Wow before you know it 3 months have gone by since I got here in Japan. I am 1/3 of the way done with this program. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I really want to see my friends and family and as great as Japan is I kind of get sick of it some times. But any ways lets see what did I do this week.
Starting on Thursday there was a gakuensai(school festival). It was really weird to see actually the main walk ways up to school was just packed with food vendors from clubs. Now normally you could just walk past all of that stuff but these people get right up in your face and try to get you buy their stuff. It was actually really annoying. But I ate lunch from the vendors and they had a stage up with little student bands playing and one group did an amazing cover for high way star. But we had class still so after I think I just went home, honestly I don't remember if I did anything else.
Friday I went with Emily tomomi and tomoko (unrelated just similar names) to osaka for shopping. That day I decided to take a bunch of short videos with my camera so that people could see what its on just a normal day going to osaka. I apologize for the shakiness and the shots of my feet I was just doing it as kind of an after thought. We started out at Hep 5 in Umeda. Its a mall but as you would expect in Japan its very narrow and very tall. When you go in there is a giant whale suspended from the ceiling and on the top of the building there is a ferris wheel you can ride. We looked at a few things but ended up going to this haunted house in the arcade. This was really different from a normal haunted house because after a short little intro video you go into this little room with a wooden table, a giant doll attached to the wall and head phones. You put the head phones on and the lights go out and just listen. They some how did perfect surround sound with these head phones and it felt like this creepy old lady was whispering into your ear and was moving from shoulder to shoulder. It was all in Japanese but just the way everything was said was so freaky. Things like lights flashing or the seats dropping a few inches suddenly throw in extra shock but it was really all about the audio.
We then took the subway to nanba and looked at more shops but ultimately we got to Den Den town. I was on a quest to get a portable hard drive and ram for my laptop. I got those at a pretty decent price but I also picked up another gundam model. It was the 1/60 scale Strike Gundam from Gundam Seed. it looks a little plane but it was 2500 yen and I didn't even know they made more 1/60 non perfect grade models besides the exia I picked up.
I ended up staying later then everyone else then headed back home. The reason I got the computer parts was so that I could play world of warcraft at school. I got the game up and running on my tiny PC which in itself is a pretty amazing thing. Its really slow but totally playable. So that Saturday I went to school and used the internet there so I could download the 2 gigs of patches needed to get back up to speed. But after I got it all patched I found out that the internet connection there blocks the ports wow uses. So I was a little frustrated about that. I was feeling that I couldn't get anything I wanted to work the way I wanted it to do that. But I ultimately found a port I could use a lan cable to connect and get pass the blocked ports. that made me feel really good actually because its like something I always did at home. Recently I found out I can use the computer lab and just plug in my hard drive and play with really good graphics so I'll probably be doing that.
That night I got a text message from kentaro (some I met at the welcome party) and he invited me to a Nou performance that his club was doing. I said yes even though I didn't want to go. You really have to work with building a social life so I take any chance I can get. So I go and its really boring I can't understand anything and sometimes I think they are just making sounds. Onces its over I hung out with Kentaro and his friend for a few hours. We ate lunch and checked out the class rooms that were decorated for the clubs. When you enter they ask you sign this book then they give you a big pamplet about their club after a few rooms I had a big stack in my hand. I felt bad because I was just going to throw them away. I was actually going to use the bins at school by Kentaro said to do it at the station. The most interesting room I saw was the American studies club. In the center of the room was a badly made white house over a half black half white united states map and a life size lincoln being assasinated by john wilks booth. They also had a famous black people section and it was Michal Jordan, Obama and Michal Jackson. It was a real WTF moment.
Then we hung out the Nou club's house and it was pretty cool, Kentaro was like "oh hes a gundam otaku" "he's a baseball otaku" "he's a tokusatsu otaku" so definitely interesting people there. Me and Kentaro talked about pokemon actually. He has like 250 hours in his pearl game!
I was invited for all night karaoke so I went home, ate dinner, then took a little nap. That was a lot of fun and it was only like 1050 yen for the whole night because someone had a coupon.
Because of that I was really tired on Monday and just slept in. I then finished my Exia model. I put the final decals on it. These decals are so hard to use. You have to cut them out of the sheet you want, soak them in water for 3 seconds then slide them off of the paper onto the piece you want and some how dry it with out moving it. I messed up one of the major ones I wanted and had to use something else that didn't look as cool I think. I really wish I had somewhere I could spray paint, I really want to add a finishing coat to give it a more metalic look but I don't know where or how I could do that exactly. Hmm well I just thought of something as I wrote that. I could just go walk and find some where that is out in the open and no one goes to and spray there. But I have to be careful so it doesn't look like I'm there to graffiti or something. I'll let you know how that works next time.
Um Tues, Wed, and Thur nothing particular happened except I started getting really home sick. Once thanksgiving came I was really sad. Although I got my tuff guy persona I need to uphold I will admit I was getting pretty teary eye thinking about everyone back home and how much I miss them all. So me Emily, Christy and Zoe decided to go out for Kobe Beef because we all missed out on a great meal back home. So we get there and the restaurant has gates on the booths so you can kind of close yourself off from the rest of the place and there was a grill pit in the center of the table. There werent any pictures on the menu so we worked our way through in Japanese on ordering and we were all surprised how little raw meat our 1480 yen bought. It was like half a pound I think, I dunno it was like 8 grams I think maybe. But it was SOOOOO good. you grill it yourself then dip it in this sauce. Its one of those you just do it once for the experience. We were all still hungry so we went to the bakery bought some really nice rolls and such then went to karaoke for two hours while we ate. I sang cha la head cha la (DBZ japanese opening) and dekaranger theme song. Me and emily also sung rock lobster. It was great.
Saturday me and Emily were invited to walk around the old part of Kyoto by Shinichi. He really put a lot of effort in planning it out, he even printed out maps and plotted a course. I took a lot of pictures because the fall colors were just breath taking. The pictures really speak for themselves so I'll just upload those. But one really cool part was that there was a little bridge, normally nothing note worthy except that there was a little sign explaining that this bridge has been here for hundreds of years and there was a very old drawing of that very same bridge. Its so mind blowing for things to be the same as they have been for hundreds of years.
Well I've got more goofing off to to do and more gundams that need building so I'll write later
bye
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