we continued a video that we had started last class. It was by some famous sci fi author guy I think? It was about the idea that in the future, you could have a lock on your door or bag or something that was voice activated (in this case, represented by a large human ear model, creepy) and you used a word or phrases only you knew. (As Noguchi pointed out though, someone could hear you saying it though...) But then they had a really cute little mini-drama about a couple who gets in a fight and the girlfriend changes the password to her house. It was so sweet and the ending made me tear up in class ^^;;;; I need to gain more control over my emotions, haha.

The end of this class marked the beginning of Golden Week for me! It's just a week in Japan where a lot of their national holidays and stuff happen to fall, so I think maybe a lot of kids get off school the whole week or some people get off work. We get Monday and Tuesday off from school which is amaaazziing. I'm still trying to decide if I want to try and travel anywhere, but for now I'm just taking advantage of the free time to do things I want to do and get caught up on some studying.

After some lunch and computer labbing I went on home for the day and took a celebratory nap from 4:00pm to 6:00pm which was a great idea if I may say so. I needed that nap! Then I managed to feel motivated enough to clean my room and blog! Wow! The rest of the evening was spent eating dinner, getting my butt kicked at Smash on N64 (aahh it feels like such a different game.. I was embarassed), and talking to Nick. And that's about all that happened on Friday!

Silver Week

2008-05-02T04:35:00.000-07:00

Recap! I'm not sure if there is a Silver Week, but this coming week is Golden Week, sooo, yep.

Monday

I don't even remember....haha.
G-Splash practice was Hip Hop trials, which basically means it's your last chance to check it out and decide which genre you want to do for the next month. They taught us a short part of a routine to House of Pain's "Jump Around" which was totally awesome. As soon as Jen and I heard it come on we started dancing, haha. And we started jumping EVERY time he told us to jump around. Us crazy Americans.
I liked this routine a lot better than the audition routine, it was way more fun and I could get into it a lot easier. It was a workout though! Hip hop wears me out, haha.
I think we got katsudon after practice? I don't remember...

Tuesday

NO SCHOOL YEESSSSS!!
I erroneously stated in a previous day that this was due to Children's Day, but it was actually for Showa Day which is.... some other holiday, haha. Nothing exciting happened, but we got out of school, so it's a wonderful holiday.
I think I slept...some? What did I do that day? I went to the grocery store...I meant to study all day, but I didn't really start until later afternoon. OH YEAH, there was KANJI TEST.
Since I hadn't studied for or done so hot on the previous two kanji quizzes, I knew I was in for a lot of studying. Basically I had 125 kanji compounds to memorize before the next morning. I studied those darned kanji from about 6:30 pm to 11:00pm, slept from 11:30-2:00am, studied from 2:00am-3:00am, slept from 3:00am-5:00am, studied from 5:00am-9:15am, and then all through first class and break. And that brings us tooo...

Wednesday

What an awful test!! You had to know those kanji frontwards and backwards to get anywhere close, and apparently I only barely knew them frontwards, even after all that studying. There was even a little section full of kanji we hadn't studied over the past two weeks, but I guess she thought we ought to know? They might have been in a book exercise that we did now that I think about it....
Oh well, at least we only had one kanji day this week.
Oh crap, I was supposed to have field notes done from my field site for Symbolic Practice this afternoon! *runs off to Shinjuku after class to visit an arcade*
I took some semi-useless notes in one arcade and then went to a different one that had a floor full of fighting games. It was pretty empty, and only one girl was there with her boyfriend. I tried to play Tekken 6, but I lost the first round three times in a row! Turns out if somebody else is playing on the other side, you automatically challenge them when you put your money in, whoops! I didn't learn this until yesterday, haha.
G-splash this night was LOCK TRIALS WOO! I love locking. The routine was really fun again! They taught it to us really fast, and we met yet another pair of adorable lock teachers! The girl made tons of sound effects and it was awesome, haha. The lock teachers are best all around =) Needless to say, I signed up for lock during the sign-up period at the end of practice! Hip hop was really fun and I liked learning the moves, but it was love at first sight with me and lock, and I would be sad if I didn't do it.
Yoshinoya Takeout Dinner!

Thursday

Class? Whatever. We played stupid games again, it was stupid. I'm going to start bringing a kanji list to that class to study while we waste time =/ We did watch a cool video though.
Symbolic Practice is such a fun class. We work in small groups every day and it's always awesome. I got some good feedback from my group on where I ought to take my research, and I think I'm going to try and look at how beginners and females are accepted/treated/taught to play in the arcades by regular visitors.
With no more G-Splash practice until next week, I decided to go do some more field research in Shinjuku! I went back to my arcade from last time and this time resolved to figure out the secrets of the impossible Tekken game, get a card for it, and try the Gundam game Greg always plays. I figured out the whole challenging thing when I started playing a game and it was a loooot easier, and missing some of the things that had been written on the screen, and then someone challenged me later on. Jerk. I did beat one challenger that day though! It was awesome! I think they might have been going easy on me though.
I watched some other people play for a long time and kept waiting for someone to seem not-involved enough that I could ask them about cards, but I ended up figuring that out on my own too =/ 500 yen card, ooooof. But it saves your progress and such, and you can customize your name and profile and things like that, and Tekken only costs 100 yen to play.
Next challenge was the Gundam game! This one is intimidating because you end up in teams or something, and it's in this huge pod thing with a huge screen and controls like you're really in a giant robot. I asked some guys playing psp outside of the area, "Excuse me, I want to try this one but it's my first time sooo...how do I...?" And he was like, um err, I think trying to say it's kind of complicated, and told me about how you get a card (which I had already done, 300 yen), and how it costs 500 (!!!!) yen to play, and you get to play twice, but the first time is computer training (I had already learned most of this from Greg) and then he directed me to some instruction manuals you could take from a kiosk. Lame =/ But he was very nice in explaining, I think he was just preoccupied with his PSP playing. Come on man, I need some data! Haha.
So that game was an interesting experience. The screen was huuuge, and I couldn't read most of the Japanese. The game has a rumble feature which adds to the realism. Normally I LOVE that sort of thing (roller coasters, the 3d rides like Spiderman at Universal Studios, the cheap things in the mall where you sit in a pod thing and it has a video and the pod thing moves with it, haha) but this one just made me feel reeeally disoriented and kind of uncomfortable, haha. I still don't have the hang of the controls really... It was fun but difficult. And too difficult for me to be willing to drop another 500 yen right there to try and get better =/ I spent a total of 1800 yen that day T____T I don't know if I can afford this research...
Shinjuku dinner with Greg, Jen and Hunter at a gyouza (dumplings) place! It was no Marco and Luca's (amazing dumplings in Charlottesville for super super cheap), but it was very good and super filling!
Home, where I slacked off on homework for the third night in a row! I'm just too tired/wanting to talk to Nick/convinced I can get it done in the morning (which I usually can =) )
I also read some really nice articles I want to share later that got me thinking about the future, but I think I'll save them for their own post.

Korean Church Day

2008-04-27T05:14:00.000-07:00

First off, here are some videos I took at the rehearsal before G Splash auditions, so you can see the kind of routines we were doing! We're all a little rusty/hesitant looking, but that's only because we were sooo sore and exhausted from Break and House the past two days, and we didn't want to wear ourselves out for our auditions! We definitely gave it our all for the real thing =)

First was Hip Hop. I think this was my least favorite. I couldn't really get into it, maybe it was the music? Some of the moves were kind of tricky too.

Lock!! My favorite genre and my favorite routine! Every time I did this one I had so much fun and started smiling and getting really into it =D They dance to such funky music!

Oh no, it's Break!! Every time the synthesizer part came in on this song I cracked up. I had the most trouble with the part where we first go down on the ground and kick our legs out in front... Haha, don't pay attention to the fact that none of the girls in this clip got the freeze!! Look in the back of the room, there's a group of guys there so look to them to see how it's done. I did it in auditions though!

House! This one doesn't look too impressive from this angle, and I started the video late, but this routine had the most footwork out of all of them and it was so easy to forget! When the real members do House, it looks so pretty and graceful and like they're having a good time =) Also, I apparently insulted Jeannette at the beginning of this video.

The last one, Girls/Girls Hip Hop! I made sure to film Hunter a lot in this one =) He was one of the few guys who actually seemed to have gotten the hang of it, haha. Is it that hard to shake your hips? I got my OWN car!

Today I went to church with Mia! I'm not exactly sure where we were, but it was somewhere outside of Shinjuku, she said it was sort of like the Korea Town of that area. The building was really tall, and there were different services on each floor. We went to the English service, where all the songs and stuff at first are in English, and then the sermon is in Korean but translated into English. They also have all Korean service, Chinese, and Japanese services. It was a pretty small room/group, but the church itself seemed to still be really busy with services even when we left! It was really interesting =) The atmosphere was kind of that revival, hand raising/clapping atmosphere (projector with song lyrics and everything!) like I experienced a lot in my church growing up. Although I think I've come to enjoy the more traditional services like the one I go to in Charlottesville (University Baptist Church) and the one here in Nishi Kawaguchi, it was really really nice to see people who were not only from a country foreign to me, but in a country foreign to them, having such passion about living for Christ.

Afterwards, they served lunch and had a Bible study. Lunch was really interesting! Mia told me it was sort of a common Korean dish called "bibimbap" (I did not remember that, I had to look it up, haha, though I did learn the Korean word for "and then" today from listening to the service!) which basically means mixed rice. It was a bowl of rice with various different vegetables and a sauce placed on top, and you're supposed to mix it up. I was explaining this to Mia afterwards and I should probably explain this to my parents/people who know me very well at all; I think that when there's a dish I'm familiar with that has vegetables I know I don't prefer, I usually eat around them as you probably all know, haha. But when it comes to something completely new and different, I've just been going for it! I ate that whole thing, and I couldn't tell you what was in it, except there was some ground beef, carrots, and maybe some of those funky mushrooms I've only seen in Japan. It was very fresh and greeny and kind of spicy! My first Korean food =D We also got little "tiramisu" (but not really) cakes for dessert, and Mia and I both ended up having two, haha!

The Bible study afterwards was nice too. Although my church here in Saitama is good listening practice for my Japanese, it was really nice having someone translate today (well, especially because I don't know Korean!). They talked about how God fills the emptiness in your heart, and through God you can do anything. My favorite part was where she talked about how when there are waves in your life, God can help you get through them and teach you to manage them, like a surfer! And how the Bible says to always be thankful and joyful no matter what situation God has put you in, and like how surfers really love the big waves because they're so exciting, we should be excited when God puts us in tough situations or tough times, and ride through them with his help!

Oh yeah, the usual church outfit update: I put together this outfit yesterday because everything else was in the wash, and Jeannette said it looked like I was going to church, so I decided to wear it to church! I wore my white jeans mom talked me into bringing even though I was hesitant, my black dressy tank top with tiny white polkadots which I love, a black light sweater, and black heeled sandals which destroyed my feet, but oh well. It was such a nice day today, I'm so happy it's warming up!

I was really sleepy when I got back, so I slept from about 4:30-7:00 ^^;;; And then I ate dinner, and I've not been getting much done since then.... I'm going to see which assignments I have for Japanese tomorrow and decide when to do them. Luckily we get Tuesday off from school this week because it's Children's Day! Thanks kids!

Lazy Day

2008-04-26T05:49:00.000-07:00

It's been another busy week! Here's the usual recap from what I can remember:

Wednesday

Another bad kanji day, but my quiz wasn't so bad since I studied more this time.
Studied a lot after lunch.
Break dancing, oh no! They taught us the audition routine for break, which was basically everything we had learned last week, put into sequence. It was really short which was nice because break is so hard to begin with! There was a part where we had to drop to the ground and kick both our legs out in front, supporting with one hand in the back, and I just couldn't get the hang of it as far as where my weight was supposed to be distributed, so I practiced that part about a million times and my quads are still feeling it. I did finally get it though! So we did the first dance part, dropped to the ground, did this basically (it was really slow in the routine. It's not that hard to do! I can't go fast yet though), and then ended with a chair freeze. The chair freeze is the part that was driving me absolutely insane with frustration last week! Hunter even tried to show me again before this practice, and I just got even more frustrated, I didn't understand at all! It was as if someone was saying to me "Oh, just put your pinky finger down on the ground, and then kick your legs up so all your weight is resting on it and hold yourself in the air" or "Just jump up in the air and levitate there for a minute, if you practice enough you'll start getting it!" It just seemed totally impossible and like my arm would snap in half (as Shougo pointed out later, pointing to my forearm "you are too thin here." ) However! They did a great thing at practice and took time to split us up into small groups of 5, and a member of the club worked with each group to help them figure it out. I don't know what our group leader said or did, but somehow I got my arms and weight in the right spots and could kind of see how this thing was supposed to feel! I didn't quite get a good one that night, but I at least understood the concept finally! I was super happy =D Here's a picture of the chair freeze I found on google. Mine doesn't look like this yet, my legs are all over the place. NOT ME
I can't remember what day this happened, it might have been Wednesday, but the train we were on was pretty empty, everyone was just sitting down. We were asking Ansen if he thought he'd be able to do a freeze on the train (he's been breaking for three years I think), and he said he already had before! So someone dared him to do one, in one of the more spacious areas of the train. Instead, he decided to do it right in the middle of the train between the two rows, lol. Of course, the Japanese travelers were totally unphased. I accidentally made him hold this for a reeeallly long time because I was taking video first and he was posing for a photo, so I had to hurry and switch to photo mode, haha. Sorry Ansen! It was super impressive though. We were all scared he was going to fall on some salarymen.

Home.
I was supposed to be studying for my Japanese test the next day, but I was so exhausted and didn't know really what to expect/how to study since it was the first test we've had, so I decided to go on to bed.
Ended up not actually sleeping any earlier because I got myself all worked up and sad thinking about things like how there's been earthquakes in Southern IL lately, and worrying about my family and stuff ^^; whoops!!

Thursday

Probably should've studied for that test, haha.. Didn't really do so hot, didn't even finish (but that was because also I misread the directions on one part and spent a while doing it wrong...). There's always next time!!
The rest of class was fine. I did my self-introduction and it went well and I got some nice peer comments. Although my teacher said I could speak a little faster, but some of the students said too fast. I think I just need to calm down and know what grammar forms I'm using before the words just sort of fall out of my mouth so I don't have to go back and correct them. I also need more interesting self-introductions.
I had to read a bunch of stuff for Symbolic Practice before class, so I did that during and after lunch. The book we're reading for that class is really good so far. It was talking about what ethnography is, and the ethical measures you need to take and consider as an ethnographer. My favorite part was where the author was asking, why bother doing ethnography? And he argued that science just for the sake of understanding isn't good enough anymore. It needs to have a purpose and a purpose to help people. So he was encouraging researchers not only to start out focusing on something to research where the results could shed light on something to help people, but to also be willing to change your research to meet the needs of the people you're researching. That was really cool for me to read, because I had started to feel like that a little bit in this class. Yeah, Japanese people use cell phones and other technology differently that other societies.... but why is that worth anyone's time and money to study? How is it helping the greater good? So I'm planning on asking my professor about that before we pick our research topics. Greg and I had been thinking about video games, but now I'm not sure. Actually, I can't really think of how any of the topics we threw out in class could be used to help people, so maybe he can help put a spin on that so I can see one of them in a different light.
House practice! This was the last routine to learn for auditions, but it was so easy to forget! The first half was stuff we already learned, luckily. But it's so much fast footwork! And there was a drop at the end that I could barely do cause my quads were so sore from breaking. It was fun though, House is a fun style!
Home, not really any homework the next day, so sleep!

Friday

Class was ridiculous. This program is ridiculous. First half was fine, but in second half, after we finished self-introductions for the day (1 minute, doesn't even have to be memorized), we got instructions for two different card games in Japanese, and a deck of cards, and we were supposed to play with our group of 4 or 5. WE PLAYED CARDS IN CLASS FOR 30 MINUTES. IN THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF INTENSIVE JAPANESE, WE PLAYED OLD MAID FOR 30 MINUTES. Something is not right.
On the flip side, Oh-san showed us a crazy card magic trick!! We freaked out, haha. He played it up really well and got us thinking he might have messed up or forgotten how to do it right, and then totally blew our minds by making a card magically appear!! I love magic XD Thanks Oh-san!
I went to go start the bank account process by getting my hanko, which is basically a rubber stamp with your name on it to sign documents with in Japan. Most other places let you just sign in the hanko stamp space, but not the bank =/ Japanese people pretty much have kanji last names, so there will be stands in stores selling hanko for lots of different names (think those personalized pencils/mugs/crap nobody needs stands in card stores and stuff), but us foreigners have to get custom ones made. It'll cost about $30 and won't be done until next weekend, but I think it'll be a pretty cool thing to bring back to America. If anybody wants a little stamp with their first or last name in Japanese made up, let me know =)
Lunch is always delicious.
I studied some in the library, but also slept some, and thought of what I would say at G Splash auditions as my reason I want to do dance.

Oh snap, G Splash auditions! I got there early and there were already tons of people rehearsing =) It was an exciting atmosphere! Everyone was nervous, and after some groups started coming back, it started to sound pretty bad. (Shougo just said "terrible, terrible, my performance was terrible" ^^;; ) Everyone was saying that the judges (several different representatives from the club) looked really mean and didn't say much the whole time and were super intimidating. There was also a camera in the room, I guess so they could look back over and evaluate. I convinced myself that they had all agreed to look and act really mean and tough in the audition (which Yuki confirmed later on, haha, and apologized to us but said they had to), and I decided just to try and smile and look like I was having fun and have confidence. I was in a group with three other Japanese girls who all seemed really nervous. We only had time to run through the first 4 dances together in the warmup room before it was our turn! For my answer as to why I wanted to do dance, I said in Japanese that although I don't have any experience, whenever I see a dance performance, I start feeling like I want to do that kind of cool dance and be that kind of amazing athlete. Haha. My audition went really well, and I didn't forget anything in any of the dances! That was a big thing for me because I was really worried I would. And the best part.... I held my chair freeze for a good three seconds!! I was super proud ^__^

Afterwards, everyone gathered outside the gym and they announced the results.

Ok, give me.. "I'm super nervous about G Splash results!!"

Hunter asked for a retake, this is what he produced the second time around.

We got in!! Everyone who tried out was excepted, except for two people and they were going to talk to those two people about it later to see if they should reconsider, haha. We were kind of surprised they took everyone, but that's fine with me =) I'm glad everyone gets the opportunity to be part of this cool group and learn dancing

They were having a welcome party later on, so a big group of us went to go eat before hand (since Yuki said "The food is not very good, so..you'll want to eat before.. and you'll be sitting on the floor the whole time on tatami, and.." she was not selling this party basically, haha.) After much deliberation and splitting up, me, Jen, Hunter, and our new friend Yuujiro ended up at a cool ramen place with a nice atmosphere. Jen and I had girl talk the whole time and that was really nice =D hehe
This pic turned out so nice! Jen, Hunter, and Yuujiro!

Jen's dish.

My ramen. My heart belongs to Udon though.

Then it was off to Takada no Baba, a weirdly-named place with a meeting area right outside the station where tons of other groups from other schools and such were meeting up. I think we saw one guy getting hazed pretty bad, which was really really weird and uncomfortable...

We finally left for the party place after 11, and it turned out to be like... just down the street out of the station, haha, but I guess they wanted us to all go in together. This place was basically a house with big Japanese style rooms that they rent out to different groups. Yuki said they have the party there every year. There were lots of long low tables where we sat on the floor and they crammed us all into the not-big-enough room. Yuki said the food would be bad, but we enjoyed it! They had a wide variety of snacks and stuff (well, I guess it wasn't like, a meal or anything, but it was good for snacks!) like edamame (tons of edamame!! they're kind of like..peas I guess? but they're bigger and still in the pod, and they're really addictive and you end up eating a ton. You can buy them in America at the store or as an appetizer at Japanese restaurants sometimes), some weird popcorn, pineapple (it was soooo delicious but the girl next to me pretty much ate all of ours, haha), some weird Japanese seeming snacks, and lots of candy and chip/cracker items. Lots of cans of alcohol of course, but luckily there were big bottles of tea and lemon mitsuya cider there too, so I was able to just drink mitsuya cider and eat snacks all night! It was really great!! hahaha.

This was supposed to be Jen and I making kind of awkward faces, cause it was a little awkward and uncomfortable at first.... but I guess it turned out pretty cute instead!

First they had a toast to the new members, and something about growing close over the next four years (which made me feel like this would be a fun club to be in from first to fourth year), and then they made everyone do an introduction. Those were crazy because Shougo (not our friend Shougo, but the main teacher guy of breakdancing who is kind of a crazy guy) was yelling stuff during everyone's intro. Sometimes he would yell "Suki da! Suki desu! Kawaii! Suki da yo!" which is basically "I love you! I love you! You're cute! I love you!" at the girls he knew, haha. The best part was when one of us foreign exchange students would give ours and say, I'm so and so, from here, I'm a foreign exchange student, and Shougo would yell "Shiteiru! Mou shiteiru!" "We know! We know already!" hahaha. That was funny for us because it's just ingrained in our heads from class to say something like that in a self-intro and not consider the social situation we're in. My intro was luckily uneventful, haha

Now, as you might remember, the trains in Japan stop running at midnight, and this party started at 11, so it was going all night. The beginning started out pretty crazy, but then it calmed down. Jen and I mostly talked to whoever came our way the whole night. It was surprisingly hard to just find people to talk to, maybe with the way the room was set up. It was nice that everyone was all sitting on the floor though. It made it feel more personal like a sleepover and less like a sit-down dinner or something. There was a lot more freedom for everyone to move around.

The best part of the night was when Shougo came to talk to us! He was the only senpai member of the club who really talked to us at all. We expected him to be totally crazy because of how he normally acts, but he was actually really really cool and so polite to us in the way that he just kept asking us different questions about our experience with Japan and how we're liking it and stuff like that to keep the conversation going. It was definitely the most Japanese I've spoken at once since I've been here and it was soooo nice and so much fun. I was surprised how much I could speak naturally, although I still got hung up on a couple of things, but the conversation flowed pretty nicely. Thanks for the nice conversation Shougo!

Sorry I blocked your face, Jen! T__T What is Christine doing....

The other two people we spent time talking to were Shingo and Elena (I think that was her name..) across the table. They were both students in the Spanish department and I think second-years in G Splash. Shingo spoke in English while I responded in Japanese and that seemed to work out pretty well. I even forgot sometimes which language either one of us had been speaking and how to respond, haha. He kept trying to convince me to do break dancing, which I might consider now that Shougo made such a good impression on us! I kept telling the breakers that at first when they showed us the moves, it seemed impossible, but then they taught them and I was able to do it and it's so cool. Shingo said "impossible is nothing." hehehe. Whenever he would be trying to remember peoples' names, he kept having trouble with mine because it's kind of hard to say in Japanese, or it doesn't sound very natural. So he would point and say "Hunter, Jennifer, Jeanette, .........difficult." haha. I told him he could call me "difficult" instead and that got a laugh. A lot of the students seemed to have nicknames they went by, so maybe I should try and get one of those.

LOVE this photo, haha.

The night went by a lot faster than the night we stayed out in Shinjuku. Probably because this time:

It was warm.
There was food.
There were people to talk to.
We started at 11 instead of 8.

Overall it was a lot more fun than I expected, and even though it threw off my weekend get-work-done intentions a bit, I'm glad I went! We got kind of disappointed to see that a lot of the friends we had already made and some of the senpai group members we respected were smoking though. The percentage of people smoking there was crazy! It's almost as if they don't know it's bad for them. It seems to be part of that group mentality thing, sort of along the lines of how all the girls dress up and all the guys do their hair. If it's something they think will make them seem cooler, they just go ahead and do it. As a result, my throat and voice was starting to feel pretty weird by the end of the night and my hair and clothes all smelled like smoke again when I got home. Luckily today was laundry day =)

Jen being constantly leaned-against by the exchange student behind her who was too engrossed in teaching the Japanese kids English slang to realize he was being a jerk. Pay no mind to the slumbering Jeannette in the photo.

It didn't take too long to get home, and I slept til about 1 this afternoon and talked to Nick til about 3 when I started my laundry and got a shower. Then I went to Yaoko with Jeannette to get groceries and... lunch? Dinner? Both? Haha. Mom and Dad, I bought some milk (and oreos...I splurged!) and a container of pineapple, soooo go health!

The rest of the evening I haven't really been getting much done. I meant to focus on cleaning and doing physical work today since I can do that when I'm kind of tired, but I can't study at all when I'm tired. I haven't gotten much done though. I think my wet clothes all over the room is demotivating me somehow. I'll just try and say I relaxed today so I can work hard tomorrow =)

Locking Day

2008-04-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

Today was just another normal day =) Japanese didn't go so well because I had confused myself into thinking Kanji day started tomorrow when it actually started today, so I had another quiz I wasn't prepared for... whoops! It shouldn't happen again though.. Man I hate kanji... I'm just so far behind everyone. I hope I can stay focused and do some backtracking on older ones that everyone else seems to have learned already.

I got a quick lunch by myself so I could go study for as long as possible (I got ice cream too XD ). Greg joined me after a while and we both took turns napping, haha. I got a pretty good amount of work done. I really like that Tues/Weds/Fri gap between lunch and practice where I can study, instead of having to do it all after 10pm.

Then it was G-Splash time! Tonight was my favorite.... Locking! It's such a fun style of dance, and the two members who teach it are super-effective and really energetic. They're definitely the best teachers in the whole club. They taught us a ridiculously complex-looking dance in about 25 minutes and we had the rest of the time to practice! It's still a little confusing, but it's
reeeealllly fun! Most definitely my favorite style. I had been feeling a little unsure about G Splash with the time commitment and everything, and I wasn't having as much fun the past few days, but doing lock again changed everything! I want to learn that style!!

I got kaaragedon (like..sort of fried chicken with egg on rice) for dinner and it was pretty good. Now I'm home! Tonight I've got to practice those kanji for another quiz tomorrow, and I'm supposed to present my self introduction for the class tomorrow, but that's no big deal because I was one of the only two people who did it last time, and you don't even have to memorize it. Jeeze.

One thing I wanna talk about is how I miss America. I don't think you could have convinced me before I left that I would miss the concept of America once I got here. I thought maybe like, things I'm not used to might get annoying, like taking off your shoes or weird cultural things like that, but I'm not really one to get to missing places. I sometimes get to missing my family a lot while I'm at UVa, but that's about it. Lately though I've just been missing the comfort of America, really little things that people seem to do or not do here. For example, for some reason, I feel like people are very very conservative and reserved in public. Like, I feel really out of place if I put my hands in my back pockets, or cross my arms while I'm standing waiting for the train. Or if I had folded my legs up in the chair at the library today, or when I started hitting my stomach at dance practice because I had a side stitch. People just don't seem to goof around or act relaxed here like we do somehow...

I think I also need to get out of Tokyo soon, because I was thinking of how I miss rural southern Illinois, or even Virginia. America is so big that we build out, in Japan they seem to build up. Every time I look out a window, there's a building. There aren't any backyards really, just some small patches of grass. Every space is planned out and filled with concrete. Everyone's flowers are in pots on the side of the street. Even the parks and playgrounds are just pavement and bare dirt. I just want to go run a big field and then sit under a tree and look at the sky.

Appropriately, I started listening to Sufjan Stevens' Illinois album today =) I wouldn't say I miss America in a sad way, but more in an extreme longing kind of way. I think part of it is just that I haven't really connected with Japan on any level yet. It's so hard to meet other Japanese people really and make friends, so I haven't connected socially yet, there's a lot of things about the culture and social mentality that I don't really agree with, so I've had trouble there too. The only analogy I can come up with is from something I read online about studying abroad. It talked about how when you come back to your home country, you might feel "rootless," because you had to uproot yourself, grow new roots, and then you're uprooted again and you're left somewhere in between. Right now I feel like my roots are still firmly planted in America. I was ready to dig them right up, but... it seems for me there's no dirt to plant them in.

I can't really see Japan as being somewhere I would consider working anymore... Part of me is starting to wonder why I'm really studying Japanese or have an interest in Japan. I guess it's because I liked learning the language, and I was into anime and all, those are my only real reasons. Now that I'm here, it's just sort of seeming like another place, but not one that I should have an interest in for any particular reason. Maybe it's like how Mom thinks I deal with other things in life, I find something that's a challenge and I pursue it until it gets boring for me. Learning Japanese was a fun challenge until I came here and found out you don't really need to know any more than I know to get by here, and there's not really anything prompting me to learn more outside my own interest, which seems to be waning. I think I do need to get out of Tokyo before I make any other judgments though. At the very worst, I'm still glad I made the effort to study abroad here. I think it was the head of the religions department at UVa who solemnly advised that I make sure to visit Japan before devoting my life to studying it =)

Anyway, I might write more on those feelings as the semester goes on. Right now I'm just longing for wide open spaces, the way Charlottesville feels in the spring, green grass and trees, the feeling like I can do/wear whatever I want in a public space and still feel comfortable and normal, a normal schedule where I can go home during the day, Nick, a dirt road, and a big house with a piano inside.

Catchup Post

2008-04-22T05:50:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry for the extreme lack of updates!! It's pretty much...any time I'm not using on homework when I get home is time I don't get to sleep, sooooo yeah.. And I was lazy and didn't finish blogging over the weekend!

Sunday

Today I got up at 8:30 and then went back to bed for a while.. haha, I can't believe I was still tired after all that!
For church I wore my pale green skirt with a white shirt and a yellow sweater over it, and
I got to test drive my new pale yellow adorable heels I got before I left! They totally rule.
Church was nice, we sang a lot of hymns I knew!!
I got a Japanese bible when I came in this morning since the page numbers are in the program, and then I found the verses in my English bible, so I actually knew a little bit what was going on! It was talking about Paul visiting a city, and how the people there prayed to a lot of gods, and even had a shrine that said "To an Unknown God." But they were interested in hearing the gospel. The way it talked about the city's religiousness and the way religion played a role in their society reminded me some of Japan.
I might have accidentally told the lady from the Bible study class that I was going, but then I took off, ha...sorry!
I meant to do homework the rest of the day, but ended up spending a lot of time to go shop and eat with Greg, and then I just didn't do much the rest of the day!

My credit situation mostly got worked out, so I'm no longer hanging! Let that cat down! I'll be finishing up the language requirements of my major with 11 credits from Intensive Japanese (after taking a placement test when we get back. whatever.), and then getting another 3 for the media-ish class I'm in, so it all will work out nicely. Just took a lot of emails and explanations to get that far.

Here's a short recap of Monday:

Back to school again? Really? Didn't wanna go!!
Japanese was fine
Got lunch with Jen at our usual katsudon joint, which was delicious. We discussed our qualms with the intensive Japanese program here compared to what we're used to from U Va, but I'll write more on that later on.
A little bit of study time!
Japanese Symbolic Practice time!! I love this class!! I always get nervous we're going to do hardcore class discussion like in my MDST class, but we always end up in small groups discussing our field work. Our teacher is super awesome and hilarious, AND he let us out 30 minutes early. Best class ever.
Tonight's G-Splash was Hip Hop again. Turns out they're teaching us new, longer dance routines for the auditions, oh no! This one wasn't too tough, but the practice was run really sloppily. They just sort of started dancing without saying anything, and didn't take the time to explain it well at all. I was really irritated by the end of practice, and if it had been run that way from day 1 I probably wouldn't be very interested in joining.
Way too long of a train ride, Yoshinoya takeout, then home.
Did my homework (or so I thought....), then bed.

I'll try and get another post for today out before bed!

Slept All Day

2008-04-19T06:58:00.000-07:00

Now it's time for a recap of the past few days! Everything's just been so hectic and busy now that school has started, I haven't had time to even think about blogging! I'll stick to the bullet format for the recap.

Thursday

Day two of Kanji, just as bad as day one T_T I feel so behind all the other students somehow.. But I did end up with an 8/10 on that kanji quiz instead of failing it. Somehow.
Day two of Japanese Symbolic Practice. That class is going to be totally awesome. Teacher is really great and funny, and the class is going to be so media focused. We're picking topics for our field research/final project/paper soon, and I think Greg and I are going to do gaming. Our class came up with a lot of ideas, and he was encouraging a lot of ideas that were really media focused (like thinks we talk about in my MDST classes at home), but really cell phones and gaming are the only two that really stuck out as being particularly different in Japan and worth spending the time to research while in Japan.
(The previous paragraph can also be read translated to the following text: "Greg and I are going to play video games with Japanese people and call it homework." )
G Splash practice was House! I'm not sure what that means really, but the music was a lot more jazzy with piano parts and stuff, and the dancing was pretty easy to pick up. The girls did their routine for us, and it looked like it was just fun to dance House. The House leader also told us foreigners the club rules in English. Basically, don't miss practice or be late without telling someone first, extra practices around event time, for the first event you can only dance Hip Hop or Lock (yay!), first event is in June, second is in August (booo!), it's a serious club they don't mess around blah blah blah.
We met some new friends afterwards! The only name I remember is Shougo, but there were two boys and two girls we met. They were really nice! Shougo and the other guy spoke some English and it was really funny. I was trying to explain the concept of first-year, second-year etc. at UVa, and I mentioned how Thomas Jefferson built our school, and Shougo was like "Ah!! Thomas Jefferson!... Thomas Jefferson ha.... independence... independence.. nantoka nantoka.." hahha. And the other kid's English pronunciation was reeally good! I was impressed.
We got dinner at a cool place Greg and Hunter had found and got their recommended yakiniku. For some reason, the sauce on yakiniku still makes me feel pretty sick....although it's better in Japan
From about 10pm to 1:30am, I wrote lengthy emails back and forth to my adviser trying to get the issue of our credit transfer worked out. The story changed a lot of times, I learned some specifics about the requirements for my major, and it looks like it's going to work out fine with me getting 11 credits of Japanese language to finish up that part of my requirements, and then 3 credits from the Japanese Symbolic Practice class for another part. After I get back, I'll just have 2 more Japan-related courses to take in different departments, one of which I'm already signed up for.
Since it was 1:30am and I was still sort of in correspondence with my adviser, and I hadn't started my homework, and I didn't really feel like sleeping, I decided not to sleep that night. I did some laundry since I had run out of things to wear for G Splash, and I picked up my room a little bit, and I talked to Nick and my Dad for a long time on Skype.
Somehow I couldn't make myself focus on my homework, and there really wasn't that much of it, so I decided I didn't really need to stay up all night, and ended up taking about an hour and a half nap and getting up at 6:15 to finish my homework.

Friday

Got up at 6:15 to finish my homework (well, most of it)
Ditched the guys and rode the special ladies only car on the train, for the busy morning commute. It smelled nice and it wasn't crowded at all. Being a lady rules sometimes.
RAIN. It rained so hard on Friday, and the wind was blowing super bad, it was ridiculous. I was thankful for my new heavy-duty old lady umbrella.
Class was ridiculous. Jen and I got a bad case of the giggles when Noguchi-sensei just ran class so hilariously. He just sort of says ridiculous things while he's talking to the class, like it's nothing at all. And he draws example pictures on the board, which is fine, but he goes too far... He just keeps adding pictures and it keeps getting more ridiculous.. Jen and I were having a hard time in that class because we were both just laughing until we were crying, it was crazy... we just could not stop laughing, even a long time later.. I think Jen summed it up best when she asked me "What is he doing??"
Lunch was bad for me.. I accidentally bought a Soba ticket instead of Udon, so I asked the lady to change it since it's the same price, and she was like sure! But the message didn't make it all the way down the line, so the guy in front of me had ordered soba, but his ended up with an egg in it instead of what he ordered, when the egg and stuff was supposed to go in mine T_T So he ended up having to take the thing I had ordered basically instead of what he ordered.. I felt soooo bad and it made me feel bad all lunch, I wish I had said something to him to apologize. I couldn't even offer to take that one since the other one was udon.. I prayed that something especially nice would happen for him that day.
After lunch, I went to try out the post office ATM and see if I could get money out of it like Greg did. On the way there, I stopped in a Christian bookstore near the school and fulfilled vow #3 by buying a Japanese Bible.
I successfully took out 50,000 yen from the ATM, with about a $5 service fee, not bad!
For the room we practice G Splash in, it's supposed to be no shoes, or only indoor shoes. I've been getting away with wearing my normal shoes inside, but I decided I should really get some indoor shoes, so I walked down this street for suuuuchhh a long time and didn't find anywhere selling shoes! Very discouraging T_T
My jeans were soaked once I got back to campus T_T
I tried to go to the library to study, but ended up putting my head down for about 45 minutes, and then decided I was too cold from my wet legs to study.
So I went to the gym room and changed for practice and studied till it started!
Friday's dance waas.. Girls! Or Girls Hip Hop, as I think it's really called... they made the boys learn it too! It was one of the harder ones to get the hang of... I don't seem to have that natural sexy body rhythm that it takes to dance that way.. The worst parts were body rolls, which I still don't get, and a funky hop step thingy that took me forEVER to even remotely get the hang of, and I'm still not great at it.
I got delicious ice cream afterwards =)
Dinner was the Yoshinoya!! Wooo!
I was extremely happy the weekend had started and went to sleep.

Saturday

Woke up at 9:30! Woooo sleeping is aweesooommee
Left a little before 11 for the Ito Yokado mall with Hunter and Jeannette.
We bought shoes for dancing! Mine are pretty sweet. They're all white with like a gold sparkly swooshy cross thing on the side. I decided not to invest in running shoes after all since I honestly won't have the time or feel like running here.
After we got back, I went to Yaoko with Greg for groceries!
Then... I took a nap! From about 2-5! Woaaah
Then I took another nap! From about 6-8, double woah!
Greg tried to get ahold of me several times, and I only woke up at 8 because he knocked on my door! Whoops! I didn't mean to sleep that much ^^;
I tried to make something of the rest of my evening by cleaning my room and getting caught up with my expense report.
Then I went to bed at around 2am.

Hanging Day

2008-04-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

(Thanks, Daddy.)

Seriously? Day

2008-04-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

Things are getting complicated with our potential credit transfers from our Sophia courses back to UVa. Here's hoping it all works out as it should. I had all my homework done and then that needed dealing with... ya just can't catch a break in this program!

Today was:

Awful kanji day
Might have failed a quiz
Enjoyed studying in the big quiet library
Learned a little bit of breakdancing
Can't believe I learned a little bit of breakdancing
Got reaaally reaaallly frustrated at one part of breakdancing I just couldn't comprehend
Reeeaalllly hate the feeling of not being able to comprehend
Ate ice cream at every meal today
Took Midol for the first time, is miracle, am hooked
Got cheap katsudon from the Shop 99, surprisingly delicious and filling, and cheap
Actually got almost all of my homework done before midnight
Room's still a disaster
Was proactive
Want something done right so I'm doing it myself
Doing something right means 3am bedtime this time
Better than not getting what you paid for

Kanji Day

2008-04-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the short posts, here's a list of things I learned today:

The nice lady we met during the train delay yesterday actually lives on our street, and is eager to show us around Saitama and speak English with us.
The best part about having a big blanket on the floor is that I can just throw clothes and stuff there when I don't have time to deal with them, just like I'm used to doing haa.
Learning to dance makes it hard to walk.
Kanji day is the worst day.
Sometimes you stereotype people, and they end up surprising you. Other times you stereotype people and they end up being dead on and so you get a photo taken with them to remember them by.
There's too much homework and not enough time to do it.
How to do some locking (dance).
Locking is really fun.
Locking is difficult and too fast.
It's fun to watch skilled people lock.
"Lock" in Japanese pronunciation not only sounds like "rock", but also the Japanese word for "six."
Sukiya has coupons.
Now I have coupons (thanks again Jeannette!)
I know less kanji than a lot of the kids in class.
Four raisin croissants is an adequate breakfast.
A four raisin croissant breakfast every morning is gonna add up.
The gaijin card looks nice.
The weather is warming up.
Sometimes new shirts you buy without trying on fit better than you expect them to and turn out to be a great purchase.
I didn't bring enough T-shirts/sweatpants to be in a dance club.
Fashion tennis shoes are not proper athletic or fitness footwear.
I miss Nick a lot.
Bananas at Shop 99 are actually a lot cheaper than the ones we bought off the street.
Warabi station is a lot farther away that it looks, especially if you walk yourself around in a circle first (sorry again guys!)
I could probably make it to bed before midnight if I'd use my time a little more wisely.
Just one game of spider solitaire to unwind can last a long time.
Blogging, in any form, takes too long.

Super Exhausting Day

2008-04-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

Today was very tiring, and I'm very very sleepy with still some homework to finish, so I'll just to a short recap of today for now, in the ever-popular bulleted list form!

My Day:

Left for school with Jen and Greg
Found there to be a mass of people backed up at the ticket gates. The trains were down and delayed due to an accident.
Several packed trains later, we arrived at class 30 minutes late.
Class was ok.
Lunch was pretty good.
Spent the next two hours studying in the computer lab, trying not to fall asleep.
Met up with Greg and Jen to scope out Japanese Symbolic Practice course.
Totally awesome course, cool professor, interesting subject, will learn a lot but it'll be a lot of work too.
Bought book for that class, about $50 =/
Changed clothes for G Splash practice
G Splash practice! Crazy awesome workout and learned some cool hip hop moves.
Went to print out vaguely referred-to homework page from computer lab, waited around.
Took the trains home, everyone super exhausted and hungry.
Picked up some Yoshinoya takeout.
Picked up some snacks from Shop 99.
Ate said takeout with the gang in the kitchen, was delicious. Got Jen hooked on new chocolate snacks.
Homework, ugh.
Blog
THE FUTURE: more homework, Bible, sleep.

That's all for now! I might elaborate more later on, but maybe not. Nothing particularly interesting happened today I suppose. Back to work!

Church Day

2008-04-13T06:43:00.001-07:00

Today was an exciting day! I decided to try out the little church down the street I had found. I woke up early and did stretches this morning (which is probably good since I might not have time to do them again tonight... too much homework!), and then picked out what to wear. I love going to church because it gives me an excuse to dress up! I got out all my cute skirt and blouse combinations and laid them out on my bed. I know that I tend to buy things in pale yellow and green lately, but I didn't realize how much yellow, green, and pink made up my spring wardrobe!
I decided on a flowery pink skirt, a white three-quarter length top, a pink sweater jacket, and some white leggings for warmth since it was rainy today. I wore my strappy white sandals, although I wasn't sure about whether I'd need to take them off when I went in the church or not... I took my new green flowered umbrella and felt very flowery and girly and wonderful =) ( although I realized later today that I only put one of my earrings in before I left..haha!)

When I got to the church, they were already singing some, which was nice to walk up to! Luckily, I didn't have to take my shoes off when I went in, so that means it's gonna be Cute Shoe Sunday, every sunday from here on out! XD There were ladies in the front hallway to welcome me, and they gave me a hymnal and asked if it was my first time there and I told them I was a study abroad student here for four months. They had me write down my name and go on in. Unfortunately, I failed to get a Japanese bible before I went today, and the lady and in the front hall decided it would be better for me to read my English one instead of borrowing a Japanese one since I'd be able to understand it. What I didn't understand was the name of the book that the pastor announced in the sermon, haha.. The books of the Bible will be my own personal vocabulary list to learn for next week I suppose =)

The church was very very small, probably only somewhere between 50-100 people (on the lower side I would guess), but it was packed pretty full for such a small sanctuary. I found a seat between two girls and joined in the next hymn. For some reason, I wasn't expecting the hymns to be in Japanese! I had a lot of fun singing them though, and a few of them were set to familiar hymns I already knew. I think doing that every week will definitely improve my reading skills. At some point during the service, one of the ladies from the front desk came up to me with a note asking me which country I was from, with a few potential countries written down, so I pointed to アメリカ。 =) Another lady also brought up a cough drop for a boy who had been coughing some! How nice ^^

As I've told a few people already, the rest of the service was pretty typical, and if it hadn't been all in Japanese, you wouldn't have been able to tell it was a church outside of America. I'm not sure about the denomination, since it just says Christ Church on the sign, but it seemed to be pretty basic and traditional. We sang some hymns and prayed in between, then about a 10-person choir did a song. I couldn't understand any of the sermon except the name "Paulo" (the Apostle Paul), but as I was sitting there, I had already decided that even if I couldn't understand a word of anything being said there, I was really glad to have found such a nice and warm-hearted church to go to. Everyone seems so nice and genuine there, and to know I was in a country where Christians make up less than 1% of the population, and to be lucky enough to be sitting in a room full of Christians, I felt very blessed.

After the sermon was the offering, a few more hymns, and announcements (where two high school-age looking boys said some apparently funny things). Then came a surprising moment, the pastor introduced me to the congregation! Hehe, as soon as I heard him saying "study abroad student" and "for four months" and "from America" I was thinking, "uh-oh..." and then he said "Natalie Wilson." Hehehe, I think I was supposed to stand up, but instead I just kind of awkwardly raised my hand and waved a little, and he said something else, and everyone applauded =) Then he asked me, in English, where I was from in America! So I told him Illinois, and he repeated it, and there was much head-nodding. Afterwards I felt a little embarrassed, but it was a really nice gesture and a nice feeling to know that everyone there now knew a little bit about me if they wanted to come talk to me or anything, and it made me feel very very welcome there. He introduced a few more new visitors after me (who properly stood up), and a couple groups that I think might have been new members.

After that was a closing hymn and prayer and church was over. It was a nice average length of a service I felt. Afterwards, the pastor came up and greeted me and asked me a few more questions in English, and then ran off to find so-and-so-san who could speak English (I don't think he ever found them..) while another lady came up and talked to me, and then introduced me to a woman who had graduated from Sophia University in 1987 in philosophy. We talked for a while about how if you don't use a language, it's easy to loose it, because she had studied linguistics in America for a year, and worked at an American bank in Japan for a while, but now she doesn't remember very much English. We both could agree on the feeling of being able to read and listen to that language pretty well, but not being able to speak it after not practicing for a while.

I thought I was about to leave, when another lady approached me and introduced herself and asked if I'd like to visit a small after-church class called the "family class." I'm pretty awful at declining invitations for anything, and since I didn't really have anything else to do, I went along! It was in a separate building from the church, and I did have to take my shoes off this time, aw man. The group was very small, about 13 people or so, all sitting around a table in a small room. The lady had said it was people of all ages, and I suppose that was true, but I was the youngest there by a long shot. The structure of the class seemed to be that one person in the group perhaps came up with a study topic for the day, and then the class leader lead the discussion after the topic and Bible verses were introduced.

Today's topic was "What does church mean to you?" A lot of the introduction was hard to understand, but the lady who had brought me to the class helped me find the right verses (Ephesians, the end of chapter 1), and did a lot of interpreting for me throughout the class. The discussions were a little easier to understand, but I still didn't catch a lot of it. The leader asked around to each person what church meant to them, or their history with church, and it was soo interesting to hear the responses. One girl there is an architect, and this was her first time going to church (she later asked about if the church groups do any group meals or lunches afterwards, and seemed excited to hear that they do), another girl seemed very shy and nervous at first, but then started talking about how she has recently come to understand what church means to her, and something about how people can go there and feel the awesome power of God. A younger man talked about being invited to a wedding at a fake church. I've heard about these before... it's basically a building/event location built to look like a church, and wedding couples can get married there and have a traditional Western Christian ceremony with a preist and everything (though I'm not sure he's a real preist) because they like the look and romanticism of that kind of ceremony. He described it as "a church, but not a church," and that he was surprised. It was interesting to hear about that first-hand from a Japanese person. The pastor's wife was also in the class, and she talked about having to always be at church because of her husband, and that she was surprised the first time she went, because it was a place were people were talking and laughing together, and sometimes eating together, and it was a fun place, unlike what she had imagined. She also mentioned something that I had noticed today, that when people first come to church, they're not really sure what to do, and especially with Japanese people, they're not sure how to find the right chapters and verses in the Bible or hymnal, so it can be kind of a stressful place instead of a fun place because they're worrying about what to do next or where they're supposed to be in the readings.

The very most interesting story I heard today was from a much older man. I couldn't understand anything that he said, but my interpreter just told me this: "He says he went to a church school when he was younger, but then he was in the World War, and he was not allowed to believe in another country's religion." She also said that he had just started coming back to church this year and was going to be baptized soon. I thought that was the most moving story, and I don't think I could've heard that kind of story in any other setting than the one I happened to be in today. Thinking back on it now, it gives me such a feeling of hope, that no matter what age a person might be, or what kind of things they've been through in their life or how hardened their heart might have become, God can still work in their heart and life. It was interesting thinking about how Christianity is so scarce in Japan, and that most of the people in that church probably found Jesus on their own, as opposed to being raised in church like me and so many other Christians in America, so everyone has such a unique story to tell.

I inevitably got called on to share my meaning of church with the class, so I gave the answer I had sort of been preparing in my mind. Unfortunately it didn't come out very well ^^; I think I said something like.... "In the week..not the weekend.. your heart..becomes bad...you forget about God...but on Sunday, go to church...heart becomes more good" hahaha... what an awful response. I swear I know better Japanese than that, but I wanted to express the sort of refreshing, recharging feeling I personally gain from going to church. I got a lot of encouraging head nods though, and at the end, I think to help me out, they all said a word I don't remember that must have been describing what I had just tried to express I suppose. Oh well, hehe, they all heard me tell the pastor my Japanese was so-so =)

After the class was over, the lady asked me if I wanted to join them for the lunch they have afterwards every day. I might have eaten some interesting food and heard more stories, but I decided to decline for today and see if I could meet up with any DK House friends for lunch since nobody was really around yesterday. She asked if I lived in the big building by the grade school, which I do, and she said she lived really close to there, so she gave me her home phone number, cell phone number, and name so I could contact her in case I'm ever in trouble or anything. So nice!!

The walk home was waaay colder for some reason, even though it had stopped raining. Jeannette and I decided to go to Yaoko for lunch and grocery shopping (yes, the same Yaoko I went shopping at LAST NIGHT... but all the pastries had been bought already, I needed those right?). I ended up buying a lot of instant stuff to have around for nights like last night when there was nobody to go out with so I'm not out alone at night. I already ate one, instant delicious curry and instant rice, tonight since it was too cold to go out. I also got some more chocolate snacks since Mom seemed to condone my addiction on the phone this morning...

The rest of the night I've been slowly but surely finishing my Japanese homework. I've still got a little bit left to do, a little more practicing of my readings, and maybe some studying vocab, but I figure Jen and I can maybe quiz each other on the train. I probably didn't really have time to blog this much tonight, but I had to talk about how awesome that church was! Mia invited me to the Japanese/Korean/English church she went to today, so I'll probably try that out the week after next (so my new church doesn't think I ran off!) Hopefully there will be more young people than there are in my church... why am I always drawn to churches that end up having older congregations? Haha.

Here's to 6:45 wakeup tomorrow!

P.S. Nick informed me that, as of my last post, I had written a total of 42.5 pages, single spaced, on this blog. Now accepting publishers. I keep the movie rights.

Floor-cleaning Day

2008-04-12T03:57:00.000-07:00

After resolving to start stretching at least twice a day in order to increase my flexibility for learning to dance, I decided I could not continue to work out on my hardwood floor in its current condition. At first, I was just letting go of my inhibitions about how clean the floor was when I moved in (and after two vacuums since), but I was also running into the problem of the floor being made of wood to begin with.

I really really can't touch my toes! Not even close! So here's a stretching update. I'll maybe try and keep doing this later on when I can start seeing more results. Here's how close I can get to my toes/how far I can get past my knees before I do warm up and stretching, and after! I'm always amazed at the difference! Hopefully these lines will both go farther and farther down throughout the semester!

Problems with exercising/stretching on a hardwood floor, as a foreign exchange student with few belongings such as exercise mats, etc.:

It hurts.
The only items to place on the floor to make it not hurt are my nice towels I use for the shower.
It is questionable just how thorough a cleaning Uzuki-san had done on these floors before we arrived.
The floor gets dirty really quickly.
It's loud. I'm sure the resident below me is already sick of hearing me drop my cell phone/DS/books/heater remote on the floor every day, and I'm also quite certain he doesn't appreciate my 11:00pm fumbling around, trying to do warm-ups before I stretch.

So I decided that first, I would clean my floor with something better than just a vacuum! And second, I would buy either a cheapo beach towel or exercise mat or something to create a buffer between me and the wooden floor. So after noon or so, I headed out on my big adventure!

First, I had to find something along the way. In a new, more close-up map of our area that Uzuki-san had given us at orientation, I noticed there was a Christian church really close to the DK House. Before I left to study abroad (and as far as I'm concerned, before God would let me study abroad by getting my visa processed), I made four promises to myself and God about coming here. I filled one of them before I left, and it looks like finding a church to attend regularly will be the second. Since Sophia is technically a Catholic school, they offer masses at lunchtime throughout the week. I've only been to mass at a Catholic church once, and the experience was very very different for me (raised in a Southern Baptist church, attending a plain ol traditional Baptist church in Charlottesville), and I didn't feel like I gained as much from it as I might have a different style of church. I'm willing to go again, and will probably go to mass at Sophia at some point, but I do really like the routine of attending service every Sunday, so it would be super-great if this church nearby turns out to be a good place for me to go. Services will probably be in Japanese, which could be a good or bad thing! We'll find out tomorrow I guess =) I took a couple pictures of the sign out front and translated it at home to find that there's a 7am early morning service, and a regular one at 10:30.
My new church home for the next four months? Perhaps!

After that, I headed towards the main street and, although it was in the opposite direction of where I was going, I decided to go to Yoshinoya for lunch and see if they were still having their sale. It was over, but it was still about the cheapest lunch I was going to get. Today I decided to eat all the onions in my gyuudon! They're not as oniony as other places, so it really wasn't bad at all! And it made the beef last longer in the rice-to-other item ratio. I also sat at the counter there for the first time!

Next was my main destination, the Ito Yokado mall! I sure do love that place. I spent waaay too long in there though. Here was my list of items I was looking for:

Athletic socks (I bought a bunch before I left for Japan, but I must've just left a big pile of them out of my suitcase somehow, because now it seems like I hardly have any at all. And some of my older ones are starting to get holes in the toes!)
Athletic shoes (for running and dancing! The one type of shoe I didn't bring..)
Sweat pants
Laundry detergent (to hand wash socks etc. in the basins in the laundry room when I don't need to do a full load of laundry. And those washers do NOT clean socks very well... I may as well have just thrown them in a bucket of water and then taken them back out, that's about how clean they were)
A swiffer mop type thing, for my big floor clean!
A mat or blanket for the floor
Tape (just plain old scotch tape!)

After picking out a blanket thing on the second floor, I decided to do the rest of my shopping before getting that big thing to carry around. I hadn't really checked out the third floor yet since it seemed to be mostly baby stuff and computers, but turns out half of it is a fabric/craft store! It was huuuuge, there was so much stuff! Their pattern selection was limited, and they didn't have a very wide variety of fabrics (mostly cutesy decorative stuff, not so much for clothing), but they had about every notion you could imagine! I was super impressed and surprised.

Obviously my favorites, but a biiit out of my price range!

The fourth floor is where I spent most of my time. I found a swiffer-type mop thing and the sheets that go on it pretty easily (all for a total of 210 yen!! I couldn't believe it. And DK Friends, if anyone wants to borrow it and some sheets, feel free!), and I also found some S hook things that I decided would be awesome to have to hook over my dresser doors, since there's nowhere to actually hang anything like a coat or jacket in the rooms. I had to concede with a decorative tape dispenser that already had some tape in it, because they didn't seem to sell just cheap, simple tape dispensers like we do. Then came the difficult part... where's the laundry detergent?? I found a shelf-end display with all sorts of different fabric softeners and other items, but I couldn't find anything that was obviously laundry detergent. After a good 10 minute investigation using my DS, I discovered that several of them were detergent, but they all had a note on the back that said NOT FOR HAND-WASHING (basically). Arrg.. I'm not sure if that's not a common item for Japanese people to use or if I was just looking wrong or what. I guess I'll have to try somewhere else!
View from the fourth floor. I wonder what city it is off to the left with the super tall buildings?

Walking through that store, you just start getting to thinking that everything looks like it would be a good purchase. Especially in such a bare room where you start missing the little things that are just kind of always around, like tape or a stapler, or paper towels, or paper clips... I need to keep telling myself that I'm only here for four months, and that I have to deal with all the stuff I've bought when it's time to leave, and not "If I had that cute basket.... I could put things in it!" So far I've been really frugal about buying things (besides food), and I've only bought the things I really need. I think today's swiffer mop and blanket purchases were probably my most unnecessary so far, but they only totaled to about $16.

After the fourth floor, I found one of the shoe areas to have a pretty good selection of American brand running shoes that I was familiar with, so I hopped back over to get my new blanket and some athletic socks so I could try on some shoes. The first ones I tried were a pair of Asics, which I've had good luck with in the past, and they fit so nicely! They were soo cushioney in the heels and felt like a good solid shoe. I asked the store guy (in really awful Japanese) if they had the match to this shoe ("I will buy this shoe.") but unfortunately, the single display shoe was the only one they had in that size. What? Ugh. So I went on to try just about every brand of shoe on that they had, but the sizes were all kind of weird, and all the Nike ones were only in wide, and none of them fit as perfect as those Asics! There was no way I was just going to give in and buy a crappy pair of running shoes for $39, so I took a picture of those Asics and I'm gonna find them somewhere else, darnit. Buying running shoes is serious business (just ask my mom!).I will find you!!

That was all the shopping I needed to do today, so I went on home. It was nice to have walked outside in the sunshine and nice day, and I had listened to my mp3 player along the way there which was very therapeutic. When I got home, it was time for my super clean floor mission. I cleared everything out of the way and vacuumed really good first, and then I swiffered the floor twice. It wasn't as gross as I thought it must've been, but there was a lot more dust than I expected. I felt pretty confident about the cleanliness and put down my new yellow blanket! It fits pretty well in the space between the end of my bed and my fridge, and it looks like I'm about to have a picnic all the time! I'm glad to have utilized that space now for sitting or whatever, cause it was pretty much useless before. I'm going to go absolutely nuts when I get my first non-dorm, semi-permanent living space to shop for and take care of. Those floors will be spotless on move-in day, with a nice rug on them the next, and a high quality vacuum purchased ASAP.The rest of the night I've been just hanging out, looking at some of my Japanese homework, aaand not much else. I just went to Yaoko for some dinner, and got the Shaka Shaka Chicken from the McDonald's there. It was on the dollar menu, so I got two. I'm not sure if they're selling this in the U.S., but basically it's like a round chicken strip type thing, and it comes in a bag, and you pick which seasoning you want, put it in the bag, shake it up, and now your chicken tastes better. I didn't really understand the concept, so when the lady asked me what seasoning I wanted (or some combination of other vocab words I don't know), I had to wait til she started listing them off, at which point I chose cheese because it was the only one I understood and could recite back, haha. Even then, I didn't know what kind of cheese I'd be getting, it turned out to be like a powdery cheddar cheese seasoning packet. I was going to eat it there, but it was so hot that I figured I could do the rest of my shopping and be home by the time it was edible, and I was right. It wasn't bad, but you definitely have to be in a setting where you can shaka-shaka without inhibitions in order to get the seasoning to be evenly displaced.

I also picked up some snacks, despite my no-snack policy that I instated last night. I added up the amount from my expense report that I had spent on food so far, and it was almost $200 which really surprised me. I wanted a reference for how much that was, and it was more than the UVa dining plans work out to per month (which I suppose isn't too bad, it wasn't too much more), but it still seemed like a lot to have spent in less than a month on just food! To get another comparison though, I divided the total by 16, how many days we had been here, and it was only about $11 per day. Sophia had suggested that students expect to spend about $18 a day on food, and that's how much I reported in my financial aid applications, so I should technically be doing fine as far as food spending. I think it's just that I've never really had to think about day-to-day food spending, or really have any idea how much it costs, and I'm living in Tokyo, so seeing $200 for two and a half weeks just caught me off guard.

So I got some snacks. Again. It was interesting to go to Yaoko in the evening, because all the bakery and sushi items had apparently been marked down and consequently all bought up by the customers, so everything looked really bare. We should try and go sometime in the early evening and catch the savings! I figured I'd be needing at least something more for breakfast in the next few days, so I found some "Chocolate Bread", which in this case is a roll of the dinner roll type, filled with chocolate cream! I already had one and it was really really good, sooo...those might not last long. I think the reason for my sudden addiction to all things chocolate (it was just a preference before) is the wider variety of delicious chocolate-based items here. In America, I don't really think of anything past like.. chocolate cookies or ice cream or pop-tarts, or maybe donuts and things like that. Here, there is a plethora of new and exciting choices, but I think I'll write more on that later.

I'm off to stretch!

"When you make a vow to God,
do not delay in fulfilling it.

He has no pleasure in fools;
fulfill your vow.

It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it."

Ecclesiastes 5: 4-5

Funny how some verses show up right when they need to.. =)

First Day

2008-04-11T03:59:00.000-07:00

Happy first day of classes! Intensive Japanese class started at 9:15, so the sannin departed from DK House at about 8:00am. We might have been pushing it a little close, but luckily we didn't get denied any trains along the way. I was talking to Jen on the way, and we agreed that it's nice that the trains run so often in the morning and we don't have to plan our schedule around a certain train arriving at a certain time. With the sprawling grounds that are UVa, you kind of have to know what time the bus comes around, and if you miss it, then you might just be sorry out of luck. Instead, we pay the price of inevitable super packed morning trains for the convenience of a flexible schedule.

I also learned this morning (with a previous information from Mia's blog) that there are usually two or so cars in the front that are female only during the morning rush! I think that's a nice gesture, and Jen and I will most likely be ditching Greg for the girl's only train come summertime. (We were tempted to ditch him today, haha)

We reached school with plenty of time to find our classes! Jen, Teresa, Sehyun, and I are all in the same section, while Mia and Dan are in a different section, and Greg is in a different level. I didn't really think about what to expect from the class or the teachers, but I was really surprised to see our first teacher was a man! I think because I've only had female senseis at UVa (about 6 teachers in one form or another... not counting Professor Heldt that is.) it just didn't fit in my mind's image of a Japanese teacher! His name is Kobayashi-sensei, and he'll be one of our two teachers for Grammar, and also Oral and Writing days. The class is for three hours every day, but it's split up into two hour and a half sessions covering different topics: grammar, oral and writing, and kanji.

Kobayashi-sensei was suuuuuper nice and spent a lot of time in between talking about the course to talk about random little things. His Japanese was also really easy to understand, which was a big comfort. After his course introduction, we got down to business right away with some reading from the book and grammar study. For grammar days, we'll have a vocab quiz every day as well as homework using the new grammar.

The second half of class was with Noguchi-sensei, also a man! He was teaching oral and writing (kaiwa and sakubun), but mostly he just had us read the syllabus out loud in Japanese =/ Luckily I got a section that didn't really have any kanji I didn't know. After that we had a test! What?! It was supposedly to help evaluate whether the placement test did a good job of putting us in the correct class. I was really hoping "test" was going to be another word for "survey" and I'd get to give them the what for about how it's a bad test AND they put me in the wrong class, but..alas, it was just your standard issue test-that's-way-too-hard.

After class, we went to buy our Japanese books. For now, we have a total of four books (with another kanji workbook to be added later), which came to about $80, which really wasn't so bad. All the books look the same, so it's going to be tough making sure to bring the right ones each day. Then we decided to just hang out for a while before lunch. Lunch was being served, but apparently it's waaay to crowded to attempt during the normal lunch time. You see, Sophia is a small campus (and this might be a Japanese thing too), so there are like.. four class periods or so, with two before 12:30 and the rest starting at 1:30. There's even bells that ring to mark the beginning and end of each period! So the campus-wide acknowledged lunchtime is from 12:30-1:30, so it's obviously going to be crowded in the cafeteria.

I went for some Somethingorother Udon, which ended up having a more properly cooked egg included. I'm thinking the texture of the school udon is probably not the proper texture, but I kind of like it. It's sort of chewy? haha... After lunch we gave in and got some delicious ice cream snacks, for only 100 yen! I love cheap school food, for serious.

Greg had to head out early for the next class he wanted to try (which turned out to be a bust), but Jen and I had a lot of time to kill before we wanted to look in on the Sophia Modern Dancers' rehearsal, so we went with Dan up to a path on top of a hill (where cherry blossoms had been blooming last week) that overlooks the athletic fields. It was a really nice spot and we found a good bench in the sun! We mostly just sat around and looked at our new textbooks.

Then it was dance time! But not before a few Jen and Natalie's Awkward Social Antics! We knew where the Modern Dancers were supposed to be practicing, but it seemed like there were only like 5 girls in there! And a guy! Guys aren't in the Sophia Modern Dancers! So we looked at the room schedule, and saw that G Splash was also scheduled for that room at the same time somehow, then we looked through the cracks of the door to see what was happening, then another girl went in, then we went around to the side and found a window to look in while we pretended to use a vending machine, then we finally went around to the side door and saw the 5 or so girls doing some warm up dancing inside. We also saw a few other girls in street clothes (read: skirts and tights and cute tops) sitting on the sides watching, so we decided to join them!

Originally the plan was just to sit and observe this group and see if we might be interested in joining them if our G Splash hopes are shattered, but the Modern Dancers would have none of it. After their primary warm-up dance, they had us out on the floor doing their exercises with them! They had some intense ab exercises and super difficult leg stretches (for me anyway. As mentioned in the last post, I have zero leg flexibility. It was a little embarrassing, but it makes me want to stretch more and work hard towards this goal!) At one point I looked over at another new girl doing an ab exercise where we had to lay on our stomachs with our arms straight out and just lift our chests up off the ground a little bit, and I did a double-take. She had her eyes closed and just looked so peaceful and graceful, like she was an angel just hovering there! That's kind of weird, but she just looked really cool ^^

After more exercising and warming up (which was all synchronized exactly to the beat, with everyone knowing the next move.. their warmups could've been a performance), they wanted to teach us part of some dances! First we learned about 4 measures of their routine to Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man." I really love that song and I had seen them perform to it yesterday, so that was fun for me =) The dance was really cute and girly and fun to learn! I had a good time!

Next, they did their classical warmup. These girls are like serious ballet dancers! They were so beautiful and graceful! I was super impressed, they had such great balance! But then they wanted to teach us a lyrical modern dance x_x It was very flowing and pretty, but I'm not sure Jen and I got the hang of it, haha.

One thing Jen and I noticed was that we were waaay taller than all the other girls. We hadn't really run into this problem yet, since in most situations there is a wide variety of heights with boys and girls, and neither of us are very tall by American standards. In this situation, however, we were just standing behind about 8 shorter Japanese girls. All of their movements were so graceful and pretty, but we felt like awkward giants kind of fumbling across the floor, waving our giant arms and legs T__T Hopefully we can become elegant like these ladies, and then our long limbs will make us look more lovely instead of more unfortunate.

That was basically the end of our sit-in with the Sophia Modern Dancers! Their leader girl was really really nice, but we couldn't really understand anything she said to us. We both agreed that while that practice was really fun, we weren't so sure about the classical ballet parts, and we both have a bit of a taste for hip hop beats as well. It was a battle during class, because we'd be learning this beautiful dance, but at the same time, some G Splash members were behind us hip-hoppin it up to some cool music. I guess we'll see how their practice goes on Monday!

After that it was back home for Jen and I (and Hunter who we met along the way), and then we all decided to go to Mos Burger for dinner! We were really feeling the lack of protein/overdoes of noodles these past few days, so we all just needed some good old fast food burgers. Mos Burgers are interesting though. It's a small burger with some sort of special sauce on it (which I have dubbed the "Mos Sauce") which seems to be comprised mainly of onions. I was pretty surprised how bland the Mos Burger was (maybe the tomato I removed was supposed to give it that extra kick?) I might try the Teriyaki burger next time, but I was somewhat unimpressed with mine, and I think Hunter was as well. I did have my first melon soda though! It's really just melon fanta, but you see it in anime all the time (most prominently, Sailor Moon!). It's got the carbonation of ramune, but the taste of... I donno, just sweet and fruit I guess! I wasn't blown away, haha, and I couldn't finish it.ART. This one is ART.

Our food all came out in little baskets! I thought this was way easier/cuter than it all being separated by person.

Melon soda

My Mos Burger, upside down!

Here's what I thought my Mos Burger looked like after I saw this picture. This is maybe a little too weird for my blog... :

With a short stop at the Shop 99 for chocolate snacks on the way home (what have I become...) we returned to DK House. I think once the Mos settles, I'll do a good workout routine using my new moves from the Modern Dancers! I have a lot of homework already for this weekend, so maybe I'll take a look at that too? After our first day of class, we are all just totally relieved that class started on a Friday and now we have the weekend to recoop and prepare to get back in the groove =)

Nothing Day

2008-04-10T06:22:00.001-07:00

First off, I've added a little widget on the side of the blog that tells you what time it is in Japan! Totally awesome!

So today I didn't really do anything! Some of the gang was going to Harajuku for shopping, but in the interest of saving money, staying out of the rain, and resting up for the first day of classes tomorrow, I opted out.

Greg and I ran to Yaoko around lunchtime to get groceries and lunch. I got my standard tonkatsu on a bun with some good sauce, with a weird bread thing with hot dog in it.. and a chocolate-filled croissant for dessert! Dessert is becoming more and more important these days.

I also got an umbrella while it was there to replace my broken one since it was raining! I figured I would end up with a super girly cute pink polka-dot one, but the pickings at Yaoko were slim and I ended up choosing a classy sort of old-lady one that has pale green flowers and a tan handle. I'm actually quite fond of it.

I wanted to pick up a sketchbook while I was there, but my choice was limited to either individual sheets of nice drawing paper, or cheap ones with cartoon characters on the front. I opted for the cheapest, which is like a little kids coloring book and has pictures of babies on the front or something, until I find a place that isn't a supermarket to buy something a little better. When I got home, I wanted to draw some, so I curled up in bed to do so. After sketching one small picture, I decided to lay down instead ^^; Originally I had vowed for no naps today so I can get up early tomorrow for class, but, that just didn't work out. I took about a two hour nap with some wild dreams about flying houses!

The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful. I spent a while doing some stretching and exercise though. I can do a two-minute plank at the end of my workout, which is good for me =) Maybe I'll have it up to three by the end of the semester! That would be something. I want to start keeping track of how close to touching my toes I get over the semester if I keep up my exercise and stretching. For those of you who don't know, I'm very very unflexible. There's never been a time in my life that I can remember being able to touch my toes. That always sucked in P.E. class. I blame it on my uncommonly long legs. My toes are just too far away! But... studying abroad is a time to reinvent yourself! I'm going to try and become the girl who isn't unable to touch her toes!

I met Greg and Hunter in the kitchen for dinner, which was basically us heating up all of our frozen/instant items, haha. I had a package of what I'm assuming were read as "Niku dongo" which I took to mean meat dumpling. They were basically meatballs. I put them with some instant ramen and it wasn't half bad. Nothing special. I'm not a big instant anything, except for the ramen that you actually cook in a pot because you have a little bit more control over how good it's going to taste. We all just watched delicious meals being cooked on TV for celebrity guests, including a three-egg katsudon....zomg....

Now it's time for head to bed since we'll be leaving for Sophia at 7:45-7:50 for our 9:15 class tomorrow! Sorry this post was a little dull. Next time it's a dull day, I plan on starting a new line of posts that focus on a specific part of life here, like the way they deal with trash sorting! There just wasn't time tonight as I need to go to bed. But if you're looking for more study abroad thrills and chills, head over to Greg's blog and check out episode 2 of our podcast (it's a little ways down in the posts now)! It was recorded on our third day here about, so it's a little old, but it's quite entertaining. Goodnight everyone!

Dance Day

2008-04-09T04:55:00.001-07:00

Today, three of the dance groups were performing on the main street at campus, so I definitely wanted to go since I had only seen G Splash yesterday! I was planning on going over with Greg when he left at 11, but unfortunately I caught the beginning of shower cleaning time AGAIN, so I decided to shoot for leaving at 12 instead.

I timed my journey to Sophia today to see what my pace was. It took around 14 minutes to get to the station (NOT the 12 promised by DK House, mmmhmm), and then by the time I got to Yotsuya station it was about an hour and four minutes. That was with no packed trains or missed trains or whatnot, and not any particularly long waits for trains, so probably an hour and 15 to an an hour and 30 is about how close I'd be willing to push it for class days. Unfortunately that's going to mean leaving for school at 7:45-8:00 for us intensive kids x_x

Today was my first time riding the train by myself. It was kind of nice to have some alone time on the walk to the station, but being around only other Japanese people at the station and on the train was a very different experience. Normally I'm traveling with Greg and Hunter, sometimes Jen and Jeannette, so there's always been at least one other foreigner with me to diverge my attention to, and to diverge attention from just me. This time, I could only focus on my appearance to others, and my relationship with each person around me. It was a little weird at first, because even though nobody's really watching you, you just feel like every move you make is being watched. Which ad should I stare at, which way should I face, hands in pockets? Look at my cell phone? How can I look normal... After a while it became less of an issue and I got more comfortable with just doing whatever the heck I wanted =)

I ran into Hunter and Teresa as soon as I got to campus, but they were off to see about getting some stuff Hunter had shipped from the states, so I went on to wait for the dance performances! First up was the Sophia Modern Dancers. It's an all girl group, and they had a wide variety of styles. There were a couple upbeat, dance team-esque numbers, one that was just sort of expressive and ballet-like, and one that was a little more...latin? A lot of the dances kind of reminded me of the way I dance in my room when nobody's around, haha. They seemed like a nice, easygoing group.

Next was... G Splash! Wooo! Now, yesterday I was a little unimpressed/unsure about this group, but today I got to see two groups perform that I missed yesterday. First was Lock (which I totally thought was "Rock" until I saw it on a piece of paper...oof). They did a suuuper exciting and entertaining routine. It was really well-choreographed and every moment had something going on, it was really fun to watch and they seemed to be having a good time. I'm not sure what the other new group I saw was, but it was all guys, and they all wore business suits with dark sunglasses and did this ridiculous but amazing routine to a techno version of the theme to Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was sooooo super entertaining and the crowd loved it. On the one hand it was really silly, and there were goofy moves like hopping around like birds and things like that, but on the other hand it was so well-done and you could tell they worked really hard on it, the dancing was so skilled, and they were so confident and serious-acting about it that it was really impressive. The rest of their performances were the same as yesterday, but I had a little bit better of a view this time.

Last was Beyond, the Jazz dance club. Their dances didn't seem much different than the dance team-esque ones that the Modern Dancers did. It was kind of like.. music video background dancers I guess? Lots of smiling, lots of songs about shaking butts (well, that was true of all the groups, but this group actually danced to the thong song at one point), and LOTS of costume changes. Japanese dance groups understand the importance of costume changes, that's for sure. Their routines did seem a little more polished than the Modern Dancers though.

After they were all done, I met up with Greg and later Jen! Jen was also interested in getting information from G Splash, so we hesitantly went over to the area where they were talking to potential members. After kind of puttering around for about 5 minutes with nobody coming up to talk to us, and people even seeming to avoid us, Jen finally tapped a girl on a shoulder and we told her we were interested. After that, everything was great! She was super nice and had another girl go get us some info sheets, and she told us our Japanese was really good and that she was surprised. (We felt that she was just using particularly simple Japanese compared to what we were used to dealing with). She also said it was ok that we were foreign exchange students and would only be there a semester, which was our main concern. She explained how the auditions (!!) will work. Starting Monday, they'll have practice every night and teach everyone a different style each night, and those rehearsals will last two weeks. At the end of those two weeks, according to the sheet, you have to collect everything you've learned and perform in front of everyone. It's not clear as to whether this means they'll teach you a routine or something to do, or if you're supposed to make something up on your own... It seems pretty intimidating, but I want to give it a shot!

We also got info from the Sophia Modern Dancers, in case G Splash doesn't work out ^^;; The sannin got lunch together at a closer, but not as awesome, vending place before we all parted ways. Greg was off to meet up with a Jazz group, Jen was off to see Dan, and I was headed back to the DK House.

After a short accidental nap, I vacuumed my floor and did some exercising for a while. I figure those two weeks of rehearsal will be murder if I don't go ahead and make myself sore and recover first. When I work out on my own, though, I never feel like I exert myself enough. Nothing compared to the workouts we used to get in athletics class in high school, or how I'd feel after track or cross country. Those were the days =) Of course, trying to work out in my cluttered room at home, or in this spacious but with-downstairs-neighbors-and-hardwood-floors room also creates limitations on how much I want to do. If I have free time between classes when I'm not studying, I might check out our gym at school. I never end up going to any of the gyms at UVa because our campus is just too darned sprawling. With Sophia, I'll probably leave in the morning with everything I need for the day, stay there all day, and come home, so I'll plan on bringing work-out clothes sometimes.

I think there's probably a good chance I won't get into G Splash because it seems like such a high-skill club, and I have zero dance experience (minus ballroom), so I'm not even sure this is something I can really get the hang of or not, but I do intend to try my best and work really hard for the next two weeks! I'd really like to be able to have come to Japan and become a lot better at Japanese, but I'd also like to take this opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for a while, but never can make the time for at UVa. Here, I don't really have any outside responsibilities like work or basketball band or other projects to take up my time. I don't mind ending up having to be at school at 9:15am and not leave until 7:00pm, I think I might enjoy that kind of schedule for a semester. The way it's looking now, I'd have a lot of free time between lunch and my second class on Mondays and Thursdays, and a ton of free time between lunch and club meetings on the rest of the days. Since I'm at school, I'll probably be able to totally focus that time on studying! I'm really excited for school and clubs to start =)

Sorry there are no pictures or videos of today's amazing dances, my camera battery was totally dead! I should be better about charging it... Tomorrow I think all the girls are planning to go shopping in Harajuku, so I need to decide if my quest for a new umbrella (the one I just bought there last week got broken in the mighty winds of yesterday's storm.. *sigh*) will justify me risking spending money on clothes/accessories I don't need while I'm there... although, my wardrobe, despite its cuteness by American standards, is so far off from the current trends in Japanese fashion that I don't think I'll even be making the effort to fit in, haha.

I think that's all for tonight. I'm going to try and get a more decent night's sleep tonight so I don't feel quite so sleepy in the morning! Can't wait to get into that 7:00am wakeup schedule, for serious!

Club Day

2008-04-08T03:55:00.000-07:00

ATTENTION!: This post is HIGHLY ENTERTAINING. Please enjoy the many videos I have uploaded today =)

Today, Greg and Hunter and I decided to go back to campus to check out the clubs some more! A friend of Hunter's was performing in the gospel choir at 11:30, and Greg wanted to see the New Swing Jazz Orchestra at 3:00, so that set our timeframe. Everything was in order, except the weather! It was cold and rainy and disgusting outside, and the wind was blowing and making awful sounds! I considered not going since I figured most of the clubs wouldn't be outside, and it was so gross out I just wanted to curl up and stay in, but I decided to go after all, which turned out to be a good decision =)

First, we found the room for the gospel choir. None of us really knew what to expect from a bunch of Japanese students claiming to sing gospel music...especially one named SAfro FAmily, hehe. We all got settled in, the club made some introductions, and then they started their first song: Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee. THE SISTER ACT VERSION! It was sooo amazing, we were all totally blown away! They had such a great sound! They also had some instruments on backup that sounded fantastic as well! After that one, I recorded all of their songs on my camera! I think, if I get into a dance club (or not) and still have time, I'd love to join this group! They all just seemed like they were having such a great time singing this gospel music! It looked like the most fun club of the day and the easiest to fit in with =)
Videos! Please excuse the fact that most of the time it's not a very good shot... I was trying to be somewhat discreet about filming, because I wasn't sure if they wanted me to or not (and I wanted to clap) so most of the time the camera was sitting in my lap.

Hallelujah

Sing a Simple Song of Freedom - beginning

Sing a Simple Song of Freedom - ending

"We Are Family" - You can't really see it, but you can hear at the end after each section does its own part, they put them together and it sounds really cool! This was a great performance and there's also a feature of all the instruments in the back.

After that, we wandered the halls of the same building for a bit, since there were a few other music groups practicing/performing (including the "Folk Song Club", which doesn't play folk songs, but actually plays rock music, hahaha) before going outside under a covered area where all the clubs seemed to be today. I found a dance flyer or two while Greg got whisked away to a Jazz performance and Hunter searched for Judo. I eventually found a gym where the dance groups were performing! Hunter was there already and we got to watch most of the performance for G-Splash. They're a reeeallly big hip-hop group split up into 5-7 smaller groups by genre of dance. I couldn't tell most of the genres apart, but one was all girls and was pretty racy I guess, and another was a lot of tricks-based. A lot of them seemed reeeallly gangster, with super baggy clothes and their arms all over the place, I was surprised. None of them particularly looked like the group I was hoping to find, but maybe I'm just spoiled by clean, precise, choreography-based groups like I saw on America's Best Dance Crew. There are still two other dance groups I missed (Sophia Modern Dancers and Beyond Jazz Dance Unit) that might be more my style, so I think I'll try and check them out tomorrow.

My only halfway decent video of G-splash. I think this section must've been the breakers. They seemed to focus on small groups doing tricks and floorwork while the rest watched.

After that, we went and found Greg watching the small Jazz combos. Some of the people from the gospel chorus backup band were in one of the combos, the one we all thought was the best combo! Greg thinks he might join one of those.

By the time that was over, we were all ready for lunch so we headed to our favorite place again! I got Oyakodon this time, which is chicken and egg on rice (Oyako means parent and child... kind of grim, don't you think?). It was delicious, but I think I prefer the katsudon. Next, we were off to find a Mizuho bank for Hunter and I to start accounts at. We thought we had found one at first, but turns out it was a Mizuho apartment-finding-place. We walked in awkwardly as I noticed all the printouts of floorplans on the walls and the lack of bank-looking equipment. Me: "..Ginkou janain desu ka?" (This isn't a bank, is it...) Worker Guy: "Ginkou janai" (This is not a bank.) Haha. He did direct us to the nearest one though, so that was sweet! I went up and got the rest of my traveler's checks exchanged (minus $200, which I'm keeping for a while just in case), at what seemed to be a pretty good rate, since $600 became more than 60,000 yen! Hunter and Greg needed to find an ATM that would take their cards before we could get started with the accounts, so we found a post office and took care of that.

Unfortunately, the certificate of registered matters is only good for things like cell phones and doesn't cut it when it comes to bank accounts. The super nice ladies there told us to come back once we had our gaijin cards. At least now we know there's a bank that will give us an account nearby the school! But that means poor Hunter will have to wait another two weeks at least before he has the means to get a cell phone =/

By then it was time to see the New Swing Jazz Orchestra! They were pretty good and had a great ensemble sound. Interestingly, the girls WAY outnumbered the boys in this ensemble. I know at least at UVa, the Jazz Band is pretty male heavy. Maybe music is considered more of a girl's hobby in Japan.. (the entire trombone section was girls even! and only one boy in the sax line and trumpet line! piano, guitar, and drums made up the rest of the male musicians). All the music groups seemed to stick to the standards for their genre (It Don't Mean a Thing and Sing Sing Sing from the Jazz groups, Sister Act from the gospel choir) and I was wondering if that's because this is sort of, introduction to our club week, or if that's the sort of thing they normally play.

A nice sax feature

Nice sax solo on a reeealllly old-looking instrument

Their performance didn't last very long, but it was enjoyable. We were about to leave for home when some people we ran into some friends from the DK House and chatted for a while. They started being solicited to come check out the English Speaking Society and somehow we got coerced to go along with them? I think the three of us were all pretty skeptical, since the last thing we came to Japan to do was speak English...much less join a club about it. The people there were all really cool though. It was almost all Japanese people, and they were saying how it's a good way to meet Japanese people, make friends, and then when you hang out together you speak Japanese and get better at that. They meet at lunchtime for an hour to work on English... Sensei did say to make friends with a Japanese person, promise an hour of English practice a day in exchange for Japanese the rest of the time, so maybe this is our ticket ;) It was definitely the easiest place we found to talk to Japanese people so far. All the people were really open and friendly and joked around easily. We'll see if there's time for that with the way clubs work out.

On the train ride home, we happened to be on the same train as Miranda from DK House! She joined us for our early dinner at Yoshinoya (cause they're having an awesome sale this week! And we didn't want to have to leave again to get dinner in this weather) which was her first time there. We also stopped by the arcade so Greg could indulge in a round of drum freaks or whatever. *sigh* that boy is gonna spend all his money on video games. Well... maybe 100 yen every few days on a video game, I guess that's not so bad, haha. I tried to play Pop N Music, but it wouldn't let me get past the enter-your-amusement-pass screen.

After a couple more stops at 7-11 and Shop 99 (where I probably bought too many chocolate snacks..) we were home! I tried to get myself to do something productive, but there still isn't much of that to do right now.. Although now that I'm done blogging, I guess there's still time to do something!

Placement Day

2008-04-07T05:33:00.001-07:00

WARNING: This post also has NO PHOTOS >_< There just wasn't anything I felt inclined to photograph today... sorry friends!

Today was the other big day: placement test results day! We left for Sophia around 12:30 and nervously made our way to the Liberal Arts office. This week, however, is club week! All the school clubs and circles are out advertising their clubs and trying to recruit members! It was super crowded and it took some effort to get through everyone. We decided to come back to look at all that later so we could make it to the advising sessions at 2:00 if we needed them, and boy did we need them.

The sannin all signed up for Intensive Japanese, which is 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, and we had been shooting for level 2 or 3 out of 3 in that section. Greg got level 2, Jen got level 3, and I got... JAPN 321 Advanced Japanese in the regular twice a week section?? That can't be right.. I didn't even test in the regular testing room! Something was amiss, so after some confusion on where I needed to go and who I needed to talk to, I ended up in line to speak with the adviser for that class.

Jeannette and Hunter both met with her before me vying for different spots than the ones they were assigned, but neither prevailed. I was getting pretty nervous at this point! One good aspect was that while standing in line, I met a nice girl named Tuuli (I think that was the spelling I saw on her envelope) who was from Estonia but had done her entire undergrad in Japan! She was having a tough time because she had missed the placement test, and by the time Sophia could get things together to give her a make-up exam and get her placed, it was going to be awfully late after classes would have already started. I hope everything worked out for her!

I entered the office with my best "Shitsureishimasu" (standard phrase when you enter a professor's office, basically means "sorry to bother you") and proceeded to tell her how I had taken the intensive test, but been placed in the regular classes, and in the advanced class of those. She looked at the results and said that I had placed higher than the intensive classes, so that's why I was in the advanced class. This might not have troubled me so much if the advanced class was more than four credits and more than twice a week. I told her that I didn't think this could be right, or that this class was right for me because I had mostly guessed on the intermediate portion of the exam and I didn't feel like I was at that level. She kept insisting that my scores were quite good, and that since that's what the test had said, I should take that level, so I asked her what textbook the course used. She got it out for me and I looked through it for a bit. I think I found a total of 10 English words in a whole chapter.... this definitely was not the class for me! Meanwhile, I noticed that she was staring at my folder inquisitively, and mumbling something to herself. After a few moments she realized that the class on printed on my sheet did not actually match up with the results of my test!! Instead, she decided I should have been placed in Japanese 212, which would let me be in the Intensive equivalent, Intensive level 3, so she sent me off to that professor's office.

At that point I was starting to get pretty stressed about the whole thing. Ending up in a regular class for 212 was just about as bad as being in the advanced class. I had been counting on being in intensive for the learning experience and the credits. I came to Japan to learn Japanese, not to take more culture classes that I can take at UVa. I kept hearing from people in the hallway that they were being turned down from the intensive classes because they were full, and all I could think was that the professor was going to tell me that yeah, there had been a mistake, but the classes were full now so too bad. I tried to just pray that things would work out and God would work things out the way he wanted and that I'd be able to accept it.

Luckily, the professor was very nice and seemed to understand fairly quickly what had happened and that there had been a mistake. It was a great feeling to hear her say she would put me into the intensive class ( "shimashou" has never sounded so sweet!)!! She didn't let me out, however, without a good talking to about how it might be pretty difficult in level 3, and how I didn't know very many kanji and those are important, and how study time is important. I tried to seem as eager and studious as I could with my "hai"s and "mochiron"s and she eventually let me leave on the promise that she would get me into Intensive 280! Hooray!!

After that mess was all over, we met up with Greg and Hunter in the midst of the club parade and went on to lunch at our favorite local vending machine restaurant where I enjoyed another katsudon. I had been waiting for that thing all afternoon XD Back at Sophia, Greg left us for his meeting with the baseball club, and the remaining three of us went to find a copier to make some copies for Uzuki-san. We also checked out the bookstore while we were there, which really made me want to know enough Japanese to read a novel because they had so many of them! We also turned in our certificates of registered matters to the foreign liaison office, and I got to speak a little bit of good Japanese =)

So far, I haven't really felt the excitement I thought I would about being in Japan and surrounded by the Japanese language. The fun of learning Japanese was the reason I became a Japanese major, and before when I would think about being in Japan, I would get really excited thinking about being surrounded by the language and learning so much. I think the reason I've felt so mellow still is maybe that it's sooo easy to get by in Japan without knowing much Japanese at all. (I know my professors don't want to hear this, haha). We've needed to know the basics+ for some of the more complicated things like alien registration and JJ Club 100 (haha), but for example.. our guesthouse manager, Mr. Uzuki, speaks pretty good English and all the information about the place is in English as well. At the store, you don't really need to know much Japanese, the train system is pretty straightforward, if you just know some katakana you can read a LOT of signs and labels in Japan, and a lot of times workers and other people know at least a little English to help you out.

I think another reason for my lack of excitement has been my lack of schedule. We've been doing a lot of running around, doing this and that, seeing the sights and taking care of school stuff, so whenever we have some downtime, I've pretty much been vegging out. After thinking about classes all day and walking through that bookstore and seeing textbooks, however, I started to get that little feeling of excitement inside again. I wanted to just buy all the study books and kanji books they had and set aside a time each day to work in them. I can never just make myself a schedule arbitrarily though, especially with our daily plans being so erratic all the time, so I'm very very excited and anxious for school to start so I know where I'm going, when I'm going there, when I'm getting up each day, and when I should go to bed. Also, having study goals will be a huge plus for me. As long as I have a clear and concrete goal to strive for, I can work work work towards it!

That's about all that happened today, as the rest of the evening has been spent doing said vegging out. I think tomorrow a few of us are going back to campus for various reasons. Hunter has a friend who is performing in the gospel choir in the morning, which is something I'd be interested in seeing, and Greg wants to see the big band play tomorrow, which is something else I'd be interested in seeing. For me, since I was busy taking care of my placement mishap, I didn't really get a chance to go through the clubs and circles or get many fliers, so I'd like to do that tomorrow. Here's hoping I find the perfect beginner-friendly hip-hop club! =) The club advertising thing also has proven to be a great place to speak Japanese and (sometimes amazing, sometimes HILARIOUS) English with the Japanese students, so I'm looking forward to it!

Game Day

2008-04-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This post has NO PHOTOS =( It might be kind of boring.

Sunday was a pretty relaxing and laid back day for the most part! I ate lunch on my own since I had sushi from the Yaoko market that I needed to eat (you can read about the rest of yesterday's eating in the post before this one..) Then I blogged for a while before our evening adventure. It was time once again to attempt the journey to the JJ Club 100!

We met up at 5, this time joined by Jen and the somewhat unwilling (read: tricked into going) Jeannette! When we arrived at Minami-Urawa station, we were promptly lead out the wrong exit again by an anonymous member of the group. After some thinking and checking, we went back in and out the other side to a new and unfamiliar square. I lead us according to the streets and landmarks I had written on the map, and eventually we got there without any trouble!

Sada had warned me in her comment on my last JJ Club blog post that the signup process for the card was kind of difficult, but totally worth it. Luckily, the staff at JJ Club were suuupper nice and understanding of the fact that we were foreigners. The first thing the guy asked was, Is Japanese ok? Are you all ok with Japanese? A little? Haha, ok, is this your first time here? (In Japanese of course). Then they got us started on the computers to set up our accounts. It wasn't too difficult of a process since we knew most of the vital kanji on each page, but it was pretty intensive as far as the information they wanted. There was even a part asking how you got there and how you heard about the place.

Next thing we knew, we were JJ Club 100 members! The cards cost about 300 yen, and the way the place works is this: They print out another little card with your name on it and the time you checked in. When you check out, they charge you 100 yen for every 15 minutes you were there. Now let me tell you why this was an amaaaziiing deal unlike any other. There were two floors of awesome entertainment! There were video games on both floors, including a bunch of rhythm games we love like the drum master game, Taiko master, and some new ones we hadn't tried like Pop N Music, a piano game, and Beatmania (although the speakers were a little too quiet). These were the kinds of games we had been paying 100 yen or more just to play one time in a regular arcade!!

Aside from the video games, they had a variety of other activities you could do for free, including ping pong, indoor soccer, pool, batting cage, fishing (?!), manga to read, videos to watch, internet, and karaoke! This place was just full of fun things to do and for a super cheap price. We all played a lot of games first, especially the rhythm games! I liked the piano game a lot, although it wasn't much like real piano. Jen and I had a fun round where our song was playing about 5 times as loud as all the rest of the songs with a really obnoxious instrument, and we were missing most of the notes. =)

After a while, we decided to do karaoke! This was my first time doing proper karaoke, so it was a neat experience for me. I bombed a couple attempts at Japanese songs I thought I knew (it's amazing how much you don't actually know once there's no vocal track and kanji is thrown into the mix..), but luckily there were plenty of fun English songs for us to choose from as well. Greg and Hunter were hilariously theatrical and entertaining the whole time, and us girls just got to sing when we wanted =) We wondered if any Japanese people had *ever* sang the songs we were choosing (Gunther, The Darkness, West Side Story, etc..).

Before we knew it, it was 10:30 and we had to head out before we missed the last train and ended up stuck in Minami Urawa! X( I think our total came to something just over $20 for four hours of entertainment, and at the end they have a little lottery thing you get to play and maybe win something. We all got the consolation prizes, which I think is 60 minutes free under some conditions. One of the staff challenged Greg to a game of pool next time we go there, even after Greg almost destroyed the guy's hand with his signature inappropriately powerful high five.

For late-nite dinner, we hit up the same vending machine noodle place in the Minami-Urawa station as we did last time, and I enjoyed my Tsukimi udon for the second night in a row! That stuff is pretty darn good.

All in all there was fun had by all, and I'm sure we'll be going back there at some point for more cheap and fun times.

Fancy Cake Day

2008-04-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

So after I made myself get up around 1:00 on Saturday, it was pretty slow-goings. I managed to get myself to the shower and back, and then finally got put together enough to make a trip to the Yaoko supermarket to get some lunch and groceries. Everyone else was still asleep or had already eaten, so I was going to be going by myself, but I actually met Jen coming in right at the door! So we had a nice walk there together (where I successfully lead the way to Yaoko for the first time, as per Hunter's previous instruction) and I bought a ton of snacks...

There's something I had begun to notice about my eating habits over the past year or so, and that is that once I start to feel the slightest bit full, unless I'm eating something truly amazing, I stop eating. I don't really like the feeling of being full, it makes me feel a little ill, and I'm usually tired of what I'm eating by that point. At UVa, I'll find myself buying snacks, only for them to sit in my room for weeks because I'm never really in the mood to eat them.

All of these former truths seem to no longer be the case. While my first batch of groceries lasted me a pretty long time, they've started disappearing quicker and quicker. Yesterday, I ate 16 tuna sushi rolls, followed by half a bag of corn/choco snacks that I've become addicted to despite their unusual taste combination, a small package of pocky, and a small bag of Cheetos. For some reason I just can't stop eating! I've lost that full feeling somehow... I wonder if Japan has finally destroyed the metabolism of my youth which made it possible to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, because my appetite was fairly conservative. Nick suggests that it's just because I'm walking about 20 times as much as I was before I came here, so I'm actually more hungry than I think I am to begin with... I sure hope so, because I've gotten mighty used to not ever having to think about how much I eat of what.

So after I bought all my groceries, which I would apparently consume half of within the next 24 hours, and headed home, I was pretty much too worn out again from lack of sleep to do much of anything. I decided to just lay back down and relax for a while. Four hours later, I'm awakened by my new cell phone buzzing on my floor. I checked it, and Greg had messaged asking if I had eaten. Let me tell you another thing about me pertaining to food. I'm not sure if this is how it goes for everyone else too, but if I take any kind of nap right after I eat, I feel absolutely miserable when I wake up. I'm exhausted and groggy, but mostly my whole insides just feel bleh. I think it's because I'm taking gravity out of the digestion process by laying down. Anyway, I felt awful and not hungry at all, but I knew I should eat because it was 8:00pm and I wouldn't get another chance.

The guys were in the mood for train station udon, so we made the journey to Nishikawaguchi Station, where we discovered that there are several floors of restaurants we were unaware of. The real restaurants were too pricey for us, but we found a great vending machine udon shop on the 2nd floor! I got the Tsukimi (moon viewing festival style) udon. Time for more explanations... Udon noodles are thick wheat noodles, I can't really think of pasta equivalent in America. They're an enjoyable size and consistency and easy to eat! I had been hesitant to try any so far because I had first tried them at Sakura in Charlottesville and thought they were no good (they kind of tasted like wood...), but of course, Japan's udon is delicious. It's my new favorite noodle!

Now let me explain something about Japanese food and eggs. The Tsukimi udon is udon with an egg on top. A lot of Japanese dishes feature eggs as a standard part of or an extra bonus to the dish. While we generally think of eggs as a breakfast food, or to be included in the making of something only (like in cookies or cakes), it's not uncommon at all to see a regular version of a dish here, and then a slightly more expensive one that includes an egg. I first saw this on the first night of being here, when Dan got an egg on the side with his gyuudon at Yoshinoya. Usually you mix it in with whatever you're eating, often rice or noodles.

Here's the part that's going to make the parents unhappy.. a lot of times the egg is raw. That's right, raw eggs! Oh no!! In some dishes like katsudon and curry, the egg will be sort of scrambled I guess and placed on top, but if you order an egg on the side, or something with egg on top, there's a good chance it's going to be raw. Now normally, I would never dream of eating a raw egg with anything except a skillet. But for some reason, I trust the Japanese food methods, and for some reason egg just makes everything richer and more flavorful. It's awesome in rice, and adds a lot to the broth of a noodle dish. Also, it's fun to watch because your clear raw egg whites will start to turn white as they cook in the hot soup broth =) If I think about the raw egg thing too long, it starts to weird me out a little bit... but when it's sitting on top of a bowl or rice or udon, it just seems so natural, like "Of course there's an egg in here! Awesome!"

After that, I decided I would give in to some indulgance after such a long day the day before (and since I had money to spare by not buying any drinks the night before...) and buy a lovely cake from the lovely dessert store in the station. It was called Ginza Cozy Corner (that must be where home-base is, because we're not really anywhere near Ginza). There were a lot of cute strawberry cakes and cheesecakes, but I was in the mood for chocolate of course. I paid a fairly reasonable 302 yen for a small slice of chocolate mousse cake, which the cake worker lady put in a small box, whose make and model was apparently determined by asking me how I would be taking it home (walking) and how far away my home was (about 10 minutes). Some might consider this purchase an extravagance, or unnecessary, but I knew at least one person wouldn't think that way, as long as I provided detailed photos and taste descriptions. This one's for you mommy! =)The bag

The box in the bag, it says I have to eat it today! Looks like I have no choice...

The setup inside the box. The cake wedge stuck in the corner, with a cardboard square housing a napkin to take up the rest of the space in the box. They had so many cake pieces this shape, I would've thought they would have a smaller, more suitable box for just one slice. Then again, maybe only poor foreigners just buy one piece. The way the perforation came down the front was kind of cute and convenient for getting the cake out safely. There were no utensils in the box, which was disappointing. I ended up borrowing one from the kitchen, which I still need to return....

It had a fancy chocolate/caramel (I'm assuming) triangle piece stuck in the top. It tasted alright!

There was a long plastic rectangle wrapped around the edge to keep it safe! It peeled off pretty easily and didn't take too much cake parts with it.

Ta-da! It's my cake. It came on a cute little doily thing with ribbons printed on it. The darker layers are cake and the light layers are mousse.

Notice the layer second from bottom that looks a little different. It was sort of a chocolate and crunchy stuff mixture, a la Nestle's Crunch Bar (but it was still fairly soft). That part was super delicious!

It took me a while to realize what was going on with the top part here. I guess I just assumed it was a magical thin layer of darker chocolate mousse, but once I inhaled some cocoa powder/knocked some cocoa powder off on my desk, I realized it was just the regular mousse, shaped into a cool design and then covered in cocoa powder. It made the mousse more chocolaty, which is always good, but it was a little overpowering if you tasted it right off the bat. And it was a little too easy to inhale/knock off on your desk.

I'm curious as to how they made the design on the top with the mousse.. maybe o

The crunchy part revealed. It was delicious, but it was so much tougher to cut than the rest of the cake that I would pretty much destroy the next part of the cake when trying to cut it.

Overall, it was a delicious cake and I enjoyed it very much! I felt very gourmet and chic, and with prices the way they are in Japan/Tokyo, I didn't feel too bad about paying $3 for it. (I kept trying to compare it to Dairy Queen Blizzard prices..) Maybe I'll be able to find a more local-ish place that's not at the station where I can get delicious desserts for cheaper...

After enjoying my delicious cake, and staying up for a while longer because I had slept too much before, I hit the hay after a long and exhausting 48 hours. I hope you enjoyed this post! Since there weren't as many events, I was able to go more into detail about my thoughts and aspects of Japanese culture! That's probably the direction these posts will take once school gets started and I'm in more of a routine! I kind of like it better that way =) Sorry they're a little behind, by the way! There was just toooo much exhaustion to stay on schedule, but I should catch up today!

Teresa's Birthday Day

2008-04-05T04:12:00.000-07:00

Friday was Teresa's birthday! So of course that meant our day was about to be an adventure, haha.. I don't think we knew what we were in for =)

Sakura time is almost over!

Greg's already frustrated because the wind won't blow enough to give him a cool photo in the scattering sakura petals.

We started out the morning by leading our usual team and a few new friends from DK House over to get their gaijin cards and see if we could get our certificates of registration for Sophia and cell phones. We took the fast route we were supposed to take the first time when we weren't in search of post offices, and got there quite a bit quicker with some nice scenery along the way. We went to the Itoyokado mall (the big one where we got our bedding) so the other DK friends could get photos taken at the photo booth for their gaijin card apps. They had to meet some people later on, so we told them the directions to the municipal office from there, while we went in to get some lunch at the food court! I got curry again, haha, and a mitsuya cider (basically ramune in a can) which was not the best combination. Then the guys decided to split a crepe and bubble tea from the CREPE PLACE IN THE MALL (eek! XD ) while we browsed the rest of the mall for a while.

Everybody wanted a photo on this whale we found.

The original Surf Ninja.Our new friend Aaron, with totally awesome hair.

What the heck is this weird statue supposed to be??

On the way to the municipal office, we all bought bananas from a street vendor for super cheap! =D

At the municipal office, we saw that our friends were still there, waiting for their certificates. We helped Jeannette and Hunter get started with their card applications and then our nice friend lady at the desk helped show us that the yellow forms she had shown us (but not given us) last time were the applications for the certificates of registered matters. Whoops! We thought she was saying, get one of these at the cell phone place/etc. and fill it out, then you can get a cell phone. We filled those out, the other two joined us on the waiting couch, and before we knew it we had scored some free (200 yen a copy) tickets to cell phonesville!

We left DK House again at 4:00 to head out to Shinjuku to try and get said phones before meeting up with Teresa for her birthday. I was planning on continuing my AU adventure in Nishi Kawaguchi, but since everyone else was going Softbank and seemed to be getting a good deal, and seemed to be learning a lot more about their plans than I was, and would all be available for information in the end, and would probably be free to call in the same network, I decided to go Softbank as well. I had to pay for the phone (instead of exchanging Sada's old phone for a new one for free, which is what I *think* au was going to let me do?), but I think it will be totally worth it not to be on my own and doing something different than everyone else again. We ended up actually signing up for plans instead of getting prepaid phones, because they told us it would cost us less in the end because it's cheaper for calls (I think) and there is no cancellation fee. I got a pretty green phone that matches my laptop! Hunter was getting green as well, but unfortunately (note to future Japan study abroad kids!) his Visa check card wouldn't work at Softbank! He couldn't pay cash because you had to set it up to bill you for the plan subscription. The Visa check card is supposed to be everywhere you want to be, but Hunter wanted to be buying a cell phone at Softbank. Where was Visa check card? We may never know...
Our cell phones, all lined up.

After much waiting and trading of numbers, we all met up with Teresa and Mia outside the Softbank place to wait for Oh-san to arrive at 8. Teresa got solicited by a guy promising some great deal at a bar or restaurant or something for about a half an hour before she finally sent him on his way per Dan's advice. Once Oh-san got there, we wandered the streets of Shinjuku for a dinner place until Teresa decided on a place whose specialty was beef dishes! I got a hamburger steak which was quite flavorful, and a bowl of rice to make up the difference in filling-ness. Hunter, my only table-mate, got the curry with cheese! I had never seen curry with cheese before, it was quite interesting. I didn't try any, but Greg requested to smell it, at which point he could not conclude exactly what it smelled like, but he did say it smelled like "a good memory," which I thought was a very pleasant thing to say.After the cheese was mixed in, it totally looked like when you make rice krispie treats. Maybe that's the good memory Greg was thinking of.

My meal came with a hat.

After dinner, it was time to search the streets again for a place to drink, as it was Teresa's 21st birthday (although the drinking age in Japan is only 20). At some point in all this, Hunter was approached by a strange-looking older man who talked him up for quite a while and gave him a card with an address on it... they looked like they were having a nice conversation, but when we asked Hunter what the guy had been talking about, he said "I have NO idea!" It was a much longer conversation than any of us approved of, haha, but I don't think he had much of a way out...

We eventually decided on a place called Kachi Kachi Yama that seemed to be offering good deals, and was a pretty nice-looking place once we got inside. Everyone (minus me) got shots first, and toasted to Teresa! I made out pretty good by only dropping about 450 yen on a beautiful dessert the whole night! It was labeled as a "Pine (pineapple) Choco Brownie Parfait", but here's what was on the plate:

A scoop of vanilla ice cream, a scoop of raspberry, a tall wafery thing, some strawberry and lime drizzly stuff, some chocolate sauce, a cherry (with a pit??), whipped cream, 4 small frozen pineapple chunks, and four tiny brownie pieces. Hahahha. It was delicious though.

We finished up there something between 1 and 2 am I think, though when the bill came nobody was too happy about it. They had charged ridiculous amounts for things like, service charge, limes, and random other stuff that made the total way off from what everyone had chipped in for their individual drinks. They finally got it worked out though, and resolved never to return to the Kachi Kachi Yama.

The fellows. The prompt was "Look tough." Notice the varied interpretations.

The ladies

Now, at this point it's important to be aware that the Japanese train system closes at midnight and doesn't open up again until 5am. This means we were pretty much stuck in Shinjuku. We had chosen to go ahead and stay out all night because another thing Teresa wanted to do for her birthday was go see this place called Tsukiji, where there is a fish market where all the Japanese chefs and stuff get their fresh fresh ultra fresh fish right out of the ocean early in the morning. So we needed to find a place to hang out for the next three or four hours. We wandered around looking for a cheap karaoke place, but everything off the main street was too expensive, and everything on the back streets was closed.

At one point, we were talking about trying to find the Shinjuku Denny's instead, and suddenly we hear a slurred voice say "I want some Denny's!" I think this guy was a foreigner because his English was fluent and he had kind of a slang-ish accent to it. He chatted drunkenly with us about Denny's for a while, hilariously, until his businessman friend (we think, or maybe just a random upstanding gentleman) moved him along.

By the time we found a reasonable place for karaoke, we decided we had already spent too much money that night and nobody really felt like singing anyway, so we'd be better off to find a cafe or something. After a brief stint at the "24-hour" McDonalds (which closed at 3am for cleaning), we ended up at a real cafe for the next few hours. Time passed pretty slowly and we were all starting to feel the lateness by then.

Once it got to be 5am, we headed for the metro line to Tsukiji. On our way, we met up with our Denny's friend again, who recognized us of course! He still seemed pretty incapacitated and chatted with Greg all the way to the station, tried to talk us into going to Denny's or karaoke or something instead of going home, and christened Greg as his homeboy a few times. We said goodbye and got on the train to Tsukiji.

By the time we got there, the sun was coming up. That was a really weird feeling. We made our way to the fish market, which was unbelievably busy and bustling with all the people working there. There were small truck things driving everywhere, weaving in and out so fast, and then inside the actual warehouse where all the fish-preparation takes place, it was all super close and cramped with everyone moving and carrying things around. We saw a lot of cool things, like really big fish and crazy sea creatures sitting in boxes, but for the most part, for me, I just felt an overwhelming feeling like we didn't belong there. I think it's a pretty famous tourist spot, and there were people with cameras and tour groups going through, but I still just felt like every time I turned around I was in somebody's way and keeping them from doing their job. One of my very least favorite feelings is the feeling that I'm inconveniencing someone, and in this case it was inconveniencing them just for our entertainment, we had no business there, so I felt a little uncomfortable for the whole experience.Now does this really look like someplace we need to be?

These guys put the tako in takoyaki.

Huge fish!!

We made it through the entire market and out without getting hit by any trucks (barely), and made our way back to the station. We thought if we took the metro back to Yotsuya, we could just use our school route for free to get home. Well, we got to Yotsuya and on our platform and we waited, and waited, and waited. We waited about 45 minutes before we decided that train wasn't coming, and tried another platform. That train wasn't going to show up either, so we went up to the gates, and there was a guy telling incoming people that the line was down! >_I'm not sure what Greg said, but it looks like he's about to get smacked..

Nearly empty platform, this should've been our first sign that the trains weren't running.

We were all about to reach critical mass..

We could see the school from our platform, I thought that was pretty neat.

We were all just total zombies by the time we got back at around 8:45am. I think everyone pretty much just crashed for a while (except Jen, who had DK House orientation), and I slept til about 1:00pm. Unfortunately, between the bar and the cafe, our clothes and purses were reeking with cigarette smoke, so I know Jen and I at least had to put a lot of stuff out on the balcony, while Greg, who is balcony-impaired, quarantined his off in the lower part of his room right in front of the door. I think the sakura air got most of the smell out of my new coat, but I might still need to leave my purse out there today.

I'll post again later on to cover what happened for the rest of the day after I woke up at 1:00!

Testing Day

2008-04-03T05:34:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This post is TOO LONG
WARNING: This post has TOO MANY PHOTOS.
***Read at your own time/interest risk.***

Today was the big day: Japanese Language Placement Tests! The day we had all been dreading/failing to prepare for!

I got up a little earlier this morning to give myself time to eat breakfast (delicious delicious rolls with raisins in them, and my pureed orange drink) and study some more. I skimmed over all the grammar points we had learned in 301, and I'm glad I did, otherwise I wouldn't have remembered most of them for the test I think!

We met up at 8:30 with a few other DK House students and made our commute to Sophia. Today was the most packed train of all packed trains. The trip from Ikebukurou to Shinjuku is just the longest trip between stops ever, and it happened to be the most packed. I don't know what about my stature just says "Hey, I could easily be squashed to make more room in this train," but people sure do jump on the opportunity. My comfort level with Greg was pushed to new limits today as I was basically crushed between his backpack and another commuter. We all got there in one piece though, and without too much time to spare (after having to let some too-packed trains go by).

I love all three of these photos, which is your favorite? =)

The test was divided into three sections. They told us that if we felt we were beginners, we could just do the first section. Intermediate, do sections one and two, and advanced do two and three. Well, we had studied Japanese for three years, and used a book titled "An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese" hadn't we? So we all thought sure, intermediate, most definitely. At first, our choice seemed logical, as section one was super easy and we all got through it quite easily, thinking "Well I know way more than this! Intermediate must be the stuff we started learning in 301!" WRONG. There was a huuuuge difficulty jump between sections one and two, to the point where we went from knowing basically all the kanji to almost NONE of the kanji. The grammar was hit or miss, and the reading section was absolutely hopeless. I think we all still did the essay section for intermediate level, but it was just "describe what's hard about studying a foreign language," which isn't' too far off from a lot of the prompts we've already had to write.

Two hours went by pretty fast with that test, but we were all glad to have it done. The fact that intermediate and beginner were sooo far apart actually made us kind of happy because we knew that no matter how much we might have studied over break, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference on that test! (unless we studied only new materials and basically nothing from 301). Hooray for the test being over!

Afterwards we met up with Dan and he led us to the cafeteria in building 2 (where all the important places seem to be). Before you go in, there are the classic pay some money, press a button, get a ticket vending machines outside for you to choose your meal. Everyone else opted for ramen or udon, but as I previously stated, I'm much more of a rice girl myself, so I scored some amaazziing curry for 280 yen. I was really pleased that it tasted so good and was so cheap, and I got so much of it! That will definitely be my go-to meal. There were also some a la carte items inside the cafeteria for a little something extra, but I did not indulge. (Another plus of the cafteria: water cooler!)

Per Dan's suggestion, we ate on the "terrace" of the cafeteria, aka the roof! It wasn't terribly high up, but it was a beautiful view of Shinjuku and the weather was wonderful! It was a really nice lunch and I enjoyed it a lot! I got some amusing photos as well =) (And another plus side of getting a rice-based meal is not having to balance a bowl of soup going up and down the stairs! Remember that one, kids)It was a lot brighter and prettier out than this photo shows...

Our new DK House friends, Miranda and Julie (she's from France!)

Next we went to the media center to get our computer passwords in case we ever want to use the university computer lab, which I'm sure we will at some point. We had an amusing situation where about 6 of us were standing around a copier trying to get it to work with our money and everything before a nice Japanese student finally told us it was probably broken. Stupid gaijin.

Finally we were off for the second big accomplishment of the day: commuter passes! The way the commuter pass works is as such: We pay something to the tune of $200 in exchange for unlimited use of our route from home to school for the next three months (plus a Suica card account, which we think you can put money on as credit to quickly get through any station without having to buy a ticket, and maybe for use at train station shops and such). Since it costs about 290 yen (about $2.80) to get from here to there, times two for the return home, these passes will definitely pay for themselves in the end. A very nice and patient train office worker helped all of us get our cards figured out and purchased (although I was silly and thought I didn't have enough cash on me to pay for the card, so he canceled everything we had just put in the computer at the same time Hunter was offering to lend me 20,000 yen, while I could've used, and did end up using, my Visa card to pay... I'm sorry you had to do the whole thing twice for me, nice train office man!). We were all super psyched when they worked just fine later on!Suica?

Suica!!

Jeezum, Greg...

Suica!

Greg thought this would make a great photo until he almost died trying to ride the children's playground equipment.

Hunter asked this young girl for directions, but unfortunately she was too young/composed entirely of stone to help us.

We still had some time to kill before the scheduled welcoming party, so Teresa led us down to the National Gardens (I think was what it was called?) to check out the lovely cherry blossoms there. Greg and I got a little sidetracked by two Office Depots on the way, trying to find just cheap regular mechanical pencils in bulk (since we both prefer them to wooden pencils and we're both constantly losing them), but all we are able to find in this ridiculous country are single mechanical pencils for no less than 99 yen. We finally broke down and bought one of those each and went on our way.These statues weren't very pretty, so I took a picture of their reflection in this pool instead.

We've only seen a few ladies in kimonos so far, but they were beautiful!

Check out this crazy tulip! It wasn't anywhere near the gardens, but it *is* a flower.

The gardens were super beautiful and I got a lot of nice photos and video =) I was happy because I was wearing a cute white shirt with a pink sweater (my only thing close to a long-sleeved shirt left clean), so I kind of looked dressed for the occasion! We got through there pretty quick and headed back via a back street to explore new territory and got a few more amusing photos:

Greg infiltrating the castle.

I was super amused by the completely unimpressed look on this guy's face. I think Greg put it best with the caption "You want some of this? Cause I mean... I'm done with it."

Greg also finally got me to try his beloved Real Gold drink, which I concluded tastes like gummy bears. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Then it was party time! There was food (hooray!) including delicious cream puffs (extra hooray!) and the director guy started off the party with a kanpai (toast!). The rest was only slightly awkward as we had to make an effort to meet some new people, and try and meet Japanese people specifically. My group(Greg and Hunter) only met girls (surprise), but they seemed to be the majority anyway. They were all nice and some of them spoke reeally good English and understood us perfectly. There was a fun moment when Hunter was trying to explain swing dance to some of the girls and needed a partner for a demo, and I happen to have taken some swing dance lessons in my time, so I volunteered! I was surprised how much I could do just by knowing the timing of the basic steps, and to just pay attention to the male lead. I always liked swing dancing, so that was a little moment of fun, and those girls were chou impressed!Before the party. Don't we look like a nice bunch of kids?

We look like a nice bunch of kids from this angle too!

After that it was back home to DK House. Well, almost. We were about to hop on to the first totally packed train of the evening when a BABY cut Greg and I off!! Well, a lady pushing a stroller with a baby inside. Of course we couldn't go in front of the baby, so we let them on first. Unfortunately, Greg's backpack made it pretty much impossible for the train doors to shut, so we decided to wait for the next one.

After several more long, and significantly packed trains, we finally made it home! Hunter greeted us with the good news that there were still some sakura festival vendors set up outside, so we got dinner from there and met him and Jeannette in the kitchen/common room. I got Tsukune, which is basically meatballs on a skewer, but they're made of chicken instead of beef, and in a special sauce. I think I tried to make them once on my own at home but I did a terrible job and they were no good at all and kind of made me sick. These were much better and made a nice dinner. It was interesting to see the room filled with all the new DK House residents. An channel with anime was playing the whole time on the TV which was kind of cool. We made fun of a Pokemon episode that was on and then got to talking about Sailor Moon, at which point Greg made the mistake of agreeing to rent and watch the entire 200 episodes of Sailor Moon with me over the semester. You said it, buddy. Get ready for some Moon Tiara Action.Not actually a photo of Greg. That was just a ruse so that I could take a photo of the older guy and the young kid playing some Duel Masters or something card game. The older guy was pretty into it for the kid I think and it was super cute.

Back in my room, I've been cleaning! I managed to scrape together enough 100 yen coins on my own and from Jeannette (thanks Jeannette!) to do two loads of laundry. I would only have two to begin with, but I failed to wash my new jeans before leaving the US, and they've been rubbing blue dye off on eevverrything I own, haha.. so I made sure to wash them with only dark and blue items. Whites will just have to wait until I've made some more change. Right now everything is just hanging around on various surfaces of my room since I have no intentions of paying for or using the dryers while I'm here unless necessary (especially once it warms up and I can open the windows for more drying capabilities). I also used the adorable and user-friendly communal vacuums to clean up my floor a bit so I feel more comfortable walking barefoot on it.

Tomorrow is DK House orientation which should be...interesting? I feel like we already know everything we need to know about this place, so I'm not sure what Mr. Uzuki intends to orient us with tomorrow morning, but I guess we'll find out soon enough. I'm pretty worn out from the day, and this post got extremely long, so I'll call it quits here =)

Orientation Day

2008-04-02T05:18:00.001-07:00

I'm taking a study break to blog!! Today was orientation at Sophia! We all got up and ready this morning and left together at 11:00 for Yotsuya (the area where our school is). It takes two transfers and about an hour to get there, but then it's the first thing you see right out of the station! It's a nice, small campus in the middle of a pretty busy-seeming business area.It's my school! The first thing you see right out of the train station.

A landmark bell tower on campus (the spire with the cross on top from the skyline), from the bottom inside looking up.

After we went and checked out the building where orientation would be held, we started search of somewhere to eat lunch. Everything was preeettty pricey because of the area, but then we found a totally awesome place that does the ticket thing like at the train station, and they had a great variety of stuff, AND a water cooler (haha, it's definitely become a selling-point for us). Almost all of us got the katsudon, which is pork cutlet on rice (with a bunch of egg in it!) and it was reeally good! I think if we get sick of the cafeteria, we'll definitely end up at this place again. My favorite part was the secretive little shelf under the counter where you could stash purses and coats and stuff to keep it off the floor XD
We went back to Sophia, meeting some new people along the way, and sat outside the orientation building until it was time for my orientation at 2:00. I was just so relieved to get up there and have my name on the list of students! After everything so far, that was a big moment for me =) We received a lot of information and useful materials which was also a WONDERFUL feeling after being in the dark about so much of this for so long. That feeling reminded me of some Proverbs I had read last night where Solomon talks for a long time about how knowledge is the number one thing you should always pursue, and understanding will set you free, add years to your life, and all sorts of other wonderful things.

The actual orientation part just consisted of representatives from the various departments and offices coming to tell us how things work around campus, where and how to get help, and other useful things we needed to know. I was kind of annoyed the whole time because so many of the students were being so loud and rude, and wouldn't get quiet when someone was trying to speak up front. It kind of just felt like high school again. I've only seen that sort of thing happen at UVa a few times, and it's usually only with a teacher that you know the students don't respect to begin with, but you'd think that just being a guest in a foreign country and at a foreign campus would be all it would take to be respectable towards someone speaking to you.

Orientation seemed like it didn't last very long, and when it was done they were just sort of like "Well...that's it!" I knew that the rest of the gang were scheduled to have orientation until 4:30 and then maybe something else after that that I wasn't sure about, so I went down to the place we decided to meet afterwards (well... indoors instead of outdoors, it got so cold!!). I studied some kanji for a while and practiced writing a couple paragraphs to the made-up prompt of "Why do you study Japanese?" since we learned that there will be a composition portion of the placement test tomorrow. For the rest of the time I mostly just watched everyone coming and going. There were so many students and they all seemed like they were busy going to clubs and sports and things. Throughout the day we saw the cheerleading team (the "Lollipoppers" as they call themselves, hahah...), men's volleyball, women's lacrosse, I think I saw women's soccer too, and a lot of other sports groups that didn't have any insignia to say what they were. I also saw a looot of people carrying instruments back and forth, mostly guitars, and at one point a lot of people came through my building carrying string instruments. We also saw a lot of trombones for some reason.

A few hours later, the rest of the group had gotten done with their orientation and we went on our way. They had met a few new people, but I didn't really catch their names or anything about them. After some train station confusion and another mannin densha or two, we made it back to the DK House! Now Jen and Greg are out with Jen's host family from her previous stay in Japan and the rest of us are studying furiously for the placement test tomorrow! I found a really great site for studying my kanji (my very weakest point in Japanese, I believe!) at renshuu.org, and I'm actually feeling quite studious tonight and getting a lot done. I put on some Keane to study to since it really fits the sort of mood I'm in today. It's hard to explain, but Keane lyrics always kind of put it right out there for me.

I'm a little worried about taking the placement tests and dealing with the results. They strongly encourage us to stick with the level that the placement test comes up with, even though we may end up placing lower than we'd hoped since we've had such a long break from studying Japanese. It's in my nature to not deal well with feeling like I'm performing or working at a level lower than my highest potential, but I tend not to do anything proactive to prevent it (in other words, I didn't study a bit over the past three months). I'm feeling surprisingly acceptive of whatever the results are, just because I know that no matter what, in the end, my learning is up to how much I personally choose to study and work and not what level I'm in, and that no matter what, I'm going to get the same amount of credits for my major. Hopefully I can keep that attitude and be constructive instead of feeling down about it and making a bad decision or working myself too hard in a bad way, or just getting depressed and not getting anything done at all (which has been known to happen).

Having said all that, I'd at least like to get what I *know* that I know (all grammar, plus pre 301 kanji, 301 kanji is absolutely hopeless at this point since I didn't really know it when I was in the class) reviewed and in my head again as much as possible before the test. And since we're leaving at 8:30am and it's already almost 10:00pm, I had better get back to work =) Photos of today (I think there's like...2..) to be added later!

"Get wisdom, get understanding;
do not forget my words or swerve from them.

Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you;
love her, and she will watch over you.

Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom.
Though it cost you all you have, get understanding.

Esteem her, and she will exalt you;
embrace her, and she will honor you.

She will set a garland of grace on your head
and present you with a crown of splendor."

Proverbs 4: 5-9

Study Day?

2008-04-01T16:29:00.000-07:00

First of all, I changed my settings on the blog so anyone and everyone should be able to comment now.... so please comment! Hehe. It's always fun to hear what everyone thinks when they read your blog =) Thanks for all the comments so far!

Another announcement: Greg has uploaded the first of our podcasts, so head on over to his blog and check it out! It was recorded on our plane flight, so please excuse how utterly bored we sound, haha.

Yesterday was pretty laid back, and that was nice. We were expecting Jeannette to arrive in Japan at around 3:00pm, so we didn't make any big plans (and I think we were about big-planned out). Sometime around noon, Hunter was kind enough to show Greg and I the proper, non-time-dimensional-warp way to get to Yaoko Marketplace. It's actually very very simple, and about the closest food-housing place to the DK House. There is a big curve in the road before you get there, so that could explain how we ended up there last time.

We all got some nice groceries while marveling over how much delicious-looking food their was, yet how it was all soo expensive. I've learned to look for a little discount sticker on the baked goods and I stick to the 98 yen shelves for everything else. We all got a box of sushi for a good anytime snack though, and it made a good snack last night! I was very tempted to buy a 600 yen tonkatsu and rice meal box that looks sooo delicious, but maybe I'll save that for a special day or something. 600 yen is too much to pay for something that isn't even fresh.

After we checked out, we went back over to the bakery section to pick out some lunch! They had some interesting lunch-appropriate baked goods, mostly involving hot dogs, tonkatsu (pork cutlet), or pizza, so we each picked out a few. When I went up to the register, the cashier had hopelessly frozen the machine and we got to watch as she tried to fix it, tried to get another girl to fix it, and the other girl called someone else to try and fix it, with everyone laughing nervously and apologizing the whole time for the inconvenience. In the end, we had to go to a normal register on the other side of the store (over to which the cashier BOOKED IT), but that was fine with us because it was closer to the exit. It was all kind of funny =)

We enjoyed our bakery lunches at the DK House and then went our separate ways. I tried to spend the afternoon studying without taking any naps or eating any snacks, but that just didn't pan out. I'm way way forgetful about kanji, so my personal goal was to get through reviewing the kanji in Genki II, but it seemed like I would write three or four kanji and then just tooootallly space out thinking about something else. I was having the most difficult time just staying focused =/ Aaand I ended up taking a short nap and eating some snacks as well, haha..

At some point after 6:00 or so, we started to get worried that we hadn't heard from Jeannette yet! We figured if she was supposed to get in at 3:00, she'd arrive at DK House about two hours later. So Greg and I decided we should go ask Uzuki-san if she had happened to arrive yet and just hadn't found us. That's what we decided to do, but what we actually did was poke our heads into the lobby, look around, see lots of students coming in but no Uzuki-san, and then run away back upstairs. It was preeetty pathetic. We tried again a few hours later, and the only reason we got any further that time was because another student was asking the same kind of question, and we saw that Mrs. Uzuki had a list of students with her. Unfortunately, Jeannette had not yet arrived!

A while later, Greg invited Hunter and I to come up and record a podc----errr.... hang out for a while in his room, so I was opening my door to go up there at the SAME TIME that none other than Jeannette was knocking on my door! =D Hooray! Jeannette made it to Japan! Her flight had been delayed. So we all grabbed our coats and headed out to the station so she could eat something after her long flight! Of course we went to Yoshinoya and we all got the gyuudon! I may have simple tastes, but I just love Yoshinoya, haha. It's simple and delicious and cheap and I can eat all of it. We had a very nice meal together and there was much laughter all around the table and on the way back home =)

After dinner, Jeannette rightfully passed out in her room, and the rest of us..err...just hung out in Greg's room. Yup. You'll hear more about it later. And that was the end of Tuesday! Today (Wednesday) is orientation at school, so I'm excited to see how that goes =)

Cold Day

2008-03-31T16:29:00.000-07:00

It rained and rained all of Sunday night and into yesterday morning, so we didn't make any plans until it had stopped in the afternoon. I used my morning time to organize my room a bit, work on Fafsa, and actually study a little bit of kanji! Then we all met downstairs (Me, Greg, Jen, Dan, and our new friend Hunter) to try and find some lunch. All that rain made it super cold outside, so I was super glad I had bought that new coat the day before! I still felt like I needed gloves and a scarf though!

We walked up to the station area and down towards the mall where Greg and I had gotten ramen and pillows before, because Greg planned on finally breaking down and buying some socks, despite his particular sock standards. We walked a pretty good ways down that street trying to find a nice-looking place and happened across a little mom and pop ramen shop (hahaa...) and decided on it! It was super warm inside and the price was reasonable (although I somehow keep ending up ordering the same, happyaku en dish as everyone else despite my continued efforts to get the smaller/simpler/cheaper dish...) and the people seemed nice. The best part was that they gave us the little glasses of cold water instead of hot tea, and there was a water cooler in the corner for refills! I have a feeling we'll be going back there at some point. I got plain ol' ramen and it was sooo good, way better than the stuff from the mall =)

After that, Jen and Dan departed for a place Dan knew about near a U.S. military base where foreigners can buy prepaid phones. Our group made a stop for Hunter to get photos taken for the gaijin card, and I spotted a pretty good-sized AU store, which is the company that makes the phone that Sada gave me from her trip to Japan so I could just reactivate it instead of getting a whole new phone, so I decided to go in and give it a shot at least. The lady I talked to was super nice and helpful even though I didn't understand most of what she was saying. I filled out an entire form for a phone plan before saying I was only going to be there for four months, at which point she said oh...well a prepaid phone is probably going to be cheaper than getting a plan for this one then! Doh! I say I filled out the whole form, but, embarrassingly, neither Greg, Hunter, nor I could remember the postal code or phone number for DK House, or Teresa or Dan's phone numbers! Oof.

After we switched to pre-paid mode, she showed me how the phone Sada gave me would "become" this new tiny phone she had. I'm not sure what that meant, but I think maybe it would be an exchange? Or she would move any content and numbers to the new phone? I picked the cheapest plan, which looked like 3,300 yen (about$33) a month, but I couldn't really read it fast enough to see how many minutes or texts a month that is. I don't figure I'll be using it too much anyway so I'm not too worried about that, but I'll try and check the AU site and see what it can tell me.

Anyway, she said it would take a bit to get it set up, so she gave me a little card and said to come back in an hour, so we went on back to the aforementioned mall. Turns out there are two more stories to that mall, for a total of four stories! The third floor is mostly baby stuff and electronics, but the fourth floor has the following cool things:

A great view of the city
School supplies
Snacks of all kinds!

We did so much shopping around in Shinjuku, but this mall really had everything we needed all along, haha. We probably got things like scissors and a blow dryer for cheaper in the city though, so it was worth it in the end. But if we need anything from now on, we definitely know where to go! I wonder if they have any member discounts...

When we got back to DK House I quickly got the DK House contact information, Teresa's number, and a few other important-seeming documents and trucked it back to the AU store, which turns out to actually be preettty far away. Unfortunately, the lady decided that just my passport and the things in it weren't enough for her to be able to give me a cell phone, and that she needed something else, like the gaijin card. I was so close! I tried giving her my American driver's license, but that was a no go. Then I showed her the ISIC card, you know, the one that seems really important and amazing for foreigners to have and you have to have it before you study abroad? She stared at it for a looong time and then asked something to the effect of "What on earth is this card I wonder?" And the "world of discounts" provided by the card include a grand total of 2 hotels, 2 performing arts theaters and 1 restaurant in ALL of Tokyo. (And about 15 museums, but those are an indulgance.) We're all pretty bitter about that card now, haha.

After my long journey to and from the phone shop, I was tuckered out and decided to give in to a little 5:00pm short nap. I woke up about an hour later I'd say and checked to see if anyone was around, but nobody was online and I was still groggy so I laid back down. Two hours later, I'm awakened by Greg knocking on my door. "First of all," he says, "It's like almost 8:00, so you've been asleep for like three hours.." Dangit >_< haha. Second of all, he and Hunter decided they wanted to find this gaming club he heard about only two stops away from our station that had a super cheap deal for all-you-can-play gaming. I had kind of a bad feeling about it but decided to say yes anyway.

When we got to the station, there was a neat sort of stand where you can put money into a vending machine and choose the meal you want, and then it gives you a ticket that you give to the cooks and they prepare it for you. We decided that was about as cheap and good as we'd be able to find, and it was a unique experience, so I got curry soba noodles and the two guys got udon. I think I'm discovering that I prefer rice to noodles, and definitely when it comes to curry, but it was still pretty good (and there was unlimited water again!!!). It was suuuper hot though and I got some on my pretty new cream coat T__T Just another reason for me to abhor the Japanese custom of slurping as showing a sign of delicious noodles or whatever, it's silly and unnecessary, especially when places don't have any napkins out for use. Bah humbug.

After our meal, it was time to head out on our journey for the JJ Club 100. Now I'm not gonna say how it happened, but we ended up walking a good 30-45 minutes in the complete opposite direction out of the station. We asked some Jr. High kids if they had heard of the place we were headed, but they hadn't. Finally we ended up asking the worker at the Sunkus store, who also didn't know, so we just asked him how to get to the nearest station. Unfortunately, all I remembered from the name of the station we had come from was "Urawa", so that's where he directed us. We finally got to the station and on the train before we realized it was not the station we had arrived at, but one further down the line! We had walked reeally really far. While we never got to the gaming club that night, it turned out being a nice and entertaining stroll with friends =)

Fashion Day

2008-03-30T06:19:00.000-07:00

Today we went to Harajuku! Dan and Jen met up there this morning while Greg and I were only just getting the wheels turning, so they said we could try and meet them at the Harajuku station at 1pm. Harajuku, from what I understand, is sort of a sub-culture hub with a focus on craazy fashions. It's kind of well-known for those who are into anime or Japanese rock music.

Anyway, once we got going (which was kind of late in the game, thanks to me and my slow goings this morning), we decided to get lunch at the money-devouring festival again. I got a chicken kabob that was pretty good (but 500 yen oh my gooosh >_< ), and Greg got some ridiculous squid legs or something, I don't even know. Quit eating weird things Greg. He got some more takoyaki after that and I got another ChocoBanana from our vendor friend who remembered me from yesterday! We ate our new foods on the way to the station and lamented the lack of trash cans (we didn't find any suitable ones until we were inside the station!!) and the difficulty of separating trash into its appropriate bin (more on that in a later post).

We had a little train confusion on the way, but we did make it to Harajuku. Unfortunately, it was almost 2:00 so Dan and Jen were nowhere to be found, so we just explored on our own. First we saw what I can only assume was the well-known bridge where people dress up in crazy goth/lolita outfits and stand around and tourists take photos of them, cause that's what was happening. I was surprised how small the bridge was though, and how not really that far-out the outfits were. I felt like I could out-crazy dress those kids if I wanted to. Come on, kids.

We didn't spend long there and instead started looking for Takeshita street, where I knew there was a big hyaku-en store called Daiso. Turns out that's where aallll the clothing stores are crammed into as well. It was kind of a winding street with shops on both sides and people absolutely everywhere. We described the first steps down that street as "diving in" because you just kinda had to fall into the flow of people going in and out. We picked up a few fun things at the Daiso and then had a nice time browsing all the different crazy clothing stores. Greg continued his eternal pursuit for the perfect socks, but concluded that Japan might not be the best place to find socks for size 14 feet. One highlight of my shopping day was that I bought an umbrella from a store called Shazbot.We felt like we had seen about all we wanted of Harajuku and it was starting to rain, but I still wanted a sort of rain/wind/why-is-it-still-cold-in-springtime jacket, so we started back from the beginning of the street to try and find one. There were even more people than before, so it was a task to try and even get into the street, but I found a store pretty quickly that had a nice selection of coats like I wanted! I found a light yellow windbreaker material one that caught my eye right away, because I'm starting to really love that color, but it was kind of flimsy for $50. With a little more browsing and trying on, I found a lovely and classy cream colored jacket of the same style! I still had to deliberate a while on which one to get, but in the end it had to be the cream one. Oh, and much thanks to Greg for holding my stuff/saying "that one looks good"/not saying "just pick one already."

Dan and Jen had mentioned planning on going to Yoyogi garden for flower viewing near Harajuku, but since it was so much later than they had talked about and we had little or no chance of actually meeting up with them, AND it was starting to rain for serious, we decided to head on home. Getting into Harajuku was easy, but trying to get out was ridiculous! We got our train tickets and then stood in a slowly-moving line for about 20 minutes as tons of people tried to get in the station but even more tried to get out to Harajuku! Craziness! Finally we got on a train (after having to let a full one go on) and made it back to home sweet Nishikawaguchi. With the rain and the cold, we decided to get some 7-11 takeout for dinner instead of planning on walking back out to the station later. After a lot of searching, Greg won first prize by finding some spaghetti plates for cheap. He got regular and I got super cheese I guess. They even heated them up for us before we left! One more stop at the Shop 99 so I could give in and get some ugly cheap slippers of my own instead of continuing to borrow DK's, and we were on our way home for serious.

We ate our lovely spaghetti dinners down in the communal kitchen, and after a while an American-looking guy came in and sat down on the couch. We struck up a conversation with him and he came over and sat with us while we ate! His name is Hunter and he's from Texas and will be going to Sophia as well! I think he said he's a Theatre and Japanese major. What a combination! He just got here two days ago and hasn't been out much yet, so whatever we do tomorrow I think we'll definitely see if he wants to come with! I'm sure we'll start meeting some actual Japanese people soon enough, but for now it's interesting to meet other Americans or international students as well =)

The rest of the night has been blogging, trying to get FAFSA done before the deadline, putting away clothes and things, and sorting trash. Haha...that last one doesn't sound so good. Oh, and of course there was the part where I had myself convinced that because 1) I couldn't find my key card for the front door, and 2) I remembered feeling like someone had taken something out of my back pocket on one of the packed trains today or yesterday (though I couldn't find that anything was missing), that my key card had been stolen and I would have to explain it to Uzuki-san and pay for a new one. Turns out I had put it in a zippered case in my purse for safe keeping. Dur.
Harajuku put Greg down for the count.

Now I am quite sleepy and I think I'll head to bed. I'll plan on adding photos to this post tomorrow, though not too many I'm afraid! *yawn* Goodnight!

Sensory Overload Day

2008-03-30T02:39:00.001-07:00

(Warning! This post is high in text, pictures, and emotions! Also, it was written yesterday, about yesterday.)

Today was an interesting day. We woke up this morning to find a festival of sorts was happening right behind our dorm in the cherry blossom-lined walkway right behind DK House! We had been seeing tarps laid out there all week, but we weren't sure what they were for. Turns out, it's how people stake out their spot for hanami (flower viewing), where they bring lots of food, and even cook some there, to have a big picnic and enjoy the flowers! As if that wasn't neat enough to see, the entire pathway (a good two or three blocks long) had food vendors set up along the left side! It was so interesting yesterday morning hearing the sounds and smelling the smells of the festival.

We decided we definitely had to go check it out, and walked the length of the vendors first to see what they had to offer. On our way back, Greg and Jen picked up some food items that I still have no idea what they were, but they were kind of a batter with a bunch of items like roasted corn and other vegetables, fried into a mini pancake-like thing with sauce. I had a bite and it was pretty good! I absolutely had to have some candy from the candy stall. For some reason, I didn't take a picture of that one, but I think maybe Greg or Jen has one. The main item was little star-shaped candy called konpeito. I had seen konpeito in anime and such before and I've always wanted to try it because it looks so sweet and delicious! It's basically like America's rock candy, only in tiny clusters that are a lot easier to eat. They had a few different sizes but I mostly stuck to tiny and small. You could put any candy you wanted in the bag, but it was all 100 yen per gram, so that wasn't exactly the best deal.. I ended up with a tiny tiny bag of candy for 250 yen, after a discount from the nice candy vendor =) It was totally worth it though, I'm enjoying it so much!

Next, we split the cost for 6 takoyaki. Tako is Japanese for octopus, and takoyaki is octopus dumplings. They fill up a half-sphere frying pan thing with a batter and put in the octopus and other items, and then roll the mix as it fries to make the round shape. I don't think anyone at home would believe that I would ever eat anything like this, so Greg filmed it for me =)
The taste was pretty good, although there is some spice I kept tasting in the festival food that was new to me and I'm not sure I liked or not. The octopus was interesting, it was very tough and chewy. Overall it was a nice and filling snack. We picked up some vending machine drinks to go with our meals. I opted for some cute Natchan apple juice which was very appley and good. After that was the best part.... ChocoBananas! We scouted out all of the chocobanana stands and decided the first one was best. It's basically just a peeled banana on a stick, dipped in either chocolate, strawberry chocolate, or green tea chocolate, and then decorated with sprinkles (and in our case, topped with a koala cookie!). The chocolate wasn't quite as chocolatey as I was expecting, but it was still delicious and fun to eat!After we were all festival'd out, we took the train to Shinjuku to shop and meet up with Teresa. Downtown Shinjuku is another Times Square-esque location, with tall buildings and flashy ads. First we ventured into a gigantic multistory store called Don Quixote. I'd never seen anything like it! Everything was just completely packed to the walls and ceilings, and the aisles were really only big enough for one person, and yet the place was still crammed with young people shopping.

We still had some hyaku-en (100 yen store) shopping to do, so we went to one at the top of the Prince Hotel and picked up some random needed items. After that, we got completely distracted at a 5-story arcade across the street. Greg rocked some Taiko Drum Master, while Jen and I were overjoyed to find an old neglected Typing of the Dead game! We got pretty far until a boss monster asked us questions in Japanese and we had to type in the correct answer. Totally lame. Before we knew it, it was time to meet Teresa! We ended up just taking her straight back to the arcade though, so nothing really changed. We all went up to the purikura (photo stickers) floor and had a blast taking awesome photos! If I get access to a scanner sometime I might scan and post them.Once we were tired of spending too much money on video games (which didn't take long), we ventured out to see more of Shinjuku. We did a lot of wandering around, browsed a few more hyaku-en shops, and eventually decided to eat at the Yoshinoya. I tried the butadori this time (pork over rice) and it was delicious! Japanese portions are kind of nice for me because I can get the cheap small version and still eat enough, since I usually don't finish meals at home. I tried to order miso soup as well, but the waiter heard mizu instead, so I got water. I wouldn't have been able to finish the miso though, and the water was a really nice change from tea, so I guess that waiter knew what he was doing better than I did.

We did some more wandering after dinner and walked through some more....interesting parts of town. I won't say shady, because they looked mostly the same, just with fewer people and more ads for host bars (surprisingly few for hostess bars, or maybe they just don't advertise the hostesses the same way they do the hosts..). At this point, Shinjuku was starting to wear me a little thin. I think it was partly due to the fact that we had gone to Shibuya just a few days before, but I really didn't like being in or seeing so much of a city that was devoted entirely to entertainment and consumer culture. The only big city I've spent any time in in the U.S. is New York City, and the only real entertainment-focused area I really noticed was Times Square. Times Square, however, seems like more of a strip of entertainment with a few theaters and such off to the sides, while Shibuya and Shinjuku are entire cities with nothing but stores and pachinko parlors. If you walk long enough through Times Square, you eventually find a newspaper or TV company, or some other establishment whose presence isn't entirely devoted to instant consumption. If you walk long enough through Shinjuku, you eventually find a love hotel. I know there are cities in Tokyo more like New York, with different kinds of businesses and offices, I'm just not used to seeing an entire entertainment/shopping district the likes of Shinjuku or Shibuya.

I think just seeing so many indulging in the lifestyle of being serviced by these kinds of districts just really bothered me. Imagining girls who work in the office all week and then go to Don Quixote in search of the next accessories they can add to their collection, to wear out to a club or bar or karaoke in the city. I start to imagine this is the bulk of their existence, it's the meaning they're creating in their lives, and that's the extent of it: buying pretty things, having fun, looking good. I'm sure there's more to all of them, but somehow these cities just reek with that feeling. So friends, if I was a little quite last night, that's my explanation =)
And yet, in the middle of all this self-indulgent, consumerist bustle, something magical happened. When we got back to Shinjuku station, we noticed that there were musicians setting up and performing in a pavilion at the bottom of the stairs to the station. After watching a girl singing with guitar backups, we started to move along and saw a young Japanese man with some luggage, about to set up a performance area. First he put on some fast-paced music through a speaker and set down a black hat, a glass ball, and a drinking glass on the ground in front of him. Then he roped off the area with some thick rope, placing a diabolo at each corner. By the time he was all set up, we were really curious and interested in what his performance would be, so we were sitting pretty close to his stage. He began by changing the music to something dramatic and then did a routine with the glass ball, making it appear to be weightless or stationary in mid air, which was really entertaining. He fed off the applause of the audience and encouraged us to clap more whenever he felt it was needed. Even when part of a trick went wrong, he would quickly save it and request even more applause.

After a few hat-catching tricks, he did some fork-bending, including one trick where Jen had to hold the two middle prongs of the fork while he twisted the rest. Our favorite trick was when he started shaking the fork back and forth, and one of the prongs separated from the rest. Then, with some more shaking, all four prongs separated and fanned out, then he separated the top of the fork from the rest. His final act was diabolo! I was really excited because I've been interested in diabolo since I started watching Kaleido Star, and I've even tried to pick it up a few times on my own without much luck. He did some of the coolest tricks I've ever seen, including a lot I had never seen before, and his performance had so much energy. He knew how to play the crowd and it was mesmerizing to watch. At the end of the show, he gave a moving speech which seemed to be about how he had come this far just doing his best as one person, and he hoped to pass on those feelings, and if we felt those feelings too, to donate some money of course. I absolutely had to get a photo with him, so we took one of just me and him, and then a group photo. After that, he offered the bent pieces of fork to us, and I got the top part while Greg got the bottom.

Every now and then I see a performance like that that just blows me away and makes me very emotional. I remember how I, ridiculously, thought the musical Starlight Express was so cool and entertaining that I cried six times during the performance, I tear up most every time I watch Cirque du Soleil, Kaleido Star made me cry in the first episode, and I know the same thing has happened on several different occasions with different things. Last night's performance was one of those times. I don't think the rest of the group had quite the same reaction, but I just couldn't get over the energy he had, and how passionate he seemed to be about it. And it was a great performance on top of that. I definitely could've cried afterwards, and it made me all smiley for quite a while afterwards.

After that, we wandered some more through a store in the station and down to another district, and then back up into that store for sitting (I bought a $10 blowdryer somewhere in all that... it smells like burning when I use it, haha). We split up our purikura from earlier and just enjoyed having a seat. Then we went back down to the station and headed our separate ways. It was a looonng day and I think we all slept good! Sorry for the long and somewhat emotional/philosophical post... blame Shinjuku! Haha. I'm well aware that America is a highly consumer-oriented country, no doubt about it, I'm just not used to it being quite so concentrated and populated.

Relaxing Day

2008-03-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

Today we decided to relax. Well, Greg and I did. Jen was already gone with Dan to see the campus and run errands this morning once we were up and functioning =) I slept in till about 11:00 which was woonderfulll. Our lovely 3 piece futon sets are the best! I slept on towels as pillows but that was fine. When I woke up, I had been having a complex dream, so I had a few seconds where I wasn't sure where I was at all. I think that's an interesting feeling, so somehow even when the back of my mind started to figure things out, I tried to keep that unsure feeling for a few more moments.

It took a long time to get moving this morning, or rather, there was too much to do so it was hard to get myself to stop doing that and go get a shower. I unpacked pretty much all my stuff and got some of it put away, and then got too hungry to keep doing that and decided to get a shower. After Greg and I were both ready to go, we decided to head out towards the station to get some lunch. Unfortunately we ended up really confused as to where we were, because we found ourselves at the Yaoka Marketplace (the store that had the McDonald's from yesterday), which we were pretty certain was on the other side of town. We decided to stop and get some groceries while we were there anyway. I got some water and a good-looking orange drink, two chocolate-based snacks, some rice crackers, and some croissants that were on sale! We decided we need some snacks in our rooms, and definitely some drinks. Somehow Japanese people don't seem to drink much at restaurants, but then there are vending machines everywhere on the streets. I got a big bottle of water, but I'm afraid it'll be gone soon. (We found it for cheaper at the Shop 99 though!)
After our directional mishap, we decided to go back home with our stuff and try again. This time we took a street we knew and ended up at the station area. We went farther on a street that we hadn't been down yet to try and find a place to eat and saw an Itoyokado department store, AKA the type of store we carried our bedding home from last night, a good 30 minutes from our area. I said to Greg "We're going in here." I was sure we'd find the exact same bedding and feel ridiculous, but we didn't! There were other 3 piece sets for about the same price, but none of them were as good-looking as the ones we bought, so we felt justified. We also bought pillows while we were there! Greg found a nice flannel one and I found a fuzzy one that looks just like my bed set! Most of them had this weird bead stuff inside for some reason....
After browsing the store a little longer and making fun of shirts written in English, we went back downstairs and saw that they had a little ramen place inside the store, kind of food-court style, so we thought we might as well eat that! I accidentally ordered a ramen set, which I thought was just the thing I had been looking at (a bowl of ramen), but it costs more and comes with a mound of rice. That was kind of a bummer because I couldn't eat it all and I paid extra, but now I've learned to say no to sets, unless you know you want extra stuff. Greg got a melon soda which is a bright green drink. I remembered seeing it on Sailor Moon all the time and I was tempted to ask for some, but he paid so much for so little, I didn't want to take any. I'll definitely have to have some while I'm here though! =)

Since we had completed our objectives, we headed back to the DK House with a quick stop at the Shop 99 store. We were hoping it would be a regular 100yen store, but it was mostly groceries. We did find that all the groceries were much cheaper there than they had been at the Yaoko Marketplace, and it was closer to our apartment. Greg got some soap and we went back home. Jen still wasn't back so we just took care of little things we needed to do. Then when Jen got back around 5 something, we all started blogging... and didn't stop until about 9:00 when we realized how hungry we were. We met up in Greg's room and lamented the fact that we had to leave and go out in the cold to get food, but we're the sannin darnit, so we headed for the station area.

After passing several drunk salarymen, we found a place called Sukiya. It seems to be the same kind of fast food type place as Yoshinoya, but it serves curry and donburi (items over rice). We all ordered curry with an egg on it for 440 yen each! The service was awesome, one guy came out with our trays, the other with something else, and then he rolled up the check and put it in its little container with a flourish. It hopped back out somehow and he had to do it again, and he did it and said the same thing the exact same way, it was like a performance. It really reminded me of Mary Poppins when they're inside the drawing, and Mary and Bert go to get tea or whatever and all the penguin waiters start running out, haha.

We took an uneventful trip home (stopping once to find that our Itoyokado store is only open til 10:00pm, not 11:00pm, so Jen couldn't get a pillow) and now here I am blogging about the day =) Oh, on another note, today we kept noticing that on all of the signs for our city, Warabi City, there was this weird rabbit mascot. We kept seeing them and wondering about it, until Greg finally noticed today that one of the signs said it was a wallaby. That seemed even weirder! Then about 3 hours later, it hit me that the mascot was a wallaby because we're in Warabi City. Duh. Crazy Japanese.

Since I didn't really take any pictures today, here are some photos I took of the sakura trees right from my balcony! This is what I wake up to in the morning, folks =)

Jam-Packed Day!

2008-03-28T02:30:00.000-07:00

This is a catch-up post for Thursday, March 27th, our second day in Japan.

So after an uncomfortable night's sleep, I got up around 8:30, cleaned up a bit, and went downstairs to meet Jen and wait for our luggage. We waited in the freezing cold lobby until about 11, then decided to go up to my room, eat some cookies, and warm up. Before we went back down we went to visit Greg, who had been up for too many hours with no watch or sense of the passage of time. When we came back downstairs, our luggage had magically arrived!! Hooraaay, thanks Black Cat! Jen and I got showers and dressed, and then we all headed out for our first day of exploring! First we headed towards the city hall building (basically) to get our gaijin cards (alien registration), but on the way there we found a nice grocery store with a McDonald's inside and decided to make that our first lunch, haha. Jen and Greg got the Teritama burger, which is a teriyaki burger with an egg on top (we called it the Japanese Gusburger), but I played it safe with a double cheeseburger set. I did try a bite of Greg's sandwich and some of the Qoo drink he bought though.

Along the way on our trip, Jen and I made several stops at post offices and banks, trying to get someone, anyone to cash our traveler's checks. We asked in Japanese and everything, but everyone looked at them like they were some relic from the past, and could only tell us "Try a bank," or "Try a different bank." We moved on to city hall, and Jen and I registered for our gaijin cards, while Greg only half registered before we had to get him some photos taken for the card. They directed us to a cheap photo booth outside a department store a fair walk away, so we went! Greg got his photos, and we browsed the store for bedding. We all found a 3 piece bed set that we really liked in nice colors and on sale, so we decided to keep it in mind for after we shopped around. After browsing the Fashion Recycle STOMP store for a while, we returned to city hall and got Greg registered for his card. The nice city hall people also couldn't tell us where to take a traveler's check. Who knew it would be so much trouble!Favorite photo so far.

After all of that, we went to Warabi station and took a train into Shibuya to meet Dan. Aside from a bit of confusion when our train went backwards and took us back about three stops, we made it there just fine. Downtown Shibuya looks a lot like Times square, only every street after the first, bright billboard part, is still jam-packed with little shops and arcades and pachinko stores (they're REALLY big on pachinko here, it's a type of gambling game). There were tons of young people there and it seemed to be the cool place to hang out. First, Jen and I found a big Mizuho bank that would finally take our traveler's checks! The exchange rate was something like 97, it could've been worse. We were just happy to find somewhere to exchange them! Next We went around to a few stores and tried to find bedding and other household items at Tokyou Hands, but it was all overpriced and not very cute, so we didn't stay long.For dinner, Dan took us to a kaitenzushi place (sushi that is made fresh and comes out on a plate that goes around the restaurant, where you take a plate and they add up how many you ate at the end). This place was jam packed and all about speed. You had to finish within 20-30 minutes, but if you ate 7 plates, you could stay as long as you wanted. I'm notorious for eating slower than everyone around me, so this place wasn't too fun for me, hah. I managed to eat 6 plates, but I was starting to feel not so great by that time. I did have a funny cultural mishap there though. I saw the girl next to me get some water from a faucet at the table, which I then tried to do but couldn't really get it working, so she showed me how. Then they pointed out, hey, you're supposed to put this tea packet in it, and I was like "Oh cool! Hey Greg, you're supposed to put this tea packet in it," at which point I was trying to tear the packet open, so the Japanese couple starts yelling "Aaah! Sono mama de, sono mama de" which basically meant, as it is, don't tear it open it's a bag of tea you idiot. I guess that wasn't a cultural mishap so much as an I-don't-ever-drink-tea-and-forget-how-tea-works mishap, but it was still pretty cute and that couple was nice =)Greg decided it would be a good idea to eat these tiny octopi/squid/things you shouldn't eat

After that I think we bought Greg the kanji dictionary game for DS and then browsed a Sega arcade. I dropped 100 yen (about $1) on a win-some-candy game, but I didn't win any candy. Lame. The purikura (cool photo booth) section was girls only, or as we English speakers would apparently better understand it, "Female Limitation."

We were all pretty beat after that and knew we absolutely needed to get our bedding, so we all hopped on the train back to Warabi. This is where things started to get interesting. We walked the good 20 minute walk from Warabi Station to the department store where we saw the bedding earlier, picked out some other things we needed, and took our bedding to the cash register. This bedding was huge and came in a ridiculously huge package. There wasn't a non-awkward way to carry it. The plus side was that it was on sale twice over, so we ended up paying about $70 for the three piece set (a foam futon pad, a softer futon, and then a big comforter) which was a great deal. But then we had to carry it home, hadn't we?

We had gotten a great map from Uzuki-san, and thought we had a pretty good route home figured out, but we ended up getting lost three times. I say lost, but it was more like.. we knew what area we were in but not the exact street or direction. After asking the nice men who worked at the Shell station, a nice lady who came out of her house when she saw us on the street corner, and the nice worker at the 99 store, we finally got on the right road and made it home. I'm still not sure what made us look at that bedding and decide "Yeah, we can carry that home." I guess it was the same thing that lead us to build a fort out of a ping-pong table, no questions asked. It's just that sannin, can-do attitude. Or it might have been the daunting prospect of trying to get a taxi and the strong desire not to pay for one combined. No matter, we made it home with Uzuki-san watching us awkwardly as we brought in our large packages, probably thinking "Why didn't these crazy Americans just rent bedding from here?"
So after a way too long day with swollen achy feet, we all enjoyed a soft and warm night's sleep on our new, well-earned futons! Jen and I got pink and cream while Greg got blue and some other colors I don't remember. That's all for Thursday's wrap-up, expect a re-cap of today (Friday) sometime tonight perhaps!

First post catch-up!

2008-03-28T01:58:00.000-07:00

It's finally my first post! It's been a whirlwind of activity and exhaustion since we arrive in Japan, so I haven't really had any time to blog yet! I'll start by catching up on the beginning of the journey:

Monday, March 24th:
I packed my bags, said my goodbyes, and flew from St. Louis to Washington D.C. to meet up with Jen and Greg, my plane/residence/Sophia friends! Together we form the sannin, a legendary trio of scholars and adventurers the likes of which are unmatched in all of Japan. Jen came and picked me up and we hung out at her place until Greg arrived! We went and got dinner with some of Jen's family and then set up camp in Jen's basement. We all decided it would be a good idea to make a fort to keep out any possible invaders, so we did. We covered the ping-pong table with some blankets and reinforced the back with a couch cushion. The floor was constructed of comforters and pillows. It was actually extremely comfortable and cozy and we all slept quite well in preparation for our journey ahead.

Tuesday, March 25th:
Jen's parents drove us to the airport and we tried to get our boarding passes. There was a bit of a problem with our information, but the nice airport man fixed it for us. Then we had to play a little musical luggage while we transferred items from Greg's suitcase to ours in order to get his bags under 50lbs and save him the overweight fee. Ironically, both Jen's and my suitcase ended up weight more than Greg's. With Phase 1 complete, we moved on through security, Phase 2, with no problems at all. We found Teresa waiting for us at the gate, our fellow plane partner (though she upgraded to the next class).
The wait for boaring passed quickly as we chit-chatted, and before we knew it we were on our 14 hour flight! I sat in the middle of a 5-seat row with some men on my left, and Greg and Jen on my right. Time passed surprisingly fast on the plane, and we all slept surprisingly little (not by choice). Greg and I watched Elizabeth: The Golden Age on the screen on the back of the seats. We both thought it was pretty good, and an artsy, pretty movie to watch. Then I thought I'd put another movie on and try to sleep, but I ended up becoming way too engrossed in the movie to sleep at all. It was Becoming Jane with Anne Hathaway. I super liked it, I laughed, I cried (on the plane T_T) and while my feelings about the main characters' relationship has changed a bit, I still think I could watch it a few more times and still not be tired of it =)

Aside from all that, the sannin talked, ate the airline meals, went and visited Teresa, and occasionally got up to look out the window. Next thing we knew, we were in Japan! Jen's boyfriend Dan, who has been at Sophia half a year now, came to meet us. We got through customs and got our bags with no problem, and then Jen, Teresa, and I had the Kuroneko (Black Cat) service deliver our luggage to our residence. It was a little stressful, and since we found out a little too late that we wouldn't get them til the next morning, we were left with whatever clothes etc. was in our carry-ons, but it was definitely worth that inconvenience and the cost considering how much stuff we had and how far we were away from home. We took a train from inside the airport (Narita Airport) to Nishi Kawaguchi Station (I think we had a transfer once, and parted ways with Teresa somewhere in there as she went to stay at her hostel). I was just staring out the window taking it all in. Everything looks so different here! My first views of Japan! It was exciting, but I was also pretty worn out from the flight.
It was dark by the time we reached our neighborhood, but Dan managed to get us to the DK House! We checked in with Mr. Uzuki and he gave us the grand tour. We have a kitchen/common room with TV and computers, toilets and laundry on every floor, a small meeting room, a nice lobby, and the first floor has the boys and girls shower rooms. If we understood correctly, we switch sides each week because one of the shower rooms has a sauna, so boys and girls take turns (this week is boys, aw man). As for rooms, I'm on the second floor, Jen is on the third, and Greg is on the fourth. All of our rooms are right off the stairway, so that's super convenient! We also have the most beautiful view of a pathway covered by cherry blossoms right outside out balconies! I can hardly believe it, it's so perfect! There are people walking through there and having picnics all day, it's really nice. At night there are lanterns lining the walkway that are lit up too!

After we got settled, Dan took us back towards the station and we had Gyuudon (beef over rice) at a sort of Japanese fast food chain called Yoshinoya. It was cheap and delicious! Then we went back home and crashed for the night. Well... sort of. We had planned on going to buy bedding that night, but by the time it was all said and done there just wasn't time and we were all too exhausted. That night would be the first real test of the sannin. Our beds by themselves are just wooden boxes (sort of like the ones at UVA), but we all figured we were tired enough that we could just put some clothes on them and be fine to sleep. After layering clothes on my body to fight the coldness of my room at the time, I only had enough clothes with me to make a pillow. I laid down and wasn't too uncomfortable and managed to sleep about two hours. After that, I woke up and was just too cold to go back to sleep. I was wearing a total of three long sleeve shirts, plus a camisole, a sweater and a jacket, my jeans, and three pairs of socks, and I had actually taken down one of the curtains in my room to use as a blanket.... I've heard that Japanese buildings are very poorly insulated and I definitely believe it. All the rooms have an air conditioner inside but I hadn't really figured out much about it. I did notice that the maximum temperature was 30 degrees Celsius, which is definitely not cold air, so I started messing with the controls and looking online for help. After a while I got my Aircon to put out some warm air and I was finally able to get some more comfortable sleep, though only in 2-3 hour shifts. Jen had also figured out her heater that night, but poor Greg slept in the cold =(

I'll update about yesterday (Thursday, March 27th) in the next post!