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
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
mo ichi do
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
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
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Himeji Castle
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.
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
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)
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Another week
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
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
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Nothing particular
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
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
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
koyo san
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
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
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