Chris K.'s Japanese Blog

Parting is such sweet sorrow...

2008-07-30T16:03:00.003+09:00

Well, I must say, this last week has been quite a fun one. Can you believe how fast 4 months has gone by? In this time I've learned a lot of Japanese, made a lot of memorable friends, and I've acquired a third family. I guess I'll start with last week friday, last week friday my host family held a farewell Yakiniku party in their garden. I had a great time, we grilled meat and just talked about all the fine times we had. We were out in the garden till the stars came out, after a bit, we went inside and just sat around and took some pictures, I played with the children. I also learned a new game from their father, basically you cross legs at the middle of your shin, and you just keep trying to press against the other's leg until one of you gives up from the pain. Neither of us gave up and it ended in a draw. The results of a drawn out match are long lasting, my shin was sore for a few days after.

On Saturday I went to a matsuri(festival) at a hospital, and watched my host mother hula dance. After that we walked around with the children and their parents, we watched them play some of the games there, and I tried my hand at catching a goldfish, it was very fun. My host mother managed to catch the biggest one in there, haha. I had the weekend off and even Monday too.

However on Monday, I got driven to school to attend a farewell ceremony, there were some snacks and a lot of people. The president of the school gave a speech in a auditorium and after two speeches by students, we went down to the cafeteria to eat. There were three students who did a yosokoi dance for us, it was really cool and i videotaped all of it. However, I can't put it on the internet so you'll just have to ask to see it in person.

Tuesday I had my Oral Japanese test, that went pretty well. After that, I had to wait around for calligraphy. We painted on some really nice paper and it was a lot of fun.

Yesterday was really fun, I came to school in my geta, yukata, and straw hat. I got a lot of compliments and requests for a picture. I continued working on my management paper and eventually got that done, after which i started on the presentation.

Today I had to wake up early, walk to Nagayo's city hall and cancel my insurance. I also had to pay an extra 3500 yen that I wasn't planning on, and that stinks cause I was going to use that money in Fukuoka. It was really hot and then I had to go catch my bus. When I arrived at school I went to class and presented my management paper. I aced the Japanese test, thank goodness too. Tonight I have my last dinner with my host family, I'm going to miss them a lot, they were so nice. Tomorrow's plan is I leave for Fukuoka at 9:45AM, and when I get there I'll drop off my stuff at the hotel. From there on I'll either try to find this festival thats going on in Fukuoka, or I'll just spend the last of the money I've been saving. I land in Chicago on August 2nd at 3:25pm, and now I can finally eat the emergency Craisins! I bought this small on-the-go pack of craisins before I left Japan. I told myself they'd be the "Emergency Craisins: Do not open unless your plane is crashing and you need a last meal, or if your plane has already crashed and you survived, only eat these after all human survivors have been eaten and there's no food left. Can also be used in case a bear attacks you..." See you guys on the other side!

The dog-days of summer

2008-07-22T12:57:00.002+09:00

Well, as you can guess, there hasn't been much going on lately. Yesterday was my last day of Aikido, and my time here is slowly drawing to a close. I still haven't figured out how much I'm going to need to send back to America by shipping, which is kind of troublesome because I really don't want to spend the money, I just have too many diabetic supplies, and those might be the only things I may need to send back(hopefully). This Friday my host family is having a farewell party for me, and we're going to be eating yakiniku, yay!! The Japanese papers have been lying to me this past week, the weather says no rain, and sun, and then when I'm walking around or I'm at school, it just starts dumping rain.

On Sunday I went to go watch my host mother hula dance on stage, the only bad thing was the entire thing started like 50 minutes early, so when she was supposed to go on the stage at 2:32pm, she went on at 1:50pm, and I got there about 2:10pm. So I was all prepped with my videocamera and camera, and then when 2:32pm came around, she wasn't there and I was like huh? I figured they might be running slow, and so I watched a little longer, until my host mother came up next to me and asked if I saw her dance, much to our mutual disappointment. I decided to head back home and wait for her to come back so we could go eat Sushi later on. The sushi we ate with Setsuko, her daughter, was a thank-you present for me taking care of Nozomi a lot. Kiyoko took several pictures as I didn't have my camera, I'll have to grab them from her later on.

As I said, yesterday was my last day of Aikido. I had a lot of fun and I'm definitely going to miss the teachers.

Finally, another chapter on insects in Japan. I was walking home yesterday and I happened to look up above a tree and I saw a monstrous spider which had strung it's web between the power line and top of the tree. I took a zoom shot, and then one panned back so you could see it's size in comparison to the tree and power line, this thing was just huge. On the same day, I was walking along and I saw a cicada on the ground, so I took the opportunity to take a picture, and then I whipped out my fan and had it climb on. Eventually it moved from the fan onto my hand and just stuck around till I set it down.

Well, that's about it, one last thing I have to say is that Modern Japanese TV dramas are stupid. I think the better ones are Japanese dramas set in the Edo period.

A typhoon draws near....

2008-07-17T10:48:00.002+09:00

I'm just writing this to let everyone know that a typhoon is supposedly going to be passing close to the Kyushu district in about two days. Before I came to Japan, I was saying that I hoped to get a chance to experience a typhoon. It's been said that the typhoons rarely come close to Nagasaki, and so you can imagine how excited and lucky I am that one is about to come before I leave Japan. For those who didn't know, I've always been a big weather buff. Extreme weather such as severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, blizzards, and hurricanes have always interested me. Things I want to do in my life would be to chase tornadoes, stand in a few hurricanes, and watch the lightning shows from my backyard. When I was a kid I wanted to be a meteorologist, but ITM has my career path, and if anything I'd like to learn as much as I can about the things meteorologists study.

The cicadas have come out and it's starting to sound like Kansas, but in Japan. I'll take a few better pictures later on, but for now this is one of the cicadas Yuri caught and stuck in a plastic cage. Not a very good picture, but let me tell you that they're big!

Hmmm...not much else to talk about, here's the link to Japan's Meteorological website, and you can track the typhoon!

Why I like America Better!

2008-07-15T12:59:00.002+09:00

I don't have much to talk about right now other than some of the things I miss in Japan that America has plenty of. Don't get me wrong, I love coming to Japan and living here for a while, but if I had to choose between here and America to live, I would definitely choose America. I'm writing this for those people whose dream would be to live in Japan. Let's just assume I was fluent in both Japanese and English, but the reasons why I like America better than Japan are many. Let's start with my biggest complaint about Japan, the lack of air conditioning... It's not even funny how much I've been sweating lately, I've always been a very warm person, but I could always expect to walk into a nice cool house or store to cool off. Japan isn't really the case, very few houses here have central air, and even if they did, they don't turn it on when you want them to. The school is a good example, they have central air but it's just no good at all. The A/C trickles out and you can occasionally feel a small cool breeze. So after I sweat all day at school, take the bus home(which has some good A/C), walk up my mountain and break another sweat, and get home, there's no A/C at all. I sit in front of a fan for about 15 minutes before doing anything else. I can only turn on my joke of an A/C on for a few hours before I go to sleep and then I have to turn it off before hitting the hay.

Now America can be warm sometimes too because we're trying to conserve a little electricity, and that's where the next thing I miss comes in. I miss my car so much, it's my personal audio-playing, stuff-hauling, freezer on wheels. Buses here you have to pay to get anywhere, except my free school bus. To go up my mountain, it costs me 140 yen, which is almost a third of a gallon of gas in America, when driving your own car is so much cheaper in my opinion. The other thing I hate about buses is my tendency to lose things on them, hitting my head on bars and lights, and the fact the schedules are wrong when you really need a bus. Walking everywhere can be healthy, but in this heat I just sweat way too much for me to enjoy any benefits I may or may not be actually getting. Well, enough complaining about the heat, onto the next thing!

The food would be the next thing. I don't have any problems with Japanese food, in fact I like it a lot. It's the things they're missing. Some of the stuff they're missing would be cheap meat and cheese. Japanese cheese is a joke, it tastes like nothing and it's way too soft. The meat is really expensive, buying any kind of beef, even if it's ground beef is extremely expensive. The cheapest meat they got here is pork, and even chicken isn't all that common here. Fish is plentiful and usually a good price, it's also very fresh so that eating it raw is no problem, sashimi is amazing and it's one of the things I'm really going to miss. They don't have gallons of milk, they have it in 1 liter cartons, and it's almost always close to whole milk. I've only found one kind of milk here that tastes like American milk, and the taste of their milk here takes some getting used to. Macaroni and cheese is practically non-existent, and a lot of the things we take for granted like Ranch Dressing, Beef Jerky, and chocolate by the pound can't be found here. Nothing here is really sold in bulk except for rice, and so that means you can't have one bottle of shampoo lasting you for a month, only just a week or two.

Hmmm...the next thing would probably be the job situation. The way you're hired and how you work is so radically different from the United States it's really not worth it to work here unless you want to teach. The only way you can really get hired for a full-time job is straight out of college, changing jobs is really hard and often not worth it, and most wages are seniority and not ability based. So making a decent living of $50,000 a year is nearly impossible coming straight out of college here in Japan. The work hours are long and demanding, and family life often suffers as a result of it. I wrote a 6 page paper on this for business, so explaining it any more than this would be exhausting.

Let's see, probably the last thing would be housing and the way Japanese interact with each other. The housing is often small, and affording a decent house can be difficult. Most houses don't have any form of central A/C or central heating, electricity is expensive and so is phone service. You have to separate all your garbage into one of like 5 or 6 different categories. If you don't, the local neighborhood watch can sometimes track you down and put "social" pressure on you. You're often obligated to do things with the community that you may not want to do or have time for. The Japanese are a very indirect sort of people, they can't always tell you what they want to without being too forward, and that's specifically because if there's direct confrontation, and one of the parties sort of loses out on making a decision, there is a loss of face. The Japanese are a face-saving people and usually try to avoid direct confrontation at all costs. So it can be very frustrating when you want to make a point, but you have to go through all these channels to get something taken care of.

As much as I love Japan for all the awesome things that their shopping has to offer, and as well as their culture. I think one of the things I'm going to miss most is all their festivals and interesting ceremonies. However, I miss my meat-eating, bulk-buying, A/C conditioned, freezer on wheels, cheap cell phone, direct to people life in America. America is truly something to be appreciated, and I don't think I would realize this fact as much if I hadn't lived in Japan for 4 months. I miss you all and I look forward to coming home in 2 and a half weeks, take care everyone!

Happy Birthday Dad!!

2008-07-09T13:04:00.003+09:00

Happy Birthday Dad!! You're now a half century old, another half to go! Just thought I'd let you know I didn't forget about you, and I hope you have an awesome day. I don't have much to talk about today, but I mainly wanted to make this post for my Dad. I started calligraphy yesterday, and there was a beautiful sunset, but that was about it. Calligraphy was pretty fun, but it's hard, especially to use the brush correctly. The sun was a giant orange globe of fire, and it was pretty cool looking. In fact, one of the kanji on those sheets means sun.

Well, after watching the sun set, I played some music on my iPod and I sprinted up the mountain to my house. I was exhausted by the time I got home, carrying a 35 pound backpack doesn't make it easier, but it sure provides a good workout. I got bored later on at night, ooooo.....spooky!

Chomp! Slurp! Devour da' watermelon!!!

2008-07-07T11:35:00.003+09:00

So this Sunday at Iwo Jima was amazing! After I went to church, I went back home and decided when I wanted to leave for IoJima, and luckily Trevor happened to be online and he wanted to go real bad too, because we both agreed it was way too nice to be indoors. We decided to meet in Sumiyoshi at 12:35ish and then we started to get packed. After we met up in Sumiyoshi, we rode the tram down to Youmesaito. After we got off, we went and did some food shopping for our day at the beach, I settled on a bottle of C.C. Lemon, some watermelon, and a loaf of bread. Trevor bought some meat, Aquarius, and sunscreen. After that we walked down tot he ferry dock and purchased our tickets, for 980 yen, we get a round trip on the ferry and admission to a hot springs! How cheap and cool is that?? The ride to IoJima was very refreshing and windy, I took a bunch of pictures and saw the biggest dry-dock in the world, which was apparently in Nagasaki. I also took a lot of video on my video camera too.

After we arrived on the island of Iwo Jima, we made the 15 minute sweaty walk to the beach. I changed into my swimsuit and decided to devour my watermelon before I had to take off my insulin pump. The watermelon was gone, I've never had that much fun eating watermelon before, and I think it was only because I was making a huge mess.

We spent several hours just lying in the sun on these raft that were positioned off the coast, and occasionally I'd dive in and swim around to cool off. I even found a starfish later on, which was cool. Then I took a bunch of pictures as evening wore on...

It was an awesome time though, our friends didn't show up until about 4:45PM, and we had already been there for a few hours. Around 6pm, Trevor and I decided to head to the hot springs at the hotel, it was nice to wash my hair after all that sea water. After the hot springs, I had my supper of a loaf of bread, C.C. Lemon, and beef jerky, yum....After that it was time to catch the ferry back, it was a beautiful night, you could see a whole bunch of stars and even Jupiter. Nagasaki at night was pretty, but I'd have to say the bridge was the must stunning thing.

After we got off the ferry, Trevor and I walked to the tram and headed back to sumiyoshi, and then we parted ways and took our respective buses home. Talk about a good day, I hardly spent any money, and just had a blast there. Now I can say I've been on a beach in Japan/Iwo Jima. Hope you all had a safe 4th of July, see you guys in less than a month!

Ice ages are my friends...

2008-07-04T18:32:00.002+09:00

This last week has been the warmest and most humid so far, right now it's 86 degrees with about 80% humidity. I'm soaked in sweat by the time I make it to school and then I gotta sit through classes like that all day, talk about gross. Anyways, I finished my business paper on time and the presentation went well. I need to make a powerpoint for my anime movie I'm presenting on this thursday, but that shouldn't be too hard. Tea ceremony went well yesterday, and today I went to Yuri's nursery school this morning and watched all the 2-5 year olds sing songs and put on plays. It's for the Tanabata festival thats celebrated in Japan on July 7th, which reminds me...Happy 4th of July everyone!! I really wish I could have joined you in the park for burgers and Alberto's grilled meat, yummm.... I hope that you all have a safe 4th of July and an enjoyable one! Getting back to the nursery school, it was extremely cute, I didn't take thousands of pictures because I spent the time videotaping it all. After it was all done, we wrote wishes down on a piece of paper and tied it to a big stalk of bamboo. The Tanabata festival is a celebration of the constellations Altair and Vega being able to meet only once a year because the Milky Way usually separates the two.

I might be going to Iwo Jima this weekend on Sunday. All depends what everyone else feels like doing. Iwo Jima is an island off the coast of Japan where in WWII, the Japanese holed up and fought to a bitter end with only 216 taken as prisoners, with about 20000 dead over a period of 35 days. They actually made a very good movie about this battle, shown from the Japanese' perspective called Letters from Iwo Jima. It's a war movie, so expect it to be akin to Saving Private Ryan, another good movie in my opinion.

Japanese class is continuing to go very well, I aced this weeks and last weeks kanji quiz, and then we took the time in class to do a little review, and then we wrote wishes down on paper and attached it to bamboo, I also got myself a paper balloon, mines a grapefruit!

Well, this weekend is gonna be a relaxed one now that I got the accursed business paper done! I seriously hated that thing... I can finally enjoy the time I spend lounging around instead of worrying that I'm slacking off and not working on a business paper. Happy 4th of July everyone, and remember, no blowing off fingers unless I'm there to join in the fun, fireworks rock! Here's a little something to stay cool ;)

Cursed Business Paper

2008-06-30T17:56:00.003+09:00

Well, not a whole lot has been going on this past week. Tea Ceremony started in traditional Japanese arts, but it isn't all that enjoyable because many students fool around and act rather rude in my opinion, it just gets annoying. However, the assistants and teacher are really nice and they were fun to talk to once the class was over. Thank goodness that room has Air Conditioning as well, otherwise it'd be no fun at all.

Other than that, I got a business paper that's due on Thursday along with like a 20 minute presentation, and then a round of questions. First off, it's only me and 2 other guys that have to talk for 20 minutes each, while all the other students only have to talk for 15 minutes. It's just because I had the privilege of getting randomly chosen to go on the first week. My topic is American and Japanese Employment Practices, and believe it or not, it doesn't have all that much to do with business. First off I hardly know all that much about getting a job in Japan, much less how it affects the economy. I'm just a little worried that this paper is gonna be 6 pages or so of a subject that doesn't have to do entirely with business. Finding references isn't that much fun either. As far as I see it, this paper is the only bane I have for the rest of the school year, believe it or not but I also have another 6 page paper to write for the business management class, but I know all about the topic! Then I also have a presentation that's due next Thursday, but that shouldn't be too hard because it's for Japanese Cinema. I don't have to write a paper, and at best I have to give a 10 minute presentation on any Japanese Film that I want. The best part is it can be an anime movie I've seen, score!

The rainy season is slated to end by about the middle of July, and so there should only be a few weeks of hot weather. So far for the month of August, Nagasaki received 44.1 centimeters of rain. I totally plan on going down to the beach and smash a watermelon open with a stick while blindfolded, thats as long as I can find someone to help me pay for said melon, the only thing that's cheap over here fruit-wise is strawberries and oranges. Well, I suppose I should try to write another half page of that business paper before giving up for tonight, I seriously hate that thing, and 20 minutes is ridiculous! くだらない！！

Rain, Samurai, and Volcanos too!

2008-06-23T21:29:00.003+09:00

So this last weekend I went to Shimabara, and Shimabara castle. It started off with riding the bus to Morimachi, and then walking to Sumiyoshi, in the rain. After that I got on another bus, took it up to the stop by the school, and climbed up the mountain the school sits on, in the rain. Once I got up there I spent about 15 minutes trying to dry myself off before I sat in the bus for two hours. After I got on the bus, and we left, we ended up stopping at the bottom of the hill for a student who had overslept and was coming in a taxi. After she arrived, we were able to leave after losing 20 minutes. The bus was comfy, I had the back row of seats to myself and I was sitting in the middle seat so I could stretch out. The girl who arrived late cause she had been out partying last night asked if she could sleep in the 2 seats on my right side, and then later another friend of mine came back and asked if she could sleep in the seats to my left, as she also didn't get enough sleep. I played a few games with Trevor and Jesse of Metroid Prime Hunters on our DS. After we were done playing, the tour guide was still talking up at the front of the bus and was rather loud. She was nice, but loud...especially when we were driving aside the ocean, she shouted "Ume, Ume desu!". Which means, "Ocean, it's the ocean!". We stopped for a bathroom break, and I bought a small paper kite for like 315 yen. We hopped back on the bus and she continued her monologue about Shimabara and random other stuff.

We eventually arrived at Shimabara Castle, and the lame thing was that after they got done explaining some of the history of it, we only had like 30 minutes to look around before the bus left to our next location. However, there were many cool suits of armor on the second floor, along with katanas, wakazashis, and a tanto or two.

The top floor had a gorgeous view of the city, as well as a full view of the cloud covered Mt. Fugen that I climbed. After taking a lot of video and a few pictures, I went back down to see if there was anything worthwhile buying in the gift shop, nothing really drew my interest, but I forgot to get a cell phone charm of Shimabara castle, I like to try to get one of unique places I've been to.

After our bus left, we went down and looked at an old house of one of the samurai that lived in this city, it was pretty interesting, though I think I liked the gardens more than the house.

Unfortunately, after that last picture, my camera battery died. I was able to take pictures with my camcorder, but the quality is significantly less than my camera, and I haven't gotten around to uploading them. Anyways, after the samurai house, we went to a place featuring houses that had been partially buried by the Ash that was washed down when the volcano erupted. We went and had lunch after that, and it was pretty tasty. After that we went to the Fugen Disaster Memorial Museum. That place was pretty cool. They had all this footage of the volcano erupting, mudslide, and simulations of the pyroclastic cloud over the city. This museum even had one of the cinematic theatres that showed footage of the volcano through a helicopter, and the floor moved. In the theatre they kinda took you on a ride as the volcano erupted, and I must say it was quite interesting and enjoyable. After that we looked around the museum some more, went up to the observation deck, and then had to leave to go home. Hehe, I bought this little owl, which almost has the composure of a hackeysack, except it's not meant to be used that way. It's pretty fun tossing it around though cause it always lands right side up, because the bottom is weighted. I'll use it to get someone's attention or something, I'll be like, "Hey!" *Throws owl at them* "Pick up your garbage!". Or in this case, I put the owl on top of the bottle of Shimabara shyochu(Japanese Sake) I bought for my host dad and I to drink when he comes home. I plan on keeping the bottle, cause I wouldn't have bought it otherwise. Remember kids, the owl says "Don't drink and drive, or I shall dive-bomb you!"

Ok, well that about does it for the Shimabara trip. That night I managed to catch this Japanese Moth, and it really suprised me because it's much bigger, and it actually looks quite unlike a moth. The only reason we knew it wasn't was because I happened to catch this thing at night as it was flying into the glass pane door towards the light. Don't ask me how I can keep moths and butterfly's on my hand, it's just a natural gift. I also finally got around to taking a picture of the work of art hanging in Kiyoko's tea room. It's a tiger and it's made out of all stone. Pretty cool, huh?

On top of all that, I shaved, and it really suprised Kiyoko and all the people at school.

Yesterday was Nozomi's birthday, and we celebrated it along with his mother's birthday(which was on the 17th of June) with a nice grand supper. We had gyoza, sashimi, cake, chicken, shrimp, sushi and rice!

We had lots of fun, and now Nozomi is 8 years old. Monday was nice because the weather was just gorgeous, it was cool with a breeze and no humidity or rain. Now, for the moment I've all been waiting for!

I made this picture, using the one of me from Shimabara castle, and a picture I took back in Golden Week because it looked like a fuedal Japan. The combination is perfect, muHa! Till next time!

Rain and Nagasaki Medical College

2008-06-17T10:23:00.003+09:00

Well, aside from the rainy season picking up, like lots of rain all day Saturday and Sunday, and even saw lightning and heard thunder in Japan. I didn't even think it was possible for Japan to have thunderstorms. The dog thought so too, because everytime thunder rumbled through the sky she'd go barking her little head off. Kiyoko asked me about lightning and thunder as well, what it was like in the United States. I told her there's so many thunderstorms that nearly 100 people or so a year die from lightning strikes. There are also many instances when a bolt of lightning will strike the ground. Oh ya, on top of that, she found out how much I truly eat when I told her what I usually have about for breakfast. She didn't believe me when I told her that I usually eat 3-5 large bowls of cereal and drink about half a gallon of milk in one sitting. For Japanese, one egg is fine, she was very suprised when I told her I eat about 6. The other day she got to talk to my dad over skype, and he asked her if I eat a lot, she said yes but she didn't realize what he meant all the way. I told her the best way to see my stomach, is as a black hole. That if she ever got a chance to talk to Sharon again, to ask her what my nickname is. Sharon will probably say, "The Black Hole." Kiyoko was worried that I was starving after I told her how much food I can actually eat, I told her that I was fine and not to worry. She knows I like meat, and then she asked about how much meat I eat, I told her in about 2 of my sandwiches, there are about 400g of meat. That if I ever get hands on steak, I eat roughly a Kilogram or more. Well, other than Kiyoko's revelation on how much food I actually eat, it's been boring around here. I spent all day Sunday messing around with skype and my camcorder. I was able to use my camcorder as a webcam, so those of you who want to talk to me on Skype, add karrakerc to your contacts.

Other than that, on Friday I went to the Nagasaki Medical College and Hospital. This medical college is the oldest in Japan, and it was also the only medical college in the world to be destroyed an atomic blast. When we arrived there, we watched a 15 minute video of the aftermath of the Atomic Blast on Nagasaki. It was pretty horrendous and thus I will not show any photos relating to what people physically experienced. Some of the photos depict the range at which the blast affected Nagasaki. The hospital and medical college were roughly 600 meters from the hypnocenter of the atomic bomb.

This is the stone gateway that stood in front of the medical college, it's actually tilting out of it's foundations, and is a good demonstration how powerful the explosion was.

After that we toured the Nagasaki Medical College's Hospital, and I must say it's quite interesting. Mom, I took these pictures for you because I figure you'd like to see their facilities. This first picture is the door to a patients room, the panel tells doctors and nurses who the patient is by touching the LCD panel.

This is a standard room for patients...

Next is the Japanese version of a premium patient's room. You pay 500 dollars for this room, and then 20 dollars per day. They get a bigger bathroom, a fridge, a 27" LCD TV, and even a balcony. Pretty comfortable hospital I'd say.

Here are a few other pictures, they include the nurses station, the guest room, and the X-Ray examination room.

The guy in the picture was the one leading the tour and explaining everything to us. Other than that, it's just dealing with the cursed humidity because the school doesn't turn on the air conditioners till July. Sorry for not posting much lately, we're going to a castle on Saturday, so there should be stuff for me to talk about. Enjoy your coldness and air conditioning people!!!!

Osaka and Kyoto was awesome!!!!

2008-06-09T14:29:00.004+09:00

You know something's awesome when you blow all your spending money. I now have 700 yen in spending money left to my name. However, I can get more spending money if I only eat a bowl of ramen for lunch and 1 chocolate bar a day. I wonder if I'll be able to live without my CC Lemon, I might go into withdrawal. Anyways, this last weekend I finally went to Kyoto and Osaka, we took an overnight highway bus from 9PM thursday night to 7:30AM Friday morning. Their highway buses are soooo cool!

We arrived in Osaka early Friday morning, and began our day by finding our hotel and dropping some stuff off so we wouldn't have to haul it around all day. We had a quick breakfast and after that, I split from the group to go meet a friend from Wisconsin who was also studying abroad in Kobe, which is a train ride away from Osaka. While I was waiting for her to arrive around 10:20ish. I killed time by wandering around this department store I found, it was 2 times cooler than the one in Fukuoka.

Sam and I met up in Osaka station, I took a video on the way to where we were supposed to meet, it gives you an idea what Japan's morning rush is in the morning.

After we met up, we wandered around looking for a place to have lunch. We took a subway over to a different area of the city and had Okonomiyaki . It was pretty good, after that we took the subway again to visit her former host brother at his Tea Accessory shop. He wasn't there, so we waited around outside the shop when I noticed what looked like a boss of the Japanese Yakuza(Mafia). Seriously, slicked back hair, dark sunglasses, sharp suit, and shady car fits the description perfectly. Yes, I did manage to sneak a picture without him seeing me.

There was also a guy waiting in front of the Lawson Store the mafia boss went into just pedaling on his bike, very random.

After waiting a little while, her former host brother still hadn't showed up, so we visited her host mother behind the store, they had a cool garden!

After visiting her a little while, we took our leave and we made our way over to the nerd district. On the way there we found a martial arts supplier along with some katana and even samurai armor.

Soon after we arrived in the nerd district and it was awesome!!! There were so many cool stores, all sorts of anime stores and electronics stores.

I was forcing myself to not spend any money there until Sunday. It was sooo hard, but so worth it. I went to Kyoto the next day, we took a train from Osaka station and it only cost 540 yen. Once we got there, Sharon and I wandered around Kyoto from kimono shop to kimono shop. I didn't find any kimonos my size except for Yukatas of which I already have. I'm going to be seeing a supplier that a teacher her at the university goes through for Kendo about a kimono my size. We went to the Golden pavilion which is one of the famous landmarks that's associated with Japan.

After seeing the golden pavilion(kinkakoju), we decided to head over to ginkakoju(silver pavilion). We took a bus to the closest stop by the temple, and then as we were walking up to the temple, we found a rickshaw service. Sharon and I both chipped in 1500 yen to have a rickshaw take us up to the temple, about a 10 minute ride. I even took a video of it, whee!

There were some cool gravel sculptures there that get destroyed every time it rains, it's a zen bhuddist concept that nothing lasts forever and that you should appreciate something while it's lasting. The temple itself was under reconstruction or something, there was scaffolding surrounding the temple, it was a little disappointing. After that we walked down the street and took a look at the shops, I found a store where everything in there was 1050 yen, I bought a full-length door hanging of an owl at night, lit by the moon, cause I'm a night owl :P .

After that we went to the Gion district, the former Geisha district. There were so many Americans there! There were also many women wearing kimonos, though none were Geisha.

After our delicious supper at the Gion district. We started to head back and we got to see Kyoto tower lit up at night, we were all pretty tired and we didn't feel like trying to figure out how to get to the top.

The next day in Osaka was a real fun one. I spent the entire day by myself, wandering around the nerd district deciding what I was going to spend my money on. Since many of the shops weren't open at 9-10 AM, I spent my time in some random shops that were open, including a vintage weapon shop that had some amazing things there. Every one of the weapons in that shop were real and vintage, I got to take pictures and the shop owner even gave me a book in Japanese and English detailing things about some items there and the stuff he had to sell/auction. Matt and Alex, you would've loved this place.

One of the shops I was wasting my time in while the other shops were opening up had like all the Indiana Jones Toys out in front of the store, it was pretty cool. They also had godzilla ties and stuff which was amusing.

It makes me wonder, why does Japan happen to have all the cool figures and stuff from American Movies. I can't find anything like this in America and they just happen to be in every other shop I visit in Japan. Stuff from Indiana Jones, and more importantly Star Wars. Dad, these things were so cool. I could imagine you just placing it in your office or by your computer desk.

There were countless anime shops, Brian you would have had a blast here.

After blowing all my spending money in the Nerd district, I headed back to Osaka station and got lost looking for the bus station. I eventually found it, had supper at an Udon shop, and then sat down and waited for the rest of my friends to show up. Here's where I took a few pictures of some of the things I bought. I found an R2-D2 Pepper Mill, they also had a soy sauce pourer, but I figured I'd be using the pepper more often so I bought that one instead.

We took the highway bus back, and I actually got better sleep this time around than I did the first time.

I got back home around 9:15 AM, had breakfast, took a shower, and went to school. Thats about the bulk of my Osaka and Kyoto journey, but I had a lot of fun and I'm glad I went.

Soon....very soon.....

2008-06-03T21:51:00.003+09:00

Only 2 more days till I go to Osaka and Kyoto. On top of that, tomorrow after classes are done, Kiyoko and I are going to this kimono convention one could call it. It's being　held over a period of two days in Nagayo, but we're just gonna go for one day. It should be a lot of fun, and I probably won't buy anything unless they have the elusive XXL kimono for a reasonable price. Well, enough about tomorrow...
Today was pretty fun, I had an enjoyable walk in the rain this morning as I walked to my bus stop. It was a light and cool rain, so it was enjoyable.

The Hydrangea are in full bloom now, they are Nagasaki's official flower. The school has a very nice hedgeline of them along the front of the school.

If you're getting tired of pictures of flowers, then my apologies, but asides from the rain and flowers I've been seeing around here, there hasn't been much else. Right now I'm in the process of conversing money, more specifically for this trip this weekend. Once I get back from there, I'll know exactly how much money I'll have to spend. And now...more flowers!! Today we had traditional arts today, and we arranged some more flowers. It looked a lot more extravagant this time than last. After class was finished, I took all the flowers home, and then I did the arrangement for my host mother again so that she could display them in her tatami room.

Well, other than that, we'll see what tomorrow brings, probably many pictures of extravagant kimonos from the convention.

おやすみなさい　みんなさん。

The Rainy Season is...

2008-05-30T19:35:00.002+09:00

Well, not happening yet. We had the first day of the rainy season as a crazy day of rain, but so far haven't gotten anything since. It's actually been pretty nice these past two days, but I don't expect that to last for long. At least the school will finally turn on the air conditioning this Monday. I lovez the air conditioning. Less than a week to go for Osaka and Kyoto, I can't wait. Oh yeah...I actually haven't shown you any pictures from this Wednesday, the start of the rainy season.

Other than that, I haven't been up to much, it's mostly because I'm not going anywhere as I'm saving my money for my trip. I think I'll have more pictures than I know what to do with when I come back from my trip. Let's see, these past two days have been real nice out, not too humid, more on the cool side. Some flowers that have taken several weeks to bloom have started to open up, I walk past these everyday when I'm walking towards my bus stop, and I could always tell when they were going to open up.

I believe this was yesterday, I was in a bit of a rush to get to my bus, as I was a bit behind schedule, but i had to stop and take a picture because I'd never seen it in my favorite bread shop before, the bread shop's name is "Nagayo no Sato" by the way. I wasn't expecting to see this either because I go to this bread shop every single morning before school, but here's what I found.

Yesterday we had another traditional arts class on kimono wearing, and we even learned a traditional dance, it was kind of repetitive, but nevertheless...interesting. The picture below is not the dance we did, but it was just another demonstration. One of my friends actually took video when we did the dance, so maybe someday I'll have that available for your viewing.

Other than that, I'm waiting for the "real" rainy season to kick in. I've already took some video with my camcorder, so maybe someday I'll get that uploaded, if not, I'll do it when I come home. I purchased a license for Quicktime Pro for my windows machine, but it's lacking some capabilities my Mac has, and so this saddens me. Anyways, until next time, おやすみなさい。

Rainy season is starting soon...

2008-05-26T09:39:00.003+09:00

It's starting to get humid...on Saturday it was a torrential downpour all day, I went and bought my bus tickets for Osaka and Kyoto, ended up costing only 17,600 yen. Roughly equivalent to 180 bucks round trip. Only another week and a half to go.

On Thursday, we had Traditional arts again. This time the teacher showed us the various kimonos that women wore. The tomosode and the furisode looked beautiful. A tomosode is a formal kimono for married women, and the furisode is the kimono for young women over the age of 20 and are unmarried. After she helped put the kimonos on, she performed a traditional Japanese dance, it was quite elegant.

On Friday, I got to take part in a welcoming party for 23 students from UW-Oshkosh who are visiting Japan for three weeks. It was a very fun party, the food was good and I got to talk to many people. I also wore my yukata and I had a great time. I got to take home a ton of leftover sashimi and several bottles of fanta, and aquarius. Free food and drink = happiness.

On Sunday yesterday, I helped guide that same group of people around on a tour of Nagasaki, we went to Glover Gardens, and they had some huge koi there. There was an escalator you could take to the entrance or a ton of steps, Jeremiah(siebold university student) and I took the steps and beat the rest of them up there. There was a gorgeous view of the city from up top, so I was glad I went.

They were a fun bunch of people, after we got done touring the gardens, I took 5 of them to the Hamanomachi shopping arcade. I took them to a reputable used and new kimono shop, and one of the girls bought a komon(common kimono). I helped them by telling what accessories they needed as well, especially since there are many ties you need for a woman's kimono. After that store, we split up for an hour to wander around, Jeniffer followed me and I took her to the really expensive kimono store to show her what some real money buys. I asked the store clerks if it would be alright to dress her up in one of the furisodes, and they gladly said yes. Jennifer didn't want to be a burden on anyone, but I insisted it was alright. The clerk dressed her up in the furisode of her choice, and then she tied an obi as well. Her digital camera had stopped working and so she was stuck using a disposable. I took some pictures with my camera so that I could send them to her by email.

After that, we met back up in Hamanomachi, and I took them back to the tram, the others had bought McDonalds, so Jennifer and I went and ate some ramen. After that we went to see Chinatown at night, and it's so much cooler than during the day. They got the LED-lit pictures and they were very cool. My favorite was the dragon and tiger.

After that, we hopped on the right tram, wrong direction and went to the end of the tram line without realizing it, so then we had to wait for the next one and hop on the tram running the other direction. I got back home around 9:30 PM, uploaded some pictures, and hit the hay after my shower. Less than two weeks to Kyoto and Osaka, I can't wait!

And so the week goes on...

2008-05-22T12:03:00.002+09:00

Well, it's been kind of an uneventful week. I haven't been doing all that much, wrote up a paper for my society class yesterday, did some flower arrangement on tuesday for traditional Japanese arts. We have arts again today, but today we're covering women's kimono. All of us are going to dress up in kimono and take pictures, so it should be a lot of fun. I still haven't found my Nintendo DS, which saddens me, but these things always kinda work themselves out. I may never find it again, but I'll gain something in return, what that is, I don't know. Yesterday Japanese class was actually quite enjoyable, the three stooges were all absent, and so we finally had a productive, quieter class. I'm all for a few laughs the three stooges sometimes provide, but I'd rather focus on learning Japanese since it's of great interest to me. When I see the nice teachers putting up with all their crap, makes me a little sad because they are remarkable teachers and I think they deserve more respect than what they're given. Here are some pictures from flower arranging, as well as some of the rain clouds from a torrential downpour we had on Monday.

That's all for pictures I've taken this week so far, I'll have a few more after tonight's Japanese arts class. Hmmm....other than that, it's just another 2 weeks till I go to Osaka and Kyoto. I can't wait, I'll finally be able to look for the big fish of the sea of Kimonos, the XXL sized kimono! On a side note, being here in Japan, there are many different landscapes and structures that make me have the urge to take up parkour/free running. Parkour is the martial art of getting from point A to point B in the fastest and most efficient manner possible, the focus is the destination. Free running is similar to parkour, except it focuses on the journey of getting to a place, and tends to focus on personal style. For more information, please refer to http://www.americanparkour.com . Both focus on total body fitness and efficiency, and like I said, being in Japan, I feel the urge to take this up in addition to the conditioning it provides. Here are a few youtube videos for reference in case you're still wondering what I'm talking about, but until then, じゃね。

Eating like a King!

2008-05-18T12:30:00.002+09:00

So, this weekend was well worth not going out anywhere with friends. On Friday, I was invited to go hang out at a club in downtown Nagasaki with some friends. However, knowing what day of the week and how long it's been since my host father came home, I knew he'd probably be home that night and that he'd bring tons of sashimi. So I went home, and sure enough, he brought tons of Sashimi for me to consume. On Saturday, we visited Kiyoko's mother in the hospital with Nozomi. After that we walked down to Nagayo and stopped in an Udon Restaurant, I had a big bowl of Udon for lunch.

After that we went back to the house, grabbed Moko(the family dog) and started walking to a vantage point on top of this mountain. By the time we got to the mountain and partially up it, it had taken to long to get there. So we got picked up by Setsuko, dropped Moco back off at the house. Oh ya... I also found this gorgeous butterfly, took plenty of pictures, shown below.

After we dropped Moko off at the house, we went shopping to replace the motor for Kiyoko's fish tank. I went into a Hard-Off which was right next to the store they went to, and it's basically a huge resell store of computer, music, dvd's, cd's, and a bunch of music equipment. After looking around and resisting the urge to buy anything, I went to the store Kiyoko and the others had gone into and carried Nozomi around. After that, we went to the big restaurant and had Yakiniku, all I could eat, it was buffet style! I ate well over 5 plates of meat, it was sooooo good. Yakiniku is basically Japanese grill, except you get plates of thinly cut meat which you then cook yourself in the center of the table. I didn't get any of my own pictures, but Kiyoko has some, I'll have her send them to me. Well, it's time to eat lunch now,talk to you all later, Aikido tomorrow, yay, time to get flipped!

We now return to your regular programming...

2008-05-16T21:19:00.002+09:00

My new AC adaptor arrived today!! This is pretty amazing since I went to Fukuoka on Wednesday, they shipped it out yesterday, and I got it today, talk about service! Well, anyways, i sent an e-mail off to the two Japanese gentleman who helped me. I looked at their business cards today, one was a Workstation Sales Rep., and the other was the District Manager of all of the Kyushu District! I consider myself lucky when I think about a District Manager taking time out of his probably busy day to sit me down in a nice conference room and help me with this whole mess. Granted he spoke less English than the sales rep, both were very helpful despite the fact I was some foreigner with an American laptop. This now means I can get back to writing regular blog posts, putting up pictures, and staying sane during the long breaks in between classes at school. I was so bored today I borrowed a book from the library. It's an interesting one nonetheless, and even if my laptop wasn't broken, I'd still have probably borrowed it.
Well, anyways... On Wednesday, I went to Fukuoka, after arriving there and speaking with the HP representatives and getting my problem worked out for the most part, this left Sharon and I with a whole day to explore Fukuoka some more. While we were walking to an anime store whose location I had found online, I spotted this hilarious sign painted on the sidewalk.

It was a beautiful day out, not hot at all and just the right amount of a breeze to keep me cool.

Anyways, we got to the anime store named Mandarake, that I had found out about online, and I have got to say it was the coolest anime store I've been to this entire trip so far. The first floor was manga, the second floor was art books and some figurines, the third floor was mostly cosplay costumes(all for girls), and the 4th floor was models and figurines. Unfortunately, pictures and video were not allowed, so I didn't push my luck, I would hate to get thrown out. After that store, we went over to Tenjin and shopped around InCube. Sharon finally got all the figurines for an anime called Escaflowne, she was very happy. I found this nifty re-usable silicone mold for 1050 yen, which basically allows you to make shot glasses out of any liquid you're capable of freezing in a freezer. I tested it out last night and popped them out of the mold this morning, my host mother was impressed and so were my friends.

Yesterday my traditional Japanese arts class started, all the guys got to put on a yukata and learned simple ways to tie a men's obi. I brought my own Yukata and obi and had a lot of fun. Next week we'll be learning how to tie some of the complicated women's kimono, and the week after that, we'll all dress in kimono and take a bunch of pictures, needless to say, the next two weeks will be most interesting.

To my parents, I just want to say thank you for sending me that care package, it was more than I expected but I'll have to say beggars can't be choosers. I took a picture because it was that epic.

Kiyoko enjoyed the American chocolate and ranch dressing a lot. She was very interested in the dressing especially when she noticed I only ate my salad plain. I told her I only liked Ranch and Caesar dressing. She knew what Caesar dressing was, but she had never heard of ranch dressing. When she looked it up in her electronic dictionary, there was no definition for a salad dressing, she asked me what it tasted like and I had a hard time trying to describe it. I could only tell her that this dressing was uniquely American. She enjoyed it very much, and now I will definitely enjoy my vegetables a lot more over here as they do constitute a large part of my meals. After supper yesterday, Nozomi and I took Moko(family dog) for a walk. I took a few pictures despite how dark it was, once again, all I can say is I love my camera. Anyways, here's those pictures and a few others, tune in next time, who knows what will happen next!

A quick update...

2008-05-14T23:01:00.003+09:00

Ok, I only got thirty minutes of power left on my laptop, so I'll make this quick. I went to Fukuoka today and found out the HP center there was nothing but an office building, no parts or anything. However, I was able to talk to two Japanese in a mix of broken English and Japanese, and they directed my problem to the service center, I got a call from the service center later on and talked to someone in pure English, which was nice. They said they'd be able to send me a new adaptor and should probably be receiving it by next week sometime. Fukuoka was once again, a great time especially since I got the whole laptop thing handled in under an hour after arriving there. Anyways, more explanations and pictures later, gotta put my laptop back in Hibernation Mode(I know, Hibernation Mode... That's how much is stinks to not have a power adaptor at your disposal)

Computer Issues....

2008-05-12T11:13:00.002+09:00

I'm having issues with my AC adaptor for my laptop. After spending an hour and a half talking to an HP technician in the library on their support chat, we finally got around to the point where he told me where I could go to get service in Japan. Talk about a headache, the guy just didn't understand I had already made sure it was the adaptor that wasn't working. Unfortunately the nearest service center in Japan to me is Fukuoka, got a map printed out and the good news is, I know where this is. Anyways, until I get this issue resolved, I probably won't be able to make any blog posts with pictures, the only way I'm doing this post now is I'm using a school computer. I might see if anyone wants to go with me this weekend to Fukuoka, I don't really feel like spending the money on the bus tickets, but I can't do much over here in regards to updates without my laptop. Can't even talk on AIM or MSN which really stinks. Anyways, I hope all you mothers out there enjoyed Mother's Day. I'm sure after you told your kids that Chris was gonna kick their butts if they didn't treat you like a queen, they obeyed and treated you like a queen. Well, I'm gonna go wait for Trevor to get out of his class and see if I can borrow his AC adaptor, if his doesn't work then i know somethings wrong with the laptop itself, and I'd rather confirm that it is not the issue.

Happy Mothers Day!

2008-05-11T17:09:00.002+09:00

It's Mother's Day her in Japan, so I went out around Sumiyoshi and looked for some flowers. I found some I liked even through I was pressed for time. I wanted something you could plant and that wouldn't wilt and die in about a week. I settled on a small basket of hanging flowers, along with a small pot of miniature roses. I put them on the table for Kiyoko to find when she gets home, right now she's out and about with her family. I went to Sharon's house today to try to get her internet set up because she needs to access the keyserver to make photoshop work, but seeing how the software was in Japanese and I couldn't diagnose the problem, had to call it quits. She can't access the Stout keyserver through the school's internet because they use a proxy for internet connectivity. Other than that, happy mother's day to all mothers who read this, may your children treat you like a queen for the day or so help me some heads are gonna be split when I come back, not lying either, you tell those kids Chris is a green belt in Tae Kwon Do. Here are the pretty flowers, whoo....

So...I haven't been up to much lately, just taking class one day at a time and such. Yesterday it rained all day, and so I took a nap, watched some anime, and studied a bit while Kiyoko and the children had their English lessons conducted downstairs. We had sukiyaki for supper, which was quite tasty. While we were eating, I noticed the sun come out, just in time for a gorgeous sunset, I only wish the telephone lines weren't in the way.

Hmm....On a few other notes of things I did this week. I peeled this massive grapefruit-like thing and made a hat out of it. Not that I kept it or anything, but it was pretty fun.

We happened to spot yet, another massive insect. You know, for Japan having such small cars, houses, people. The bugs and said above grapefruit-thingy are pretty big.

I also found a vending machine that sells Mountain Dew. To those who love Mountain Dew, let me express to the point how non-existant many of the soft drinks that we have in America are not here. The only soda you'd probably recognize, would be Coca Cola, and Coca Cola Zero, no pepsi products save for these cans of mountain dew they sell in a vending machine for like a $1.10.

I also finally got around to taking a picture of this gorgeous car I walk past everytime i go down to Nagayo. I love the Toyata cars they have over here.

Anyways, talk to you all later, I got Aikido tomorrow, yay!

War of the sparrows....

2008-05-06T23:15:00.003+09:00

Ok, I know what you're thinking, you thought the title would say, "Golden Week, Part 2". Well, i decided to change it, but I'll still talk about Golden Week. However, first I shall detail this great war of the sparrows. Sunrise here in Japan is about 5:30AM here or so, the sparrows start their annoying chatter, right outside my window at about 5:35AM. This isn't just 1 or 2 sparrows, no, this is like a small flock of them. They all fight constantly with each other in the most annoying sound known to a sleeping person with exception to maybe a woodpecker. However, woodpeckers are few and far in between, and I'm pretty sure there's none in Japan. These sparrows just chatter, chatter, chatter and fly which way and that chasing each other. There will be a sparrow on a tree branch, and another sparrow will land on the branch a few higher, and immediately the sparrow on the lower branch will start chirping up a storm at the other sparrow. The sparrow on the higher branch will talk trash right back, and these two go at it for at least a minute. Finally the sparrow on the lower branch will attack the other sparrow, and so they flutter around in the air chasing each other all while still making racket. I've maybe gotten like 6 hours of sleep, which is usually fine, except for the fact they wake me up at 5:30 in the morning. If they woke me up at 7:30AM, I'd be perfectly fine with that cause thats when I get up anyways for breakfast, but no, they start 5 minutes after the sunrise. On top of all this, there's a bird nest somewhere close to my balcony(yes, I have a balcony), and if the sparrows have a lull in the fighting or they take it somewhere else, I got baby birds making the same noise over and over again. The thing that beats all of the sparrows fighting and the baby birds chirping, is when the mother bird lands on my balcony and starts chirping at the babies at which they are constantly answering back. Out of all the things I thought I'd be missing in Japan such as cheap beef, generous portions, ranch dressing, and real chocolate and candy, my fiance, the thing I miss the most is robins and mourning doves. If I happen to wake up to those, they're pleasant to listen to and usually drop me right back to sleep. Sure we have sparrows in the US, but none anywhere around that I sleep. Anyone else might ask, "well why don't you wear ear plugs?". Well, as it stands, my alarm clock is my iPod and they're hooked up to my headphones. My headphones are only so loud, but it's loud enough for me to hear it. It's not like my 2.1 speaker system I would usually hook them up to and could potentially crank those puppies up loud enough to shake my house/dorm. If I wear earplugs and can't hear my alarm clock, things will just get screwed up, like being late for the bus. When I figure out what I'm finally going to decide to do, I'll let you know how it goes. What I need is a supersoaker, if anyone wants to ship me one from the states, I'll use that my entire trip here, and then just give it to Nozomi before I leave.

/endrant

Ok, back to Golden Week, Part 2. For Monday, I went digging for clams with Kiyoko, her daughter Yuuko, Yuuko's husband, and their 2 daughters Yuri and Yuna. We left around 11 AM, got there about 25-30 minutes later, and unpacked the van. I had decided to wear my slip on shoes, which had nice rubber soles that would protect my feet. I couldn't go into the river, so I just stayed on the bank. The bank was pretty muddy and wet, riddled with mussels, rocks, and whatever else.

Didn't take a whole lot a pictures here cause I was too absorbed in finding some clams with the rest of them. All and all, I found 12 clams on the riverbank, which isn't too bad for my first time, I wasn't able to get where the higher concentration of them were cause of my shoes, but I still had fun. I found quite a few crabs, most about the size of my thumb, a few bigger, but I did manage to find one crab the size of my hand. We kept that one for eating later on. For lunch we had onigiri(rice balls) and some vegetables. They were so tasty, and I had my 1.5L bottle of C.C. Lemon, that stuff is so good. Yuna and Yuri get a kick out of it every time they see me have a bottle of that stuff, mostly cause if you drink anything straight out of a large bottle, it really impresses the Japanese and Chinese. You have to remember the size of the drinks you get with a McDonalds Value Meal is no bigger than a can of soda here. After lunch, we dug for more clams, but that came to an end around 3 pm. We packed up and started heading back to what I thought was going to be Nagayo. Instead, we stopped at the beach along the way so Yuuko's husband could wash the clams in the sea. While he did that, I had some fun skipping rocks and Yuna and Yuri had fun watching, they tried a couple of times, but only Yuna could skip a rock once. I took some nice pictures, and I even found some jellyfish that had washed up on the beach. First time I had actually been to a beach and found jellyfish. Here are some pictures of where we stopped at.

After the beach, we went to FamilyMart and picked up some snacks to tide us over till we got back to Nagayo. Yuuko's husband, Toshi Hiro bought me some Ashahi beer and icecream. I saw an interesting car at the FamilyMart and I took a few pictures, I've never seen soemthing like it before.

We ate our icecream and drank our beer on the way back to Nagayo as Yuuko drove. We stopped at the grocery store on the way back in to pick up some stuff for dinner. After we got home, it was just a nice relaxing evening at the house. On Tuesday, I did pretty much nothing except lounge around the house,wrote some postcards to coworkers,relaxed, and took a nap. See you guys next time, school starts up again tomorrow, Japanese and cinema, whoo!

Golden Week, Part 1...

2008-05-05T00:31:00.004+09:00

Well, Golden Week has been going pretty well so far. On Saturday I went to a small town with my host mother, Nozomi and her daughter, Setsuko. The drive out there was absolutely beautiful, we drove along the coast for the most part and I got some pretty wicked pictures. There was even a small area that we pulled over to the side and got out for a few minutes.

After we visited Kiyoko's friend, we walked towards the beach, there was a path that looked like it was straight out of fuedal Japan. It was pretty cool, kinda made me wish I was wearing my Yukata and the awesome hat.

After walking down the path, we emerged onto the beach, I took my shoes and socks off and ran as fast as I could manage towards the ocean because the sand was scalding hot. Personally, I never walk around barefoot except for martial arts, but thats about it. The water felt so nice after that molten sand.

Nozomi and I waded around in the water for like half an hour, looking around for cool rocks or shells. Kiyoko walked ahead of us scouring for interesting rocks to add to her garden while I looked for some shells. After a little while, I started looking for flat skipping stones and Nozomi joined me, we just started trying to skip stones till we were bored. However, before boredom set in, Kiyoko wanted to head back to where we left our shoes, and trust me, crossing that molten sand was not fun. Kiyoko had already gone ahead of us, and by the time I was ready to venture across the lava fields, she was just standing up on the nice cool stone path where we left our shoes. The sand had gotten hotter and as I was running up towards the steps, I was yelling "Atchi, atchi!!", which in English means "Hot, hot!!!". I was so hilarious that by the time I got up on the stone, Kiyoko was clutching her sides from the laughing.

After we got done with the beach, we walked back to the car and drove to the city's nearby waterfall. The waterfall was small/tame enough that a path had been built so you walk right down to the waterfall. Kiyoko, Nozomi, and Setsuko cooled their feet in the water, I just kinda walked around and took pictures.

Nozomi and I found more skipping stones and we started skipping rocks off the pool after 50 feet away from the base of the waterfall. After a while, we left and went to a music museum. I thought this place was gonna be kinda boring, but I ended up liking it, they had more than just record players, old videocameras, an original Edison phonograph, a Japanese typewriter(that thing was insane), and a few other things. Towards the end of the tour, we got to select a few records from their library of 1.5 million records to listen to. I found The Moody Blues records and selected a record with the song, "Story in Your Eyes", good song. We all listened to a song we wanted to, then decided to get going home and for supper. On the way out, guess what I happened to spot. The infamous Japanese Wasp! These things were featured on the National Geographic channel, and are the largest, most vicious wasps in the world. A few of these things can decimate a colony of a million honeybees. Luckily there was only one, I was trying to tell Kiyoko and Setsuko where the thing was perched, we were a good 20 feet from the thing, and I could easily see it, the thing was the size of my thumb. I was trying to tell them it was not a bee, it was a wasp, but I didn't know what wasp was in Japanese, we looked it up and after they knew what it was, they were like "Ack! Gotta get outta here!!!". I was able to explain to them that the thing was the biggest and most vicious wasp in the world, just had to know the japanese for wasp. Here's some pictures of this last paragraph(yes, I did manage to get a good picture of the wasp from twenty feet away, I love my camera) .

This made me laugh when I saw it...

The Moody Blues section!

After we got back to Nagayo, we went to a sushi restaurant . I didn't take any pictures, but all the plates of sushi were on a conveyor belt, with the sushi guys in the middle making the stuff. Basically, plates of sushi go round and round, and you just snag what you want. At the end, they count how many plates there are and ring up the total. For 4 people, it was only like 5100 yen, talk about cheap!

And so ends Day 1 of Golden Weekend.

On Sunday, I thought I was gonna meet up with 2 people to explore around Nagasaki, however, I found out this wasn't the case after i already hopped on the bus. So, resigning the fact I'd spend the day wandering by myself alone , it wasn't all that bad. I went to downtown Nagasaki, to the shopping arcade known as Hamanomachi. I've been here at least 3-4 times now, but I made a few discoveries I had somehow missed in the past visits. I found a useful electronics store, I didn't buy anything, but it was nice to know I could count on the place if I needed it. And then I also found this cool anime/manga/CD floor in a store I had been to all the floors except the basement floor in the past visits. After that, I visited another anime store I had been to before and took a hard look at some of the stuff they had gotten in that wasn't there last time. I ended up buying some Bleach(anime) stuff and this nifty little screen cover for my cell phone. Basically, only you can see the screen, anyone looking at it from an angle sees a warning alerts from another anime I like. I'm trying to decide whether I want to put it on my cell phone here, or back on my cell phone at home, decisions decisions....

After that, I decided to set out looking for this kimono store my host mother had found and given me their little brochure. However, the brochure had way too many kanji I didn't know and the map was poor, so while I was looking around in the only general direction I knew to walk, I stopped at several stores along the way. I also found some cool figurine shops that I figure I'll blow some of my leftover money at before I leave Japan. I also found this beautiful Japanese paper parasol for 1360 yen. I was stunned that I was that lucky to find something, I bought it of course.

I can't wait till I have my own house, my host mother was saying I'm gonna have like one of the coolest Japanese rooms ever, and I was agreeing with her. It'll just be like one large room, or maybe a basement with all things Japanese, tatami mats and such.

Well, I never did end up finding the kimono store that Kiyoko found, I did finally run across the spectacles bridge. Lots of us wanted to see it but we've never been down this way before, I got a really cool picture too, there's these stone blocks running across the river that you can walk on to the center so you can take a nice picture, which i did so.

After the bridge, I found this store with all these Japanese antiquities. There were kabuki masks, dishes, dolls, and ..... used kimono?! Jackpot, this still wasn't the store Kiyoko found, but oh man, they had some nice stuff here and it was all really affordable. Unfortunately I didn't find any men's kimono in my size. The lady was very nice and patient, and I was able to communicate for the most part in Japanese with her, she knew very little English. After we had for the most part determined there were no kimono in my size, I continued looking at the men's obi(kimono belt) which would fit me, they were only 3000 yen and were very reasonable in price. The lady was still looking through her other stocks of kimono, but still ended up finding nothing. I was now looking at the women's kimono and accessories. All the stuff in this shop were probably used, nevertheless, all of the kimono were in tip-top shape for the most part. What attracted my eye were the formal obis, formal obis are usually extremely expensive, with the cheapest new ones costing at least 200 bucks. Some obis cost as much as the women's kimono itself, or more(which is absolutely insane). In the end, I found 2 formal obis I liked and could afford, along with a tomosode. I showed all of this to Kiyoko when I got home and she was amazed, I seem to have a good amount of luck finding certain things, however, that Kingu-kingu sizu(XXL size) still eludes me. If I find one though, then so help me I'm going back to china town to buy those extra tall geta, I shall be like 6'7" tall, muahahaha! Anyways, Monday I'm going to be digging for clams, random I know, but it should be fun. I got to try the clams we'd be digging at the sushi shop, and they were pretty good. Look forward to the next post, "Golden Week, Part 2...".

Photo Album

Bring forth the almighty hat!!!!

2008-04-30T20:23:00.003+09:00

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...

2008-04-28T11:58:00.003+09:00

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!

2008-04-25T10:41:00.005+09:00

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.....

2008-04-21T11:30:00.003+09:00

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!

2008-04-18T08:59:00.011+09:00

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!

2008-04-15T21:53:00.003+09:00

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...

2008-04-10T17:18:00.003+09:00

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...

2008-04-07T23:12:00.003+09:00

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

2008-04-04T23:21:00.003+09:00

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...

2008-04-01T22:14:00.003+09:00

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.

My first few days in Nagayo Nyu Town(Suburb of Nagasaki)

2008-03-31T18:28:00.003+09:00

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days, I had to get myself re-established and there were a few days I was busy. The cherry trees (sakura ki) are starting to come into full bloom. I've been getting to try many different Japanese dishes, my most favorite foods are Ramen and sashimi(raw fish). The fish is very fresh here in Nagayo and it tastes delicious with soy sauce. Tomorrow I go to register for my Alien Registration Card, which basically allows me to become a temporary citizen of Japan(more or less). After that I'm taking a bus and tram to downtown Nagasaki to meet up with the other students for a cherry blossom viewing party. It will be my first time in downtown Nagasaki and it should be a lot of fun. They have a really good bakery on my way to the bus stop for school, and it's all pretty cheap. One thing I have noticed is I've cut my sugar/carbohydrate intake in Japan by like 60% or so. Chalk it up to the protein, whoo! We'll see what this holds for me when I return to America.
A word of warning to everyone, I will be staying with a second host family from April 1st to April 6th while my host mother Kiyoko takes her grandson Nozomi on a small vacation. The school year just ended for him today. While I'm with my second host family, I'm not sure if I'll be able to easily access the internet, so if you don't see an update here, that's why. It should be fun as I will get to explore more of the city this way. Hopefully while I'm in downtown Nagasaki tomorrow, I can get the rest of my money changed to Japanese yen and then I'll be able to do some shopping( The stores here are amazing) Until then, Ja ne mina san! (If you see differently colored text, click on it as it's a link to a photo.)

Finally in Japan!

2008-03-27T21:03:00.002+09:00

Well, I'm finally in Japan. Sorry it took me about a day to set up my blog. My first full day in Japan was awesome, walked around a lot, did a little shopping(Only found stuff for my fiance....sorry Nick :P) We went to a few shrines and temples today in the Fukuoka region around our hotel, they also had this amazing department store better than the Mall of America and about 1/16th the size, but its really hard to find stuff in there, haha.
While we were walking to another shopping center north of the department store,after we visited our first shrine, we found a kimono store on the second floor of a building, we were extremely fortunate. The clerk there spoke a good amount of english and was very nice to us, she gave Sharon this magazine with all sorts of beautiful kimono in there, I was actually jealous. I was directed to the Komon in the store, which is known to be a common kimono and is very beautiful. I decided to buy one for my fiance and some hairpins to go with it. After purchasing the kimono, the clerk said we were all allowed to have a pair of tabi(split-toe socks). Granted they are for women because they are much to small for me, I'll give them to MaryJo.

The shopping center we went to after the kimono store was just a beautiful work of art. The architecture was amazing and they had a canal running through it. I took quite a few pictures and they even had water jets in the canal that shot water up like a firework display. We had lunch there in our first ramen shop. The ordering had us a little confused at first because we ordered our ramen outside the shop almost like a soda machine. Once we selected what we wanted to eat, a little ticket was printed out, we were then directed inside to sit at a counter, where we waited a few short minutes for our ramen. Once it was served, pictures were taken and noodles were devoured. It was sooooo good! I love ramen.

After the department center,we visited a bhuddist temple right in the middle of the city and walked around. The temple itself was very ominous and ancient, but extremely cool. Since more of our group arrived, we're going to go out and do some karaoke, whoo!Take care everyone :D