Pictures

I'm going to a camp with a cabin by a lake for the next few days, but I'm going to bed now, so I just wanted to update you with some pictures and a video.

Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2078017&id=3708410&l=5ca60ad3ff

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=888358295784&ref=nf

Oh, I'm actually not sure if that video will work for people not on Facebook. So... if you can see it, yay, if not... join Facebook or something >_<

Juggling

So this weekend has been pretty good, but for almost all intensive purposes, I did nothing on Friday or Saturday. Friday we didn't have class so I slept in, rather, I stayed up to 8 AM from the night before for no reason then went to bed and woke up around 2:00. I did eat breakfast though before going to bed, haha. Saturday it rained all day so I just went out to get food and came back.

Oh, which reminds me, Thursday was pretty interesting / fun / bad / fun, in pretty much that order. Interesting and fun first, Japanese class. We met with Japanese students and talked about things, then randomly got paired with a Japanese student to be Email Partners with. I got paired with a girl whose name is Kimmie, she's someone's E-Pal [IES Japanese Friend and Assistant, that I do not actually have] as well. She's really nice, understands a little English, has a part time job at Disney, and is great at helping me with Japanese. Anyway, we had to record a conversation for 40 minutes, I'm not sure why, probably to look back on and see how bad I suck at Japanese. Well, that class was fun, I did accidentally say I was afraid of Shrimp though when I meant to say Snakes. The words are "ebi" and "hebi" respectively, and they sound quite alike, haha. She laughed at me -_-;;

The bad part comes afterwards. Well, I guess it's not right afterwards. Two people from my next class and I ate lunch at a Gyuudon, or beef and rice bowl, place, that was really good. We thought we had enough time to do that and still casually go to the station to meet at Nihombashi for the field trip at 2:00. Well, we didn't. We ended up getting there at like, 2:50 because of train waits and everything, so that was real good in a sarcastic manner. The actual tour that I made was good though, and you can see it in this album! http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2077503&id=3708410&l=b5a9ef0003

Yeah, so that was good. The last part being fun refers to Tennis Club, it was fun. =P Simple as that. This kid from my Japanese class now goes with me to it, he's pretty good as well.

So back to today! At Yoyogi Park a couple weeks ago there were people there with Poi and it looked really cool so I decided I was going to get some, along with a Devil Stick. For those of you not in the know, these are both performance arts like juggling. You can see them in these videos :

Poi : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-2VAb4wQqo
Devil Stick : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5OxpAhzsJA

Just throwin' it out there, I've never done either before so I am pretty bad at both of them. I was poi-ing on the roof here a bit earlier in the dark, that was fun, and I think the videos of what you can do with them are crazy. I actually bought 2 different kinds of Poi and a Devil Stick at a store called Naranja's in Itabashi, 50 minutes west of where I live. It was a nice train ride over and it wasn't too hard to find. However, it was supposed to be closed today, I just wanted to scout out the area and then head to a park, so I didn't have that much money on me at the time, so when I found out that it was open I had to find a 7-11 as that's the only place really that accepts American Issued Visa cards of my kind. I actually couldn't find one so I took a train ride over to Ikebukuro to look there. It took a bit, but I found one. Then I went back.

Naranja's is such a cool store. Like, the customer area is really small, but they have all their stock [or at least most of it] out to try out and to go outside the store and use. They aren't in the road, they're tucked back, so no one walks by the storefront. All the stuff in that area of the store is used, but they have an abnormally large warehouse type thing in the back. Maybe they share it with another company or something, that much juggling stuff would be ridiculous. They also do other flair items like Contact Juggling and Bar Accesories and whatnot. Anyway, I bought a goldenrod and red sock poi, a red and white tail poi, and a red trigon dube devil stick.

I then remembered I hadn't eaten anything in a long time, so I went back to Baraki Nakayama and gathered a small group of people from my dorm to go get some curry at Coco's. I got a level 7, it was good, and pretty spicy, although admittedly not too hot to enjoy. 10 still worries me though, haha. It was actually the only thing I've eaten all day and am rather hungry now, but alas I should not go out to get a snack at 12:30 when breakfast is in 7 hours. What I should do is go to bed now. So that is what I shall do.

Thanks for reading! More updates later sometime!

今日は面白かった

今日は面白かった！日本語のクラスはだいじょうぶ，自己紹介を練習した。私の日本語は苦手だからちょっと難しかったけど楽しかった。昼ご飯にポタトフライとチキンみたい食べ物とチョコレートチップクッキーを食べた。おいしかったけど食べた肉はちょっとおかしかった。それからもう買わないと思う。。。それは肉だったけどどんな肉が知らない。。。焼き鳥と思うけど皆目知らない。次は大衆文化クラスだった。それはよかったけどちょっと長すぎる。クラスの後でテニスをするつもりだったけど雨が降り始めたので私達はテニスをしない。運良く私の傘が持っていたからウエットにならない。それから駅に歩くことにした。歩きながらテニスのクラブの人が見た。間に私達は駅に歩くことは日本語を話した。彼は英語を勉強していてかなり上手です。だからちょっと易くなった。この経験はすごくていい練習だった。時々分かりにくいけどそれが好きだった！

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Today was fun! Japanese class was fine, we practiced our self-introductions. My Japanese is not skillfull, and because of that class was a little difficult but still interesting and fun. For lunch I had fried potato wedges, a chicken-like meat, and a chocolate chip cookie. While it tasted good, the meat was a little strange. Because of this, I don't think I'll be buying it again... it was meat but what kind of meat I'm not sure... I think chicken but I'm not entirely sure. Next was popular culture class. It was good but a little too long. After class I planned on going to tennis club, but since it started raining, we didn't play tennis. Luckily I had my umbrella so I didn't become wet. So I decided to walk to the station. While walking I saw a person from Tennis club. During the walk to the train station we talked in Japanese. He was studying English and was relatively skilled in it. Because of this, it became a little easier. It was an amazing experience and great practice. Sometimes it was hard to understand but I liked it!

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So yeah, I decided to practice writing Japanese on a more regular basis. As you can read by my literal translation from what I wrote in 日本語, today was really interesting. Talking to the kid, who is a 22 year old male who wants me to call him Kin-chan, was a great experience.

Well, just figured I'd share some 月語 with you, haha. <-- Kanji means "moon language", something that some people who don't know Japanese refer to Japanese as, haha.

じゃまた～

A Day In Baraki Nakayama

It's 6:45, my alarm clock that I brought from the States that is plugged into a Japanese outlet is starting to get louder. It's across the room so I have to get up fast before it gets loud, my dorm has real thin walls and I don't want to wake up others. Although admittedly they're probably already all awake or getting up soon anyway. I look out my window and see some little houses under the towel that's hanging from my curtain bar as it dries there because the sun rises outside my window. The last few days I've been leaving my window open (which I found out I had a screen on the side of the window as well) and my room smells so good from the outside smells that come in. For those of you who know me, my sense of smell is the one I hold most dearly, there isn't a thing in the world that puts me into such a euphoric feeling as quickly as a smell of nature.

Anyway, I turn on my computer to see what people have left comments on this blog or left picture comments on Facebook, then grab my razor and shave. Yeah, I just shave in my room, it doesn't go anywhere and it too works off the plug in the wall without any sort of plug converter. I use an electronic razor because I'm far too lazy to actually shave the correct way. I then grab my shampoo and soap that I keep in a plastic bag as well as my toothbrush and head downstairs in my sleep shorts and towel. We have a main shower room which has 4 shower stalls, completely private. Each stall has it's own walk-in room for undressing and putting stuff in a bin type thing, then there is a door to the actual shower. There are four switches outside the shower; one for the shower light, one for the shower fan, one for the outside light, and I have absolutely no idea what the fourth does. I'm thinking something to do with the mat outside the door because under it there is metal, but I couldn't guess what the switch does, is looks on all the time but doesn't feel warm or anything. Anyway, the shower is large and spatious, much unlike everything else in Japan which tends to be smaller in size. After a shower and brushing my teeth I head back up to my room and grab all the stuff I need for day. I slide my slippers back on (shoes are NOT allowed past the front door, or in our situation a shoe cubby room that you carry your shoes to). There are no exceptions to this, construction people, delivery people, everyone has to take their shoes off before stepping up into the first room. Partially because of custom and how they've done it forever is the reason, but I can't help but think that it's really just cleaner as well.

Breakfast is next on my schedule, at least Mondays through Saturday, and we have to tell the people a month ahead of time whether we want an A meal, which is a Western style based breakfast, or a B meal, which is Japanese based. I go for A every morning more or less just because I don't want fish and rice as my main dish for breakfast. The main part is the only thing that is different, there are still side dishes that are very Japanese for breakfast. Oh, and also, there is bread and jelly (which becomes toast of course) for A meals. When we get to the meal room we take a tag off the wall with our name on it and put it in the basket, I guess to prove that we ate that particular morning. After getting all the dishes, already all plated for us by the way, we sit down and eat. I say we because in the morning other IES students are normally in there so I eat with them. There is this kid that is from Brazil too that is studying to get his second Masters Degree, and he's sometimes there too. There are tables and chairs, we don't sit on the floor in my dorm to eat meals, although I will add it is common to do that in families or at certian restaurants. The eel place was structured like that. There is also a TV and we watch the news. I don't really understand most of it, but that's not always the case. After breakfast we bring over our dishes and rinse all of it into the sink. There is a bag with very fine meshing that catches all the food and allows the water to go through, a rather ingenious idea for pouring water and food into the same bag. We then spray off our dishes and drop them lightly in the sink full of water. Our equivalents of mama-sans clean them, or Manager-san himself. I actually don't know his name, so I refer to him as Manager-san with other IES students. While leaving the breakfast and heading to the door to leave I flip over my number tag on the board in the hall to signify that I'm not in the building anymore. We don't have a curfew or anything, but it serves as a way to tell who's in the building for whatever reason.

Oh, and just to clarify this, I'm not sure if people realize this: I don't live with other Americans other than IES students. There are about 75 residents here and the 6 of us and the 1 Brazilian are the only non-Asians in there. From what I've seen, there are a couple Koreans and as far as I know, no one that knows any real amount of English. I'm sure most Japanese people know enough to say hello and maybe some very basic comments, apologies, complements, etc, but that's about it. Manager-san knows a little bit but not enough to talk to you in English. I know enough Japanese to understand what he tells us thankfully, but I can't really communicate clearly with him.

Then I get to the front door room and exchange my slippers for my shoes and head out for the Baraki Nakayama station. It's about an 8 minute walk through a really rural in comparison town to the rest of Tokyo. There are cabbage plots in people's lawns, and really narrow roads that not a whole lot of people drive on. Kids are normally playing on days and times where there isn't school. It's really a pleasant place. If I don't take the back shortcut to the station (saving on a minute or so), there is a 99 Yen Store, a 100 Yen Store (which sells things about 90 --> 600 Yen Items), Cocos (my favorite restaurant in the world now actually, they sell Japanese Curry), and some Konbinis (shortened from the English word "convenient store"). Here are some pictures of aforementioned places and streets:



Cocos



I think you can click on them to get bigger ones, but I'm pretty sure they'll be unmanageably huge, but hey, up to you.

When I arrive at the station I head for the Tozai Line Subway towards Nishi-Funabashi. There is a lot of English, but if you know any Japanese, or even if you don't, the stations of Baraki Nakayama(原木中山)　and Nishi-Funabashi(西船橋) are both pretty easy to spot. From Nishi-Funabashi Station I go to Makuhari(幕張) on the JR Line, the Sobu Line. The ride lengths are about 5 minutes from 原木中山 to 西船橋, and about 18 minutes from 西船橋 to 幕張. From Makuhari it is about a 10 minute walk to the Kanda Campus where my Japanese class is always held in the morning. This blog isn't about Kanda, so I'm going to skip to the part where I go back home, haha.

As I arrive back at the Baraki Nakayama station I head for the 99 Yen store to get some sort of snack for the evening. It is typically some sort of baked bread good or chips or occasionally candy. On another side note, whenever I go to a Konbini or a department store I look to see if I can find Pocky, and if they have a flavor I haven't had I buy it. If I've had all the flavors they carry I normally buy my favorite amongst them. For those who aren't sure what Pocky is, it's basically a snack food that is made up of Biscuit-sticks dipped in chocolate or a fruit flavored cream of sorts. In the U.S. there is chocolate and strawberry, but they have dozens of flavors here. I'm going to list all of the kinds I've had at the end of this blog.

Then I head back to the dorm and put away my stuff in my room. Sometimes I head straight down to dinner, sometimes I go on my computer for a little. Dinner works the same way, but there aren't choices. There are however, many different side dishes that you are given so dinner is normally 4 small dishes. There is always rice and miso soup / sometimes other soup, and normally some sort of salad. My favorite is the curry we have although the seafood dishes are normally really good. There were these crab balls that were delicious. Balls of crabs, not balls from crabs...

Life in the dorm room is pretty good too. My room has a fantastic view in my opinion of outside and the road. There are some buildings all around us on most sides, and there is also the inside of the building as we are in a U shaped building, that some of the IES people have views of. Outside my window there is a store which I believe sells candy and ice cream and other food items although I plead guilty to not actually entering, so there may be more stuff. Kids go in there and get stuff though, so someday I'll probably head in to see what it is. See, I'm not afraid to go in stores but I have no desire in going into what could be a porn store of something like a Pink Salon, which, well, look it up. But since there are kids going in I would hope that I'd be right in assuming that this is just a store that sells food.

You have to be really quiet in the dorm rooms. Dorm rooms are NOT like they are in the States. They are much stricter in certain manners, and because of this it is not a popular choice of living in Japan. Most students live at home or rent apartments, which are a bit like the U.S. apartments. It's a little strange though in terms of Alcohol and Pornography though, once you're of age for them they are rather common things. You can get drunk in public malls. As for sex, Japan is so lenient and so much less of a Taboo thing. The age of consent here is 13, and it's not uncommon (or frowned upon) for a female of legal age, which I'm not sure which is what, to give service for money. We talked about it in Pop Culture one day, and I guess it's interesting that the country works that way. It is what it is.

Hmmm... well that's a bit for this entry. I guess I'll just talk about what I've done the last couple days.

Yesterday I went to the Ueno Zoo, which is Japan's oldest zoo and one of it's better ones. It has the most variety of animals including Tigers and Lions. The album on Facebook is here : http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2077044&id=3708410&l=568c06509f

It was a good day overall, the animals are always so cute and I always feel bad for them. It's really a split thing, I don't like what zoos do to the animals, but there aren't guarentees they would live a good life outside one either, and since some are endangered for whatever reason as it is, the chances of them living at all is smaller. I can go to zoos without feeling too much hatred for zoos, although I'd be lying if I said I like supporting the idea. It is what it is.

Today I just did homework and reading assignments. Well I mean, I woke up at 12:00 so it's not like I've been busy all day, haha. I didn't eat lunch and instead snacked on Pocky all day, which was delicious. I asked people if they wanted to go to Coco's for dinner and they were interested so I went with some people from my dorm. I got the Fried Chicken Curry again, it's so delicious. Other people got Ebi (shrimp) Curry, Chicken Cutlet Curry, Egg Curry, and Ika (squid) Curry. I then noticed that there is a heat chart, you can get Curry of varying hotness. The standard one that I've got and a 3 one time apparently are rather mild, and go extremely hot to 10. Here's a chart from their international menu:

So basically to even try Level 6 you have to prove that you can handle Level 5, meaning that 10 must be unbelieveably spicy. A bunch of people I went with want to try Level 10, but it looks like you have to start with Level 5. I will be among the people who try Level 5 next time out of curiousity, but if you have to have a pre-requisite for trying anything hotter I'm not sure if I want to have anything that dangerous, haha. I've decided that's where I'm going every Sunday for dinner as we don't have dinner at our dorm on Sundays. I'll also probably eat there for lunch on Wednesdays if I'm in town as I don't have class or a Field Placement. Wednesdays are great.

All in all though, Japan is great. Classes are pretty good, some of the readings straight out are boring, but that's how that goes. Japanese class, 実践日本語２ is pretty good, I really like the teacher and we had a 自己紹介 assignment, which is a Self Introduction, we're going to be writing it to a Japanese student and become something of Pen Pals. I really pulled out the stops and spent 6ish hours on it and learned a lot of grammar and adverbs from books and dictionaries that I've never used before. I hope it's mostly correct, haha. Gotta make mistakes to learn from them though, so I'm ready!

Here is aforementioned Pocky list by the way! :

• Strawberry
• Chocolate
• Milk
• Strawberry (additional fruit)
• Kiwi (additional fruit)
• Orange (additional fruit)
• Choco Banana
• Chocolate w/ Crunched Almonds
• Chocolate w/ Crunched Coconut

I also found some new music groups that I like quite a bit, mostly Japanese, but some Korean and one Asian-American MC that raps in a Jazzy Rap. I think I'll share some songs with links for you all if you're interested:

[English Lyrics & HQ] Epik High - Map The Soul (Worldwide Ver.) (Tablo, MYK & Kero One) - English, although Tablo is Korean, can't tell by this song though, huh?

Sen no Yoru wo Koete - Aqua Timez - Japanese

Kero One - "When The Sunshine Comes" - English

[MV] One - Epik High - Korean

BUMP OF CHICKEN - 天体観測 (Tentai Kansoku) - Japanese

東方神起/TVXQ-Survivor[HQ] - Koreans singing Japanese

Ai Otsuka - Planetarium - Japanese

TVXQ 4th album《The Secret Code》-Stand Up!- (full ver .) - Koreans singing Japanese

Alrighty, hope you enjoy some of it, haha, most of it is boy bandy or very different kind of music, so I'm guessing that most people won't like them or even listen to them all, haha. I don't care, I accept that most American people won't want to listen to this kind of music, but I can't live without it I don't think.

And this is the end of this blog. Expect updates maybe weekly or twice a week, I'm really busy during the week. Please though, keep asking questions you want me to answer, I'll get to them, I promise.

Peace!

Chiba Zoological Park

Hey guys, I have to do some reading still so I'm just going to post the link to my new album. More when I get the chance, including telling you what Baraki Nakayama is like.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076833&id=3708410&l=2c7661094c

Narita Drum Festival

Yesterday was the Narita Drum Festival, or the Narita Taiko Matsuri. We went as an IES Field trip to spend a day in Narita to do different things.

Actually, the day started with me waking up around 7:00 to take an early train, and then monorail, to Chiba Park. I'm glad that I did as it was absolutely beautiful and I will definitely go back there sometime soon. I couldn't find the monorail for a while so I lost time that could have been spent in the park, but such is life. I eventually found it and rode it to the park to spend half an hour of marvelous park time there.

After that I took a train to Narita, which is where we flew into to, to meet IES Staff for the beginning of our events. I was actually 20 minutes early, which is much better than the people that were 40 minutes late, so we ended up waiting around. I got a Lemon Fanta, [soda], but I didn't see on the can that it had a Jello type thing in it that you're supposed to shake before opening. So I had this soda that had jello in it that I couldn't really drink. Oh well =P

Our first destination was walking down the main street where the Taiko Festival is located. There were lots of people and a handful of small grouped street performers displaying their Taiko skills. Every group was impressive. We arrived at our destination after about 10 minutes, which was an Unagi Restaurant. For those unfamiliar with the term, it's eel. The surprised emotion you're probably thinking about eel with was what I was thinking when we got there. I had never had eel before and the first thing that comes to mind is a slimy, clam like thing. Well, the eel was actually really delicious. It was broiled I think and served over rice. It honestly tasted a lot like fish. It's a delicacy in Japan and we went with our whole IES group, E-Pals, and homestay parents for those that have homestays. The meal was really good and it was overall just a nice lunch.

Afterwards I wandered to a little park and on the way got some sakura flavored ice cream again. It is really good, and I do believe is made from the actual petals as it tastes sweet but not really artificial.

After that began our temple tour, where the IES staff brought us to the different temples and gave us information on all of them. The neatest part was when we got to attend a ceremony complete with monks and ceremonial Taiko drums. The actual purpose of the ceremony I wasn't sure of other than it being a Buddhist ceremony with fire. However, during it, the monks could take an item from you and bless it ridding it of bad luck on the fire, so I gave them my bookbag.

After that we finished touring the temples and saw some really neat carvings on the statues and buildings that told of the tales of the Buddhas. It was really neat and the whole experience was just neat to see all the different kinds of temples.

The best part was after this, where the group tour officially ended and we were free to do whatever we wanted. The main Taiko Drum performance started at 5:30 so we had an hour so me and a couple other people went and walked around Narita Park. Let's just say that this is the most beautiful place I've ever been in my life. Yoyogi takes second now, Narita Park beats it, but in a different way. It doesn't have that many Sakura trees, but it makes up for it with it's natural streams and waterfall. Yes, waterfall. It was gorgeous. We wandered around here for a while before going into town for the festival.

The actual festival was amazing as well. The opening groups were made up of a dozen or so performers, and they were pretty good. Then a lot of the IES people went to go drinking, which in my opinion is a really silly thing to do and miss out on the Taiko performances of some of the best groups from Japan, but who am I to judge. Anyway, a girl from my school stayed and watched the rest with me along with 2 other people from IES. The final performance group was a group of 4 males, they played a large taiko drum, smaller drums, an Asian flute thing, and xylophones. This group was the best musical performance I think I've ever witnessed, and while I have bits and pieces of it taped [my camera was running out of battery and space], I wasn't close enough to capture the power of the Taiko drum. You can feel the drum in a way that a video could never capture. It made the insane crowd rush and chilly weather completely worth it. I'm not sure what event in the near future will top the amazingness of that last performance group, if anything will. The people I was with completely appreciated it as well, and it's for people like this that I am glad I am in Japan with to immerse and appreciate the culture.

That was last night, today I went with a small group of people to go find some Cherry Blossoms. We were going to a park in Shinjuku but for some reason that park was closing and there was a change of plans so we ended up at some park I don't even know the name of somewhere on the Tozai Subway Line route, haha. It was nice enough, there weren't many flowers and the grass was all run down, but there were dogs and a large pond. We played frisbee there, and the frisbee almost flew into a few people and did manage to go into the water a couple times. It wasn't the greatest place to go but it was somewhere new, so I have no complaints. I managed to get a lot of reading done on the train there and at the park I got all my Japanese homework done, so that was cool.

Okay, so pictures. At this time Day 19 at Narita has 2 albums, I took a lot of pictures, and be sure to check for today's in the 14, 15, 17, 18, and 20 album. Here are all the links.

Day 19 : Narita - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076541&id=3708410&l=29cc5ff993
Day 19 : Nartita Part 2 - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076567&id=3708410&l=9b57bbae4d
Random days 14 - 20 - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076231&id=3708410&l=95b66184ba

Enjoy!

PS. I'm going to work on getting the videos uploaded too.

Prince of Tennis

Today was my first Japanese class, and I have to say, I don't think I can handle 300, haha. I am going to attend 200 tomorrow and see if it is a level that is more comfortable for me. I don't think the grammar is a problem, but the speaking and confidence behind the language is just not there.

On a side note, I've had all my courses at least once at this point. The Pop Culture class is interesting enough, and I'm actually going to give a presentation on Pokemon in 10 weeks or so, haha. That's the way to do it. The lady is pretty nice, seems a bit out there, but I think that's a good thing. She's from Europe and speaks English, unlike the Japanese Marketing Professor who was Japanese and isn't as fluent. Everything considered though, he's fairly fluent in the language.

My favorite class at first glance is my History of Tokyo course. Something about the history of Japan, especially the Edo period, fascinates me. I don't even know the words to explain it, something inside of me just wants to rewind time to then to experience that time. It just feels like somewhere I'm supposed to experience, on a very strange and powerful level. I don't think anywhere still exists like this, the closest thing would have to be somewhere out in the country, which I am very interested in visiting. Perhaps I can get people to go with me somewhere or see if I am confident in making a trip out there somewhere during Golden Week. [Like Spring Break, it's a happy time in Japan and most people have it off]. I'm not talking about some day trip either, I'm thinking across country. If I don't go out that way, people are going to Kyoto, and that doesn't sound bad either.

So perhaps the highlight of my day was Tennis Club. As many of you may know, or not know, I love the anime Prince of Tennis. It is very much an anime about tennis, and it pulled me in and I watched all 200+ episodes. Something about a Japanese Tennis Society appeals to me. Granted, being a Ryuugakusei, Study Abroad Student that is, makes me the bottom of the placement of the club and not a leader. I suppose that's better of course, I'm the only Non Japanese Speaking person in the club, haha. I struggled through saying anything meaningful, reminding me I need to practice the hell out of talking to actual people. It was a great experience though, we did random pairings with Senior Members and New Members, and since I'm better than pretty much everyone minus 5 or so of the males, which I may or may not be close, they were holding back in the matches that had newer people that couldn't handle themselves, I didn't actually lose a match with my partner. I believe that my partner was a 19 year old Chinese descent student, although it's possible I completely understood all of it wrong, haha. Anyway, we won 4 matches and tied another, we played 3 game sets and rotated among other groups. It was really fun and it felt great to play tennis. It's a completely new experience when it's all in Japanese, but in the end it's a game of tennis with people playing that enjoy the game. It was actually really nice to get out and join a club despite the fact I knew I'd be drowning myself in a language barrier. But I guess I kinda knew that going to Japan for 4 months, huh?

Anyway.... I have to get up in 5 or 6 hours and I'm exhausted. Tomorrow is going to be nice, classes over at 12:00. I actually think that I might just crash and take a nap in the afternoon if tomorrow is anything like what normally happens after tennis and classes.

Oh, I uploaded some more pictures, I put them at the end of the Day 14 and 15 album, before the Yoyogi one. Nothing too amazing, but be sure to check them out if you want a little more of Kanda.

And I don't remember if I wrote it before or not, but I've decided that I'm not going to try any alcohol here, keeping me alcohol free for 20, almost 21 years. I actually kind of like playing this no-alcohol game, I think I'll keep it up for quite a while, haha. I mean, obviously I'm drug free as well, but I really felt that I would cave in and try some sake or something. I'm legal age here for those who aren't sure if that matters at all. I mean, alcohol is in vending machines here, haha.

Alrighty, peace!

Real Quick...

First of all... I went to Yoyogi Park today, and it's beautiful. It's the nicest place I've been since I got here, and it's probably one of my favorite places in the entire world. I have to go to bed or I'd write more, and the pictures are being processed as we speak, er, type.

To answer the question about Meikai and Kanda, yes, they are two separate schools and I do have classes in both of them. I have Marketing in Meikai and my Pop Culture Course / History of Tokyo / Japanese at Kanda.

Lastly, I actually placed into Japanese 300, a class that has students that have an equivilent of 2 years college study, which is less than I have so I hope I can handle it. I can always move down should I need to, but for now I'm going to give this level a shot.

Well, gotta go to bed. Pictures of Yoyogi are here [but they aren't quite working and I haven't added any comments, so if you wait a bit maybe then they'll work fine] :

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076356&id=3708410&l=a81eca5f2c

2 Weeks In

Hey everyone! So I'm 2 weeks into my program, and I started my first class. With the way this program is structured, we only have any given particular class [excluding Japanese Language] one time a week. The downfall of this is the length of the class, it's 2 hours and 40 minutes. I will admit though that not having class on Wednesday and being done in the AM on Friday is pretty nice. What's even better in my opinion is my next semester's schedule at UR, I have a Calligraphy course at 9:40 on Tuesday, other than that my classes start at 2:00 PM or later, and nothing on Fridays, haha. I didn't even plan it this way honestly, it just happened to work out that way and I'm definitely not complaining.

So like I said before, today was the start of classes, and also the Entrance Ceremony, basically a small presentation welcoming us to Kanda University. It was short, and nothing too special, but it was nice enough. After that I went to the nearby mall and got lunch at the food court. I went with a couple people but ended up splitting up and going to look for some notebooks. After that I ate lunch and then came across a Taiko No Tatsujin arcade game, it's a game where you drum on a drum to play. It's basically just a rythm game but with drumming. It's really fun and I have and play the handheld version [you just use buttons instead of drums / drumsticks] and I love the series. After I played there were Japanese boys that played that were ungodly good at the game. They played the hardest difficulty and basically toyed around with it and still beat the levels, it was crazy. This isn't me or them, but here's the general idea. I think I'm going to spend a few dollars a day at the game, haha, it's so fun and a ~dollar for 2 songs isn't bad at all for how fun it is.

After that I had to go to Meikai for my afternoon class. The class is about Key Strategies of Japanese Marketing. Basically we look at how and why marketing is so successful in Japan, and we take 3 field study trips, one of them being to AVEX, a major J-Pop producing studio / company. I love J-Pop, which stands for Japanese Pop, in fact it's my favorite genre along with J-HipHop, which is argueably the same genre, but that's beside the point. Anyway, the class looks pretty good, not too hard as there is only a few graded things, one being the final paper and others being short quizzes every couple weeks and a short field study summary on our 3 outings.

Tomorrow I find out what Japanese Language class I placed into and what kind of credit I'll get for it back at UR. Honestly... it doesn't really matter, but it'll still be fun seeing what the placement test decided. That's at 9:20, and I've honestly gotten quite used to getting up in time to make that 40 minute commute and not be late, which is fantastic.

Here's a link to my new album, but it doesn't have that much on it at all, today wasn't a big day for pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076231&id=3708410&l=95b66184ba

Oh, last thing. So I've been here 2 weeks now, and the initial foundation and every day schedule has set in so I'm pretty familiar with what's going on. However, I'm sure some of you still have questions about how things are here. So, if you post in the comments what you want me to answer or explain, whether it be how one eats a certain food, takes a train, uses the restroom, whatever, just go and ask.

And with that, I'm out for the night. Going to bed soon, have to get up at 7:30ish.

私のブログを読むためにありがとう!

Kanamara Festival

So today I went to the Kanamara festival in Kawasaki. It was basically a festival dedicated to fertility, penises, and protection against AIDS. There were lots of penis shaped things including a parade and a bunch of other things as well. We took the train to the station we thought we were getting off at, but it turns out we were really 3 stops and about 40 minutes away from where we wanted to be, so it was a walk, haha.

I did upload the pictures to Facebook, but I don't know how long they'll be there before I get in trouble, I dunno, there are phallic images and whatnot. No real penises of course, but still.

Also, I changed my theme, the last one was giving me imaging problems. If I can get it back I will, but honestly this one is pretty too.

Check it out! WARNING : Contains some pictures that may not be suitable for minors, at least in America, there were tons of kids here. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076128&id=3708410&l=d70ba19d58

Ueno Park

Ueno park pictures are up. It's one of the busiest spots to view Sakura, or Cherry Blossoms. It was exceedingly beautiful but sadly overcast. It was still beautiful in person though.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076064&id=3708410&l=701e90423e

Baraki Revisited

A wise man once said, "A picture is worth a thousand words". So here's 65,000 words worth of pictures.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2075968&id=3708410&l=ff5146bd99

So as seen by my pictures, I basically just walked to the campus today, it was beautiful for walking, and took pictures along the way. I was such a tourist.

I also went to look at the local shops tonight with a few people from my dorm. We stopped at a video rental place and saw they had a large selection of J-Pop, Manga, Hollywood movies, animated movies, Anime, Japanese films, and you can only guess, pornography. As I mentioned before, this country is not shy on porn, and the 4 or 5 filled rows at this videostore did not fight that notion. Sometimes Japan, you make me wonder.

Oh, and I also bought a DSi here, I wanted a black one but they didn't have any and instead of waiting like I very easily could have done, or went to another store, I got a white one instead. I figured out most of the menus, as it's all Japanese, and I have something that will allow me to fully utilize the system and that's all I'm saying about that, haha. But it's real nice and is a nice replacement to my scratched screen and broken L-Button DS Lite. I'll still keep the DS Lite though for games where scratching is probable, seems like the best way to handle it, haha. Oh, and on a side note, I talked to the cashier in Japanese, really the first time I've talked so in depth. I think I managed correctly.

Well, since I'm pushing my 65,000 word limit, I'm going to go to bed.

Placement Exam

Today started off as a rainy mess and it should appear that it is ending in much the same. Orientation was good today, we learned how to use the computers and computer stations at KUIS today. After that I ended up eating at McDonald's, and I have to say my first Japanese experience with them was a good one. Many of the products are the same, but some are completely different, like the Ebi Filet-O [shrimp filet], Teriyaki McBurger, and the McPork. There are also different sort of chicken sandwiches, I personally got the Chicken Filet-O today. I'm sure it won't be the last of there, haha.

After that I studied for the Japanese Placement Exam, which more or less decides what level of Japanese I'll be taking this coming semester. The test wasn't too bad until Grammar section 2, but I feel that is where the real placement part comes into effect. Anyway, hopefully it went well.

The last thing of the day was a Karaoke Party for one of my friends here. Let me start by saying this, Karaoke and of course drinking are definitely not my things, but I felt it would be nice to attend, as well as experience one first-hand. I still haven't drank any alcohol in my life and that still hasn't changed, but the group of people I went with [around 20 people actually] managed to convince me to sing, or at least co-sing a song. Utada Hikaru's "Simple and Clean", a song from a video game I've played, ended up being the song. It was alright, haha, I don't like singing in front of people really. Additionally, I don't like dancing so I really just sat along the wall 95% of the time, which I was completely content with. I just took random glances around the room, we got the large room because of our numbers, and read the words to the songs on the TVs spread around. People were lame and picked mostly English songs, which was rather dull for me, but there were some cool people who picked Japanese songs. If anyone finds pictures online they were taken completely against my will, I couldn't just hide or turn it down but I had no desire of any of them to be taken, so yeah. Oh, and especially the picture / video of Peter, hmmm... what shall we call it... giving me a faux-lapdance for just sitting there the whole time, haha. It was actually less awkward than the whole singing and dancing thing in a weird sort of way XP

So, tomorrow I don't have anything scheduled, and I think that's my queue to sleep in, haha. I might stop in Makuhari though to look at DSi's, depending on how things are going. The thing I test-ordered to my location arrived, so I can more or less guarentee my address now.

Last update I'm going to do, and I should have been doing this earlier, and that is to actually go and answer all the comments people have been leaving me. Sorry if I don't get every answer to them, but I'm going to try. So go back and read what I write back to them!

Alright, peace, that's all for now.