Bring forth the almighty hat!!!!

Ok, so I haven't been up to much these past couple of days... That's Ok though, I got a hat! Why a hat you might ask, don't you have enough hats Chris? Heck no! I'm merely getting started on my hat collection, lets see....hats I'm proud to own. There's my Chuck hat, which my mom bought for me in florida as it looked like Chuck Kuchler's hat, which I climbed Mt. Fugen with. Then there's my florida waterproof hat, which I bought on a trip in florida because I didn't like all the rain falling on my head, so thus I bought a waterproof hat, which can also become a normal baseball-looking hat. Then there's my straw hat which I bought for kimono wear, it's been featured in the past, not on this blog though. Here's a picture though of said hat, please ignore the messy room.

Samurai Hat!

Let's see, oh yes, then there's the renaissance hat! That hat is really cool as well, it was kinda expensive because it was made out of all leather, but nevertheless, a hat worth buying, you might have seen it on my Facebook profile for a while. Shown here...

Renaissance Hat!

And now... the moment you've all been waiting for, bring out the new hat!!! *Fanfare and whatnot*



Why go through all this trouble about hats you might wonder, well, personally, I like hats. I don't wear them often, but they're always nice to have for those occasions you need a certain hat for. When I have my own house, my basement is gonna be lined with hats, swords, wall scrolls, and figurines, and it's going to have a tatami mat floor. Getting the tatami mat floor might be kind of difficult as I'll have to import the stuff from Japan, but it's gotta be about as expensive as some nice tile right?

Anyways, if you haven't guessed it already, I haven't been up to much these past couple days, just been going to school, getting some homework done, and walking around taking pictures of the plants here. One other piece of news not related to nature and school, I bought this DS game yesterday which is basically a Japanese/English dictionary, and it allows you to write kanji in to find out they're meaning, basically it's a really cheap, effective pocket dictionary, not all the features of one of the really nice ones, but it's a third of the price and it lets you actually write in the kanji, the trick is guessing the stroke order, this thing is like one of the most practical things I might have ever owned, other than my computers. Like I said though, the rest of this week has been taking pictures of pretty flowers because we totally don't have enough of these things growing in the US.





I like this one especially cause Yuna-chan found it and gave it to me....


Well, other than flowers, the insects are starting to come out. I haven't gotten bit by a mosquito yet, but judging by what I've seen so far, the first mosquito that bites me is gonna be like the size of my head or something. Just yesterday I saw the biggest bumblebee I've ever seen just flying around, it was too erratic so I couldn't get a picture, but I did take a small video recording of it. I'm uploading it now, not sure how long it will take, but once it's finished, I'll post the link.



Another thing that amazed me and freaked Sharon out was what I think was a mayfly. However, this thing was as big as my cell phone, I was entering the gym and I just saw the thing hanging on the wall. Even managed to get a picture of it without the darn thing flying away on me.



So yeah... like I said, first mosquito is gonna be like the size of my head, and seeing the head is one of the hotter parts of the body, it'll just end up skewering my brain, too bad it has to pinpoint a vein, otherwise it's just hitting brain tissue, muHa! So help me though if it knows that piercing a skull is too difficult, if that thing knows it can pierce any other part of me and get blood, then I'm done for. Golden Weekend is fast approaching, what I do I have no clue, hopefully it will be fun.

Fun weekend indeed...

This Saturday, Sharon, Trevor, Kiersten and I went to Nagasaki's Chinatown section, and needless to say we found some pretty neat stuff there.



We ended up walking through the entire single street the first time through, hardly stopping at any stores, just seeing how much of a chinatown it was. It was actually rather small, only one street spanning about 3-4 blocks. When we got to the end, we had lunch there, being that I didn't want to spend a whole bunch of money on lunch, I bought a large tub of strawberries for 200 yen, and that was my lunch. It was a beautiful day out, not too hot, not too cold, just right. Shown below was the small park we had lunch at.



We then walked back through chinatown, taking our time checking out each shop just to make sure we don't miss something really cool. Laura, you can put your worries to rest, I found a large fan for you that you can hang up on your wall if you so choose, you'll have to wait to see what it looks like though, muHa! I found a nice chinese shirt, which I bought because it was an American XL size and it looked really nice, my host mother absolutely loved it.



I also found geta sandals much cheaper than the ones I originally purchased, and being that those ones are a tiny bit small on my feet, I'm considering taking them back, getting a refund, to go buy some bigger ones I found in Chinatown for like half the price. They also had the ultra tall version too, haha, I might get them if I can find a XXL size.



After that we went to Youmesaito to meet up with the rest of our group for the Tall Ships Festival. I went down into the grocery store and bought a 4 pound meal. For supper I had sashimi, bread, CC Lemon, and some Asahi Dry. The ships were very tall and had so many wires.




It was pretty brisk and windy that night, all the Japanese and Chinese were freezing their butts off, it was rather funny because they kept asking me if I was cold, but I was like no. I was in a t-shirt and shorts, and the Japanese are in jeans, coats, and long-sleeved shirts. We waited around for about 2-3 hours for the fireworks to start, the ships looked pretty cool at night.



Finally the fireworks started and I got a chance to try the fireworks setting on my camera, it looks so cool. Here's the entire album of Saturday and Sunday, it has all the pictures of the fireworks, as well as all the pictures we took on Sunday when we went to the Udon shop, and then walked all the way back to our house, picking flowers and taking pictures along the way. Golden week is fast approaching and I'm not sure what I plan on doing. I'm not sure if I'm invited to go do stuff with my host family, or if I'm supposed to make my own plans, well anyway, I'll figure something out, it will be fun irregardless.

April 26th-27th

Photo Albums and pork, oh my!

So last night I had to prepare an American dish for 100 people. My host mother and I prepared the dish on Wednesday in the kitchen they provided us, then we cooked the pork yesterday before the dinner. Needless to say, it came out so good not even superman could eat them without falling to his knees because of the deliciousness. After sitting through the boring meeting before the dinner, which they kindly talked about financial figures and other boring meeting whatnot, we then brought out the dish. I don't have the pictures yet, I will grab them from Sharon later and update this post.




In the meantime, please engorge yourself on all the photos I've taken and organized into albums. I will occasionally make a blog post with the links to recent albums, all these albums are organized by date, so the amount of photos in each album depends how many photos I took, and how often I upload them.

http://picasaweb.google.com/karrakerc/March26th27th?authkey=lWV8InPw32Q
http://picasaweb.google.com/karrakerc/March28th31st?authkey=u_OA2T2dY00
http://picasaweb.google.com/karrakerc/April1st?authkey=VARyYtcSG6A
http://picasaweb.google.com/karrakerc/April2nd3rd?authkey=TYgPxE4kpuk
http://picasaweb.google.com/karrakerc/April4th?authkey=12xF3cJmmoM
http://picasaweb.google.com/karrakerc/April5th?authkey=EkU50-Z5vRw
http://picasaweb.google.com/karrakerc/April7th?authkey=76OXG2J36Hw
http://picasaweb.google.com/karrakerc/April8th?authkey=MxUTWlkqyaQ
http://picasaweb.google.com/karrakerc/April9th10th?authkey=78BdB5jnfJY
http://picasaweb.google.com/karrakerc/April11th15th?authkey=_5qbAB1KVp0
http://picasaweb.google.com/karrakerc/April16thApril21st?authkey=yxUcvnbV-gA

These are albums of pictures when I left for Japan, up to April 21st. When I get the pictures from Sharon, I'll repost in the comment some of the yakuba dinner photos. Until then, the next album linkage will either be on every other random post, or in about a month. Hope you're all enjoying the snow, and can someone tell me how much snow we finally did end up getting in Milwaukee? An email or comment on here is fine.

Mt. Fugen is no more.....

I have conquered Mt. Fugen, once we got to the top, we were walking in the clouds. Mt. Fugen is 1359m high, which comes out to be 4,458.66ft.

It was pretty windy up there, and it was finally cold enough to make me put on my jacket. All that sweat and the shirt I was wearing was like the ultimate air conditioning combination. Once I got off the top though, I had to take the jacket off, and it was just our luck that the clouds finally broke, but we weren't on top of the mountain anymore. Anyways, I grabbed a rock while I was up there for one of my coworkers at Sears who asked me to bring a rock back from Japan. This picture below shows how limited you visibility was, because these people were only like 25 feet away from me.

Posing is so much fun....

Anyways, we got back to the hotel, where I took an awesomely comfortable bath. Then I went back to the hotel room and napped for like an hour. We then went to supper where a fellow student, and some of the university staff wanted to take a picture with me while I was in my yukata.

We had octopus for supper and rice, and all that other good stuff.

After that we conversed in Japanese with other students for our activity for like an hour. After that we had karaoke, then we hit the hay.

On Sunday, we toured the geyser basin and walked around downtown Unzen, there wasn't much to see there. The geyser basin was pretty smelly, but the steam would be a lot cooler if it didn't smell like rotten eggs.

Anyways, got back home yesterday around 2:30pm, so I took another nap until my host mother got home. I had burgers with some of my cheddar cheese, granted the meet wasn't exactly ground beef, it was still quite tasty. After that we had an abridged tea ceremony with the Castella cake I had bought Kiyoko as a present, she said that when we both have more time, we'll do an unabridged tea ceremony, which will be good because I'll have a better idea on what to expect when i start doing that in my fine arts class.

While I was walking to my bus this morning, I took a picture of the bushes they got around here that are in full bloom, and it makes me kinda jealous that we don't have plants nearly this cool back in the States. Anyways, time for lunch, talk to you all later.

Woot, Friday!

The weather's been relatively mild these past couple of days, a little on the gloomy side, but no intense downpours or anything. Yesterday I went to the martial arts club, and being that it was our first meeting, we didn't do too much, we were showed some self-defense and it was more or less just a good way to learn more about the human anatomy and how if I apply pressure here, their arm will bend that way. It was probably more or less geared to someone who doesn't know much at all, but it was still informative. Next week I think we were going to be learning some kendo, which is pretty cool.

Other than that, tomorrow is my field trip to Nagasaki Unzen, we have to meet at the school at like 8:30 in the morning, which is gonna be hard because there are no buses that run all the way up to the school, I'm going to have to hop on the sumiyoshi bus, and then once I get off in Sumiyoshi, I have to hop on a bus that will run me up in front of the mountain the schools on, then walk up the mountain. Once I ascend said school mountain, I gotta sit for like 2 hours in the bus. It's amazing how long it can take to get from place to place in Japan. When we arrive at Unzen around 11:30am, we'll have lunch till noon. At noon, we start our hike up an actual mountain, they put hiking on our itinerary for 5 hours, either it's a very tall mountain, or it's a moderately tall mountain that we're still gonna take 3 hours to ascend, and then sit around for like 2 hours. I'll be sure to take pictures once I'm up there, not everyday u get to climb a mountain. There were also some bushes blooming on my walk to the bus this morning, I'll make sure I get some pictures this afternoon when I have more time, you don't see bushes blooming like this in America.

Well, today I have introductory Japanese and Japanese society. Should be fun in society because only a few people chose that class instead of Japanese culture(which is mostly about religion). Well, I'm gonna wrap this up and go talk to some people, talk to you all next week. To keep you all preoccupied before then, I present to you......



Koi!! Pretty Koi, watch as they swim around, swimming swimming swimming around, like a colorful rainbow.

School has finally started!

It feels good to get back to school, last time I had to worry about homework was last December. Yesterday I had elementary japanese, the homework they gave me was all in kana so I spent many hours translating it to romaji so I could read it, and then I'd still have to look stuff up in the dictionary. Well, despite the fact I got about only 3/4 of the homework done, I sat in on the Introductory class today and talked to the teacher some about the 2 classes. She said that since I haven't fully learned katakana and hiragana, and that I also don't know much sentence structure, I'd probably be better off taking the introductory, even though some of it I will be a little too advanced for. I suppose it's better than struggling in elementary Japanese, cause once I learn kana and proper sentence structure, my vocabulary can really be put to good use. I'll also be getting a conversation partner soon that I will be able to practice my Japanese with, and so it's basically kind of taking a mix of introductory and elementary Japanese. Other classes I'm taking are Japanese business, Japanese management, Japanese society, Japanese Cinema, Japanese traditional arts(kimono tying,dance, flower arrangement, tea ceremony, and calligraphy), and then Martial Arts, which consists of Aikido. I originally signed up for the first traditional arts class, and I was one of the first people to do so, but they stuck Trevor and I in the second class because there was only one other guy there. So the second class is 3 guys and the rest girls. It shouldn't be that bad though, Sharon got into the first class, but then opted to switch to the second class to take it with Trevor and I. I think the first class is about 10 guys and 10 girls, give or take a few guys.
Anyways, other than school starting, it's starting to get up in the 70's or so, we seemed to have a little cold dip with all the rain lately, but it's starting to warm up again. Yesterday, Trevor and I walked all the way from the university to Nagayo, I'd say roughly 4 miles or so. We stopped at electronic stores and book stores along the way, ate some ice cream, good times. Oh, since the last time I posted was Thursday, I hadn't mentioned yet that I bought a yukata in LL size. A yukata is a one layer summer kimono, and being that it's rather casual, I can get away with it being one size smaller than what I am(XXL size). I got some geta(sandals) and an obi(kimono belt), the obi is unlike one I've ever seen for men, it's so cool.

There haven't been many things worth taking pictures of these past few days, however, this weekend I have a school field trip to Nagasaki Unzen. It is basically a hot spring and hotel on a mountain. I think I heard Mark Tiedemann say there were kimono shop up there, but my host mother said there wasn't, we'll find out who's telling the truth. I totally plan on bringing my yukata so I can walk around in it up there, there's no better place to wear such a thing.
I made a dish on sunday for the party at the Nagayo Yakuba on April 24th. My host mother and I decided it'd be a good idea to test the dish ourselves before I made it for a party of 100 people. It was so tasty despite the fact I chose the wrong cut of pork cause I couldn't read the kana(rofl). When we go to buy the pork for the dinner, my host mother is going to go shopping with me so i can get the right cut of pork, and the great thing is the yakuba(city hall) is reimbursing us 100% of the cost for ingrediants. So I get to make an american dish for 100 people, and not even have to pay a cent, and on top of that, I get to eat for free at what is to surely be a delicious party. This is what it ended up looking like...

Once we had cooked all the pork, the marinade was left over, so my host mother and I boiled it down a concentrated marinade and oh man, is it good! I now have a new secret marinade I can use, muha!
Well, other than that, I ended up waiting after school to see if the martial arts club would meet up, strangely it didn't. So I'll just have to wait this Thursday after school and see if someone shows up. Pretty glad I can get back to school, it's going to be a bit less stressful now that I'll be in introductory Japanese, despite wanting to learn at a higher level, it doesn't help that I don't know all of hiragana and katakana, and I never actually learned much for sentence structure. Take care everyone!

It's been kinda rainy...

But that won't get me down, I do enjoy it when all of the Japanese people ask me if I'm cold because i'm wearing a t-shirt and shorts. They're in long sleeve shirts and sweaters and bundled up in coats, and here i am just walking around like it's 80 degrees out. Yesterday it was extremely rainy and windy, it's even worse up on the mountain that the university's on. Yesterday I found like three different kimono shops, none in my size however, there was a winter kimono jacket(not sure what it's actually called) that I could fit into, but I didn't buy it as I need to save my money for an actual kimono or yukata, which should be arriving in bigger sizes within a month or two.

Today we got Sharon her cell phone, it was kind of a headache as we had to buy her phone at a FamilyMart instead of the actual SoftBank because the ones in Sumiyoshi didn't carry the prepaid models. After we went to the last help session for people at a beginner's Japanese level, we walked to a Toys R' Us. Shown below is the group of Japanese students who have been leading the help sessions, they were very nice and helpful.

Anyways, we went to Toys R' Us and they had Bleach figurines there, which seem to be hard to find around here, the only bad part is they're in random boxes so you can't really tell what ur getting. Unfortunately, I got two of the same figurines in the exact same pose I have of a larger figurine, I was so ticked. Now I have some presents at least, or maybe I can sell them to friends at Stout when i return. I'm not lying when I say I've been buying a good amount of figurines, they are very hard to find in America and are usually more expensive. Buying manga and anime is also sort of pointless because DVD's are like 25-50 bucks, and manga is in Japanese. The manga being in Japanese wouldn't be so bad if I had some of the english manga from America with me. Anyways, my bus is leaving soon for Nagayo, so I'll be going now, here's some pictures of the clouds rolling off the mountains.

And so a new week begins...

Well, it certainly was a fun weekend. Sharon and I went to Fukuoka by bus and hung out with her friend Jenny all day. Jenny's boyfriend Hiro joined us as well and served as our personal translator for the day, which was quite a luxury when you can't read most of the signs and stuff here. First we went to a park in the morning and ate some donuts there, and after that we started exploring Tenjin in Fukuoka, there were so many women's clothing stores a woman could walk from one end of Tenjin to the other without setting foot on the street for like 10 seconds. We finally found some cool stores later in the afternoon, I found a bunch of figurines from anime that I bought, and we finally found the elusive sakura kit kat bar. There was about 15 boxes sitting in a 100 yen store waiting to be taken.

We also went to this awesome restaurant, basicaly they give you a plate of raw beef, pork, and chicken, and then you grill it in the center of the table to your liking, after that you dip it in some really tasty sauce.

After we ate, we went to Canal City again in Fukuoka and went into a store I somehow missed the last time I was there. It was the Shonen Jump store, they are the company who produces one of my favorite animes, Bleach.

I found so much cool stuff in there, it was all so cool! After the trip to the Shonen Jump store, we decided to head up to the arcade and just try to win prizes, I didn't find anything there worth taking my money with my luck, so I just went to the capsule station and bought some small Bleach figure capsules. After the arcade, we went back to Tenjin as we were running short on time before our bus left. We had a little bit of time left so we went around some shops and we stopped in another arcade. There was a cool Evangelion figurine which was easily worth 6000 yen, I popped in a 500 yen coin for three tries, and I managed to get it on the first try, it was so cool! I never win at those things and this success has encouraged me to try my luck in arcades more often, cause u can get some nice stuff with a small amount of money and a little luck. After we left the arcade, we went to the bus stop and said our goodbyes to Jenny and Hiro. Sharon and I kept ourselves amused on the way home by making up lines for a Japanese Bleach game on my DS.
On sunday I moved back to Kiyoko's house, it was not fun hauling my suitcase,backpack, and all the stuff I bought through hilly Japan. I took the wrong bus from Sumiyoshi and ended up in the wrong place, luckily I was able to get to where I needed to go after an extra hour or so, the bus driver was very nice and helpful. Then I hauled my suitcase up the hill to my house, which usually takes 15 minutes when you have no extra baggage, but I had to do it with a 50 pound suitcase and such, oh man was I exhausted and hot by the time I got home. Before I went up that hill, I stopped in at SoftBank and picked up my cell phone. I finally have one, whoo!
Anyways, today we took the Japanese placement test to see which level of Japanese we can take, I couldn't read a word on that test because it was all in Hirigana and Katakana, but it was multiple choice so I guessed. I'm hoping I can get into the middle level instead of the beginner's level, I don't want to relearn everything I know already. After that we took a tour of Nagasaki, we went back to Peace Park, which was nice, but I had already seen it, I made a ton of new friends though, which was awesome. Many of them are chinese and are here to learn Japanese as well, most of them speak English well.

Well, it's getting late here, so I'm gonna wrap it up, later everyone.

Busy couple of days

It's been a busy past few days. I've been going to the orientation in the morning and then exploring parts of the city in the afternoon and night. I've also been living the apartment life with a breakfast and dinner basically. Thats the only time I really get to see my new host mom, she's really nice but is busy herself. She likes to make Americanized Japanese breakfasts and it's like the perfect combination. I can't wait for Kiyoko to come back from Tokyo though, I miss our conversations and Nozomi. On Sunday I should be able to go get my cell phone, I got my student ID today and I've already had my health insurance card for a little while. It's either that or my passport and Alien registration card. Yesterday we walked around the city below the university, there were a few shops and a tasty place to eat.

We also sat through our first boring Japanese ceromony. It was the entrance ceremony and I'd have to say church is more interesting. Some of the old guys on the stage were even sleeping, haha.

Today we went over more orientation at school, and then Sharon and I went to go meet our friend Jenny downtown. She was on break from school in the Navy(I guess even the Navy gets breaks). So we did our best showing her around, but we hadn't been in Nagasaki much.

We took her to the Peace Park which is a park with monuments made from all over the world representing peace in honor of the bombing of Nagasaki with the atomic bomb(or something close to that ideal). There's on big statue in particular that looks just like me, so I had to honor it by posing in front of it.

We spent a few more hours wandering around and then we had to bid Jenny and her boyfriend Hiro farewell as they are going back to Fukuoka tonight. Tomorrow, Sharon and I will be getting up at the crack of dawn to take a bus to Fukuoka to spend another day there with Jenny, Fukuoka is so cool. I should probably get to sleep, long day ahead of me tomorrow.

Beware the crow!

Downtown Nagasaki is interesting...

This morning I went to Nozomi and Yuna's school this morning with Kiyoko, it was a beautiful walk and we took many pictures(Kiyoko too...) and lots of them were really cute or funny.

It was a long walk but an enjoyable one, when we got to Nozomi's school, there were many other Japanese children and they just kind of swarmed around me, it was awesome. Kiyoko managed to get all the good pictures which I'll have to snag from her later so I can show you guys. After we dropped Nozomi and Yuna off, we walked into Nagayo and then was picked up by Yuko for the drive to Nagayo Yakuba(city hall). Registration for my alien registration card took no more than 15 minutes, and then after that we were waiting for another fellow student. So in the meantime, Kiyoko took me up to the third floor and she chatted it up with a member of the International club. He asked me if I'd be interested in cooking an American dish for 100 or so people at their dinner on April 24th. The Nagayo Yakuba is going to pay for all the ingredients I'll need to make whatever dish I choose. So I have to find something American, easy to make for 100 people, and with ingrediants available in Japan. That's going to take some thinking.
Well, today I went to downtown Nagasaki after I registered with my city for my alien registration card. That went pretty easily, but we were running late to the Sakura Hanami(Cherry Blossom viewing party) because the other student in my prefecture misunderstood the time it'd be starting. Needless to say, we got down there ok by bus, after we got off, we had to find the massive department store we were supposed to meet our group at 1pm. I asked 2 people for directions, the first guy pointed us in the general direction, but being we didn't know what the place looked like, we were getting turned around by street signs and the map I had, I need a better map. The second person I asked was a nice lady who was also headed towards the store, so we just followed her and got there after a few minutes walk. I can't wait for Japanese lessons to start so I can actually start talking real well with people, I know some basic conversational Japanese as well as survival Japanese(asking directions, time, ect.) There are plenty of good pictures I haven't uploaded to my computer yet of today, but when I get the time, I will do so and update this post with the pictures for your viewing pleasure. Strangely enough, at the Hanami, there were very few cherry trees around us, we were sitting in a part of the park that a large group of people could gather easily and have a picnic so-to-speak. There were cherry trees blooming if you took a short walk around the park, though.

After I got back to Nagayo, I met my host mother in front of a SoftBank(cell phone company). We went inside and found out that I really couldn't have her sign her name as guarantor there, so I'll have to wait till I get my alien registration card which the earlier day is like April 14th or something like that. Tomorrow I will be living with a different host family for a few days while Kiyoko will be vacationing with Nozomi around Japan. I don't mind it at all, and it will be a neat change of pace as I'll get to live with another family for a bit. Other than that, we'll see what tomorrow holds in store for me.