Back to School

I am back to school and am going to start a new blog for organizational purposes. This one is called Senior Life and will be documenting my trip through my last year of school. You can find it at:

http://jonsseniorlife.blogspot.com

All of my future entries will be on that website.

Japan was a great experience and now it is time to move on.

Bye Bye Japan!

The bags are packed, the room is clean, the time is not here yet. I managed to shuffle my things around so both of my bags are just under the 23 kilo limit (by about 0.4 kilos!) Hopefully the person who checks my bags will be kind enough to overlook the fact that I have a ton of stuff in my backpack. I have to carry my 2 pillows, hat, and business suit jacket (or wear them >_<) onto the plane. I don't know what to do now. I have about an hour before I want to catch the train to the airport. I should be arriving at about 2pm, almost 3 hours before my flight.

And now my words have ended...

Packing Woes

It's not the size of the stuff I have, it's the weight! All of my stuff easily fits into my 2 suitcases, but each one is overweight by about 2 kilos. It looks like I'll be carrying some books with me onto the plane. The other problem is that I have too much random stuff and not enough clothes to provide padding. I will get it!!!

Scaling the House

I just went into town half an hour ago and when I came back the door was locked. On top of that, I had forgotten my key and nobody was home to let me in.

Great.

For the first time since I got here I had to break into my own house. It just so happens that my window has been open 24/7 to relieve me from the heat. The bad part is that I live on the 2nd floor. It actually wasn't that hard to climb up to my room. Houses are so close together here that I used the adjacent house as a balance and climbed my way up. getting over the balcony railing was the hardest part.

Anyways, back to packing!

Yep

So I have to finish the rest of my food and sake before I leave. I have a lot of sake. That means I will be super hungover by tomorrow morning.

I also need to find a home for my beetle before I leave. The problem is I don't know anybody that wants one.

So Very Very Tired (and not ready to go home)

Quick update. I will try to do a full update later (most likely on the plane ride home.)

Wednesday - Skipped my last anthro class and stayed home. Rented movies
Thursday - Last class with Okuhara Sensei.
Friday - Last class with Oto Sensei (last class ever). Finished my books at book off. Had dinner with Kishi Sensei and Hajime san. Skipped dinner with Mieon,
Saturday - Graduation ceremony. Said goodbye to everyone at the afterparty. Walked with Steve and Sonja. Hung out with Sonja till 6pm.
Sunday - Disney Sea with Lisa

Monday plans - get something nice for my host family. Send pictures to Niigata.
Tuesday plans - Sushi with host family. Finish packing.

Last Week of School

The last week of school started today. I went to Japanese class as per usual and nothing particularly exciting happened. I did however, decide to start renting movies. More on that later.

For lunch I met up with Steve, Kyle, Milton, and Daniel for some noodles at the nearby restaurant. Good times. Zaru-soba tastes even better when the weather is really hot like this.

I met up with Ryota for the last time today too. He is busy this week studying and things so we probably won't be able to meet up again before I leave. This time Vaso showed up in the middle of our conversation. Chika (Mile's girlfriend) also showed up a little later. We all talked mostly in Japanese. We played with Vaso's dictionary. It has a feature where it will say English words out loud in a computerized voice. There is something really satisfying about having a dictionary curse at you ^_^

On my way home I stopped by the local Tsutaya and opened up a rental account. It sure took me long enough to do it! I want to rent/burn some dvd's before I go home for future watching enjoyment. The reason for doing it here is for the Japanese subtitles instead of English ones. If I watch a Japanese movie with Japanese subtitles I can understand exactly 50% more than without them. It really helps that much with the listening. Today I got L: Change the World and also watched my Tales of Symphonia bonus disk that I received. Tomorrow who knows what I will get!

Winding Down

I got my stuff shipped today!!! It was a total of three boxes instead of the original four. I woke up early this morning to pack up everything and clean my room. Once I got everything out and put into the final box to ship, I realized that I didn't have anything left to put in my luggage. Therefore I threw the box in one of my suitcases (yes it fits) and proceeded to fill them up with clothes and things. After putting everything in it is still underweight and good to go. Japan postal has a really good service where they will come to your house to pick up boxes for free. This guy came to our house, weighed my boxes, put on the packing labels, then gave me the payment slip. It was easy and painless. All I had to do was carry the boxes down the stairs and give him my money. Speaking of which, it was cheaper than I was expecting by about $40.

This weekend I have not been doing much. On Saturday I went with Nathan and his friend to the Square-Enix store in Shinjuku. It was pretty small but they had some cool merchandise. I would have bought tons of stuff had I had the money and room for it. Instead I settled on a cheap key holder and a figure. Sunday I went to the luncheon for all the exchange students. Only about half of the people showed up. They were however 5 or 6 little kids running around. They were fun. Steve got to be the bus and I got to be the demon. There was pizza for lunch and tons of desert. I ate my share of donuts. Afterwards I went walking with Milton, Sonja, and Steve down to the Tokyo dome. We had a nice walking chat. Near the Tokyo dome we sat down at a California Kitchen pizza restaurant. Steve and Milton splurged on beer and pizza while Sonja and I were content with the endless supply of water that the waitresses kept bringing out. At the end of our meal we received coupons for 500 yen off our next purchase. We asked our waitress if we could use them now to get desert and apparently it was alright. Sweet! I got some sort of brownie / ice cream type desert for only 400 yen! It was probably the best desert since I got to Japan.

Shortly after Sonja went to Ikebukuro to meet up with a friend, but we stayed and chilled a while longer. On our walk to the train station I spotted a park and we decided to investigate. They had one of those jungle gyms with a bunch of metal bars intertwined to create a fortress-like structure. We sat on top and talked about life for at least an hour.

Today I finally got a hold of Hirai Sensei down in Niigata. It seems that this years kids are doing good. She really wanted me to come down to participate in some sort of camping trip with the kids as well as a festival next week, but sadly I can't make it. I've thought about that place every single day since I got back to Tokyo...

This week is the last week of school! Things are finally winding down. I have all of my exams over which means I don't have any class besides Japanese. The last thing to do is a speech about Takabashi Rumiko Thursday. Should be fun.

Not Again...

Back to the 'ol studying habits. The semester is finally winding down and I am getting ready to go home. All of my free time is occupied with my DS instead of much needed Japanese study. I'm back in the "I don't want to study" stage.

In final exam news, I have been reviewing everything for my Buddhism class exam tomorrow. I got together with some people in my class yesterday to exchange notes and study. Supposedly the exam is a fill-in-the-blank exam with no word bank. I think as long as I remember all of the important terms it should be an easy A. Tonight I'm gonna make up a review sheet with all the terms and definitions on to study from.

As for my other Buddhism exam on Friday, I have not even looked at the material. First things first you know.

Also on Friday I have a report due too. I just finished typing it and am going to have Ryota check it for me. I never realized how good it is to get a second opinion on reports and essays. He checked my speech for Japanese last time and I got a perfect grade on it. Hopefully this report will turn out to be the same way. Thanks Ryota!

Oh and did you know? It is going to be my birthday tomorrow. The big twenty-one. As of tomorrow I will be legally allowed to consume alcohol in the States and gamble in vegas. The only problem is, I have been able to do that since I arrived in Japan as the law is set for 20 here >_<

My real birthday is going to suck. Classes all day, an exam, and another exam to study for the following day. I get no time for myself!

I think I am going to have a party when I get back to the states. It will be a birthday / coming home party for anyone that wants to join. I am going to send out invitations through facebook I think.

Packing, Homework

I went to the post office today and got 3 large boxes for the rest of my books. Instead of using the super large box (which is un-liftable after filling it with books) I settled on some smaller ones. I spent the morning tearing up my room and packing things into boxes. I have 3 large boxes with books which weigh about 18kg each. I checked on the post office web site and found out that it will be about $80 to ship each one. The fourth box will hold my super famicom and various other things that I do not need immidiately when I get home. I hope to get them all shipped on Wednesday afternoon.

While I was out I also asked about canceling my cell phone. It seems that the easiest way to do it is to go in the day before I leave and cancel it. Then I can pay the remaining balance and early-cancellation fee and be done with it.

I then spent way too much time playing video games when I should have been doing homework. Trauma Center and FFTactics A2 are way too addicting. After dinner I started doing my homework. I finished everything for tomorrow, a scholarship essay, and am currently halfway through my keigo report which is due on Friday.

This week I also have to study for 2 different Buddhism exams on Thursday and Friday. I am meeting up with some people tomorrow to review. After this week I am pretty much done with class!!!

Look at all the Pretty Flowers!

Today I set my alarm and woke up by 9. I skipped out on the Nikko trip with Don and the rest of the exchange students and instead went to Komagome in order to meet up with Junko. I will probably not make it back to Nikko by myself which is a real shame, but I got to spend the entire day with Junko instead. It is probably the last time I will see her before leaving Japan.

So we met up at Komagome (she was 30 minutes late) and found a nice place to eat lunch. It was ramen at a pretty famous place. After that we went over to Rikugi park to check out the flowers. Sadly, there were not very many flowers. Upon entering we saw a bunch of bamboo stalks with paper tied to them. It is for the Tanabata festival held on July 7th of every year. Before the festival people write their wishes on a piece of paper and hang it from a bamboo stalk. I wished for a safe trip home and a safe return to Japan in the future.

We wandered the rest of the park together which featured a fairly large pond and tons of trees. Japanese people really know how to make nature look good. Afterwards went out for ice cream. It is still blazing here in Tokyo at a scorching 88 degrees! We went to Baskin Robbins (which is called "31" in Japanese for some reason) and shared a triple scoop chocolate cheesecake, blueberry, and ramune mix. It was delicious.

The next stop on our tour was another nearby park which featured an extensive rose garden. There were roses of all shapes, colors, and sizes (most of them in bloom!) all around the exterior of this beautiful victorian house. I think Junko took at least 3 pictures of every rose in the garden... Anyway, we wandered around her as well ending up back at the house for a tour of the inside. The upper floor had a combination of Japanese style and Western style rooms which was very interesting.

We then wandered around the rest of Komagome before getting tired and thirsty. The next stop was Sunshine city in Ikebukuro. We got some bubble tea and talked for another hour. It was nice being able to sit down in the air conditioning.

We parted ways and said our final goodbyes on the Yamanote train. Back at home I refused to do homework and instead spent the rest of the night playing DS with Nathan. It's good to have a gaming partner.

In the house, Off with the clothes

It is soooooooo hot these days! It must be around 80-something but I am getting to the point where I cannot stand it. There is no air-conditioning and everything is so sticky and gross. I guess I only have do deal with it for a little longer...

Yesterday I participated in a special ICC group outing. We went to Shin-Okubo to check out the minorities living there. It is one of the few places where non-Japanese people gather and live. Very similar to any China-town-USA. There were 2 groups of about 8 people each who each had 3 tour guides. My tour guides just happened to be the coordinator Nathan and best friends Ryota and Marie. They took us to a couple ethnic stores, supermarkets, and buildings. We got to see that there are more than just Koreans living in Okubo. Once it was all over, all of the participants went home and the guides all had dinner at a yaki-niku place. I was the only one of the participants left... Anywho, the food was pretty good. It was my first time having real Korean yaki-niku. The Japanese version is slightly different in that they use a lot of beef instead of pork. Yum yum!

Today right after I woke up, Nathan and Andrew showed up. Andrew wanted me to put custom firmware on his PSP. He paid me some $$ and I did it for him. This time only took about 45 minutes. Getting faster! After that I hopped in the shower and headed over to Milton's house for a party.

The party was really weird. Milton's host father is apparently some sort of professor at a nearby university. He had invited some 40 students that are in his class for a party. Then there were the typical group of 8 foreigners from Waseda huddled in a corner playing Go-Fish. For food, the students had made 1000 gyoza. You heard me, 1000!!! I ate way more than I could count! There were also various drinks around that we helped ourselves too.

I think my tolerance for alcohol has gone way up since I got here. At the party I had 4 beers over the course of an hour and a half and did not feel drunk at all. There was no dryness of the mouth, no noticable loss of moving skills, and no getting tired. It makes me wonder if there really was booze in them... I dunno what will happen when I return and party with my friends. I'll be the only one not drunk!

When the party was beginning to end, Kyle invited people over to his house to play Smash. I, of course, jumped at the opportunity. It turned out that only Laura and I went to play. Kyle lives on the Chuo line about 30 minutes out of Shinjuku. His host family is really nice and welcoming. We played for a good couple hours before heading home.

I Thought He Was Dead!

My beetle is alive!!! He finally changed from a gross looking white larva into a beetle!!! For the past month or so I could just see the shell underneath all of the dirt. I thought he had long since died and was rotting down at the bottom of his cage. When I got home today I noticed that the soil was looking a little different in the cage and sure enough a full grown beetle was crawling around!!! The little guy must be hungry though. I don't have any solid food to give the little guy at the moment. Tomorrow I will make a trip down to Nakano and grab some snacks for him. The problem is I don't have too much time left here in Japan. I need to figure out what to do with the little guy before heading home.

In other news, I ate dinner with Hiro, my old homestay brother from 2 years ago. He graduated from graduate school this spring and is now working at a company doing research. He told me that he is working about 14 hours per day! That is insane! As such, he has lots of money and no time to use it. He treated me to a meal and we caught up on old times. It is really too bad that I have to go home so soon. People are finally wanting to get together with me again...

20 Days

I can't believe it. In exactly 20 days at this time (5:30) I will be on the plane heading back to the states. I can't believe it.

Exhaustion

I just woke up from my nap. Yesterday I had to work on my final project that is worth 50% of my grade in Anthro. You know? That one about Shimokitazawa that I have been mentioning for ages. Well we finally got it done. It only took us from 8pm Tuesday night to 9am Wednesday morning. That's right, 11 straight hours of video editing, picture collecting, and sound sampling. We had to take all of our video footage including interviews and random shots, cut all of it down, and edit it into a video. That, however was not the problem. Putting the video together only took about 4 hours or so. The rest of the time was spent subtitling the interviews. I never knew how much work subtitling was. Actually translating the interviews only takes about 1/4th of the time spent on subtitling. The rest was spent typing it all in and getting the words to time up with when the person was speaking it. It was a huge pain. I think I got an hour and a half of sleep while the other group members took over. Luckily, Nick did most of the work, Seth provided his apartment as a place to stay, Jay gave suggestions, and I worked on the picture portion.

We got it done 20 minutes before class started. Rather, we had to go and present what we had finished. The movie still needed a lot of polish around the edges, but got the point across. After presenting we stuck around for the other 3 presentations then went home. I then immediately went to sleep.

Why do American college students like to wait until the last minute? I don't understand... If we had just started on Monday we wouldn't have had to pull an all-nighter...

Back to Home

We got to sleep in until 7 this time which was nice. Breakfast sucked, but it was filling. We caught the bus and did the same old routine until finally ending up back at the airport. The final bus ride was almost 3 hours long with a small rest stop in the middle. We didn't see too many sights, but instead were focused on getting all the way back to the airport on time.

We made it, but our flight was delayed by almost an hour. Upon arriving back in Tokyo, everyone caught their last train home.

The Real Hokkaido

I forgot to mention that I was partially sick during my trip to Hokkaido. I woke up with a sore throat which continued the duration of the trip. It was pretty miserable because my throat was constantly scratchy and dry. The good part was that was all. There was no cough or anything.

We were forced to wake up at 6 to eat and get back on the bus. It was another long day of riding around and looking at the sights for an hour at a time. Hour bus, hour site, hour bus, half-hour rest stop, hour bus, hour site. That is pretty much how the entire trip went. I don't like buses, but it was nice to have 3 other people to talk to. We rotated every time we got off so that we did not get bored with talking to the same person the entire time.

The second onsen was not as nice as the first one. The food was still excellent (we had crab this time,) but the room was smaller and the onsen had a sulfur smell. It is good for the body supposidly. That night we got to try some blue beer. The bottle said it was engineered by Tokyo University students but is produced in Hokkaido. It was not very good, but it was blue. Crazy. We got to bed around midnight.

Catching the Flight

I woke up bright and early at 4:15am in order to get ready to catch the train. As I packed everything the night before it wasn't too bad. I just grabbed my stuff and left the house. My host family made some onigiri which they left on top of the microwave instead of inside the fridge (which is right below it). They don't believe in keeping food fresh apparently. At the airport I first found Sheung Sheung, and then we found Bridget and Melissa who were waiting for us. We all got checked in and hopped on the plane. The flight was surprisingly short and surprisingly large. We flew on a 747, the same size aircraft that we took from the US to Japan! It was packed with people too.

I should mention that before this trip I did not know Bridget or Melissa at all. They are in my program but I never really got to know them or hang out at all. Shueng Shueng is the exception in being one of my best friends over here.

We got to Hokkaido and I e-mailed my teacher saying that I was not going to be in class . I gave prior notice but figured it would be fun to do it anyways.

In order to go to Hokkaido so cheaply, we signed up for a tour with the JTB tour group. With one price it consists of breakfast and dinner every day, a hotel room, and the 2-way plane ticket. What we did not know is how much busing around there would be. It turns out that we drove halfway across the island and back.

We found the group waiting for us at the arrivals gate. We were of course the only foreigners there. The trip is entirely in Japanese which I am betting that most tourists don't apply to go on. We made sure everyone was there and got on the bus.

We visited a whole bunch of places. I didn't have an itinerary so I really don't know where we visited to be certain. I will however put up all the pics (hopefully today) with proper titles of the places that we went to.

The onsen that we eventually ended up at was really nice. It was sad though because I had to go by myself. I guess that is the problem with vacationing in Japan with 3 girls, you can't use the public bath with them >_< Our room was huuuuge though! We had two entire rooms, one for sleeping and one for relaxing. It was a really nice restaurant. The dinner that we got was excellent as well. I would bet that it was a $30 meal or something close to that. Great Hokkaido food!

Sick...

I stayed home today and rested because I was feeling a bit under the weather this morning. I wanted to rest up for my big trip tomorrow to Hokkaido! The plane leaves at 7am which means I have to catch the train at 5:04. It is so early!!!

On translation news, I finally found out where the text is stored in Goemon 2! I got a table made and am now ready to dump the text in order to start translating it! The only problem is that I need to learn a little assembly in order to actually change it... Except for character sprites, all of the graphics are compressed (even the text which is weird) which means that I have to figure out how to uncompress it, edit the Japanese fonts to English, and then compress it again to put it back in. I have been told that it is pretty easy to uncompress it but we will see in the future. Until then, bye bye.

Playing Tetris

I finally got the rest of the materials I need to ship stuff at the dollar store. Tape, plastic bags, and packing materials. I just spent the past hour going through all of my books, arranging them by sizes, and trying to shove them all in this box that I got. The good news is that over half of my books fit inside this one box which means that I will only be shipping 3 boxes total! Two for books and one for my games. The bad part is that the books do not fit into the box correctly... No matter how much I try I keep ending up with this little 2x2 inch hole in the middle of my books. I guess I will just shove some filler in there, but it is such a waste. If I put anything else in it then I won't get the book discount though...

Back into the Groove

Things are going well. I have pretty much given up on all of my Japanese friends except for a couple. Like many American college students, I am a last minute kind of person. Japanese people are not. At the very most I may have something to do a week in advance but that is all. Whenever I ask someone when they can meet next they pull out a calender which is completely full and I get the answer; "next month"

Wow

So in any case I had a pretty good weekend. On Thursday Nathan came home with a DSTT and you can bet what we have been doing since ^_^ Gaming. Every night when we both come home we have sat down to a game of Bubble Bobble or Mr. Driller or any other random game that catches our eye. Today we spent most of the day playing Goemon 2 for the Super Famicom. It is really nice to finally have a gaming partner again. I am really glad of that because I actually look forward to coming home every night. It also means that my study of Japanese suffers a bit but hey, that is the way it goes sometimes.

I also decided that I want to work on the translations for Goemon 2, 3, and 4 for the Super Famicom.

Only the first game was released in the states and it is not very good at all. It relies on a password system for one thing, and it is linear. The other games feature a save feature, an overworld map, and the all important IMPACT robot boss battles! I was very impressed when we first ran into one. It is played out very smoothly. Anyway, for some reason unknown to me, nobody has done a translation yet >_< The game has very minimal text which makes it the perfect game for a beginner translation like mine. It is also on the SNES which makes hacking it much easier than any other system. I think there are more tools and FAQ's for snes hacking than any other system ever made. This is because there are so many good games that never made it to the states! If I find some time I will start on the initial text dumping so that Nathan and I can start working on the translation.

This weekend I visited the Pokemon Center in Hamamatsucho and grabbed myself some sweet pokemon merchandise. They had some really really cool shirts, but they were $45. I am on a budget... I picked up some folders, a sticker for my DS, and a lanyard for back home. Pretty good I think. They were also running this contest where after you buy something you get to do the slot machine. I won a tissue holder. Not much but hey it was free!

I guess I havn't really been up to much recently. Just going to school, gaming, and a little lack of studying. I picked up a box at the post office for mailing stuff only to realize that I don't have any tape to tape it up. I am getting ever closer to mailing my stuff home!!!

Day Off with a Few Surprises!

I was feeling pretty down last night but things seem to be picking up today. I HAD to get out of the house so I went to school and met up with some people for lunch in the lounge. I relaxed there until Daniel showed up and we played some good 'ol fashioned PSP Monster Hunter. Once we finished a mission we went to eat lunch then parted.

I figured before I went home I would pick up some of the last remaining books that I need for my collection. I hit up three book-offs in The Takadanobaba area looking for the last 2 volumes of Maison Ikkoku. I still cannot find them. I did make an awesome discovery though, there are novel remditions of many popular manga series. I was not looking for anything in particular, but I just happened to stumble upon the novel for Last Exile! The anime version was and still is one of my favorite of all time. I can't believe I had forgotten about it up until this point! After further investigation it seems that there is no manga. The TV show was produced in 2003 and I first saw it on Anime Unleashed on Tech TV. They brought over some of the strangest shows from Japan. Anyway I am glad I found it. I now have a feasable number of books that I still need to pick up. 2 - Mason Ikkoku, 3 - Evangelion, 2 - Tokyo 80's, 1 - Tenchi Muyo. This makes a grand total of 8 books before I am completely done with my collecting! I will most likely end up paying full price for many of these. I also finally asked about shipping this stuff back to the states. I want to get most of my stuff shipped by this weekend.

As I said I was planning on going home but some plans for dinner suddenly popped up. I usually email 5 or more people looking for something to do in the evening and am always rejected. Today was an unexpected exception. I met up with Tomomi at Waseda and we went to Baba for dinner. Tomomi went with us to Karuizawa and is going to Minnisota next year for school. She is a lot like me in that she likes to listen and not speak very much, so there were many akward moments when I was just staring at her. It was very good though. It was the first time I had eaten dinner out in quite some time.

Housing Assignment

I received an e-mail about my housing back at home finally. As you may or may not recall, I was not allowed to participate in the housing lottery because I did not turn in the application early enough. This is my info for all to see.

Assignment: Tippit House 310D
Room Type: Tippit/Staley Suite Single
Room Charges: $3,675.00 (semester)

Telephone: 216-754-****
Mailing Address: **** Murray Hill Rd
Cleveland OH 44106-2676

Now living in Tippit House can be a good or a bad thing. It is on southside which is good but all of my friends are living on northside in the village. The good thing is that there is a full kitchen, it is cheaper than the village, and it is close to class. The bad thing is that I have no idea who I am rooming with... And the furniture in the rooms does not move. It is much nicer than where I was living last year though because there is a ton of shelf space for all my books, games, figures, or whatever. But I don't know who I am living with!!! It will be a suite with 6 people who may or may not previously know each other. I could have gotten thrown in with a group of 5 friends, or a group of people who couldn't find friends to room with. The possibilities are endless and the problem is that I won't know until I get there. Housing has not disclosed that info and I don't know if they will or not....


Anyway enough of my ranting on that, I had a great day today. In class we killed all 3 hours basically talking about each others past experiences. Everyone shared about 3 stories with the class and then others commented or asked questions. THIS is how a class is supposed to be! For lunch I ate with Sarah, Ryota, and his friend again. Then I did my homework in the library. Then I met with Ryota and Marie for a language session. They checked my speech and we talked in English and Japanese for over 2 hours. It was good though. For dinner today we had Yaki-soba! It was amazing. I think I am going to go to bed soon because I ate so much >_<

Depressed

Is this what you call depression? I havn't had any motivation to do anything at all the past week. I have been leaving everything to the last minute, not hanging out with many friends, and have been tired the entire time. The thing is that I don't have anything to fight it with.

I left the house today for about 5 hours and went to school. There I met up with Daniel and we played Monster Hunter 2nd G for a good couple of hours. It was a good time but neither of us really accomplished anything.

Now I am back at home trying not to do my kanji homework even though I have a quiz tomorrow. I really just want to go to sleep and forget about it.

Not having class really makes me a lazy bum. That is fine and all except that I am trapped by myself without any friends around. I could go out into Tokyo and do something, but that takes money and I would be by myself. There really isn't anywhere I still want to go besides Disneyland and Joypolis. With the lack of friends around I don't know if I will get the chance to go before I leave...

Exciting Weekend

It took a couple extra hours, but we finally got custom firmware on Daniel's PSP. I ran into an unexpected problem in that I couldn't use the slim battery on the phat psp. We got it though and are gonna try it out tomorrow by playing monster hunter 2nd g.

Friday was amazing. After Daniel left I ran into 2 groups of people outside the SILS lounge. One group wanted to go drinking and the other out to eat. I choose the latter as I don't feel like spending money on booze anymore. The group I went with consisted of Terri, Michael, and Guthrey to Shinjuku. There we met up with 2 of Guthrey's friends and went out to Tonkatsu. Along the way we ran into Steve and his girlfriend. Steve had the great idea of staying out all night. I told him I wasn't too interested but then he mentioned the reason; The new subway line (Fukutoshin) is opening on Saturday morning at 5am and he wanted to be the first person to ride it. I agreed.

I went home, dropped off my stuff, rested up for a while, then headed back out to Shibuya to meet up with Steve. It was 11pm by this point. Suprisingly we also met up with Kyle, Daniel, Yusuke, and another random Japanese person. Steve handed me a Chu-Hi as a present and we were off. We took the Yamanote line to Tamachi station which is 1 stop before Shinagawa.

The original plan was to walk across the Rainbow Bridge. Steve's host family said that there is a sidewalk which is walk-able so we figured that we would be able to see a spectacular view of Tokyo from the bridge. Sad thing was that apparently the bridge closes at 9pm. Lame. We gave up on that and decided to try and climb one of the buildings next to the water. All of the buildings happened to be really high class, high security apartments. The one that we went into had card access in order to get on the elevators. One of the Japanese kids had the idea of throwing a piece of paper under the door in order for it to trip the automatic sensor on the inside. He threw a piece in and nothing happened. I was thinking to myself that we should just get the f out of there before something bad happened, but just then the door opened. I wasn't watching, but apparently he threw in another piece of paper and it worked. Crazy crazy crazy! We went to the highest floor and to our disappointment found that there were no windows. All that work for nothing!

The rest of the night consisted of us walking from Tamachi all the way back to Shibuya. Thankfully Steve knew where we were going because none of the rest of us did. I would have been completely lost had I been on my own. It didn't help that we were drinking along the way. It was a long journey to Shibuya. We walked from 12:30 until 4 in the morning. When we arrived there was a pretty large line in front of the train station. Some of the people had been camping there all night! There were newscasters, people doing interviews, and every single person there was taking pictures. A few minutes after we got in line they started letting us into the station. There was a huge line for the ticket machines, but we walked right on through as we all had suica. Steve literally walked through without paying, landing himself as the first person ever to not pay for a ticket on the new line. We waited on the platform for another 40 minutes until they let us on the train. We got to sit down and wait for the last 10 minutes. The train left at 5:05am. It was really cool to be one of the first people ever to ride the new train, but once I got over that fact I realized that it is just a train... And I hate trains...

We got off at Nishi-Waseda and had breakfast at the local McDonalds. We were all worn out by this point and didn't talk much. I went home and slept like a baby.

On Saturday I woke up about noonish, ate breakfast, took a shower, and left. I made plans to meet my new friend Emily at Baba and lazy around. And that we did. We went for a 2-hour long walk which ended in a short trip to the arcade. At 4 we parted ways to our respective other plans. I had to go to Shimakita to meet up with Nick and Jay for our movie project. We met with a member named Megumi who explained a lot to us over some ice coffee. We then went to an official meeting that is held every Saturday in the Shimokita town hall. The other members seemed happy to see us. I didn't grasp a lot of the meeting, but had a general idea of what they were talking about. After this Jay and I went home to eat, while Nick stayed out longer with them. I wanted to go to Mile's birthday party, but it was already past 8:30 and was really tired from the previous night. Therefore I returned home and slept.

Today I went out with Megumi (a different one) for lunch. We had pasta in Baba. Then we went to the government building in Shinjuku as well as the park. Megumi lives in Yokohama and has no idea of anything in Tokyo besides Waseda. I think it is pretty rare for a foreigner to be leading his Japanese friend around Japan. Nothing especially exciting happened, but it got us out of the house for a couple of hours. Around 4:30ish she said she had to return home and do homework. I followed suit and did the same, but I havn't worked on any homework yet...

Back in Action

I got back into the groove of studying! I still do not feel up to par, but it is going pretty good at the moment. I guess I hit a down point last week.

I was doing homework about some emotions a minute ago and realized that I do not laugh here. Sure there is the occasional chuckle or smirk when I think I say something witty to one of my friends, but it's not the same. For one I have not seen a comedy in ages. I am dyeing to watch a couple movies... Then of course, I can't recall laughing at or with someone since I have been here. I am sure that is not true, but it just feels weird. Maybe the humor here is different or something...

On a lighter note I attended classes today. Whooooo.

I got an email from Danial saying that he wants to put custom firmware on his PSP. Guess what I get to do tomorrow ^_^ I don't know why, but I really like doing things with electronics that you are not supposed to do. Modifying them is really interesting because you can do so much more things with it. For example, I can play Mario on my PSP on the train in the morning if I really want to. Just little things like that brighten my day.

Oh, I also met with my language partner today. He is doing well. Gotta get back to homework...

Lazy Lazy Lazy

I find it really hard to believe it has been almost a week since my last update. I have been really busy... Well not really, just really lazy. I don't even know where to begin with what I've been up to recently... I guess I'll just give an overview.

My lazyness starts off on Saturday. I stayed home all morning just studying and playing games. Once night rolled around I headed over to Hayato's dormitory. He's the RA of one of the dorms owned by Waseda and invited me to have dinner with him. I went to a place called Tamushi and met him there. His dorm is a really nice place. If I were not living in a homestay situation, I would want to live like he does. Most of the students are 1st year Japanese students. I was told that there are very few non-native Japanese speakers. I helped cook curry with some of his friends. We ended up making way too much, but gave it away once we were finished. I went home that night feeling pretty good.

On Sunday I made plans to go out with Megumi to get breakfast/lunch around Shinjuku. After we met up we decided that going to a coffee shop would be easier though. I can't remember if I said this before, but she went to Karuizawa with us 2 weeks ago and is going to the States next year to study abroad. We chatted for a couple of hours until she had to go. At this point I went to Baba and met up with Taka, Kanjana, Laura, and her friend Josh. The five of us went to Saizeriya and had lunch. We then wandered the steets of Harajuku and Shibuya. We went to Karaoke for a couple of hours in Shibuya, then wandered around Baba. It was pretty fun.

Monday I had no class, therefore I did not do anything. Nuff said.

Tuesday I did have class. I went. It was boring. For lunch I met up with Ryota and some of his friends. He brought along some girls from his baseball circle, Ayako, Makana, Yui 1, and Yui 2. The guy that we played darts with last time was there too, but I don't remember his name. After lunch I hung out with Ryota until about 4 and then went home.

Today I also do not have class, therefore I am not doing anything. Nuff said.

Pictures

I am currently uploading all my pictures from May up until where I am now in June. There are a lot of blank spaces because I have been really lazy about taking pictures last month. Even when I went to Kyoto, I got almost zero pictures of my friends and me. All well... There is nothing I can do about it now...

Mmmmm....

I just indulged myself in some Lucky Charms. It was excellent!

A bit of time off

I decided to take the day off. Not in a literal sense though, just a mindset. I still went to class, had a good talk with Megumi during my religion class, met with my language partner for 4th period, and came back home. It was the same 'ol school-day, but then I got home. I should be doing homework, I should be renaming my pictures, I should be running through my flashcards, but you know what? I'm not. I spent the day veggin-out on my bed with psp in hand. It was a good day. I have not sat down to have a gaming session in quite a while. Recently it has only been 20 minutes or so each day on the train.

And life is good

Homework on Top of Not Feeling Well

I was working on writing an e-mail to my keigo (that's Japanese for talking to your superiors) professor, but decided that my blog needed attending to. Also as in the title, my stomach is a grumbly-tumbly and I don't feel so hot. It must have been the food that I ate today for dinner...

Yesterday was a lot of fun. I was not planning on leaving the house, but when I woke up I had a message from Jeff sitting in my inbox. For those of you that do not know, Jeff came with me to Japan on my first journey here. That was 2 years ago on a 1 month program to Tokyo. We also came with Steve, who was in Japan a little over 2 weeks ago. Jeff spent the year studying in Singapore and hasn't been back to the states since he left last year in August. He has been traveling around China and this past week in Japan which is pretty cool. Unlike us, he did not have a 2 month spring break which is why he has all this free time. Anyway, he just arrived in Tokyo and wanted to grab lunch at the all-to-famous tsukemen place Yasube. It was the 2nd place we ate in Japan together. I immediately emailed him back saying to meet at 1pm at Takadanobaba. That is exactly what we did.

Jeff came with his girlfriend who he met in Singapore. She is Chinese and didn't speak much at lunch; Understandable because Jeff and I had a lot to catch up on. We talked over a nice steaming bowl of noodles and soup, reminiscing about our old adventures in Japan. He has been up to a lot lately and there was absolutely no way to talk about everything in the course of a day. I really miss those days....

Jeff's girlfriend wanted to go shopping for clothes, so we parted ways. Jeff and I went over to Yoshimoto sensei's lab in order to find out what is going on with Jeff's old host family. It is always good to get in touch with those people again. Like me, Jeff had not even done so much as an email after he parted with them 2 years ago. Needless to say, Yoshimoto sensei was floored when we dropped in on him suddenly. After a couple phone calls, he hooked Jeff up with the info he needed to get in contact. I love how professors can do that. I opened my mouth and asked about what the current students were doing at the moment and we got told to meet up with them at Takadanobaba. So we did.

Once again we only met with Shunichi, Saki, Michel, and Eric. I havn't talked to the other 3 students here much at all, only saw them for a moment at Karuizawa. We went to a coffee shop and had some drinks on Yoshimoto's tab. Sweet. We talked for probably an hour, then parted ways and went home.

So more big news on the homestay family front. We just got another student come to live with us for 7 weeks! This guy unlike the last two is from America! His name is Nathan and he just graduated from a university in Wisconsin. He's a computer science major with a minor in Japanese. He took Japanese for a full 4 years in school and has only been to Japan once on a 2 week long trip. I know I didn't rant about the other students too much, but that is because they were not nearly as interesting (at least in a way I could relate to them.) His personality is a lot like Steve's. He loves to play video games, read manga, and watch anime. Someone I can relate to! I think we had an hour long conversation this afternoon about video games! It was great. His Japanese is not nearly as good as I thought it would be after studying for 4 years, but I guess without much exposure to Japan you kinda lose that drive to study. It is interesting because I can see how far I have come since I have gotten here. My level was the same as his if not lower when I first arrived in September. Glad to know I got something out of this trip!

Today I went to class. Yay. After that I visited Nakano as I had not been there in ages. I found 4 new super famicom games to buy, but my list of games that I still want is dwindling down. The one's left are pretty expensive and rare such as Harvest Moon, Bomberman, and Puyo Puyo. I also broke down and spend a whopping 200 yen per book to finish off Death Note. I only have a couple more books to buy and then my manga adventures will be over. Maison Ikkoku being one of the main ones... When I got home I sent an email to my mom to convince her to let my buy a 360. I decided that I will probably get one regardless, but at the moment Amazon has a deal that if you buy an elite console with GTA4, you get a $75 gift certificate, good for of course, more games. I really don't want to drop the money, but in the end I think it is well worth it. There is a huge library of games that I have only gotten a peek of through other people such as Reid playing them. I think this is a good time as well because the new 65nm processor is being put in new 360's which reduces power and heat. That means that it probably won't die on me ^_^ Also, I can borrow lots of games from said people above. ^^

Ahhhhhhhh... I wanna go to sleep now, but I gotta finish my homework first. Rats...

Of Pain, Pleasure, and Realization

Please, don't touch me for the next week. I Got horribly sunburned this morning on my face, arms, neck, and legs. I didn't realize it at the time, but I think my legs are actually the worst! I have been wearing pants ever since I got here. I only have one pair of shorts (which are swimming trunks) so obviously my legs are white as snow. I really, really hope that I start changing colors after this one...

So this weekend we went to Karuizawa for the second time funded by the Japan Study program. This time however, a lot of the kids in my program were either lazy and didn't feel like coming, or had work and could not get away (mostly the former.) Out of the 30-some people that are here, not even half of them went! To make up for this, there were a lot of Japanese students that came along with us. They are Waseda students who are going to GLCA colleges for a year study next year. Over the weekend we became pretty close friends. Also, the 5 students here from my school also came with us, but I didn't get to speak with them too much. Michiyo said that they were trying to keep the Case kids and the Japan Study people separate because they are not associated with JS at all. Still, I wish I had the time to meet all of them a little!

So on Saturday morning we I woke up at 7 in order to catch the bus at Baba at 8:45. I actually managed to get a decent amount of sleep because I did not stay out on Friday night. It took 3 hours to get to Karuizawa. On the bus I got to know a few of the students such as Yuji and Yosuke. I also convinced everyone playing mariokart to switch over to tetris. We had a 6 person tetris game going on! It was a lot of fun. Don gave us a choice of stopping at somewhere he called a "volcano park" which everyone voted against as there was no molten rock. It was supposedly just a museum and an old volcano that we may or may not have been allowed to climb. Instead, we chose to have an extra hour or two of free time at Karuizawa.

As soon as we arrived we had a short meeting once again explaining the rules of the place. Throw trash in the right bins, rent out equipment if you need it, watch out for wild boars, ect. Everyone then did a short, 10 second introduction with name and college. Then we were forced to explain a little bit about what happened on our spring practicums. Only one person per group had to go, but since I went alone to Niigata I had to speak. I could go on for hours or even days about Niigata, but think I got my point across in the 5 minutes allotted. It sounded like Aaron had a hellava time at the ski resort Hakuba, and Kanjina and Joe also did at the Zen Temple. I'm just glad I got to play with kids all day. I have been thinking about Niigata recently and need to give them a call sometime in the future...

Now we had lots of free-time until dinner. 4 hours to be exact. Some of the Japanese kids went to play basketball in the rain. I declined and played ping pong with Louvie for about an hour. By this time both my hands were completely frozen so we both decided that it would be best to go in and heat up by the heater. I found John studying and Michael playing DS in our room. I joined Michael and passed the rest of the time until supper.

After dinner we finished up the meeting that started earlier. This one was geared towards the Japanese students going to America this fall. We explained some of the dangers of college parties, roomates, and drugs. There were some interesting skits by student on our side. They were completely improve, but everyone did a good job. Finally, we ended our session by talking about re-entry into America for all of us. It is finally setting in that I will be back in the states in a mere 8 weeks.

8 Weeks

Obviously I am not looking forward to being back in the states again. Well... That is not completely true. I want to mix different aspects of both worlds and create my own, new one. I have 8 weeks to finish up all of the things I want to do here, ship all my stuff home, and say goodbye to everyone.

Which brings up another point; Are all these friends I have made over the past year simply going to disappear? I got some phone numbers this morning and realized that I have over 115 contacts in my phonebook. At least half of those people I email on a weekly or even daily basis to ask if they are free to hang out. All of these people have had such a big impact on my life that I can't just let them go. The problem is when will I ever get to see them again? They all have their lives, I have mine. Our paths will probably not cross too often in the future because of the huge 13 hour plane ride between Japan and America. It is very depressing. When I look back to even my college friends, besides Vaso, I have had little to no contact with any of them. An entire year being separated from everyone will have a huge impact on our relationships when I get back.

That is why I have decided to finally start using Facebook. I never bought into the whole "Social Networking" or "Internet 2.0" websites, but like so many other people I have finally come around. Let's face it, E-mail does not work for keeping in contact with people. For some reason I cannot seem to use it for anything other than getting news about school or different internet newsletters. It is amazing how many people are really "into" Facebook now. Even most Japanese college students have an account. Currently the only way I have to contact people right now is through my cell phone, which will be rendered useless once I get back to the states. I may still be able to text message people though my American phone, but I would need one with Japanese support (I-phone?) in order for that to be of any use. Therefore, Facebook seems like a good way to go.

Sorry about the ranting but it is all true. After the meeting was over, we had the drinking party. It was not nearly as extravagant or loud as the last one. It was much more calm because of the lack of people. Actually, none of the big party people from our group showed up so it was a nice change of pace from normal nomikai's. I finally met all of the Japanese people. Under Sonja's influence, we started up a game of pictionary. I had some great ones like moon, and train. Yeah, not my game of choice.

The party moved to one of the sleeping rooms, but turned into a nice pillow-fight. All of the futon, pillows, and blankets were spread all across the room making a giant bed. It was amazing. The highlight of my night was when Asuka gave me a massage! I was lying down and out of nowhere she jumped on top of me. I paid her back the next day when I wasn't under the influence. We had a bunch of dogpiles withing all of the futons. It was great fun. Sadly, nobody stayed to sleep in that room when the party was over. A group of us went to Askua's room which had 8 bunk beds and slept in there. I think it was the right choice because I slept all through the night.

The next day I was not hungover! Just still a little drunk and dizzy. After downing my liter of water that I brought, all was well. The entire morning was ours for the taking! It was bright, sunny, and warm. We spent the day tossing the frisbee around trying to get an ultimate game going, but once that failed decided to play something else. The game was volleyball and it lasted for over 2 hours! We had to put up the nets ourselves, but it was totally worth it. This is most likely where I got my sunburn from. Surprisingly, I was quite good compared to some of the other people. I was getting in a lot of spikes and only made a few mistakes when it came to bumping the ball. It was nice playing with both Japanese and Americans because there were words flying around in both languages. The best part was that everyone understood what was being said. This was the most fun I have ever had playing volleyball.

So after that we packed up and came back to Tokyo. I got a little sleep on the bus, but ended up talking to Rui and Megumi most of the ride back. I am seriously going to regret spending all that time outside tomorrow. My arms and legs are already starting to burn!

Rubix?

So I just found out that putting together a rubix cube while under the influence has a significant effect on my times. I also screw up much more often. My times jumped from 2:30 to 3:30... Sucks! Anyhow, I gave up on that and decided to write in my blog.

Today was a normal day at school. I met up with Bridget for lunch and she informed me of plans to go to Hokkaido at the end of next month. It looks like I might be going with her and Eric! I hung out in the lounge after class and met up with Ayumi. She had skipped the past few Anthro classes so I let her copy my notes down. I must admit that my notes are really bad.... I don't even understand some of them, let alone a native Japanese speaker... She sadly couldn't stay to study with me, so instead I went to the other lounge. There I met up with some of the study abroad students that I have not seen in at least a month. Moons really are flying by! We caught up a bit and I got my ear talked off by Laura, who had tons of things to say about a specific 留学生... I went to Laura's apartment with Milton for a tad and then headed off to Baba to meet some Waseda students.

Now I know I said before that I had a dinner planned with them. The students are not the month-long engineering students, but the week-long give-a-presentation-about-Japan students. I was surprised. We sang some songs at Karaoke for an hour and then met up with the rest of them. The party was a lot of fun, but I dunno about meeting them individually on later occasions. They don't seem interested in meeting outside of a big group setting. Well, we will see what happens.

わあああ

漫画集めがすぐ終わりそう。今日ヘルシング５番冊と７番冊を買った。後サムライチャンプルーも買い終わった。もうすぐ終わる！！

今朝の人類学について授業も映画を見て、意見を書いて出した。今日の映画は一番抽象的なやつだった。センスがなかったその映画。。。来年の水曜は期末試験（期末じゃなくても最後のテストだ）。ちょっと心配してるけど、教科書も全部読んだ。先生はそれだけをするなら大丈夫だって。明日アユちゃんと復習するつもり。頑張れ！！！

１２時から７時までずっとICCセンターでいろんな事をした。まず、風邪の影響でエクスチャーンジパートナーが来なかった。幸運にもヴァソが来たから、一人じゃなくて、二人でのんびりした。結構楽しかった。マリオかいぞうEDITIONというスパーハードのスパーファミコンゲームをやった。６時から７時まではJAPANESE　HOURという特別なプログラムだった。皆は東京についてゼミみたいなやつをする。もちろん日本語で。無料ノートとお茶をもらった。＾＿＾

今日はじめて２分以下ルビックを完了した。速くなるよ！

Is it good or is it bad?

So yesterday I went out with Sheung Sheung to Roppongi Hills and saw the Bucket List. It is about these two guys who have cancer; one the head of a hospital and the other a mechanic. They learn that they have only 6 months left to live and decide to go on an adventure to see the world. You can see the ending coming from a mile away, but it is still sad. Sheung Sheung had tears by the end of it. It's not my kind of movie, but it was a way to get out of the house and away from studying. Aside from that it was really cheap at only 1000 yen after the student discount.

I returned home and instead of doing homework, I started playing FF7: Crisis Core. Now I got the game when I bought my PSP way back in August, but this is the first time that I have started playing it. I wanted to wait until my Japanese level was good enough to be able to understand the story. Since this is an RPG, it is a heavily story driven game. I am glad that I did wait because I can understand %80 of what is going on WITHOUT LOOKING AT MY DICTIONARY! It is probably the best feeling in the world. I also get to learn new words like "air raid," "pride," and "mission." It is such a good feeling...

So since yesterday I have been playing non-stop in my free time. This morning I had a speech and a kanji test in Japanese. I did not prepare for either of them except on the hour long ride to school. Needless to say they went just as well as if I spent hours preparing. After class I went with John and Kyle for lunch at Malibar. We spent the entire time talking about friends back at our home colleges. I think everyone is getting a little homesick by now.... For 4th period I met my language partner Ryota and his friend from Vietnam. I forget his name, but he has been living in Japan since he was 2 so he is not really a foreigner. We talked in the ICC for an hour (all in Japanese) and then went to play darts at a nearby place called "The Hideout." The perfect place to go when you skip class. We played 4 rounds of darts and I managed to win on the first one (which was highest score) and the last one (pizzarea). There are a bunch of interesting games for darts where you try to give you opponents points and the lowest score wins. Anyway, after that I returned home and started up Crisis Core again.

I really am addicted to video games. But it is a good thing right? I am once again not doing my homework, but at least I'm getting Japanese practice right?

Spring Cleaning

部屋を掃除した。２ヶ月過ぎた。。。

宿題は何だ？

今日、初めて午後一時まで寝た。どうしてか分からないけど、昨日終電に乗った。４回目だった。

宿題を一生懸命するはずだったんだけど、できないわ！日記を書き始まったとき、淳子からメールが来た。すぐ宿題をしないで、お風呂に入って、出かけた。高田馬場のミズドで２時間ぐらいしゃべた。久しぶりに会った。その後、代々木公園で散歩した。今９時のに宿題がまだやらなかった。できるかなあああ

命、どこへ行っちゃって？

今日は楽しかった。まず、池袋駅でスティーブに会った。スティーブは何とかIcocaカードの問題があって、僕が手伝ってあげた。駅の中で二人ともヨヨを使って遊んだ。ステぃーブの影響でケースに帰るとジャグリングクラブに入るかもしれない。囲碁より楽しそう。

でわ、西日暮里という駅へ行って、ねず駅へ次行くはずだったが、Icocaは関西から持ってきたから地下鉄で使わない。そして、山手線に戻って、上野駅で降りた。歩いたあいだにヨヨを使った。道で歩いている人は変な顔が出って来た。ま、外国人だな～

上野公園からねず駅まで歩いた。驚くほど短期間で到着した。ねずにあるスーパーでダンゴともちで作ったお菓子を買って食べた。ベンチさんがないから、食べながら歩いた。今日の予定は東大際っていう祭り。東京大学はどこか知らないけど、歩道にある地図を見て、すぐ分かった。最初に工学部キャンに行ってみた。そこで何もない。学生もいないし、ビルが閉まっているし、自転車もないし、どう見ても誤っていた。では、次のキャンへ行ってみた。こんかいは正解！東大正門を見つかって、　祭りも見た。マークというステぃーブに会った東大学生を電話した。５分後、来た。マークは８年間日本に住んでいた。最初は僕と同じ留学生だった。今PHDの学生、沖縄の古い言葉を研究しているって。

This is taking way too long. So this guy Mark introduced us to Tokyo University. It is a very nice campus with nice buildings and trees everywhere. I think it is much better than Waseda. We watched a couple of the events which included a dance that we were dragged into, a juggling demonstration in which our yo-yo skills were greatly shown up, and ended up outside a host bar. There was a girl standing outside that tried to get us to go in. We started talking to here and it turns out that she goes to Waseda! On top of that she is in SILS! It is amazing that I havn't met her before... But of course I guess SILS is bigger than I thought it was. There are a ton of Japanese students in it. We ended up talking with her for about an hour. After that we parted ways. Mark went home while Steve and I headed to Baba.

Steve and I stopped at Waseda first in order to check out the book off there. Steve had a list of things he wanted to pick up for friends at home and himself. I ended up getting almost the entire series of the original Tenchi Muyo manga. It was the first time I had seen it and it was almost in its entirety so I couldn't pass it up. Next we were planning on going "conbini hopping" コンビ二ホッピングっていうのは最初のカンビニで好きなお酒を買って、歩きながら飲む。終わったら、次のコンビニでもう一度買って。。。。など。こいう風に安くてよぱらくなる The problem was that Steve picked up a small bottle of Whiskey. It is great if you want to get really drunk, but the first store is pretty much your last in the way of conbini hopping. I got a Chu-hi. We walked back towards Baba (it was raining BTW so it sucked) and stopped at いっぷど for dinner. Steve had yet to finish his drink so he shoved it in his pocket. The ramen was amazing as always. I think that you only get free rice and Gyoza at lunch which is a real shame. It would be sweet if you could do that all the time. We ended up back in Baba and went to the book off there as well. I picked up 1-10 of Tenjho Tenge which was also the first time I have seen it. It is so weird how you start seeing things after spotting it for the first time. The final book store was a ポーンオ bookstore. Steve wanted to pick up some interesting books for his friends back at home. We laughed while Steve looked through a couple looking for the most outrageous one. Finally, we spent the next hour at the arcade in big box. The plan was to beat time crisis 4, but the 2nd player gun was broken. We instead played DDR again, and various other 2 player games. I said bye to him on the train station and returned home.

It was nice seeing Steve again. It makes me realize how long it has been since I have seen anyone of relation aside from Vaso and the others here. I'm really starting to miss home.

やっと金曜

長ああああい授業があった今日。１から４限はwaaay長すぎる。授業後、Steve, Meion, Nanae, Joe, and Chisatoとカラオケをしに行った。楽しかったけど、スティーブと僕が歌ったばかり。ナナエとチサトは歌うのが下手だって。関係ないよ！上手かどうか関係ない！ｈｍｍｍ。。。その後サイゼリアで食べて、皆帰った。スティーブと一緒BIGBOXのゲームセンターで１１時までゲームをやった。スティーブはゲームが好きって。

Business Meeting

今日早起きたのにやっぱり遅刻した。でも東西線の問題があったから、サラとダビーダも遅刻した。奥原先生はいい先生だよ！ことわざと擬音語を勉強して、スキットも作ってやった。休憩に奥原先生が明日のスピーチを直してくれた。よかったけど他動詞と自動詞の間違いがあった。”つける”と”つく”をスイッチした。

昼食は弁当だった。２２号館の向こうにある弁当屋さんでのりから揚げを買って、次の授業の部屋で食べながら東京について本を読んだ。桜井先生は今回わかりにくい。隣に座っている女性が全然わからなかった。どうしてかというか、科学の話だった。科学と仏教の関係があるかなぁ。桜井先生はそう思う。

次、おうくま像の前にカメロンと会った。一緒に恵比寿へ行った。

Okay it is getting late and I need to get some sleep so English go!

So the Bridging Scholarship people put together a meeting for different companies in Japan to give a recruiting speech to people who received the scholarship. The meeting was in Ebisu on the 11th floor of Ebisu Tower owned by Morgan Stanley. We spent the next 2 hours listening to speeches by various presenters. These included representatives from the JET Programme, US Embassy, Shinsei Bank, and even Square Enix! I got to talk to the JET Programme guys about their experiences on it and what they think is best for me to do. First of all I need to make sure I will graduate on time, then I can think about applying. I then talked to the localization head of Square Enix. He is a normal guy just like me with a fascination for video games. Surprisingly, he started studying Japanese when he got to college just like me, transferred after 2 years to a Japanese college, then got the job at Square after finishing his 3rd year there. He said that the most important thing about video game localization is to remember that most players have no idea about the "true" Japan and the translator needs to keep that in mind. It is much less about literal translation then about writing creatively and keeping the character of the games intact. He showed an example of an easy sentence in Japanese and different ways of translating it depending on what game it shows up in. It sounds like a really cool job, but I need to practice my creative writing skills if I ever have a chance of doing it. I also need to pass the level 1 Japanese profficiancy exam. I think I can pass level 2 right now if I try hard enough.

The presentations were really cool. I appreciate the Bridging Scholarship people for setting it up. I need to start thinking about where my life will take me in the future... ３年後どこにいるかなぁ

About the Japanese Posts...

I really really really want to do all of my posts is Japanese, but it takes so much time!!! The entry below this took an hour to write! It sucks because I feel like I leave so many things out, whether it is just lazy-ness because it takes so long to write, or that I don't know how to express a particular feeling in Japanese. I need to decided if having a nice detailed account or getting a ton of Japanese practice is better... Sure I would love to have my writing skills be better than they are, and the only way to do it is simply to write a lot, but I lose many details... We shall see...

もう一回みよう

頑張るぜ！今回は京都の観光も書くつもり。何時間をかかるか分からないけど、頑張る！前に言ったことのに、本当の日を選ぶことが出来るからこれから適当な日にもうあった事を書く。

今日は普段の日。早起きても、学校に遅刻した。残念。それにしてもやっぱり眠かった。昨日の１時もで起きていた。。１と２限の授業は人間関係。今日すごい変な映画を見た。先週と同じ感じだけど、今回の映画は分かりにくい。ナレーターはずっとストリーを話して、不適切な写真とビデオが出てきた。ぜんぜんわからなかった。見た後、自分の経験を書かなければならないけど、あまり書かなかったね。でも先生が「成績を取らない」って。よかったなぁー

昼にミオンと一緒にドンキへ行って、ミオンが化粧をした。僕が本物のルビッククーブを買った。おもちゃとして高いけど、１００円のクーブに対して上質だ。後、ICCでLanguage　Exchangeっていうプロラムのアンケートを出した。それからバスでおくまキョンへ行った。吉本研でスティーブとシンイチさんに会って、やすべーというつけ麺レストランに到着した。そこで新しい味じゃなくて、ダブル辛味を選ぶことが始まった。やはり僕らは大盛りでダブル辛味を食べてみた。美味しかったよ！！！最初に行ったとき、普通の辛さを選んで、「美味しい！」と思った。次に行ったとき、辛味を選んで、「もっと美味しい！」と思った。それからいつも辛味つけ麺を選んだ。でも、ダブル辛味は最高の味だと思って、これから食べることにした。おなかがいっぱくなった。

２時に高田馬場で新しい工学部の交換プログラムの人に会った。５人にいるけど、２人しか会わなかった。ミシェルとマイックと呼ばれ、２年生の人たち。ミチェルは高校で日本語を勉強して、ケースでもう一年勉強した。マイックは初めて言語を習う人ど。後、前にこのプログラムで来た人ジョも来た。最後に吉本研の大学院２年シニチとサキが来た。９人で原宿方面へ出発した。

原宿でまず東京で第一神社、明治じんぐと呼ばれ、を訪問した。そこで変な中学生の制服を着ているおじいさんを見かけた。まじで？

やっと駅に戻って、竹下通りで散歩して、帰った。

スティーブと僕がバイバイして、新宿で電車を降りた。スティーブは買い物をしに行きたいって。よよを買いたいって。TakashimayaというでっかいデパートのTokyuHandsへ行って、おもちゃのフロアで買い物した。スティーブの影響でYomega　Fireballというよよを買った。余計なひもを半分した。最後にトリックペンと呼ばれ特別なペンを買った。普通の値段だからしょがない。

スティーブは高田馬場にあるBlue Parrotという中古英語本屋へ行きたかったってけど、僕がこの日記と宿題をやらなきゃから、帰った。どこにあるか教えてあげた。みつかったかなー

オッケー！これは１時間かかったよ！京都の分は絶対英語で書く。。やるたくないでもしょがないね。日本語を使うと終わらなさそう。。。

眠いよ！！

ほんまに眠いよ！ナイトバスはすごい大変！ま、今回隣の席が空いていたので、足が長くしてた。それでよく寝た。後はね、大雨の影響で平気に眠れた。でも何回も起こされた。。。

京都から１１：１０に出発して、７：３０に東京に着いた。授業に絶対遅刻するのに、家に帰らなければ教科書を持たない。家に帰って、ご飯を食べて、教科書をグラブして、また出た。やっぱり遅刻した。でもバスでイトウ先生にメールを送っておきた。

授業はつまらなかった。新しい教科書を使い始まったが、もっと頑張らないとダメ。

お昼になって、留学の人にちょっと話して、おくまキャンへ行った。５１号館の前でスティーブに会った。スティーブは観光でケースから日本に来た。２年間前にスティーブ、ジェッフ、私、が一緒に日本に来た。あの時１ヶ月間日本語を勉強に来た。スティーブは留学したいけど、他の勉強の方が大切だって。このままでスティーブとずっと話した。久しぶりだった！

僕らはまずインドレストランで食べて、高田馬場を紹介して、新宿へ行った。紀伊国屋で日本語の本を探しに行った。Heisig, Kodonsha Kanji Dictionary, and the Japan Times Grammar booksをちょっと説明してあげた。日本語の勉強のために、その三つは最高の本。三つの本しか使わない。その良さ。で、やっと最後の文法本が発売した！！！日本語文法辞典（上級）という本を買った。メールを送るとヴァソがうらやましいって。つまり、買ってください！

ええええっと、新宿でもうすこし散歩して、帰った。

京都についてブログで待ってて！

Kyoto Day 3: Lost in Nara

I woke up to Yuko staring at me. She set the alarm for bright and early at 7am because she had class at 10. Then unexpectedly she started making breakfast. Ok letting me stay over is one thing, but making me breakfast? I have never had any of my friends do that for me before. I helped out. We had eggs, toast, sausage, and salad, my first American-style breakfast since Niigata. Then I took a shower, packed up all my stuff, and we were ready to go. She gave me directions about how to get to Nara and then walked me to the train station. I definitely need to get Takura and Yuko something for letting me stay at their apartments.

I thought I got lost on the way to Nara, but ended up arriving at the right place. Lucky! I could not find a map of Nara around the train station, so I took a picture of one out front. It is a good thing that I still have a camera!

I spent the day wandering around Nara. I visited some temples first off. I also visited the giant buddha statue (the biggest one in Japan) and saw lots of kids. Finally, I fed some deer. That's right, deer. Nara is famous for its deer population. They are well fed by tourists like me who pay 150 yen for a pack of senbei to feed them. If you are carrying senbei, you will immediately have 10 deer run up to you and make you give them a piece. They will tug at your shirt, pockets, and if you are not careful will try to stand up and take the senbei straight from your hand! Needless to say I had a good time with them.

Eventually I ended up at this hill that you could pay to climb. I was about to do it when I saw a map of the area. Apparently that small hill was only one of 3 levels. I wanted to go to the top one. After a little more searching I found a hiking trail. It was 3 kilometers to the summit and 5 to a waterfall. Now I ran cross country, so I figured that it would take about an hour to walk all the way to the summit and waterfall, then another hour to come back. If it took a little longer that would be alright too. It was only 1pm and I did not have to be back to Kyoto until 11 to catch my bus. I departed on a hike through the woods.

It was a good hike with almost nobody around. Once I reached the summit I was greeted with a beautiful view of the city. It was amazing. After getting my fill of pictures, I headed off to the waterfall. The waterfall ended up being pretty tiny, and it was a ways off the beaten path. It seemed that nobody had been there for a while because there were rocks and fallen trees in the middle of the path that needed navigation.

I started my journey back and passed a guardhouse. I'm glad there was a guardhouse there. I continued my journey and ended up on a paved road for the rest of the way back. After going a little ways it started to sprinkle. On top of that, it was almost 4:30 so I was getting worried about making it back in time. That is when a car came up from behind me (the guy from the guardhouse) and I stopped him to hitchike a ride back to the station. It was this guy from Osaka and his daughter from Nara who were kind enough to give me a ride. I was very grateful. The ride was much longer than I thought. The road winded down the mountain and would have taken me another couple of hours if I had walked it. They dropped me off right by the station so I could hop a train back to Kyoto. I am so very grateful to those two.

Back at Kyoto I had 4 hours to kill until my bus left. Unfortunately, all of my friends were busy with school and jobs. I spent time around the station. At some point I decided that I could win at Pachinko and went to the nearest parlor. After settling on which machine I wanted to play, I put in my money and read the instructions. The screen said to push some button, but I couldn't find it anywhere! The guy sitting behind me helped me. I lost all my balls within 15 minutes of starting. How do people win at this game? I looked around and did not see anyone with buckets of balls sitting around. There has to be some sort of strategy to it... After that I went to Karaoke for an hour by myself. That was sort of depressing, but I got in some practice. Finally, I stopped by the local convenience store to pick up some booze and water for the trip.

I slept much better on the bus this time!

Kyoto Day 2: Down Time

Today was much less exciting than yesterday. We all woke up around 9am and talked for the next hour. Tan had left much earlier and Ayana and Yuko had jobs to go to so they left too. Takuro and I chilled around his place for a while. I got to take a shower, but not change clothes because my bag was still stashed in the locker at the station. Once freshened up a little we went to McDonalds for breakfast. Sadly it was too late for breakfast sandwiches so I settled for a cheese-katsu sandwich. McDonalds is a good way to get away from Japanese food for a while. We went back to Takuro's apartment and watched some TV. I emailed all the people who I knew in Kyoto and tried to find something to do. Eventually I ended up deciding to go to the station by myself. Takuro walked me to the street and I was off.

The first thing I did at the station was grab my bookbag. I found an empty bathroom stall to change clothes in and brushed my teeth at the sinks. Now I was "freshened-up." I got an email from Keisuke saying that he wanted to hang out so I spent the next hour doing nothing around the station.

Once Keisuke showed up I was finally not alone anymore! We got on a bus and headed to Ginkaku-Ji in order to see the giant 大 symbol on the side of the mountain. It was nice having someone to talk to on the bus. We walked, went the wrong direction, and ended up on the wrong side of town. Retracing our steps we returned to Ginkaku-ji and found out that if we turned left instead of right, the entrance to the mountain was 100 feet away. We decided not to climb the mountain. I really should have tried harder to convince Keisuke, but didn't.

We ended up walking around Kyoto for the next hour. I got a call from Ayana asking if we wanted to eat dinner with her. Sure. We met up in 4th street in front of the Keiyo department store. Then we decided to eat some Italian food in the same department. The waitress mixed up Keisuke and my order, but we all received free drinks so it was alright. I got a speech from Ayana saying that I have to return to Japan in the future. If I don't then this experience will all be for nothing. I totally agree with her, but I need some sort of entry way to come back to Japan for an extended period of time... I basically have 3 options to do this: Join a Japanese company, come teach English, or get married to a Japanese girl. Coming back to study again is pretty much out of the question because I will be graduated by the time I have a chance to...

So anyway we returned to Kyoto station and I grabbed my bag again. I said bye to Keisuke and Ayana because I probably won't see them again before I return to Tokyo. Then I headed to Yuko's apartment.

Previously Yuko said that I could not stay with her (well she said to ask Takuro anyway) but since Takuro had to work all night she said it was alright. I gave her a call when I arrived, but she was cleaning so I had to wait 20 minutes until she finished. I didn't mind, but just thought to myself that I am used to really messy rooms. Living with college guys kinda gives you a different definition of the word "clean." She arrived and took me to her place. Needless to say it was almost spotless. She lives a couple blocks down from Takuro.

I thanked her immensely for letting me spend the night. We stayed up quite a while talking. I sent her and all my other Kyoto friends the links to my blog and Brenden's picture website. They all appreciated it. The sleeping situation was a little different than Takuro's. Yuko only had one futon. She opted to sleep on the floor, but I couldn't put her through that, especially since I was the guest. I made her sleep on the futon beside me, it was plenty big enough.

First Day in Kyoto: Link BBQ

I arrived at Kyoto station at 7am in the morning. It was so terribly early. I figured that it would be better to just get up and deal with being tired all day rather than finding a place to sleep. I grabbed my stuff and headed up to the big steps in Kyoto station to eat breakfast. I would have gotten Mister Donut for breakfast, but apparently they don't open until 9. That is not breakfast time... I had a granola bar and the rest of my water. On the steps there were a bunch of college students who were stetting up camp to watch some sort of show later in the day. I sent everyone an email saying that I had arrived, but figured that they would not be awake until later. I decided to see what was around the station.

I first went to the only temple on the south side of the station, Toji. It was only a little bit of a walk and I got to follow some middle school students all the way there. I only found out later that there were a bunch of students in Kyoto on a school trip. Why didn't we go on any sweet trips like that when I was in school? Oh wait... We went to Chicago... It doesn't feel the same though ^_^

Anywho, I paid the full price to see the temple grounds, treasure museum, and special exhibit that they had going on. The 5 story pagooda is the largest one in Japan, but the general public is not allowed to go inside. All well. The grounds were actually really nice. There were a couple ponds and park-like areas. You were also allowed to go into two of the "normal" temples to see the statues inside. I listened in on an explanation that a priest was giving to the visiting students. The museums was not worth it, but I did manage to kill a couple of hours. Finally, there was this really cool house that I got a personal tour of!! The guy working there was really nice and tried his best to use vocabulary that I knew. He explained about each room and the gardens that were outside. I should invest in personal tours more often, especially if they are free!!!

Ayana gave me a call as I was watching the Koi in the nearby pond. We talked a bit and planned to meet at the station a little before 11. As it was 10 already, I figured I should head back and explore along the way. Sadly I did not find anything interesting.

I met up with Ayana and gave a big Hisashiburi hug. College kids are nice because they don't cringe when you hug them. We decided to grab lunch at a nearby noodle place and catch up a bit. Ayana has been busy with work and school since returning from Spring Break. She is working two jobs; a bakery and at Tsutaya (video store), as well as studying medicine. We caught up on what had happened the past month. She gave me directions to the BBQ and gave me her commuter pass. We parted ways and I hopped on the train for the hour long commute to the middle of nowhere. Ayana's teiki took me all the way to the station before I needed to get off. It is normally a 480 yen fee but only cost me 180! Thanks Aya-chan!

When I got off the train I spotted a bunch of people standing outside the ticket gates talking. The problem was I did not recognize any of them. I figured what the hell Kyoto people are nice and just started talking to them. I listed off some names of people I knew and just saw blank faces staring back at me. I got even more stares when I said that I attended Waseda. I gave my friends an email and they said they were at the BBQ already. Little had I known, it already started. I stood around looking confused for a while when a girl came up and asked if I was Jon! Yes! I found someone at last! Apparently most of the people standing around were from a different club at a different college. The people that I wanted to see had already left and started up the grills.

We gathered a few other people and headed to the BBQ. It was about a 20 minute walk to the side of this large river. Amazingly, the river had a beach with a ton of people on it. To get down there we had to climb this amazingly dangerous hill full of plants, rocks, and dirt. Of course, I was the only one that lost my balance.... As soon as I got on the beach, Takuro found me. Now we are getting somewhere! The BBQ was set up so that there were 10 or so stations with people huddled around them. Everyone choose a number at random and was placed at that particular station. A good mixer. Since I was a guest, I went with Takuro and was introduced to BBQ 7, my new home for the day. The BBQ was just a couple of cinder blocks with a rack on top and coals placed underneath. I introduced myself in English and got the usual "!!HHEEEEE?!?!??" when I mentioned that I went to Waseda. Yeah, it is that popular.

It is a good thing Ayana suggested we eat lunch before I went to the BBQ because I ended up not eating much. I spend most of the time socializing with people who I had never met before and will probably never meet again. It is alright though because I got to use my Japanese skills. I stayed at the BBQ until it ended. We had a final walk down the beach to pick up the trash and then formed groups to go to various after parties. I went with Keisuke and Takuro to go bowling. Just then, Shoko showed up! She went flower viewing with her mother this morning and could not attend the BBQ. It is so nice seeing all my Kyoto friends again!

We got a group of about 20 for bowling. There were not enough lanes for everyone so some people just watched. Bowling was not as fun as it was last time. Mostly because I did not know a lot of the people that were there. Last time I could socialize with everyone. I bowled my game and talked with Shoko, Keisuke, and Takuro between turns. We decided to leave after the first game was over and grab some food.

We went to the local family restaurant and ate.

After that we returned to Takuro's apartment. It was only 4 of us at first, but more people started showing up until we ended up with 10. Among those were Ayana, Tan, Yuko, Hiro, and a couple others. We spent the night playing various drinking games and conversing. The last game we played involved putting a "base" in a large cup and floating a shotglass in it. We then went around in a circle pouring something else in the shotglass. The person who sinks it has to drink it. It was fun and all, but Yuko was sitting beside me and had already had too much to drink. I felt compelled to save her from drinking more so I sunk the glass on purpose and blamed my own drunken-ness. She was thankful.

We made a couple of snack runs during the night but eventually all passed out on the floor. Takuro had a ton of futons so we just laid them all out on the ground and made a giant bed for all of us. Yuko, Ayana, and Tan ended up staying because they missed their last train. I slept really good that night.

The First Night Bus

I left the house and met up with Yoshi in Shinjuku in front of the Bic Camera (the usual meeting spot.) She found a place that she wanted to eat at and I wasn't about to suggest something else, so we departed. Using a map on her phone, she led me to some parts of town that I had never been before, weird because I thought I had found all of Shinjuku. It was a tempura restaurant where you can order any kind of veggie, meat, or fish on a stick that has been deep fried to perfection. We ate and talked. She is really into music... Hardcore. Some of it is my style, but a lot of the bands she was rattling off I had never heard of before. The original plan was to catch a movie, but we had just missed the 8pm showing and she had not returned home from work (still wearing a suit) so we parted.

Now it was still early and I was alone is Shinjuku. I had my bag on my back (which was suprisingly light) and went for a walk. Nobody was available to hang out in Shinjuku with me and I had 3 hours to kill before the bus departed. Well, what better way to spend a couple of hours other than drinking? I also realized that I would sleep really well on the bus after a couple drinks. Before buying anything, I went to the bus station to make sure I knew where my bus was departing from. I don't want to miss that thing! Then I hit up a nearby convenience store and picked up the new "strong type" lemon chu-hi. It's 8% and tastes like lemon ^_^ For the next couple hours I did what the other exchange students like to call "conbini-hopping" that is getting something to drink at a convenience store and going for a walk. Once you finish, you stop at another store and continue your walk. I wandered around Shinjuku and made it to the bus on time.

Before I got on the bus I bought some water. I knew that I was going to be thirsty in a couple of hours (or when I woke up) and I did not know what the air was going to be like on the bus. I got on and saw that it was surprisingly comfortable. There were only 3 seats instead of the normal 4 per row which gave a lot of arm and leg room. I could lie my seat all the way back and almost lie down! It was nice! Now because of the nature of the bus I did not sleep to well, but it was good enough.

Off I Go!

I had a good time at school today. My Japanese class went by pretty fast this time and I actually learned a few new things too! For lunch I met up with my language partner and his friend with bento's in the park. We spent the latter of lunch hour and some of 3rd period talking about topics from America to life at school. You know, all of the usual stuff. We all then walked to 3rd period class together (we are all in it!) and listened to the prof speak. Finally, my Keigo class (which I missed the last 2 weeks of) had a test (which I did really well on) and the rest of it flew by. On the way home I ran into Vaso, John, and Kyle and talked to them until Shinjuku. I bought some earplugs at the local supermarket and now I am ready to go to Kyoto!

Taking a bus that you are supposed to sleep on is a really weird experience. The thing leaves at midnight and arrived at 8ish in the morning. It is like getting into a time capsule and waking up at a different place. I am all ready to sleep there too with my earplugs, neck pillow, and eyemask. It may look stupid, but I need my sleep!

Before I forget, I am going out with one of the helpers that attended my Japanese class a couple of weeks ago. We are gonna grab dinner and then maybe catch a movie. I know it is going to suck carrying my book bag with all my clothes in it, but しかたないね！

Caught Up Again

After a week of classes I finally got everything caught up again. It is a real hassle to do this stuff every day... It is even worse when I slack off for a week... But it is all here again. And yes, my parents were in Japan last week. I put off posting it on here because of personal issues which will not be explained any further. In any case, I did a terrible job of keeping a journal after the first couple of days. Since it has been a week already, I have forgotten a lot of the details. See? This is why I am keeping a journal in the first place! I took what I could remember and threw together an outline of each day. If I remember any more important details (which is unlikely at this point) I will update the outlines. I will not be fleshing these out, so if my mother or father would like to do this, go for it.

Yesterday I went to my Anthro class and watched a movie. We spent almost 2 hours watching a documentary of a guy's first time journey to Tokyo. It was a little interesting, but a lot bland. He edited the video so that every 10 minutes or so he would change locals. This is fine, except that his philosophy for filming is 1: not panning the camera and 2: leaving the camera running all the time. There were long clips of people playing pachinko or golf with no dialogue. After the thing was over we spent the rest of the class discussing it. I ended up eating at a Korean restaurant down the street with my friend Hayato. It was good.

I had no class the rest of the day so I figured I should continue reading that book for anthro. I went to the library and got half-way through it before getting tired and switching to Japanese homework.

Once I finished it was already 5pm so I figured I would go play some Go again. Apparently on Wednesday everyone shows up, so there were 30-some people there. Needless to say I got a lot of practice in. Afterwards we went out to dinner at a nearby cheap Italian place. I ended up getting home around midnight.

Today I had a presentation in Japanese class. I left the house at 7:30 to prepare for it, but my partner John and I ended up slacking off for half an hour instead. Our speech about Taiko Matsuri was alright... Well nobody elses was any better. Let's just leave it at that...

It took a while, but I eventually met up with Erika for lunch. I first met her at a party in December and have hardly talked since. We had a lot of catching up to do. Three of her friends Asuka, Tomoko, and a name I forget joined us in the park for lunch. I found out that a group of 4 other Japanese is a good number. I could grasp the conversation and put my own comments in as well. Today was a good day for speaking.

I was late for my next class. Sakurai sensei is still the coolest ever, although today he used a ton of kanji. It was fine in the beginning, but near the end I was completely lost.

Then I went back to the park and relaxed for a bit. I did my Japanese homework outside. Nature is good for doing homework... Except for the sun. Afterwards I met with Daniel and Michael in the lounge because I did not want to go home. We talked until they had class. Finally I ran into Steve outside and he told me that the best place to get tickets was in the co-op.

Speaking of which, I decided to go to Kyoto this weekend.

I went to the co-op and after a bit of conversation with the person behind the counter, I was the new owner of a brand new bus ticket to Kyoto and back. Also, if you use the student discount on bus tickets you can upgrade to first class seats for really cheap.

Along the way home I stopped at a book off and picked up some books. First of all I think I need a round of applause because I finally finished 2 of my series! In the Book Off in Baba, I found the last volume of Yu Yu Hakusho. I also convinced a worker to let me buy half of a wrapped set of books. They like to wrap whole series together and sell them as a big bundle. The problem was that I wanted the rest of Ramna 1/2 and they did not have it... Except in the bundle. He let me pick up the rest of the series from 21 - end. Yay! I also stumbled upon this one called Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. I ran into it when working on the translation for Jump Ultimate Stars and decided it sounded interesting enough for a look.

Now I am packing for Kyoto!

BTW: I just found out that I can change the date and time of each of my posts! This means that I can change all my previous ones so that they are on the correct day! It is pretty useless to do, but if I find myself with a ton of free time, you bet I'll do it!

May 13 - Language Partners

Today I got all my pictures renamed and my blog entries for last week finished. The only problem is that the wireless is not working at the moment. Ugh. I do not have access to the thing so I need to wait until Mariko gets home. We are looking at midnight here folks.

In other news, I went to class for the first time in a week. Of course, I was late getting there but luckily Ito had not started yet. For some reason the 3 hour class felt like an eternity. Was it because I was having so much fun and then went back to this boring environment? Yeah I think that is it actually... For lunch I ran into the rest of the exchange students once again. It sucks running into these people because they always want to stand around and talk all lunch hour. I finally got them going 20 minutes later when they decided to go to Mos Burger. Gah! Sonja and I went by ourselves and eventually bought Original Bento and ate it on some steps inside a random building.

The rest of the afternoon I spent in the ICC (International Communication Center) lounge area meeting my new language exchange partners. A couple of weeks back I signed up to become one. It is a program put together so that for 45 minutes you talk one language, and for another 45 minutes you talk the other. Today was just an introduction, but I spent the entire time talking with 2 different people. The first one was not too keen on speaking English as soon as he found out that I could communicate in Japanese. Whenever I tried to revert to English, he would say a few sentences and then immediately revert back to Japanese. I got lots of speaking and listening practice but I can’t say that he did... My other partner was really fluent in English. I felt like he could understand everything I was saying at full speed, which is pretty impressive given that he has never studied abroad. We spoke in half-half, reverting as needed. It was a good experience, but talking for 3 hours puts a strain on me. I don’t know why, but I was starting to lose attention near the end. In any case, I think it will be a good way to at least kill some time when I have it.

After that I met up with Nick and crew to talk about our Anthropology Movie. It seems that Nick is taking control of the group by giving out orders and coming up with a plan of attack on Shimokitazawa. We got everything nailed down and should be good to go.

Finally before heading home I went to Igo. The guys were happy to see me. The first game I played with a four stone handicap and managed to win with a little advice from my opponent. The second game I played with a new member who I gave a 2 stone handicap to. He would have won but made a couple crucial mistakes protecting his stones. I told him not to worry because I was making those same mistakes a few weeks back. I do feel like I am getting better at the game. I have more common sense that tells me good moves from bad moves, and I’m not losing as many stones.

May 11 - My Day of Relaxation

I finally got to sleep in today! I woke up real late to a plethora of emails on my phone. After replying to all of them I ate breakfast and hopped on my computer. I spent the morning catching up on some homework and lazying around. I ended up going out at 8pm to meet Mike in Shinjuku. We ate soba for dinner and headed to Baba. Once there we played pool for an hour, caught up on things, and went home.

May 10 - Bye Bye!

Dragged the other suitcase to the hotel

Took parents to the airport

Ate at Subway for lunch

Saw them off then went home

Steve wanted to hang out, but I was too tired and the weather was cold and rainy

Put my puzzle depicting Mt. Fuji together

Practiced solving my rubix cube

Went to sleep early

May 9 - Odaiba

Last full day for my parents in Japan

I took them to Odaiba in the morning

We arrived around 11am

The monorail was cool

We walked around the area

Took pictures of the Statue of Liberty

Ate at a Chinese buffet

I bought some stuff at the Toys-R-Us

Checked out Muscle Park and Joypolis

Walked to the Japan Future Science Museum

By this time it was 4:30 and the museum closed at 5

Found a waterfall fountain

Walked to the Ferris wheel

Found an arcade

I played House of the Dead 3 with a shotgun

I also played a really cool jet game where the seat moved

Found the Toyoto showroom

I did the driving simulator of Gran Turismo 4

Mom and I took a ride in the cars that drove themselves; I want one

We looked at all the other cars

Looked at the ferris wheel and nearby arcade

Zepp Tokyo is also there

Walked back to the dock area

Decided to see the movie Cloverfield

Ate at the food area in the mall waiting for the movie to start

By the time we finished we were too late to see the movie

I gave the girl working at the Ishi-yaki place my number

We decided to go home

We all drank in the hotel room

I returned on almost the last train

May 8 - School Trip

I hauled one suitcase to the hotel room

We went to Fukugawa where we met with my Japanese class (I was late as always)

We got a tour of the Edo Museum

For lunch we went to Indian curry in Baba

I gave my parents a tour of the campus

We went to Asakusa

I ended up buying a yukata for the coming summer months (500 yen!!)

We visited the temple and wandered around

Returned to Baba and had soba for dinner

I drank with dad a bit and stayed the night again

This time we pushed the beds together and I slept in the middle

May 7 - Loose Ends

Finally were able to exchange money

I exchanged $1000 and gave $300 to both mom and dad

For lunch I took them to all-you-can-eat Okonomiyaki in Harajuku

We went shopping for some loose ends

I bought stuff in Akihabara

After returning I went with dad to the game center in Big Box

We played a token game for a couple of hours

After losing I caught the last train home

I spent almost 2 hours cleaning up my entire room

I got 2 suitcases packed with stuff I don’t need (ex: winter clothes, fall semester papers, souveniers)

May 6 - Kamakura

Decided to go to Kamakura

Hopped on the train in the morning and arrived before noon

Went first to the main temple place

Walked up a giant hill to Kencho Temple

Ate lunch at an ice cream place

Took the train back to Kamakura station and a bus to the Daibutsu

Got our pictures in front including a couple with the Bryan Times

On our way to the Hasedera Temple I bought a hat

From Hasedera Temple we saw the sea and many wind-surfers

Went back to the station and went home

I bought different types of beer and sake for my parents to try

I stayed with my parents by sleeping on the floor

May 5 - So Tired...

Today I am really tired. I woke up bright and early at the normal time (for school anyway) and hopped on a train out to that hostel. When I got there my mom and dad were all packed up and ready to go. We grabbed the 2 suitcases and headed over to the Sunroute at Takadanobaba. Today was the last night at the hostel.

dropped off luggage, Bank still closed

took Tozai to Otemachi

Imperial palace grounds / gardens

Walked south to Hibiya park.

Found hibiya shopping arcade / dad bought kimono / I got belt and shoes

went to ueno

big history museum

my feet were killing me / sat down a lot

it started to rain a little

walked around ueno

had rotating sushi and tako-yaki for dinner

back to baba and checked into hotel

I stayed and watched tv for a couple hours b/f going home to sleep

May 4 - Big City = Lots of Walking

Instead of spending lots of money today on trains, I decided that we could make a nice Yamanote walk from Shinjuku all the way down to Shibuya. We started off by taking the underground tunnels from Shinjuku station all the way to the Shinjuku Metropolitan Government Building. When we got there it was open thankfully. My parents had no idea what to expect. When we stepped into the elevator and I said we were going to the 45th floor, they just stared at me with jaws open. The view from the top was pretty cool although a little cloudy. The building did not have anyone working because of the holiday, but there were a ton of tourists eyeing the city. We went to both the North and South towers as they have different views of the city.

From the top of the building I pointed to where we were going to walk to the rest of the day. “You see that big green area? We are gonna walk through that!” We stopped by a convenience store for sandwiches before heading off. The walk was rather nice. I led us in the general direction if Meiji Jingu and finally ran into a road that I had traversed earlier with Sheung Sheung. We entered the back way and ended up at the temple. It was really cool because there was a wedding going on. This meant that a lot of people were wearing the traditional Japanese style clothes. I forced my mom and dad to make a donation and pray so I could get their pictures. I also made my dad do the omikuji, but he did the English one and got a poem instead of a fortune. Lame.

We walked out of the temple and to Harajuku. Deciding against seeing Yoyogi park, we instead checked out all the girls cosplaying on Takeshita-dori. Honestly, it was the first time I had ever seen it. The clothes were very gothic and very out there. I figure it is mostly high school girls who are tired of wearing the uniform all the time so they buy crazy clothes and flaunt them on the weekends. Takeshita-dori was packed with people, not that it is a bad thing. The parents kind of get to see rush hour. We once again just looked at all the stuff and did not buy anything.

From there we went down Meiji-dori to Shibuya. Once there I took them to the station and visited the Hachiko. After that we passed 109 and went towards the NHK building. We got a little distracted with a flower festival right outside of the building and ended up not being able to enter. It apparently closes at 5:30. At the festival I got some dango which I made my parents try. They did not like it too much. The mochi was too chewy for them.

Back at the station it was starting to get dark. I decided to take them to Kudanshita one because there is some cool stuff there and two because the Toei-Shinjuku train goes there. We walked some more and eventually went home. I plan on going back there first thing in the morning when it is daylight and the imperial palace is open.