I think I'm turning Japanese

Kanji is really interesting.

2011-02-15T15:15:00.001-08:00

I for some reason feel like I want to write about how interesting Japanese is. For those of you who don't know the Japanese written language has three parts, two alphabets called hiragana and katakana and kanji. Hiragana is used for Japanese words and conjugation, katakana is used for loan words and kanji are sort of the main chunk of the language. There are around 2000 kanji that are taught from elementary school to high school and there are more used in names and more complicated writings. Kanji is sort of a mess in a linguistic sense. Where in Chinese the kanji always have just one reading, in Japanese they can have many and you will always find extra readings that aren't in dictionaries. Kanji is difficult.

If kanji is so difficult then why does Japan still use it? There are several reason, despite having two alphabets the Japanese language doesn't have very much range in the available sounds. There are many words that have the exact same sound but very different meanings. People often think Kyoto and Tokyo are the same word but flipped when actuality it is 京都 Kyoto and 東京　Tokyo. The 京 kanji is the same but the other one is different. The difference is hard to hear but if you see the kanji you can understand it a lot more.

The same word can also have different kanji. This is a weird concept and makes it harder to study, but it allows for an extra level of depth not possible without it. I was watching Bleach today and saw a great example. The verb to protect is mamoru and is normally written as 守る but it can also be written as 護る. The kanji for the main character, Ichigo, is 一護(one and protect) not 苺　(strawberry). So in the show Ichigo is fighting himself in his mind and his other self says something like “The thing you want to protect isn't what I want to protect” but they used the 護る　kanji instead of 守る. This seemed to have a second layer to the conversation because it was talking not just about protecting something but about Ichigo himself.

All of this would have been lost if I wasn't watching the show with Japanese subtitles on. Kanji gives Japanese so much flexibility and diversity in its writing, its just really interesting.

Ive decided to take the kanji test. This is the test Japanese people take to test their Japanese level. I am shooting for the same level as middle school students take, its going to be tough.

nintendo 3ds impressions.

2011-01-08T01:53:00.000-08:00

Ok so I am very lucky and I live only two hours away from the tokyo area so I was able to attend nintendo world 2011. The free event was set up to show off the new 3ds. So how was it? Short answer, I plan to buy one at launch. Long answer....

So the big thing is of course the 3d. And for the most part it worked really well. Much like 3d movies it isn't as much about things jumping out at you but more that you can look into the picture. Being able to look into the games world adds a lot to the experience. It may sound cheesy to say so but it feels like the video game world is more real, like the characters exist just out side of your reach. I worry about dating games on this because some people might get even more attached to the virtual girls. But it wasn't perfect. It took a bit getting used to and depending on how you hold it things might look a little flickery. You don't have to worry about loosing the 3d effect mid game play but each person will have a sweet spot. Speaking of sweet spots it is really good nintendo included a slider for the 3d because I found some settings better then others. I've also noticed that all 3d is not equal. Some games had more of a flicker to it then others. I noticed a lot of flicker in the metal gear solid demo.

The unit itself isnt that different from the ds. It does of course have an analog stick which is great. It is way better then what the psp has. It feels good and moves quickly. The units are really glossy which looks nice in photos but the smudges would drive me crazy. I didn't get to hold one without the security device on it but it felt the same as the ds .

I played dead or alive , street fighter , ridgeracer , kid ikuras , and resident evil. Doa was good. Looked nice just like doa3 the 3d was nice when the guys fell down to the next part of the stage and not too much flickering. Street fighter was great . It looks like the console version and had a sort of behind the player camera which also looked great in 3d. What really made me like it is yhr same thing that will make serious fans hate it , you have moves assigned to the touch screen. If you suck at moves like me just press a square on the touch screen to do a fireball. The combo gauge moves are also there and light up when they are ready. Very n00b friendly. Ridgeracer didn't have that great of graphics. It is obvious that this is a quick cash in but playing a racing game in 3d was a lot of fun. You can better sense the speed and how far away you are from the other cars. Kid ikarus was awesome. Flying in 3d was reallyy something else and makes me think how great all on rail shooters like Panzer dragoon would be. The demo was really easy but you have simple controls easy targetting and fun combat. It may be the killer app at launch. Resident evil seemed to go back to its roots with this one as the game is scarry. Movement is like re5 but shooting is done in first person. So when you pull out your gun the analog stick controls where you are aiming. First person looked great in 3d and made it scarrier at that monster just gets closer and closer to you. One little thing I loved was when you take damage the border of the screen turns red like most games but this effect just looked really cool in 3d.

I also saw a.video for metal gear paper mario and mario mart. Paper mario impressed me the most because he really looks like a piece of paper in a 3d world now.

So the 3ds is great and I will get mine in a month and a half and I think everyone should get one when they can.

Its been a while

2011-01-01T21:46:00.000-08:00

For anyone who reads this blog I am very sorry that I haven't written anything for a really long time. Plenty has happened but for the most part everything has just sort of become normal for me so I haven't felt that there was really anything worth writing about.

But in a nutshell,
Halloween was interesting. The elementary schools had Halloween presentations and they wore these garbage bag costumes and did little skits. It was really cute. Really really cute. I did a little introduction to halloween in Japanese in front of all of the parents too. That was a little embarrassing. I had a cloth power ranger mask on I got from the 100 yen shop so I think that made it a little more embarrassing.

Nothing big really happened in November. I went to a few more single adult activities and I meet some girls, get their email addresses only to find out that all but one time they were at least 10 years older then me! I found one girl who was really cool and just a little younger then me, but of course she had a boyfriend. The whole girlfriend thing is frustrating because I am doing all that I can do. I go to every single activity I can, no matter how far away it is, I don't let myself be shy and I go up and talk to strangers in Japanese, and I make it a goal to get at least one email address every time, but so far no luck. There are only so many activities. I do have friends who are keeping their eyes out for a girl they can introduce to me, but I guess it all comes back to patience.

December was Christmas the entire month. I did the same Christmas presentation at least 20 times. And if it wasn't that we were doing Christmas vocab or something like that. I didn't exactly hate it or anything but it was just a lot of Christmas. The high light was on Dec 24th-28th I was able to spend time with Courtney, Emily and Julienne, my friends from when I studied at Konan. We exchanged gifts, did yakiniku (hot plate bbq I guess), sang karaoke, watched stupid videos online, just good old hanging out. And on new years I spent the day with the bishop's family and had some traditional Japanese food. It was pretty great. I also had chocolate covered potato chips which were actually great.

So with the basic what I did stuff out of the way I want to talk a little more general about my life here. First off, I love my life right now. My job is fantastic. In the future I may have a job that is more rewarding and I will have a job that pays more, but I don't think I will ever have a job that is as fun as this is. With the younger kids all I basically do is play with them. Sure I sneak some actual teaching into the fun but its just great. I really enjoy spending time with the kids and I actually miss them when I am on break. Children see the world as such a bright and happy place and I can feel the same way by being around them. At my schools there is next to nothing to prepare and it is easy to change things up on the fly if need be. Middle school doesn't have that same happy go lucky atmosphere but I really enjoy talking to the kids outside of class. They all have some great personalities and are a lot of fun to be with if you get to know them. Inside the class things don't always flow all that well and you have to deal with the crazy shyness but it isn't "unpleasant" you just need to know what to expect. It is normal to get few volunteers or have some kids talking to each other. Once you can accept that, you are fine.

The pay is also great. As long as I am careful about my spending I can eat out whenever I want, pay all my bills, get all the little odds and ends that I need, buy one big thing that I want, and still save $1000 a month. If I was more careful I could save $1500 but I like shopping. I get 20 paid days off a year. That is basically a month of free pay. I also have great co-workers. Everyone likes me and I like everyone. I don't agree 100% with some of the teachers teaching style, but I don't really know the school system here. I took Japanese in college, not middle school, my experience isn't exactly the same as what the students are going through.

I also love where I live. My apartment is great. It is actually really warm. It is nothing like what I went through when I was in Kobe. I stay nice and toasty. Of course the reason for that is that my town has really nice weather. It is now January but it is a really nice day out. Kamogawa is also just a great place to live. It is so nice and peaceful, tons of nature everywhere, but you can still do shopping. Every time I go to Tokyo I realize how much better Kamogawa is. Tokyo is so busy and loud. It just drains the energy from you. I go to Tokyo to meet up with people or do shopping but at the end of the day I always just want to get back home.

At my job I also get a lot of time to study Japanese. Its great for two reasons, the first being its really hard to get yourself to study on your own, especially when you are out of school. If I don't study at home in my free time no one will know and or care, if I study while at work I look busy and that is a good motivation because other wise I would diffidently not be. The other reason is that I am getting paid to learn. For the past 4 years I have had to pay to learn, now I am getting paid to. If I can keep this up my Japanese will be at interpreter level in a few years.

I saw all of this but I only have one friend, by normal definition, in Kamogawa. The reason I say by normal definition is that there are lots of people that care about me and I enjoy talking to, but they wouldn't come over for a halo match. Like I said before I miss my students and I look forward to going back to work. I think of my students as my friends, just not normal friends. Same goes with all of the other teachers. And at my church I am friends with people who are much older and married and the missionaries who can't really do much. So while I always want to make more friends, I am not lonely. I think a lot of people who complain about living out in the countryside don't look at friendship the same way I do.

One thing still bothers me though, I don't know what to do with myself after I am done with JET. Obviously I want to continue to work with Japan and use Japanese. And truth be told I want to stay in Japan. I really love this country. I of course love America too, its my home, but you can't really compare the two. People always ask why I like Japan so much and I don't really have a good answer. Of course originally it was just I like Anime and how exotic Japan appears but the more I learn about it the more it just seems like this place matches my personality. It is really easy to get along with people here, the scenery puts me at ease, and just the lifestyle seems just what I want. There is one problem with working in Japan after JET and that is over time. On paper the work week is supposed to be 40 hours but in reality 60+ is normal. I don't want to do that. I want to come home as soon as possible and spend the evening with my family. I am willing to budge on it every once in a while, an extra hour here two hours there but in Japan people literally work themselves to death. So I don't know what I'll do. I at least have some time to think about it.

Ok well that was a nice good blog. If anyone has individual questions about living in Japan that might give me some more direction on what to write about.

till then

Another trip to Tokyo

2010-11-07T01:42:00.000-07:00

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.

Why I need a GPS

2010-11-07T01:41:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-11-07T01:07:00.000-07:00

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.

The Story of Gon, The Loyal One Eye Dog.

2010-09-30T05:46:00.000-07:00

So the following is a story that I translated. There is an interesting story as to how I got the Japanese version. A few weeks ago I was interviewed by a reporter for a regional paper that has about 200,000 readers. In it I mentioned that I translate anime and manga into English. The whole thing is actually kind of embarrassing but I guess there isn't anything really important happening in southern Chiba. So one day I get a phone call from one of the teachers at school saying that I have received a strange letter from someone in Tateyama (about an hour south). We both tried to figure out who it could be since I had never been to Tateyama. Once she opened it however it was a letter, a short story, and a pamphlet for an onsen. As it turns out that they wanted me to "share" the story of Gon with Americans. I've had some free time and I haven't had a good translation project for a while so I gave it a shot.

The reason I enjoy translating as a hobby is that there are so many challenges you need to address. First off is Japanese is a cute language. It is very easy to make something really really cute, I think its hard in English. Japanese cheezyness isn't as clearly defined as it is in English. The Japanese version really gives off a feeling of "Oh this poor dog, I feel so sorry for him" I don't know if I really pulled that off well in the English version or not.

The second thing is length of paragraphs and sentences. You would think that the best way to work with a story is to go sentence by sentence and keep the paragraphs the same, but Japanese can have crazy long sentences and very short paragraphs. There were a lot of parts where I split sentences and merged paragraphs, but this version still has very small paragraphs.

Another thing is quotation. There are lots of parts in the original that seemed like they should be quoted weren't and vice versa. I just went with what sounds better in English on that. One translation problem that you would see in any language though, is what if the original is just written poorly? This story would occasionally break the 1st person for a third person. I guess you have to change it for the better but you also need to protect the authenticity of the original.

Ok so enough of an intro, please enjoy the story
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The Story of Gon, The Loyal One Eye Dog.

Written by Mitsue Suzuki
Edited by Shintaro Suzuki
Translated by Benjamin Pomeroy

My name is Gon. I'm a crossbreed shiba inu. When my mother's master moved away, she abandoned her. My mother wondered around looking for a new master, when the president of a construction company saw her while he was going for a horse ride. “Well will you look at that splendid dog. Someone might be looking for it, go grab it.”His employee grabbed my mom and took her home. She was very well taken care of. And then me and my brother were born, although my brother soon got sick and died. I was given to the Watanabe couple, who worked at the same company. They loved me as much as if I was their own child.
The old man who became my master was very good at singing and would always sing a song while going for a walk. It was wonderful, and I was enchanted when I listened. I thought no one could sing better then him.
I grew up very strong and healthy, and on the day that I turned three years old, a new hobby store opened up next to the school. Three grade school kids purchased a plastic pistol and were searching around for a target to shoot. Since I never caused any one any trouble, my master let me loose in the yard. I started to go near the three of them, and just my luck, they saw me.
They caught me, dragged me out to the field, and tied me up to a tree. The three of them took the pistol and shot point plank into my left eye. Three pellets hit my eye. “Aaaahhh it hurts! It hurts! Daddy! Mommy! Help me! It hurts!”
The kids untied me and ran away. I tossed and turned because of the pain. I was scared, and I hid myself under someone's house and cried. Dad and Mom were out all night searching for me. “Gon! Gon!” They were so worried they couldn't sleep. The next day they continued to search for me after they came home from work. “Gon! Gon!”
I was in pain and I was starving, and right when I was about to go home, my master found me. My eye was dangling by a thread. They were shocked and rushed me to the vet. The doctor removed my eye. “Three plastic pellets were lodged in his eye”,they all then knew that it was the work of those no good kids.
Dad took me in under the covers, and we slept together in the same futon. “Gon, it must have hurt so much. Never go near those kids again.” Whenever Mom would say “Is it really alright to have the dog inside?” Dad would quickly come back with “What are you saying? If this was our own child, what would you do?”.
I slept with my Dad's arms wrapped around me for a week, and I started to feel a little better, so I tried practice walking. Because I only had one eye, I wasn't very good at first. I would just go around in a circle or stumble about, but Dad would do his best to cheer me on saying “You can do it Gon! Don't give up!” Eventually I was able to get back to living a normal life, which made Dad and Mom feel revealed, and they started going back to work. This time they made sure to leash me to my dog house.
After a while those same those same bad kids came back. They wanted to shoot out my other eye too. A neighbor saw what they were trying to do, and called the police. It seems Dad and Mom told them “If anything happens, please contact us” The police contacted the school, and the teachers realized how big of a problem this was. The students and parents were all gathered together, and were given a stern warning.
The parents of the children came to my house to apologize, but simply said “Well just pay the medical bill, and it will be alright.” This upset Dad and he yelled back “Fix Gon's eye! What would you do if this happened to a person?” I was very glad to hear him say that. I think even dogs have a right to live.
Once I had fully recovered, Dad would take me for a walk and sing, just like before. I was really taken away by his beautiful singing. Life was nice and peaceful, but only until that one day.
Suddenly the telephone started to ring. “Hello? Is this Mrs. Watanabe? Something terrible has happened. Your husband collapsed at work. Please hurry and come down here.” Mom had been home with a touch of a cold so she left right away. Dad was rushed off to Kameda Hospital in Kamogawa and there he began a long hospitalization.
Dad couldn't talk, he had a vacant look in his eyes, and he was paralyzed from the waist down.
The blood vessels in his brain had been severally damaged. Mom never left Dad's side, so there was only me and my older brother, their son, left at home. My brother would leave for work after lunch, so I was left all by myself to watch the house.
In an attempt to help Dad regain consciousness, Mom played the tape that Dad recorded every day. The doctor told her that it wouldn't be a bad idea, so she determined to play it over and over again.
One day, Dad suddenly work up. Tears were rolling down his cheek and Mom too was crying tears of joy. After a while his condition became more stable, and he was moved to Tateyama hospital. There he struggled everyday with his rehabilitation. Dad still couldn't talk very well, so even though Mom would come home by bike to take care of laundry or what not, for the most part, she spent everyday helping Dad at the hospital.
Some people from Dad's office were taking care of me, but they didn't seem to have the time to take me for a walk. They would say “Gon, go take yourself for a walk” and let me go. More then a year had passed since I had last seen Dad, and I wanted to see him more then anything. I found a road that had Mom's scent on it, and I followed it until I came to an intersection. The cars were honking and zooming pass so, I found some old lady and I crossed the street with her. After I had followed the road for a while, I could faintly hear Dad singing off in the distance. A human wouldn't have been able to hear it. Only a dog, like me, could hear it. Our ears are much more sensitive than human ears, so voices that humans can't hear, I can.
I eventually came to a big hospital, and Mom's scent was very strong there. I sat down at the front gate and stared, but I just couldn't see Mom or Dad anywhere. So after two hours I had no choice but to go back home. The office people I was staying with would release me after they finished lunch, so I would follow Mom's scent and go back to the hospital.
Because I would sit in front of the hospital every day waiting, some of the nurses said “Everyday that one eye dog comes to the front gate and just stares. I wonder if it is a stray. It's really gross that he only has one eye. But he does have a collar on, I wonder if someone owns him” Mom heard this while passing through the halls and though that it might be Gon. She went to go tell Dad, who as listening intently, and gestured for her to go to the entrance and take a look. Nervously she ran to the entrance, and to her surprise, she saw me sitting there waiting for her. “Gon! How did you know we were here? Did you come along with someone?”
I didn't respond, I just sat there wagging my tail. I was finally able to see Mom again. I was just so happy I couldn't stand it. I leaped up on Mom. Mom couldn't hold back, and tears started to roll down her face. “Gon, please wait right here. I'll go tell Dad. When Dad finds out that you came here, he will be so happy. It might even help him recover”
Mom went back to the room and she started telling Dad about me. A doctor, who was passing by, came in and Mom told him as well. They couldn't exactly let a dog into a hospital, but since they thought that it might help Dad recover, they let us meet in the entrance way.
I hadn't seen my Dad for a year and a half, and I was so happy that I just jumped into his arms. Dad couldn't stop the flow of tears. After our joyful reunion, Mom told me “Gon, at two o'clock Dad has to go to the rehabilitation room, so go home and come back again tomorrow. Wait out side the pathway to the rehabilitation room and watch out for cars.”
I was sad, but I just had to go home and I could come again tomorrow. Mom called the office and told them “Today Gon came to the hospital! I was very surprised. I wonder how he knew where to go. I told him to come again at two o'clock, so please let him go after lunch.” I was once again able to meet Dad and see his smiling face, so I went home happy.
Despite his rehabilitation, Dad eventually left for heaven. Mom called the office and told them “Dad passed away today, please don't let Gon go” They didn't let me go that day.
Dad came home, but not the same way. Many people came to our house, and everyone of them was crying. I was very sad too and I cried “Awwoooo” A hearse came to our house for the funeral. For a final good-bye, Mom let me go. I headed straight for the hearse and I climbed inside.
“Dad, your the one who saved me, Dad. I love you, I love you so much. You can't leave me here, please take me with you!”
Somehow, I heard Dad's voice. “Gon, no-no. There is no way I could do that. You still have something you need to do here. Now that I'm gone, I want you to watch over Mom for me.”
That's right! I still have my mom. I need to be strong for her. I have to do this, for her! My brother shouted out “Mom this is bad! Gon got inside the car!” Mom was surprised and once again leashed me to my dog house.
The neighbors and relatives all ran around busy, but I just watched in a sad gaze. After a while, Dad came home in a small box. Everyone acted as though there was a great weight on their shoulders. I just couldn't believe that Dad, who I loved so much, was inside that tiny box. I cried out again “Awwoooo”. All I want it is to go for a walk and hear him sing again. God had taken Dad to heaven. “Please let Dad come home. Please, God I'm begging you!”
Without Dad, everyday was sad. One day, Mom and my brother took me for a car ride to the grave that Dad was sleeping in. It was very far away, there was no way I would be able to walk there myself. “I came to visit you Dad. Why are you sleeping under such a cold rock? I miss you Dad. I've come to give you flowers and water, so please come out of your grave.”
Just then I somehow heard Dad's voice again. “Oh Gon, thank you for coming. I can't fix your missing eye, but I am watching over all of you so you can live happily together. I need you to watch over Mom and help her out in my place.”
That's right! I can't just let myself be sad all of the time. There is something important I need to do. I have to keep it together!
From then on, everyday after I finished eating my lunch, Mom would play the tape that Dad made and I would wag my tail. We would listen together everyday, and everyday was very peaceful. ”You can relax Dad, I am watching over Mom. And I know you are watching over both of us too. “
One day, several years later, a fine young man came to our house. I didn't recognize him, but he was one of the boys who shot out my eye. “Miss, I am so sorry. As I child I didn't quite know the difference between right and wrong and I did such a horrible thing to Gon. I couldn't imagine it being possible for you to forgive me, but I am moving away to start a new job in April and before I leave I just have to apologize to Gon.” Mom told him “Thank you so much. I'm so glad that you've come all the way here to apologize. Gon has full recovered and you have become such a wonderful young man who loves animals. I forgive you.” When I heard this, I felt very happy inside. I forgot the anger that I carried for so many years. The boy and Mom shook hands and parted ways.

THE END

This story is a dramatization of the story of the dog Gon, owned by the Watanabe couple.
Gon passed away of old age after living a full life in 1999

A month later.

2010-09-23T17:12:00.000-07:00

Its just about a month since my last post and things are still going pretty good. I really enjoy what I do. I teach at elementary and middle school and I really love elementary. The kids are adorable and think I am the coolest thing in the world. They all run up to me when I enter the school screaming "Ben-sensei!" Middle school is a little different because while elementary kids are very out going and full of energy, high school students are very quite, and even the best students act like they don't want to be at school or listen to anything you say, so middle schoolers are kind of in the middle of that. The teachers are all very happy that I can speak Japanese and I still feel very welcomed and wanted everywhere I go.

My town is a really nice place but it is kind of far from everything. If I want to go to the Tokyo area it is 2 hours or so on a bus. That isn't really all that bad but it is an hour and a half drive or an hour train ride to get to church every week. Because it is every week it gets very tiring. If I go up to Tokyo on Saturday, it just kills me to go to church on Sunday. I mean I absolutely want to go to church and my week feels like it is missing something if I don't go, but its tough. My church is something I am really grateful for though. It is small but there is a strong fellowship and so many people who want to help me out. I often just receive random food from some mother who is worried about me.

I really want to get a girlfriend but it is really hard with how busy Japaneses people are. I have tried to set up a date with a few girls from church but it is like the one day they have free I don't. And there are plenty of cute young teachers at the schools around town but I barely get enough time to talk about the lesson let alone get to know them.

I really don't like living on my own. Its too quite, too much time just playing video games, and it really sucks to cook for just one person. I waist so much food because I either make too much or I can't eat the food I buy before it goes bad.

As far as events there were three things. There was field day at the middle school which was kind of cool because I've never seen one in real life. They did a lot of running and some other games but they had this cheering troupe that was just awesome. There was a small festival in my town and they had a couple mikoshi (portable shrines carried on poles) around town. It was nice and had that Japanesey feel. And I also went to Tokyo Game Show. This is a big event where all of the video game companies show off the games they are working on this year. So I got to see lots of neat things but it was crowded. I have never seen more people in one spot in my life. It was a pretty big expo center but it was just solid walls of people.

I guess thats it.

I have peanut butter

2010-08-26T06:02:00.000-07:00

I love my life right now. I love it, because I now have peanut butter. I was feeling very frustrated with food because I know so little and I was growing very tired of Japanese take out. I was walking around Besia (almost exactly the same as walmart) hoping to find something different to eat, and then I found it. A jar of peanut butter! Peanut butter is one of those rare import only foods in Japan and its not everyday you find it. Even at around $5 for a small size, I was overjoyed. I then had one of those, wow my life is awesome moments. 5 minutes from my house and I have peanut butter. How many English teachers in Japan can honestly say that? I could have been placed anywhere in Japan and I got Kamogawa. I got a place that has two used Game/DVD rental stores, two large grocery stores, several different Karaoke places, and all of the odds and end stores that I need. All within 10 minutes of my house. On top of that my schools really aren't far away at all. I am only going to one school tomorrow and it is only about 5 minutes away. Kamogawa has everything that I honestly need. And Tokyo is just right there. 2 hours on the bus and I'm there. I've been to Chiba city a few times and it really isn't all that bad of a trip.

And then the people here are so nice. All of the teachers and the BOE people I have meet have been fantastic! Taking me out to lunch, helping me clean my apartment when I first move in, bringing me random vegetables to bring home. I feel so unworthy to receive such kindness. And it goes beyond work too. I've been invited over for lunch with church members and I just got back from a little english conversation circle and they already are making plans to go Karaoke and eat bbq for a welcome party for me. It's wonderful.

And I love being called Sensei. It is weird. I mean I have no education training, I have no experience, and yet I am given the same respect as someone who went to school specifically for this job and has been doing it for years. I think the kids look up to me and I just feel wonderful being able to help them.

I really love my life right now. I am looking forward for school to start proper and I hope it is just as rewarding as helping with the speech contest has been.

Review of Torne for PS3

2010-08-22T04:07:00.000-07:00

Japanese TV is sort of a puzzle, you know that Japan makes awesome anime, but actually finding anything but B list celebrities eating different food and saying how delicious it is, can be a challenge. That's why I was really excited when I heard about a Japan only DVR add on for the PS3 called Torne. I picked one up, set it up and got a chance to play with it for a bit and here is what I think.

For 10,000 yen (around $110 now a days) you get a very small box, some cables, and an install disc. You insert a BS card into the machine (sort of an ID card that all Japanese TVs use to pull a digital signal over the air), run the coaxial cable from the wall into it and that into the TV. And then a USB into the PS3. That is all there is to physical installation. Since the Torne box sits in between your TV signal you can use your TV like normal.

Installation is a snap, pop the disc in, run all of the updates you need and when you are done you will have a new icon on the XMB, "TV". From there you eject the disc and never use it again. Clicking on the Torne icon under the TV tab launches the program. You do all of the basic set up that you would if this was a new TV, choose a few settings, tell it where you live, and let it scan for channels. I was able to find all of the channels I have on my TV normally without any problem.

Once set up you have a couple different options, you can watch live TV with a nicer TV guide then my new Sharp, you can look at the schedule for the next couple of weeks, you can search for a particular show by genre, title, or keyword, watch recorded video, surf the web (with a split screen so you can still watch TV), and manage your content. Everything that you would possible need a DVR to do it has the function.

Torne also does a lot of things that I am surprised about. You can choose full or compressed recordings. Since this records everything in HD, files can get big. It is about 6 gb an hour on full setting, and 2 gb an hour of compressed. Compressed still looks good and unless you were looking for bits of compression you wouldn't notice the difference. Having this option is very important because it gives people options on storage. You can connect an external hard drive to the PS3 for additional storage or you can use the PS3 hard drive. I am using the PS3 hard drive so I need to keep an eye on it because with a 120 gb I get about 90 gb I can access. Considering I need to share that with games and downloads as well, I can't let my list get too big.

The big thing for me, but I doubt many other people, was the fact that you can turn subtitles on or off on recorded videos. My Japanese is not at the level where I can just tackle any anime without some help and subtitles really helps. Not every show broadcasts with subtitles and of course they are Japanese subtitles, not English.

Torne also connects to the internet to see which shows other Torne users are recording. Kind of a silly idea but it is kind of neat to see what is actually popular that week in Japan.

But the single best thing about Torne is that it can do all of this recording without getting in your way at all. The PS3 does not need to be fully turned on to record, it can do it from its sleep mode. Torne will not interrupt games or movies, you just get a little message saying that Torne will be starting soon.

So I know have a set up where anime basically comes to me in my sleep! This little magic box does it all for me, no more waiting for someone to release it and then tormenting it, blah blah blah. And considering regular DVRs are really expensive in Japan the fact that Sony was able to just add that functionality to the PS3 is amazing. With this the PS3 really does become the end all home entertainment machine. Its just awesome.

As awesome as Torne is, there is one problem. It is Japan only, and the TV signals are different so you can't import it. Sony has yet to make any plan to bring it to the states. I can understand a little. In Japan basically everyone has the same set up. There really isn't a cable box or anything like that. It is all based off of that BS card. In the US they would either have to make a Torne that could only do your broadcast channels (which who would be happy with just that?) or make a special Torne for each cable company. I hope they do, but we'll see.

All in all, if you live in Japan and own a PS3 or are even slightly interested in a PS3, get Torne. It is well worth the money.

feeling dumb

2010-08-15T15:36:00.000-07:00

In Japanese culture complimenting someone about something is very important, so as a foreigner you are often complemented on your Japanese, regardless of how good you are. Which as a sign of modesty you are supposed to reply �iee mada mada desu� which means �No I still have a way to go�, lately I have realized just how �mada mada� I really am. I have been studying Japanese for 5 years and have spent a year living in Japan before, so I can speak Japanese. While the word �speak� has very broad implications, I am at a level where I can be a contributing member of Japanese society, unfortunately I am a very stupid one. Normal conversations for the most part aren't any problems but stuff like setting up an internet account, buying car insurance, and figuring out the cell phone bill have really shown me just how little I actually know. I try and try but I just get so lost and there is so much vocabulary that is really never used outside of certain situations that I just don't know. Church today was especially difficult to follow because there was a talk about the Japanese festival of Obon, its history, it's connection to Buddhism and Shinto, and how Japanese Mormons approach a holiday that is so ingrained into Japanese society to transcend any religious belief. And then it some how got even harder in sunday school when they were talking about the old testament. The old testament is hard enough to understand in English!

But a bit of back tracking, let me talk a little bit more about church. Last week I wanted to go so I looked up on the computer when I was at work and got the address for the church. I found out that it is �near� Yatsumi station so I spent about $10 in train fare to get there and realized, I couldn't find it. I walked in circles all over the station but couldn't find anything. I was all hot and sweaty and since I didn't have a cell phone, I had no way to look it up. This week however I got a cell phone and was able to look up that it was actually about a kilometer in the opposite direction I was heading! So I after I finally got there, I was warmly greeted by everyone. I had forgotten how wonderful it feels to be so welcomed like that. Yatsumi is a pretty small nothing area so, of course, there are really only older people there and a few young families. But I did able to make some contacts and I'm now in the know for all of the single activities happening in the Chiba area so that's a good start on my quest to build up a good social life. But after church brother Sugimoto invited me over for lunch with his family. It was wonderful. It was a big (for Japan) house full of energy. I really felt the love that everyone had for each other and I was able to have lots of really good food. It was a fantastic day. It made me realize how much I really don't care for living on my own as compared to living with a family.

Besides that work has been good. I have done actual work lately, not just sitting around the office not doing anything. Since school is currently out for summer I am helping a handful of students with their speech contest practice. This is more work then it sounds like. You have to repeat the same short speech over and over again, really exaggerating everything. My tongue and throat actually hurt at the end of the day. You also don't realize how hard it is to explain how you make a sound. Native English speakers just naturally know that to make an L sound you push your tongue against your upper teeth, first year English students have to constantly think and adjust their tongue to make the right sounds. Sometimes you hear a word and it doesn't sound right but you just for the life of you can't figure out how to explain it to make it better. And then you have a balance you have to keep where you need to make practice but don't want to push the kids too hard. It is actual work. I think some times we think of the JET program as just such an easy gig that we assume that there isn't any real work involved, there is. But it feels really good to finally be salary. There is a new level of trust you are given by your employer. You don't need to be timed for exactly how long of a break you take, under the right circumstances you can leave a little early. There are times when I'll have to stay late but I enjoy this much more.

Driving in Japan requires a lot more concentration then it does in America. The whole left side right side thing becomes natural very quickly, but what gets you is how small the roads are, how much people will block traffic, and how much old people just don't care about any sort of traffic safety.

On a side note, there are a bunch of little frogs outside my patio right now. I don't know how they got there, I'm on the second floor. I almost want to catch one and keep it as a pet.

catch up

2010-07-29T22:49:00.001-07:00

Friday 23rd of July 2010

I am sitting in my hotel room of the marriot waiting for the orientation to start. This is it, the last day in the united states. At the orientation I will get some more information, have a nice dinner, receive my passport back and the final instructions that I need to know for tomorrow.

We left pretty early this morning, around 4:30 because we were planning on picking up my friend Sam on the way. About 4:45 we get a call saying that she wont be ready and she will get someone else to give her a ride. About 7am I find out that she isn't going. This upsets me because I really enjoyed spending time with Sam and would have liked to have someone I knew to come to LA with, but also because it is a big mistake not only will she have to repay the JET program a lot of money, she is going to miss out on so much. The JET program is this amazing once in a life time adventure that only a select few get to enjoy. It's funny, I have been thinking a lot more about a friend missing something wonderful then I am about what I am about to do.

We got to the air port on time with no problems and then we sat around for a bit talking. I quickly meet up with the other JETs at the terminal and we formed a group. This helped a lot because there was no one meeting us there at the air port so we had to figure out how to get to the marriot and check in on our own. Not really that big of a deal but when you are going on a big adventure like this you already have way too much on your mind and you don't want more things to worry about or have more things to go wrong.

I have to say I feel very grown up at things like this. Fancy hotel, black suit, high paying job, I feel really important. I still sort of think of myself as that little teenage boy but I guess I really am an adult. All I need to do now is get married.

Well I have a few hours to kill so I think I am going to try playing fallout one on my little netbook, well see how well that works.

Wednesday July 28th 2010

I am writing this on the bus on my way to meet my supervisor in Kamogawa, it has been a crazy past couple of days.

The orientation in LA was fine, our recruiting agent talked way too long and it got a little boring with that but we had a nice mexican dinner party. It was kind of a bad descision though because it was hard to eat dripping fajitas while wearing a fancy suit. Sam did in fact show up. She bought a plane ticket from Tucson to LA at the last minute and made it, I was really happy to see her and she said that I really helped her out.

We got the the airport really early the next day and waited around a bit for the plane. The plane ride was actually kind of comfortable, even though I didn't get any sleep. Once we got off the plane we were hit with a wave of heat and I remembered just how hot it was there. We were greeted by all of the JET staff and that was really nice. It took a long time to get to on the bus and then it was about an hour and a half drive until we got to Tokyo.

I actually stopped here because we arrived at our location, I'll get to that in a little bit.

So the first night we were greeted by more JETs in this fancy hotel and they gave us a bunch of books and what not and our keys. After getting situated I went out to shinjiku to get something to eat when I just bumped into Emily Love from Konan. We had some ramen with this guy I found a little annoying. Now that I think about it I guess I can see a lot of myself in his annoyance. He had only studied a little bit of Japanese but acted like he knew more then I did, I can do that too because I have relatively had little Japanese experience.

The next day was tough, I got dressed in my suit which made me feel very grown up. The meetings were very boring and not all that much new information. In themselves it wouldn't have been so bad but that jet lag, (JET lag, if you will) made all of it really painful. The workshops were mostly useless. There was a banquet that night but I was feeling really light headed so I just wanted it to be over. That day I did get to meet up with Juliene Fang who is also a friend from Konan and we went out for ice cream afterwords. After that I came home early and got some sleep.

The next day was much better, jet lag was now that bad, the meetings were much more energetic and useful, got me a little worried about the actual teaching part of the job. We had a meeting with the prefecture advisor and got some more specific information about Chiba. That night we went out to eat with everyone from Chiba, we went to an izakaiya place. At these restuarnts you order a bunch of small plates that everyone shares. The amount of food you get is really small and people only go here because you can get all you can drink alcohol for a set price. I really hate paying $15 and still feeling hungry. I then just headed back to the hotel from there.

The next morning it was just packing, checking out and waiting for the bus. We rode a bus to Chiba city something something center. We had a very small meeting where the ALTs meet the contracting organization. Much like the meeting when I studied abroad. I was meet by HXXXX san and a coworker of her's that I do not remember his name. Even though I was really nervous at first, I quickly felt very relaxed and felt a real connection with them. I was able to carry on a decent conversation the whole way in Japanese and the guy treated me to a sushi lunch. HXXXX san is really wonderful she is so friendly and seems to be more like a best friend rather then a boss to Niji and Chris. She has even gone as far as to have me stay over at her family's house. They are so nice and friendly it is simply amazing. There is also a little kid in the house who is adorable and really wants me to come to his kindergarten. This is going to be the best job in the world and I can not believe how much the lord has blessed me.

Friday July 30th

I will not be posting the names of people I work with because Japan is very worried about privacy.

Well it has been a week since I left Tucson and started on this JET program. It has been a very long week and I want nothing more right now then to be in my own place and try and make it my home. Don't get my wrong I am very grateful for the accommodations I have received from the Japanese people (directly the HXXX family) but I want to unpack. I want to sprawl out on my bed and just take a big sigh of relief. Tomorrow afternoon I should be moving in, finally.

Yesterday was my first real day at the office and well I didn't really do anything. There isn't anything for me to do so I've been reading up on the JET manuals that I have received but Chris came by and he got on his computer, and he said it was alright, YXXX even offered her computer while she was gone. It just feels really weird to not be doing anything and getting paid for it. Like I am wasting tax payer money, and I get paid a lot. I get around 36,000 USD a year, tax free! Because I am making so much I bought a new TV. I ordered it on Yodobashi.com and I think I got a great deal. Now normally TVs are much more expensive in Japan then they are in the US but I got a 40” Sharp 1080p LCD TV for 89,000 yen with free shipping and 20% back on Yodobashi points. So I have about $180 credit at Yodobashi which I can use on an electric dictionary and almost get it for free. So $1000 for a 40” TV and an electric dictionary isn't a bad deal even in America, maybe not the BEST but I still feel good about it. I found out that Japanese TVs have two things weird about them. The first thing is that they have three broadcasts going on, the first two are simple analog and digital broadcasts like the states went through and the other is this thing called BS where you have some sort of card inserted into your TV and you get channels that are more like little programs then anything else. I have no idea how that technology works but it is probably why Japanese TVs are more expensive. The second thing weird about them is that a lot of the ones I look at don't have component ports on them. They have this D5 terminal thing, which I guess is supposed to be the same quality as component but who knows. This means that all of the cables that I thought I wouldn't need in Japan, I actually do. Xbox VGA, ps2 composite, and HDMI -DVI cable. I sent an email to Dad asking him to mail them, we'll see how long the shipping takes on that I suppose.

Any rate it is really nice staying at HXXX's house. It is very Japanesey. There are tatami rooms, slidding doors, caligraphy, etc. I am enjoying it and I am enjoying getting all of that free food, some nice Japanese home cooking. There is a little boy there who is hilarious and that really makes me feel more at home.

So I am enjoying Kamogawa and it isn't a Inaka (very rural town) but I think it is proof that the JET program isn't for everyone. It is a good distance away from everything and there really isn't much to do. The town has what I need, there is a game store, a book store, a video rental store, a walmart like store, karaoke, McDonalds, train station, but I am very distant from the life I had in Kobe. I think it lacks the excitement Kobe had. Which isn't that bad but I think I am really going to have to put a lot of effort into building a social life and finding what really makes me happy here. I guess what I am trying to say is that if you just want to be a long term tourist (like I was before) I don't think you could make it here.

Another thing I have learned is how bad and good my Japanese is. I can talk to just about anyone no problem, but I make mistakes. In the office I hear Japanese all of the time and sometimes I am like “wow I understood that whole thing” other times I am like “wow I didn't understand a word of that”. But this certainly is the total submersion that I had wanted. There is no gaijin bubble that I need to escape from, rather I will have to find chances to have a natural conversation in English. I think I will definitely improve my Japanese by leaps and bounds. In fact I will probably be studying a lot at work since there seems to be a lot of down time. I really just need to get my hands on a good JLPT level 1 book.

One thing that is a little uneasy right now is how helpless I am. Everything is dependent on getting the alien registration card. I need that for a bank account, for a cell phone, to take ownership of my car, for internet (maybe), just everything. Everyone is really nice and has helped me out a lot but still I want to get my own life started already.

I really hope I didn't come off as negative in any of this, I am grateful beyond measure. This job is going to be a lot of fun, I am really going to love spending time with my students, I have wonderful co-workers and just a breathtaking view of the beach. The town is good distance away from a lot of things but I love it all.

catch up

2010-07-29T22:49:00.000-07:00

Friday 23rd of July 2010

I am sitting in my hotel room of the marriot waiting for the orientation to start. This is it, the last day in the united states. At the orientation I will get some more information, have a nice dinner, receive my passport back and the final instructions that I need to know for tomorrow.

We left pretty early this morning, around 4:30 because we were planning on picking up my friend Sam on the way. About 4:45 we get a call saying that she wont be ready and she will get someone else to give her a ride. About 7am I find out that she isn't going. This upsets me because I really enjoyed spending time with Sam and would have liked to have someone I knew to come to LA with, but also because it is a big mistake not only will she have to repay the JET program a lot of money, she is going to miss out on so much. The JET program is this amazing once in a life time adventure that only a select few get to enjoy. It's funny, I have been thinking a lot more about a friend missing something wonderful then I am about what I am about to do.

We got to the air port on time with no problems and then we sat around for a bit talking. I quickly meet up with the other JETs at the terminal and we formed a group. This helped a lot because there was no one meeting us there at the air port so we had to figure out how to get to the marriot and check in on our own. Not really that big of a deal but when you are going on a big adventure like this you already have way too much on your mind and you don't want more things to worry about or have more things to go wrong.

I have to say I feel very grown up at things like this. Fancy hotel, black suit, high paying job, I feel really important. I still sort of think of myself as that little teenage boy but I guess I really am an adult. All I need to do now is get married.

Well I have a few hours to kill so I think I am going to try playing fallout one on my little netbook, well see how well that works.

Wednesday July 28th 2010

I am writing this on the bus on my way to meet my supervisor in Kamogawa, it has been a crazy past couple of days.

The orientation in LA was fine, our recruiting agent talked way too long and it got a little boring with that but we had a nice mexican dinner party. It was kind of a bad descision though because it was hard to eat dripping fajitas while wearing a fancy suit. Sam did in fact show up. She bought a plane ticket from Tucson to LA at the last minute and made it, I was really happy to see her and she said that I really helped her out.

We got the the airport really early the next day and waited around a bit for the plane. The plane ride was actually kind of comfortable, even though I didn't get any sleep. Once we got off the plane we were hit with a wave of heat and I remembered just how hot it was there. We were greeted by all of the JET staff and that was really nice. It took a long time to get to on the bus and then it was about an hour and a half drive until we got to Tokyo.

I actually stopped here because we arrived at our location, I'll get to that in a little bit.

So the first night we were greeted by more JETs in this fancy hotel and they gave us a bunch of books and what not and our keys. After getting situated I went out to shinjiku to get something to eat when I just bumped into Emily Love from Konan. We had some ramen with this guy I found a little annoying. Now that I think about it I guess I can see a lot of myself in his annoyance. He had only studied a little bit of Japanese but acted like he knew more then I did, I can do that too because I have relatively had little Japanese experience.

The next day was tough, I got dressed in my suit which made me feel very grown up. The meetings were very boring and not all that much new information. In themselves it wouldn't have been so bad but that jet lag, (JET lag, if you will) made all of it really painful. The workshops were mostly useless. There was a banquet that night but I was feeling really light headed so I just wanted it to be over. That day I did get to meet up with Juliene Fang who is also a friend from Konan and we went out for ice cream afterwords. After that I came home early and got some sleep.

The next day was much better, jet lag was now that bad, the meetings were much more energetic and useful, got me a little worried about the actual teaching part of the job. We had a meeting with the prefecture advisor and got some more specific information about Chiba. That night we went out to eat with everyone from Chiba, we went to an izakaiya place. At these restuarnts you order a bunch of small plates that everyone shares. The amount of food you get is really small and people only go here because you can get all you can drink alcohol for a set price. I really hate paying $15 and still feeling hungry. I then just headed back to the hotel from there.

The next morning it was just packing, checking out and waiting for the bus. We rode a bus to Chiba city something something center. We had a very small meeting where the ALTs meet the contracting organization. Much like the meeting when I studied abroad. I was meet by Hatanaka san and a coworker of her's that I do not remember his name. Even though I was really nervous at first, I quickly felt very relaxed and felt a real connection with them. I was able to carry on a decent conversation the whole way in Japanese and the guy treated me to a sushi lunch. Hatanaka san is really wonderful she is so friendly and seems to be more like a best friend rather then a boss to Niji and Chris. She has even gone as far as to have me stay over at her family's house. They are so nice and friendly it is simply amazing. There is also a little kid in the house who is adorable and really wants me to come to his kindergarten. This is going to be the best job in the world and I can not believe how much the lord has blessed me.

Friday July 30th

Well it has been a week since I left Tucson and started on this JET program. It has been a very long week and I want nothing more right now then to be in my own place and try and make it my home. Don't get my wrong I am very grateful for the accommodations I have received from the Japanese people (directly the Hatanaka family) but I want to unpack. I want to sprawl out on my bed and just take a big sigh of relief. Tomorrow afternoon I should be moving in, finally.

Yesterday was my first real day at the office and well I didn't really do anything. There isn't anything for me to do so I've been reading up on the JET manuals that I have received but Chris came by and he got on his computer, and he said it was alright, Yoriko even offered her computer while she was gone. It just feels really weird to not be doing anything and getting paid for it. Like I am wasting tax payer money, and I get paid a lot. I get around 36,000 USD a year, tax free! Because I am making so much I bought a new TV. I ordered it on Yodobashi.com and I think I got a great deal. Now normally TVs are much more expensive in Japan then they are in the US but I got a 40” Sharp 1080p LCD TV for 89,000 yen with free shipping and 20% back on Yodobashi points. So I have about $180 credit at Yodobashi which I can use on an electric dictionary and almost get it for free. So $1000 for a 40” TV and an electric dictionary isn't a bad deal even in America, maybe not the BEST but I still feel good about it. I found out that Japanese TVs have two things weird about them. The first thing is that they have three broadcasts going on, the first two are simple analog and digital broadcasts like the states went through and the other is this thing called BS where you have some sort of card inserted into your TV and you get channels that are more like little programs then anything else. I have no idea how that technology works but it is probably why Japanese TVs are more expensive. The second thing weird about them is that a lot of the ones I look at don't have component ports on them. They have this D5 terminal thing, which I guess is supposed to be the same quality as component but who knows. This means that all of the cables that I thought I wouldn't need in Japan, I actually do. Xbox VGA, ps2 composite, and HDMI -DVI cable. I sent an email to Dad asking him to mail them, we'll see how long the shipping takes on that I suppose.

Any rate it is really nice staying at Hatanaka's house. It is very Japanesey. There are tatami rooms, slidding doors, caligraphy, etc. I am enjoying it and I am enjoying getting all of that free food, some nice Japanese home cooking. There is a little boy there who is hilarious and that really makes me feel more at home.

So I am enjoying Kamogawa and it isn't a Inaka (very rural town) but I think it is proof that the JET program isn't for everyone. It is a good distance away from everything and there really isn't much to do. The town has what I need, there is a game store, a book store, a video rental store, a walmart like store, karaoke, McDonalds, train station, but I am very distant from the life I had in Kobe. I think it lacks the excitement Kobe had. Which isn't that bad but I think I am really going to have to put a lot of effort into building a social life and finding what really makes me happy here. I guess what I am trying to say is that if you just want to be a long term tourist (like I was before) I don't think you could make it here.

Another thing I have learned is how bad and good my Japanese is. I can talk to just about anyone no problem, but I make mistakes. In the office I hear Japanese all of the time and sometimes I am like “wow I understood that whole thing” other times I am like “wow I didn't understand a word of that”. But this certainly is the total submersion that I had wanted. There is no gaijin bubble that I need to escape from, rather I will have to find chances to have a natural conversation in English. I think I will definitely improve my Japanese by leaps and bounds. In fact I will probably be studying a lot at work since there seems to be a lot of down time. I really just need to get my hands on a good JLPT level 1 book.

One thing that is a little uneasy right now is how helpless I am. Everything is dependent on getting the alien registration card. I need that for a bank account, for a cell phone, to take ownership of my car, for internet (maybe), just everything. Everyone is really nice and has helped me out a lot but still I want to get my own life started already.

I really hope I didn't come off as negative in any of this, I am grateful beyond measure. This job is going to be a lot of fun, I am really going to love spending time with my students, I have wonderful co-workers and just a breathtaking view of the beach. The town is good distance away from a lot of things but I love it all.

The day before

2010-07-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning I leave for PHX airport where I will go to LA for orientation, then the next day fly to Japan. My job officially starts tomorrow. I don't know why but it still hasn't hit me. This is the moment I have been dreaming of for years and years and it is at my finger tips but it just seems like a normal day. It has been stressful though, so many things to pack and store and through out. So much paperwork to worry about, so I think that has been sucking some of the fun out of it.

Or maybe it is because I have studied abroad before that I know I can see my friends again, I can skype with people, and I can visit home, that I am not feeling so anxious. It kind of like how when I went before I was like a kid on Christmas morning, and now I am like a parent on Christmas morning, I have to make it all somehow work even though I will still enjoy it.

Thinking back though I have really enjoyed my time in Tucson. I had a little bit of a rough start making friends and I had my ups and downs but I have wonderful people in my life and I am grateful for that.

I wonder what my new life will be like. Having build a social life from scratch might be a little rough at first but as long as I always try and find something to do or go to, I should be alright. Or rather I know as long as I stay true to being a good church member, it will be alright.

So I guess I'm ready to go.

Leaving for Japan, bitter sweet.

2010-07-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

It is now 16 days until I board a plane to LA, go to orientation then fly off to Japan the next day. It is all happening very soon. I of course am excited, I have such an amazing adventure waiting for me. But I am also a little sad. There are so many people in AZ that I really enjoy spending time with. Of course my family, I love them and they are going to be the ones I call the most for sure. But I'm also going to miss my "long time az friends" Cameron, Tyler, Heather and Rob. I've been in AZ since late 2004 and I think it was like mid 2006 that I really started to be friends with all of them. For a long time they were my only "real" friends and that didn't bother me. They are such wonderful people. But I also have my "con-nichiwa friends". All of the friends I made while working on our Tucson anime convention "con-nichiwa". I've wanted friends that I can just sit back and watch anime with for a really long time and it wasn't until I was about to move to Japan that I started making friends like that. I really hope that I can arrange enough time off next year to be able to visit everyone.

So leaving all of these people is starting to get tougher then I was expecting. Life is like this sometimes and you just have to move forward. It is going to be tough though. Going from having a bunch of friends to having to start up an entire new social life from scratch. I know I can do it, but it will be a little tough.

JET pre departure orientation

2010-06-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

So I drove down to LA this weekend for the JET program pre-departure orientation. It was a little pricy considering getting a hotel and gas cost, but it was well worth it.

I drove down from Tucson with my friend Cameron. I brought my really old portable DVD player and we watched some Simpsons, King of the Hill, and My Name is Earl on the drive. It was nice because those are shows you can enjoy even if you can't see the screen. The driving in LA is insane. There were so many last second turns and mergers with just jammed packed traffic, I honestly feared for my life. I got a hotel a few blocks away from the hotel that the orientation was actually held at.

I had a little bit of trouble actually finding where in the hotel event was but I found a few equally lost JETs and we ended up finding it. The overall orientation was a real eye opener to both the fact that I am really going to Japan very soon and how much of an adult I now am. Fancy hotel, everyone wearing suits and ties, professional atmosphere. This isn't Wal-Mart any more. I learned a lot of good stuff like how to file taxes so I don't have to pay US or Japanese tax for two years, what sort of games and gifts I should prepare, and how to take care of legal paperwork abroad. I also got to talk to a lot of people who are going and who came back form my area, which has helped prepare me mentally.

The orientation was over at 4pm after that I went back to the hotel where Cameron was and we headed towards China town. We originally were planning on going to the California Science museum because it had free admission and both of us wanted to do this trip as cheap as possible. The traffic was just insane getting there because right next door was a huge rave/dance party where like 100,000 people showed up. And all of these kids were wearing quite frankly the slutiest costumes and just anything that they could do to be weird. Me and Cameron both felt it was funny how we wanted to go to the boring museum but there were so many kinds going to this party that we weren't able to.

China town was cool if not a little disappointing. Weren't really that many shops or restaurants. The China town in Kobe was way better. We did eat at a fancy Chinese restaurant, like the ones I see in Chinese movies.

The next day we went to Hollywood and did the tourist thing, that was fun. Just walking up and down the strip. After words we picked up Sam (who is also a JET) and headed home, which since we had three drivers really wasn't that bad of a trip either.

It was a pretty good weekend.

Getting close to JET

2010-06-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

Well it has been 4 months since I last posted a blog and for anyone who didn't know I did get into the JET program and I am going to Kamogawa city in Chiba prefecture. It is a smaller town of 35,000 people but it is only a 2 hour bus ride to Tokyo! So I really can't complain about that one bit. Chiba was my first pick and to actually get it was pretty amazing.

I ended up going back to wal-mart for a few months because I could not get a job anywhere else at all. I mean it got to the point where I was applying to be a pizza delivery guy and I wasn't getting a call back. But it wasn't that bad, there are a lot of things I do not like about the job but over all it wasn't the end of the world. But that is almost over as Friday is my last day again (the third time I thought it was my last day). After that I will have about 5 weeks to prepare for Japan.

I watched a dvd I got in the mail with my JET paper work and it showed what life is like and what to expect in the JET program, I am really excited right now. I just can't believe that I will get to live in Japan, do a fun job, and get paid that well. As a single guy with little debt, I'll be pretty well off. After paying $1000 a month to student loans (for just a few months) and living expenses I'll have more spending money then I did while studying abroad. I'm going to buy a lot of gundam models! Or maybe not, well see. But I am just so grateful to the Lord for blessing me with this and the Japanese people in general. I would be willing to do this job for longer hours with less pay and yet I don't have to.

I really need to start finding more people who live in the area and start making some friends. I really need to put a lot more effort into building a social life over there. I think it is really important to understand how busy people actually are and the whole soto uchi thing. I think you need to make a lot of acquaintances and from there you will make a few good friends. I also need to not limit myself to just finding otaku friends but find things to talk about with everyone.

Not related to JET but I have been building an arcade machine. I am leaving soon so I wont be able to use it that much but I more wanted to build it then to own it. I always think I am so close and then I get hit with another problem, its just one thing after another. The goal of an arcade is to have every single game be easily accessible from one joystick without having to change settings or use a keyboard. Since each single program is different this is next to impossible. Some programs will only work one way and others another way, there seems to be no way to win with them. I really just want to have it done already.

I have been working with a translation group called KAW and we have been translating an anime called senkou no night raid (flash of night raid) and it has been insanely hard to translate. What makes it so hard is that it takes place in 1930s Manchuria where Japan does a lot of political stuff and takes over the country. I have a very loose idea of what happens but not nearly enough. When I translate there are so many people talking about so many complicated things, it drives me insane. I really want to do a simple slice of life anime after this.

We went to Disneyland and six flags last week. We went with my sister's friend's family and they had a bus and all of that stuff. It was kind of a mistake to do it that way because we had no idea where the bus was half the time, we were all dead tired and couldn't get to the hotel until late. Dad likes to really plan stuff out and have a schedule but the group all sort of played it by ear. Jessie wouldn't hang out with us though. She had her friends and she said she would spend the day with us but then would break off and just have fun with them. I kept telling her, you are upsetting dad, he wanted this to be a family day, and she couldn't understand. He never told her she couldn't hang out with her friends but it was more then obvious how he felt. Jessie still has some maturing to do if she really couldn't figure out what she ought to do. But all in all Disney land was fun, I got a little sick on space mountain and I didn't do many rides at six flags but I had fun all around.

JET interview

2010-02-20T17:57:00.000-08:00

I just had my JET interview so I am going to talk about that first. So I drove up to Phoenix and got to the location about 45 mins early. I wanted to get there even earlier but there was an accident on the way over. I came in and was greeted by some former JETs and they talked a little bit and I got to ask them some questions. A Japanese man came in and asked for me and started to talk in Japanese, basically just asking how good my Japanese was. I had no problems talking to him in Japanese for a bit and it turns out that he actually teaches at Pima (my old community college) and knew my Japanese teacher there. The other two interviewers were Americans. They first asked me to talk about myself and why I want to do JET and I gave them my whole rehearsed speech about wanting to use JET as a career move and how I feel grateful to Japan for all that I received last year. I forget the order but the lady there asked if I had any teaching experience and I was able to say that I am gaining some through church and volunteering. Church became a big topic during the interview. I was asked how I would react if someone asked about my religion, which I replied I would be happy to talk about religion and would ask about their religious beliefs while being very careful not to sound pushy or preachy. They asked if being in a small town, far away from a church would be a problem, which I replied that I would be willing to do some traveling to get to church. Also when the question about why I chose urban setting on my application came up I said it was so that I could be closer to a church. They asked a lot about my statement of purpose and I was able to explain how I want to do grad school but I need some time to think about what to study and how JET could help me get a scholarship for grad school. They also asked how I would run a class for middle schoolers, I was a little stumped on how to answer that, but I said I would introduce myself and talk about America for a little bit and then try and get the students to talk by asking open ended questions, the lady there said that it would be middle school students so open ended would be over their head but I responded by saying it would be things like “what is your house like?” or “tell me about your family”. I was hoping for a more specific teaching example, but I think what I said worked. Another question was how I would respond to being a part of clubs or hanging out with the school staff after work and I responded that work isn't just 9-5 there is more that goes with it and I would really enjoy doing those things. This was sort of a trick question, overtime and hanging out with co-workers is the norm in Japan. There was also the strength and weakness question.

All in all my recommendations are, do not be nervous, know your statement of purpose really well (that is why they picked you), and be willing to be flexible about anything.

September 20th 2009

2009-09-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

Ok well I feel I need to keep writing in this thing because I don't keep a proper journal but nothing really big has happened. School is still good, I finally found the short story I want to translate. It is called black bird (kokucho). I have only read the first few pages but if I can just get some time I should be able to make some real progress with it.

Yesterday we went up to Phoenix to visit grandpa who has been diagnosed with cancer. I feel weird about grandpa dying because I don't really know him besides the bad things my parents say about him , he divorced my grandma who is the sweetest person in the world. And also he's 70 something so he would only have another 10 years at best. And I have a pretty strong belief in the afterlife so I'm just not worried about him. But anyways its a good 2+ hour drive up to Phoenix and there was a temple trip I wanted to go to but instead I went with the family. We visit with grandma for 20 mins then have lunch with grandpa and then we are done. Mom says we are going to visit her mom in order to get out of spending time with Grandpa's new wife and instead we spend all day walking about a stupid outlet mall. My entire day that I really needed to use for homework and studying was waisted with Angie trying to find cute shoes. Like I really want to see my extended family but my mom cares so much more about shopping then she does seeing relatives.

I am really worried about Angie. I thought if she got a boyfriend she would get out of this rut that she is in but that doesn't seem to be the case. I mean she did get a job she did go back to school but she is still so angry at the whole world. And she hasn't gone to church for at least a year. I invite her but she says no. It's not an issue about the doctrine of the church its the people, or rather how Angie views everyone. She thinks that everyone is this perfect Molly Mormon (stereotypical super churchy girl) and they all think they are better then her. But its all her attitude. She is so mean to people when they try and talk to her they get scarred off and then she thinks that they don't like her. I want to help my sister so much. I really love her but I don't know how to get her to just snap out of it. It breaks my heart sometimes.

I think in fact that the three oldest girls all have had situations where they have been offended or felt shunned by other girls at church and that has caused them to not want to go at all. I dunno I just wish there was something I could do.

On more positive notes. I saw that wolverine movie finally, why was there no concern about continuity with the other films? Sabertooth and Stryker are major characters in the other films and the people in this one are so different you would think they were completely different characters with similar names or something. And why is there so much focus on throwing in cameo mutants? Why was the blob in the movie? Are there really blob fans out there who really want him to be worked into the movie for no reason? Or what about deadpool and how he had all sorts of powers that he wasn't supposed to? That makes deadpool fans angry and deadpool fans are the only reason you should put him in the wolverine movie anyways. I don't get it. It was a fun action movie and definitely not as bad as X3.

I did install windows 7 on my pc with no upgrades and it runs amazingly. I don't know how but Microsoft somehow saved windows from the horrors of vista. It runs faster the xp did, boots atleast as fast as xp did, and does so many little things I don't think I could ever go back.

Well I guess thats it.

School started

2009-09-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

Well I guess the big thing is that School finally started. This long boring summer of not doing anything finally came to an end. I am taking Modern east asian history, Advanced practice in Japanese, Japanese civilization and Japanese religion. Besides the advance practice class all of these are 200 level classes so the work load isn't too bad and I have them all on Tuesday Thursday which is good but that means I am at school from 8 am till 7:15 pm. Its a little rough. But I really like my classes. The EAS class is pretty generic and the readings are dull but its mostly review for me. The Japanese language class is exactly what I need because its a tiny focus on spoken practice but a huge focus on translations. The teacher is actually a British guy but he spent years living as a monk in Japan so he knows his stuff. For my other two classes I have the same teacher and he is really cool and just one of those teachers that I click with. I am also taking a church institute class so I get free parking, awesome, and the institute building is a really cool place to just hang out.

Work is kind of sucking because I put 24 hours on my availability and left it pretty open. Normally I would have had no problem getting 20 hours but because they have this stupid scheduling program now I'm getting like 15 hours a week. I need more money I've got a car now. I am really looking forward to graduating and quiting that joke of a company.

So there are three things that I need to get done in my spare time this fall. The first is work on my senior capstone project, which is to translate 25-30 pages of Japanese into English. Since this is my big project I want to translate a short story rather then a chapter out of a book but I am really stumped as to where to start looking for stuff like that. Its really hard to find stuff online in Japanese just because they just don't have the stuff you would expect them to. The second thing I need to do is to put together some resumes and post stuff on like monster.com to start preparing for getting a new job. Because I want to quit before December so I need to get a job lined up. The third thing I need to do is turn in the application stuff for JET. Yeah I've decided I am going to apply for it. It seems like a pretty solid choice. I just need to get letter of recommendations, transcripts for schools, medical papers, etc... Its a lot of work.

Other then that nothing much is going on. Still no girlfriend, no plans to move out, just kind of going with the flow. Because of the cut hours I am starting to realize how little money I really have but I really want to upgrade this desktop computer, its really sucking right now. What I would like to do is install a small solid state hard drive, upgrade the ram a little bit, and throw Windows 7 on it.

Well I have to get back to home work

boring but not terrible

2009-08-17T09:59:00.001-07:00

Well this summer is almost over and I am really glad about that. I really want to get this last semester finished up, get my degree, and quit walmart. I'm still not really sure what I am going to do about grad school. I want to go, and I am willing to put out the time, effort, and money needed to get a masters degree but I'm not so sure how to go about it. That MEXT scholarship is still my number one plan but it seems like the acceptance rate is lower then I thought and I have to go first as a research student then take the entrance exam in order to become a graduate student. Then there comes the issue of what exactly do I study. I am interested in Japanese history or society or something like that but if I get a degree in that then I am kind of stuck being just a teacher. Not that I wouldn't enjoy being a teacher but I would like more options. If I do something like international relations or international business that gives me more job opportunities but would be far more boring to study. And then what if I don't get the scholarship? Do I go into U of A's tiny Japanese studies grad program? Study abroad through U of A again? Maybe go to U of Hawaii or something.

Tucon was fun but because I didn't wear a costume I felt so out of place (even though I didn't wear normal clothes either) so I really have to make a costume for saboten con this fall but I can't get started on it until I get some fabric so I need to go shopping soon. I am going to go as leon belmont from the ps2 castlevania game.

Guess thats that

Just waiting for the summer to be over

2009-07-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

Well another blog post without anything amazing happening. I didn't go to some 1000 year old temple or watch the cherry blossoms fall like my older posts. Just waisting my time at home until its time to go work at walmart then waist time there till its time to go home. I really dislike the summers, its been pretty much the same thing for 4 years. I really miss school, because when you go to school you can say you did something that moved you forward in life. Even if its just a bit. When I'm just working I'm standing still and I can't stand it.

I've calmed down about the whole missing Japan thing. I mean I still really miss it but I'm getting used to America now. I sent off an email to Waseda daigaku asking about thier graduate program so I'm making my plans to go back. I don't think I'm going to teach English in Japan now. The application process for it is kind of a pain and I need to make sure I am here to be able to do all of it.

So anime tucon is coming up pretty soon and that should be a lot of fun. I have a really good idea for a pannel but I need one other person who knows Japanese to do it with me. What I was thinking is going over all of the books and programs out there that claim to teach japanese and I'll give my opinion if they are worth it or not. I emailed someone on the forms who is supposed to know Japanese but I haven't got a response back and the dead line for pannel applications is the 24th.

No real updates on other fronts, still no girl friend. Still just a few friends in this whole state. Maybe I'll meet some cool people at the con.

Well thats that

Living in America

2009-07-05T11:39:00.001-07:00

Well its been over a month since I came back from Japan and quickly it is all feeling like a distant memory. I'm just going through the mundane every day life I had before I left. Wake up, mess around the house for a few hours, go to work, come home, mess around some more go to bed. Its the same thing almost every single day. I don't get out and do anything cool any more. I don't even see my friends that often, I've only seen Cameron a hand full of times since I've been back. I tried to make plans with him but I felt like I was in Japan again in the sense that we both had to take a look at our schedules and plan something a week from now. It was so cool in Japan spending all of that time with everyone. I just had to send out an email saying "anyone want to go see a movie?" and I would have a group to go do something with.

I'm still having a hard time being back in America. I don't like driving, I didn't like it that much before and now I really dislike it. Cars are expensive, dangerous and require all of your attention to drive them. I really miss the trains, you just wait a few minutes, board the train and just read a book or play a game. Its so easy. I also really don't care for the food. I have a really hard time finding stuff to eat for lunch because nothing looks good. Also I never feel good after eating American food. I know I put a few pounds on in Japan but man I really want Japanese cooking.

Another big thing that is bothering me is the fact that no one is impressed with the fact that I know Japanese. Like no body cares that I spent a year in Japan. I mean thats a really cool thing, I know a lot about Japan now, I can read manga and watch anime raw now! Before I went I thought anyone who could do those things was really cool but now no one thinks I'm cool. Its so unfair. I even get some people now and again who still think they know more about Japan then I do. I don't get it what do I have to do for people to think highly of me?

I feel as if being here, working at walmart, and the way no one seems to care about my accomplishments, is all trying to get me to forget all that I did. Like I am supposed to just go back to being just a normal guy. I mean like in Japan I was someone special. No celebrity or anything like that but Japanese people were really impressed with the fact that I knew Japanese. And like there were lots of downsides too but in a crowd of people in Japan I stood out. I dunno I guess I just miss being special.

I guess for now I am just running down the clock until school starts. At least once school starts I can take institute classes to hopefully make more friends, have Friday nights off to do more stuff and have Saturdays free to finally go to TASS meetings. I hope between all of that I can somehow get a girlfriend because I really need one of those right now.

Feeling uneasy back home

2009-06-21T23:16:00.000-07:00

So I've been home for around 3 weeks now and I guess you could say I've gotten back into the swing of things. I'm back at work now and I'm glad to have a job that I could start right away and make the money I need this summer, but I feel really uneasy, for lack of a better word, working there. Its the same thing I was doing a year ago with the same people complaining about the same thing they were a year ago. Being there just makes me feel like that big wonderful adventure I had, never happened. I feel like I'm just right back to where I was and that my life hadn't moved forward at all.

Its not just my job though that is making me feel uneasy, everything about America is just not sitting right. Like don't get me wrong I've come to love and appreciate this country so much more then I did before and I really think that while there is not "best" country, America is certainly the most blessed country. But when I am driving around town I just don't like the fact that everything is so far away. Everything is too spread out, I want the compact-ness of Japan. Food is also bothering me. I can't find anything aside from sweets that I actually want to eat. At lunch at work or going out to eat I look over my options a million times and none of it looks appetizing at all. Eating the food is ok, but I've only eaten a few things that I thought were actually delicious since coming home.

Being at home too I often feel uneasy. I have TONS of movies, games, and tv shows to catch up on but I can't really find myself wanting to do any of them for long period of time. I've only played my 360 for maybe 6 hours total since being home. I really just want to watch tons of anime because I really enjoy hearing Japanese. I started playing this stupid PSP game with Julie called Idolmasters but I found myself hooked just because it was in Japanese and its fun to try and keep up with whats being said. But I dunno I just feel really off being at home in general.

Add in the fact that my social life in Tucson is pretty much just one person, as compared to the amazing friendship we all shared at Konan, and I feel the hands of depression/frustration trying to pull me down already.

So what do I do? That is the question I have been lamenting over for quite some time now. I am going to do everything in my power to get that MEXT scholarship and go to grad school in March 2011, I graduate from U of A December 2009, so I have 13 months that I need to do something. I guess I could search for regular office job and just live in Tucson for 13 months waiting but I might go crazy with that unless something really interesting happened in my life. There might be a chance to work teaching English in Japan from Jan 2010 to Dec 2010 but that might run into a problem with my interview for the MEXT scholarship that takes place at the Japanese embassy in LA. I might find a way around that, maybe I can go to some head office in Japan or something but even if I could do that, would I really want to do 3 years, almost 4 straight living in Japan? Another idea I had was to do a summer english program in China.

So I really don't know what to do, and the one thing that would help me to actually figure it all out, I can't seem to find; a wife. I'm back to the frustration of living in Sahuarita, AZ where I can't meet people my age. I went to institute and singles ward and no one seemed to really care that I was there. I mean a few people at church were like "oh hey your back, how was Japan" but that's about the extent of it. That's another thing, I'm having a hard time recapturing the enthusiasm for church that I had while in Japan. I really miss the small ward where everyone was friends with each other and really cared for each other and the just specialness of it being Japan and all.

In closing I dunno, life just feels off here. I miss Japan a lot right now, I really do.

Back home

2009-06-11T14:19:00.000-07:00

Well its been about a week and a half being back home in America. The plane ride was not that bad actually and I was crying coming off the airplane because I was just so happy to see my family again. I had a huge culture shock seeing how big America really is and how beautiful of a place we all live in. I was also really surprised to see how everyone looked so different. I got so used to everyone being Japanese and me being the one guy who was different in a crowd. It was also really weird to see the way clerks and sales people talk to customers, we are all so laid back and friendly. Of course I also had the culture shock of seeing American prices, DVDs, games, transportation, all of that stuff is so cheap. In fact seeing everything so cheap has really made me want to not pirate stuff anymore. Like Japanese people pay crazy amounts for their entertainment stuff but pirate way less then we do. I feel that I ought to be more appreciate what America has and "be honest with my dealings with my fellow man".

So the first weekend back I spent with Cameron, Tyler, Heather and Rob. It was a lot of fun. Other then that I've spent time at home and I'm already feeling really restless. Like I can't stay inside all day just playing video games or watching anime. I love doing those things but I need to get out and do something productive with my time.

I went to institute on Wednesday night and it was a good lesson but no one introduced themselves to me and I just fell into that same rut that I always do of just sitting there being too shy to talk to strangers. I was pretty mad at myself for that because I did so much embarrassing and out of my comfort zone things in Japan that I should be able to just do anything. No excuses next time I guess.

Well other then I'm bored at home I don't have much more to say, kind of makes me miss the blogs from when I was in Japan where I would write for hours.

---Ben

The last post in Japan

2009-05-30T04:55:00.001-07:00

Well folks its been fun but my time is up and I'm heading back home to the good old US of A. On one hand I feel like I just got here yesterday and on the other it feels like I've been here so long I don't quite remember what the states are like. I've cleaned my room and got my luggage just barely under the weight limit. There isn't anything particularly fragile but its so backed I hope it makes it home in one piece.

I've said my goodbyes to everyone for so long I dunno I'm ready. Like I do love Japan and being here has been the biggest adventure of my life but I'm feeling ok about leaving.

For my last day I went to Himeji again and in addition to the castle I went to shosha mountain where there were several temples including some used in the last samurai. It was kind of funny because I was not caring about the fact that these temples were built 1000 years ago, I just wanted to see something that was in the movie! there were some steep hills there on top of the mountain and the heat/humidity was really hitting me today.

I thought I would have more to say for my last post but I really don't. Its been a lot of fun, I did some crazy stuff, hung out with some crazy people and now looking forward to seeing all my crazy people back home.

I will not miss my host family.

2009-05-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

I had to fight back the urge to vomit while eating breakfast this morning. Inside my salad (which I don't like eating for breakfast) was two bugs! I'm not a germaphobe but I can not stand bugs in my food, like I don't think that is an unreasonable line to draw. And as I tried to tell myself it was just the salad not the rest I see all of these bugs running around the counter. What the heck! why doesn't my host mom freaking do anything to stop the bugs from running around where they make food.

And its not just the kitchen there are bugs all over the bathroom, crawling around the sink, on the toothpaste (which they always leave open!) and probably over their toothbrushes. I always leave mine in a sealed plastic bag but I would be freaking out if I had even the slightest thought that a bug was crawling on something that would go in my mouth.

And the other day a HUGE spider appeared in my room, like much bigger then I've ever seen in Arizona. It ran into my closet and I shut the door on him but I was left not knowing if it was still in there waiting to jump out next time I needed to get in.

There is nothing in this house that separates it from the outside. Windows are left open without a screen all day long, everyday regardless of outside temperature. There are big spaces between doors to the outside and no sealing between the wall and the floor.

I really hate how my host mom asks me a question but doesn't wait for a reply just makes some statement how I love gundams or something stupid like that. I totally sense that you have to respect your elders kind of mindset with the way she talks down to me. And she is really full of herself. She'll say stuff like other Japanese people are racist but okaasan (mom) isn't. I dont think she has ever referred to herself as anything but okaasan. And my dad pretty much only talks in sound effects. Like he will be saying he walked from one place to another and to say it was far he just goes "BAAAAAAAAAAA"

Aside from a few things I don't care for the cooking either. Usually I don't have to worry about bugs in my food (although there have been other cases) but I'm just bored by the food and I just eat it because its there, like I would never order it at a restaurant.

I really hate this room too, its so freaking tiny. Tatami mats are stupid now a days. They really are, they don't do anything for the temperature, they are crazy hard to clean if you spill anything, you can easily drop something down the cracks between them, and they break really easily. I've spent so much time in this little room I just can't stand it anymore.

I hate to be so negative about my last few days in Japan but this aspect of the experience took away from the overall enjoyment rather then added to it. Everything else about being here was great, lots of fun with friends, Japanese language class was very effective in the end, and all of the stuff I've seen has been incredible. I just wish I lived in a dorm instead.

Just a few days left

2009-05-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

Well its almost over, a few more days and I'll be back in America. I've had a lot of fun in Japan but ever since the farewell party I've dealt with the fact that this wonderful adventure is over. Because of that I feel ready to get back to my regular life, friends, family, U of A, walmart, Tucson, all of that stuff. I thought I would be really sad and they would need to drag me to the airport but I feel ok. I am going to be separated from the friends that I are remaining here with me come Sunday but I think I got through all of that emotional stuff already.

I don't know there isn't too much to write anymore. I went out with everyone on monday and everyone else was drinking. I had a lot of fun for sure, but under normal situations I wouldn't want to hang out when everyone else is drinking. Like not putting yourself in that kind of situation but since I wont see these people for much longer I feel like my hands were tied.

I got all of my packing done. I have the stuff thats going into my backpack as a carry on and the clothes for the last few days. It was kind of tricky to make the weight and space all work out in the right way but I should be ok. I'm really looking forward to giving everyone their gifts, I got some really good ones for some people. Some people I might have spent a bit more then others but I hope nobody really minds.

Its really cool to start making plans to hang out with people for when I get home, man its really happening. I have such wonderful people in my life and I can't wait to see them all again.

Recieving the priesthood

2009-05-23T23:14:00.000-07:00

Its been a long time coming but I finally received the Melchizedek priesthood today. During sacrament meeting they sustained me and as I stood up and saw everyone's smiling faces I was just filled with an overwhelming emotion of gratitude to these people. After the sacrament was passed I was asked to come up to the mic and say a few words because it was my last day there. I said that I was very grateful for the fellowship and inspiration that all of the members of this tiny little branch gave me. As I was saying it I was fighting back the tears.

Being here in Japan has changed my life, not just from experiencing Japan but being apart of this small ward. I could no longer be passive about church, I couldn't try to just blend in to the crowd I was forced to really talk to people and be active. And as I've gotten closer to people I found myself being more and more inspired by everything they say and everything they do. Before coming to Japan I didn't particularly like going to church, it was just something that I did because I was supposed to. Over the time I have spent attending this ward I have grown spiritually and for that I am eternally grateful for.

When I was ordained I was just overwhelmed by the love of God and for my friends surrounding me. I could not stop the tears from flowing down my face. Even now thinking about it I feel moved. I feel that this is a major turning point in my life and what happened today will change the rest of my life.

3 day adventure

2009-05-20T06:10:00.000-07:00

So time is really running out here in Japan so I thought I best do as much sightseeing as I can. This week I went on two really big ones and I'll try my best to remember all that I did.

The first was on Monday and I went to Awaji island with brother and sister Wade. They are the retired missionaries and Monday is their P day so they invited me along. I met them at the church around 9 then we headed off on the highway. I had only been on the highway one other time in Japan and that was the way home from the welcome party. So I took a lot of pictures of just the scenery from there and it was pretty nice weather that day so I think they came out pretty nice. Awaji being an island and all has a big suspension bridge connecting it to honshu. I believe it is the highest suspension bridge in the world. One thing I found really interesting about the highway is that almost everywhere has a toll and it is expensive. To cross the bridge and go about 30 mins south cost 5000 yen. Brother Wade missed his exit and he had to go to a toll booth, pay, then turn around and go back in the other way which ended up costing another 1000 yen.

So we stop at the other end of Awaji where the whirlpools (naruto) are supposed to be. We were there about 11ish and there didn't seem to be much of anything going on. Luckily someone told us that the whirlpools really start going at around 1. So we went back drove around and somewhat by luck found the boat tour place. Brother Wade amazes me because he will just go right up to people and talk to them in English. He got lucky and the lady at the boat counter spoke English and she recommend which time to go. Brother Wade will also sometimes just very bluntly say what little Japanese he knows to people. Like as I will explain later, we were looking for some place and he just pulls up to a gas stand shows the person the paper and says “DOKO”. This is an interesting logic brother Wade has because if he has to talk to them in Japanese how is he going to understand their answers? But even as a foreigner it just seems really really rude to me to say that. Like I when I ask for directions I go あのう、すみません。この所に行きたいんですけど、どう行ったらいいですか。 Like “um excuse me. I would like to go to this area but what might be the best way of going?” I can't say to a stranger “あさ、この所はどこの”　for it to be Japanese it needs to be unnecessarily long.

Ok so anyways we are on the boat and it is a breathtaking view all the way up to the bridge area and then you really get to see some nice stuff. Now I was thinking that it was one giant whirlpool but in reality its tons of small ones. It looks like this one spot of water out of the big ocean is going crazy. It didn't feel like the ship was in danger or anything but it was really cool and I think I might have goten some of my best pictures of this year there.

So afterwards we wanted to find the Japanese puppet theater. We got a map and it had a picture of the puppet on it and said ningyou on it. We were trying to find it and were going all over the place, and we were in some really rural places. For a while we were really confused why something like this would be all the way out here. We stopped for directions a few times and I got thrown in there trying to make sense of what they were saying. We eventually got ones that made since because we were heading towards the factory where they make them not the theater so thats why we got lost.

The theater was on like the top of the mountain and I wonder how it manages to stay in business. Anyways the Japanese puppet theater has a long history and like anime, was not made specifically for children but rather adults. The puppets are controlled by three people wearing a black costume and a black mask. The idea is that you are supposed to forget that they are there. I heard that modern tokusatsu shows are derived from this theater and after seeing it I agree. The idea that something is fake but if you just pretend that it is real then it really comes alive. The monsters in tokusatsu always look like a guy in a suit but like this theater it doesn't get in the way. The play itself is obviously several hundred years old as the script is read by one person off to the side who doesn't change their voice at all for different characters and talks in that crazy samurai style. I can not make any sense out of it. All I hear is NANINANI DE GO ZA RU!

So on the way back we stopped at a giant Buddha. Like this thing is HUGE, at least 7 stories tall. Almost Godzilla size. In fact I think these might be Japan's real defense against Godzilla. On the way back they dropped me off at Shinkaichi, I killed some time there then went home and planned for the next day, a trip to Nagoya.

So for Nagoya I woke up early, ate breakfast then headed off to Shinkobe station. I got a window seat for most of the ride and I spent a lot of time just admiring the scenery of middle of no where Japan. Like it was the kind of area that if JET sent me there I would find some way of quiting, nothing there. Before I knew it I was at Nagoya station. I got my bearings on a map and headed off to this bike rental store I found online. Using my PSP's GPS gizmo I walked and walked a good mile and a half until I got to the spot where the store was supposed to be. But it wasn't there, in fact the whole area was nothing but houses. I was really banking on the idea of having a bike to use but instead I had to make do on foot. So I walked all the way back to the station before heading off to my first actual destination, Nagoya science museum and park.

I didn't go to the museum just enjoyed the park and then headed off to the next park that was about a mile away. On the way I checked my PSP to see how far away it was and I found out that their was a Manadarake store pretty close to where I was, I decided to go there first. The store was located in the Osu shopping area, specifically on Akamon street. This Mandarake was done way differently then the one in Umeda. This one had a lot of old super sentai stuf. Like they had the super final form robot set from the series before zyuranger (mighty morphin PR) and all sorts of ones way older that I knew nothing at all about. I was hoping to find a good price on a figma figure but nothing that warranted buying another toy for myself.

So I headed back to the long park and went up it. This park is a mile plus long but only maybe 100 feet wide. It had traffic lanes on both sides of it. Towards the north was the TV tower that looks exactly like Tokyo tower except it was all gray. Once I got to the top I aimed for Nagoya castle, but first ate some curry for lunch. Nagoya castle is a reconstruction but it still was really nice. The area is huge, well maintained, lots of Japanese style garden stuff. I went inside one of the corner towers which may or may not have been an original but looked real. The castle itself is a museum but a cool one at that. One thing that really impressed me was an old style rifle that was like 6 feet long. I read the Japanese and it said that it was used for defending a castle. I'm surprised I haven't seen an anime character in a samurai era series walking around with a giant gun like that. The view from the top was pretty nice too. Oh also apparently it was a big deal for this town when they put the gold fish things on the very top of the castle so they are the cities mascot.

My next location was the Tokugawa park. At this point I came to a brilliant realization, Nagoya has subways! Rather then killing myself walking all of this way I should freaking use a subway! So I figured out how the lines work there and was off. The station was a little bit away from the park but there were signs as you exit the station so it was ok. The park was really nice, Japanese gardens have a certain something about them that I just cant explain.

After that I wanted to hit a few temples that according to my map looked not that far away and kind of in a row. After going a bit in the wrong direction I decided it was time to call it quits for the day because it was already 6 and I was dead tired. So I played around with my PSP found the nearest station and got to kanayama where my capsule hotel was. I made reservations to check in at 9 so I didn't want to go too early. I walked around the area for a bit but there isn't too much there, I ate dinner at McDonalds and around 8 went to the hotel.

The hotel is actually only two floors of this building which kind of surprised me. I got to the counter and checked in no problem but I don't think they even checked to see if I had a reservation I just filled the paper out. They gave me a wrist band with the key attached to it, I took my shoes off then went to the lockers. Since the hotel was all men I just changed into my Pjs there and checked out the capsule. They are all in rows and stacked two high. Inside is actually not bad. I had enough room to toss and turn just fine as I do in my sleep and it had a TV which I was able to watch some random anime where I think the people are in some sort of computer and a rerun of tsubasa. The only problem with the hotel was the pillow they gave me. Japanese pillows suck, a lot. They are all filled with something that feels like a very thick straw (drinking) cut into tiny bits. It feels like sleeping on a gravel.

So in the morning woke up, ate McDonalds for breakfast, finally found a map of the city at a tourist guide place in the station, and headed off to atsuya jingu. I took the subway so it didn't take too much time. It was a nice park but the main buildings were under construction. There was a national treasures museum there that I got lured into going by a giant katana. On the hiroshima trip I saw a giant sword but I think this is bigger. Like its longer then my body, its massive. Apparently it was used for horse mounted combat and by the looks of it, it would take out the rider and the horse in one swing. The rest of the stuff was cool, there were various swords and old clothes but I wasn't going to bother to try and read the Japanese on all of that stuff.

Afterwards I went back to the station and went to the station closest to nittaji temple. The walk from the station to this one was far and the heat was really getting to me, I drank like 5 bottles of Japan's gatorade like stuff that day. Nittaji was cool, very big, very wide open. I headed towards the next temple but according to the map there were all sorts of smaller temples along the way. So I headed down a path that kind of went through a neighborhood and I stumbled across some interesting temples here and there. There was a little bit of a nice nature trail in there too which was nice. My next goal was a bit off but I walked it. I walked through a much more business kind of area that reminded me a lot of Kobe. When I got to this temple what really stood out was the giant Buddha they had. This one was smaller then the one in Awaji but it was sitting down and still freaking big. I would say it was a bit more bigger then king kong. It had a hand seperate so you could see the size and it could grab you like a toy. Anyways it was cool.

So after that I headed towards a big park on the map. When I got there I found out it was all part of the zoo and I didn't feel like paying the admission and seeing a zoo by myself. I saw there was supposed to be another park up and to the left a bit so I went towards that but after getting a dead end, being tired, and the heat beating down on me I decided enough was enough and I should start heading back. I grabbed the nearest station and took it to a station a bit below where I the shinkansen station was. I figured I would walk up this last bit, hitting the temples along the way and that should put me right on time. I called my host mom but she didn't pick up her phone so I left a message. I checked my phone about an hour later and saw my host mom tried to call me 30 mins ago. So in my brain I automatically assumed my host mom got the message and was just saying “don't worry you can eat at home”, so I didn't call back.

I hit up the temples along the way and they were pretty cool, even though they are all pretty much the same I still like seeing them. At the last one there was an entrance to that Osu shopping center so I thought I would check that out. It wasn't too bad, the area as a whole is pretty big. Its like take shinsaibashi, mix in den den town, shrink it down to a little bit more then kobe's biggest shopping areas and you have Osu.

The way back to the station felt like it was taking forever. I don't know why but it seemed so far. I finally worked my way through the maze and the crowds to the shinkansen station, got on the train and was heading home. When I was at shinkaichi I called my host mom to tell her I would be a little after 7 for dinner and apparently she hadn't checked her voice mail, I don't think she knows how, so I felt really bad that I just out of the blue asked for dinner after saying originally I didn't need it. I don't know if was because of me or what but she was just starting dinner when I got there and host dad wasn't home until I was done eating.

It cost me about $120 for the round trip ticket and $2800 for the capsule hotel. It was really interesting to see that part of Japan and I am glad that there is now another part of Japan that I know of as a real place. But because I went by myself it wasn't that much fun, even though if I went with someone else I wouldn't have been able to do half the things I did. Nagoya is a decent city. It has all that you need without being so overbearing like Osaka and Tokyo can be. I think if I do JET I'll say that I wouldn't mind going to Nagoya, not my first choice but I'd be happy with it.

A review of the Konan University Year in Japan program

2009-05-16T02:27:00.001-07:00

I hope that this blog will come up in some google search for someone who is thinking about choosing this program. Obviously they can read any of the other 50+ posts I made during the year but I wanted to write a review of the program as a whole for them.

This program has some strong points and some weak points but it all really depends on what you want out of a study abroad experience that will determine if this is the right one for you.

The amount you pay and receive will vary from year to year but I paid $20,000 for 9 months and 2 semesters worth of credits in Japan. That included my host family, breakfast and dinner every day, 3 big field trips, several smaller field trips, and transportation. I also recieved that Jasso scholarship which gave me a reimbursement of my plane ticket's cost and $800 a month.

Now $20,000 may sound like a lot but think how much tuition and living on a drom would cost at your university. For me when I thought about it that way it didn't seem too expensive for what I was getting. So for the price of the program itself, I think its pretty good (the cost of living abroad is another thing all together)

Konan University is located in Kobe. I really enjoyed Kobe. Most of the people who live here are pretty well off and it is Japan's 8th biggest city so it has a sort of nice clean feeling to most of the areas. Kobe itself doesn't have too many attractions or sightseeing spots but it is under an hour away from Osaka and some where under 90 mins to Kyoto so I feel like you avoid the congestion of those areas but still can go to them any time you want. The weather doesn't get too hot or too cold (Japan in general is worse then you would expect but compared to other parts of Japan I can't complain). Most foreign exchange students want to go to Tokyo, and Tokyo is cool, but living in Tokyo can be kind of hard. As far as location I recommend it.

Now Konan University is a private university so its pretty small. Something like 10,000 students at max. There are only about 6 buildings that are part of the main campus. The school itself is fine but for me it was too small. There weren't any clubs that interested me and just too few students would come into the international room. But the school itself is fine if you are ok with a smaller school.

One of the big things about Konan is the fact that you have to have a host family (unless they get too many people and you get placed in a dorm). With a host family you are living with a complete stranger for 9 months. Some people LOVED their host family experience and really bonded with their host family and they were thought of as a member of their family, and of course their Japanese skyrocketed. Some people got into fights with their host family and got kicked out or had to try and sneak out. We had several cases my year about people changing host families. And then you have people like me who spend 9 months living with someone and never actually completely feel comfortable living there. I really wanted a great host family and instead I got one that is just nice and they give me good food and do my laundry but there is no bond there. I try but I never get a conversation going with them and little things like the way they talk about me really gets on my nerves sometimes. I honestly feel like I got ripped off or cheated by being placed with the family I got. All I can think is how great it would have been if I got a really good match. I guess living a dorm has its own list of complaints so maybe Im blowing the problems of a home stay out of proportions but I really feel that it can be the best thing in the world, the worst thing, or anything in between. And its all by chance too. So as far as home stay is concerned I don't know what exactly to say.

The classes. Here is something that I was not told about during my own orientation for this program, the classes by and large are not good. You have Japanese class mon-fri 2-3 hours then elective classes such as japanese history, japanese cinema, japanese art history, japanese literature, etc... For the Japanese language classes all of the students are divided into 5 levels (A-E) and you have classes with those same people for a year. This is a very flawed system from the start because every college teaches Japanese a completely different way. I have talked to people who studied everything in romanji but had a really strong speaking ability, I met people who knew tons of kanji but couldn't speak very well so most people were placed in a class where one aspect was too hard and one was too easy. An alternative would probably be impractical but I think their system needs some serious attention. Each class then rotated teachers throughout the week. For me that meant I had one day of a really strict teacher, two days of a really really laid back teacher and only two days of a regular teacher. While I would hate having 5 days of the strict or laid back teacher this lead to the class feeling very unbalanced. I've said all of this but the Japanese classes aren't too bad, since I wasn't talking to my host family at home much this was my main Japanese practice. The real issue came in the electives. The teachers are nice people, smart people too but a good amount of them don't know how to run a classroom. I had a history class where we went over pretty much all of Japanese history without a textbook! To add to the confusion the teachers notes weren't really in any order and as I looked over them they didn't make any sense. We had to rely on wikipedia to study for the midterm! There is no clear expectations, for the most part the work load was so lite I felt like I wasn't in college anymore but rather some magical make believe school system. As a whole I did have fun in some classes, I did learn some stuff but I don't think any of these classes would happen at my home university. I think the dean would shut them all down for not being up to standard. So in a nutshell don't expect too much from the classes.

Field trips. When I was going through one of my up and down bits about being homesick what always cheered me up and made me excited about being in Japan was the field trips. I saw some really awesome stuff. Castles, temples, shrines, landmarks, famous scenery, I've seen more then I can count. To experience this much of Japan in a safe and reliable context you can only do it through being a foreign exchange student. Simply put the field trips make it all worth while.

My Japanese still sucks a lot. I thought that I would become fluent by being in Japan for 9 months, that was not the case at all. I didn't talk to my host family much, aside from japanese class everything at school for me was english, and I wasn't really able to make a Japanese social life. I felt that I was in this English bubble and through my Japanese class I did get better for a while but then I kind of hit a plateau. If becoming fluent is the number one goal of yours, I can't recommend this program. Like you'll get better for sure but their is so much english in this program and you are so isolated from the other Japanese students there is no way you can say that this is immersion. If you really have to become fluent, search for a program that places you in Japanese classrooms, if you can be ok with coming back and still having to study a lot before you hold up a normal conversation without feeling dumb, then this program is ok.

Being a foreign exchange student is something I recommend to everyone. You can read about a place, you can visit it on a vacation, but neither of those are like really living there. Everything aspect of living in a foreign culture comes together to be this incredible experience that you will cherish forever. I also think it helps you grow as a person in a way you never could have imagined. Being separated from everything and everyone you know, you find out that you have the power to do anything you want. Because you are thrown out of your comfort zone in the most literal sense and it becomes sink or swim kind of thing. Regardless where you go I recommend to study abroad.

Like I said this program has some ups and downs but in the end it was worth it. As long as you are ok with the randomness of being assigned a host family, silly classes, and not being fluent then go for it!

the program is over

2009-05-16T02:12:00.000-07:00

Well today is the 15th day I have left in Japan and the program officially ended yesterday with the farewell party. It was really sad to say goodbye to all of those people and finally accept that this little path in my life was going to an end. I couldn't hold back the tears when I realized it was the last day that I would see the people from Hawaii, especially Jay, Nohea and Courtney as they are leaving today for the airport. I had so much fun with them and I really enjoyed being otakus in japan together. But not just them I might see a few people here and there before the last two weeks are up and we might see each other at the airport but now its time for us to go our separate ways all over the world. I would really like to visit Les in Canada, Darlo in the UK and Martin in Germany but will I ever be able to?

I know its part of life to make relationships and then go your separate ways, make new ones and repeat but their is a part of me that just wants to stay a ryugakusei with these people forever. But at the same time I know that there is a new and exciting road ahead of me as well.

You know for it being such an emotional farewell party for me, I don't have too much to say for once. I really enjoyed spending times with everyone here and maybe I didn't accomplish what I wanted (never did find that Japanese girlfriend) I still had an incredible experience that I will treasure forever.

The last 20 days in Japan

2009-05-11T05:56:00.000-07:00

Well here I am, almost done with this grand adventure of mine. Soon I'll be back home into the 100+ degree Arizona heat and far away from Japan. I'm not really dreading it or anything like that. I've done what I was supposed to here, made lots of memories, learned more then I could ever write down and now its time to move onto the next stage of my life. If anything I am going to miss all of the other foreign exchange students the most. I think of almost all of them as my best friends and I am really going to be sad when I can't see them everyday anymore, but that's life. I am really looking forward to being home though. I really want to see my family and friends.

So last week was golden week and obviously monday I had a big adventure but on tuesday I was so sore I could barely move. I went out for lunch because my host mom's mom died (she was almost 100) but beside that I stayed in my room a lot that day.

Wednesday there was a barbecue with the students from the Konan Cube campus. It was a nice get together and was kind of funny to see how much these kids did not know what they were doing. They just dumped whole bags of meat on the grill for crying out loud. Christy, Emily and Juliene wanted to go to Den Den town and I never turn down a chance to go to Den Den town so I went along. Emily and Juliene were on a quest to find non pornographic doujinshin (fan comics of popular characters) and that is a really hard thing to do. Christy got a terabyte hard drive for $110 and was so happy and thought it was the cheapest thing in the world I was trying not to bust her bubble that $110 isn't that much cheaper then the ones in America. After the girls headed home I decided to try and find the madarake in shinsaibashi and eat out since my host mom had to go to Tokyo for the funeral. I didn't find it but I walked all the way back to Umeda and got some neat night shots. Osaka is a really nice city. I ended up going to the mandarake in umeda and got this saber figure for $5! I don't know how they make it so cheap. I think some of them might be opened but they all look new and have all of the packaging so I don't care. They also have the cheapest prices I have seen for perfect grade gundam models. Like $65 for the MK2. I was tempted to buy it and ship it home but shipping unbuilt like that would have negated the cheapness of it.

Thursday there was school again so I went a little early and studied for my religion test. I thought I did pretty good. It seemed easy but you never know. I just headed home after that.

Friday was cinema and Emily finally brought back my suitcase I lent her on the Tokyo trip. When I got home I tried to do a mock pack and it seems I have just too much. I have too many clothes so I have two options. I can mail some of the stuff back and pay $40-50+ or just throw some of the clothes out. I do have some jeans that are worn past their limit and such so maybe I'll do it. I just hate the idea of paying that kind of money for clothes I might not even want. Anyways I'll check on that.

Saturday was the ryugakusei barbecue and I wasn't quite sure what kind of meat to buy. I've never actually bought meat before so I ended up with some decent pork and some really weird and not too great beef. It was a really hot day but we had this really cool park that was pretty close to campus. There were a lot of bugs that day. Like you were always walking through a swarm of tiny bugs. It was a lot of fun to talk to everyone and I had a good time. After words some of us got dinner at this Italian restaurant in Okamoto then headed off to Karaoke. I couldn't remember a lot of the songs I like to sing so I felt frustrated trying to remember them. Jordan was really drunk at that time and was acting really silly. We had three separate rooms because our group was so big and everyone kept changing rooms so we were probably bothering everyone.

Sunday after I came home and cleaned up a little mess I made outside trying to empty out the spray cans I went out with my new PSP GPS toy. I kind of wish I didn't spend $60 on it because its just so freaking weak. When it works its cool, I was able to connect while on the train and it told me how fast the train was going but sometimes it will take 1 or 2 mins to connect if at all. In a car that might not be a problem but while walking its really annoying. I read online that if you get a metal case for the PSP it helps block some electrical noise that interferes with the device but I can't find one for my 1000 series PSP. It's so hard to find accessories for these game systems because as soon as a new model comes out the old stuff disappears. Well at any rate because of the GPS and the fan made program I am using I was able to find this cool Chinese style temple in Kobe.

Best Day EVER

2009-05-04T17:34:00.000-07:00

So at the speech contest all of us were invited to participate in fukae matsuri. Only a few of us did it and I feel bad for all of those who passed up this chance because this was one of the coolest things I have ever done in my entire life.

So we met bright and early at fukae hanshin station and of course Pak was late. We are guided to the changing rooms in the building on the temple's grounds. We each have a bag with our names on it and inside is the traditional costume for this festival. After getting some help from some people we all got dressed.

Here is what me and Pak looked like

For the legs it actually was a skirt kind of thing but was pretty comfortable. I was at first nervous about showing off my chest like that but I then decided just to have some fun with it and a few people just came up and touched it and some people took pictures of me because of it. It was fun though.

We started by pushing the danjiri from its storage shed to the temple which was like a block away. For those that don't know, which is probably everyone, a danjiri is kind of a traditional Japanese float. However float makes one think that it is light, that is not the case at all. They actually weigh around 4 tons! It has stone wheels that leave a trail on the street where ever it goes. To turn this thing the people in the back have to sit down on it while the people in the front lift so that it is only on two wheels then they can push it in the direction they want.
Here is a picture of the one I pushed and a picture of one that looks exactly like ours did (even the clothes were the same so I have to wonder if I found the right one by chance).

There was also a smaller one that was pushed by only women. As it turns out I was really lucky to do this year because they do the men's one every 2 years and the women's one every 3 years so the year they do both is only once in 6 years. In side of both types is someone playing the taiko drums and they NEVER stop. As these things go through town there are also tons of other people keeping track of traffic and which direction it is going and stopping it from going off track.

So we bring the danjiri to the temple, line up then walk in a parade up to another temple. We keep a four row formation and keep up a chant, I'm not sure what we were saying but I just tried to mimic the sounds. When we got to the temple a bunch of people went into a shed and dragged out the mikoshi. A mikoshi is a portable shrine covered in bells and gold everything. It weighs over 1 ton and costs over a million dollars. Here is what mine looked like.

They placed it down and we all sat around it while some of the older guys in yukatas and wearing a special hat sang a shinto prayer song while holding a folding fan over their mouth. We then all stood up, said a chant while we clapped then lifted it up and ran around the area for a bit, brought it back to the center, put it down and then they sang again. We did this three times and then we took the shrine down the stairs and out of the temple. There is probably 20 people lifting the mikoshi at one time so you think its not that bad right? No way it was crazy heavy. We had to constantly trade out people because it was just so much work to move this thing. Here is a picture I found on the web of people carrying a similar one so it was a lot like what I was doing.

As you can see there are beams that are lower and some that are higher. Because I am just a little taller then the average Japanese person I had a really hard time using the lower beam so I would usually be in the center. Even still it was really hard to use your shoulders because for me there isn't too much muscle on the top of my shoulder so it hurt pretty badly. I tried to push it up with my hands, which hurt a lot right now. In a nut shell it was very awkward to move this thing. We were carrying this thing all through the neighborhoods and sometimes we would stop infront of some place and lift it above our heads twice then throw it in the air a little. That was really scarry. Sometimes we would shake it a lot so the bells would go all crazy. A lot of times we stopped, put it down then did the shinto prayer song again. I would carry it as much as I could but I made sure to take breaks too. We went all over the neighborhood then came back to the first temple for lunch.

lunch was pretty good there were those platters with all sorts of stuff on them and some yakisoba and what not. I had to ask the ladies helping with the food for some water because the only thing to drink was tea and beer. After lunch we continued carrying the mikoshi all around the neighborhood and sometimes meeting up with the girl's danjiri. Every hour or so, didn't have a watch so don't know, we stopped for a break. They had a car with lots of drinks and cups and also signs that said smoking area. Like they just made it a smoking area by putting up their own sign. During the breaks I had a lot of fun talking to all of the people there. I have often talked about the soto/uchi thing in Japan and today I felt part of the uchi. People would just come up to us and start talking and they were all so energetic and fun. It was a real nice feeling. Sometimes we got to use this sort of supporting cart for the danjiri and it became much easier because you just had to pull it now. I'm not quite sure why we would use it some times but not others.

The day continued with going around the neighborhood (which there were surprisingly few people out and about) and such until it was time to put the mikoshi away. We made our way back up to the temple where we got it from and there were a bunch of people cheering us on. We placed the mikoshi down in front of the shrine, they said a special song, everyone else said a different chant, we picked it up again and then the real challenge started. We ran a marathon around the shrine. I don't know how many times we did it but it was at least ten times. As we ran around the back people would tag out so people could get rests but I was in the middle and didn't think I could get out while everyone was marching like that. I just ran and ran and went into robot mode, just turned off thinking and did it. Martin somehow got in and tagged me so I ran out. I took a little break but then had to jump back in but this time I was on the edge again. I eventually got back into the inner parts and we made it to the end. We shook it like we had never done before then finally put it away.

We got in rows and marched down to a park where the danjiri was. I guess some people must have broken off from our group and moved it. After another break we got ready to push again. They had us be in the front and it was really fun. We switched at the train crossing and then stopped on the other side. Looking down the street were crowds of people cheering us on from the sidewalk. The taiko drum's beat got faster and faster until we heard the whistle and we all took off running. This 4 ton danjiri was flying down the street at a crazy speed. The lanterns attached flew off and some of us not pushing it picked them up as we ran. They did this a total of 5 times and twice I got to push it. It was really scarry pushing it because I couldn't normally keep up with that running speed, I had to put some weight on the danjiri and my feet barely touched the ground. It was a really cool feeling to be a part of it and to see the crowds of people cheering you on. It was really something else.

We then started the long process of putting the danjiri away. We put all of our weight on the back and turned it around probably 10 times then pushed it towards the storage shed. The crowd followed us and kept up the cheering and clapping. We pulled it into the garage and then ran back out and pulled it back it and then ran it back out several times. Then we all got inside and they shut the garage door. Behind the garage door they had a paper curtain cover it so when they opened the garage door they could show the lights from color flash lights. But what really surprised me was that some of the older guys came and stood on the front of the danjiri dressed as anpan man and other characters. With the garage door open they burst threw the paper one and everyone was dancing and clapping and streamers and confetti flew everywhere. I could not believe the amount of energy these people had after such a long day. The costume guys got down and then some of the leaders got on the little stage and jumped into the crowd and we threw them up in the air.

I was blown away by it all and had never seen anything like it in my life. After this we walked back to the temple, bowed before the shrine, ate some sushi for dinner, changed clothes and then went home. This was an experience that I will never forget and I can't believe that I was lucky enough to be able to experience it.

The end is coming

2009-05-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

So today is May 2nd 2009. I have under 30 days left in Japan and I'll soon be coming home. Its a weird feeling to think about leaving this place that I have grown to love so much but I'll be able to return home to my friends and family.

But hey I'm almost done with all of the stuff for school here. My Japanese final is over, for education I just need to do a small presentation, for cinema I just need to show up, for religion I have a final but I dont think any of those are really anything tough. The japnaese final was tough, we really rushed at the end to get as many grammar points as possible in.

I decided to take a fall semester instead of a summer so I guess I'll probably live at home a while longer but you never really know whats going to happen. I managed to get all of my classes on tuesday and thursday and because I am getting grants school will be free. Very nice. As long as something major doesnt happen I should be able to pay off my student loans before I even graduate.

We had a fare well party on friday night. It was done by one of the clubs and they put a lot of effort into considering it was just a club. It was a lot of fun but I really wish this club would have come and talked to us more during the year. I tried to get information about how I could be apart of it one time but was unable to get any information. Oh well I guess. Some of the staff was dressed up in yukatas or ninja costumes and one guy had that freaky horse head mask on. They played bingo and everyone talked a lot. Some of the guys I had met before kept trying to get me to talk to a bunch of girls. I would do it because it was no big deal but they were so shy and acting weird about it. It was fun and all and I appreciate all they did but being isolated as a foreigner is something I don't think I'll ever like about Japan.

So on Wednesday I decided to head off to Takarazuka. My original goal was to go to the area where the horse race was and see that area again but the place I went seemed completely different. It was a really cheap train ride there and the area was gorgeous. I was really blown away by the area around the station. Takarazuka is famous for a type of play done only by women actors of the same name. So the area was full of flowers and pleasant architecture. It was kind of like shojo city. So after a little bit of being blown away by how pretty it all was I stumbled across Ozuka Tezuma museum. Now honestly I have a hard time remembering the name but this guy is the father of japanese anime. He created not only Astro boy but that white lion thing and black jack and apparently something like 30 anime series, several movies and TONS of manga. I don't know if there is anyone who has done as much in the way of entertainment as this guy has in his life. It had a very nice atmosphere about it and everything looked like it was from a 50s scifi show. There was a lot of information about the guy too but I didn't bother to stop and read all of the Japanese.

After I saw most of the museum I continued to walk away from the station and enjoyed the really nice area that I was in. I soon got to a river bank and it was simply goregous, the city scape off in the distance was amazing and you see nothing but packed buildings all the way until the mountain. I walked along the river bank for a while and really just took it all in. After a while I got back up to the street then got to a more business area and headed back towards the station.

So while walking I found my next destination kiyoushikonji-seichoji temple. this was around 2 km away and I just followed the arrows as I went up a steep hill and through a very residential type of area. As I went up and up the view became really nice. The arrows I was following though were for cars so I was walking on the side of the road for a little bit and was really starting to question if I was going the right direction or not. I finally got there and climbed a bunch of stairs just to find a regular modern Buddhist dormitory and a cemetery. A little disappointed I was heading back but decided to go a different way down the hill. I am glad I did because that was where the real temple was.

The temple had a really cool atmosphere and while not too different from other temples I really liked it. Took lots of pictures of course. I sort of followed the crowd on my way back and it lead to this really neat little shopping alley. You don't really see ones like this in the states I think where its really cramped and people's houses are right next to stores selling souvenirs and such. I was getting a little worried as to where I actually was because I was going a very different way then I had come. It seemed to go on for a long time but ultimately it did end infront of kiyousoji station.

Before I got to the station however I saw a sign that said "nakayama temple 2000 meters this way". I stopped and thought about it but felt it was better to get to the station because I didn't know where exactly I was and I didn't have much money on me. I had under 1000 yen and I needed to make sure I had enough to ride the train back home because I could not find a SMBC bank or ATM anywhere. So when I got to kiyosoji station I debated whether or not to try and walk to nakayama. I even started to head back to the sign but turned back. I ended up deciding to take the train to the next stop and just check out that temple. This train line is really cheap so I was ok money wise.

So I exit the station and I see a sign one to the left and one to the right. The one to the left said there was a temple only a few hundred meters to the left and the other one said nakayama temple was 900 meters to the right. So I figure I can do both. As I head to the one on the left I see this big open gate and a sign that said something about takarazuka. I go in and there is a statue of Jesus. I was really surprised to see a statue of Jesus in Japan but was really happy. I go up the trail a road a little bit and I see a bunch of buildings. It turns out that this wasn't a park but the takarazuka catholic school or something like that, and I was just trespassing. Luckily no one but someone working on the yard saw me so I just hurried out. I found the other temple and it was a so so one with stairs going really high up.

I then headed off to Nakayama temple. There isn't just a path just a few signs every so often saying which direction to go. I ended up walking through some neighborhoods and I always feel a little odd walking around people's houses with a camera as a gaijin. Because I think people automatically assume that I don't live there and if I'm taking pictures of something normal like a neighborhood it might be looked at as kind of creepy. Of course no one would ever say anything so I probably shouldn't worry.

I ultimately get to nakayama temple and it was very big and also very modern. There were parts with escalators even. There were also a lot of young families with newborns there, I guess they bless the baby or something. There was a great view, lots of cool shots, and an all around cool environment that you never see in America. After that I headed towards the station and made my way home.

While on the train however I got an email from Courtney asking if I wanted to hang out with her and Martin. I was tired but I said yes. We were planning on studying for our kanji test the next day but ended up just doing some shopping and eating.

So this Saturday I was free and wanted to check that area out some more because after all if there were two awesome temples there I would imagine that there should be more. Exiting nakayama station I saw a very different kind of atmosphere, everything was really spread out. It felt more like Tucson almost. there were a few temples here and there but I ended up walking through a lot of residential areas.

I saw the same signs as before and one of them pointed to a waterfall. I really wanted to see this so I followed the arrow, and I followed it for a while, even until the next station and I saw nothing. I then road back to the station where I saw the sign and tried to figure where on earth it was supposed to be because it points in one way but the road turns drastically right away. Frustrated I gave up trying to find it and just checked out a few more temples I learned about from a map I stumbled across. After that I went home.

I stopped at sannomiya because I wanted a guide book for Kansai. I wanted to know where all of the cool spots were, I don't think I have enough time to just wander around endlessly like that anymore. There were plenty of guide books at Junkudo but they all were just about one city. I wanted one that was about all of Kansai so I could compare where to go. I left empty handed but thought I would check out Seiden/Tsutaya to see if maybe there was some super cheap GPS thingy or something I could use. I saw the PSP GPS add on and thought it was worth checking online reviews. When I got home I found out that using a homebrew game you can make your own maps of anywhere in the world. So that was kind of the deal maker, I went back the next day and bought the GPS add on for the PSP. After a LOT of work I got it to work just the way I want it to and now I can know exactly where I am and where the nearest, temple, shrine, or convenient store is to my location.

Tomorrow I get to do a real once in a life time thing, I get to pull a danjiri (traditional Japanese float)! Its going to be tiring for sure but wow how cool is that, I mean really. Okay I wrote a whole lot so I going to stop now

---Ben

Just over a month left

2009-04-28T04:10:00.000-07:00

Wow where did all of the time go? Like really not that long ago I was counting down the days until I went to Japan and now here I am with just over a month until I return from it. Its a weird feeling because I feel like I have been here so long I don't remember exactly what home is like but at the same time it feels like just yesterday we were having out orientation. I am excited to go home to see my family, hang out with my friends, be able to enjoy everything being cheap, and all of the cool movies and games that came out while I wasn't paying attention to them. I'm not looking forward to going back to work. I'm not looking forward to loosing what little Japanese practice I get in my normal day, but I'm really not looking forward to leaving this country. I don't know why I like Japan. If I wanted to say some complaints I could come up with a good size list but there is just something about this place that has a real charming atmosphere about it. I ask myself why I want to come back and its not just the anime goods shopping, which is a huge perk, its something that I can't quite explain.

Classes are wrapping up and fair well parties are happening left and right. In about 2 weeks all of the kids from Hawaii are going home and in all reality I'll probably never see them again. I've made really good friends with Jay and Courtney but I just don't see myself getting out to Hawaii too much. I guess there might be a chance with Jay if I ended up in California for work and he goes back home or something like that. But life is just full of those sort of short term friendships and you just have to learn to enjoy them while you have them and move on when they are gone I guess.

So I am once again changing my plans for school. I emailed a few teachers trying to figure everything out and it turns out there simply isn't ANY Chinese studies class this summer so that forces me to not have a free schedule in the fall so I might as well just take all of my classes then rather then some in the summer. The more I think about it the smarter decision it really is. I am getting grant money for the fall and spring semesters so school is not only going to be free but should make some money actually even after buying books and what not. The little problem is that the priority registration already passed while I was set on taking a summer semester so some of the classes I wanted are full. I signed up for Chinese writers and society 341, Japanese 421 (I don't really know if this will be a more difficult class or not) and I am going to try and get into Japanese civilization 272 to fulfil my history requirement and modern east asian history 270. These classes have a lot of students in them so there should be lots of people who drop so as long as I just keep checking up on it I should be able to get in no problem. I actually dont need Hist 270 but I need to be at 12 credits to get the money so its just about being full time with that class. I wanted to take an easier class then Chinese 341 because I have already taken all of the hard ones I need and I have had professor li for three other classes. I know he is good but he is going to work you.

So one of my more interesting teachers is Koji Nakamura. He teaches the Japanese education class and he is the one who has had the class be all over the place in terms of what we cover in class. He also teaches regular konan students classes and he invited all of us to come to his class. I was free today and saw him during a break in class so I decided to go later in the day. He said the class was taught in all Japanese which I thought all the more reason for it to be interesting. So I go to the class room and he tells everyone that their will be a ryugakusei so think of a question to ask and he had me go in front of everyone and do a self introduction and I was doing ok in my Japanese but he kept asking me more and more questions and then everyone took turns asking me questions. It was so weird being on the spot lot like that saying everything in Japanese and making mistakes left and right in front of a group of native speakers. I only go to sit down after an HOUR. I held a Q and A in Japanese, in front of Japanese people, for a solid hour! I can't believe I got through it. Now that its over I feel glad because I certainly could not have done anything like that before I came here. And this is another example of how I am constantly forced out of my comfort zone. Like if I can do this then like really their is nothing I can't do.

There is a lot of free time coming up, tomorrow is some sort of holiday and I'm thinking of going to Takarazuka. Next week is golden week (a week where a bunch of holidays fall one right after the other) then an odd week of having only my elective classes and finally the two weeks of no school at all before I go. I really need to get working on exploring. I want to stay mostly in Kansai but thats still plenty to see and do.

---Ben

coming close to the end

2009-04-24T19:07:00.001-07:00

There is a mall that opened up in this area a few months back called nishinomiya gardens. Nishinomiya is a little past the stop I get off on for school (and it takes forever to walk there as I once found out). I had plans to see the conan movie on saturday but friday zoe and jay wanted to walk around nishinomiya gardens so since I needed to get dinner because my host mom was in Tokyo I went along. We walked around but I have to tell you the only interesting store in the whole mall is Joshin (electronics store) and maybe book 1st. So it was a little boring but had fun with friends so it was ok.

The next day we wanted to do the 2pm showing of conan but it was sold out (this was the only time Ive seen the theater actaully busy) so we went for a 5pm one instead. That meant that we had lots of time to kill in the mall so we just kind of sat around for a while. The next day Courtney invited me to go to the horse race tracks with her and her family and it was a lot of fun. We didn't actually see the real race because we were trying to get out of the sun but it was lots of fun to hang out and Courtney's brother is so cute. After the race though we went again to nishinomiya for dinner.

On monday me and courtney were planning to skip afternoon classes and go to Umeda to buy more anime figures. I've started collecting the figma series and also ones that are about the same size, shes been collecting the really chibi funny ones that I forget what they are called. But it turned out it was layla's birthday so we went to nishinomiya to have lunch with her and then somehow talked Pak and Layla to go to Umeda with us. I like going shopping with courtney because I never feel bad about the amount of money I spend because she spends TONS of money the figures she gets are like $25 each and she bought like 5 of them! Her dad just gives her so much money I wonder what she is going to do when she has to make it on her own. So that was 4 days in a row of going to Nishinomiya gardens.

Tuesday we had off but Wednesday we had a field trip to the CUBE campus which was right across the street from Nishinomiya gardens. The cube was really nice because the students there seemed honestly interested in talking to foreigners not just practice thier English or something. It was a lot of fun and its really good to see some people trying to change Japan's education system.

Also on Wednesday I got to do my presentation on Tokusatsu. It was a lot of fun and I showed some trailers and opening videos, I put a LOT of time into making the presentation.

But it is really close to the end of the program at this point. Next week is finals for Japanese class. Then we have a week off I think, then the last week for elective classes. A few days after that half the people go home and I have the last two weeks to do everything I possibly can.

Its a weird feeling because on one hand its like, "what did I actually do here?" or "where did all of the time go" but at the same time I've been here so long its hard to remeber what its like back home. But I do have close to 10,000 photos (Im like 300 short so the next time I can just walk around I'll hit it) and around 50 blog posts while being here so you could say I've documented it as well as I could have.

This has been an incredible experience and I've done so many things that most people back home would never even dream about doing but I really don't think this programs goals are what they ought to be. This program is designed pretty much for "have fun in Japan with other foreigners" which is good in its own right but you really can't say that it is "to vastly improve Japanese language skill". But I dunno I'll get fluent someday.

Honestly I am dying right now. The allergies have come out and they are showing no mercy to me. Right now I can barely keep my eyes open and my nose is all messed up. I'm wearing a breathing mask but when I exhale it goes right into my eyes and makes it worse but without it I can't stand it. It all really sucks!

Well see everyone pretty soon

---Ben

conan movie #13!

2009-04-18T16:51:00.000-07:00

So the past few days I kind of flipped out. I thought that I failed big time because my Japanese was still so terrible and everyone else who had a host family they liked was close to being fluent. I felt like this was my one chance to improve my Japanese to the level I needed it to be and that I had my dream kind of taken away from me. So I prayed about it and I got my answer the next day when I was talking to my friend Jay who just mentioned "I mean I wasn't naive enough to think I'd be fluent but my Japanese improved a lot". That was exactly what I needed to hear so I started to feel better from that point.

So last night me, Jay, Martin, and Courtney went to go see the 13th Detective Conan movie, The Raven Chasers. We were all pretty impressed with ourselves afterwords because we understood enough of the movie for it to be really enjoyable and get the major plot points. It was a pretty good conan movie and I was just really happy to be able to see one of them in a theater. Like downloaded anime is pretty good, HD anime gives a really solid picture but man 35mm just blows me away how good it looks. It was a lot of fun. Also it was packed and we had to get a later showing too because it was sold out.

Schools really coming close to the end right now and it's mixed feelings. I am kind of fed up with school and I need that little break but also going back to the real world with job and that summer class and all of that jazz, not looking forward to that.

Well that's that
---Ben

shitsubou

2009-04-15T00:18:00.000-07:00

I've tried not to be too negative about certain things here. I've tried really hard to ignore the bad and savor the good but I'm going to vent a bit. All of my problems are connected to the fact that my Japanese still sucks a lot. I came here with expectations to become fluent in a few months and have to dig really deep to find challenging Japanese like newspapers or something. That is not even close to what happened. My Japanese did increase for a bit but then it just sort of stagnated around the end of the year. So here I am almost ready to go home and while I have read manga cover to cover with out a dictionary (although didn't get all of it) and I can run earns like getting my camera fixed or shipping internationally, I still have the hardest time in the world understanding my host family. Its not just at home either, I've realized that I am the worst student in the class. I can usually see peoples grades when our teacher hands them out and Im always in the bottom. I took the Jtest with Patrick and he passed but I failed. This monday we had a speech test and I know I got the lowest grade. Im going to complain a little to the nice teacher about the speech contest because me and one other person actually gave a speech, everyone else just read it off a paper. So yeah mine was didn't have as complex grammar in it because I just wrote my main points in English on a scrap paper and sort of made it up on the spot. I didn't really "make it up on the spot" I mean I practiced it a lot and each time I would practice it it would come out a little different. But one of my friends literally copied a line from Haruhi (anime) and read it off in front of everyone.

So yeah all of this work and I see everyone doing better then me and I just feel so freaking stupid sometimes. Like Japanese is my tokui, or pride, like its what makes me special and being here in a program where not only is it everyone's tokui as well but they are all improving way beyond me. Its frustrating. I think I really have hit a wall here, I need to go home, take a break from studying Japanese then come back at it with a new resolve because despite all of the stuff I want to do with better Japanese I still find myself just doing the bare minimum in the classes here. Like I have a really hard time saying that any of the classes in this program are "good". Some teachers, wont say names because they read our blogs apparently, have no focus or direction in the class and it just goes off into all sorts of tangents. While Im sure the teacher thinks this is great and exploring people's minds it just leaves students confused on what they are supposed to do in the class and how they are even supposed to get a grade. Some classes are way too relaxed and nothing gets done, some are completely useless, some just aren't good classes. The thing they all have in common is that they all encourage students to not try, do the bare minimum, and not care about the subject at all.

You know I still dont like my host family. I really don't get it. You would think that I would have goten used to them by now but I haven't. I still don't feel comfortable in this house. The other day at dinner she said that there was a school to teach the kansai dialect to ryugakusei (foreign exchange) and I was trying to get at that I think its stupid to study kansai dialect because Japanese people expect you to not know Japanese to begin with so why waist the effort to learn something that you dont have to use. Plus the idea of learning kansai ben is to make you seem like a native Osaka person, but no matter what you ever do you will ALWAYS be just a gaijin, foreigner.

To go off on a little tangent, Japan is actually really racist. Everyone has this nice clean idea of Japan but its all just lies. Japanese people are really racists to particularly Koreans. Its a lot like blacks in America. People were brought into the country against their will, forced to work here, became free but generation after generation finds it self stuck in a lower economic class, and they are blamed for crime. There are also the aborigine people of Japan called the Ainu and for hundreds of years the Japanese government has forcefully tried to destroy their culture. They are also often discriminated against. Also on the south most part of Japan is an island called Okinawa, this is a lot like Hawaii in the sense that it was its own nation but was conquered because of its strategical position. The okinawins and the ainu are fighting desperately to preserve their language and culture but only recently have they been recognized by the government as a minority group.

I didn't know it but there are around a million Japanese descendants living in Brazil. Around 1900 in the Meji restoration the economy wasn't doing so well so Japan made a deal with Brazil that Japanese workers could immigrate to Brazil to work. Like immigration stories in the US (especially Chinese who built the rail road tracks in the west), the situation was not what they were told it was, they couldn't afford to go back home and ended up living their for generations. In the early 90s or late 80s Japan was enjoying economic success so their was a need for low level labors. A lot of the labors who came in illegally were from Iran. The Japanese people didn't seem to like the Iranians but needed the workers so they extended citizenship to all people who are Japanese up to the 3rd generation. This way they could have the workers from Brazil come and work while maintaining their xenophobic idea of a harmonious society.

What gets me personally is the stereotypes of Westerns. Our teacher showed us a TV show episode, as language practice, called Cool Japan. What this show is is foreigners going around being silly, experiencing Japanese things for the first time, and talking about how great Japan is. Japan's view of Westerners is movie stars and the silly ones they see on TV. I don't know I just felt really upset by seeing that show for some reason. I hate that I'll never fit in this society. I hate it when a store clerk uses English with me. I really hate the thought that people might be glancing looks at me just because I'm white. I think I understand in a tiny, tiny bit now what it might be like to be a minority in America.

Well there you go todays post is just some complaining I guess but I wanted to get it off my chest.

dai-dai-bouken

2009-04-08T03:53:00.000-07:00

So the first noteworthy thing I did this week was go see watchmen at nishinomiya gardens. Now this movie came out almost a month ago in America but it was only a few days after the japanese release that I saw it. In a nut shell I think it was 4 out of 5 stars. It pretty much did everything a film adaptation of the graphic novel needed, the different ending still worked, but the music selection was terrible. The music made for the movie was really good but every popular song that was put in didn't fit the scene at all an I think really hurt the movie. It was also really bloody. Like the comic is supposed to be dark and serious and people do get murdered but I felt uncomfortable how much gore there was. But the biggest thing about the movie is the fact that Dr. Manhattan is naked for almost the whole thing. They could have made him have a loin cloth that he wears in the Vietnam scene but they chose not to for some reason.

So nothing big really happened in school this week. Well the Japanese students started coming back to school so its more crowded now. Thursday night we made bean dip and soft tacos at church and that was pretty fun. I really like mexican food so even so so stuff tastes really good.

Friday night at oji koen (park) they had a night hanami (flower viewing). As you probably know Japan is full of these beautiful cherry blossom trees. These cherry blossom (sakura) have these wonderful white/pink flowers on them but the flowers only bloom for about 1 week or so. Poets and such say that the flowers represent the frailty of life. The night viewing (hanami/flower viewing) was really nice because they would have these paths with branches going over the top making this tunnel of white flowers. They added lights to the flowers so they really stood out. It was almost like a light show. I did take a lot of pictures of that but because of the odd lighting situation they all came out atleast a little blurry. We went with a big group but ended up splitting some how. The group I was with sat down on some benches and talked for a bit. The parked closed at 8:30 so we went through the rest of it then found a little park where we could hang out some more. Its really nice being in Japan because even though it was night time and there wasn't much light at the park I felt completely safe.

Once we found a good bench we started to play this really fun drinking game, I of course drank apple juice. You sit in a circle and you all take turns counting off 1 to 21. When you get to 21 you say "cheers to the general", everyone takes a drink and the person who gets to 21 makes up a rule to replaces one of the numbers with a phrase, simple action, or word. So for example it could be "3 is butterscotch" so when you take turns counting it goes 1,2, butterscotch, 4,5,6,etc. If someone messes up on counting they have to take a drink then start the counting over again. Also there are two numbers that are replaced from the start 7 is 14 and 14 is 7, these prove to be hard to remember no matter how many times you do it.

I had a lot of fun that night, lots of laughs and had a hard time with the game even though I was sober. This was also one of the rare times I hung out with Martin and Fabin, the two German students in our program. They are really cool guys and make me want to learn German someday.

Saturday I planned to do hanami with the people at church rather then go with the other ryugakusei. It was raining however so we went to the nearby park, took some pictures then went back inside and ate some food. I was under the impression that everyone bring their own lunch but it was more of a pot luck so I felt kind of bad. There are two Japanese people there who we kind of joke around with their names. One is Nagabashi and we call him Tom Longbridge and the other is Macchin and I call her machine. It was a fun afternoon, we played some badmitten and jenga but I went home around 4 or so. When I got home I was just kind of out of it so I crashed on my bed and watched gundam 00 on my computer. I don't quite know how I feel about 00 actually. In some senses its really different from Seed and Seed Destiny but in other I feel its too similar. Almost like super sentai where you can tell whats going to happen by looking at the timer in the corner of the screen and what episode number it is.

Sunday I went to church, got appointed as young men's advisor (over all 3 of the young men), went home and messed around on the computer. I'm doing my report for Japanese class on tokusatsu so I was learning about the history of Godzilla movies. I actually got pretty addicted to this video series that explained them all.

Monday we had a JLPT practice test. I didn't think the test was insanely hard or anything but when I took the test I got a really bad score, 48%. I realized that, or rather assumed, that I got the lowest score in class and was feeling really bad about my Japanese ability. Like Japanese is my special thing and I was feeling really bad because I'm with nothing but people who that also is their special thing or its their natural thing. I didn't want to go but I ended up going to family home evening but I'm glad that I did because my bad mood quickly disappeared. FHE was pretty nice we had some good cake and longbridge and machine came. Longbridge is actually an investigator so they showed a video but the cable was going in and out. Randomly I remebered that I had a video cable in my bag from when we were watching movies at school and I just pulled it out and gave it to them. Everyone was surprised I had it with me and machine said "sasuga otaku san ne" or something like "thats an otaku for you".

Tuesday is when the real fun starts. Ok so like I said there is only a small opportunity to see the sakura and the best place to see them arguably is Kyoto. So right after japanese class I printed some maps off and headed to Kyoto. I wasn't sure how much time I would have because if I could I wanted to eat dinner at home because my host mom said she would make okonomiyaki for me. So I got to Kyoto in about an hour or so and decided to take the bus to Kinkaku temple (the golden pavilion). Their were two buses I could have taken, one had more stops, was coming a few minutes sooner and went directly to kinkukujinja. The other had fewer stops but stoped just a tiny bit before. I thought I should take the later but when the former came I just jumped on. The bus ride took a really long amount of time and I was wishing I would have just looked up the subway info instead.

I got there in about 30 mins and the first thing I noticed was the amount of foreigners there were. This might sound in some bizzaro self hating racist way but I feel really weird when I see other foreigners in Japan. Its like maybe I've adopted a little of the Japanese soto/uchi thing but its like the foreigners in my program I know and are my friends and we all kind of stick together. With japanese people there is this separation feeling. So when I see a foreigner I dont know where to put them. They are like me they aren't the sort of distant Japanese people but I don't know them they aren't my friends. I try not to make eye contact because its like we shouldn't have to make eye contact just because our skin is the same color. I don't know if that made any sense but its a really unique feeling.

Ok ok so Kinkaku jinja, not that awesome. First of all it cots 400 yen to enter which isn't a lot but there are so many places that are free. The pavilion itself is pretty small and it sits across this nice scenery but the water is pretty dirty looking and you can only see it from a few angles. There is a path and a nice garden-esq area to walk through but I've seen nicer ones other places. Also like most things in Japan its become so touristized its hard to really feel any sort of calmness or tranquility. I got some nice pictures and can say I've been there so I guess thats worth the effort to go I suppose.

Since there were actually no sakura at kinkau I decided to head to my next destination. I was thinking of doing ginkakujinaja (the silver pavilion) but regardless of what I did I needed to get back to the other side of town. Since the bus took as long as it did I wanted to use the subway. I looked at the map and it looked like there was a station just a few blocks from there. I thought I would just head for that instead. As I was going down that way I found a little video game store. I of course went straight to the sega saturn section because for collectors sake I am buying a lot of those here. I found two of the games I had been searching all over for; shinning force 3 part 2 and part 3. Part 3 was reasonable price at 1100 yen but part 2 was 2900 yen. I debated what to do for a long time. I really want the trilogy but can I justify 2900 yen for an old video game I might play once but other then that just sit on my shelf so I can say that I have it. I ended up just getting part 3 but I'm still not sure if it was the right decision to pass up part 2.

Anyways I bumped into this pretty big temple what I think was called heiya temple. It was jam backed with sakura trees. Oh man it was like the clouds were only a few feet above my head. I spent a lot of time there taking a lot of pictures, it was really cool. I think the pictures kind of speak for themselves so I won't say too much more on this place.

A little bit from there I saw another bus stop. The station should have been just a little further down but I didn't know where exactly, the bus was right here. I ended up taking the bus just to be safe and waited another 30 mins. I actually rode the bus to kyoto JR station. I decided from there it would be good to go to inari jinja so I got on the train line and rode for two stops.

A torii gate is the tale red gates that you see all over Japan. Inari Jinja has thousands of them. They have pathways that are just tunnels of torii gates. Take a look at the crazy pictures I took there it was incredible. So I get there and its a lot like a regular temple but you go off to the side and you find the torii path. Inari jinja is part of tofuku jinja I believe and both are located in this huge park on the south eastern part of Kyoto. Its also mountainous so going through the gates is a lot like a hiking trail except you have stone walk way and the tunnels of gates. This area seems to really like the fox spirit because there were lots of fox statues and lots of mini shrines with for statues on them. Along the trail there were parts where you could break off for a bit and have just a regular hiking trail. I would go on these for just a little bit to get some pictures and go back but it was really stunning being there. Coming from Arizona forests in general are something very rare but Japanese forests are full of skinny tall trees packed together, there was also a lot of bamboo trees so it gave this very surreal feeling.

As you get toward the top there are resting spots, because you do get tired, over looking the kyoto city scape. It was a very beautiful sight even if there was a lot of haze. Surprisingly there seemed to be either stores or houses up this high on the mountain. I don't know how anyone could live there. At the very top was a shrine area that was packed with a bunch of mini ones. One of them had a big stone in the center with holy looking rope around it. I walked around that area a bit and decided to take a back exit out of that place.

Going up there were a few little side detours you could take or alternative pathways and going down was the same way. I got two this three way fork and decided to go down to the left. It was a somewhat steep stair climb down and there were much less torii gates this way. When I got down to the bottom I really took in the beauty of it all. It was so calm and quiet and peaceful. I continued on the stone path for a bit more and I ended up infront of this house and a bunch more fox type shrines. This house was pretty far away from anything but the door was open and there were shoes in the entrance way so people did live there somehow. I kept going but the path then became just a dirt path. I again took it all in and also thought of how amazing it was that I was here on this trail. Like I really didn't know where I was. I knew I could go back all that way and find the original path but I had no idea where my current location was. I wasn't worried about it but rather thought how I am one of few people who actually explore Japan like this. Tourists don't have time to explore nooks and crannies like I do and natives don't usually care too much about exploring their own area. Its only foreigners living here like me who really can explore.

So I continue on the trail and the forest breaks up a little and I see houses. I go a bit more and the trail is over but now I am in some really fancy looking neighborhood. Like a gated community. I was really baffled how I got there. I knew that towards the sunset was the main part of Kyoto so I headed that way but I really did not know where I was at all. I amaze myself sometimes with these adventures I go on. Like I genuinely get lost sometimes, I should be more worried about that then I actually am. Just walking around in a city I don't know very well without even a compass, its a big adventure for sure.

So as I exit the gated community what do I see? A sign with three kanji 任天堂　which I learned recently means NINTENDO. I totally accidentally stumbled across the Nintendo headquarters. There isn't much to see in all actuality but just to get a picture of the building where so many awesome games is made was a pretty exciting thing for me. After I got my fanboy pictures over with I tried to find the station. I did find the train tracks and hoped they were JR and followed them. I was in a part of Kyoto I didn't know at all but somehow I found the station and headed back to Kyoto station. I actually arrived on the hankyu line karasawa so I had to go north a few blocks. I marked on my map where it was but that was actually a mistake, it was a block ahead of that. Again somehow I got to the station and headed home.

Today, Wednesday I went to Sannomiya with Courtney and we both bought more anime goods. Courtney bought a lot and I have no idea where she gets all of her money from.

Well I think I might have written enough now so bye

the last field trip

2009-03-29T05:15:00.001-07:00

Ok so I got back from an incredibly awesome field trip last night and I was really tired. I took a lot of pictures on this trip; 1,844! That puts my total pictures taken to over 8,000! I have a goal of taking 10,000 pictures before coming home and now that seems very do-able.

So the meeting time was 9 am at the shin kobe station. I wasn't 100% sure how to get there so I left a little early. I ran into Darlo and Martin at Sannomiya station and followed them down to the subway line. It was 200 yen to go a pretty short distance so Darlo and Martin just decided to walk. When I got there I found Jay but no one else was there. We were all worrying about Pac not coming on time so we told him he should be here at 7, but he wasn't and didn't show up until right before we left.

Once we were all gathered up we headed up to the shinkansen boarding platform. This was the first time I had ever ridden on the shinkansen soI was really looking forward to it. The train is incredibly aerodynamic and really long. Very cool looking. Inside was very comfortable and nice. I sat with Jay, Nohea, and Les and we started up playing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on our DS, that came to be THE game we played on the trip.

Before we knew it we arrived at Hiroshima station and then boarded a tour bus. Hiroshima is more like Kyoto in the sense that the area is more spread out and not as busy as Osaka. We only rode for a little bit before we got to Okonomi-mura(village). It was a building that just sold okonomiyaki. This Okonomiyaki was very different from the stuff you get in Kansai. It had noodles in it but they were too crunchy for me. I thought it was a very good meal but everyone else was acting like it was the best thing in the world. If given a choice I would eat the kansai version instead. After eating we ended up spending some time at this little park nearby. It had the playing card symbols cut out of walls so it looked pretty cool, plenty of picture ops.

So after another short bus ride we got to the peace museum and met up with some Japanese students from a nearby college. They were really nice but like most Japanese people I met they weren't really talkative in either language. The park was really pretty. The sakura (cherry blossom) flowers were blooming so it was the perfect time to go. As you probably know there is a folk legend that if you fold 1000 paper cranes you get a wish, well as you can see in my pictures paper cranes are all over the park. There are monuments just covered with them. One of the major sights in the park is the building that was directly beneath the bomb's blast. The bomb actually didn't detonate when it struck the ground but rather in the air. In what I can only assume is an eye of the storm kind of thing this building wasn't completely vaporised like everything else was. This building is part of a set actually. If you stand from the museum there is a large stone arch with a record of the victims buried underneath (I think), then a pond and a torch so if you look through the arch you see the flame and the building.

One part of the museum has a room where when you enter it gives you a panoramic view of the destroyed Hiroshima. In another room is a computer screen that plays a loop of pictures of all of the people who died from the explosion. You can also look up on the computer the age they were when they died and what their profession was. Its staggering to see real faces of war victims. A debate topic our classes here like to use is “was it justified for the US to drop the bomb” and one argument is that more people died in this event or in that event. Like its only 200,000 people. But when you can see that those 200,000 people were real people, its enough to make anyone cry I think. They also had a section where eye witnesses talked about trying to help those who weren't killed right away. Apparently if you give a severally burned victim water, they will die from the shock. So there were so many stories of people having to say no to crowds of people's dieing wish and not being able to help them. Also people who gave them water but felt guilty for it. It was all really tough to hear.

The main part of the museum starts out with an explanation of the pacific war since the Meji restoration. I was surprised actually because it mentioned the rape of nanking. This is a source of conflict in Japanese/Chinese relations even today because the amount of people who were brutally killed by Japanese troops varies from a few thousand to a few hundred thousands. The museum said “the currently accepted number in China is 300,000”. They also showed documents from the US side talking about the construction of the bomb and why Hiroshima was chosen. Then there was two model cities, one before the bomb and one after. There was also a cement wall that was riddled with holes from tiny shards of glass. There were lots of little personal items that were destroyed in horrific ways and information about who owned them. We actually started to run out of time so we hurried through the end faster then we wanted.

We then walked to our hotel, dropped some stuff off, took a breather then headed into one of the rooms for a discussion about the atomic bomb with the Japanese students. When it came to our groups turn to talk I said that Its hard to say if we should have or shouldn't have done something because there are a million different ways the world could have turned out if a different decision was made. Since we can't know what those realties are we can't say if it was the wrong choice or not.

So after all of that we were ready to get some food. I went down to the lobby and waited for people to come down but some people were taking to long and no one could decided anything so we ended up waiting forever. Once we finally went out we were too big of a group so me, christy, emily, tom and two Japanese students secretly dropped off of the group and went to this little ramen shop. I had never had ramen like this. You get a plate full of the cooked noodles, vegetables, and meat then you dip it in this spicy sauce/soup and eat. It was really good. You could select how spicy you wanted it. It went up to 30 so tom got 20 erin got 15 me and emily got 9 and christy got 6. Tom was sweating bullets but was loving it. Erin was doing good, mine was just right but emily was having the hardest time in the world eating it. It wasn't that spicy but she was acting like she was going to die. After dinner we got some conbini snacks and went back to the hotel. Those four started watching fight club in their room but I went out for a bit to play with my new camera taking night shots. I got some good results I think. I have a tripod and an option for slow shutter speed so I was able to do that thing where the street is in focus but all you see is the head lights from the cars streaming by. You really have to take a lot of pictures that way because they more often then not don't come out right. After that I watched the end of the movie then went to bed.

So the next day, woke up had a buffet dinner checked out then we got on the bus towards Miyajima. We thought we had an hour so we started to play final fantasy again and tried to do a dungeon. For some reason you can't save in the middle of a dungeon in this game so unless we beat a boss we would loose everything. Well the bus stopped and we were far from the boss so we had to turn it off. We took a ferry across and the view was gorgeous. Miyajima is famous for its torii gate that stands out in the middle of the water, I took as many pictures of that as I could. We arrived on the island and met up with the Japanese students again. This island also has a lot of dear walking around like Nara but they aren't as annoying. So we got the groups and walked to this big temple that was built on stilts on the beach. When the tide is out its a very cool sight to be walking on a temple over water. From here I just walked around taking pictures of the scenery with the sakura flowers with Matt and a japanese student I think here name was Rena. We had a pretty good katsu don for lunch then headed back to the ship. Some of the guys had their pants half wet and apparently tried to go out to that torii. Once we got to the boat we said good bye to the Japanese students then rode back to the bus.

So again we rode the bus for a while until we got to kintaikyou. This is kind of a park like place. It starts out with a very large bridge that has a 3 or 4 large arcs in it so when you are crossing you go up and down. It goes over this shallow river and it was a really nice sight. Once on the other side we made our way through the are to the cable cart because on top of the mountain was a small castle. Once you get off the cable car there is a nice path that goes through the forest for about 5 minutes until you get to the castle. The view from the top of the mountain was gorgeous and of course there were plenty of sakura trees there. Inside the castle was a little museum that had a lot of swords. They had one sword that was huge. Like most samurai swords are shorter then you would expect them to be based off of anime and games but this sword was like something Ichigo from bleach might use. Very cool. I got to the top, took more pictures made my way back down and then just wandered the area for a bit. There were a few temples and this really neat fountain so I took a lot of pictures of that. I had some sakura flavored ice cream and it was really good. I don't know how to describe the flavor but it was really unique. Eventually time was up and we went back to the bus. There isn't too much to say about this place but there were tons of really nice photos.

From there we went towards the hotel. It was in a really tiny little city so there wasn't really going on but its nice to see those spots in Japan as well. The hotel room it self was ok, the last hotel I shared a room with Pac in this room I had to my own. One interesting thing about the hotel was on the remote there were two channel changing buttons one that said muryou (free) and one that said yuuryou (cost money). As you may have guessed the yuuryou was porn. But it was in a way that everyone accidentally pressed it. I quickly dropped my stuff off in my room and waited to catch someone and go out to dinner because I was hungry. I went out with a group of me, matt, emily, christy, erin and zoe. We had a hard time orienting ourselves with the map at first so we got a little lost. Emily and zoe gave up on us at one point and just went to a yakitori place. I wasn't paying any attention to the directions debate at all and just let matt and erin take control on that issue. We did end up finding the yakiniku place and it was worth the trouble. I have had yakiniku before with host family and the kobe beef I ate was given to use in a yakiniku style but this was the first time I had gone to a yakiniku restaurant. If you come to japan above almost anything else I recommend going to a yakiniku restaurant. Its kind of pricy and you need to go there with the idea to enjoy flavor rather then getting full but really worth it. You have a grill on your table and they give you the meat uncooked. You only get a few small pieces but the flavor is out of this world. The store owner seemed like he doesn't see giajin very often so he kept checking up on us making sure we were doing everything alright. After we ate Christy stood up and hit her head on the vent above the table and it made a very loud gong sound. All of us were just laughing at her but another customer came by and gave her a warm cloth. It made it look like gaijin don't care about their own. After the food we went back, got emily and then bought some snacks. I was going to go watch a movie in cole's room (just kind of inviting myself over) but then I ran into martin on his way to vals room because he got invited to watch anime. So I invited myself over their instead. On cable there are actually two anime channels, I was amazed. We saw cowboy bebop. We ended up playing a drinking came, I was drinking ginger ale, where you all count in a circle to 21 but the numbers you say are replaced with something else. So it starts out with 1 2 3 4 5 6 14 8 9 10 11 12 13 7 15 16...21 and who ever has 21 end on them gets to replace something else so it became 1 2 3 4 lela has 6 14 8.... and when you mess up you drink. It ended up getting pretty funny at the end. I ended up gong to bed at midnight.

The next day I had a japanese style breakfast which means that only half of the stuff was edible. We all packed up then checked out. Once again we boarded the bus and drove for another hour or so. We ended up at a place called ruikouji. This was a temple area with a 5 story pagoda an average size temple and a bunch of sakura trees. Not much to say here but the pictures are really nice. There is one place that if you clap or stomp infront of the stone steps it echoes in a weird squeaky sound. Its really cool. We then ate a japanese lunch somewhere and it wasn't very good and they only gave you a tiny bit of tea to drink, no water. So it was really tough to eat that stuff. We got a little time to walk around the place then boarded the bus again.

Our final destination was Akiyoshido. After a good amount of time on the bus we arrived at the cave entrance. It starts out with a man made tunnel with just a little bit of a downward slop and then you enter into the cave. It had a path so its not like we went cave diving or anything but it is always cool to see all of that stuff. I took pictures and they came out pretty cool, but not very accurate. In the pictures there is a lot of green lights but in reality there wasn't. I don't know why cameras do that but its cool none the less. As you exit the cave you get this really nice path through a bit of forest with a really nice stream running underneath. Just a tiny bit from that was the town with some houses and some tourist shops. We had some time there to look at everything and one guy was selling fake grasshoppers made out of grass. He started talking to us in really good English and I wanted to buy one from him but even with a little plastic box it would be impractical to store and display. We all met up at station for the bus, Pac was late of course and we went off again.

Not too longer after that we arrived at yamaguchi station. I don't know if that is the name of the city as well but we had about 30 mins before our train arrived. I wanted to find a conbini and take as many pictures as possible of this little area because I most likely will never come to this town again. The real reason we stopped here was because there was an old fashioned train that took us to the shinkansen station. It was really cool to see something like that moving and the inside totally felt like old timey turn of the century kind of image. Its apparently a special deal for this train to run because it only goes during some promotion or just weekends or something because as we went by there were lots of people waving to the train as it went by. Mostly little kids with their parents, it was really cool. It was over before we knew it and we then went to the shinkansen area. They gave us a sandwich set and a juice box for dinner and we waited for our train. We then boarded the shinkansen, played a lot of DS and got home around 7pm. Once I got to my house I was really tired but I copy my pictures to my PC before I went to sleep because I was getting an error with some of them. As it turns out some of my pictures and one video did get corrupted which totally sucks. 99% of the stuff came out perfectly so I can't complain too much I guess.

Well thats it, I wrote so much about this trip I can't believe it. If you want to see some of the 1,800 pictures I took go to picasaweb.google.com/benkpomeroy2

There and back again, a camera's tale

2009-03-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

So friday we had off for some holiday so I thought Id take the chance to go visit the actual famous spots in Kyoto. I've been to Kyoto many times but Ive never actually gone to Kin/Gin kakujinja or the thousand something torii gates so I thought Id do that. Of course I wasn't smart enough to find out exactly how to get there I just kind of got a general idea of where the stuff was located and had at it.

I head off in a new direction then I normally go and start walking. It was raining just a little bit so I was a little uneasy about using my camera but the weather was stopping and starting all of the time so I thought it would clear up. It was just a little chilly too. I got some good shots on my way trying to get there because there are temples EVERYWHERE in Kyoto. Its like walking down the street, house, house, conbini, temple, conbini, temple, temple, temple, house. So at one point I found this really neat hall way that went to a residential area or something but it was really cool so I climbed to the top and tried to get a picture but my battery died. So pull some batteries out of my back pack put them in but as Im putting my arm through the strap on the back pack I somehow let my camera slip out of my hands and it hit the hard floor with the lens extended.

Of course it was broken. Pretty badly actually it wouldn't close right away, I played with it for a bit and got it to close almost all of the way but it made a loud clicking sound when changing zoom and of course, it couldn't focus at anything but 8x zoom. So I gave up on the trip at that point. I let my self feel a little sad for a bit but then I just told myself its only a problem to fix, and its going to cost money but money isn't anything to be sad about. Once I got home I looked up Canon's Japanese website and found out that they had a repair center in Osaka! Even though it costs $100 to fix a $260 camera, I think I was really lucky actually.

So Saturday I thought that I would just stay inside but the weather was so good I couldn't help myself but to go walking again. Taking along my old camera I headed off. I didn't have a goal at first so I just got off at Kousoku kobe and walked towards the port area. I've never really gone there but its a pretty nice area, very pretty. Lots of young families where there, I think I want my own baby really soon, there so cute.

Somewhere I got the idea to go to Port Island. There is a little island where, as you may guess, is a lot of ports but also a lot of international center and just a really nice area. I thought that it was the place that we were the first night we got to Japan so I wanted to go back. Now that I have my bearings for Kobe I wanted to put those memories from those first few exciting days in order in my head. But we actually went to Rokko Island for orientation. So anyway I walked across the bridge, there was a walking path, and saw some incredible ocean scenery. When I got to Port Island I was blown away with how beautiful everything was. I think either part or all of the island it self is man made so everything is really new and they had some really nice parks and I just took my time wandering around enjoying everything. I was actually pretty sure that Port Island was the place even when I got there because I thought the trees looked familiar. So I spent a good amount of time walking around trying to find this hotel building that wasn't there. I should have caught on because there weren't many tall buildings there to begin with. But its so nice and peaceful there it was a worth while mistake.

So once I figured out that it wasn't there I just took the train back, its actually a monorail so it also had a great view of the area. It stopped at Sannomiya and there I found out that there is Rokko Island. It was around 3 I think, I was tired but I really wanted to go and see the real place. So I took a JR train to a few stops east and was going to transfer but then I saw there was a Toys R Us in the station/department store. I wanted to see what a Japanese Toys R Us was like so I took another detour. Inside the first floor of the department store was a little performance by four japanese girls singing something in English I think. I'm pretty sure they were doing it with out music but they werent really that good. Toys R Us was what I expected actually smaller, more compact and carried Gundams, sentai, and Kamen Rider stuff. I actually found one of the girls in uniform random box toys for half off so I grabbed two of them and got Hurricane blue (I like this one because she is henshined except for her head) and Sakura from boukenger.

Anyways I got on the right monorail to Rokko and I got to sit in the front and its facing the front of the train so its kind of like your piloting it. I took some pictures actually. I felt a little embarrassed doing that but I thought no Japanese person would say anything so who cares, but randomly one of my ryugakusei friends was on the train too. She didn't care but there actually was someone who thought it was weird. Actually when I got there I didn't have much time before I needed to head home for dinner. I got a few pictures, enjoyed the scenery again, then went home.

Sunday, went to church, came home, then started to read some manga. I wanted to catch up with Naruto. Now of course after all of the effort I've put in to studying Japanese I want to read it in Japanese, but its really hard to find good raws of Naruto. Its really easy to find translated ones and people put a lot of effort into cleaning them and even coloring them, but I can't find Japanese versions that aren't someone just taking a picture of the page. Thats kind of my current frustration.

Monday, school was so so. I hurried home and finally mailed off my gundams, figures, and games. It cost $75 but it was a pretty big box and I put a LOT of stuff in there. I was thinking about doing a lot of small boxes but I figured thats just increasing my odds of damage or lost.

Tuesday, the second part of my camera quest. So earlier I had filled out an application form for repair and printed out maps. After a silly sakubun test/contest at school I hurried over to Umeda. Now there were two ways to get the place, I could transfer twice on two different train lines that I've never even heard of before or I could just walk. I decided to walk and once I got my bearings I was there in about 30 mins or so. Wasn't too hard to find. I got to the Canon place and talked to the lady at the counter and got everything set up and they said to come back in 3 hours. As I was heading back I started to feel pretty good about myself. Like it wasn't that long ago I was scared to use my Japanese at all but now I am doing every day earns in Japanese with out an major problems. Like there isn't anything special about me but if even I can accomplish a goal like that then anyone can do anything. Its all just a matter of choosing what you want, planning it out, and holding on to the determination for it.

So I go back to Yodobashi in Umeda and I find something I can't believe I didn't have before, a neck strap for my camera. Duh I use this and then I can't drop it at all. Lesson learned the hard way I suppose. I also pick up a tiny tripod(like pocket size) and a case. I waist some time around Yodobashi and then decided to head back around 3 (its supposed to be ready at 4). On the way to yodobashi I took a different way but I figured if the direction was right then I shouldn't have too much of a problem so I tried to just go back the way I just went. Somehow something when wrong. I got lost, I think I must have been going south west instead of south or something but I had no idea how I got there or where I made the wrong stop. I by luck found a JR station and figured I'd just go back to Umeda and start again this was taking too long. When I got on the train I saw the next stop was actually a place on my map so I got off there. It got to a tricky part here and I think this is the same spot I messed up before. I needed to go south but the station comes out at an angle so I wasn't sure if I turned right or went straight at the crucial intersection. I first went right then decided that was wrong and then went back up. While being lost I got a few phone calls from the service center and he said it wouldn't be ready when they thought it would and I said its ok if it takes an hour more or something as long as its done today. But I kind of felt my Japanese fail me because I was ultimately able to do the conversation but there were things he said where I didn't know I just said “hai” but I don't think they were yes or know questions. Some how I communicated, found the place, and got my camera back. Oh it was an adventure unlike anything else. Hurried home ate dinner, watched Tora Dora then wrote this.

Tomorrow is Sumo match I'm looking forward to it!

the journey to nishinomiya

2009-03-15T03:20:00.000-07:00

Okay so bright and early I left to go take the Jtest, I got there early and waited. This test was a nightmare. It was so hard and so long and so confusing my brain was just jelly at the end. I've explained it before but its out of 1000 points, I was shooting for 500. Now this is in some ways a good way and others a not of testing a person ability in Japanese. There are questions in there that are at several different difficulty levels. So the idea is that D level people should be able to get ALL of the D level questions and anything they get right by luck on the higher levels will be bonus or make up for the ones they missed. Since its really unrealistic to get all of your level questions right, to get the appropriated certificate you need to just get lucky with the harder questions. While the JLPT has level 2 and level 1 tests and you only need like 70% to pass. So in a nut shell I think the JLPT level 2 would have been a much easier test for me and would have been a sure pass.

So after that I decided to do some more exploring/picture taking. Before I talk about that though I should explain my area. My city is Kobe, my ward or district (I forget which it is but its Ku in Japanese) is Nagata. Kobe is a port city so from my train station I can see the ocean, but Japan is also crazy mountainous so my house is on the edge of a mountain kind of. Since Kobe is in between mountain and ocean it is kind of a tunnel shape. This is really helpful for walking around because the two main train tracks run right through the middle of that.

Now Japan is actually very slanted when you look at a map so I'm not actually sure where north is but in my cognitive map north is where the mountains are and south is where the ocean is. I use Hankyu train line (the other is JR)and it runs from Shinkaichi (which is about 30-40 min walk from my house) until Umeda(most north western part of the concentrated Osaka). My school is in Okamoto, which is somewhere near the middle but closer to shinkaichi on the hankyu line. Two other places of interest on the hankyu line are sannomiya and nishinomiya. Both of these places have big shopping centers. Also Nishinomiya is has two stops between it and Okamoto. If your ride an express going from shinkaichi to umeda takes probably around 40-45 mins. My normal route for school is I walk to my station called maruyama (takes about 7 mins) then transfer at shinkaichi and get on the main hankyu line.

Okay so now that I got that part explained I arrived at Okamoto, bought a bunch of batteries, then headed out. Since Kobe is so close to the ocean I thought Okamoto would be too so I walked south for a bit but I saw no signs of it. This brought me into a very residential area with a lot of what the Japanese people call "mansions". Japanese uses incorrect English as part of official Japanese all of the time, its actually a very tall and big apartment complex. (another good example of bad english in Japanese is maikaa "my car" it doesn't mean any one particular's car just a personal car as compared to a bus or taxi or something like that.). I saw a bunch of parks and school yards with kids practicing baseball and what not. From there I really traveled around, I maintained my idea of where I was in comparison to the train station but not that long into it I was wondering where was I. I didn't really have a good grasp on how far away nishinomiya really was, and also that there are only two stations in between. I got really exhausted but just kept going.

The scenery really changes once you get away from the big shopping centers and this area has a real different atmosphere about it then other residential areas I've seen. Its like this giant road that just keeps going on and on, there is plenty of stuff to see for sure but in some sense it starts to all look the same. I did manage to some how make it back home in one piece but it was a real adventure. I thought I'd write more but I'm just tired now. I did upload the pictures already and put comments so if you watch them in order you can kind of get an idea of where I went.

Also since my picasa now filled up I created another one, I also uploaded the rest of the new camera pics on there as well.

So from here on out the new pics will be at
http://picasaweb.google.com/benkpomeroy2/
http://picasaweb.google.com/benkpomeroy2/JourneyToNishinomiya#

new gadget!

2009-03-14T03:37:00.000-07:00

Ok so the first thing I have to talk about is how much I love my new camera. So as I said in a previous post that I needed buy a new one. I went two a few stores and played around with some display models and was able to narrow it down to a few. I read some reviews and narrowed it down even more, and then when I saw that it got 20% point bonus on it, I ran out and bought the canon powershot 110IS. It was 26,000 yen but I got 5,400 yen back on the store point card so its not that expensive actually. It is 9 mega pixs, which is an upgrade from the 7.1 of my last camera, has a huge iso range with manual control on all of the settings, but the best is the 10x optical zoom.

I am blown away with how good the zoom is on this thing. I can get really solid nice pictures from things I could only vaguely make out with my glasses. I'm using the extra zoom power this thing has a lot on the pictures I took. With that and the all around better components of this camera I think my pictures look really different now. The camera is a good size bigger then most point and clicks but still small enough to fit in my jacket pocket and the lens goes all the way in so its not an awkward shape either.

this program is winding up, in a few weeks final projects will start being due, classes will wind up, and before you know it I'll be on that crazy long plane trip back to America. I've been thinking a lot on how soon it will be over, and how grateful I am that I kept this blog up and took pictures because its so easy to forget all of the castles and temples and sights and foods that I've experienced. But even though I've done all of that I didn't do what I really wanted to do that was to make some good Japanese friends. But like most things in life this wasn't exactly what I was expecting, and it wasn't exactly what I wanted but it was exactly what I needed. The people I met at church really revitalized my testimony and I am really grateful for that.

So tomorrow I have that big scary Jtest. Oh man oh man its like 3 hours long non stop, and so hard. But if I can just get half of the questions right I'll reach my goal. I don't think I'll know the results for a month so thats going to be stressful for a while. There is another chance to take the test before I go home but if I score at least 500 this time then it takes a huge burden off of taking it next time. But I guess I can also think that if I fail it this time I still have another time. I dont know all I can do is, ganbatte!

the weather is kind of hit and miss here lately. On a good day its warm enough that a good sweater will do but it has so many rainy days. It can be tough to live with Japan's weather. The summer is so hot and humid it just wears you out, thats why in anime characters are just laying on the floor next to the fan. The winters are really tough because the houses are not insulated, I think at all. So if you don't have a heater in your room running, inside is as cold as outside. And in America, usually when the weather is unpleasant you just have to make it form the building to your car, in Japan that walk from the train station to your destination can be just painful. Right before summer there is a big rainy season, where it apparently pours all day everyday. Its tough.

I went to a church dance today, but its not really what you think of normally. There aren't enough people to really have a dance so we all practiced this line dance over and over. I really hate dancing. LIke I know I need to loosen up more but I just don't see whats fun about doing a set movement over and over to music. Like I understand jumping all around going crazy for a concert but I dunno. Never liked them, never will. We ended up playing badmitten and ping pong after a while. I got some japanese practice but I'm just not an overly talkative guy and it doesn't seem most of the other people were either so no real deep conversations.

Well I should wrap this up so check out my new pictures http://picasaweb.google.com/Benkpomeroy/

things breaking

2009-03-07T05:37:00.001-08:00

Today is Saturday and this week was the mid terms for Japanese class. I think I did a little worse on these tests then I normally do. I studied a lot but definitely not all that I could have. I dunno my Japanese classes are doing some pretty hard stuff I think. I've done some more walking/picture taking in Kobe so there are plenty of pictures of my town uploaded now.

Wednesday me, Jay and Courtney went to Den Den town. It was the first time either of them had gone and they really liked it. Between that and a store I found while walking around I picked up some major parts of my final fantasy collection; I got final fantasy 1 2 3 on the famicom, 4 and 6 with the box on super famicom and x2 and x2 international version. It was all pretty cheap even though I really wanted to get FF7 international (Since I got Dissida I've been playing through all of the final fantasy games, I just beat FF6 then the FF7 prequel game. Also I want to get the Japanese version because I know the story well enough to still follow) but FF7 is still crazy popular and I passed up the chance to buy it for 2200 yen which was cheap compared to other places.

The main thing thats been on my mind though was the fact I dropped my MP3 player and it broke. I didn't use it too much before but not being able to listen to music if I want to makes me really want to get a new one. I've looked all online and I've decided I want a 16gb ipod touch. The problem is that I can get them cheaper in the US, especially if I can use a walmart discount. So I tried to find an alternative with using my DS as an MP3 player and got an 8gb micro sd card ($20) but the software kind of sucks. so I can do it, but its not ipod.

Today we went to Nara for a field trip! Nara is famous for its deer, and I took a bunch of pictures of them. These deer are EVERYWHERE! You walk towards the temple and there are deer mixed in with the crowd. The have stalls that sell deer food and the deer are really pushy and want everyone to keep feeding them. The deer also poop everywhere, which is pretty gross. We first had lunch and of course being a tourist trap was a little more pricey then usual but had a really good katsutamagodon. It was really sweat. We then saw a store making mochi. Mochi is like the sticky clay like ball of rice, they make it by pounding at it with hammers tons of times. I did manage to capture a short video of one of the parts, my camera messed up on the other.

We then walked someways and went to a museum that had an exhibit on o mizutori (the festival we were attending). Our teacher really puts a lot of effort into this class as he came earlier on his own (nara is pretty far from kobe) and made a printout explaining all of the parts. It blows me away to think of how old some of the stuff there is. Like scrolls from 700 ad that lists all of the emperors and not worthy people in history. We also so other exhibits which all looked cool but didn't really know what it was about. I did see some scrolls that were like depictions of hell with oni doing graphic things to people, I was kind of surprised.

After that we went to a giant buhdha temple and inside there was an enormous buhdha statue, its again in the pictures but like it could fight godzilla big. There were several other huge statues but as it got just a little dark my camera kind of crapped out. We waited around for a little bit trying to get our group all together for the other place. We got to the site where the public can view the omizutori ceremony and got pretty close. I brought a tiny folding stool and was really glad that I did. A few of us then left our stuff and tried to get some dinner. It was me leila, pak, courtney and leila's friend from leeds (who was a really cool person). We walked around for a bit but there was only two places to eat and it took a while for our food to come so we got back a little later then we should have as the crowd had goten huge. Somehow, I have no idea how, we got back up to the front with the others who were no longer sitting down as it was too cramped. We still had a good hour plus to wait however so I managed to sit on my stool and play pheonix wright.

By the time the ceremony began at around 7 it was a little cold. We stood down hill to this high building where a giant torch was brought up and shaken over the edge of the railing. It really looks like the temple is going to burn down with how big these torches are (it has happened before) but it looks like they are pretty well prepared for it. The bits of sparks that came showering down was really pretty and looked a lot like fireworks. Even though it probably wouldn't have worked I couldn't use my camera because the stupid thing gave me a memory card error. I took a few with my cell phone but I really can't do the sight justice in word or picture.

We had a little adventure getting back to the train station though because the last express train for either an hour or half an hour was leaving pretty soon so we all pretty much ran. Well Sensei ran, we just tried to keep up with him. We were really moving it and he even had us illegally cross the street to try and make it. I was so tired but we somehow made it with a little bit of time to spare.

I've had problems with my camera before, not remembering settings, not being able to take shots in any sort of low light, not being able to zoom. But with this memory error and the mess up with the mochi making video I wanted to take I'm fed up with it and have to buy a new camera ASAP. Like an MP3 player I can deal with out, I dont need it for Japan. A camera on the other hand is something that I use to make memories and for the last month in Japan all I plan on doing is exploring/taking pictures so I really need it. So I'm going to start doing research on cameras and see what I can find.

kimeta

2009-02-26T02:19:00.000-08:00

So today I received an answer from my counselor back at U of A and as it works out if I take japanese pop culture class and any Chinese studies class this summer I will fulfill all of my requirements for my degree. Well with the exception of my senior capstone class, which is not offered at all over the summer. I really wanted to just have my degree a month after I got back but this isn't too bad of a situation either. Its not really a class, for my capstone but rather I have a senior project that I work with a teacher with so, I think, I just have to keep a teacher updated on my progress of some project and I won't have a set class that meets at a set time.

So in other words after a month summer class I am freed up time wise. That means that I can start searching for a new job and not be constrained on what hours I can work (the main reason I stayed at walmart for so many years, they let me work the bare minimum when it was best for me). Now if I had my bachelors it would be much easier to find a job for sure but I have an associates, I have two computer certifications, hopefully a Japanese language certification so hopefully that will peak someone's interest enough to at least get an interview. Of course I won't quit walmart before I have the next job lined up but I can honestly start looking even a little before I come back.

In some sense I am picky, I really don't want to do retail, I want at least $10/hr, and I want Mon-Fri 9-5. I have good reasons for this too. I've done 6 years of retail, I'm just fed up with it. I make $9.40 at walmart I think I am worth at least another .60 cents, and I want to work that time so I can be freed up to have a good social life. Mainly I want to be really active in the single adult activities. I've come to this understanding that if I do what God wants me to do, God will give me what I want. God wants me to go to church actives, I want to find a wife, its a pretty obvious answer of what I should do then.

So if I got school out of the way, a descent job, I'm really thinking about getting a car and an apartment in Tucson. I really want to be close enough to church so that I can easily go to everything and I can invite people over. I definitely wouldn't want to move out right away because I miss living with my awesome family but I really think this is something I should do. I think it would be awesome to live with Cameron because we get along really well, we would be in the same ward, and almost all of our friends are mutual friends. The thing with Cameron though is I don't want to be the cause in any sense of preventing him from going on a mission. Right now he is living with his sister and, he says, that he keeps having to bail her out financially and thus can't save money. His parents place is way too small of the amount of people in it already so he's going to be paying rent some where. But that part is a little too far away to plan at the moment.

So I'm really glad that finally I have a plan again. Before I knew about the summer classes I couldn't even come close to making any plans and it was kind of upsetting, but at any rate I should talk some more about Japan. Last Saturday I took the train to Kyoto and just tried to get lost. Kyoto has a completely different atmosphere about it then Osaka has. Everything is more spacious, it sort of feels more like a regular US city. However it has more Japan-ish (in Japanese its a real word nihonteki) things. There are tons of temples all over the place, a geisha district, rickshaw pullers, and more Japanese style houses. I started at one point, just kind of walked to a big tower in the skyline (its in a lot of the pictures I took) then I arrived in front of the JR station, which I had used before, so I suddenly knew where I was. I was actually disappointed by that and just walked past that and up some more. I kept walking until I ended up in this little park in what seemed like a some what poor area, but not scary, part of town. There I just took a few moments to take in the scenery but also the fact that just some guy from Arizona was standing in this tiny little park in Kyoto, Japan. At this point in the program its kind of hard to get those, “holy crap Im in Japan!” moments but I definitely had one that day.

Classes are really revving up. I just had my religion mid term which I think I got a good grade on but was some what tough. Tomorrow we have a kanji test, next week Japanese midterms, then the week after that the Jtest (Japanese proficiency test). Now for the interview test next week its ridiculous! We have to read three “dear abby” letters from a newspaper and talk about what advice we would give the people. The first one is the person can't seem to form a strong opinion on politics or the economy and wants to know how to learn that kind of stuff. The second one is upset because hes short. The third one feels that because her husband is so devout in a religion that she doesn't really feel strongly in that its becoming a wall in their marriage. Its like geez I cant give advice for those situations in English, why do they think I could do it in Japanese?

I wish I could say I've made friends in Japan but that just not the case. Things are getting better with people at church because there is a set time and place to meet people and talk, when I come back I'm definitely going to consider church the main way of meeting people.

Oh also there was a going out of business sale at this used manga store by my school. At first it was ½ off some manga, then 70% and then for the last few days it went down to 10 yen a piece. I got 50 volumes for under $5! Some stuff I picked up just because it was cheap but some stuff looks really cool. I know have around 100 volumes (some are final fantasy game guides though), its not too heavy all things considering so hopefully I can mail it back to the states with out negating the bargain I got them at. I really want to send my gundams back soon but I still need to finish zeta gundam and justice gundam. Justic I started to spray paint so I need to finish but the weather has been kind of hit and miss lately so I have to wait for a good day. I think I'll mail the manga later because it is good reading practice that doesn't feel like studying.

I've complained a lot here about my host family but I really think I have a pretty normal host family now. Host families that people get along really well and are more like friends are the exception rather then the rule I think. One person had to change host families already and a lot of people say there is, usually a host brother/sister, that is just intolerable. And a large part of it is my fault. I don't talk as much as I really should to them.

I guess thats all there is to say at the moment, aside from what I said things are pretty futsuu. I do have one funny little story though. There is one ryugakusei who is studying at hawaii but came from mississippi. He asked another ryugakusei from hawaii if there was a beach on the west coast! She said “its an island!” I said “you said COAST!”

samui yo

2009-02-17T03:58:00.001-08:00

I'd like to start this blog off with retelling a children book I read in my Japanese class the other day.

It's called, "why jellyfish have no bones"

once apon a time in an underwater kingdom lived a king and a queen. One day the queen got very sick. They tried all sorts of medicine but in the end the doctor said the medicine they needed wasn't in the ocean, it was a monkey's heart.

The king didn't know what to do so he asked the turtle for help. The turtle came up with an idea and went to an island where he found a monkey. "Mr. monkey, would you like to come to the castle? Its a lot of fun and there is lots of delicious food". The monkey quickly hopped onto the turtles back and went down to the ocean.

When they got to the castle the turtle went to go tell the king. While the monkey waited he met a jellyfish. The jellyfish said "its really nice of you mr.monkey to give your heart for the queen". The monkey was surprised and ran back home.

When the turtle saw what happened he told the king that it was the jellyfish that told the monkey the truth. So the king ordered his servants to just beat the living tar out of the jellyfish with baseball bats over and over. And that is why jellyfish don't have bones.

Isn't that just a wonderful story for little kids to read?

So I signed up for this thing called the j-test. Its like the Japanaese Language Proficiency Test, which is kind of the standard requirement for Japanese related jobs. The difference between the two tests is that the J-test can go way beyond the difficulty of the JLPT. But for me all that matters is that I pass with atleast the lowest level. Its out of 1000 points and if you score 900 or above they say thats interpreter level (not just translator), 700 points is level 1 of the JLPT and 500 is level 2 of the JLPT. So I'm shooting for 500 points. I took a practice test and I scored 420. This is good in one sense because you can say that its only 80 points shy of what I want but how exactly I go about getting those 80 points is the problem. This test is over the Japanese language so there isn't really any restrictions on what grammar or vocab I'll run in to so I can't really study for this test itself I can only try and improve my Japanese as a whole. Its also interesting to think about how it all works out because each of the 8 sections start out at around my skill level and move up to fluent level. So its like if I were to get only the points that are my difficulty then my its like the points are cut in half. In other words I have to get all of the questions that are at my difficulty correct or make up for it by guessing on harder difficulty ones. I've started to study a lot extra stuff in my free time now because of the test.

So I've written about this before but what exactly I do after I come home is really up in the air. There are so many variables I just can't get anywhere planning anything out. College is a big variable, when exactly can I graduate? I have a feeling that I'm not going to be able to graduate after a summer semester so that means another whole semester of college and another 10 months from now until I have a degree. I need a mere 7 credits so do I just take that? Maybe I should take extra classes so that I am a full time student and thus get grant money.

Another big variable is trying to find a wife. I really need to marry a good mormon girl and that means I really need to be very active in every singles ward activity I possibly can. But how does living in sahuarita, going to school, and working (thats a whole nother thing too) allow time to do stuff like that? If I could graduate in the summer then I could probably find some sort of decent 9-5 monday-friday job and move to Tucson, but if I have school thats hard to squeeze that all in.

I wish I could say "oh what ever happens happens" but I'm already 25 I really want to get my adult life started.

I am really enjoying church here. There are two sets of married couple missionaries and they are responsible for the free english lessons and organizing youth activies and family home evening and what not. They are trying their best to learn Japanese but they are just beginners right now so it can be really tough for them. Yesterday at first it was just me and a Japanese guy ( I forgot his name) and throughout the lesson brother Tanner would try and say something in really broken Japanese and half English and then I would translate it back to the Japanese guy (in my not so good Japanese). It was cool to finally be in that situation where I'm talking to someone who someone else can't and the other person keeps asking "what he say?". After words more people came and we played badminton and ping pong. Just lots of fun.

Tomorrow we are going to a Japanese high school on a field trip, I'm very excited

Quick update

2009-02-12T02:28:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to put some links up to direct folders in my web album

First off is the things I bought folder I just put some pictures there of the insane deals I got on manga from this store near my school's closing sale

Also pictures from Kobe folder

and pictures from Osaka folder

and of course you can check out the rest of the pictures from the links there or on the side

hima sugiru

2009-02-11T03:04:00.001-08:00

Last week we had the entire week off because of the nyugakushiken (entrance exams for freshmen) and today was some random holiday, normally vacation time is nice but right now its just way too much. I'm really bored. Last week like I said in the last post I built the wing zero custom perfect grade gundam, and despite some set backs and having to heavy duty gluing some parts its done and taking up the last bit of space I have in this room. But besides two days thats all I did last week.

Last Thursday I wanted to find out how far it would take to walk from my house to my friends house who also lives in nagata (its a ward, like the one subdivision below a city). I had an idea of how to get there so I grabbed by camera and just headed off in the direction that seemed right. It was a really pretty day and the whole time I kept thinking "why haven't I done this sooner?". Japan's city scape just has this certain charm about it that I was really taking in. I posted all of the pictures I took that day in my picasa account under "kobe". I particularly like the way the power lines in here are just so crazy and all over the place, there were a lot of pictures of those. It turns out that it was a good 35 min walk and I sent her an email asking if she wanted to do anything but I ended up just seeing how far I could walk. By following the train tracks I got to downtown kobe and saw so much there I hadn't noticed before. I got to pretty much the spot where I bored the train going home and it takes about 40-45 mins to get home so I was pretty tired after several hours of walking.

Saturday I decided to do the same thing but this time in Osaka. I arrived in Umeda (again ward, this is one of the major ones) and looked at a map, figured out which direction was south and just started to walk. I ended up walking for about 5 hours but I wasn't worried about getting lost because all I had to do was find a train track of a subway entrance, which are everywhere in Japan, and I could easily get back to Umeda and thus home. I again took some really cool pictures and they are under the folder "osaka". The main street I followed was interesting because it was mostly buisness and government office type buildings but on the other side of the street going parallel was this incredibly long shopping hall. I say shopping hall because I don't know what else to call them. Its like a wide ally with a roof and shops of all sorts on both sides. These shopping halls go on for miles!, or kilometers!, and before I knew it I was in Nanba (a ward I go to a lot), so I instantly knew where I was. Even though I wanted to do some new exploring I thought this might be a good time to really take a lot of pictures of my beloved den den town (den means electricity and its like the osaka akihabara, maybe half the size). Stores usually don't like you taking pictures of their stores so I only took pictures from outside but I got most of the stores so maybe someone looks at it they can kind of get an idea of what its like.

I spent more time there then I had intended and then went south from den den town and there was a drastic change in Osaka from that point. Up until den den town it was very close and tall buildings everywhere but it quickly dropped off to smaller more home like places. Like if I had to compare it its like new york quickly becoming tucson. I don't know if I can really explain it but it was a really interesting feeling.

Sunday I went to church and ended up having lunch with the missionaries and an investigator. There was a fireside that night so I just killed some time until then and we had some dinner and got to socialize a little. I talked to these other missionaries for a while and one of them was really obsessed with smash brothers brawl but he was on his mission when it came out so he couldn't play it. He kept asking me all of the particular questions about how each character was. I hadn't played the game in 5 months and didn't pay too much attention to that stuff when I was playing it anyways. The fireside was about the history of the church in Kobe, of course in Japanese. My Japanese has defiantly improved a lot but I still suck at listening. What happens is I hit a little streak of parts I don't understand, loose my place then kind of space out, thus forgetting what little I did get and suddenly I have no idea whats going on.

Monday nothing amazing happened except I got a compliment from the mean Japanese teacher. In the thing we read it was a story about how this ryugakusei's host mom was upset because she didn't recieve a letter from the ryugakusei's real mom and the teacher asked me what I thought about it, and I said "its like Japanese people are thought of as kids even when they are college students but in America as soon as your 18 your thought of as an adult so the parents have nothing to do with the host family, also sending letters is a little annoying now a days". The teacher said I said it really well but she didn't like my opinion.

I know my reading skills have improved for sure, I've now read 16 volumes of manga. I don't get all of the plot points but I'm still pretty impressed with myself. I really wanted to watch gundam 0083 because I got the models from the series but all my friend could find was a Chinese subbed version so I just watched that. I was able to understand enough to enjoy the show but when it got towards the end the plot got way too hard to understand. 0083 was made in 1990 so its so different from current animation but it felt very nostalgic. There is just something about cel animation that I really like.

Today I did nothing at all. I wanted to go to Kyoto and walk around but left foot hurt for some reason. I worked on a gundam model for a bit played some final fantasy 6 on my psp but thats about it.

So as I read the Book of Mormon it really amazes me the faith the ancient people had in Christ. They had faith that he would come and all we have to have faith in is that he will come again. Jesus of Nazarath was 100% a real person that actually lived and actually did something to upset the Jewish leaders to get crucified. There is historical evidence of it. The apostles saw the resurrected Christ, testified of that fact, and dedicated their life to telling people about it. The catholic church started up 2000 years ago because of the apostles (Peter right?). Like that in itself ought to be enough for us as humans to believe in Christ but God gave us a second book that aligns perfectly and testifies to the same thing. Its like how much more evidence does God need to give us for stubborn people like us?

Well like always when I think I have nothing to say I end up writting tons so later yall

Setsubun video

2009-02-05T05:51:00.001-08:00

Watch Setsubun | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

vacation week

2009-02-03T20:18:00.001-08:00

Well we ryugakusei have this week off of school. Even though our semester just started the Japanese student's semester just ended so this week is actual the entrance exam for all of the freshman. So for some reason we aren't allowed on campus even, and we have this week off. I honestly I don't have any plans. Right now its Wednesday and I don't have anything to do besides work on this freaking crazy perfect grade gundam (more on that later) and I don't really have plans for the rest of the week either. I want to do something just so that my host mom doesn't make all these comments about me being a hermit or what not.

Starting off though Tuesday was awesome! Me, Julienne, Courtney, Lela, and Val went to the Setsubun festival in Nagata jinja. Setsubun, or season divide, is a festival that was originally meant to appease the oni so they wouldn't bring misfortune but at some point became a festival of chasing off the oni. I made a video and I'll try and upload it as soon as I can but with my really inconsitent internet connection I don't know when I'll be able to. In a nut shell some people from the community put on 400 year old oni (demon) costumes and perform ritual dances while holding a straw torch. There is also a part where beans are thrown at the oni but we may have missed it. It was raining that day so these poor men dancing without shoes in the cold rain for like an hour. The rain was a mixed blessing kind of because it meant that a lot of people had umbrellas making it harder to see (as you can tell in the video) but that meant that there were a lot less people this year.

The BEST part of the day was going back to Courtney's host family's house and having dinner. Courtney has a 4 year old host brother who is so adorable and all of use spent hours playing with him, we didn't want to leave at 10pm but Lela had to catch the last bus home. Kota (the kid) was just so cute and silly. He would randomly say random English words like out of the blue he just said "stomach!" and other times he says random math like he dad was wrestling with him and he just yells out 49 plus 2! And Courtney's host parents are so nice and sweet and easy to talk to. Its really funny actually Courtney speaks only in English (she knows Japanese she is in my class) and her mom only speaks Japanese (but understands English). A very interesting linguistic situation. I feel so jealous now. I wish I got that host family so badly! Coming home to this place afterwords just kind of felt kind of crappy.

So I started the wing zero custom perfect grade gundam model the other day and wow it really is a challenge. There are so many moving parts and it just takes so much time. And I had a huge problem with the shoulder gear. So the shoulder section sits inside the main body and with like 5 different parts allows the shoulder to move back and forth a little bit. Well they use this spring pins which are really hard to get in so I got it all put together but when I attached the shoulder bit to the core a spring was out too much and was causing it to push up and stress the plastic so I tried to push it in more and I snapped the plastic in half! So I tried to super glue the two halfs back but just a little bit wouldn't work so I used a lot more which caused another moving part to fuse together with something meaning that even if I could some how get the broken peieces back together it wouldn't be able to move anymore. So as I tried to move something into place so that I could have some sort of movement a few tiny bits from an arch piece just fell apart, and soon several pieces did. It was like the plastic was corroding in my hands. I somehow got the pieces back and when I thought I would have again a tiny bit of movement something else broke a tiny bit of the arch off. So as I held it in my hand contemplating what to do, I dropped it on my floor and lost it forever(because my desk is too low to really sit under it for some reason). So ultimately what I ended up doing was taking a bit from the plastic runners glued it over some bits, sanded it down so it all fit then finished up the core. So now one arm has normal movement and the other doesn't but I don't think its too big of a deal.

So Friday the teachers apparently got our evaluations for their class from last semester (before we got our grades back which doesn't seem right to me) and they didn't seem too happy. I've written many times about my opinions of these classes but I think if we really look at it from a "whole is greater then the some of the parts" kind of idea they really aren't that bad. Like my history class for example; I went in there hoping to learn a basic of overall Japanese history and more specifics about bushido, what I got was two field trips to two castles and a bunch of detailed random information about Japanese history. I think the same can be said of my complaints about the program at whole because yes its not perfect and has things that could easily be better the fact that I've seen and done so many things that most people back home will never even dream of really ought to outshine not having many Japanese friends. This semester I started out really dreading the Japanese religion class but its actually really cool because he tells us all of this information about the festivals that we have a chance to go to while in Japan.

Well I guess thats it, I feel like I should get out today but I really don't know what I would do or where I would go.

ichi go ichi ei

2009-02-01T02:49:00.000-08:00

Well its February now and nothing incredibly huge has happened. Classes are so so, the japanese religion class is actually getting pretty cool because its at a point where he tells us all about a matsuri that is going on in a few days so we are all prepared for it. In the Japanese language class we finished our first novel! Its called moonlight shadow and I personally didn't care for the story. I was all excited for starting a new book but apparently we are taking a detour in February to focus on grammar points used in the JLPT level 2 test so thats pretty good too.

My birthday wasn't too bad. On the 22nd, Thursday, I ate yakisoba with the missionaries, who are really cool people. On Friday me a few foreign exchange friends and one Japanese guy, kanada, went to nishiyoma gardens (new mall) and ate at a Hawaiian restaurant. I got a really good "american size" burger and Kanada ordered a birtday desert and they sung happy birthday and it said my name in chocolate. We then walked around the mall for a bit and Jay got a terabyte external hard drive for 12,000 yen ($120). In the states you can get them at about the same price but its so hard to even wrap my mind around a terabyte. Like it was a few years ago that a terabyte was an impossible number like you might as well say bajillion or something like that.

I have really enjoyed going to church here. Its a really small ward (we had a record today of 53 people) but that just means everyone is so much closer to each other. And the missionaries, especially elder Bohman, are a real inspiration to me and I actually, for the first time in my life I think, bore my testimony for fast Sunday today.

I decided that Its kind of unreasonable to try and spray paint all of the models I have left to build before I go home with the awkward way I have to do it that I'm just going to build them as quickly as possible and do all of the painting at home once I buy a airbrush. I really need to go this way because I ended up buying three more the other day. I bought one because I wanted to try and hand paint it and then I got the wing gundam one because I have wing zero and wing zero custom so I wanted a set and I bought the zeta gundam because it was only 1200 yen! Like Japan is an expensive country for sure but when it comes to manga and anime goods its really amazing.

I'm past the half way mark on this trip and before I know it I'll be home, its starting to become kind of mixed feelings. I keep having dreams of being home and seeing everyone and other dreams of coming home too early and missing out on everything back in Japan. I think I'm going to be really frustrated in my life for a few years. There are things I like and dislike about both countries so while I'm in America I think I'll miss Japan a lot and if I come back to Japan I'll want to go back to America. I hope I can find some happy middle ground somewhere.

matsuri and stuff

2009-01-23T17:16:00.001-08:00

Well its been another good amount of time since my last blog so its time to write some more. Since last thing the first thing that was really big was I went to Ebisu Matsuri on Sunday. It was incredibly crowded something like 700,000 people went on the busiest day. I took some interesting pictures but I was more interested in the side booths then the actual temple. All sorts of different foods and carnival esq games. I kept thinking about trying one of the lottery type ones because they have a box for a wii and ps3 so its like you “could” win them but since its $3 a try and the boxes look REALLY old so its probably impossible to actually win them.

Monday I went to the 20 year old celebration with my friends. There were tons of really pretty kimonos, and everyone was so dressed up. My friends said its kind of like the Japanese prom, the way everyone gets all fancy. I wasn't planning on going in because it seemed like they were taking tickets but after my friends left I ran into the missionaries and they were going in and it seemed like it was all right. The ceremony was kind of boring but it was one of those once in a life time things you have to do just because.

The rest of the week went by pretty event less I think. It seems like I'm going to have a really easy semester despite having 3 non language classes. Cinema is taught by possibly the single most laid back (lazy) teacher in the history of the world so we just have to turn in 4 short papers about the movies we watched. Religion is a pretty boring class because we just fill in the blanks in class for the most part but last time he showed some pictures of stuff which made things more interesting. But for that class all we have is mid term final and one paper. Education might be the only class that is close to being a “real” class because we have a paper that requires 5 sources but the thing with this class is it just talks about the Japanese stereotypes. Not like how they are bad but talking about them as if they are true.

I have to take a little detour to rant about this for a bit. In Japanese studies there is a thing called nihonjin ron, or basicly an argument or debate about Japanese people. This is characterized by setting Japan up as a very unique culture and how it is infinitely different from the West. The problem is that this idea is maintained by both Westerners and Japanese people. For example many times I have heard, Japan has four seasons Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. But its like thats the same as everywhere in the entire world. And in the education class we watched a video about Japan and it talked about the Japanese way of eating and it showed people in kimonos sitting Japanese style on tatami mats eating off the floor, but the reality is that no one in Japan does that. And in the book for education class, which by the way quoted a source from 40 years ago, talks in such strong absolutes that all Japanese people think in this specific way, its all just really annoying. Another example is Akira Kurosawa was really thought to not make movies for Japanese audiences simply because his movies won awards internationally. Because if Westerners like something then its not Japanese.

On Saturday I took Emily and Julienne to Den Den Town because they wanted to find non pornographic dojinshin, let me tell that is no easy task. Hentai is so big here its really scarry, which I think I'll just leave it at that. I'm trying not to spend too much money or atleast refrain from buying anime goods because I've ran out of room here and if I really want to display everything back home, I'm out of room there too so its a no go. Also like I really need to get working on my Gundam models. I haven't been doing too much because I've been trying to read more manga in my free time (which I found a series I really like and I'm on book 5 now) and also I want to spray paint some of them but I need a day that is not too cold, not raining, not windy and I'm home during day light so its been a no go lately. I got a few that are metalic coating and I just started the last of them and I have really mixed reactions about them. One model had the model specifically built for the metalic coating (ie there is no regular version) so on the runners they are in a way that you can snap it off with out cutting into the coated part. The others however have regular models so no matter what you do you have a black spot where the frame was. And I tried painting it over with a color that wouldn't stand out too much and it instantly ate the coating so any mistake and its ruined. But the other hand is that the metallic looks so cool so its a trade off.

Ok so here I want to rant about the konan program a bit, so bear with me. I know I'm in Japan and its an incredibly opportunity and I'm doing all that I can to take advantage of it and experience as much as I can, but when I decided I wanted to study abroad I was looking forward to two things, the first is to make a lot of Japanese friends and the second is to become really good at Japanese. Pretty much exactly in the middle of the program, I feel both of those things are not going to happen. Starting off its just so hard to make Japanese friends. The start of which, and really the only part I can blame the program for, is that we are completely separated from the Japanese students. Apparently other programs, granted not all of them, have the ryugakusei take normal Japanese classes but offer a small prep class beforehand so the students know what to expect this would be really tough but you would actually be a student at that college not just someone doing a program that takes place inside that college. Add in the fact that the Japanese students will soon be gone for two months as their calendar is completely different and it just feels impossible. However it isn't impossible to “meet” people but rather making friends is a whole different story. Many times when I try to hang out with someone I always get some excuse, so much so that it makes me not want to even try. Even if they are legitimate I think a friend should be someone who hangs out atleast once every 3 weeks, espically for students. And the bout about becoming good at Japanese is really all dependent on making friends. Japan is a country that is very easy to get by without ever having to speak Japanese. All of the signs are in English, enough people study it that you could find a clerk that speaks it, and EVERYONE assumes you don't know Japanese at all so they try and avoid you. There is a guy at church who came here about a year ago with his wife as an English teacher and he wanted to get to the point where he could translate but he doesn't have any Japanese friends and ended up just speaking English with his wife and now feels his Japanese is worse then before. So point is Japan is a country that doesn't try to assimilate foreigners , like America is, so a good foreign exchange program should take that into consideration.

Oh yeah and I'm thinking about going with some of the ryugakusei to Korea sometime before I head home. I bet Melissa would be pretty jealous.

A trip to Den Den Town

2009-01-09T03:39:00.000-08:00

I actually made this video a while ago but never linked it to this page, here is a video made out of little clips from my camera as I went to Den Den Town in Osaka. The camera is VERY shaky and you very likely will get sick a parts so just skip around.

Watch Just a normal day in Osaka in Video Blogs | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

New years and stuff

2009-01-09T03:38:00.001-08:00

Its been a while since I last wrote so let me see if I can remember what happened since last time. Well the big thing was new years. My host family's daughter and her family came. There was an adorable 3 or 4 year old girl named Mai. I really love little kids and was so happy to be able to play with her, and to have someone who I could understand. Over the holidays we had food that had a lot of effort put into it. Some of the stuff was really great like yakiniku and crab but other stuff was just so weird I couldn't eat too much of it. Like there was mochi in a bowl of miso like soup. That stuff is so hard to eat.

On new years day I went to Ikuta temple. It was really crowded and there were food stands and like carnival type game booths set up so it really was a sight to behold. As you waddle your way through the sea of people and get up to the actually jinja (temple) you see more booths but these are selling charms and what not. I went up to the main part and threw in a few yen saying a little prayer to Heavenly Father in my head and walked around some more. As you will often seen in anime you can buy fortunes and you tie that fortune around a tree or around a fence covering a tree so that it either comes true or doesn't come true, which ever you want (its kind of confusing there). After that I came home and just did the usual try and kill time thing.

Taking a little detour here, Japan is so weird here religiously. Like this place is translated as a temple but it didn't seem to really be anything at all what you would think of for that word. The fact that there were just all sorts of vendors leading up to the place made it all feel more like a state fair or something rather then anything spiritual. And the fact that they sell good luck charms just is something thats hard to get my head around. Its like the gods (there is a huge vagueness about if there is one god or multiple) will bless you because you spent 300 yen on a cell phone strap. And I started my religion class on Thursday and its like the Japanese “religions” don't seem that concerned about validity. Like its no secret that budhissim is an evolvement of all sorts of beliefs across Asia. Coming from a Western (or even Middle Eastern point of view) a religion should atleast claim to be a powerful being's real desire for mankind. But religion here just seems like philosophy mixed with traditions which my religion is so much more to me.

Its kind of a little silly but while I'm building my Gundams I've been listening to the book of mormon on mp3 and I started in heleman (because I always give up on reading it once I get to alma, I get so lost in the so and so reign of the judges this war happened part) and after I finished it I moved on to the doctrine and covenants. I can't believe that I went my entire life without ever actually looking at the contents of the doctrine and covenants. As I'm going through it it is blowing my mind that in relatively recent times God gave very direct distinct directions to the leaders of the young church. Its like I can feel the power and authority of Heavenly Father's words as I listen. I didn't expect to really have my testimony grow so much here but it really has. Many times I've very grudgingly went to church but now I find myself looking forward to it and I really honestly want to become a good Mormon now.

Aside from all of that um I sat around my room a lot. I hung out with Jay, Nohea, and Courtney a lot and we went back to the temple one time and I got a fortune. I didn't tie it on the tree because I wanted to know what it said and I wanted to keep it as a souvenir. School finally started and I'm really glad. Japanese class might be a little on the tough side this semester (but its my LAST Japanese class). We are reading books now and there are SOOOOO many words we have to look up because this author is being incredibly descriptive of everything. I am taking three other classes this semester; education in Japan which is taught by a seems to be really cool teacher and we are going to have a field trip to a Japanese high school, Japanese religion which is taught by a terrible teacher. This teacher just gave us a packet with key points not filled in and he just stands there and reads the piece of paper while we fill it in. Its like freaking crap that is NOT teaching, I know its slim pickings on teachers who can speak English but the teachers in this program seem like they have never been a student before. The last class is Japanese cinema, which after the first meeting I have high hopes for.

On Friday in Japanese class we did some really fun word games. We broke up into two teams and each team had a leader. The first game the teacher wrote a word on the board so the leader couldn't see it and three of us had to each write a part of a haiku to describe that word. My team had nintendo DS so it was , everyone holds it, has 2 screens, also wireless (doesn't fit the rules in English). The second game the captain would know the word and give tiny hints as to what it was and the three of us at the same time had to say the same answer. Each time we got it wrong we were docked points. I think this one would work in English too. The third one was really interesting, the teacher wrote a word in katakana (the alphabet for foreign words) and we had to make a 4 kanji word that would describe it. So we had bargin (ba-gen) and I wrote dai-an-kin-sho which was big-cheap-money-little and he guessed sale (se-ru) but it wasn't close enough.

The most boring christmas ever

2008-12-28T00:31:00.000-08:00

Well let me get started with talking about how the trip to tokyo finished up. The last day there was still more I wanted to see and do in Tokyo but everyone was feeling pretty tired and wanted to make absolutely sure that we didn't have any problems getting to the bus stop at 1030pm. I was a little tired so I didn't push on any of the things I wanted to do, and I knew this wasn't going to be the only time in Tokyo so I just thought I would go with the flow. We once again ate at dennys, spent a good amount of time at asakusa shopping for souvenirs then finally got to shinjuku. We got lockers for our stuff then started the long quest of finding the square enix store. We met up with Julieane and after probably somewhere around an hour of train, walking, and being turned around we finally found it.

The square enix store is pretty cool. It was a pretty fancy kind of place actually, the staff wore suits and they had a lot of jewelry behind glass. Expensive stuff too, like emily spent $90 on earings and Courtney apparently paid $140 for her necklace when she went there. The big attractions were the statue of Sephiroth in the floor, the costume that Genesis wears in Crisis Core and the helmet for judge galbrather from 12. They also had a giant tonberry and cacutar (sabotender in japanese) plushie. There was also lots of dragon quest stuff that I didn't care about. The pictures do justice for the place so check out my picasa account.

After that we spent a lot of time walking around Shinjuku and Emily was frantically trying to find a Christmas present for her family. People were worrying about time and the long trip was kind of straining our friendship so I think people were getting kind of short with each other. We finally found some food, went to yodobashi (where I bought that perfect grade wing zero custom model. I could have gotten it at Osaka yodobashi any time but since it was my christmas present to myself with mom and dad's money I wanted to have it on Christmas), and tried to make our way to the bus stop. While looking at the map a Japanese person came by and asked in English if we needed any help. He was really nice and actually walked us to the spot. When I looked at the map it was the same spot I thought it was so I felt 100% that it was right, but for the previously mentioned reasons people started to bicker a little about where the spot actually was. It didn't help that the bus didn't come until 1015 but we some how got on the bus home. We really lucked out on the bus though because there were so few people ridding it Pak laid down on the row behind me and I had two seats to try and get a comfortable situation. And it somehow worked I slept moderately well on the way back and felt fine the whole next day. We asked for directions back to Umeda station and from there went home.

From this point on I don't do anything particular. Play WoW, watch some anime, build gundams, thats about it. Christmas eve my host mom gave me a christmas cake which was pretty good but we didn't do anything for it. On christmas day I skyped home, felt kind of down that I was missing all of that, listened to Mathew, Mark and Luke on MP3 while building gundams and played wow. Actually listening to the scriptures while I'm doing something with my hands actually really helps, I really took a lot in and had a good long thought about the true meaning of Christmas.

The next day I knew I had to get out of the house if just for a little bit so I went down to Okamoto to get some money from the bank, looked around the used manga/game store, found a ps2 gundam game in a collectors box with a figure for 480 yen, and by chance ran into Jay. He also ran into Nohea and the three of us ate lunch at Mcdonalds and talked about how amazed we all are that we are in Japan with nothing at all to do. They are doing the same thing, just sitting in their room on the computer or playing DS. I picked up batteries for my wing zero model I'm working on and headed home. Later that evening I got a package. It was from heather, rob, holly and cameron! Oh man I was so happy to recieve a christmas present and the fact they spent $50 on shipping just made me realize how good of friends they are. I was honestly moved to tears by that present it really meant a lot. I put up my little christmas tree and watched walle (loved it).

The next morning (saturday) I modded my model to put LEDs in the head so the eye's glow! I am so amazed with myself. In reality LEDs only need a simple circuit to work but figuring out which ends and making it all fit in there smoothly took quite a bit of time. And because I couldn't get 100 yen head phones to work I used a video cable I didn't need. It works great except its kind of a little too thick so the head can't look up very well. I might still be able to fix it somehow though.
*warning more in depth gundam rant*
ok so for this model I wanted to make it look better so I spray painted the peices while still in the runners. The color was perfect, the reds and blues are vibrant and the white no longer has this ugly dull shade it had before, however now that there is a paint texture to the peices I can't do pannel lining the way I used to. Panel lines are grooves in the plastic that make it look more machine like and normally you use a pen in the grooves and wipe away the excess so only the stuff really deep in the groove remains. The problem is that the paint attaches to the ink of the pen instantly so I have these ugly thing lines and to top it off wing zero has TONS of panel lines all over its legs so it stands out a lot. I have to do more research to figure out what I'm supposed to do.
*end gundam rant*

So because I listened to the scriptures on mp3 the other day and I really wanted to get out of the house I decided to go to church, finally! I'm really glad that I did because right when I entered everyone was really nice and the american missionary took me under his wing and showed me around and introduced me to people. I so easily forget how nice everyone is at church. I accidentally went to the japanese language ward but it was really cool experience. I couldn't really understand most of the lessons but I could pick up bits here and there. Aside from a lot of church vocabulary I don't know they use a lot of keigo and teneigo which is that infamous Japanese polite speach. I was taught that in class but they just wanted you to have a basic understanding of it, and I understand the bits that sales clerks will use but its something I'm not very strong in. It seems like really good practice though so that should be good. It was interesting to see people in suits, street clothes and kimonos all together in sacrament.

Well thats about it I suppose I'll try not to go crazy while waiting for school to start January 7th.

---Ben

Tokyo part 3

2008-12-22T15:09:00.000-08:00

Okay so today`s main goal was to get to the studio Ghibli museum. We got a late start and ended up eating at Dennys again and then headed off for mikata. We had to transfere to the Chuo line, which was kind of hard to see on the train map we had, but we went to shibuya, transfered to shinjiku, then got on the chuo line. Some how we did a pretty good job at navigating the train lines here in Tokyo. It was about a mile or so to the studio from the station and we decided to walk, it was a really nice suburbian setting along the way. When we finally got there behind the glass was a giant totoro and a bunch of people taking their picture with it. It turned out that we needed to wait until 2pm because they let people in at increments at a time. So we walked around the nice park that was nearby while we waited. The museum wasn`t incredibly huge but was like a really rich person`s house. The whole thing had the miyazaki magical vibe about it. They had one room that was about like the old ways of animation and they had these figures that were the same character but slightly diffrent poses and they spun with the strob light and it looked like they were all moving, very cool. They also had a fake, over the top, old time projector. Like its not how projectors worked back then but it was kind of like a magical way of thinking about it with film being stretched back and forth left and right all over the place. We also a room that was dedicated to the animation process. It had original story boards from movies, original cells, and lots of charts on how cell animation was done. It really make you appreciate the old way of animation, it again just made it feel some how magical. We also got to watch a short film about the kitten bus. The cat bus was a major character in totoro and this was its son. Its a really weird character design. Its a cat with 6 legs, you can get inside of it, its eyes become head lights, and it can turn into the wind if it wants to. This was the first time Erin had seen any studio Ghibli stuff and was pretty freaked out. They also had a cat bus playground thing for little kids and an over priced gift shop.

It started to rain when we got out so we took the bus back and then we ate some cheap donburi place. Then we began our quest for the square enix store. This is where we started to get on each other`s throat. As it turns out square enix store is in shinjiku, NOT shibuya. Both me and Emily looked up the stores location but neither of us could get solid information about how to get to there. Assuming it was in shibuya I was pretty sure we had to go one way but other people thought we needed to go another. It wasn`t until we boared the wrong train that we found out how off we were. We both admitted fault for that then headed back. Becuase we tried to exit the same station we bought the ticket at, the machine wouldn`t take it. Pac some how managed to get pass the gates before the closed but the three of us had to try and explain what happened to the clerk. Thank goodness we spoke Japanese because this guy was so confused as to what we had done.

It started to really pour down at this point and Emily and Erin still wanted to do some shopping. So we got umbrellas and crossed that world famous intersection then headed up a little bit. Me and Pac whent to Tower records while those two were close shopping. We then got some food, rested up, then made the long trip back. I some how managed to get all of my stuff into the bigger suitcase and hopefully emily will help me out and put here three bags into my smaller suitcase and use that one.

got the night bus to look forward to still!

Tokyo part 2

2008-12-21T00:18:00.000-08:00

So Saturday we decided to let Erin decide what to do and we ended up going to Ueno Zoo. It was actually kind of a disapointing zoo. First of all the big attraction was the giant panda, but it died earlier this year. Besides that the animals all looked really sad and weak. Like I`m no animal rights activists or anything but these animals looked really miserable in that zoo, and some of them not that healthy. We then walked around Ueno for a bit. Tokyo is really a beautiful city. The city scape just keeps going and even though it is a big city it feels so safe and clean. After walking around there for a while we went back to Asakusa. There was a really big area for street shopping and little stores that just seemed to go on for ever. We spent a few hours walking around and ate dinner at a kaitensushi place. It was good but once I ate squid sushi, I was done. Squid is the toughest thing in the world to eat. Its so chewy you can not bite it at all. There was a strong bit of wasabi underneath too so ugh I couldn`t eat anymore after that. The staff there found out we knew some Japanese and they were so impressed. They must get tons of foreigners everyday who don`t know a word so it felt good to kind of show off a little bit. After that we got some ice cream and called it a night.

Today we woke up earlier and made it out of the hostel at a decent time. For breakfeast we went to a dennys which was pretty diffrent. Like they had eggs toast sausage but I don`t think there was thing on the menu that was exactly the same. After that we got to Akihabara!

Now I have wanted to go to Akihabara for years, it was easily the place I wanted to go to more so then anywhere else in the world; and now after having gone it wasn`t what I was expecting but I wasn`t dissapointed. First of all, I could not find cosplayers! I found maids handing out flyers and I saw 1 foreinger dressed as naruto`s sakura but that was it. I don`t know if people don`t do it all year round or what but I couldn`t find the parades of cosplayers I was searching for. However the shopping is incredible. There are TONS of stores, I got so lost and turned around it just drained me. It wasn`t just the anime stores but tons of electronic stores and DVD+CD places. I didn`t actually go crazy with spending though. Osaka and Kobe have some pretty decent anime stores so I knew what was out there and whats normal prices, and truth betold I only want to buy gundams. DVDs wont play on my stuff at home, figures can get pretty pricy and you dont get to build them, and my japanese just isn`t good enough to enjoy reading manga yet. But I did come out pretty well with the Gundams, I got 6 for 8100 yen, all of them close to half off. Two of them are master grades, three of them are metalic reflective coating models, and four of them are 1/100 scale.

Going to Akihabara had been one of the big life goals of mine and now I can check it off the list, how many people can say that? Feels pretty good

Well I`ve got more things to do in Tokyo for the next two days so I`ll update later

Live from Tokyo Japan!

2008-12-19T14:58:00.000-08:00

Well here I am, finally in Tokyo. Its been a real adventure getting to this hostel in asakusa. We decided to take the night bus because it is less then half the cost of the shinkansen. We had to board the bus at 11:30 so we met up at Umeda station at 10 and tried to find it, according to the map I was sure it was just over one way pretty close but thankfully we have some girls in our group who are able to ask for directions, I can say all of the japanese words its just a guy thing. So we found out it was best to take the train until the next stop and go from there. So we get on the Osaka loop and we ask a guy working there if that train stopped where we needed it to and he said yes but when we got on it, it passed our station! So then we got off on the next one it stopped and walked to the other side, but we couldn't figure out which train would stop there because JR doesn't put big signs on the trains saying limited express or local it just has diffrent colored trains, which are diffrent from what Hankyu uses. At this point we all started to get a little anxious about getting there on time and some how we got to the station we needed to get to and just started walking down this random street in downtown Osaka. We finally find the bus, it wasn't a station it was just the bus parked there. We didn't have much time left but we tried to find a bathroom. Of course everything was closed but the only things around that area were really fancy car dealerships and hotels. Erin ended up asking a restaurant to use their bathroom and they were apparently nice about it. So we ran back to the bus.

The ride on the bus was not so good. Like the seats were pretty comfortable and you had a decent amount of space but I just can not sleep in a situation like that. I don't know if I actually slept or not. All night I was kind of concious but my mind was going all over the place and I could move if I wanted to but my body felt heavy. Anyways it just didn't refresh me enough because when we finally arrived in Shinjiku I felt like crap. We spent a good amount of time walking around Shinjiku just trying to get our barrings. The government office section of shinjiku had some amazing buildings, the architecture is really out there. Emily and Pak got the special edition dissida PSP system at bic camera, and its a really cool. I feel so special being able to get a final fantasy game right as it comes out in Japan.

We planned to get to the hostel at 3 so that we could all just take a well deserved nap. I figured out the infamous tokyo subway line even though its really something else. In Osaka all of the stations are within each other so if you buy a ticket that you have to transfer somewhere you never go outside. Here we had to leave the station and walk a block to transfer. Also I've noticed that on the escilator in Osaka people stand on the right but in Tokyo people stand on the left. Its intersting that there are these little differences between Kansai and Kanto regions.

The hostel is actually pretty nice. For starters it was only 7200 yen for 4 nights and they have a big area downstairs for showers, TV, computers, or just general haning out. The room is a basic dormitory set up with 3 bunkbeds. There are 4 of us, one girl that we saw and someone's backpack that was sitting ontop of one of the beds but we never saw whos it was. The bed has a really nice memory foam pillow but the matress is really painful. Anyways when we got there I passed out and at around 8 we went to a ramen restraunt and talked slightly about what we were going to do today.

Going to tokyo tomorrow!

2008-12-18T02:05:00.001-08:00

Right now I am kind of out of it. On the 18th (today) Final Fantasy Dissida came out. Its a really cool fighting game for the PSP that has the villains and heroes from FF1-12 (although 11 and 12 only get one character each while 1-10 gets a hero and villain). So anyways some other foreign exchange students said they wanted to get it at midnight and even though I wasn't super crazy about getting it right away, I love midnight releases, so I emailed them asking what was up last night and they said they were all heading down to Umeda. So ok I thought I'll head down too. We get there and yodobashi is closed. No body actually took the time to find out if there was a midnight release. So we are all sitting there kind of stupefied with ourselves. And we decidced to do all night karaoke and get it in the morning. We walk around for a bit, first trying to find a bathroom for Courtney, then we check out an arcade for a bit and I played a really crazy version of half life 2. It was an arcade game and you sat in a chair and you had a mouse like joy stick on your left hand and a flight stick on your right. The game was heavily edited to be more of an arcade game but the controls just didnt work. In some of the wii shooter games you have to move the cursor to the edge of the screen to move the character, it was the same thing. It just didn't really work out, and controlling a human by using weird joysticks like that didn't make it feel more realistic or anything.

We then tried out a kaiten sushi place. Kaiten is that conveyor belt thing where they just have plates of sushi going around and you pick up what you want. The plates all cost 130 yen so they just counted the amount of plates you have at the end to pay. It was really obvious however that no one there liked their job. The plates were not very clean and the chef had this tube of mayo that he uses on some of the sushi (mayo is diffrent in Japan and usually really good on japanese food). But he just squirts some on the floor! Its like what the heck that is NOT sanitary at all. And then when we called over the cashier, she was definitely not the super spunky clerk you see everywhere else i Japan. So we then go to the karaoke place and spend so long there. The tiredness was getting to me at the end and you know how your throat gets kind of acidicy if you are up really late drinking soda? I had that pretty bad. I've come to really like singing only Japanese songs. Most of them are a challenge just to get the words out in time but its fun.

The all night karaoke ended at 6 am. But yodobashi didn't open until 9:30! We walked back to yodobashi and so a place seling the game at 7am. However the other people were buying the special edition psp bundle so they had to get it there. I wanted to be a good friend and wait with them but for the life of me I just couldn't sit around for 3 more hours. I got mine at 7am and tatsuya put out a folding table just outside of thier store and a cash register and boxes of the games. A few people started to gather but I got mine pretty early on. I hurried back to the train station and started to play but I was falling asleep playing it, I was so tired. I did what I could to get home and crashed in my bed. I set my alarm to go off in 3 hours because I wanted to go to class and turn in my paper in person but my alarm didnt go off, or didnt wake me up and I slept until class just started. I then went back to bed and got up at around 3pm. I emailed the teacher then spent the rest of the day packing and playing dissida. I'm pretty tired right now and I have to board the night bus at 11:30 tonight. Hopefully, fingers crossed, I'll just passout and be all genki for tokyo friday morning. We all did a really bad job of actually planning this trip so it'll be interesting to see what we end up doing. It's all pretty cool finally going to akihabara and seeing what all of the fuss is really about.

Well I'm going to head off back to umeda soon so I'll write back when I return from tokyo.

---Ben

byoki

2008-12-10T03:08:00.000-08:00

Well this weekend was really not that exciting. This week I have my Japanese history final and my Japanese language finals. Also I didn't have any plans so I thought it would be best just to stay home and do as much studying as I could Saturday and Sunday. I slept in a lot Saturday, tried to skype home but the internet was bad, then around noon I decided I needed to go out to get some food since my host mom was gone. So I headed off to Sannomiya and tried to find a Wendys because I was really longing for some regular American food but couldn't find anything so I ended up getting some curry at some little place. The other reason I went to Sannomiya was to play that gundam arcade game. For my conversation test we had to pick a piece of news and talk about it and I picked an article about how that game is getting a firmware upgrade and the features it was adding so I thought I should know what I was talking about. I'll rant on about that game later in this blog because it will be a lot I'm sure. After words I decided to just check out gamers because they have random sales that are really good. I ended up picking up another gundam model, which I will also hold back on talking about until later.

So I went home and from that point until Sunday night I was just going between playing DS, watching Gundam Seed Destiny on youtube, messing with my PSP to get new programs isntalled, and a little studying here and there. By late sunday I was really regretting staying home all day and was really looking forward to going to school just to get out of that house. For dinner we had this hamburger thing, it was just the meat with some sauce on it. It tasted fine but my stomach started to hurt right after I got about half way through. It was pretty light and it was more like a pressure so I thought I was full. After dinner I just laid on my bed but slowly it got worse and worse and when I tried to go to sleep the pain kept me up pretty late. It wasn't excruciating or anything like that it just felt like there was a lot of pressure on my insides.

In the morning I felt like crap but I had to go to school because I had two finals. I was barely able to eat some yogurt and headed off to school. The walk to the station felt so terrible. I really didn't want to go on anymore. On the train wasn't too bad because I could find some sort of sitting position that didn't hurt as much. At school I just felt really bad. I kind of bombed the conversation test because I just didn't know the new vocab I needed to talk about the story and I could use notes but looking at that totally throws you off. I got an 82 on it which is much better then I thought. I tried to eat some ice cream and fruit for lunch but couldn't get it all down. The history test wasn't too bad I thought. If this was a real class I would have worried because I didn't put college level answers to the questions but since this is make-believe-joke-of-a-college class and there was extra credit I'm sure I'll get a good grade.

Right after I turned in the test I hurried home and the walk from the station to the house was so terrible, I wanted it to be over so badly. I some how made it and fell right asleep. I woke up for dinner and had enough of an appetite to eat dinner. I messed around online for a bit then went to sleep at like 11 or something. The next day I felt better but still had some discomfort so I called in sick and just layed in bed most of the day. I watched like 20 episodes of gundam seed destiny I think, I'm almost done. I didn't take a nap just sat around all day. When I went to school this morning I was really happy to finally get out of that house.

So the semester is really close to being over, here is what I have left; Thursday: kanji test and reading comprehension, Friday: grammar and listening test, Sunday: field trip to Kyoto, and Monday and Thursday: meaning less Japanese history class since the final is done. Then it's off to Tokyo to take lots of pictures and spend lots of money.

Oh also I'm hanging out with one of my penpals tomorrow. I don't know if it is a date or not though. I've seen her pictures and she's really cute and were having dinner and seeing the lights for the luminaria festival. It's always hard to know what is and isn't a date. I think as long as you don't call it a date there isn't much pressure. Oh well heres hoping things work out.

Now for the rants. First that Gundam arcade game. The game is called Mobile Suit Gundam: Bonds of the battle field (kidou senshi gundamu: senjou no kizuna) and it is a giant dome pod that you enter in and sit inside. The game uses a projector to give you a giant hemisphere view from within the mobile suit. You have two flight sticks and two peddals. The flight sticks control movement, left, right, forward, turhing, etc and the buttons on the sticks control lock on and meele or long range weapon. The peddals control dash and jump. It is really easy to get the hang of the controls and it really feels like you are piloting a giant robot! The hemisphere view really brings it all together as you will see stuff in your peripheral vision and since the controls are the way they are you do more normal movements, none of the crazy stuff that main characters do in the show but things that the regular troops do, which is what you play as. I don't think I'm doing a very good job explaining it but the way the whole presentation comes together it feels like you understand what the anime characters are actually doing.
But this game has some huge problems. The first is the graphics suck. Like you can play the game online with other arcades across Japan, so the graphics are held back for that but this really looks like a dreamcast game. I never understood why they can't just put a freaking PS3 into these are arcade games to get decent graphics. Second the projector is pretty low quality. I mean it is kind of understandable since they are high mass production and run pretty much 24/7 but its a really low resolution image, making kanji nearly unreadable, and it has really bad screen door effect which takes away some of the experience. The game is also kind of pricy. Its 500 yen for 2 plays and each play lasts for 3 or 4 mins, so compared to other arcade games its not a terrible yen to min rate but its not something I think I could justify playing everyday, atleast with all of my other vices. Also you have to buy an ID card to play. The ID card is cool because you choose your character's costume, voice and default mobile suit and it prints out this card with your name and an emblem and stores all of your win records on it. But at 300 yen it means your first play costs 800 yen.
Now more gundam rants. At gamers what I decided to buy was the 1/60 scale wing 0 gundam. I kept going back and forth on this because I am going to tokyo and didn't want to waste all my money before I went but these 1/60 scale are kind of rare and Gamers has a sort of ware house or budget store kind of vibe in their gundam section so I thought when that thing is gone its gone for good. So going with that mind set I HAD to buy it. I've yet to start it but I am glad I bought it because for 2500 yen it has a light up chest. Whats really cool is that you build the little light circuit yourself they just give you some wire pieces already bent the right way. I'm really looking forward to having that one finished. With this one I also decided that I'm finally going to start buying spray paint and painting the models. I sprayed some of my completed ones with this top coat stuff which adds a hint of flat metalic look to them in addition to protecting the decals. With wing 0 I can get by with just buying white, red, blue and gold. And white red blue are colors that tons of gundams use so it won't really be a waist.
The problem with spray painting them is how do I keep the pieces organized. What I plan to do is cut out all of the pieces, trim them, sand them (since I am painting them the extra scratches wont show up) spray them, ink them then assemble them all. On the 1/60 models the pieces are simple and big enough it should be ok but on the 1/100 master grades there are somewhere around 200 pieces and a lot of them are really small. Just digging through a box of parts could take forever.
Lets see what else do I have to rant about. I'm playing castlevania order of eclessia on DS right now. I like the main character being a strong non girly female and the weapon system is really good but I'm at the end game part right now and I'm just stuck with nothing to do but keep leveling up, and leveling up in this game usually breaks down to you running into a room killing 1 monster running back out then back in so that he spawns once more. Normal castlevania games make mosters lower the amount of exp the give as you level up but in this one they stay the same. Which is good and bad. It kind of encourages me just to kill the same thing 1000 times. At any rate once this is done I'm going to try and burn through Phoenix Wright 3, so that I can do nothing but Dissidia when that comes out on the 18th.
Well theres another long blog for you all, bye

November is already over!

2008-11-29T20:19:00.000-08:00

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

kanazawa

2008-11-16T04:16:00.001-08:00

I just got back from my field trip to kanazawa so I wanted to write this down before I forgot the details. Ok so the plan was to meet saturday morning. It was at 8:30 so I thought thats about the time I arrive at school normally I'll just leave a little bit earlier so while on the train I noticed that the paper said to meet at 8:15. I was really worried at this point but ridding a train you can't do anything about it. I started to run once I left the station (even though it was still like 8:07) and only stopped when I saw other ryugakusei. I worry so much about being late to things. So as always we waited around and didn't leave even close to our scheduled time, one ryugakusei pak (big afro guy in the pictures, really fun guy by the way) was really late so we waited for him.

The bus was one of those really tall buss where you can put luggage and what not in the bottom. There was a section in the back where like 8 people could sit around a table me, emily, and erin (I hang out with those two a lot) plus a few other people sat back there and we had so much fun. We tried to get 4 players going at final fantasy crystal chronicles but it would keep getting disconnected for some reason. We were playing the pirated rom version but still we were confused as to why we couldn't get there. I felt a little bad because that game can only do 4 players and emily wanted to play something wifi but just played phoenix wright instead. While on the trip we played a lot of mario kart and tetris (courtney is really freaking good at tetris and kicked our buts) and I started to read batman the dark knight returns on my mini laptop.

(forgot this part and added it later) We stopped for lunch in the same town as the temple and it was a traditional Japanese style restaurant. It had tatami floors, and we sat on the square pillows and had the square trays. It was various vegetables and cold tempura and some soba. My taste buds must just not have adjusted the same way other's have because the food was barely edible, some of it just wasn't. Some people really liked it, I dunno why. After we ate we had a few mins at the gift shop on the first floor. I saw something so bad their, it was a cross with Jesus on it but then it had skulls with red eyes around it and the key chain package said horror series. Its so crazy how few Christians there are here and even how little Japanese people know about it. At the scheduled time most of us gathered up but two people Healy and Patrick ran off on their own somewhere. Those two can really frustrate me sometimes. Healy is the stereotypical California bimbo and Patrick is the stereotypical gay guy. Separate they don't annoy me, Patrick is even in my Japanese class and not a bad guy, but together ugh its painful. Truth be told I don't know why they annoy me but the example of them just going off on their own when we are supposed to be a group and stuff is a good example. If you just think of those stereotypes you'll understand.

We first arrived after a few hours to eiheiji which means temple of eternal piece. It was a really cool temple but was really cool was the amazing fall colors (kouyo), I took a lot of pictures but was worried about my camera's battery running out when I needed it so I held back taking a crazy amount of them. The word temple might not be the best translation the more I think about it. It feels very much like a tourist trap in my opinion. You can buy little souvenirs from the temple and talismans things like that. It is a place where there are statues and pictures of gods and Buddhas but their isn't a very strong sense of reverence. I really want to learn more about Buddhism because I don't even know if you can really call it a religion in a Western sense, its like its just about discovering your own mind through meditation rather then your actions having any consequences.

Any ways after we were rushed out of that we headed towards this amazing sea shore and took a boat ride. The sight was breathtaking but because we were behind schedule they rushed us down to the boat for the boat tour. This shore has these very particular shape rocks that are only found in 3 places in the world. The boat ride was very cool, espically since I haven't really been out on the ocean since I was very little living in Washington. The pictures really speak for themselves at this part so I won't try and describe it in vain. After the boat ride we were once again rushed along back to the boat, even though we all tried to steal a few more pictures.

We rode for another hour or so until we arrived at our hotel in Kanazawa. This was the weirdest hotel I've ever seen. We all got individuals (because apparently its the cost per person regardless of amount of rooms) and it was very small but functional I suppose. The bathroom was really small and slightly off the ground so you had to step into it. The way the whole thing felt it was like being in an airplane bathroom. Also it was a regular key, not a card key, and they gave you toothbrush and toothpaste. When you enter the room you have to insert the stick attached to the key into this hole in the wall for the lights to work.

So every dropped their stuff off and we went off to get some food because we were starving. Kanazawa isn't as packed as even sannomiya is so it had just that normal city vibe which is kind of nice every once in a while. We wanted to go to the conveir belt sushi place but their was a big group of us and lots of people in front of us so me emily and erin ended up eating at a Chinese restaurant. After that lunch we wanted something with a lot of meat and it was pretty good despite the gunsa being too buttery for some reason. After that we walked around a bit and saw some really cool lights and some modern art statues but didn't go too far away from the hotel. We ended up turning in like around 9 and I layed in bed until 11 reading more of that batman comic. My little laptop works really well for it resolution wise. I couldn't sleep very well last night, the AC wasn't working right, the pillow was really bad and stuff like that.

We had breakfast at this buffet called the olive garden (no relation to the state one) and it was pretty lack luster, I just had some scrambled eggs and bread. After the usual lateness of everyone we turned in all of our keys and headed off, one group was going to the geisha district the other was going to this kimono painting place. It was raining of course and would continue until we went home. At the kimono place they gave us this handkerchief with a flower design on it and using stencils we painted in the color. None of us really understood the explanation apparently because if you swirl the brush around it works much better so everyone's first leaves looked terrible. We all wanted to use different colors and mix them but the lady was really against it. If we wanted to change the color we made sure she wasn't around. Mine turned out ok, I just wish I could have had a practice one first. So they had a cool shop with this fancy cloth paint on it, most of it crazy expensive though.

After some walking and getting distracted we ended up at the big park, and after waiting for the other group we finally got to see some of this park with a guide. The place is huge and so beautiful and I did my best with my camera to take decent pictures but I dunno, that camera kind of sucks and I kind of want to get a better one (but I doubt I will).

We then had free time from 11:30 to 1:45, Christy made reservations at this ninja temple but it was at 12:00, we would have had to take a taxi, and we couldn't find Christy so that didn't happen. After more waiting around for people we got some food and did a little shopping before it was time to head back. At starbucks I saw these two girls in their Lolita clothes and I asked to take a picture and they let me but they were really shy about it. I don't get, don't you put all of that time and money into the costume so that you will get attention from strangers?

From there it was time to go home and the bus ride was fun, we played SO much mario kart. And Les kept calling bullet bill, billy the bullet and every time someone got that item we would yell it out to freak out all of the other players. It was a lot of fun. All in all it was a really fun trip but now I only have a little bit of time to do some homework, geez chotto iya ne

mo ichi do

2008-11-12T02:49:00.001-08:00

Well lets see I've had a little over a week since my last blog entry and I'll try to remember what happened. Last Friday there was a welcome party for the ryugakusei, now 2 months after we get here is hardly a "welcome party" but it was pretty fun actually. It was a big event and probably 60 or 70 people went. They had name tags for the ryugakusei, food, and group games. Some of my friends didn't go because no one told us any details about it we just saw the fliers around school. I got to talk to quite a few people and got some phone numbers from some actual otakus!

It actually was nice that it was later because my Japanese has improved and I was able to carry out some pretty decent conversations. I'm still far from fluent and even far from where I want to be with my Japanese at this point, but I can definitely have a conversation in Japanese. So we are doing a sort of group conversation and I'm standing next to one of my classmates and he sees another classmate come in and he says "oh great now someone else who can speak Japanese is here" meaning he was the only one before not me and him. I'm going to take a little break and rant about this guy.

His name is Matt Groover and he is THE example as to why homeschooling is a bad idea. Matt never went to high school he just studied for his GED and he has watched so much anime over 8 years that he only took one Japanese language class and is in the highest level at Konan (with me). In all of his classes he is constantly correcting everyone and only slightly indirectly puts everyone else's Japanese ability down. During orientation we had a book with everyone's name and face and he went through and marked how good their Japanese is compared to his. And this "I'm better then everyone" attitude extends beyond Japanese ability as he was even watching over my shoulder and trying to coach me when we were playing tetris on the DS. And to top it all off he is so sterotypical american in the way he wont try new things, even though he flew half way across the world. He will pick out parts of the food when we eat, and he keeps telling us how he tries to get his host family to do things his way, I feel really bad for them. But I'm not being the jerk to him that I think in all right I should be because 1, regardless of what I think about him I have to spend a LOT of time with him in this program so best not burn any bridges and 2, he is a good guy inside, he is willing to help anyone out and he burned me a whole bunch of dvds. He just doesn't have the social skills you need in the real world.

Anyways back to the party. There was one Japanese guy who was like "Hi I'm so and so, I'm interested in Zero Tolerance" which is like a very weird topic starter I think. Something about that bowling for columbine movie, which I don't know why on earth Japaense people would care about documentaries like that. Then there was this other guy who is really an otaku but doesn't talk to much. And he was saying he knows the haruhi dance so he and his female friend start doing it, and it was the lamest thing I've ever seen. I dunno they were barely moving and so not into it. When we got into the main room we did this game where the projector posted a question like "which is the Japanese flag A or B"(in japanese of course) and you would walk to either the left or right side of the room, then before they gave the answer they roped off the sides and whoever was wrong was eliminated from the game. Then there was a not so interesting game of align the group by longest hair, or height or things like that. They also had this weird cardboard gundam thing but for the head it was like badly sculpted like a human and it had hair. The music was so loud though it was hard to have a good conversation.

After the party a lot of people went out to drink but me, one of the Japanese guys I had been talking to, and this ryugakusei from Egypt tried to find the station in this part of town no one really knew. Its really cool to think of people from three very different countries being able to communicate like that. I talked to the guy on the train ride home and he knows a lot of English but the way they teach Japanese students English puts no focus on actual spoken skills so he just needs more practice.

Saturday their was a field trip to Kyoto for the Art History class. I'm not taking Art History but if I paid my own way I could go, I felt like doing something more then just building gundam models that day so I decided to go. It was one of those things were it was hurry wake up rush out the door then wait around while everyone go there. And apparently there is a much faster and cheaper way to get to Kyoto then the last time I went. It was like around an hour for 500 yen, really not that bad. It was on and off raining all day and it was cold. The weather made me feel miserable all day. We first went to a museum that was all about the Portuguese who came to Japan, it was a some what interesting mixture of the two art styles and products. But the giant koi in the fountain outside was much more interesting. We also got hot chocolate from the vending machine, that was really good.

Then we went to a temple that was across the street. At first I was thinking "oh great ANOTHER temple" but this one was crazy. It had over 400 Buddha statues! And they were all around 800 years old. You would just look down that hall and it would last forever. There was one GIANT Buddha, 28 (I think) gods, and 400 of some praying one. The 28 gods were incredibly well sculpted the muscles looked so freakishly real. Its a shame photos are prohibited. We then ate at this mom and pop Japanese restaurant and some of the people were thinking about getting the bento but didnt really know what was in it and they saw that the table next to us was eating it and they lady brought the thing over and showed everyone what came with it, they were so friendly. Whats interesting about that place though was the music playing in the background, it was like 50s dinner music, like regular American music. American music is everywhere in Japan.

Next we went into this really big department store/train station and saw a ikebana(flower arangement) exhibit. There were something like 200 and it was crazy the stuff they did with these things. I thought ikebana was like just putting a rose over on this side of the pot and cutting away the ugly leafs but if that was ikebana then this was the extreme sports version because there were crazy colors and shapes, oh man it was incredible. I'm kicking myself that I didn't have my camera with me, I took some on my cell phone and lots of the other ryugakusei took pictures so maybe I can get some of the best ones uploaded.

After that we were free in Kyoto, we messed around for a bit trying to find a cafe for us to all sit down, then we went to an arcade. We played taiko drum masters, aparently in this version their is the go-onja theme song. I played an older version of some gundam game, I put it on easy and was surprised how long I lasted, usually arcades here are just how fast can you put money into it. Then I played this sega shooter game where you had a target onscreen so it was like a wii game and you had a pedal so you could move left or right and all the game was was one on one fights that lasted 30 seconds. It had a cool artistic edge to it but I would have liked a full game instead. At the arcade though Erin was hilarious she played the Rambo shooter game and she was just shooting like crazy and there was this part where Rambo has to shoot an helicopter down with a bow and arrow so it shows the cut scene then shows the game with the arrow and you had to wait for the helicopter to get in range but she just fired right away, missed, but the cut scene still showed it hitting it. Then she played that game where the alligators come out and you have to hit them with the foam mallet, but she was REALLY getting into it and letting out so much frustration on these poor alligators. Oh man great.

Then we walked around the shopping area, looked at souvenirs and found not only a batman and robin (the bad movie) wallet but also models from it. Really random. Max was with us and he wanted to get some cool shoes but they didn't have his size. Its so hard to find shoes in Japan. We ended up eating at some random place, I had tempura shrimp set. Then got home pretty late.

Sunday was cold. I woke up late and started working on my history paper, I have some stuff to say about my history class. This paper was the single worst paper I have written in college, I just retold the events, I didn't make any argument, I didn't quote anything, I didn't add any analysis, I just wrote until I got 1000 words and stopped. Normally I would be really ashamed with myself but with this class I know my teacher wont care. She wouldn't give us a straight answer when people would ask questions about the report and the class itself really is just a joke. In fact aside from the linguistics class, all of the classes are jokes here. The teachers don't know how to teach however they don't know how to grade harshly either. I've really become a bad student because the class doesn't really encourage learning. In the end a credit is a credit and it is better then the opposite of having insanely hard classes, but still I worry about going back to U of A and having to be a real student again.

So after my paper was done I pretty much stayed inside all day. At some points I would want to play my DS so I would have 2 sweaters, a jacket, and be under the blanket and not want to stick my fingers our enough to press the buttons. My host family gave me a heater now but I was just really cold.

Sunday I also worked on my 1/60 scale Exia gundam model. The brand name for gundam models is Gunpla and I've developed quite the obsession with them as of late. Currently I have 1/144 virtue gundam, 1/144 gundam throne drei, 1/144 dreadnought gundam, Unit 00, 1/144 00 gundam, Gurren Laggen, and 1/100 Musha Gundam. The Musha Gundam is really awesome. Its also a "master grade" so I put a lot of time into making it, probably 15 hours or something like that. I didn't even paint that much, just a few pieces to make it look like wood. When I'm making them I really wish I was home so that I could spray paint them because I want to get more serious about building them, it really drives me crazy to see all of the little mistakes I have made on them. I'm currently working on 1/60 Exia gundam model (from gundam 00, which is awesome by the way).

1/60 is pretty big like its the size of those power ranger robots I've got. I was a little disappointed with the model at first because its like just a big "high grade" model while since its priced the same as "master grade" I thought it would be something closer to that. But even still it's taken a lot of time to put together and I still have a lot to do. Right now it just has enough of its legs built so that it can stand and it looks kind of odd. Since there are so many big spots with out anything going on I was thinking about adding more panel lines myself (the dips in the model that you ink to highlight and make it look more anime machine like) but the guides recommend using an exacto knife which if you mess up its going to show up so much. I might try just making small marks with the pen by itself and letting it dry. I am going to have to hit it up with decals though, I actually bought an extra sheet of decals made just for 00 gundam. Also I bought the 1/100 "master grade" freedom gundam from gundam seed. This one comes with a stand so it should look pretty awesome whenever I get around to making it. Oh well I said bought but actually I just redeemed my yodobashi points from my laptop and got it for free.

Oh also let my explain the gunpla titles. "first grade" is the cheapy ones for kids that cost under 500 yen then there is "high grade" which what most of them are and the 1/144 size those usually cost 800 to 1400 yen then there is "master grade"which those can very from 1600 to 10000 yen, those are 1/100, the two master grades I got were 3000 yen. Then there is "perfect grade" and those are 1/60 and range from 10000 yen to 30000 yen. Then to make it even more confusing there are some models that are either 1/100 or 1/60 but not marked as a certain grade, that I don't understand.

Monday I went out to eat with this girl I met online from an English penpal site. Shes nice but really short and can't hold a conversation that well. Also I think she likes me but its not mutual. She sent me an email "ben ha watashi no koto dou omou no?" basically "what do you think of me?" This is the first a girl has made an interest in me here in Japan, I just wish she was more my type. She is taking an English class now but its so hard to get her to speak any English. I dont get it.

Oh yeah I forgot, Monday we started a manga translation club. Its like a book club but we help each other understand the Japanese being used line by line and keep each other motivated to keep reading it. Lets hope it works out.

Tuesday we saw Iron man in the theaters here. Eigakan's are pretty expensive here but it was girls day apparently so Erin and Emily got in for 1000 and apparently if you go as a couple its cheaper for the guy too so mine was only 1200 rather then then 1500 because they thought we were a couple. Also get this movie theaters in Japan have reserved seats, crazy huh. Also they have movie merchandise booths, so you can buy stuff like a cool iron man key chain or a walle plushie right after seeing the movie. Its a great idea, I am always really psyched about movies right after seeing them.

Wednesday Japanese class was pretty awesome, Tanaka sensei has let the class dissolve into just hang out and chat in Japanese hours, which its like its not that hard anymore. Its just knowing more words so you don't have to describe around everything. At 4 we also decided to start a movie watching club so we are using someone's laptop and we have this big old projection TV, so I thought I could grab an S video cable at 100 yen shop but all they have are composite so I took the train to sannomiya and tried a few diffrent places but they either didn't have it or wanted way too much. I ended up going to donkihodi and got an s video and a sound adapter for like 1200 yen but the whole thing took like under 2 hours. I forgot the name of the movie that we watched but it was done by miyazaki's son and was much more serious then most of miyazaki's movies but still had that mystical charm. I liked it. We had a pretty good turn out too, I was surprised.

This week my host mom has been in Tokyo so I've been eating out a lot and talking a tiny bit to my host dad, he is so hard to understand. She comes back tomorrow so finally I can have good food with out having to pay a lot for it.

Ok this is one monster of a post, wow I didn't realize I had this much to say. bikkurishita! This weekend we have a field trip to kanazawa so I'll have even more to write about then. Well ok bye

Himeji Castle

2008-11-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

Well today I had another field trip. It was with the history class this time so it wasn't the whole crew and we went to Himeji castle. Now Himeji isn't actually that far away, I heard that if you just fall asleep on the train you'll end up their on accident but I still hadn't gone. I have been to Osaka castle before so I had an idea of what to expect. You have the majestic castle towering over the vast tree line, the ancient architecture, and the sense of history but what makes the two castles different is that himeji is an actual castle. Osaka castle was destroyed in World War 2 and rebuilt several times before that, the one that is standing now is just a museum on the inside. Himeji managed to survive WW2 with the help of people covering it with black cloth so night raids would think it was a lake or something.

After seeing Himeji I understand just how hard it would have been to take a Japanese castle in ancient times. You have large gates with stone walls, followed by large areas where you could easily be ambushed by arrow fire, followed by more gates and more ambush points mixed in with dead ends and confusion as to how close you actually are to the castle door. The inside was fairly large and with the sliding doors you could easily change the amount and sizes of rooms on a whim. One interesting part is that their are four wooden pillars that run the entire height of the castle, and they are one solid piece.

After the castle we went to kokoen which was a special garden established in 1992 I believe. It was really beautiful, it didn't have the flowers like I was expecting from the word garden but when you think Japanese garden, it was it. Words don't do it justice so please look at the pictures. There also were giant koi fish, and tons of them. very cool

After all of that we split off into groups and me, emily, pac, erin, lela, and laura walked around Hemeji a little and ate dinner. We really had the giggles because we couldn't help ourselfs from the obnoxious laughter which I'm sure was bothering all of the japanese people even if they wouldn't say anything. At the okonomiyaki place we sat at the low table so we took our shoes off and when we were done I teased Emily about how long she takes to tie her shoes and she goes "ok fine teach me how to time my shoes correctly" so Erin crouches down and starts doing it for her and she goes "oh dear God don't do it for me" because here was this 20 year old woman getting her shoes tied for her. We laughed so hard. Then later Lela said that she needed to use the bathroom and I pointed to the train station bathroom and said "I used it, it wasnt terrible" and Emily goes "yeah but you didn't have to take a sh@t" and we all just were silent for a second and started laughing. She thought in her head "you didn't have to sit" but it crossed in her brain as "sh@t" and then added "take a". Oh man I'm laughing just thinking about it. I really do have some good friends here, I wish they were Japanese but they are really fun people.

Halloween in Japan

2008-11-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween everyone, I just finished my Halloween and it was one of the best ones I've ever had. My costume was a generic red ranger (of course), I got a stretchy spiderman esq ranger mask then red sweats and a red sweater so when I took the mask off it was normal clothes. I didn't wear the mask to school but when I got there everyone put them on. Someone was in like this cute pikachu pajama thing someone had a big afro (he was going as one of the other ryugakusei) and someone else was going was a sexy devil, when the teacher came in she fell to the ground laughing. It was so funny to see her reaction. She took pictures of us later. During the break right next door was the other Japnaese class and they had some other costumes but the best was a monkey costume. Since our windows had a little balchony Les (monkey suit) went from his class and just came through the window that our sensei was at, oh man it was another fantastic expression.

Walking around school you could see the greatest reactions from Japanese people because like they really wanted to stare but would try and hold them selves back from doing it and everywhere you go you hear (ah bikurishta! Surprised) or (ah halloween ne). In the elevator I could tell just how uncomfortable the people felt with us in it. Then after class we all took the train to sannomiya. It was a big group like 25 some odd people in costume we even had a few pictures taken. At sannomiya we spent some time getting everyone together then we walked to this restaurant/bar it was an okay size for a Japanese place but with all of us crazy foreigners it was probably pretty freaky for the staff working there. We talked a lot, played some darts and waited forever for our food.

Then we set out for karaoke. We originally wanted to do a small group but everyone said they wanted to go but no one was ready when we wanted to go and people couldn't make up their mind on anything so we didn't get to the karaoke place until like 9 when we wanted 8. There was a person out side the karaoke place who talks to people on the street to pull them in and I asked how much it was and they said 200 yen, which would have been okay but when we were getting set up all of us got confused at how much it was so when we had to pay it was double what we were all expecting. We all were getting frustrated and angry about it but when I think back on it, the sign did clearly say it. It was just with the sales person pushing us and everyone fighting no one was able to think it out clearly apparently. Lesson learned the hard way I guess.

A few of us left sannomiya at 11:00, we have a filed trip to himeji castle today but also the trains stop running sometime around 12:30 which is really annoying if you want to have fun. In the states I would stay over at a friends house until like 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning then drive home, here you have to be very concerned about how late you stay out other wise you take an expensive taxi or crash at an internet cafe (they are actually private rooms with TV, computer and access to showers and a giant manga library, I have yet to go myself though)

Another week

2008-10-18T17:53:00.000-07:00

Well that small laptop I was thinking about I ended up buying. Its really cool and convenient. It weighs less then a text book and is smaller then one too so its really easy to carry it around with me wherever I go. I can download anime while I'm at school (internet sucks at home), I can use it as a dictionary, and I can watch videos on the train ride home. It was 29,800 yen and I got 3,600 yen credit on my next purchase so its not too bad of a deal actually.

This week kind of went by pretty fast but this week I have midterms. Its only midterms for the Japanese language class and its three days of tests. Its retarded. A day where we are going to be tested over like 300 kanji and one for a conversation test and another for grammar. Its going to suck.

You always here how much better Japanese food is for you but the giant dinner my mom makes and all of the great snacks around I feel quite a bit fatter. There is a gym on campus that I can use but I have to have a pair of shoes just for the gym and I don't know where I can get shoes that are like under $40, so I have to do more searching I need a gym setting to exercise.

Thursday as I was walking home I just found a sega saturn on the street. It was in its original box with the manual, all of the cables and looked like it was hardly used at all. This was amazing like you never just find things you actually want for free like that.

Saturday me and a few people went to yodobashi, pokemon center and den den town. Pokemon center was a little disappointing as it was just a medium size store and didn't have a whole lot of incredibly rare pokemon things or stuff like that. But Zoe really seemed to enjoy going. Yodobashi wasn't that exciting today for some reason. I was looking for a video adapter for my laptop so I can play my game systems but what they had just felt too expensive. Den Den town I picked up like 7 more Saturn games dirt cheap (including Panzer Dragoon RPG but that was 500 yen) I also got some manga for 50 yen each (I thought the book store near school was cheap but those start at 105 yen and go up)and I got two more models. I really enjoy gundam models here.

Well at some point I have to do a presentation on the battle of sekigahara so I'll get going on that, catch you later everyone

Nothing particular

2008-10-11T18:24:00.000-07:00

Well since koyo san nothing particular has happened. Of course everyday I see new things but all and all nothing huge. I have recently goten into models, when you go to an anime store there are so many really cool models everywhere I can't help myself. I am a pretty thrifty shopper though so its not a real dangerous hobby. The gundams I buy I like to keep in the $10 range and since I got the paint markers and the filer it takes me a few hours to put one together so its not too bad.

I'm still thinking about the electronic dictionary but now I'm kind of leaning towards the acer eee pc instead. Its around $300 so its the same price as the den shi jisho and I already have a great dictionary software with 700,000 entires. The eee pc is an ultra light weight 7" screen laptop. I played with the demo at midori, the keyboard is of course small but not impossible to take notes with, the screen is very usable but I would much rather use my regular laptop to watch movies on. Its like I have the money and I dont. I get $800 a month and even with my terrible spending habbits I normally spend under $400 so its not like I'll run out of money here but money I have left over I need to put towards that student loan so its like money I don't save I'll have to make up for with cash in the future.

at any rate I only have one japanese friend right now who is like "hey lets go hang out" but there are japanese people who are sort of friends with the whole ryugakusei group, if that makes sense. I know I'll make more friends its just going to take more time. Which thats another thing that is a little frustrating is that I know that I'll be fleunt in Japanese at some point this year, I just dont know when.

Saturday about 20 or so of ryugakusei and japanese students hung out at a park for a few hours, that was really fun. Everyone is always so busy it felt really nice. Aftewards I went with my host mom and stephen (the canadian who lives with us, cool guy) went to my host mom's daughters apartment. We had some nice temaki (hand roll) sushi and talked for a long time, well I didn't say too much but tried my best to follow allong in the conversation. The daughter knows a little english and she said it in really silly ways (shes a silly person in japanese too) and we had this cake with chest nuts in it and she said very strongly CHEST nut and then "you like it? your FAVORITE?" but I also said something stupid in Japanese as they were talking about how suki and ai mean diffrent kind of things to the english word love and they asked me what I thought and I wanted to say its hard to translate (yakushinikui) but I thought that the verb was yaku not yaku suru so I said yakinikui which means grilled meat. So love is a grilled meat.

anyways I love and miss all of you

koyo san

2008-10-01T05:46:00.000-07:00

Well this weekend we went on our first field trip to mt. koyo, the spiritual center of a major japanese buddhist sect. It was created 1200 years ago by The buddhist leader kukai. Being 1200 years old is really crazy, I really cant fully comprhend how many people have been there over that time. There was this grave yard, not really a grave yard in the usual sense because there werent any corpses buried there only the tomb stone, but there were over 300,000 tombs. There were small one of course but most were pretty big and there were a lot of enormous ones. And only in modern times was there something like a cable cart to get to the top of the mountain, people carried these giant stone monuments up the mountain.

We stayed in a very traditional Japanese house with tatami and futon. The weather ontop of the mountain was cold but it almost felt like inside was colder. I don't know how people survived in olden times if this was traditional. The next morning we had to sit through two meditation sessions, my legs hurt so much. For dinner and breakfeast we had vegetarian meals, which there are good japanese dishes like yakisoba that dont use meat but what we had was really weird and crazy stuff. For lunch we got to eat out and everyone was dying from some meat.

On tuesday I started my audited regular konan class. It was pretty interesting, its a large lecture class so I don't have to worry about being called on for questions but I think I only understood maybe a 1/4 of what the teacher was saying. They then passed out this questionare (on GIANT pieces of paper I dont get japanese printers) and it was interesting because there is the normal kanji for blue, but there are also older ones that arent used very often and it asked you like when you see blue kanji 1 do you think of blue skies or blue water or blue paint and when you see blue kanji 2 do you think of this etc... I of course only saw the first one so I couldn't really do much of it. The teacher also came up to me and said hi and asked my name, he also gave me the text book. I was really surprised at that. There isn't any furigana (small text in the alaphabet like script that is put above the kanji so you can pronounce it without knowing it) so its going to be very difficult if not impossible to read but I'll give in my best shot. I've been thinking I need to get one of the electronic japanese dictionaries, I have this DS software that is a dictionary but its pretty limited I'm often finding that the word I'm looking for isn't in there and it doesn't always give actual definitions. The stand alone electronic dictionaries (denshi jisho) are expensive, like $300 so I need to be a little cautious. I get $800 a month and want to stay around $400 in spending so I can come back home with some savings to pay off loans

well thats it for now

otaku-ness

2008-09-23T04:28:00.000-07:00

For this blog I'm going to talk a little about the otaku culture in Japan.

I live in nagata, kobe, it is on the western half of town. In the center of town is a district called sannomiya, sannomiya is the place to shop in Kobe. Right next to the station is a big mall like place, I say mall like because it doesn't have exact enclosures besides the roof and doesn't have a definitive beginning and ending, it kind of blurs together with the rest of town. Anyways I've been there several times and for the first few weeks I couldn't find any anime stores until I stumbleded across Gamers in the basement floor.

Now Gamers is actual very close to a store that I originally mistook for Gamers. I don't know the name of the first store but it is a model speciality store. They have gundams, lots of them. As you enter you see very large glass cases crammed with beautifuly assembled super high end gundam models. They have a good half of the store coverd with display casses of models of all sorts. Mecha, sentai, anime, chibi, disney everything. And again its big I wanna say 4-5 times the size of a normal store in a mall. Gamers itself is slightly bigger then the gundam place, and has a good section of gundam themselves. But Gamers has the regular anime stuff, manga, dvds, wall scrolls, collectable figures, all those nick nacks that you can't get outside of a con.

When I found this place I was pretty blown away, but a few days later a friend showed me on the third floor (well first that there was a third floor) even more anime stores. Enormous ones! Anything you can imagine there is a figure of it. And so many diffrent stores, I think we saw like 10 of them or something.

And along all of these stores are pocket change's worst enemy, capsule toys. We have capsule toys in the US but because no one wants to put in two dollars in coin into a machine and the stigma attechted to fandom (I'll touch more on that later) they are no where near what they are like in Japan. What they do is that there are series produced by various companies and stores buy them from them, put in the label and fill them up themselves. For example there would be an evangelion set 1 and it would have shinji, asuka, rei, gendo ikari, and misato. Now you really can't honestly think "oh well which ever I get is fine I like them all" no everyone has a favorite, you are always thinking "I really want rei, asuka is good too but I would perfer that rei" so when you don't get the one you want, the urge to try again is so strong. You didn't have any eva figures before and now you have asuka but now you really really want that rei. Maybe you finally get that rei but now you have 5 out of 6 of them or something, might as well complete the set. But that last one is espically rare, what do you do? You can just buy the one your missing from a store, for an increased price. Yeah its hard to really understand. Stores buy cases of capsule toys, repackage them with simple bags and price them according to thier rarity. Sounds crazy I know but there are entire stores that do nothing but this.

But that raises the question "why the interest in toys? Just because you like a show why buy toys for it?". Its a good question and I think I am beginning to understand. So as awesome as the stores in Sannomiya are, my freind kou showed me an anime store in Osaka. Wow. The girl at the counter was cosplaying for crying out loud. They had the exact sailor mars costume angie made from scratch and soooooo many toys. I found the japanese voltron! it was called lionbots. I wanted to take a picture but kou said I shouldn't. And I also found the gekiranger toys I specifically wanted to buy in Japan. rinlion, gekibat and gekiwolf. So a year from now when I get home I can form the coolest robot name ever geki-rin-bat-wolf-touja! But when I found it I didn't decide right away. I felt really childish buying these toy robot animals, and I didn't want to be super nerdy infront of kou but when I went to pay I saw two busy men buying some anime figures and paying a lot for them. I guess there really isn't any reason at all to feel nerdy or childish about giving into otaku-ness so much, which is a reason I really love this country.

We then went to yodobashi. Yodobashi is one of the world's largest electronic stores. I say that only because I can't possibly imagine a store being much bigger. Imagine the largest best buy and stack 6 of them on top of each other. On the 5th floor of yodobashi is the video game and toy section. They have a regular kid toy section and they have I guess big kid toy section. The big kid toy section had pallets stacked chest height of gundam models being grabbed left and right. Expensive ones $30, $40!

So my working thesis on to why it is ok to send a weeks paycheck on plastic figurines of fictional robots is that Japan never lets things not be cool. Dragonball is the best example of this. Dragonball Z started in 1992 I believe and ended in like 1997. So Dragonball Z is very old but you still see dragonball z figurines, dolls, posters, dvds everywhere you go. The DBZ opening was even playing on the display TVs at yodobashi, you can't escape it! In the US DBZ was cool for a while but then cartoon network stopped giving it prime time viewing, the toys let up a little bit, there weren't many DBZ games out for a while and the fandom died off and moved on, so when it started back up it just couldn't regain its popularity. Since I'm sure the first episode of DBZ there has been capsule toys and DBZ ads in Japan non stop. The DBZ fandom in Japanese otakus is constantly being reinforced. Gundam is much the same way every year a new gundam with new models to buy and because it never lets up there isn't a stigma against liking it past a certain age. It would be an interesting social experiment to see if you ran toy commercials on pre-teen shows if you could get them to stay interested in toys.

Wow I've typed a lot and I haven't even goten to the most important part, I went to Toei Uzumasa Eiga Mura! This was THE thing I wanted to do in Japan and there were a few things that were really cool I'm glad I got to see but the rest was very disapointing. First the good. I saw a kamen rider show. I'm going to upload the video you might want to skip around I recorded like half of it and some parts have long dialog. The fights were so cheesy I couldn't belive it. But thats what the live shows are all about. Kamen rider is famous for his motorcycle but since this is a live show KR Den-o came in on a bicycle. Oh man so silly. They did do some cool flips and a KR kiva did signature poses. Really check out the video its worth it.

Second awesome part I saw the super sentai museum! Again I took pictures of everything but wow the gods from majirangers, were so freaking cool and well just look at the pictures. I think these were the stunt double costumes because they look a little cheaper then the show. They also had the history of J-hero time line starting from the 50s. I wish I could get a printed copy of that or something. After we were done there I felt like my otaku-ness had reached a whole new level. Really blew me away.

But if you aren't staying in Kyoto I don't recommend making a special trip just for this place. It doesn't have enough content to last all day, maybe 2-3 hours tops. They film samurai tv dramas here so that means that large section of an already small amusement park are cut off. They had little presentations like mock sword fighting and sound effects with this ninja battle but they were rather lame, crowded and we only caught the last half of them. There just wasn't anything to really do. Oh there was the, sfx corner and it was a freaking animatronic dinosaur that would come out of the water and spray a mist out of its mouth. The mouth didn't move just the head rose above the water. It was just retarded. I was really expecting some place that you could get lost in because there were so many houses and having tons of extras walking around. There was an episode of deka rangers where they went here and it was just nothing like that. We didn't really get to see much of kyoto but its much more spread out and open as compared to osaka. Kyoto is more like a regular american city I think.

Wow wow wow, I talked a lot okay I got to study some kanji bye everyone

Another week

2008-09-20T17:12:00.000-07:00

It's been a week or so since the last post and I guess there hasn't been anything too major happen. After having monday off for senior citizen day classes were in full swing and my frustration of my classes goes all over the place. I'm in the highest Japanese language class somehow and everyday it goes from "I hate life" to "that wasn't so bad". I have two teachers tanaka-sensei and morikawa-sensei. morikawa-sensei is fun energetic person who while speaking difficult Japanese understands that we aren't fluent so tries to talk accordingly. Tanaka-sensei is not as animated as morikawa but for some reason thinks she needs to talk in that high pitched anime school girl voice. It's really annoying, like nails on the chalk board. Tanaka-sensei also just seems to talk completly normal japanese so I have a really hard time understanding here. Sometimes I'll go like 5 mins without understanding anything then she asks me a question and I'm completely stumped whats going on.

The grammar, the vocab and homework are all ok so I know I can get a decent grade in the class atleast but in class it is really stressful. I think I would like to move to the lower class but thats not possible. Because so many people moved from C class to D class that no one from E class can move down to D. Which isn't fair, also I'm getting a little screwed on it because at U of A I get credit for the next two Japanese language classes which use the same text book as C. So even though I am taking a really high level class I am only getting an intermediate level course credit. Oh well I guess.

Oh also I'm going to audit a real Japanese class. Like a class for Japanese students taught in Japanese. It's really scarry, thats an incredibly high language level and I probably wont be able to follow any of it in class or be able to read any of the assignments. But it is an audit so I can't fail it, the teacher can drop me if things get really bad I suppose but I really need to do this becauase its such a rare opportunity. How many people can say they really know what its like to be a Japanese college student. Also great way to make freinds who don't use English a lot.

Oh yeah freinds! I'm finally starting to create some sort of social life outside of the ryugakusei (foreign exchange studnets) I went to this online penpal place and put in a profile saying I live in Kobe, speak moderate Japanese and if freinds want to practice thier english thats cool and I got tons of emails. I made one freind who goes to Konan as well, his name is Kou and he is really cool. He came along with me and some other ryugakusei to sannomiya (I guess the shopping center of kobe) and one guy wanted to get a cell phone and he stuck around for 2 hours while we got it all squared away. Another ryugakusei called Matt is insanely good at Japaneses and he actually did most of the translating but Kou helped here and there, it was really nice of him. Kou's kind of funny because he wants to get an american girl freind but worries he's too shy. I keep telling him that the ryugakusei girls want to talk to Japanese guys and I know in general that those otaku girls LOVE japanese guys. So I'll help him get a girl maybe he'll return the favor.

Also we had a ryugakusei/konan student party. There is this thing called the big brother and sister program where konan students emailed us and we talked throughout the summer. My sister Eriko couldn't come (I've yet to meet her actually) but I spent like 5 hours talking to people in half english half japanese. It was so much fun. And there is one girl named Aya who started to text me last night so thats pretty nice too. One Japanese guy said he was really jealous that all of the ryugakusei get attention from girls just becasue they are gaijin (foreigner). I told him he looks white he should just pretend to not understand Japanese very well.

Also also on Friday I meet with someone from the kyudo club. It was really windy because a typhoon was passing through Japan so practice had been cancelled but he expalined everything to me and two other ryugakusei. He spoke only Japanese so it was a little ackward but we got through the conversation and all of our questions asked. This is an expensive hobby and he didn't know if we should buy all of the stuff if we are only going to be here 9 months. The paper he gave us put the estimate at around $800 for the bow, arrows, hakama, uniform, gloves, casses, stuff like that. We don't have to buy anything at first but I'm thinking I'm okay with buying most of the stuff and maybe trying to rent something or just paying the $800. Because while I'm in Japan I want to do something very Japanesey and kyudo is definately something cool like that, and also unlike kendo, kyudo isn't all that well known in the states so its something extra special

Finally (much longer post then I thought) I went to a No play last night. I could not understand anything that was going on or a single word that was being said. I really thought they were speaking Chinese at first. There was a whole lot of that traditional japanese background sounds, like the stuff you see in a samurai anime or something and a lot of odd jagged movements. Its not something I would ever want to watch again, and I don't think its something that most Japanese people enjoy either because the audience was like 90% elderly people. Most Japanese people aren't that short in reality but the elderly just shrink a lot. So I really felt like a giant there.

Gosh I thought I didn't have anything to talk about this week but I ended up writting tons, whew well see ya later

Osaka

2008-09-13T17:22:00.001-07:00

Well yesterday was an adventure, we went to Osaka! We all met up at okamoto then took the train to umeada. The train ride wasn't too long maybe 40 mins ish or something like that. In the US when you go between cities you have long stretchs of nothing, this wasn't the case, it was buildings along the entire way, there wasn't a distinct line where one city ends and another begins. We get off at the station, and its much bigger then the one at Sannomiya, we get everyone situated (we traveled in a large group) and headed of to yodobashi electronic store.

Yodobashi is freaking huge! Imagine a best buy, fill it with twice as much stuff, then stack 5 more of them on top of each other. Oh man it had everything, an entire floor for cell phones, a floor for cameras (which everyone was so sure they were getting a better deal there but I dont think so), one for TVs, computer parts, and then one for video game and toys. The video game toy floor was crazy. They had hundreds of gundam models (even a 5 foot tall display by the enterance) and all of the kamen raider, sentai, transformers stuff you could ever imagine. I even found a model for the car voltron ( I forget what it was called in Japanese). I really wanted to buy a lot of the stuff there but it came down to, I don't want to carry it all day and I don't have that much room in my room for little nick nacks and I don't know how I would get it back to the states. But in the game section I found a DS stylus pen that I had wanted and lots of other cool things like the wii neo-geo fighting stick. Also today the newest version of pokemon came out, platinum, came out so lots of kids had those paper burger king esc hats on but for the new pokemon in the game. In the cell phone section I found this really cool cell phone decale. It is the nerve logo in shiny metal and it looks really nice on my phone.

From there we decided to head off ot Osaka castle. We had a little adventure getting a big group of people from varrious stations on the subway but when we got there it was pretty breath taking. Osaka, like all of Japan, is very crowded but in the center is a giant park that the castle creeps up over the tree line. We walk for a while and see many really cool things that I took pictures of but when we finally get to the castle itself, it kind of takes you back how big it really is. The inside is actually a museum, which is still pretty cool. There were lots of things that made me wish I knew more about Japanese history because they had things like THE sword used by some famous samurai. The view from the top was pretty amazing, I took pictures but I dont know if they even do justice to have awesome everything was.

After words we headed back the way we came and got to the umeda stations. The problem with big groups happened as we ended up waiting half and hour because some one got seperated for some reason. I don't quite know two people were kind of taking over as leaders so I was just following along but even with cell phones we couldn't keep track of everyone. I started to read this manga I picked up for 105 yen at that book store and was really impressed with myself that if I don't worry about looking up every word I can have a pretty good reading comprehension. Eventually we all ended up in this shopping plaza and had some over priced food before going up to the ferries wheel.

The ferries wheel was also very awesome, my camera for some reason simply could not take usable pictures at all. It was really cool seeing Osaka from that angle at night, really amazing. From there I just headed back home, it took about an hour from station to station. It was a really cool day.

Things are good but...

2008-09-11T00:42:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling a little pessimistic right now but try not to take it as not being grateful for this really amazing experience but I do have a few complaints to vent.

The first is with my host family. They are really nice people, Okasan is willing to do anything to help me out and does all of the housework. However I can't get much of a conversation going with her. The language barrier is one thing, speaking Japanese is by far my weakest point and I'm really disappointed with myself in that regard but I think if she spoke English we wouldn't talk all that much more either. She's just one of those people that like there isn't a huge personallity click or something. Like I feel like I'm living with an astranged aunt or something. So when I hear how much people are having with their host familes, playing games, talking a lot, doing things, etc I get really jealous.

This jealousy wouldn't be so bad if I could meet some Japanese people, which leads me into my second point. The foreign exchange program is offset of the regular school schedule by 3 weeks. That means until like the 19th or something the school is pretty dead and none of the clubs have started up. I appreciate that we could have some time to get to know the campus before it became crowded but I think it was a pretty annoying move on the schools side. I do have 2 penpals that I have talked to for like 3 months and both of them are too busy to hang out. I'm getting pretty frustrated about that I mean I flew 14 hours to get here and you can't take 2 hours out of your day to show me around this foreign city?

That ends my rant but I do have more to talk about. By some bizzare stroke of luck I somehow managed to get into the highest difficulty Japanese class. Seriously I don't know how it happend. The first day everyone took the same test. The next day 7 people took test 3 while everyone else, myself, took test 2. If you took test 3 you were supposed to go to class D or E and test 2 people were A B or C. I'm really confused about it. This class is advanced Japanese, we are reading news articles, I don't know if I can do it. I never actually took an intermediate class, I only read the book for it. In the class I am for sure the bottom 3 on speaking ability, like I know I can study well enough to score high on the tests but in class it is stressful. We have two teachers, because its too many hours a week for one teacher to have or something like that, and they are both nice but one talked much simpler and slower then the other. Also there are two French guys there who are near fleunt (pera-pera) but their French accent is so strong I can not understand anything they say.

I got a cell phone and opened a bank account. Cell phones are really weird in Japan, you get a really crappy amount of out going calls but get unlimited incoming. Also everyone emails rather then SMS because SMS only go the company your on. I ended up going with AU because the only other feasable one, softbank, could only do a one year contract at a single store in sannomiya and you had to buy the phone right out. I really wanted a nice TV phone or something like that but I ultimately decided that for 9 months it wasn't worth the money to get a cool phone. Oh also two cool things Japanese phones do, the first is that they have a barcode reader. In Japan on advetisements you see square barcodes, you use the camera on your phone and the phone will display information like a web link, phone number, etc and you can store that in your address book right away. The second thing is IR sending. You can send info about your phone, such as number, name, info, picture of you, birthdate to someone by just point the phones at each other and pressing send. Its way easier then typing it all in and creates a sort of social event of collecting phone numbers.

Well I've talked too much and should get back to studying, bye everyone

Starting to get used to this place

2008-09-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

Well it seems like life here is starting to normalize. Nothing incredible amazing happened this weekend. I did spend a lot time inside watching TV with host-mom, only news type shows but all of Japanese tv is weird. Also I went to Sannomiya by myself on Sunday.

I gotta say something about the tv first. Non stop the news has been covering a story about this one particular sumo wrestler and I couldn't figure out what he did until I asked kasan(host mom) and she said he test positive for marajuna use. I was pretty shocked. Like in America I'm pretty sure only possesion is a crime and tons of celebraties and politicians have admited to trying pot and here in Japan the fact that a somewhat famous person used pot is big enough news that it needs 24 hour coverage. Just crazy.

Getting to Sannomiya it self was pretty easy, I took the kobe line from maruyama station to shinkaichi station (last station everyone gets off) then follow the signs towards Osaka and get on. Sannomiya is a really nice shopping center with hundreds of small and large stores very close to each other. I checked out a book store and thought it was a pretty small one or something but was really surpised when I saw that it was 6 stories tall and each floor was enourmous. I think in all it was bigger then the u of a library. The manga section was also huge, like atleast 10 giant isles just jam packed. I ended up getting shounen eesu (one of those various manga in one giant book things), a faimatsu magazine (gaming) and terebikun (tokusatsu magazine designed for kids). I also went to an electronic store and found a really cool video game section with a giant MGS4 old snake statue and all sorts of new and old games and I also saw that the TVs are like twice the price here, I don't get that.

On the way back I did get lost because from sannomiya station I did take the wrong direction train, realized it then got off after a few stations waited for the one going back the right direction found one, got on it then it stopped again at sannomiya. I waited a bit then it went backwards to the wrong direction again. I got off at the first station and asked this japanese girl and she was really helpful, apparently you have to take the express train to go back, I don't know how I'm supposed to know stuff like that but oh well.

Videos taken from my first week

2008-09-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Host Family

2008-09-05T05:34:00.001-07:00

Firday the 5th of September

This has been the scariest day of my life but at the same time the day that I realized that I am the luckiest guy in the world. Today was the day that we met our host families. We ate breakfast as normal then went back up to get dressed for the party. I asked the front desk for an Iron, which I should have done in Japanese because the guy seemed to have a little bit of trouble understanding, then started getting ready. We all finished up and packed up all of our stuff and I called maintenance to pick up the iron, I did that in Japanese but it didn't go as smoothly as possible. We then went from a few different rooms and had some of the KIEC staff tell us some things about being polite to the host family and what not.

Then came the big moment where we gathered in an line and they called the host family and us. I was getting so nervous. I don't know why I have spoken to people who only know Japanese before but it was really getting to me. Then I finally got to meet Otoshi-kasan. She scared me a little bit because she, and I mean this in a nice way, has kind of a crazy old lady look to her. The conversation at first was a little rough and difficult but then the party started and we could mingle and eat. She talked a lot with all of her friends and at this point I was kind of thinking “oh jeez what have I gotten myself into” After the party we got into her car, which is really nice, and we drove to the ward office.

Along the way we said a few things but this language barrier was getting rough. Well I mean it was possible but I was nervous and bumbling with my speech left and right. I got to see a really nice view of Kobe though. Anyways we go to the court house type thing, uh municipal office maybe? And we got my gaikokujin paper work thingies and there was one girl who talked amazingly fast. I could not keep up. It was a normal office but everything being in japanese it was just so new and ,of course, foreign. Oh another thing I noticed, Japanese people always seem to back up into a parking spot, usually at great effort. When we got the house she backed up with her side next to the wall then got out the passenger side.

The house though, this was what made me realize how lucky I am. Its freaking huge for a Japanese house and really good size for an American one. My bed room is a 6 tatmi size room which, if my family is reading this its a little smaller then Jessie's room. Next they have a freaking HUGE tv. Probably a 52 lcd or something. And Japanese TV is almost all HD, I really like that. Also we talked about the rules and the only thing she cares about is that I tell her when I'm coming home each day. If I'm going to eat dinner with friends just call her by 4 or 5 so she wont make as much and if I'm going to stay later then normal just give her a call. She also said I could have parties here. From the start of the day my nervousness was at an all time high and by dinner it had dropped quite a bit, until I finally understood about Stephan. Stephan stayed with them as a foreign exchange student 2 years ago and became such good friends he lives with them while he works as an English teacher. So I have an emergency person to talk to if I have to, and it shows just how freaking awesome they are.

All of this has made me realize that my life has pointed me down this amazing path by all of the things I thought were misfortunes in the past. Not being able to move to Florida, moving back in with my parents, not being able to be a foreign exchange student right after transferring to U of A, all of that put me on the path of having the best possible experience in Japan and probably the most amazing thing I will ever do in my life.

Oh Japan

2008-09-05T05:31:00.001-07:00

I've seen the weirdest and coolest thing today on the train. It is an automatic window fogger. Not a window defogger but one that will fog up on purpose. We were looking out the window at the city view and all of a sudden the window was too foggy to see out of. I was confused but thought we passed by some steam vent or something like that but before I could think about it, the window was clear again. I kept my eye on it and realized that at specific times it instantly fogs up then instantly clears. The reason I believe is that certain houses want the extra privacy so when the train gets to a certain area it prevents the riders from seeing. Its cool and awesome but at the same time not entirely necessary. Very Japanesey.

Today we had a tour of downtown kobe with Ryo, Yuki and Mai. They all were very friendly but our Japanese and their English skills held back the conversation a little bit. But Kobe is a huge city! It has those giant crosswalks, it has a china town and it has giant sky scrappers. I wish I could take the time to take pictures of everything. Thats kind of becoming a problem that there is so much cool new stuff that I want to take a picture of and share with everyone but I simply don't have the time for everything.

Also I wish I could get some more internet time. Just a few minutes today after lunch was just enough to update a blog and send everyone messages. I have so much I want to tell everyone its a little frustrating being held back.

The rest of the first day

2008-09-03T20:52:00.001-07:00

(8:22 pm)

Uh lets see where did I leave off? Well we met up after that little break in the schedule (thats when I posted the last one) and we headed over to this Japanese style restaurant. It was a very unique experience for sure. We entered this building on one of those business alleys that aren't exactly crowded but wide-ish. We enter it then go up a lot of stairs and enter this room with three long tables low to the ground. We take off our shoes and put them in a shoe locker then sit down at the tables, the floor is sunken there so it felt like sitting normally but you weren't. Also in the center, sunken into each 1/3 of each table was this wok type thing with cabbage and what i think is chicken.

The waiter came in and turned on the gas oven below each to get it start cooking. We didn't know what to do exactly, like when it was ok to eat so we just waited a while until someone took the initiative and grabbed some. It was good slightly spicy. There was also a salad that had lemon rines in it. I don't know if the rines are supposed to be eaten or not, it tasted terrible (I only took one bite). Then he brought out what he called pizza but was basically a cracker with corn and tiny fried whole shrimp. The shrimp part of that was weird to see but didn't have any really texture when you ate it. The little shrimp looked like dead bugs so you had to make sure not to think about that part of it too much. Then he brought out this pasta which was like spaghetti but um cold and like I guess a little bit more of a fresh taste.

Then came the thing that really threw me off, he brought french fries, onion rings and rice cracker like thing. The rice thing looked like styrofoam but tasted like a regular rice cracker thing. There was also three more dishes a fish something in a light soup, yakisoba, and something closer to pizza but had weird japanese twists on them. I had a piece of the potato one myself. It was really cool eating like that, but I would have enjoyed it more if I was just feeling like myself. I'm tired and my stomach keeps acting up.

We walked then took the JR line to sumiyoshi then at that station transferred to rakko-liner and road that for four stations until island center. We got back and I checked out the 100 yen store, I was surprised by the quality of stuff they had. They had belts and hats and slippers, I was really surpsied. I bought a hankerchief because bathrooms don't have paper towels and one of those colapsible fans because geez the humidity just destroys you, oh yeah and also a DS screen protector (I need to see how that one goes).

I also tried to find some place that I could buy aspirin or some sort of stomach relief. I tried the family market and they didn't have it but they did have some really cool dragon ball items like a big dragon ball pillow and a Bulma statue and chibi goku plushies for 200 yen. If I was at a con and saw those for 2 bucks I'd buy them all but I had to stop myself because I need to be very cautious with my money until the jasso money comes in and where would I put something like that. I went to the mall thing again looking for somewhere to buy some medicine, and I found a pharmacy but it was closed, I continued walking in it but then all of a sudden I was back in the hotel. It was really confusing.

Japan has a weird night life it looks like. From what little I have seen it appears that people have specific destinations that they go to in the evening and thats that. By 8pm most people on the street are just a few stragglers trying to catch up. Well I sure wrote a whole lot for one day. I guess as my first full day in Japan it wasn't too bad. It could have been much better if my stupid body would just work with me here but I've seen more new things in one day then I did all of last year.