Sax in the City

久しぶりだよね！

2008-12-13T00:25:00.005+09:00

Hey! It's been a while. What, about five months, huh? Well, lots of stuff has happened in that time, but at the moment, that's no matter since, you know, I didn't even write about my last month in Japan (sans the kokuhaku), and some of the best parts of my trip happened in that time. So, without further ado:

July in Japan Part I: The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Nadia's birthday was June 20th, so she had a big karaoke 飲み放題 (nomihoudai - all-you-can-drink) party. I remember it being pretty fun wailing with the birthday girl and friends, but at the same time, there were about 25 people or so in that karaoke room which caused the following to happen: (1) the room became quickly void of any sitting room, (2) people were shouting and shouting for people to order more drinks although the person next to the phone to the desk (me) was telling them that he had already ordered, (3) people had a hard time getting to sing, and (4) total chaos. The lesson learned that night was never to have such a huge gathering in a karaoke booth. Please keep that in mind during your travels.

On the plus side, Nadia had a wonderful time, and that's what really mattered. And hey! Jonas even sang for once! If you recall, when Jonas came to karaoke with the class, he didn't have fun because there were no songs in the books that he knew. They happened to find some international songs this time around, one of which was about Moscow and is apparently very famous EVERYWHERE in Europe (and I think the Japanese all knew it, too), so he join in the festivities. In fact, at the end of the night he kept saying how much of a great time he had, mostly because the place was in complete disarray and there was alcohol. So, I guess, in retrospect, if you enjoy point (4), have at it.

I would recommend, rather, hooking up with your old counselor and having her take you to a bizarre restaurant in Shinjuku, though, as my best friend from USHSD 2004, Andrew Pierce, and our counselor Azusa did just that and had a wonderful time.
The premise of the restaurant was to try to catch your own fish and have the chefs cook it for you, which is already strange, but get this: it wasn't in some little pond or anything, it was in a moat around a giant wooden ship placed smack dab in the middle of the place. Atop the ship was a large table for the workers to sell giant pieces of high-quality tuna to the patrons that were rich enough to afford a table on the ship. Needless to say, though I would have loved to get my own slab of tuna meat to stick in my mini-fridge freezer, but at the time my money was running a little short. Drat! Should've curbed my Gundam playing for the sake of the tuna...

To burn a little of my frustration, I decided to go fishing, but let me tell you: it was REALLY HARD. Basically, I had to resort to trying to lead the hook (complete with bait) into the mouths of the fish, but it was to no avail. I tried for about two hours, I think, and never caught a thing. Got two nibbles, Andrew and I decided that the fish that were still alive probably had been seeing their buddies getting eaten the rest of the day and were smart enough to avoid even my masterful line. So, instead of eating an fish that I myself caught, we all enjoyed some selections from the menu, including some really cheesy takoyaki, yakisoba, and some other things of which I forget the names to. This was probably one of the best meals I had in Japan, though. Everything was EXCELLENT, so if you need a recommendation, let me know, 'cause I have a membership card to the place and can hook you up with the location.

*EDIT*     So I wasn't the only one trying to catch fish, of course. No one was really having any luck, but then Andrew spotted these Korean guys on the ship trying to catch the motherload fish. The fish was probably a foot and a half wide and two and a half feet long. It was HUGE and absolutely wouldn't bite. These guys, though, decided to use the ol' East Woodland Indian trick of taking out their lighters and putting it near the water so that the fish would come up to the surface. Well, sure enough, it worked, and they hooked the huge fish. Unfortunately, it thrashed around quite a bit and broke the line, swimming away, never to be almost caught again. Alas!

     On the way home, I spotted an homage to Philidelphia's LOVE Park, which used to be a really famous skateboarding spot until they tore it down. I guess if people really missed it THAT much they could travel to Shinjuku, but such a mecca would prove unfruitful since the area isn't that apt to being a hip skateboarding spot.

That ends the post for now... I've got to get cleaned up and start packing to head home from school this weekend. I hope at least one person read this... and if so... well, to you, my friend...

Until next time...!

Kokuhaku Secrets Revealed!!!

2008-08-12T00:13:00.005+09:00

      I love karaoke. And so, one night, I decided to invite a whole lot of my friends out to karaoke. If you don't recall from when I told you in April, Japanese karaoke is done privately with friends instead of in front of large crowds. Which do I prefer? Probably Japanese karaoke, but of course, there are times when American karaoke is very appropriate... like when you want to laugh at people or have people laugh at you. But there's something about Japanese karaoke that's magical... and it may be because even the worst people LOVE to sing. With their souls. There are many accounts of me walking to the bathroom or out of the karaoke place where I would hear a Japanese guy (or a group of Japanese guys) singing (/screaming) at the top of their lungs sounding absolutely awful but MAN, there was so much passion.......!!! It influenced some of my karaoke, too, especially when singing in Japanese. Maybe the only times anyone will be able to hear me like that are: a) when we travel to Japan together!; b) when I've been drinking a bit much; or c) when Rock Band: Japan comes out!
      You'll notice that a lot of the people I went with have been featured in my pictures before. Shou, for example, is featured even in the karaoke box because he is known for having a lovely voice, which is especially adored by Akira. The blonde girl in the picture with Shou is Amy, who is one of my international friends from Australia.
      Speaking of international friends, here is Julia of Sweden (pronounced yu-li-uh, not jew-li-uh), one of my favorite friends from Japanese class. I made her cry mid-July. Here's why:
      At the end of June, my classmates and I had an assignment to do a speech in Japanese. This speech could be on annnyyyything we wanted, so after thinking about it for a while, I decided that I wanted to sort of complete one of my goals for Japan, which was to do a kokuhaku, or "confession", most often referring to a "love confession". Brief history of me and my relationship with the word "kokuhaku": when I stayed with my host family in 2004, my host brother Masa and I were watching a television program that involved middle school boys confessing their love for girls in their class over the loudspeaker. Thinking it was hilarious, "kokuhaku" became my new favorite word, and then it became my goal in the future to do a kokuhaku to a girl in Japan. This is a little strange, I know, because really, what's the difference between a kokuhaku and telling some girl in America that you like her? There probably isn't REALLY one, but in MY mind, I can be ridiculous and long-winded in a kokuhaku. I mean, it translates to "CONFESSION" of all words, and that's pretty strong, yeah? Also, another funny anecdote about kokuhakus, they're nowadays OFTEN done over the keitai (cell phone)! And it's socially acceptable! Is that hilariously ridiculous or what?? Really, it just shows the role that keitais play in Japanese society, blah blah, but man... if I could do a kokuhaku over a keitai, that would make my life.
      Regardless, I decided that my speech was going to be a fake kokuhaku to a girl in my class. I made it absurd and vague so that no one would be able to tell "who" it was directed to as to cause chaos and confusion amongst my classmates. Well, in the end, it worked a little TOO well. After class I went to lunch with a handful of my classmates and they were all like "who was it who was it!?" and everyone had their own guess as to who it was directed to. During the merry time I got a text message (yes, I DO text in Japan... it's about the only way people communicate there... sometimes even when they're with their friends [not referring to my own!]) that read, and I quote: "Hey, about your speech, was it by any chance directed at me? Because if it was I think we need to talk." Whoaaaaaaaa! Does that sound like bad news or what!? Well, it was, despite my classmates being really excited about it (in a positive way, obviously). My British friend George even suggested to ask her out to dinner and talk it about it then. But, of course, I was "errrggg"-ing it because of the tone of the message. In fact, two days before I gave the speech I was rethinking it because I really didn't want things to become too too awkward, especially if I had to explain that it was for no one and the recipient didn't believe me. Clearly, though, I ended up not caring. Anyway, we didn't talk until Monday, even after we went to a Star Wars convention with a group of friends the day before (more on that in the future).
      We went on a walk on Monday, though, and I explained to her that it was for no one, but she was sort of correct because the contents of my speech was directed to make hints at roughly two girls and one group of girls, completing basically the whole class. I posted the speech in both Japanese and English below so you can read it and I'll asterisk-ize the place and explain them. Anyway, moving on to the meat of the story, after she heard that it wasn't directed towards her and that I didn't have a crush on her, she cried. And mind you, these were not tears of sadness. She cried because she was so relieved that I didn't like her. MAN, do I suck or what!?!? Who... I... I still think that's hilarious, but it's pretty darn sad, isn't it? Guy can't get a date, and to make matters worse girls cry when he shows any affection for them... shoo'...
     She said that she thought of me as a really good friend and didn't want that to be spoiled. Maybe I wouldn't think that sincere if I actually did have feelings for her, but it was, in a sense, nice to hear, despite the, you know, suck, haha. But it was cool to get that out so that things weren't spoiled for us in the last two weeks of being around each other. A few of our classmates walked by us when she was crying, too, haha. Yowza. But hey! The kokuhaku was done. Sorta. I count it. I mean, it gave results that were similar to if I actually gave one (...but AGAIN, let's hope that doesn't happen when I do it for real XD).

      Back to the karaoke, the other girl who is hiding herself with Julia is her friend whose name I could NEVER remember. Never. Even though we probably hung three or four times. Man... Japanese names... Here's Teresa and her friend. Teresa's actually in her late twenties. Maybe even thirty. I can't remember. Let's just say that she's 22 because she looks it and can still hang with us youngins. She's an excellent singer, and in fact, when she was singing Utada Hikaru's new hit single "Heart Station", Akira (the vein! the passion!) expressed that he thought she was even better than the original. Yeah. That good. Supposedly she's a singing competition winner in China, too, so... yessir. She's good. Jyun also sang a few tunes there, but since I've already introduced him and will talk about our other adventures later, I'll move on. Same goes for Hiroki (but not for unknown Teresa's-friend-girl! I never met her afterwards). Here are the rest of the people (left to right, Shou, Sonya, Amy, Adina, and Hiroki). Adina's a New Yorkian who I met early at the DK House who I hang out with a few times while in Japan.
      So though maybe I can't explain it well, that was probably one the most fun times I had karaoking in Japan because it was the first time that I got to sing Southern All-Stars songs, which I had been sort of practicing that week in preparation for the night. This was also the night that I Jyun decided that he had a crush on Julia, which I found pretty funny. I ended up having to try to hook them up (and failed). Actually, Julia had all of my friends crushing on her... Jyun, Asato, uhhhhh some other guys. Lots of my Japanese friends (and even some Japanese guys that I met maybe only once!) asked me to hook them up with foreign girls, but most of my foreign friends had boyfriends already. 'Twas a shame!
      Anyway, below you'll find my speech in Japanese and English with footnotes. I hope you enjoy it XD

Until next time...!

「告白」

     最近、僕達のクラスメートは音楽とか、スポーツとか、重要な人についてスピーチをしていた。心から思っていることについてスピーチをしていた。それでは、僕は、何について書くべきか考えていた時、どうしても「愛」についての考えが僕の頭からはなれなかったんだ。だから、このクラスの好きな女性に告白をするより仕方がない。
     まずはじめに、今から話すことを男の人はうらやましがらないで下さい。君達は、僕にとって、告白するほどかわいくないんだ。すみません。でも、ピーターさんはちょっと例外なんだ。時々、僕が好きな女性はシャイガールな事もあるから、そう考えると、ピーターさんはかなり僕のタイプに近いよね*？とにかく、始めましょうね。
     本当に、僕達がこのクラスにいる間、ずっとあなたは美しいと感じている。つい寝てしまった後、目覚めて、気分がとても悪くても、いつのまにかあなたの顔を見てると、その気持ちがなくなる**。ほとんど毎日のようにあなたは笑ったり、日本語で先生の質問に答えたり、お昼ご飯を食べたりする。そんなのは普通過ぎるほど普通のことだと分かっているけど、僕は普通のことをする女性が好きなんだ***。例えば、もしやせるために一緒にお昼ご飯を食べられなかったら、あなたは僕のタイプじゃなくなる。でも、あなたはあなたで。。。あなたは僕のタイプだから、今言ったことを気にしないで下さい。
     とにかく、僕は自分自身と約束した。僕は自分に、日本にいる限り、日本人女性だけをくどくという約束した。でも、僕はもう一つ、愛についても自分と約束した。自分に、百パーセントの女の子を見つけたら、絶対に彼女にするという約束だ。あなたは僕の百パーセント女の子です****！！
     そして、時々、人々はあなたを日本人だと思う。日本語をはっきりうまく話せるので、そう思うのも当然だろう*****。例えば、もし屏風の後ろに立っていて、声だけしか聞こえなかったら、あなたの民族や何人か分からないかもしれない。それに、白人、黒人、アジア人の顔や体を見ただけでは、僕で違いがよく分からないから、日本語で話しているあなたを、後ろから見たら、何人か分からない人もいるだろう******。
     それに、彼がいるか、彼がいないか、そんなの関係ね。三角関係にならなければならなかったら、絶対にそうする。愛を止められないよね！じゃ、愛のために、告白をしなくちゃ。僕はこのクラスに入っている女性が大好きで、その女性は。。。！わー！時間がない！ごめんね。終わってしまいます。失礼します。

Kokuhaku

      Recently, our classmates have been giving speeches concerning music, sports, and important people... concerning things that come from the heart. Therefore, when I was thinking about what to write, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get thoughts of love out of my head. So, I have no choice but to confess my love to the girl in this class whom I like.
      Before I start... guys, please don't be jealous. To me, you guys just aren't pretty enough for me to do a confession to you. Sorry. Ehhh, but, Peter's sort of an exception. Sometimes, the kinds of girls I like are shy, so if you think about that, Peter's sort of close to my type, yeah*? Anyway, let's begin.
      Truly, ever since we've been in this class together, I've thought you beautiful. After I unintentionally fall asleep in class, I wake up, and despite me feeling terrible, before I know it I'm looking at your face and those feelings disappear**. Almost everyday you do things like laugh, answer the teacher's questions in Japanese, and eat lunch. I understand that those things are general to the extent of being too general, but I like girls that do general things***. For example, if we were not to eat lunch together because you were on a diet, then you wouldn't be my type. BUT, you are you and... you're my type so... don't worry about what I just said.
      Anyway, I had made a promise to myself: while in Japan, I would only hit on Japanese girls. But, I also made one more promise--a promise to love. When I found my 100% woman I would definitely make that girl mine. You are my 100% woman****!!!
      And, sometimes, people think you're Japanese. Clearly, your Japanese is great, so that way of thinking is only natural*****. For example, if you stood behind a folding screen and people could only hear your voice, most likely no one would be able to tell your nationality or race. Moreover, white people... black people... Asians... if you look at only their faces and bodies, even I often don't know the difference between them, so accordingly people that look at you from behind when you're speaking Japanese and don't know what country you're from exist******.
      Also, it doesn't really matter whether or not you have a boyfriend. If I have to make a love triangle, I will definitely do it! You can't stop love! So, for the sake of love I have to do this confession. I like a girl in this class, and that girl is..........! Ah! I'm out of time! Sorry! I'm regrettably finished. Excuse me*******.

* One of my classmates, Peter, always introduces himself as "Shy Boy" and it's sort like his running joke, so that's why that's in there.
** This one was mainly directed at one girl, but could have been taken as two. In class I often talked to both the girl in front of me, Jess, and the girl behind me, Nadia. Really, in my mind I was directing this to Jess because it's her that I would most often talk to after that happened because she always laughed at me and called me narcoleptic. On the other hand, I think the popular guess on this one was Nadia because the class most often noticed me talking to her because we were always partners.
*** This sentence caused the biggest problem for me in the editing process. The aim of it was to be absurd, but some people didn't really get it and the sentence that I ended up writing was told to be "correct Japanese" but "wrong" in the case of... I don't know, what people would say. My original sentence read weird even in English, but it was kind of the point... but maybe I just can't do that in Japanese or I can't be weird correctly yet. Iuno.
**** The term "100% woman" is an allusion to Haruki Murakami's excellent short story, "四月のある晴れた朝に100パーセントの女の子に出会うことについて", or "On Happening Across the 100% Woman on a Fine April Morning".
***** This was directed toward Julia because her Japanese is really great, and she's white!
****** To make the girl seem like she may be Asian (like Yi-Chen <3<3<3), I added this sentence. If the girl had blonde hair like Julia, it would be kind of obvious that she wasn't Japanese, but with the other Asians in the class... not so much.
******* There was a time limit and my speech was waaaaaay over, so it made sense to have this there.

     Thanks for reading if you did, haha. And, if anyone in my class is reading this, hope it cleared a few things up : ) Once again...

Until next time...!

The Tokyo Blue Note

2008-08-08T00:06:00.002+09:00

      Back on June 5th (or sometime thereabouts) I went to the Blue Note jazz club in Tokyo to see legendary bass man Ron Carter play with other jazz masters Mulgrew Miller and Russell Malone. This probably doesn't mean anything to most of you readers, but that's okay because I won't be going into detail about the performance or anything. So, no worries.
      Before I get to anything involving any real content, I want to iterate how much I hate making reservations in Japanese on the phone. I don't really even like speaking or listening to Japanese on the phone in general because for some reason, compared to speaking directly to a person, it's much harder to pick up. Maybe it's just me, though. Iuno. I suck at talking on the phone in general. But yeah, I had to call the Blue Note to make reservations for two first-year friends from the Jazz-ken circle (Ko and Yukiko) and myself. When I called, I wanted to make it flawless. I mean, HOW LONG have I been studying how to make a reservation in class!? REALLY LONG. We start that in 101. Of course, in 101 it's like:

"Hello. Is this the movie theatre?"
"Yes, it is the movie theatre."
"What time is Indiana Jones?"
"7:30pm."
"I will buy two tickets."
"OK. What is your phone number?"

... etc, etc.. But in REAL LIFE, the reservations go something like this:

"HellothisistheTokyoBlueNoteTakahashispeakinghowmayIhelpyou?"
"I would like to make a resrb... rervti... rsvtn... res-er-va-tion for um... the Ron Carter live performance, but..."
"Aojaosjfo0uq0ufF"
"Excuse me? Sorry, girl, I didn't understand your keigo. Could you speak to me like I'm a real human being instead of you pretending that you're my vassal? I mean, it's kind of hot, but I just want to make a reservation! COME ON."

Or, you know, something to that effect. Longer story made less long, I stumbled around and they decided to say some things in English to me, which frustrates me more than if they spoke slower keigo to me. Whateverrrrr. I made it and we were set to go. Tickets were $80. That's double I usually pay for seeing someone who I doubly want to see.
      I arrived early and sat around in the lobby for a while until my friends came, and much to our surprise, one of our senpais, Jyunsuke, was there! So, when we got into the club we sat down at our respective seats until practically everyone was seated and then we had Jyunsuke moved over to where we were sitting. You can see the seating in the Tokyo Blue Note goes something like this and we were sitting in the second row back from the stage at one of the long tables. Originally, Jyunsuke was sitting in the front row off to the left side of the stage, but that's because he got inside much later than us. The seating is first come first serve, and I was one of the first ones in the waiting area, not to mention the fact that I payed for the $80 ticket. Jyunsuke, on the other hand, payed about half that much at a student price and as a result was let in later than everyone else. But, I guess that still didn't matter now, did it? *sigh* There went eight Gundam games...
      Oh, and as for the people I was with, I'll give them a short introduction. First, here's a picture of us in the train station afterwards. From left to right, that's Jyunsuke, Ko, and then Yukiko. I met Jyunsuke at a rather late Jazz-ken function where he turned out to be a wily, off-the-wall kind of guy. Rather hilarious, really... he wouldn't stop shaking my hand. We talked about onsens and he kept on making the sound effect that is in regards to someone just jumping into an onsen and making a huge splash (I think it was something like "ZABUUN"). Why he would do that for an onsen... eg, so yeah, that's him. Ko I met during the first nomikai that the circle hosted. He started as a metal bass player and moved to jazz this semester. He majoring in English at Sophia and also likes Radiohead a lot, so we sang "No Surprises" at the karaoke that took place after said nomikai. I don't know much about Yukiko, but she was always very nice when I talked to her. Her instrument of choice is the alto sax, and the last time that I played with the Jazz-ken members we played one of those rhythm changes songs that has a name like a bunch of other bebop songs so it makes me forget the title. She just started playing and couldn't really do the song, but as I had mentioned before, it was cool that she would even just attempt it playing with and for players that are just leagues above her.
      Anyway, the place was beautiful. I wish I could have taken photos, but unfortunately it wasn't allowed in the club, so you have to see online for yourself if you're actually interested. The place was a really nice restaurant, too, and although we weren't obligated to buy any food, each of us had to buy one drink. So, we all picked up the drink that Ron Carter HIMSELF recommended, which was some fancy grappa. I don't even know what a grappa is, per say, and neither, I guess, does spellcheck. Regardless, it tasted, if I recall correctly, sort of like a champagne... dry... with an odd flavor to it. Overall? Probably wouldn't buy it again. Thanks a lot, Ron Carter. JEEZ.
      As for the show, it was good. Ko was floored by it particularly because it was his first concert featuring real jazz masters, and as a bass player, Ron Carter's playing really made an impression on him, especially when he played a song with no accompaniment. But, did I myself fall asleep like I do during every movie/practically every jazz show? YUP. Just a little bit though. The good thing is, I was able to listen to the whole thing again and can now forever because I snuck in the Zoom H2 recorder. Yoink!
      I may as well talk about the other show I went to on June 19th at the Blue Note now as well because I don't have any pictures of that. I ended up going by myself because I was ditched by fellow saxophonist senpai Ryuuichi from the circle because he had to use his money for saxophone repairs instead of the show, but it was still cool. His loss, missing the Mike Stern Group (featuring Randy Brecker, Chris Minh Doky, and Dave Weckl!). Randy Brecker isn't even close to being one of my favorite trumpet players. In fact, I don't really like him, especially because he gave a masterclass at ODU my first or second year in high school and it kind of really sucked. But, he can indeed play, proving that to me at that show. Oh, and by "play" I mean "play good" and, at the same time, mean "play corny". Seriously, sometimes I just didn't understand why he thought what he was playing was hip because to me it was really just lame and made everyone look like they crapped their pants or something. It was embarrassing. The other players were cool though, especially Mike and Dave. Got a recording of that show, too, though it's a little crappy because I was in the VERY front. But yeah, score. That show cost me $80 at first, but then I got the cheapest meal and ordered one of the band's recommendations and another drink, soooo it was something like $120 in the end. Egad.

      One thing thing that is funny about Japanese audiences is that when someone plays a standard, like in this case, "Autumn Leaves", they go crazy. And I'm not talking about old people rockin' out to "Girl From Ipanema" crazy, but they shout really loud, clap a lot before and after the head is played, etc.. It was funny to hear, especially when they played some pretty hip originals that were MUCH more exciting than another rendition of "Autumn Leaves". But, what do I know?
      Another thing about the audiences is that there was a good amount of young people in the audience. There were a lot at the Mike Stern show which makes sense because that band was funk- and rock-based, but there was still a surprising amount of kids my age at the Ron Carter show. They were playing more old-school and Ron Carter and the other guys are in their 80s, probably, so the show may inherently be a little bit of a turn-off to the younger crowds, but that didn't stop a good deal of younger people from actually coming.
      Lastly, sometimes it seems like Japanese audiences don't really know the boundaries between rock and jazz-based rock or funk and jazz-based funk. I'm not saying that many people in general understand that there's a difference either, but one may think that okay, maybe the audience is a little more knowledgeable about jazz styles because they're coming to see Mike Stern and not, oh, Chris Botti. Maybe that's a bad example because Chris Botti has nothing to do with rock or funk, but I think you may get the point. There were also tons of examples of the clouding of genres that existed within the playing of members of the Jazz-ken circle, too. But anyway, Mike Stern knows that the Japanese love the rock, I think, and so he really hammed up his performance at some points. He went for the metal/rock style high-note hammering and came to the front of the stage to rock that playing out for the crowds... stuff like that. He'd make goofy smiling faces when he was doing it or at other points in the show, too, which was evidence enough for me that he was kind of poking fun at the situation.

      So that was my Blue Note experiences in a nutshell. Coming soon, awesome karaoke and more baseball.

Until next time...!

Classy

2008-07-26T15:43:00.003+09:00

      I'm on a time limit right now (ala leaving in about half an hour), so I'm going to try to be quick and stuff. YEAH!
      I don't really remember what necessarily inspired the first couple of pictures, and most likely nothing really INSPIRED them, but anyway, one day after class, my classmate friend Nate and I decided that we were going to drink after class around Sophia. Cool thing about Japan is, you can drink in public, so don't worry about us getting arrested. Also, you can be drunk in public, too, and it actually is seen as good because it's showing that the salarymen are actually getting out there and having some kind of fun in their lives. It probably keeps the suicide rates down a little bit more by allowing them to not have to care how much and where they drink.
      Anyway, originally we were planning on going to sit in a park, but then we ultimately decided that it would be kind of fun just to be around school. So, we went to 7-11 and bought the two items that Nate is displaying here, some crackers, and some cheese. Basically we labeled it as a wine and cheese party with that $6 or so bottle of wine (one per person) and string cheese. I think it's kind of bad when I can safely say that the Ritz crackers were the classiest thing about this wine and cheese party.

... egh.

      It was good, though, and we even drank some of these babies, too. They're called Oni Koroshi, or "Demon Killer"s, and while they look like innocent juice boxes, they in fact are not. I think they were recommended by Matt Pollard to Jen Doo. But, keep in mind, Matt downs the worst of 40s and drinks gin out of the bottle, haha. Oh, and he also recommended the One-Cup, which I haven't had yet just out of sheer principle and respect for myself, haha. Don't worry, Matt, I'll probably try at least one before I leave, heh.
      They weren't as good as the wine, p.s.. But, after everything, we cruised down to the actual campus part of Jouchi (where we drank was the Sakura-dori, just outside of campus), sat, chatted, and went home. I remember being really sleepy at that point, and that mixed with the alcohol actually made me take the train in the opposite direction to get back home. So hooray for adding another 15-30 minutes to an already really long train ride!
      Speaking of riding the wrong train when I had already been in Japan for two months, I actually ended up riding the wrong train during midterms! Call me retarded and it's totally valid, but call me unobservant and, well, I would appreciate it. At the Akabane station, there are two orange lines. One is the Shonan-Shinjuku line, which is blue and orange, and the other is the one that I accidently rode that day. When I looked at the arrival schedule in the station, I noticed that the Shonan-Shinjuku line wasn't coming for a long while, so I headed to get on Saikyo. But, when I passed a certain gate, I heard the fateful mamonaku ___ban sen ni kakueki teisha blah blah the train is coming. So, thinking that maybe I looked at the wrong board, I ran up there and dashed on the train! "Tsugi wa, Ooku" 'Ooku, where the hell is that...' Turns out Ooku is a desolate wasteland with about 12 train tracks, all of ONE that is being used. Excellent. The next stop was Ueno, but forgetting where exactly Ueno was, I rode back to Akabane and rode to school, getting there a tad 10-15 minutes late. *sigh* I tried to take that track again one day because I thought it may be faster than taking Saikyo or Keihin-Tohoku all the way to Kanda, but yeah, of course it wasn't. I got to Ueno and lines to get on the Keihin were backed up from the train, all the way up the stairs, and out into the station hallway. Bah!
      Looks like I'm out of time. Next post will be about the Tokyo Blue Note, the greatest night of karaoke I had in Japan (thus far!), more baseball, my illness, and one more night of USHSD-ness.

Until next time...!

Almost Done!

2008-07-24T15:01:00.004+09:00

Wooo, time whipped by since that last post. During the time from then until now I have visited Kyoto, climbed Mt. Fuji, and made a girl cry. But before I get to all of that awesome stuff, I have to continue with writing about stuff from the past couple of months or else I'm going to forget even more. If you read the last post, it was a mess, so I need to bust the next picture sets out before my blog turns incomprehensible. But hey, I just finished my second exam today (kanji was yesterday and grammar was today), don't need to study for tomorrow's (it's listening, writing, and oral), and then I'll be home free sans my 25 page anthropology paper! Yikes...!
The first picture starts us off at the two-month anniversary of the Sannin's arrival in Japan. To celebrate we decided to out to dinner, and after wandering around Warabi for a while (reminiscent of our first night in the city), I spotted an excellent prospect: a poster that had unagi on it!!! For those that don't know, unagi is Japanese for "eel", and you can try some Americanized unagi in the little sushi packs that they sell everywhere, right next to the California, Spider, and Dragon Rolls! This is my favorite Japanese food, and for good reason. The eel isn't really fishy and the Japanese have concocted a superb sauce for it. Yoink! I highly recommend trying some at home. Don't get fooled by the name "eel" either... I mean, just take for example a cow or something. You wouldn't ever look at cow never having steak before and say "MAN that's a tasting looking animal!" Same for pigs. They're smelly and dirty, but holy crap is bacon awesome or what!?

      So the unagi turned out to be my first real expensive dinner in Japan, pricing about 2,000 yen or so. Was it worth it? Well, let's see the presentation first. Looks pretty good, right? A really nice box, that is! Mystery box, mystery soup, mystery vegetables (they're ALWAYS mystery here), and mystery drink. Well, the drink is green tea. You know, 'cause I'm in Japan. Anyway, voila! There are some open boxes. Everything looks delicious, right? Well, the verdict is, it turned out to be good, but not up to expectation. The soup was delicious, and I even liked the cucumbers (pickled, that is... pickled is the mystery of vegetables that is not so mysterious in Japan). Rice was good... unagi was... par. It's possible to get boneless unagi, but I unfortunately didn't, and it took away from the flavor, which was a little hard to sense in the first place.
      Funny thing about the trip, though, was that we all agreed we STILL can't perfectly order food in Japan. The menu is just full of kanji that we don't know (because I mean, there're fish names and stuff... and I'm busy learning how to read and write "meteoric belt" and "volcanic zone"... COME ON!). And yeah, it's still a problem. I mean, do you inherently know what "Unagi Yamakake" is? (whatever, Akira!)
      So there went the two-month anniversary reunion thing, and on the horizon was a load of other reunions that involved my friends from USHSD 2004 (starting front left and making a U around the back back to the front, that's Yusuke, Fumi, me, Miki, Aika, Yuuka, Ayano, and Urara). There we met in a pretty nice restaurant to eat and drink a bit, talking about old times and catching up with everyone. One thing about not seeing these people for a long time... you tend for forget names. And even worse, you tend to forget faces. Take, for example, my blunder. I walked in the room, looked at the people inside, and thought '... who's friend is that...?' Errrr, that was actually Yuuka. In my defense, I think I have absolutely no hard copy of what she looked like in pictures either, so how was I supposed to know?? I was safe with my secret for a while, too, until Ayano asked me if I remembered everyone's name. GOD I hate when people do that! Stephen did it to me a few times with the baseball guys, too. Did I know them all? Nope. Do I still not know them all? Yup!
      Anyway, dinner was pleasant, especially hanging out with a couple of my homeboys, Yusuke and Fumi. Fumi's presentation of Japanese to me was hilariously semi-insulting. It was really slow, but EXTREMELY sarcastic sounding. He got out of the habit after a little bit, and then later on when I wouldn't understand something he'd do it again, but at those times it was okay. The girls didn't hold back too much, though sometimes Miki and Ayano would speak English... which I was cool with. Man I have a lot of pictures of the girls... But yeah, we went to purikura afterwards and took some good shots. I also played Poppin' Music while the girls were cutting out the pictures. It was fun!
      The next time we met was at Kohji's wedding surprise party. Kohji was a counselor from USDHSD 2004 and an all around spectacular guy. He was the first Japanese friend that I had that really listened to jazz. By that, I mean he even kept up with current artists (I specifically remember talking to him about the Dave Holland Quintet). He ended up getting married at the beginning of July when I was in Kyoto, but as for the party, it was really early and he showed up to be surprised and greeted by friends from when he was a student in HSD and from every year he was a counselor. People came from all over to see him, too, which was very cool. Aika ended up giving him a speech on behalf of us '04 kids. What'd she say? Don't remember, and probably wasn't really sure when she was saying it anyway. The important thing is, though, that he was happy, and he may have even shed a tear or two! He should have, at least, and if he didn't, he better have had after he read all of what was on the shirt that we gave him! That's an HSD counselor shirt fitted with signatures and messages from every person in attendance. I wrote in Japanese on it, and if you think that writing on a shirt in marker is hard, well, imagine what I had to go through. My year had these cats in attendance (from back left, Taka, Nori, Fumi, Jiro, Miho, me, Miki; from front left, Youhei, Azusa, Kohji, Ayano, Asami, Aika, and... uh... who the hell is that?). Oh no! She's in another picture, too. I think she set up the event. Was Azusa's partner in crime. Everyone thought it was cool that I was wearing the HSD shirt, by the way. It turns out, though, that it's one from HSD '03, not USHSD '04. HA! Joke's on them... suckers!
      Afterwards, Jiro, Youhei, Fumi, and I hung out in Harajuku while the girls went shopping. Youhei left early, but the other two and I went walking around. Old men like this were enough to make Jiro, the Osakan, exclaim, of course, just like Kohei, "Tokyo is not Japan...". After cruising around we all went to eat and drink some more, ending with the videos of Jiro talking about how he hates Jews. I mean juu-s.
      I have to leave to go correct some random Japanese dude's English. Hopefully he pays me : ) But, I will leave you with one more photo. FEAR THE POMPODOUR!!!!

Until next time...!!!

* Everyone that reads my blog (whether you like it or not) should download Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I'll even pay the $4 you lost if you don't like it! (don't quote me on that)
** Hey Flicka-Flicka Fans, Sprite Remix may be a lost cause in the US, but that doesn't mean it is in Japan! Asahi's new drink is "Lucky Cider (with KIRAKIRA SPARKLE)" and is a refreshing replacement for the Flicka that we know and love.

Picture Group 7/10

2008-07-06T17:02:00.003+09:00

      That's how far behind I am. Four folders of pictures! And that's not four days, that's four spans of time between uploading photos. Luckily for me, I don't have billions of pictures per folder, so technically that's not SO much work, but looks like I still have plenty to do, no? I'll also have plenty of photos to share after the trip when I steal everyone else's from my class and stuff. [guffaw]
      The first group has all to do with the weekend that my friend Kohei came to visit from Hiroshima which was... a long time ago. May 16th, my camera says. Jeez.
      For all of you who have never met him, here's Kohei, my Japanese friend who homestayed with my family and me this summer. He doesn't normally look like that, but at the time he was frustrated with a weight puzzle that he was trying to solve on my Nintendo DS from the game "Professor Layton and the Curious Village". When playing the game, I often wear that kind of face, too, and it's usually on the trains. It's cool to know that he could read many of the puzzles' descriptions enough to solve them. I myself could buy the 2nd "Professor Layton" game in Japanese, but there would be no hope for me.
      Anyway, we went off to Yoyogi park to show Kohei Tokyo. Yoyogi (which I think I've talked about already.. it's the park in Harajuku with the people that dress up and stuff) may be an extreme of Tokyo, but it's fun for people to go see, I think. It wasn't Sunday (the traditional day to go), but luckily for us, even Saturday that weekend was full of unusual happenings. It started with happening upon this giant thing. I don't know what it is, but it's hilarious looking, and it must have been important because there were enough people there that were interested in worshiping it. Or at least move it around... that's like worshiping it because who would want to move that thing around, right?
      Kohei was the first person that I heard say that Tokyo "is not Japan". He first commented on Yoyogi itself, but think he may have said it again after we did more stuff that weekend. Yoyogi people especially scared him, though I think everyday Tokyo fashion did, too. But, it seemed like he found it amusing, too, especially when we were in the area of Yoyogi that's full of a bunch of bands playing even though are clear signs that say "no playing allowed". Take note that the sign is also in the first picture in the back.
      In the park itself, Kohei, Dan, Jen, and I sat around and talked. Kohei taught me a lot of useful words in Japanese that I can use to make friends, we wrestled and raced a bit, and then happened across a bunch of elementary school kids that were racing themselves. It was actually a televised event that was being hosted by a famous Japanese television personality, though I don't remember his name. We ended up cheering for some kid who, when asked to speak some English, actually spoke some. (海の) Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hopefully we got on TV : )
      Basically that day we just walked around. After Yoyogi we went to a Reggae festival because they happened to have one there across the street. I bought a taco there. It was awful.
      Oh yeah, and while walking to the park, I talked a little to Kohei's aunt who used to be a famous comedian in Japan. I'm not really sure where she's living right now, but she was living in Hawaii until she decided to take a long vacation to China and, I think, India. In fact, she told me that she was there around when the earthquake happened. Luckily, I think that she was out of the country before it hit.
      Like I said, we basically walked and talked that day/night. When we went back to Dan's I remember that we played Free-For-All Super Smash Bros. Melee. I have to regain all of the skill that I gained at home all over again, boooo. It was the first time Kohei had played, and he got very determined to win so we gave him a bit of a handicap and I think he may have one once, haha.
      When we woke up the next day we went to Shibuya to eat at an Indo-curry tabehoudai restaurant (all the nan I can eat??? wooooo!) and then went to Tokyo Dome City to ride the roller coaster there. It just so happened that on the day we got there there were a bunch of cosplayers prowling the city. The word "cosplay" means to dress up like a character of some show or video game and run around like them. Take, for instance, these really good Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children cosplayers. The Cloud one was especially good, we agreed. Even the sword he had was bad-ass realistic. The Sephiroth and the two clones there weren't as good because they didn't have the face for their characters, but their costumes still were quite cool. There weren't just Final Fantasy cosplayers there, though, of course. I saw some people dressed up like Evangelion characters, people from Gundam 00, Darth Vader, some girl dressed up like an E.S.F.S. girl that I don't know (Warning: XXX), etc.. Hey, we even joined in the fun at the park! BAM!!! Not only were we members of the End of the Century Heroes Go Renji, but we also all took our turn becoming Forrest Gump.
      Kohei and I ended up having a blast on the roller coaster, even if it cost $10 to ride once. Neither of us had been on a coaster in a really long time, and I'm glad to say it's invigorating for me once again. Afterwards, we some some musical duo play on a stage that had this birthday song... oh man, I wish I could remember it. It was hilarious. If Dan and I can remember, I'll record us singing it and everyone can use it for everyone's birthday in the future. I think they said "Happy Birthday Song" over and over in the actual song.
      In the end we ate okonomiyaki lead by master chef Kohei, who was actually confused at first because the way that Tokyoians make okonomiyaki is different from the Hiroshima way. Of course, it's a well known fact that the taste is different (the Kansai area's okonomiyaki is famously better, starting, I believe, with Hiroshima and going down from there), but he didn't know that the actual production was, too. And, truth be told, the first time I made the stuff here in Tokyo I thought something was wrong, and I was right (in USHSD I made it in a restaurant in Hiroshima).
      After dinner we watched Kohei go off and planned on meeting again in the future. And, I plan on making good on that this month when I go to Osaka, which should be good, clean fun.

      Time to continue to bust through my homework load. Hopefully I'll be back to cover more of the photos soon because I really want to talk about the details of this actual weekend asap.

Until next time..!!!

*Edit: While adding more photos from Jen's album on here, I realized that I totally mixed up the chain of events. In reality, it was Yoyogi, Tokyo Dome City, Okonomiyaki, back to Dan's to sleep, then Indo-curry and Kohei's departure. Maybe you noticed how I did, which was by looking at Kohei's shirts.
** Edit Two: Have fun, Japanese readers. タワーレコードという店の外で、有名じゃなくて女が二人いるバンドはこうこくした。車の「おしり」の上でグラスの函の中に座って、俺は、新しい単語を使うために、携帯で「ムラムラだよ。赤外線をしたい！！！」というメッセージを書いて、女を見せた。でも、その女の表情は変化してしまわなかったんだ。残念だな。。。
*** Edit Three: If my Japanese is off, that'd be embarrassing, but I'd appreciate you telling me. I know I can count on you, James! But, Akira reads this, too, so...

Lists

2008-06-17T22:42:00.002+09:00

With time dwindling down, I'm actually starting to think about home more and it's made me a little homesick, honestly. Not to any major extent, it's just that it's more on my mind than usual, and while I don't want to necessarily leave, I can't wait to get back either. That said, I started to compile a list of what I miss about home and, to be fair, one of what I will miss when I leave Japan to remind myself why I shouldn't be in any rush to get back home. Here's what I came up with in a short amount of time:

"Things That I Miss About America"
Family. This is a no-brainer for me. Although I'm in contact with some of my family through Skype, I still feel that large land gap between us. Just being around home to know that my family is near is really comforting to me. Even at UVA my home is only two and a half hours away, so I could really go there whenever I felt like it if there was some emergency (not that I've ever felt the need to leave in the middle of the week for home).
Friends. Another duh. What I really wish is to be able to warp friends here and do fun things here with them here. I think I've said it before, but I think that Japan is a place that partners itself with things that I like to do with my friends at home, with a few exceptions that will be on my other list.
Hugs. Yes, this was the third thing I wrote down. I give SO MANY at home, whether they're to my family in Virginia Beach or to friends at UVA. Here I've given a few, but they're so few and far between, and I'll give a leeway of two when I say I've hugged probably five Japanese (a few HSD members, Shuuji from the baseball team when he was happy about winning the most recent game [which I'll get to later], and uhhh...)
Couches. I really look forward to returning to the couches in the den, relaxing, and naturally falling asleep on them.
Diverse Foods. This week especially I've been bummed with food choices here. I eat the same stuff all of the time, and since stuff that I've been eating all the time has hit a hard, unexpected roadblock as of last weekend, I refuse to eat things such as: Yoshinoya, fried rice balls, and bread sweets with cream inside.
Mexican and Chinese. I went to a Mexican place on Saturday with Jonas and Juun (Sugiyama) and got fajitas, but... this was no Plaza Azteca. There also are no American Chinese food places anywhere [but America].
Home cooking. This would naturally go higher on the list, but I was just throwing food nostalgia everywhere at this point. Also, I miss home cooking at UVA, so this is nothing new. What I DON'T miss at UVA is the above food because it's still around. Anyway, my mom cooks great food, as does my dad, and let's not forget about my grandparents! Man... I would consider making lumpia like my grandma taught me this winter here, but the peripherals here are just too gross.
Cookouts. The smell, the gathering, and not to mention the actual foods. Summer is all about cookouts at home, and I'm missing them. You know, I think I'll try to put together a Japanese barbecue now that I think about it... not that that will by any means make up for a burger off the grill and a pool to dive in.
Jazz. I can't practice here because I just don't have time, so that's one thing, but another thing is, I don't play with people like the people I play with at UVA. Hands down. Attitude about jazz and playing-wise. You know who I'm talking about. Maybe it's just that talking about music with people here is IMPOSSIBLE for me the way I talk about it with my jazz friends at UVA, and even sometimes at home.
Driving. Driving a car is the first thing that comes to mind, not driving a bus. The freedom of hoping in my car and going someone I want is awesome. So is SINGING in the car (that originally was just another point on the list). I can't belt out here. Sometimes I sing at night when I'm coming home late and there's no one around and sometimes in my room, but usually never outside of karaoke. I miss the bus, too, but it doesn't compare to the car when you don't have a car around.
Tub. Maybe I should just say "non-communal showers". But I like sitting in the shower at home, too.
LOST and other good TV. I missed so much...!!! Supposedly there's a website I can go to, but I don't remember what it is... I'm going to have to find whoever told me about it...
Rock Band. You know it had to come sooner or later. When I get home there're so many new songs to play aaaahhhhhhhh!!!
Home Games. Really it's the idea of having friends to play games with, as that is my main goal of owning games in the first place in this modern era of my life. Smash Bros., anyone?
Candy Bars. I love Kit-Kats, but COME ON, Japan. What I really want is a Milky Way.
Open Spaces. They don't exist here. When I wrote this, all I had to do was think about walking outside my front door and walking along the street. Open. Lovely.
Nature. Part of open spaces, I presume, but not totally. I miss nature a lot anywhere, but there's just SO MUCH city here. Even going to Yoyogi park is less nature-y than, say, the Lawn due to the sheer number of people there. Not that there aren't a lot on the Lawn... maybe they're even...
Clean Laundry. It doesn't get clean at UVA either, but at least the dryer does its job.

"Things I Will Miss About Japan"
Friends. Goodness I'll miss the friends I've made here, Japanese and not. As I said before, it's only recently that I started to make actual good relationships with a lot of people, so no matter what it's going to be like a rug pulled out from under me. It's happened before with HSD, but that was ten days versus months, which is a little different. Maybe it's bad to even compare it this to HSD at all because that's like an inexplicable phenomenon.
Baseball. I'm not going to be playing baseball when I get back. Softball, yeah, but not baseball, and I'll miss that. I'll also miss growing up with the other first years of the team, which is sad to think about. But, hopefully I'll return in the next four years and I can come back to see a game of theirs when they're awesome.
Different Ethnicities. What? Different ethnicities aren't in America!? Not like this. My Japanese class alone has Germans, Brits, a Russian, a Swede, Thais, and people from all around America. Not that the Americans are recognizably different from me, but the others are non-diluted citizens of their respective countries and it's very cool.
Gundam. Haha, you know it.
Speaking Japanese. I guess I'll be speaking Japanese in class, but the Japanese I want to speak is not the Japanese that I'll be speaking in class. I love the casual conversations and dialect that I use with my friends, and though sure, I can't speak a little Japanese to fellow classmates back home, I'd rather speak English to them. Furthermore, I'll want to use a lot of Japanese slang when talking in Japanese, but who the hell's going to understand me???
HSD Friends. Not to beat a horse any more than it should be, but seeing these guys again have really made a part of my life.
Tabe/Nomihoudais. Cici's is one thing, but there won't be anything like paying $25 for either as many plates of beef as I can eat in two hours or as much as I can drink in the same amount of time. Er, man... $20 is a lot... but not here!!! It's like paying $10 at home, maybe... 'cause that's how much Cici's is (less, even!).
Japanese Girls. They don't exist in Virginia Beach. THAT'S going to be reverse culture shock. I e-mailed Mike at one point and told him that there are just loads of beautiful women here, and it's true. Hey all of you guys that say I like Japanese girls more than white girls! Listen up! I think there are more good looking Japanese girls walking around Japan than there are good looking white girls walking around America, and that's all you're getting from me. I still won't admit there being a preference!!!
おつかれさま！ This phrase never gets old.
Crepes. What a great treat.
Udon. Yes, I will eventually miss the noodles. Udon IS awesome, no matter how much I have to eat it.
Weight Loss. I project I won't be this skinny for much longer after I get home.
Helping with English. Teaching is great. Subbing is fun and all, but when there are guys like Juun, Asato, Hiroki, and Shou constantly trying to speak English and asking me how to say things and whatnot and they're actually LEARNING (unlike those pesky high school kids), it feels great to be helping them.
Amazement at Crowds. I won't be seeing crowded streets like there are in Shibuya much, if ever, in the States. It always is fun to watch how many people are moving around there.
Karaoke! DUH. This is low on the list, but probably because I figured I didn't even need to mention it! Going crazy in a karaoke booth with friends is awesome.
Jazz Club. Unless you're talking about Enrico's, I still won't have one in Virginia Beach.
Good Rice. No matter how much the Asian market tries to fool you, you just can't make rice like how it's made here. Maybe I should buy a Japanese rice cooker and bring it home.

That's it for now. I'm going to sleep early tonight, woohoo!!!

Until next time...!!!

Eyyyy I didn't get buried!

2008-06-15T11:01:00.002+09:00

Hey! The earthquake didn't hit near enough to me to have any effect. I felt some aftershocks, but at first I thought it was just me because last time I thought there was an earthquake it was when I was sick in class and my friend told me nothing was happening. : P

But, I HAVE been in earthquakes here! They're pretty cool. Well, I mean, they've been just little shakes, but it's almost like you're in a dream... the ones I've been in have been like waves and not rumbles, so very smooth and disorienting.

Later!

Yakyuu, Jazz Circles, and Klass Karaoke

2008-06-14T11:18:00.008+09:00

      The team's first baseball game was at a place called Tokyo Metropolitan University, which I had never heard of and took about an hour and 45 minutes to get to from home. Knowing how popular high school baseball is in Japan, I had high expectations for the game, thinking that both teams would have fans there, each player would have a little song like in the pros, the field would be nice, etc. Well, none of that is true, actually. Maybe it's just the division we're in (Sophia's in division four, which I think may be the lowest), but we had few fans (a couple players who didn't bring their uniforms, an alum, and a dad), a rather crappy field, and no singing. Doesn't mean it wasn't fun, though!
      Much like high school sports in the states (and maybe college, too? I'm not sure), all of the team members had to dress up in suits and come to the game. Unlike other college sports, though, we just changed into our uniforms outside. This was our first game, so we hadn't yet gotten our uniforms, but we wore our practice ones instead. We warmed up a bit, and after the game that was being played finished, we all ran out to the field and cleaned it up with rakes. Once everything was in top shape, we started throwing the ball around until it was time to start. In the beginning, all of the members of both teams run out to home plate, stand in a line, take off their caps, and bow to the opposing side. Once that's done, the game begins.
      This first shot is of one of the funniest guys on the team, Kosuke, who is the starting pitcher for the team. He tells me to call him Kosukebe (Kosuke + do[u?]sukebe), does hitomane (imitations) of people (including one of me, which is just him looking around confused saying "anooo"), and has this really deep voice that is especially threatening and commanding on the field. As one of the best batters on the team, he hit a grand slam that day. You'll recognize Akira in this one, but the other two are Shuuji and Kurokawa. Shuuji's my best senpai friend on the team because he actually is willing to hang out outside of baseball, while Kurokawa speaks really fast, unrecognizable Japanese all of the time. Supposedly he was nicknamed Kuro-san in school to cut down his last name, but at first people thought he was called that because of how dark his skin is. Here's a batter!
      Next is a picture of Yasuda-san warming up on the sideline. Hailed as one of the best on the team and a batter with an average this semester of about .800, he is one of the oldest members of the team, being 23. He's very comical and has a loud presence about him, but he is very serious about baseball. Dugout shot. Kosuke again. The next shot is terrible, but I guess it's good for checking out our uniforms, which I think are very snazzy, especially because of the blue and white color scheme (which just happens to be my favorite). Another team shot (sorry Justin, haha). Here are some managers, who don't actually wear team uniforms (that's to be expected, yeah?). During the game they're filling out score sheets, which is really important because after the game we have these long meetings in which we discuss what happened and what could be improved (this includes a 'point-to-people-and-ask-questions' session). The missing two managers (the one on the right is a senpai)... someone from the opposite team batting... From the opposite team there was a really short, scruffy guy who had a sort of mohawk-looking haircut that looked like he could really kick ass. The field. The stands which, as I said, harbored very few. Akira and the fabled Narita. Oh, update on Narita, seems that another member of the teach got to his girl first. Oops! Post-grand slam running, and post-grand slam manager Nohse. Nohse's really goofy and gives everybody the ol' slap on the butt during the game and practices. Team members, including Nemoto Hiroki, the third baseman/relief pitcher, who has odd ways of doing everything. In terms of actions, Nemoto is probably the most ridiculous person on the team. I would describe him as "squirrelly". For example, last game he had pick-off attempts thrown at him while he was on base and when he'd run back he'd do a little duck and hold his helmet with both hands. When he DID get picked off, he ran back in an indescribably goofy manner (think about the ducking thing). Not to mention, he has a strange way of both batting and pitching. You can watch a video that I'll post later of him pitching, which is of submarine style, but his batting is such that he throws a ton of weight on the back foot and bobs up and down so that his other foot leaves the ground, sometimes going really high into the air. Maybe I can get that on tape next time, too... But, saying all this, he's an awesome player. Last game he hit every time at bat and made some great third-to-first plays.
      More pictures, lesse... shot of the first years (in front is a first-year named Takahashi who I don't know very well but is very friendly) and of the scoreboard (our score is on the bottom). We ended up winning that game, and hey! We've won every game so far this season! More on that later, but first, an interesting fact about Japanese baseball that is very Japanese: there is a LOT of bunting, and it is an important strategic aspect of the game. If someone's on first and there are no outs (sometimes one out, too), the next batter usually bunts to sacrifice himself so that the guy on base can get to second. I can't help but wonder how this would affect things is we integrated that approach into American baseball.

      The next few pictures come from my Jazz gasshuku, which was in early May, I think. I'm going to try and be brief on this one, but basically, I paid a lot of money to go up to the mountains for a weekend with the jazz circle, thinking that the weekend would be everyone playing for hours on end with the new kids learning stuff elsewhere. This was unfortunately not the case at all. Instead, Friday night we got to the place, slept, woke up early, and the senpai taught the freshman about jazz. Most of the first years had never touched jazz before. Some had never touched their instruments before (this is no exaggeration--one saxophone player had to study a fingering chart). This obviously served as a bore to me, and lasted all morning. After lunch, people broke up into their respective instruments and had classes taught by the senpai. Lucky for me, I switched into a drum class instead, borrowing my Australian friend Brenden's sticks, as he went to the vocal class. That was pretty fun for the most part, but overall it was turning out to be a total drag. Thankfully, the night changed that.
      The place that we stayed was this lodge up in the mountains that had another building across from it that harbored nothing but studio rooms. The basement floor, though, had a HUGE room that had a stage, tons of mics and amps, and was very, very cool. It was here the actual great part of the evening happened. The senpai got all of the food and drink set up on the floor and did a sound check with the mics, and then the 10-hour concert began, starting at 6pm. A white board was brought out to the floor with every freshman's name on it, randomly placing people in groups with one or two senpai included. The players included absolutely EVERYONE, including the people who had just started playing their axes, which was the amazing thing about the night (I was on their twice... once for sax, once for drums... haha). Some of the kids were really shy to play and didn't even while placed on stage (everyone played "Billie's Bounce", by the way), but the ones that did played with an astounding amount of energy and passion that I think a lot could be learned from, even by those who can already play. There were some that didn't hold back at all and really played their soul out, and even though it was ear-wrenching at times, it turned out to be awesome. As for my drumming, there's a website with MP3s of every performance out there, but to save myself extreme embarrassment I will NOT post that link. It was pretty bad. I didn't think that at the time because I was buzzed, but now I know WHOAAAA kindabad. Here's a photo of some of the members, including the highest-ranked saxophone senpai, Ryuuichi, vocalist Linda, crazy guy bass player, and others.
      Some impressions that I got from this trip and being with with the members of the jazz circle are that jazz is definitely bigger amongst the youth of Japan, ESPECIALLY amongst females (Haruka and Linda... I have no idea what they're doing). Just the idea of people transferring from rock and metal backgrounds to play jazz at their age is crazy to me, especially the idea of those that were heavily influenced by another instrument's player deciding to not only switch genres, but also instruments. Also, I've never seen this many girls interested in jazz. Ever. I won't even fault the Japanese for some of the jazz that they like because of how great I think that these youth are praising John Coltrane over Avril Lavigne.

... Okay, maybe some of them still like Avril more.

      Whatever, there were a lot of people and a lot of alright players. Here's the stage. Anyway, the night was awesome. After the freshman groups played it was an open session until 4am. Everyone just drank, talked, and played all night, and THAT'S what I expected from the weekend. Not some silly training camp. But, oh wait, look at the word "gasshuku" closer and what does it mean? Awwww man...
      Before I get off this topic, the two senpai vocalists are just no good, to be honest. I like them as friends, too, which is a problem. Both are girls, and both try to have a gruff timbre in their voice and it sounds REALLLY bad. Unfortunately, they weren't recorded so I can't give you an example now, but maybe I can June 21st when we have another concert.

      Last for this post is an outing that I did with my class a long time ago! We went to an Indo-curry restaurant near the school for dinner that rocks (I've been there a few other times for lunch, actually). I took a picture of this drink called a "mango lasse" which, rather than being a mango dog, is a rather delightful smoothie-ish treat. At lunch time, sometimes these are given free as service, yoink!
      Aside from the class just coming, our awesome teacher Kobayashi-sensei came and brought his girlfriend, who, I found out later, he actually hadn't seen for quite a long time until that night, haha. We're really glad he likes us that much. Check out that big piece of nan bread, too!!! Man, that stuff is great. In that picture, you'll see to the right of me my German friend Jonas and my Utah-based friend Nate. About Jonas, he is a German, so his favorite activity is to ask me to join him for a beer at 10:30 at night, right before he goes to sleep. He's really strange and hilarious, and has an experimental music band with his friend (he really, really likes Tom Waitts). I got the first copy of his CD EVER. Not only is he doing that kind of music, but he's really into gritty blues music and is a drummer for a blues band back home. When I got sick recently he told me that when Germans feel a fever coming on, they heat up a liter of beer, chug it, throw on a ton of clothes, and pass out, sweating the fever out before it comes. Crazy, no?
      Here's one of Nate and Felice and another of Christina, Alexis, and my Swedish pal Julia (pronounced Yulia). Some one-sentence summaries of these people: Nate - quite funny classical composer; Felice - along with our British classmate Kirsty, misses about 35% of class and also really enjoys fried rice balls; Christina - Californian who knows a lot of kanji but says her Japanese "r"s like they're actually "r"s; Alexis - a fellow handheld gamer that is interested in karaoke and my progress in Monster Hunter 2nd G, of which I have none right now; Julia - aside from Jonas, my best class friend who is really fun and loves Star Wars... not to mention all of my Japanese friends thinks she's cute and want to betroth her.
      After dinner we went to a karaoke place... one with the epic name of "My Pleasure", which is suitable if you love singing and ice cream tabehoudais. Our teacher's first song, to my pleasure (baaaahhaaha), was "Wild, Wild Life" by the Talking Heads, which I joined him for. Mine was, of course, my signature song "Dream Weaver". Oooooh yeah!

      Okay, I've been at this long enough and am really hungry. Here are some videos and then that'll be it until next time (... I'm going to have to say that again later, aren't I... pshh... what has my English become since being here!?!?):

Nemoto's Submarine Pitch

Submarine Pitch II

Every time after we field, there's a small talk given by the team leader.

Hit!

Kobayashi-sensei and me singing Beck's "Sexx Laws"!

      Well, there you have it! I have tons more to talk about and whatnot about the month and a half between then and now, so uhhh... look forward to it!!!

Until next time...!!!

Eyyyy I'm okay!

2008-06-08T21:16:00.002+09:00

Just wanted to let you all know I didn't get stabbed. Later!

お礼

2008-06-02T15:18:00.005+09:00

      Just wanted to give a quick shout-out to those who are still reading my blog after these past couple of months. I really appreciate the time that you take to read and listen to what I have to say even through all of the filler and all of the huge delays in posts do to me being narcoleptic, and it always makes me happy to see any comments that anyone chooses to make on the posts. As I'm sure you all know, knowing me, I do miss home a lot. It's not that I THINK about missing home, but I do think about home, family, and friends, and the fact that you all are reading this makes me feel more close to home.

      In terms of an actual post, I'm going to have to save that for the weekend since I have three mid-terms this week. But, I just wanted to tell you that I've decided to eventually take a trip to Osaka for a weekend before I leave. From now I have eight weekends left, a few that have been already taken up: one weekend will be used to climb Mt. Fuji, July 5th and 6th I will be meeting with my HSD 2003 roommate Tomohiro Ishikawa, one will probably be me going to Kyoto to hang out with my friend Hiromi from HSD 2003, and then one will be a trip to Osaka.
      My curiosity in Osaka started when I hung out with Kohei who told me some facts about Osakans, and spiked last night when I hung out with friends from HSD 2004, tw of which who are from Osaka. Basically, they described the Osakans as having great senses of humor and being overall more good-natured people than the Tokyoans. For example, if you make a sword swiping motion at an Osakan on the street, they with pretend like they just got slashed, and if you give them a banana they will do something like a dance or start singing. How awesome is that!?!?!? THAT sounds like where I should have studied abroad, haha. Anyway, I really want to check that out, not to mention I want to go see a Hanshin Tigers game again!!!!!!

     And I leave you now with two utterly hilarious videos of my Osakan friend Jiro from last night.

In case you're confused, keep in mind that "juu" in Japanese means "gun".

Until next time...!

PS: Not to nag, but the post below is about three times larger now than when it was first posted, so check it out!!!!

Two Month Anniversary!!!

2008-05-25T16:58:00.018+09:00

      Being that it has been two months since the Sannin landed in Japan, I thought it would be an appropriate time to update with actual words this time. Seems that the written blogs are ten times more popular than the podcasts, so I decided to do a post first and then possibly convince the other two to pull through a podcast as we go to dinner tonight. I guess we'll see.
      I don't want to give too much of a detailed account of my feelings about Japan right now, but I will tell you this: yes, I'm stilling having a lot of fun; my feelings on class here overall isn't too much different from my feelings on class at UVA; I'm glad to be making Japanese friends; I believe my Japanese has improved, especially in the sense that I'm more confident in using it, which was a major goal of mine (but, how much has it improved overall? maybe me taking the necessary placement test when I get back home will tell us); and, my goals outside of Japanese are not being met (in-depth jazz research, wife, cooking, etc.). Let's not take note of the eggs before looking under the chicken, though... I've still got two months left : )

      Today's post is going to begin with more food-related pictures. I don't know how much enjoyment you guys get out of seeing the differences in foods as compared to the US, but I REALLY like it. Especially McDonald's food. While my pictures are uploading onto webshots, I'll start with a food that we don't have in America that is simple, but proved troublesome for me the other night. That, my friends, is the SHAKA SHAKA Chicken (here's a link to the Japanese McDonald's Shaka Shaka website... go there now because I'm going to guide you through the Shaka Shaka). You'll notice the 100-yen graphic on the site. Yes, you get THIS instead of a double cheeseburger for a $1 here, folks (the only burger you can get for that much is a regular ol' hamburger, by the way). Go ahead and click the button in the bottom-right hand corner of the page, which roughly translates to "how to eat the Shaka Shaka Chicken". You can see the step by step process of how to work the magic of the Shaka Shaka (don't you love saying that!?). First, you sprinkle one of three powders into the bag with the chicken (choose from "Hot Chili", "Lemon Pepper", and "Cheese"), followed by a closing of the bag. Next is the step where I, and maybe most Americans, had/will have trouble. If you're like me, you'll take the bag and Shaka Shaka THE SHIT out of that chicken (pardon my language). Unfortunately, though, if you're like me, the chicken will BURST from its prison RIGHT on your pants, and so will all that Hot Chili powder. And I'm not talking about me not holding the top (which some of you probably would have guessed from past incidents)... I'm talking about the bottom of the bag ripping open and the chicken flying straight for my crotch. Luckily, the chicken still tasted good.
      Next for the McDonald's experience we have the MEGA MAC, which is part of the promotion that also brought you the MEGA TERA burger pictured earlier. The MEGA MAC is pretty much Japan's answer to the Burger King Quad-Stacker (which is in America), and possibly Wendy's Baconator. I think with these burgers the goal is to stuff as much meat as possible in one sandwich without it getting too ridiculous at the current time. Hopefully, they'll move up to a Quin-Stack in due time. But anyway, the MEGA MAC is a burger that is an anomaly because it's the biggest Makku sandwhich that I've ever seen, yet it is NOT to be seen in the States. The set may have been between 700-800 yen, but I was hungry and HAD to eat one. This sucker is huge. It's basically a Big Mac with an extra two patties stuck in, making the count FOUR patties. To eat it I pretty much had to pull a Dagwood, or maybe even a Peter Fox. Regardless, it was hard to take a bite. Overall, it was good, but was no Quad-Stacker, particularly because I didn't feel like I had turned into a pile of beef afterwards like I did with the aforementioned.
      The final McDonald's item for today is the new Cheese Katsu Burger, which isn't really even a burger at all, I guess. Instead, it's a slab of pork cutlet (katsudon) with cheese inside rounded out with some teriyaki sauce on top. What I really love about the burger is the logo, which I guess is a new breed of pig that has a cheese block for a center. Wicked. Take a gander at this photo, too. While it bad be a bad shot, you can definitely see the cheese innards of the newtype pig oozing out. It was pretty good, but not worth the high price that is on it.
      A couple more food-related pictures, here is a gummy coke bottle that was not worth the 115-yen I paid in terms of taste, and here is the line for a seemingly out-of-the-way Krispy Kreme in Shinjuku. It's absolutely amazing that these people crave the KK so much that the line was SO long a worker came an started handing out free doughnuts to people in the crowd.

Pause. Nap time!

      Hopefully by now you know that "Nap Time" means, "I passed out for hours so I won't be updating again today", but in case you didn't...... it does. And for my helpful hint of the day: don't even TRY the frozen crab stuff. I should have learned my lesson when I got the creamy crab balls... and in ways I did... but I made some frozen Chinese things that are usually filled with meat today, and to my dismay I failed to notice that the meat on the package was PINK, so the meat that I was so looking forward to just... just didn't exist. =(
      Okay, so a lot of this post is going to have to do with the friends that I've made (FINALLY, right?). This first picture is of some of my friends from the baseball circle (left to right, Akira, Momo-chan, Hiroki, Asami, always-forgotten-name-girl, and me). These guys very kindly took me in as one of their own early on and they're some of the people I talk with the most. Mostly I'm referring to Akira and Hiroki, but I have friendly acquaintances with the other three (the least being, you guessed it, always-forgotten-name-girl... particularly because I'm embarrassed to not know her name).
      The two guys are both members of the FLA (Foreign Language... uh... depArtment) and study English. Akira himself has lived in America before and understands everything I say, even my Englishified Japanese, which is pretty awesome, and Hiroki, while not fluent in like Akira, is pretty good at English, and kind of reminds me of myself in learning language in regards to the fact that my listening is more painful than my speaking. Hopefully if he's reading this he doesn't take offense to that, haha... I'm not sure how they think my Japanese is compared to their English (I did in fact give them the link to this site). Hiroki's a busy guy with two jobs (he's both a high school tutor and he works at a cafe as a waiter), and on an unrelated note his Japanese is hard for me to understand because his voice is very low and slurry. It may sound like my English sounds to you guys... you know... manly... unintelligible （笑）*. But on that note, I WAS complimented on being easy to understand by one of my friends who you'll see later, believe it or not. Akira just got a job at Subway, which I think is pretty funny, and is a really good guide for me while I'm here in terms of points like telling me why I wasn't getting much response for the karaoke from the senpai. His Japanese is just fast. And he doesn't correct mine because he understands English. I've already booed him for that one, haha. Oh, and, I'm not sure if I mentioned this in the podcast or not, but he's the one who went out with the senpais on the goukon (group date). They consider him to be a ladies man, and his attitude does come off that way. Maybe America got to him a little bit with being confident around girls, because he definitely doesn't come off as being innately Japanese in those respects. But, he does know how not to be TOO American, as he often tells me not to say certain things in Japanese in public, haha.
      Here's another picture of the girls, same order as before. Momo-chan is pretty good at English and spent some time in South Africa. She has a funny way of saying "castle". Asami doesn't know hardly any English, but is very friendly. We frequently exchange casual words and greetings at practice (it's not usual that I get to do this, by the way, since everyone's always running around). She's often the one that throws me balls to hit into a batting net (I hope that means something to someone), and thus is the victim of worrying about being hit by my wild balls. Yes, even my batting practicing is wild. Occasionally I hit the ball either a) on the top of the bat so it flies over this building to where the golf team practices, or b) at some strange part of the net so that it bounces off somewhere. Not TOO often. But sometimes. Anyway, here's a story: One of the guys on the team, Narita (who taught me how to hold a baseball after gripping like it a softball for about a month), has (had?) a crush on her and the feeling wasn't reciprocated, so the senpai, thinking this was funny, gave Hiroki some money to sit between Narita and Asami at lunch one day and give her an ice cream sandwich. This is what the senpai do at Sophia instead of all that other crap they do in high school. Poor N-san! Poor Asami-chan!
      Here's a random picture of a police squad car pulling someone over. I thought it was really funny because of how the light is boosted up. Looks like something out of Looney Tunes or something... I can imagine it shooting out of the hood about twenty feet in the air, waving around while the police are chasing down some criminal.

      On that note, I'm going to stop my break and study more for my kanji midterm next week. I'll be here studying all night, which means frequent additions to this post, so check again around one your time and it may be complete!

*（笑） is the Japanese emoitcon for laughing, basing itself on the "wara" of the kanji "warau", meaning to laugh. Many use it when texting on their keitai. I may use it more often here.

      Before I continue, I'm going to write a little about a baseball dinner that we had. The reason that we were dressed up in the above pictures was because, previous to going to the place where the picture was taken (a diner called Johnathan's, which seems like a pretty popular meeting place for students), we had returned to the place where I first had dinner with the baseball team to have a sort of "welcome party". At the place we had another nomihoudai/tabehoudai (remember, that's all-you-can-drink and all-you-can-eat), but this time we all had to give jikoshoukai (self introductions). The way this worked was, every time that someone answered a question or said something that related to you, you had to drink. To indicate what you were drinking for, everyone would chant a common word. Here's an example in English: "My name is Greg Weaver and right now I live in Warabi". Cue all people who live in Saitama Prefecture to stand up, kanpai ("cheers"), drink, and sit down.
      There were some set questions, and then sometimes questions were asked. Common ones things mentioned were: where you lived, "seifukuban" (uniform number, and if the standees were designated by being either single-digit or double-digit), position (at the time I said "zenbu"/all since I didn't have one, but usually if someone said 1st base all of the infielders would stand up), "sukina senpai" (favorite senpai), "gakubu" (the school that you're in, and since my school was "Japanese" they chanted "gaijin!"/foreigners), favorite baseball team (one of the Japanese guys said an American team, so there was the gaijin chant again), and OF COURSE, the NUMBER ONE question that is asked by ALL circles: "sukina taipu", or, the type of girl you like. I think it's so hilarious when that question comes up. I even suggest to people to ask that question to others when trying to make friends because they just eat it up. I'm going to write a book:

"Making Japanese Friends: A Three Step Process" by Gregory Weaver
Step 1: Say hello first, because usually they don't. Be sure to state your name and them theirs in this step, too, in case you've never met a real person before.
Step 2: Ask them if they have a girlfriend/boyfriend.
Step 3: Ask them their sukina taipu.

BAM! You're in for life, baby. There may be a special footnote for guys that says: "say a sexually explicit word often", because if you do that they really think you're really funny. I like saying "mura mura" or "maguro gaaru". I suggest just using them before you know what they mean... not that I did.

      Some other things that are worth noting from the dinner: The senpai asked Narita his sukina manger. In regards to fellow newcomer Dobashi (who, sadly, nobody likes because they think he's really boring and he's probably the only one who's worse than me on the team... when he's up to bat, the senpai in the outfield chant stuff like "you need to go do the bench press!". I feel really bad for him sometimes, and even invited him to the karaoke event regardless of advice against it... he told me he didn't sing karaoke, though), after EVERYTHING he said, the senpai just chanted "Dobashi!", so he had to drink after everything he said. The senpai often shouted this at random times throughout others' jikoshoukais as well. Lastly, someone reported that his sukina airport was "Narita". Muwahaha.

      Now, onward and such.One weekend, Akira invited me to his place to eat "nabe". When I inquired about what nabe was, he said it translated to "steamboat" and that it was "Sumo's favorite food". Uhhhh, what? Whatever, told him it didn't make any sense and went along with it. When I got to the station that was near his house he greeted me with his friend Shou, who I had hung out with before when them and I went to a coffee shop after baseball practice one day. Shou is Hiroki and Akira's classmate who has an exceptional way of dressing. For example, he wears a cap with a lot of pins on it sometimes, and also, instead of having a chain hanging from his belt to his pocket on a wallet, he has some awesome rubber band (I think it was made of rubber bands) thing.
      Akira cooked for us while we helped a bit, chatted, and watched TV. Akira lives by himself in a really, really small apartment. What you see in that picture is all of the kitchen he has, behind him is the bathroom, and I think you can see what the living/bedroom looks like in another picture. Here's the nabe, though. Pre-being cooked, of course... I don't eat meat that raw unless it's Manly March. Basically it was a huge stew of vegetables (including cabbage and mmmmm! kimchi! I had never had it before the nabe, and it was reallllly good) with some meat thrown in. We also had this stuff on the side, and, while the name escapes me, the pickle-y flavor of what I think was raw fish stuff does not. After devouring the food, Akira went to go get another of his friends while I did some dishes (yes, yes, that IS Akira's hair in the picture, but I was still doing dishes when he got back). That friend is Asato, who you can see added to the picture here (that's Hiroki passed out under the covers, in case you were concerned about what happened to him).
      Asato is yet another one of the other guys' friends from the FLA. With them added in the equation, that makes four pretty dern good English speakers that I hang out with a lot. Asato's best characteristics is that he's hilarious and very eager to learn English. Just as an example, he texted me today: "'tell us how is the person like' <-- Are there any mistakes?" That may not seem very good, but when you take into account that he's been reading texts about Prohibition and the Dust Bowl with vocabulary words like "ruinous" (hey Dad, ask Mom to say that one), those mix-ups aren't too bad. Speaking of ruinous, I don't think I've ever used that word. It said that the farmers had "used ruinous farming techniques and overgrazing cattle", if I recall correctly. Ruinous? Really? You're going to say the farming techniques are... ruinous? COME ON. (- Job)

      Due to the facts that I have to study more, I don't have much time to study tomorrow, and that it's 10:43pm, I'm going to call this post completed and will hopefully work on another one tomorrow between flashcard sets. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't look at the next pictures on the account of they're better with narrative (I'm looking at you, parents!).

... man, I didn't think I'd EVER here the word "Brewsky" in Japan, but someone in the hallway was just saying it. Shoot me.

Until next time...!

Blogcast Episode 01 - "Senpai/Kouhai"

2008-05-23T00:02:00.002+09:00

*Double Post on Thursday! Check out the Podcast in the post below as well!

So instead of an actual post I decided to do an audio blog (is "blogcast" coined? I'm sure it's coined...) instead. This way, I didn't have to type a bunch of stuff, and I didn't have to post anything without pictures. Hopefully this weekend I'll get my tons of pictures from the past few weeks up for you to look at... a lot has gone on that I haven't blogged about!

Anyway, this is unlike the usual Sannin Podcasts because it's just my feelings on a subject. This evening I decided to record a little bit on the Senpai/Kouhai relationship in Japan, and although I know there to be a lot of evil deeds within such relationships here, I mostly talk about my experience with it and why I think the foundations are terrible when it comes to people like myself.

This blogcast is dedicated to my brother Bobby who turned 28 today! Happy birthday!!!

"Senpai/Kouhai"

Until next time...!

Sannin Podcast Episode ??? - "150"

2008-05-22T23:27:00.004+09:00

Hey everyone! Jen and I recorded a new podcast today... one that is unlike our old podcasts because it actually deals with things that we haven't talked about in our previous blog entries. This episode deals mainly with my attitude towards Nishikawaguchi, the city that we get off the train at and have to walk through to get to our actual city Warabi. Also, I would like to dedicate this podcast to Mike Ordonez. I'm not sure if you listen to the podcasts or not, but you ARE the only OYFA member that I know that for sure reads my blog (heck, I can't even be sure that my big sib reads it)! Here's to you, Mike!!!

"150"

Enjoy!

*In case you can't tell, there IS a link... click the "150".

Two Months!? Yeabuhwhat???

2008-05-14T17:09:00.003+09:00

*Note: In case you haven't checked since yesterday, there IS a new post below this one.

      I was on the train this morning and I think it was Jen who mentioned the fact that we have been here for almost two months. One week and four days from now I will have in fact been here for that amount of times, which means that I have less than nine weeks left in Japan. Now, maybe in grade school that would seem like a long time since our report cards came out in quarters of that size, but it really got me to thinking on the way to school today: what that I set out to accomplish here have I actually accomplished, what can I still do, and just, man... it took me two months to get settled and I'm still trying to make better friends with the Japanese that I know now.
      As for the latter part, which affects me the most at the moment, I've just gotten to the point where I feel that I can ask some of my Japanese friends out to karaoke or something and not feel so awkward. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to any point where hanging out with one Japanese person who didn't speak English would feel comfortable for the whole time that we would be out, but that's not so bad since I only really want to hang out in groups. I can't afford the time to just hang out with one guy from the baseball team for hours because I really would like to get to know a handful of them better rather than just one (this is in a manner of speaking: I wouldn't just call one, but if one called me to hang out one on one, that'd be cool), and this goes for the people in the jazz club, too. I'll post about this later, but I met some really cool people in the jazz club this weekend, and it would be a shame if I only got to hang out with them at the jazz functions. I waited a while to even engage in conversation with most in that circle because I was waiting for the gasshuku (training camp) to start to know the kids. That was truly an opportune time to do so, but at the same time that happened just this past weekend, and the clock's still ticking.
      I think I'm going to write a list of goals I have to accomplish before I leave and put them somewhere in my room so that I can see them every day. I really, really have to start planning out my weeks and have to start getting my work done early so that I can do things weeknights and whatnot. Wish me luck...!

      Oh, and, I also haven't found a wife yet. Haha. So you ladies reading this back home can take a sigh of relief ; )

Later!

And now, back to class...

2008-05-13T21:16:00.002+09:00

     So the point was, the schedule gets confusing sometimes. That's not really such a big deal. We do have different teachers almost every day, though, which is odd. Here's a rundown of the teachers:
- Hino-sensei: She's first because I can't stand her. How many days in a row are we going to learn how to ask our teacher if they can do a favor for us??? Dan says: the whole semester. Unfortunately, the girl that sits next to me doesn't get what she's saying most of the time, so when I black out and wake up when I have to talk to her she's just as clueless as me.
- Kobayashi-sensei: The second strongest emotions go to Kobayashi-sensei, who is just freakin' rad. He's a guy in his early 30s, I think, and is really hilarious every day. Our class likes him so much that we took him out to karaoke the other week (pictures and videos are on others' cameras because mine ran out of juice), and to give you an idea of how awesome he is, his first song was "Wild Wild Life" by The Talking Heads. Yeah!!! I used to call him Yoshinoya-sensei because it was the closest thing that I could associate his name with when I didn't really know it... which I'd say is a compliment.
- Noguchi-sensei: My friend German friend Jonas calls him "No-good-chi Sensei" because he speaks Japanese in class until he gets to a simple word and says it in English. Sometimes, he says other words in English, too, but usually it's like, "newgrammarnewgrammar FOOD oldgrammaroldgrammar". But he's pretty hilarious, so I don't mind his oddly-timed English. Last week he showed us this Japanese sci-fi short in class, and supposedly he talked about cremating kids in Natalie's class as an example of picking up fresh bones with chopsticks. He probably said chopsticks in English.
- Silver-haired-sensei: Yeah, I still don't know her name. She's really nice and effective, though. That's about it. I rode the elevator with her yesterday and we talked about how she was in an orchestra, which is cool.
- Remi-sensei: That's her first name, and the only reason I know it is because of X-Men. Her last name is something-yama, but the first day she explained to us that her name was really weird. She's the kanji teacher, which means her class is inherently boring because it consists mostly of us saying words and watching her write words that are in a book we have. It's hard to explain, but if that sounds boring to you, I've done my job. Today was a lot different because we got a new book, but we'll see. She speaks really fast, and since her class is really boring, it's REALLY hard to pay attention. Especially when most of it isn't really important sounding.

      That's the rundown of them. As for my performance, I'm on par with a lot of people, I think... and that may the first time since Japanese 102, haha... and as for learning, well... it's a little difficult. I don't know what I covered before, but it's really hard to make a lot of the new stuff concrete. We speed through the grammar with relatively easy sentences and have our quizzes and tests on vocabulary, but we're never really prompted by the teachers to use this new stuff in class. In fact, I think I've barely used new grammar in non-grammar classes because it's not something that's naturally coming to me. The thing is, it takes usage for the ideas of these new grammar structures to actually be realized in everyday speech. It's not that I don't know the grammar or that I don't need to use it, but because I have minimal practice with it, it's like I don't even have the option of doing so... that's how it works for me, at least. Same goes for the vocab--I feel like most of it is learn-and-dump, much like it was last semester in Japanese 310 where I learned a billion kanji compounds and dumped them after quizzes and tests because they weren't relevant and we weren't learning them in an effective system. But that's another story, I guess. The most I've learned vocabulary-wise is from hanging out with Japanese people, and usually the vocabulary is vernacular.
      Speaking of speaking, I think the course is actually designed so that we don't focus a lot on speaking because they expect us to be doing that outside of class with actual Japanese people. There are two problems with this: 1) again, we aren't prompted to use the new grammar and vocabulary, and 2) we learn how to speak in everyday Japan rather than classroom Japan. The latter fact is actually not really a problem in general, but just a problem for the class. I REALLY love speaking everyday Japanese and learning everyday Japanese. There's so much more gratification in that than speaking BS in class. I don't know how it is for others, but in my case, I can't usually understand the kids my age well because of their really fast, really vernacular-tempered tongues, not just because of vocabulary alone, because I think that they're using a lot stuff I know in just different ways. I've gotten use to a bunch of these, and have learned a lot of popular words among kids my age, which got me thinking about how awesome a class on everyday Japanese would be... learning modern slang and grammatical deformities of the times. We learn a few, but they're few and far between, and when you're in class using the words you don't have a tendency to use the slang because you're in a classroom.
      Oh hey, I just got my pictures from Jen, so I'm going to take a break, get them uploaded, and finish up my homework. I'm trying to go to bed early tonight, so maybe I won't return this evening, but I hope to talk about a topic that Julie keeps reminding me of: the friends that I've made!

     On that note, I'll leave you with a video of a song that is wildly popular all around Japan. It's by a 25-or-so-year-old group called the Southern Allstars (no hyphen). I know you won't understand the song... I mean, I don't totally... but you'll get some idea by the title... and you'll understand me when I say that I thought it bizarre when I saw parents dancing with their kids in the video that I watched at Jazz camp this weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQwm7HIBLTg

Until next time...!

Teen Bus Squad!!!

2008-05-06T13:12:00.001+09:00

This has nothing to do with Japan, but it's too awesome not to post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xctbq9Pd_Q8

I'm featured in it, so keep an eye out.

And um, about that last post... I'll write some more in an hour or two when I start falling asleep while studying kanji. Later!

Edit: Ha! I didn't start falling asleep! Guess it'll have to wait some more.

Now about class...

2008-05-02T23:49:00.000+09:00

I promised last time that my next post would be about class since I haven't talked about it yet, so let me give you the rundown of how it works and how my week works, and then I'll comment on how I actually feel about class.

Firstly, I am enrolled in two classes: JAPN 270B (Intensive Japanese 2) and ANTH 3-something, maybe 4-something (Japanese Symbolic Practice). Japanese meets everyday for three hours, which covers the first two periods of the day, and ends at lunch, while the Anthropology course starts at 3:15 and goes for an hour and a half Mondays and Thursdays. Now you may be thinking, "wow, three hours is a long time!" Well, by golly, you're right! But, they decided to make it seem like we were shortening it by having two different professors every day to make our sensei numbers total to five. Each sensei has his or her own topic, too, so it's not like one whole day of one subject. Reading, Speaking and Writing, Kanji, and Grammar are the topics that they cover, and here's how it looks on schedule:

Monday: Grammar/Speaking and Reading
Tuesday: Reading/Kanji
Wednesday: Grammar/Kanji
Thursday: Grammar/Speaking
Friday: Reading/Speaking

Not so bad, huh? Huh? HUH??!?! Well, HOLD YOUR TONGUE, KNAVE! This schedule gets terrible, and this is why: we have at least two homework sheets due a day and at least one quiz a day, usually two. The problem with this is keeping track of what is when. What days are which sections (not counting kanji... that luckily falls atzjslfjasf...

SLEEP. Man, sorry, that was nap attack to the extreme. If I don't have baseball tomorrow I'lll blaaaarg

Potatoes, Nattou, Tea, and GUNDAMU!!!

2008-04-25T20:17:00.000+09:00

      Ahhhh, a night with nothing to do but sit here. Few and far between nowadays, I'm afraid. I've been doing so much schooling recently that I really don't want to talk about classes yet. I know I've been in for two weeks already and you still don't know what my classes are like, but I swear, all in due time! Plus, that stuff is kind of boring anyways.

      Er, well, I guess video game stuff is boring to people, too, but here we are again, starting off the post with my talks about arcades and video games. Don't fret, though, it's not just about what I was playing...
      In fact, it starts off with me saying, "Hey Dan! We're not doing anything, let's go play that awesome Gundam game where you sit in a pod!" He suggested Akihabara, Tokyo's "Electric District", and since I hadn't been there yet, I quickly concurred. First we stopped by his place, which was pretty cool (if you're interested, I'd look on his blog), and then we shuttled off to Akihabara. Seeing that it was the afternoon, there was no real presentation of it representing its namesake, so I don't have any pictures of the actual city, but I'll probably go there one night to see it at its prime (or, what I assume to be its prime).
      What we did do, though, is head straight for this shop called "Super Potato". This was probably one of the coolest things that Dan could have taken me to, as far as I'm concerned. Basically, the place is four or five stories of every single console game imaginable. And when I say that, I mean starting from anywhere around the Atari 2600 to present day stuff... and to make it interesting to everyone else, most of the stuff was still IN ITS PACKAGING. It was amazing. They even had the Nintendo Glove, Commodore 64s, Wonder Swans, Neo Geos... Virtual Boys (I even played the Wario game for about 2 minutes just for kicks). Heck, I even bought Mega Man V for the Game Boy despite it being in Japanese (that may mean something only to about two people, but it's a very rare [original, possibly Color] Game Boy game that I was swooning over for years and never got because no one EVER had it... it even had the one and only appearance of Tango, Mega Man's cat).
      At the top of the store there was a small arcade room full of these arcade machines that had something in them that allowed them to display hundreds of games on one machine. So, people were playing some of the earliest arcade games on these babies. Also at the top they had a chair made completely of (what I remember to be) old Nintendo cartridges and a life-size statue of Snake in Metal Gear Solid 3 garb.
      The most amazing section to me, though, was the Super Nintendo section. They had everything... multiple copies of all of the Final Fantasy games, Earthbounds, etc... and what I actually got. That's right, suckers, it's CT in a box (CT in a box, giiirl) that's in pretty awesome condition... for 1,554 yen... aka, $15. I probably payed for my used copy of that back in the day for at least $50, and right now you can get an opened American copy in box on eBay for $60 + $5.50 shipping + 13 hours still left to bid. I'm not saying I could sell this on eBay necessarily since it IS a Japanese copy, but since it's my second favorite game of all time (next to Final Fantasy Tactics), it hold a special place in my heart. They didn't have it at the time, but I also want to get the actual cartridge to play the game in Japanese (Independent Study, anyone? haha).
      Moving along, Dan and I went to check out the Gundam game in a Taito Game Station, and first ran into a Gundam game that we weren't expecting. The game is a shooter that involves you holding the Zaku machine gun. On screen you're an ace Zaku pilot going through many of the battles in the actual Gundam show, kicking some serious Federation butt. It's most similar to Time Crisis with a trigger to hide and come out to attack... and you can use Crackers (Zaku grenades) and the Heat Hawk (axe), too (I don't know why I kept doing the definition thing because I'm sure the only people reading this right now would know what they are...).
      After I played that game I moved on to the Dance Dance Revolution Supernova that's behind me in that picture and played four songs for hyaku-en with a guy who had a towel (heh heh, good times, no?). I haven't played in ages, but held my own against the expert. Even after the first song my legs and lungs were burning with exhaustion, and after a very friendly game with the gentleman, I had a really hard time walking down the stairs. By the way, hardly anyone was playing that game... people are more into Beat Mania, Drum Mania, Guitar Freaks, Taiko Drum Master, and even Poppin' Music.
      Speaking of Gundam and arcades, though, here's another interesting game in the arcade that you'll never see in America (but OH how I wish I could spend all of my mon--er, play it!!!). Here's an example of a game that is played as a fusion between card games and video games. I don't know what the big screen does (like, if it displays any games that players may be playing against each other), but here's how the game basically works from my observations (I'm going to reference it to Gundam, but know that the games range from that to fantasy to even sports... I saw one where people were playing each other in soccer using these cards): you sit at one of the stations armed with your cards of various types of mobile suits (and probably other things) and position them on the battlefield, which is the card grid you see. On screen there's a battle scenario (maybe you can do 1P or more?) in which you have to use your cards to defeat your enemy. It looked like partially a strategy game because the guy was moving certain units to certain places at different times, and the computer's screen was changing in accordance to his moves. For example, when he did certain actions, a video (being shown on there right now) plays depending on what he actually had done to affect the computer. There are also buttons and a scrolly mouse ball to use, but I have no clue what those are. Regardless, he looked really serious and it looked really sweet. Also, there was a card dispenser for a sports one in there where people can buy packs or singles or something. Rad.
      The next two photos are for Tony and Nick. If you can't tell what this is at first glance, take a closer look. If you don't recognize it, then relearn your kana... or your history of what absurd games we've played in the past.
Here's a shot for everyone. Why? Because this is the afternoon and the arcade is that crowded. Also, because the game that's being played is Street Fighter II, which is a game that came out in the early-to-mid 90s. This arcade was huge and had rows upon ROWS of games like this: old ones that an astonishing amount of people were playing seriously and even WATCHING. People in America may stop for a song of Dance Dance Revolution because people are looking funny "dancing", but these people were transfixed with the people playing STREET FIGHTER. I'm sure they've seen ENOUGH in the past 13 years! But clearly, they haven't. It was cool to see the new Tekken 6 machines, too, since they were all displayed on huge HD, flat screen monitors... but anyway, there were also those games in which you're a plane on a flat plain and are being constantly bombarded with missiles and stuff in which people just couldn't be touched no matter how impossible it seemed. I think I'll take a video of someone playing that one of these days. It was hard to get a spot in the 2-on-2 Gundam game that I had played a while ago, too.
      Lastly about this arcade, there was a small space with books and art work. Your guess is as good as mine.

      That weekend I ended up hanging out with my old roommate from USHSD 2004 Yusuke, his girlfriend Karin, and Andrew Pierce (my best friend on the trip). First comes a funny picture of a sign for a "casual wine bar" named "Pee". Yup. Next comes two R-rated pictures. If you don't get what these are from the hint of them being R-rated, then you can look at this picture of Yusuke and me standing outside of the shop. I didn't buy any, in case you all were wondering... but that doesn't mean I can't buy any FOR anyone, haha. In fact, the cashier was a little fussy about the picture taking, heh.
      That's in Shinjuku, by the way. Yusuke and Karin go to school there, pretty near the station and very near to the extremely rich district that connects Shibuya to Shinjuku (if I'm not mistaken), where we saw all types of fancy pants stores such as Gucci. This was also there... but just outside of the rich district. While we were still in Shinjuku, we hunted for a kaiten zushi place, and just so happened to wind up at the exact same one that I had went to with Dan, etc. my first night in Shinjuku. This time, though, I ate something even WORSE than the finely-shaped ika (squid).
This stuff is very famous for being rather disgusting for most people. And its name is Nattou. See that stuff inside the wrap that may be called really funny-looking chunky peanut butter? It's not peanut butter, but rather "fermented soybeans". Sounds pretty gross, huh? Well, look at my reaction. That's me almost throwing up trying to down the stuff. You thought that the Creamy Spinach Casserole Jones Soda was bad? Give this beast a try. The texture is absolutely wretched, as it just sticks to every part of your mouth, and the little bean thingies that swim around in it don't help. It was like a mouthful of disgusting tasting, brown snot that wouldn't ball up so that I could spit it out, nor would it go down the hatch. Yusuke ended up finishing it up for me. He loves the stuff.
      Afterwards we did some karaoke! If you'd like to see a video of Yusuke and his girlfriend singing "A Whole New World" and not really getting part of it (heh), take a gander:

      During the singing, Karin went off to her work, so the guys and me finished up and headed to around the area where she works so that we could walk around for a bit before we ate at the Italian place of her employment. Basically the place that Yusuke lives has about three times the amount of 7-11s that are in Virginia Beach, but instead of being 7-11s they're TV drama shops that are placed closer together because it's a city.
      The Italian place was pretty good. I ended up getting a spaghetti dish... but not this one. You guessed it, nattou atop of spaghetti. I'm pretty sure there's no song about that. But anyway, needless to say, it wasn't really Italian food like what you'll find in the States, but it did okay for me. We also got dessert. I ordered Pumpkin Cheesecake, which, again, is better in the States. Ah well. It was a lot of fun to just hang out with Yusuke and Andrew again, and it really made me miss my HSD days. I'm REALLY excited to see my first Japanese friend ever, Tomohiro Ishikawa, who was one of my homestay guys and was my roommate during HSD 2003 at Princeton (here's a picture of him and Aki back then in the old kitchen! he's on the right... I'm still trying to get in contact with Aki). Just thinking about the awesome times that I had both years with these guys and the other people in the program just makes me really nostalgic and so very happy to get the chance to see anyone I can again from the programs. I'll probably also see my homestay brother Masa from 2004 when he makes his business trips to Tokyo!
      Bah! Tangent! Here's Yusuke and his girlfriend at the restaurant! They were really reluctant to take it during work hours... but I forced it.

      And here comes tonight's side-story! First of all, I hadn't had a Mountain Dew in a month. That may bewilder some of you, especially you guys at home since I probably drank two a night. Luckily, I was able to snuggle up to one the other night because they're in the vending machines at the DK House. At first, I thought it was a really good deal. Look at that huge can! Hyaku-en? No way! Then, I realized that hyaku-en was a dollar. By the way, I think that the Dew tastes a little different here, too... or at least in those big cans. Not as sweet, add something from the C.C. Lemon, and yeah... a little odd tasting.
      Natalie has some pictures I need to get of some more McDonald's stuff, but here's one for now. This is the Mega Teriyaki, which is two patties, three slices of bread, lettuce, lots of mayo and teriyaki. I got this tonight, and was lucky to do so because I went grocery shopping at 7, which is when they start selling this burger (is that bizarre or what?). Check out the cool square around the burger to keep it all nice and neat. As mentioned before, it's really nice when your burgers actually look clean. Too bad this thing slid all out as I was trying to eat it and made just as big of a mess as saaaay, ribs. It was pretty good, though I would never get it again due to the fact that it was so expensive. But, I had to just for the experience! You'll get to see the Mega Mac in action verrrry soon. That, my friends, was a monster.

     Today, just to write about it, I stopped off at Shinjuku after school to play the Gundam game that Dan and I set out to play at Akihabara but never did. When I made it to the arcade, I went up and played around with my pilot card a little bit. The pilot card, which I got with Dan to see what it was (it cost 300-yen for the card and each game, which is two plays, is 500-yen... so that's why we didn't play), has saved on it my pilot information (name, appearance, records), the mobile suits I have (you have only one to start, and since I picked Zeon I had the Zaku II), and my team, which I didn't have at first. I then tried to sit in a pod and play the game, but for some reason it didn't work. So, I got out of it and asked some Japanese kids standing around if they could help me out. The girl that helped me ended up telling me that the one of eight pods that I was in was not a Zeon pod, so she showed me the other eight pods that I could use. She helped me out a little bit and made sure I knew the controls, then I started the game.
     After inserting the coins the game searches for players. Supposedly, as the girl told me, the game connects to places all over Japan and even to CHINA. Crazy, huh? Well, I played some games with just computers and then went to the pilot terminal as the game told me. When you get done with your rounds, you have to go to the pilot terminal so that it updates your card. My card now reads such:

Principality of Zeon Army
Second-Class Soldier (picture of decoration here)
Gureggu (that's my name)
("Title" is supposed to be here, but I don't know what's up with that kanji)
1140 Pilot Points
(Kanji is too small to read for me, but the number is 5... and that's not the number of games I played)

Star Rain, Shinjuku
06 Mobile Suit Platoon
(Platoon Mark here)
08/04/25 16:15

      If you want to see the pods and what I was sitting in playing the games I did, check out the home page. After playing a total of six games (that's 1500 yen later... yikes), I got a bazooka for my Zaku II, two upgrades for it, and an Acguy mobile suit. When I was about to leave the girl that helped me out came up to me and started talking to me again, making sure I found out the controls alright and stuff. Luckily, I had a handy manual with me that I looked at before I played, so of course I was good! But, it does take some getting used to since you're not just using analog sticks on a controller at home. You have to use pedals to jump and dash, move the two control sticks different ways to move different ways, etc. Anyway, we talked about how there really aren't any arcades in America to talk about (she asked if we had games like that... haha). She told me she comes here with her friends to play about 4 days a week for 3 games a day... that's at least $60 a week, about. Whoa! I won't be doing that, don't worry, haha. But, I did get to see her pilot card which had like, 25 Federation mobile suits on it (including Gundam itself). She told me to come and play with her friends, so I gladly accepted and left the arcade. How nice it was for her to help me out and be friendly, ne?

      Aaaaahhhhhhhhh, I have baseball at 11, so I need to get up at nine. If I didn't need to catch up on sleep I wouldn't be going to bed right now, but I need to, and I am. So, in that case...

Until next time...!

Not for the Faint of Heart

2008-04-21T23:26:00.000+09:00

When I had posted about the last J.J. Club experience, I forgot to include videos that I took inside the karaoke room. Hopefully I didn't explain this already, but Japanese karaoke is a bit different from English in the fact that you go to a karaoke "box" with your friends and sing with each other (and can order drinks and/or food) rather than standing up in front of a crowd. That night some of my friends enjoyed my performances so much that they decided to record me on my camera, and I joined in the fun by recording Hunter.

But take the title to... um... heart. These are scary and really terrible (except maybe Hunter's, which is just hilarious), and you probably won't know the songs. If you don't know at least the artist, spare your ears and go listen to something better. Even Black Sabbath will do.

Video 1: Gunther - Teeny-Weeny String Bikini Part 1

This was recorded during a Sunshine Girls verse only.

Video 2: Gunther - Teeny-Weeny String Bikini Part 2

Here's some real Gunther action (by the way, for all you fans, this was the only Gunther song that they had in the karaoke book... but I guess to have ANY Gunther song is pretty darn awesome)

Video 3: Sixteen Going on Seventeen

I made Hunter be the girl since my voice was deeper. And it turned out sooo beautifully!

Video 4: Shakira - ??? Part 1

I don't know the name of this song, but I guess all you need to know is that this is how I perceive Shakira's singing.

Video 5: Shakira - ??? Part 2

In case you didn't get enough...

Sannin Podcast Episode 04 - "Toothpaste"

2008-04-20T20:41:00.000+09:00

What happened to Episode 03 you ask? It was never recorded. We haven't had time. Maybe you'll get it soon. But the amount of time between when we recorded this and when I was going to post it was getting waaay to large. But I tell you, the length of this baby is enough for two podcasts.

And without further ado, I present to you:

"Toothpaste"

Enjoy!

Catching Up! The 4-Day Post!!!

2008-04-19T12:00:00.000+09:00

      Approximately sixteen days ago the Sannin, Jeannette, Hunter, and two new friends, Adina and Aaron, decided after our DK House "orientation" (which was us signing stuff and giving it to the people who actually owned the place instead of just Uzuki-san) to go back the Warabi place where you get your gaijin card. The Sannin were going to just get copies of their registration so that we could get our cell phones while the others went to start the process from the beginning. On the way we ran into two art works on the streets of Warabi, the first being a whale submerged in concrete and the second being this wild-looking creature that had the word "Dreaming" engraved on the plaque below. Kind of reminds me of Resident Evil, now that I think of it...
      I don't know if I mentioned the characters of the people who helped us last time, but both the nice, easy-to-understand lady and the sweaty, bumbly worker-who-acts-like-an-intern-but-isn't guy were both there. The guy didn't help us this time unfortunately, but instead, staying true to his character, was hurrying somewhere, sweat rolling down his forehead as usual, and ended up running into someone on the way. It was awesome.
      As a side note, after about a week in Warabi city the Sannin were pondering its mascot. It's a wallaby. Get it??????
      Man, I love puns.

      That night we got our phones, which wasn't too much of an experience. Basically, we were all waiting forever until finally someone was available to help us. We ended up getting post-paid phones because the deal was better than the prepaid ones and got to choose mailing address, colors, etc.! Jen did all of the talking and Dan and I played Mario Kart on the DS via wireless communication (I didn't even need to have the game!). Here's a picture of the workers in the phone shop who worked really hard for a long time to get five people registered for their phones. Mine's gold. Bling bling!
      As well as celebrating the buying of our phones, it was Teresa's birthday! So, that night our plan was basically this: get phones, eat dinner, go to a bar, maybe sing some karaoke, stay up all night until 5am when we can take the trains to get to Tsukiji, the fish market that supposedly sells some awesome fish in the morning. It went well for the most part.
      While cruising the streets for a bar, Hunter got approached by this guy, who supposedly muttered some incomprehensible stuff and shook money at him. We don't know what he was up to, but take a closer look (the picture's bad, but I decided to keep it because so that I could show you what he was up against). Most likely he was a representative of places like these. In the middle of that picture you can see a Starbucks-like logo. That's actually the Starbucks lady with her breasts showing.
      The next picture represents the awful luck that I was having taking pictures that night. People just would NOT stop walking in front of my shots! I think that two people actually got in my way of this shot, but I deleted the first one before I decided to keep the rest for the blog.
      Here's another picture of an awesome sign. This one's for you, Uncle Dave!

      So we finally settled down at a bar. On one side of the table there were the guys (left to right, Sehyun, me, Hunter, Alex), and the girls (Teresa, Jeanette, Jen, Natalie, Mia) faced us on the other. Since I was in Japan I got some Japanese-only drinks. One was a Calpis sour (ridicule me all you want) and the other was a thing of hot sake, which tasted like slightly flavored water.
      When it was time to leave, we got the bill and, to make a long story short, we found out that we were screwed by the bar. The drinks were cheap, yeah, but then they charged the people who wanted limes with their Tequila shots for the limes (probably 100-yen) and also charged a ridiculous gratuity that wasn't deserved of the service we got. We left pretty irate, to be nice.
      Afterwards we scoured the city for a while afterwards and couldn't really decide what to do. Some people wanted to do karaoke, some didn't want to pay... so we wound up at McDonald's until closing and then at an extremely smoky coffee shop. 5am couldn't come soon enough.
      Arriving in Tsukiji, one of the first things that we saw was this, which is pretty representative of the city since it IS known for its awesome fish market. Here're some little guys on a poster that want to welcome you along with THIS DUDE. Needless to say, I really wanted to find his restaurant, but alas...! All I found was another fish.
      The fish market journey started with passing the graveyard of Styrofoam fish boxes. I knew them all too well from the Fish House. The entrance and the exit basically looked like this. You won't be able to tell from that picture, but the forklifts and other motorized equipment were just zooming back and forth in that place in a hurry, and if you weren't careful you could get easily skewered by one of those babies. Oh look, the first shot of the day was blocked by a guy with a thing of shrimp (maybe). Cool. Thanks guy. You blocked the guy slicing a frozen fish with a sword. Luckily, he had to do it again. Whoa!
      Some of these pictures ahead are not for the squeamish, including the next one of fish in a pool of blood. Buckets like that were all over the place in the market. And, to give you an idea what the whole place looked like, if you can imagine a tight flea market with those pitchforks and people running around like if they didn't get to where they were going and QUICK they would lose their lottery money, well, that's what the place was like, except there was water (both clean and fishy) alllll over the floor. People were constantly dumping water everywhere. Yes, and if the flea market had people cutting up fish all over the place, that would work, too.
      They did have some amazing products, though. I've never seen such huge clams in my life. One day I'll probably go back and actually go purchase one. Unfortunately since paces were varied in this quest, stopping was not an option. *warning* Man, poor, delicious fish... poor, delicious octopus. *end* Seeing those was wild, but not as wild as seeing a frozen fish cut in two, or this guy in a poncho blocking my shot. There were also many tanks of things like live octopi, trays of giant crabs, and people in my way. If you look at that one, though, you can see what a fish's insides look like frozen.
      We glided through the market with no injuries, thankfully (but some pretty close calls for some of the folks... one of us got stopped/created a traffic jam), and since most everyone was aiming to just get back home, we didn't even get to eat the fish! I was disappointed, but Hunter and I vowed to return one day.
      In the station, I was so tired that I was falling asleep standing up.

      For more wonderful Tsukiji pictures that don't involve bloody things, I recommend Mia's blog. She took some great ones.

(Arbitrary shots of a cool, Batmobile-ish car)

      In Japan you can get some cool, unique sweets. One of my favorites, which I mentioned before, is the melon bread that I buy at 7-11 for 105 yen. It doesn't really taste like melon, but rather like very sugary bread, as you can imagine from the photo. You can also buy a green tea flavored Kit-Kat which is packaged in a nice box and even rather appealing plastics. Lastly, here's a shot of the actual bars. Don't be alarmed, it wasn't vile, but actually pretty good. I'd say it was white chocolaty with a hint of tea thrown in there. In the background there's a drink called C.C. Lemon which I find to be not so good. But, to prevent myself from getting scurvy with the lack of fruit consumption, I thought it would be a good idea to drink a can.

      For the end of this post, I'm going to talk a little about the grocery stores. In Japan, the Yaoko supermarket is set up like an everyday supermarket, except that the McDonald's on one side makes it seem a little more like a Walmart. You can buy whatever including fresh sushi in little boxes and baked goods (i.e., the bacon stick) just like at home, blah blah... but when you get to the end things are a little different. First of all, they don't have shopping carts, but only little baskets, so when you bring your basket to the line, you set it on the counter and the ringing starts. There's no conveyor belt, by the way, just a lady taking out your stuff and putting into a basket that was used by the customer before you (in the picture you can see that there's a basket already ready already). In the basket the cashier arranges your groceries very neatly and then rings you up. If you're paying cash in Japan, it is custom for you to put your money in this little tray that has rubber on the bottom (you can kind of spot it if you look closely towards the bottom end of the credit card machine). I usually hand it to them if it's not a lot of coins, or I show them my count. I don't like the plastic thing.
      Anyway, you also receive a number of bags in your basket according to how much you purchased. I've never gotten anything more than two, and even though I was scared once, the bags are made of a thick plastic that makes them act almost like paper, so everything fit quite well. You end up actually bagging the groceries yourself at a station like so, which has extra bags if you need them. I've never needed one, so the bags may actually be less effective or something... I'm not sure. But here you bag, put your basket in the pile, and then are off on your merry way. This ends my presentation on the grocery stores.

      Er, I lied about that being the end. Looks like I had one more picture, which gets me into one more day at Sophia. On Monday we got our placements and looked around at all of the clubs. At UVA, clubs set up posterboard presentations in the amphitheatre. Here, people parade the streets and approach you. Naturally I was looking for the jazz groups, and I also wanted to try and find the baseball guys. I ran into the "Swing Jazz Orchestra" kids first, which was cool, but their club is completely separate from the small group club, so I got their flier and continued to look. I think the first people I got stopped by was the water polo team, who sold themselves to me this way after I told them I've never played: "It's O.K.! We need eight (?) people to play water polo, and only have FIVE." Hahaha.
      I got many other fliers that day including ones for archery, soccer, American football, aikido (spelling may be wrong), and others. Apparently

*I'm too hungry to continue. To lunch! And then I promise I'll complete this part!!!

... Apparently the sports teams seem to think that I'd be a good asset, which I'm guessing is based on the fact that I'm a tall white guy. Unfortunately for me, that's pretty far from the truth. Though, as mentioned, I was interested in one sport, and that was baseball. After being warned that maybe teams wouldn't want foreigners and whatnot I was skeptical about my chances about talking to the baseball guys, but after some choppy Japanese talking I was invited to their party at 1600.
      By the way, here's my experience with baseball, which I told them: I played with my brother, sister, and friends on a rec-league team and we didn't win, and then I played on the UTS team in the Fall that won one game. I had to tell them that I played 1st base and left field respectively, and that I was the captain of the UTS team, haha. They were impressed, but I did remind them that it was softball and of the records.
      That was my first experience being surrounded by all Japanese people and having to fend for myself in a long time. Actually, it may have been my first ever. There was a black girl there, but I didn't notice/talk to her until the very end of the dinner, so I'm still going to count that as my first time with it. And it went okay.
      I've found it really hard to do extremely casual conversations with the amount of Japanese I know. I hardly know how I do it in English, but I do know that I'm not very good at it, even in my native language. My friends and I at home have been trying to randomly approach people and strike up conversations for a while, but it's really weird for us for the most part, and it's even weirder for me in Japan when I have to really try hard to not be monotonous, not be boring, and come off as me. I've always felt that I'm better at showing myself to people through actions, but in some situations it's even hard to do that. For example, take going to baseball practice. I get there and see my teammates for a brief moment before we do something in the field. I don't know anything that translates to a "hey, what's up!" directly... and I feel funny using "genki" as a means of a casual "how's it going?" If I could remember the players' names more easily I think it'd be easier for me, but alas... that's not going well at the moment.
      In the end I think I did pretty well. Got to talk to a few of the guys, ask a few questions, got an introduction by the captain who presented himself to me as "Cruise Tom", by which I still call him (especially since I don't know his real name). The food and drink was good... I think that what the clubs do is called "nomikai", which translates to "drinking party" via jisho.org. At these, though, they have both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and an insurgence of different kinds of food that everyone shares.
      Here's a picture of the table. You'll notice the girls there. They aren't anyone's girlfriends, but instead are a part of the team. In Japan, baseball teams (at least, in high school and college) recruit females to be "team managers". They help out the team by setting up things, throwing balls at them to hit into the batting nets (hopefully someone will know what I'm talking about), collecting balls, giving first aid, and probably some other stuff.

      I'm going to end the post now and get to cleaning my room up a little bit... do some laundry, some vacuuming, and some trashing organizing... as well as study some kanji, woohoo!

Until next time...!

Finally, Ichi Maru Maru...!

2008-04-14T20:04:00.000+09:00

     With April 3rd came the Japanese placement exam. You read about the results, so I'm not going to talk about that. Oh, maybe it was important to say that I was in good health in case for some reason you thought I may not have been because of Oji-san (the uncle).
     Regardless, we ended up going straight to lunch at the Sophia cafeteria that day. They have vending machines and whatnot with select food choices... nothing exciting... except that if I get in the line for ramen then I'll get their own unique version of it, I guess... they call it "Laimen". Hm.
      The neat thing about the cafeteria in building whatever (2, I think) is that you can sit on the roof and see a nice view of Yotsuya (kokuhaku?) and the campus. That picture wasn't of the campus, by the way. Neither is this, nor this crow, who was terrorizing me when I was walking rear its perch on the railings of the roof. It was cawing at me and summoning its friends and everything... so I ended up running away. I think maybe Natalie has a video of its evil on her blog. And here are the last two.
      Next, a bunch of us decided to go to a nice park. But first, we stopped off for a little joyride around a designated smoking area for salarymen. I almost broke that thing, I just know it... it was pretty frightening to be that far back, heh. Next will be a bunch of pictures from the park. Man, I wish I was a good photographer... I had to scrap a ton of shots (that statue was there, too, and reminded me of a Celtic knot that is on a stone that my Granny gave me). Truth is, though, we all would get sick of looking at flower pictures after a while. I even got bored of the flowers, so I decided to scale a MASSIVE ANCIENT TEMPLE with Mr. Bean, of course!!!
      By nightfall, the Sannin plus Jeanette and Hunter tried for the second time to get to J. J. Club 100, and.... and.... we made it! Alright!!! It was completely worth the 2,100 yen that we spent... unlimited games (including popular rhythm games like Drum Mania and Taiko Drum Master!), darts, pool, karaoke, a batting cage, REAL fishing, soccer, manga, videos, random systems set up... it was awesome. I'm not really going to go on about arcades again right now, but there was this horse game where you moved the horse by rocking back and forth. It was hard. And painful.
     All of this trouble of finding J.J. Club? Totally worth it.

"Yotsuya Orientation" and "The Hosts"

2008-04-10T14:07:00.000+09:00

     Due to the sheer amount of information that I need to post today, I'm just going to do big highlights, mostly giving you pictures followed by information rather than just information. And, to preface this post, I'll leave you with a simple question: seriously??? who the hell thought this was a good idea???

     Erhm. Now that that's that, we'll start with a short tour of my room. First comes the spoon that the magician guy in Shinjuku broke with his mind and gave to me. Moving on, there's my drying rack, desk, shelves, cabinets (I have plenty of those)... my bed and the awesome cabinet above that I don't know what to do with... and hey! My shelves.

     Sorry that this post is kind of boring so far, but it'll definitely pick up, I swear. Just wait until I get past the university pictures.

     So let's go back to APRIL 1st! Jeanette was supposed to be in Japan at 3pm or something, so we all decided just to hang out and wait for her. Hunter actually knew how to get to Yaoko (the supermarket) and lead us there to grocery buying and lunch. I think this was the day that I got like, five or six of this mini-sandwich things that ended up freezing in my fridge a few days later. That was really unfortunate. But the food for lunch wasn't too bad... there's a bakery in Yaoko where you can get excellent dishes such as hot dogs wrapped in cooked bread with ketchup, mini pizza-things, and, my (least) favorite, the BACON STICK (which is a stick of bread with bacon and cheese inside... hmmm).
     Returning home we waited and waited until it was really late, and magically she appeared! She's actually living right next door to Jen, so us UVA kids all occupy rooms next to the stair case with the exception of Jen, who is close enough. We went to Yoshinoya again that night where I got another helping of Gyuudon, this time with an added raw egg to mix in. Unfortunately the egg really isn't good for the small size because it makes everything a little too mushy, but it was still purty good.
     April 2nd was orientation day, and so we all (remember, Jen, Natalie, Hunter, Jeanette, and I) went to Sophia. After figuring out what trains we needed to take, we finally arrived at Yatsuya station and walked out the exit to face a building with our university's name smack on it (I don't remember the name in Japanese right now, and since Pokemon is in my DS instead of the kanji dictionary weeellllll... you're not gonna know yet)! More or less, this is about the size of the campus width-wise. Also, notice the cross on top of one of the buildings. Originally the university was a Jesuit establishment, and while there isn't a heavy influence of Christianity around the university necessarily nowadays, they still stick to their roots and have plenty of classes offered in the chapel and services to boot.
     We had arrived in plenty of time to cruise around until our orientation started so that we could get our barrings straight, and since it was lunch time we set out to find a cheap lunch spot. A little ways down the street we found this awesome vending machine lunch place. The lady serving us was amazingly nice and attentive, they had a water cooler, AND they had a bidet in the bathroom!!! Whoa!!! Most of us were originally attracted by the lovely looking katsudon, so most of us ordered that. You can probably tell what's on it, but if you can't, there's cheese (I think) on top of egg on top of breaded chicken (thank you James for correcting me, it's really pork and it tastes like pork... it must be that I have had chicken on my mind for the past week now since all I've been eating is noodles...) with vegetables on top of rice. Got it? Good. It was awesome. We declared at that moment that we would be regulars at this place. BAM!
     By the way, if you haven't heard, Japanese restaurants have these awesome plastic displays of food outside their shop. They look suspiciously real, but if you put your hand on top of the soba (buckwheat noodles) dish here like Jen, you won't get BUUURNED (nor wet!).
After lunch we headed to actual orientation, and to meet the rest of our crew (Mia, Teresa, Sehyun). We ran into the underside where the cross was on our way, and that was pretty neat looking (I wish I could take good pictures... that thing isn't centered at all...). When we got to the area I noticed a vending machine that offered large cups of Real Gold for only 100-en. Sweet!
     Orientation wasn't too exciting... it was cool to get a packet with club listings and the course offerings, but yeah, it was orientation. I guess there were two exceptions... one was the opening old white guy who told us that the only reason was up there was because he had to be, and to not do drugs because he doesn't want to have to come to visit us in jail. The other was Hasegawa-san's presentation of "Announcements from the Center for Student Affairs". Part of her presentation was to warn us of cult activity.
      Afterwards we got some Japanese students as "monitors" to welcome us and whatnot. My and Jeanette's monitor was Akiko, an English enthusiast who also is on the tennis team, and who happened to be friends with the other monitors that had UVA/DK students, Asuka, who used to play saxophone and directed me to a large instrument shop in Tokyo, and Ayano, who I didn't meet because she was at another table with Hunter and other DK-er Mike. You can view us here (order left to right: Akiko, Jen, Mia, Ayano, Hunter, Asuka, and half of Mike) and here (order left to right: Akiko, Jeanette, Jen, Me, Mia, Hunter, Ayano). By the way, in that second picture... I'm not THAT much taller than all of those people, I'm just on my toes.

      That evening Jen was to go meet her host mom and brother of years past for dinner. She invited us all to come, but I was the only one to actually take the invitation. It was a little awkward at first as you can imagine, but it got better throughout the night. They took us to a kaiten-zushi place near the station, and a little way through the meal Jen's host mom gets up and sits at another table with her brother who happens to live Warabi city (this reminds me of when I went to the public bath with my host brother in '04 and we happened to see his uncle in there, haha). That left Jen, her host brother Takuro, and me to eat sushi. Takuro was pretty quiet and didn't speak much English, but that was all the better for me, I guess, since I was practicing splurting out useless facts and questions in Japanese to him all night. In regards to the food... it was great, EXCEPT for the ika (squid). Ika is nasty. In any form. I tried it sashimi-style (with the meat on top of a little rice ball like in the American sushi packs) and it was still... I don't know... starchy? Pasty? The texture was awful. Never again...!
      Anyway, here's where the real story begins. In the restaurant, the uncle kept calling to us in some very casual Japanese (and you think *I* slur!). First it was because I kept picking up the sashimi and dropping it (the rice just did NOT hold, I swear! I can use chopsticks just fine...), and second was because he ordered us each a mug of beer. Man, I wish you could have heard him... his voice was very loud, slurry, eccentric, crazy. In fact, take a look at him in this picture and you may kind of understand what he may be like.
      To continue, after dinner the host family left and Jen and I were walking back to the DK House, which is the direction that the "host uncle" (as I refer to him) was heading. When we got to the intersection to turn right to go down the long road to our place, though, he motioned us to follow him. And well, we did, since he did buy us beer and he was her host mom's brother after all. Maybe he was showing us a shortcut? But nay, he was sputtering out some other stuff that neither of us understood. After walking for about five minutes or so down some side roads he stops and walks into... well whaddya know, a bar (bet you didn't see that one coming).

(that was sarcasm)

      And there we were, in a really, really smoky bar the size of maybe my room and a half length-wise (if that), and about the same width. There were a few guys sitting down and in the corner there were two women who looked about in their 40s with a baby (greaaaat). The women were cackling and stuff, it was quite a stereotypical scene to behold. Right off the bat he orders us drinks that are called ochawari ("ocha" is green tea, and wari is uhhh, iuno). Supposedly they mix the tea with a liquor called shouchuu that is pretty unique to Japan, if I'm not mistaken. Regardless, he also bought us an omelet, and then kept asking us if we wanted more to drink (this is at about 9pm, I think). We kept refusing, telling him that we had a placement test the next afternoon, and, being the crazy guy he is, he was giving us responses that were like saying "baaaaaaaaaaah humbug!" (or maybe something more modern). After we finished the omelet he ordered us this awesome fish that was cooked, as you can see, by taking the whole fish, putting it in a metal thing, and slapping it over a flame (check out it's head!!!). Jen said he called it sakana-yaki ("sakana" being fish and "yaki" being... remember???). Needless to say, we destroyed it, especially after he said the bones were okay to swallow if we happened to.
      We got out of there alive after a while and he walked us to a point where it was familiar to get home. That place was a riot... especially that guy and those crazy ladies... luckily Jen was there or else I would have been really confused by everyone's really fast, really unclear speech. Not that I wasn't still, and not that I couldn't have gotten through it... but daaang!
      To end the excursion that evening, it was really nice that the host mom took us out, especially me, not knowing them and everything, and it was also nice that the uncle wanted to take us out afterwards with our limited understanding and us not knowing him.

PS: I guess that the first paragraph gave you false hope of short posts... sorry! Part II will be posted soon above.

Quick Post

2008-04-08T00:06:00.000+09:00

I just wanted to let you all know that I tested into Intensive Japanese II, which is exactly where I needed/expected to be placed. Looks like I can make up that semester of not taking 301 and be back on track!!!

On a side note, I'm looking into clubs, and it seems that Sophia has both a "swing jazz orchestra" and small groups, which is great for me. Also, I may be doing baseball here, haha... more on that later! Gotta sleep so I can have a clear head when registering for my Fall classes tomorrow mornin'. Farewell!