October 21st 2010
I think it has once again been close to a month since I last updated my blog. I don't know why I just haven't really been up to is all that much lately I suppose. But work is still going well. I still look forward to going to work but I have been a really heavy sleeper lately so I don't like the getting out of bed so early all that much.
I took a trip to Tokyo about two weeks ago and I was able to meet up with my friend Courtney. Courtney and I both went to Konan University, and when that program was over I thought we would never see each other again but she is back in Japan studying abroad for the third time so I guess things worked out really well. It is very do-able, but it is a serious trip to go to Tokyo. It takes two hours on the bus and because there isn't a single straight road anywhere in this country, I get car sick ridding the bus very easily. So I can't read or play a game or anything, which makes that two hours seem like a lot longer. There is a train that is a little cheaper but it takes like 2 hour 45 mins. I think I might do that in the future just so I can actually do something with that time.
But I got to Tokyo a few hours before I was supposed to meet up with my friend so I decided to walk from Tokyo station to Akihabara. I have GPS on my phone, but I forgot how terrible my phone is. Granted it was cloudy that day but it was saying I was going the wrong direction when I wasn't and I ended up doing a lot of back tracking because of that.
I meet up with Courtney in Akihabara and we did some shopping. I really enjoy shopping with Courtney because no matter how much I spend, she will always spend more so I don't feel bad about it. I got some animation cells which are awesome because it is literal a piece of an anime. Each cell is unique and for the most part they are very cheap. I got a Tenchi Muyo cells for like 500 yen, a dragon ball z cell for 1500 yen and some unknown anime cells for 100 yen. Its crazy. They are kind of odd size so I haven't found a good frame for them yet though. I also got some Lucky Star figures that we on sale. I went overboard buying figures last time but this time I just wanted something to add some personality to my apartment.
After Akihabara we went to Shibuya I think and had monja yaki. Its kind of like okonomiyaki but its kind of jell like consistency. It was good. And then I had a bakudan takoyaki, it was a single takoyaki the size of a baseball. It was pretty good. We also checked out some arcades and I played a racing game that was in 3D, it was a lot of fun. I really am looking forward for 3D stuff to take over.
After that we parted ways and I went to Shinjiku to stay at a capsule hotel. Capsule hotels really aren't that bad. Its like $40 a night which is cheap considering this is one of the biggest cities in the world. The bed is not comfortable at all and I didn't get that good of a night's sleep, but it served its purpose.
The next day I went to Saitama for a BBQ. Someone forwarded the information about a church BBQ in Saitama and I asked if I could come. All things considered it was pretty far form my house but I really enjoyed meeting those people and the food was great. The fellowship with my church is my lifeline here in Japan. It is how I meet new friends, its how I meet people who worry about me and know I even exist, and it is how I get out of my house and do things. Without it I would have a much harder time living in Japan.
The whole trip to Tokyo made me realize how different Tokyo is from Kamogawa. So many people, so big. I feel like I need to get a taste of this every once in a while, but I do not want to live in Tokyo. I like my little town, I like going to a store and people recognizing me. I like feeling special because I am one of the few foreigners in town.
Besides that trip I got a little sick. This is where living on your own really sucks. Having to get yourself together to drive to the store to buy medicine is not fun. Thanks to asking my friends on facebook I found out what medicine is good here but what I got was just a powder. I tried just putting the powder in my mouth and then quickly drinking something, bad idea. I tried mixing it with water, still bad. I tried diluting it with several cups of water, still not good. So I had to guy buy pills and put the powder inside myself. It felt like I was doing something illegal or something.
Well I guess that's about it. I'll try to write more often.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Why I need a GPS
October 25th 2010
I would like to talk today about why I am going to buy a GPS for my car.
So the trip every sunday to church can be kind of tiring sometimes. It is an hour and a half through a road with a lot of traffic and stop lights. It does have some nice views of the ocean but it is mostly city which sort of gets boring to look at very quickly.
About two weeks ago someone at church recommended that I take a different road as it would cut twenty minutes off my time because there are hardly any traffic lights and the speed limit is higher. It went through really middle of no where Japan but the view was pretty amazing. That day I looked it up on my phone and some how found out how to get home really easily with only checking the GPS on my phone once or twice.
Because of conference and being sick I hadn't been to that building in two weeks so I thought I would try the mountain road on the way there. It was a little confusing and I did end up taking more time then normal but I made it just fine.
On the way home however, things just didn't work out. I don't know how but I got really lost. When you get away from the densely populated areas of Japan, things are very different. Many roads not only didn't say what road it was, they would not have any signs at all. I had a sort of idea of where to go but everything looked so different going the other direction. I kind of had an idea of what cities should be next so I followed the arrows, but things weren't going so well with that.
So I tried to use the GPS on my phone, pulled over of course, but my phone's worthlessness really shined. I could understand if it had a hard time finding my location, it was cloudy and I think the GPS antenna in those phones is smaller then a proper GPS, but this thing would tell me I am in the wrong location. Relying on this thing caused me to go in complete opposite directions and just get much more lost then if I just had a simple compass.
Then the rain really started to come down and so did the Sun. It got dark and stormy and I was driving around on swerving roads with no idea at all where I was. It was kind of scary. Like I didn't really feel like I was in any actual danger, but I felt like I was just setting up some Japanese ghost story. The inaka (japanese country side) has it's own sense of scary and I really felt it.
What was supposed to be a simple 1 hour 10 minute drive turned into 2+ hours. And if I just had a GPS that worked, I would have been home before it got dark and stormy. So I am going to go out shopping for one after work, but at least I have a little story now.
I would like to talk today about why I am going to buy a GPS for my car.
So the trip every sunday to church can be kind of tiring sometimes. It is an hour and a half through a road with a lot of traffic and stop lights. It does have some nice views of the ocean but it is mostly city which sort of gets boring to look at very quickly.
About two weeks ago someone at church recommended that I take a different road as it would cut twenty minutes off my time because there are hardly any traffic lights and the speed limit is higher. It went through really middle of no where Japan but the view was pretty amazing. That day I looked it up on my phone and some how found out how to get home really easily with only checking the GPS on my phone once or twice.
Because of conference and being sick I hadn't been to that building in two weeks so I thought I would try the mountain road on the way there. It was a little confusing and I did end up taking more time then normal but I made it just fine.
On the way home however, things just didn't work out. I don't know how but I got really lost. When you get away from the densely populated areas of Japan, things are very different. Many roads not only didn't say what road it was, they would not have any signs at all. I had a sort of idea of where to go but everything looked so different going the other direction. I kind of had an idea of what cities should be next so I followed the arrows, but things weren't going so well with that.
So I tried to use the GPS on my phone, pulled over of course, but my phone's worthlessness really shined. I could understand if it had a hard time finding my location, it was cloudy and I think the GPS antenna in those phones is smaller then a proper GPS, but this thing would tell me I am in the wrong location. Relying on this thing caused me to go in complete opposite directions and just get much more lost then if I just had a simple compass.
Then the rain really started to come down and so did the Sun. It got dark and stormy and I was driving around on swerving roads with no idea at all where I was. It was kind of scary. Like I didn't really feel like I was in any actual danger, but I felt like I was just setting up some Japanese ghost story. The inaka (japanese country side) has it's own sense of scary and I really felt it.
What was supposed to be a simple 1 hour 10 minute drive turned into 2+ hours. And if I just had a GPS that worked, I would have been home before it got dark and stormy. So I am going to go out shopping for one after work, but at least I have a little story now.
November 7th 2010.
Friday night I came home, played some sonic 4 (awesome game by the way) and started to do some reading when I just passed out. I was so tired. I love spending time with younger students but they just drain the life force right from me. They want to play tag or something but my body just can't do it anymore. I mean I am pretty out of shape to start out with but I dunno I just get really tired. So waking up the next day I was just really lazy. Except for about 2 hours I spent the whole day just sitting in my room. I played a lot of RE5 with the move controller on ps3. I like the move controller a lot. It is like the wii remote except better and without terrible graphics, but the controls for RE5 is just really lazy. You just don't get to do what you think you ought to be able to do with a shiny new motion controller.
So when I did go out I went to a place that said it was a park on the map, but looked like some sort of bike club. I really don't know. I run into things that I have no idea what they are pretty often. Its kind of awkward because I don't know if it is like pay to enter kind of thing or not. So I just took some pictures of a temple nearby. I am trying to get better at taking photos and when I think about the composition of the shot it looks good in my mind but when looking at it on the computer it just doesn't look right. Often it is too bright or not bright enough or just sort of artistically it is boring. I kind of want to take a class or something.
On a different subject I got a GPS. I bought a garmin and I really regret it. The problem is that Garmin simply took the same system for their normal one and imported Japanese data and called it a day. But both Japan and the Japanese language can not be thrown on so easily. For example my GPS can not search by kanji (chinese characters), it can only search by hiragana (japanese alphabet), so it will bring up all of the results that have the same reading even if they have different Kanji. And because it can't search by Kanji you have to enter the locations official title. The other day I needed to get to the 会館 but I couldn't find it because it was listed as 鴨川市会館。The device also doesn't seem to know the speed limit of any road or how to take back alleys, so I very often get the less then optimal route.
I take a sort of middle of no where path to get to church and it is really pretty. It sort of sums up the reason why it is awesome to live away from the big cities. I am really looking forward to seeing the fall colors, it is going to be great.
Everything at school is still going fine. I have taught at Kindergarten and it was a lot of fun. It really isn't that big of a transition from being a student to being an ALT. My job is mostly about just having fun with kids. I do give my kids a lot of stickers, and I am starting to run out. I ordered about 1000 from some company in China but I still have to watch out even 1000 can run out quickly.
I kind of feel bad for anyone looking at this blog hopping to get some great insight about what it is like to live in Japan, Japan just sort of seems normal now. Like not in a its boring way, but just that I'm not really all that surprised by things anymore. The way things are done in Japan just sort of feel like the way that things ought to be done.
well thats it for now I guess.
Friday night I came home, played some sonic 4 (awesome game by the way) and started to do some reading when I just passed out. I was so tired. I love spending time with younger students but they just drain the life force right from me. They want to play tag or something but my body just can't do it anymore. I mean I am pretty out of shape to start out with but I dunno I just get really tired. So waking up the next day I was just really lazy. Except for about 2 hours I spent the whole day just sitting in my room. I played a lot of RE5 with the move controller on ps3. I like the move controller a lot. It is like the wii remote except better and without terrible graphics, but the controls for RE5 is just really lazy. You just don't get to do what you think you ought to be able to do with a shiny new motion controller.
So when I did go out I went to a place that said it was a park on the map, but looked like some sort of bike club. I really don't know. I run into things that I have no idea what they are pretty often. Its kind of awkward because I don't know if it is like pay to enter kind of thing or not. So I just took some pictures of a temple nearby. I am trying to get better at taking photos and when I think about the composition of the shot it looks good in my mind but when looking at it on the computer it just doesn't look right. Often it is too bright or not bright enough or just sort of artistically it is boring. I kind of want to take a class or something.
On a different subject I got a GPS. I bought a garmin and I really regret it. The problem is that Garmin simply took the same system for their normal one and imported Japanese data and called it a day. But both Japan and the Japanese language can not be thrown on so easily. For example my GPS can not search by kanji (chinese characters), it can only search by hiragana (japanese alphabet), so it will bring up all of the results that have the same reading even if they have different Kanji. And because it can't search by Kanji you have to enter the locations official title. The other day I needed to get to the 会館 but I couldn't find it because it was listed as 鴨川市会館。The device also doesn't seem to know the speed limit of any road or how to take back alleys, so I very often get the less then optimal route.
I take a sort of middle of no where path to get to church and it is really pretty. It sort of sums up the reason why it is awesome to live away from the big cities. I am really looking forward to seeing the fall colors, it is going to be great.
Everything at school is still going fine. I have taught at Kindergarten and it was a lot of fun. It really isn't that big of a transition from being a student to being an ALT. My job is mostly about just having fun with kids. I do give my kids a lot of stickers, and I am starting to run out. I ordered about 1000 from some company in China but I still have to watch out even 1000 can run out quickly.
I kind of feel bad for anyone looking at this blog hopping to get some great insight about what it is like to live in Japan, Japan just sort of seems normal now. Like not in a its boring way, but just that I'm not really all that surprised by things anymore. The way things are done in Japan just sort of feel like the way that things ought to be done.
well thats it for now I guess.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)