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!