Leaving the Shell

おわった

2011-01-10T19:45:00.005-05:00

This time home as in the US, not back to Fukuoka. Four days ago I got on a plane at 7:20pm to leave from Tokyo and I arrived in New York 13 hours later at... 7:50pm. Time zones are silly. Finally got home around 10pm or so, getting Bojangles on the way. I hadn't had sweet tea in forever. Never was able to adjust to the bitter taste of Japanese.

But... I'm back. Missing everything over there but there's nothing I can do except hope for a chance to return someday. Adjusting to things and seeing people I haven't in months. I've been tackled four times now, twice by surprise. I'm still keeping up with friends on Skype, at least. Talking to Chris about every day at least briefly. Planning a trip this summer to Minnesota and tickets may be bought after a discussion with parents. On the fence about Animazement still as well, but I need to decide before any plane tickets are purchased.

It's snowing out so I'm confined to my room, since I don't really want to trek across campus to Deborah's half of the world. Had Taco Bell with her and Candie tonight though. My tummy struggles to handle greasy American food at times but I'm dealing. If I get hungry again, since we had an early dinner, I have Red Lobster in the fridge. And.. that's about it. I don't know what there is to say about home.

Going abroad was probably the best thing I could've done. I had the greatest experiences of my life and made the best friends I could have from all over the world.

Edit: I made a website and have added it to the outside links section. It's full of tips and things about studying abroad in Fukuoka.

Sweaty Sweat Sweat

2011-01-04T06:10:00.004-05:00

Today I sweated. A lot. And I laid on stone. And rocks. And a mat.

I went to a hot spring and we did the whole package; hot spring plus sauna rooms. I went with Meagan and Jen. GOSH. So we start out by taking off our shoes and putting them in a locker by the door. We get a key that we exchange for a bracelet with a bar code. Then we get our bag and go through to the woman's changing area. So we put all our stuff in a locker and then it's time to strip. We awkwardly go out through nearby doors and sit on a little bucket to wash off with a shower nozzle and provided body wash stuff. The hot springs are riiight next to us, but we have to go back inside, put on the provided clothes, and go to the sauna part first.

There were six, kind of. You go in a certain order. First we laid down on stone, first setting down our towels to rest on. It was hot and we were there for a while. Then the next one was a little less hot, and on rocks. White rocks that poked. The next was cool air to recover. Then it was back to hot. The hottest one there. This one had little hourglasses beside each spot to lay down that counted down ten minutes because you weren't supposed to stay longer than that. Stubbornly, Meagan and I lasted the whole time. Next was another rock room that was cooler but still hot. It had blue rocks. Finally, passing through a normal room you get to one where you can either lay down or climb into one of the honeycomb type things in the wall. So I laid down in one of those until me and Meagan retreated to the relaxing/waiting room thing to cool and wait for Jen.

There were several rooms with TVs and chairs set up but we didn't stop. We were sticky and sweaty and gross.

We returned to the changing room where we stripped again, then washed again, then finally got to the hot spring. It was outside, and today it was cold with misty rain. But the water was hot. One was 38 degrees Celsius. The hottest was 43. There were also barrels that you just sat in and we probably stayed there the longest. If I had my arms out, the cold rain balanced out the hot water so I didn't get overheated. So we chatted, then went to the inside hot spring briefly, which were in the same room as the little shower stations.

Then we took our third shower of the day to wash off the salty hot spring water. Finally washed my hair here too. All the shampoo and conditioner and body wash were provided. Then they had a wall of sinks, brushes, and hair dryers in the changing room that we used after we had dressed again to do our hair. Then it was back into the rain.

We met with Chris in Tenjin and decided against yakiniku because it was too expensive. I wanted to try it... :< It's cook your own meat, I think, but Jen is vegetarian. We also didn't know where to find a shabu shabu place. So instead we went back to Sweets Paradise, the all you can eat cake place. They have curry, pasta, sandwiches, and more as well so we all filled up, and now I'm back and exhausted.

Oh, and this hot spring was in Hakata, by the pier with the red tower. Or something.

Tomorrow's my last full day.

Returned "home"

2010-12-27T08:03:00.003-05:00

After a long 5 hour ride on the shinkansen/bullet train, I'm finally back in Fukuoka! Have to say I missed it and waaay prefer it to Tokyo. So many tourists there! And crowds and everything. D:

Though, I did find the last book of the Princess Mononoke manga I was collecting. I also got a 1000 yen Simon figure from Gurren Lagann to make up for the Viral I never found. We walked for 9 hours to find that thing, and failed (probably because it's no longer made and most stores mainly carried perverted female figures). BUT. We did find one online, and Chris got it for me. MERRY CHRISTMAS he said, as he threw his card at me. This is the one I got. It'll be in the mail.. someday. I got an email that it's processing.

Anyway, I said we were going to go back out later at night to avoid the tourists. Well... instead I got sick. I was throwing up all night and suffering from a killing headache. It finally faded a little after I vomited the first two times so we headed out to a convenience store for dinner/bread for my stomach. I threw up at the first place again, but then got a corn dog (American Dog, according to the Japanese), along with a pack of bread, and after eating them I felt mostly better. So... I was well again in time to go to sleep, though the headache never really faded and I still have a remnant of it 24 hours later.

But, I did take a couple more pictures in the station and on the way back, since that's all we did today. Had to be out of the hotel by 11am and on the train by 2pm. We couldn't exactly lug our bags around everywhere, so we hopped in a taxi and went straight there. Ate at a little sandwich shop and then looked around the underground subway mall area.

Then it was back on the train for the five hour return trip from Tokyo to Hakata station in Fukuoka. Kinda miserable. The guy in front of me had his chair leaned back, and my bag wouldn't fit in the overhead tray thing, so I had it in front of my knees. Due to his leaning back, my knees were shoved into my bag and I was unable to move for most of the trip. But, I did take some pictures and videos from the window.

Also, videos.

Sorry there's a lot. What they are is in the title/description of each. Mostly just views from the window to show how fast it's going and also how quickly scenery switches from city to countryside. The first is the shinkansen pulling into Hakata station, the next two are views shortly after leaving, and the last is a view of Tokyo as we were headed back.

Sensoji

2010-12-26T04:32:00.003-05:00

So today we went to Sensoji to see the giant lantern and stuff. Here it is.

Also, a padoga.

And me!

Didn't really do much else so far. It was really crowded.

We're going back tonight to see it better, get more pictures, maybe be in one. We'll see how well that plan works out.

Tourists everywhere!

Also, there was a tiiiny amusement park and we're glad we didn't get our hopes up about it being awesome.

More pictures

Live, From Tokyo

2010-12-24T07:38:00.004-05:00

Hey! Just arrived in Tokyo a little while ago. We left the dorm at 1pm, boarded the shinkansen at 3pm, and arrived at 8pm. A short taxi ride later and it's now 9:40pm. The taxi driver was awesome. He went on a back road to the wrong hotel at first and started rambling to himself in disgruntled, confused Japanese until he realized he should've stayed on the main road, and turned two corners to find the hotel. He'd barely missed it. But we're here! The Chisun Inn in Asakusa.

Pictures! The room is tiiiiny.

There's working internet though, obviously.

Oh! And the first thing we saw while driving through Tokyo in the taxi waaaas...

A Dennys.

We're about to venture out into the city to find some dinner, then come back and hopefully fully plan what we definitely want to do here. There's a Pokemon Center somewhere for me to find! Also, we have to go to Akehabara, a palace that's only open on holidays where you can see Mt Fuji from, and Tokyo Tower, at least. We're still considering that amusement park as well, but it is kind of cold. Currently 38F according to google. Mika was also telling us about a park. We forgot to pick up a tourist map at the train station... oh well.

Also, merry Christmas Eve. o uo

Mountain Dew in Fukuoka is 120 yen for a can 350ml. Here, a 500ml can is 120 yen, and it's EVERYWHERE. I have to search all over in Fukuoka! D:

And we found a restaurant that we often go to in Fukuoka. May end up trying it here too.

Toward the End

2010-12-22T09:37:00.005-05:00

So we had our going away party a while ago with just our group. I posted pictures of the ice cream. Last week was an I-House goodbye party. They made those leaving do a little speech in front of everyone. I almost lost it and started crying right there in front. I did later, when accepting a board thing all the advisers had signed for me with little messages. But the real trigger was a video that was played with pictures from the entire semester. A lot of them were from my facebook page, actually. People started sobbing right there, and seeing them set me off too. So then people went around taking pictures and my face is red from having to constantly regain my composure. At one point right after I'd recovered, Andrey walked up to Chris and said "you'll be here next semester". Then he looked at me and said "You won't". I lost it right there, and he froze in utter shock, handed me a cupcake from the nearby table, tried to hand me an entire cake pan, and then excused himself.

Meagan, Me, Natsumi and Me and Misa. I'm waiting for more pictures to be uploaded. My (chris's) camera died right at the beginning of the party.

My health class and teacher. (top) Dimitri, Jen, Brian, Meagan, me, Chris, Tess. (bottom) Allena, Edwina, Shinfuku sensei, Ayuki, Nancy, Don, Rebecca.

In other news, exams ended as of Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon I sent in my final paper too, though it wasn't due until New Years Eve. I just rather it be out of the way, so it is. Had three finals for Japanese class. Kanji, grammar, and speaking. After the grammar part, the last one, Jo sensei made us all hug her. 8 of the 12 beginners are leaving for good. I had her sign my board thing with the adviser's signatures too. Takahashi sensei signed it at the party. She was the only teacher who attended. I also have a scrap book I've been filling with little things. I don't think there will be enough room so for now I've packed up all I want in a bag together.

Anyway, other than Japanese I had a Natural World final. It was literally four questions with five options after each and we had to mark which were true. I have no idea how I did but it counts for 70% of my grade. Originally we were told it'd be an essay and I think I would've preferred that. Manga class's final was to read some manga, about nuclear bombing victims in Hiroshima, and write responses. Besides final exams, I had papers for health, intercultural communications, and the aforementioned economics. None proved too difficult.

I've moved out of my room now. All my bags are in Chris's room, and on Friday we're going to Tokyo for a few days. We'll be in Asakusa and we're visiting Akehabara, an anime and technology focused place. Determined to find that ever elusive Viral figurine! I'm convinced one exists, somewhere. May meet Josh somewhere in Tokyo if we can find each other. Might also go to an amusement park, and definitely a castle or something that's famous for its giant red lantern. Mika was also telling us about a park. I wrote down his suggested places to visit.

I'm not sure what else to talk about. I'm out of my room. Have to turn in my key tomorrow. I also need to cancel my bike registration and figure out how to send it home in a relatively cheap way. Then there's the course enrollment form I have to have signed for UNCG. My card might no longer let me into the library so I'll need Chris to print it for me.

Let's see... we had our final dinner all together last night. Meagan and Brian are currently in Korea. Christ is leaving Japan on Friday so we'll have to do stuff tomorrow, like climb Fukuoka Tower finally. We went to Yayoikin for food. It's one of Christ's favorite places. I'm about to start uploading all of the videos I took all semester long on facebook, so if you know me on there, check them out. There's some of karaoke, food, bowling shoe machines, and whatever else I've seen/done.

Random photos!

My Yayoikin meal. Hamburger, hotdog, chicken, with bean sprouts and onions and green beans, and also potato chunks. That empty space is where my rice was before Chris took it.

Where I've been practically living the past few months.

Going away party photos
Meagan, Chris, Allena, Me - Meagan, Me, Maki
Me, Chris, Meagan, Cayleen

KFC for Christmas, anyone? "Yes!" reply all the Japanese.

Canal City Christmas

2010-12-13T00:49:00.000-05:00

So here's the video I couldn't get to upload properly yesterday.

Going Away & Christmas

2010-12-12T09:50:00.005-05:00

So with most people's departure down to just over a week away, we decided to have a mini party at an ice cream place. Here is the menu to give an idea of what there was.

Though, Chris also got real food. So did Brian. It's curry with tuna and egg on top.

And here is Chris's order and the giant one the rest of us split.

Chris wanted strawberry and the rest of us got a giant vanilla and chocolate thing. It was split between eight people. Me, Meagan, Kisha, Christ, Brian, Sarah, and two of Sarah's French friends, Loralen and Michael. It was amazing, though we couldn't quite finish. Chris did though. Then he got sick.

By the way, it was served with a shovel.

Then we headed to Canal City to see if there was a Shimama in the Pokemon Center yet. Instead we stumbled upon a Christmas show.

Also, KFC really is the place of choice for Christmas meals.

Class Party

2010-12-10T01:57:00.004-05:00

So today, since the year is almost over, Jo sensei brought us to a traditional Japanese place. The first place was booked full so we couldn't go. It was also far away, but had meat based food. The replacement was a short walk, but was tofu based. Still, it was pretty good.

1. The starter set. Some mushy thing that might've been soybean paste, an egg based soup with a weird jiggly consistency and shrimp and random things hidden inside, a salad with tofu beneath, and a little thing of something and cucumber.
2. Two mochi-like things on a stick, and tofu inside crunchy egg, with a green pepper.
3. Tofu in soup. I couldn't eat this one.
4. Doria. Cheese with rice beneath, and this one had lots of seasonings and shrimp in it. This was the main course; the rice.
5. Coralie's eel rice and miso soup. She said it was delicious.
6. My soybean ice cream.
7. Coralie's soybean cake.
8. Jen's mochi with a tea like taste.
9. Jen pulling the mochi apart to let us taste. The three of us each got one of the three desserts so we could all share and try them all.

And here's my class, minus Simon and Josh. Josh just skipped or something, and Simon's in Tokyo.

Top: Me, Jen, Abdul, Brice
Bottom: Coralie, Linda, Daniela, Jo sensei, Tess, Ayuki, Rebecca

And these are my teachers.

Takahashi sensei. She teaches us writing and is super adorable and soft spoken. After this picture she said we could be sisters, and before she made a show of fixing her hair.

Jo sensei. She's insane. She says other teachers tap their students when they do wrong, but she punches them. And she animates this each time with the Japanese sound effects. Pishi pishi vs. BASH BASH.

Accident

2010-12-05T07:57:00.003-05:00

Finally, a post in English! No pictures though. Haven't done anything interesting. Er, I guess there is this though. Our school had a Lighting of the Tree ceremony and we stumbled across it while heading back from class a while back.

So anyway, one of the things we were told the first week here is how crazy drivers are. We hear a lot of beeping, see a lot of cutting others off on the road, but we had yet to see an accident. Yesterday, we did. We must've just missed it because we were coming back from Kappa Sushi on our bikes, rounded a corner, and saw a car parked on the sidewalk. There was a guy sitting down with people trying to put a neckbrace on him. He looked like Squall. He tried getting up, but they pushed him back down and put the brace on. There was broken glass everywhere, a van run into the sidewalk's guardrail, and a motorcycle busted up in the middle of the road.

From then on, our breakneck bike pace to fight the cold turned into a casual, careful stroll along the sidewalk. We definitely have to cross roads a lot while biking, and we've definitely nearly had cars pull out and cut us off before. I'll count us lucky for now.

In other news, I sent out postcards and I hope everyone who I sent one to has gotten it by now. I have confirmed deliveries in North Carolina and California so far. I sent out literally fourteen postcards.

このしゅうまつ２

2010-11-22T02:17:00.005-05:00

きんようび　に　ホークス　モール　に　いきました。私はともだちと　おこのみやき　をたべました。とてもおいしかったです。そして、じゅうじに　ハリーポッタをみました。とてもおもしろかったです。ほん　がだいすきです。えいが　がすきです。

どようび　に　ともだちと　どうぶつえん　にいきました。カバとライオンとさる　を　みました。でも、レッサーパンダは　いちばんかわいいどうぶつです。　ライオンのうちはちいさかったです。　かなしいです。　ブライアンさんはさる　を　さわりました。それから、はな　を　みました。とてもきれでした。私は　ともだちと　しゃしん　をとりました。あとで　どうぶつえん、ラーメンを　たべました。おいしかったです。

にちようび　に　ねました。それから、インディアンのたべものをたべました。そして、ともだちとパンテイとスタギングをみました。アニメです。とてもおもしろかったです。

しゅうまつはいそがしかったです。でも、たのしかったです。

もっとしゃしん

-------
This Weekend2

Friday I went to Hawk's Mall. Me and my friends ate okonomiyaki. It was very delicious. Then, at 10 o'clock we watched Harry Potter. It was very interesting. I love the books. But I like the movies.

Saturday, my friends and I went to the zoo. We saw a hippo, lion, and monkey. But, the lesser panda was the cutest animal. The lion's house was small. It is sad. Brian touched a monkey. Then, we saw flowers. They were very beautiful. My friends and I took pictures. After the zoo, we ate ramen. It was delicious.

Sunday I slept. Then I ate Indian food. Then my friends and I watched Panty & Stocking. It's an anime. It was very interesting.

This weekend was busy, but it was also fun.

More pictures

このしゅうまつ

2010-11-15T01:18:00.006-05:00

しゅうまつはとてもたのしかったです。

もくようびにラーメンをたべました。それから、ケーキのみせにいきました。とてもおいしかったです。チョコラテのケーキをたべました。それから、ともだちとボーリングにいきました。しんさんは、いちばんじょうずでした。もくようびはとてもたのしかったです。
きんようびに　がくさいにいきました。しんさんとクリスとクライストとブラインとメイガンもいきました。おもしろかったです。それから、ともだちとうどんをたべました。それから、クリスとDexterをみました。Dexterがすきです。

どようびはとてもいそがしかったです。クリスとクライストとしんさんとスペースワールドにいきました。ジェットコースターにのりました。タイタンはいちばんおもしろいジェットコースターです。ビデオをとりました。それから、スイーツパラダイスにいきました。スパゲテイとケーキをたべました。とてもおいしかったです。

もっとしゃしん

にちようびに　べんきょうしました。それからねました。

しゅまつはいそがしかったです。そして、たのしかったです。私はうれしいです。

Halloween Party

2010-11-01T03:08:00.010-04:00

Sup guys. Time for a real update, sort of.

So Saturday I had to go to a field trip with the Natural World class. We went to a mountain to look at rice paddy's. We easily were distracted by Simon's new pet and a crab that made one of the teachers scream. Then Alecs picked it up. We also got lost on the way, missing the turn and driving up a mountain path that scraped both sides of the car and eventually turned rocky and too steep to drive up. There was also a creepy abandoned car, barking dogs in the distance, and no cell phone service.

Then we went to the Halloween party in the I-House. It was pretty cool. Food, candy, drinks, music playing, everyone in costume. Ours was ridiculous. We were Seinan Senshi/Seinan Soldiers, kind of like Sailor Moon. We got the idea when Meagan saw the masks in the dollar store, so we went with it. They even had a villian one for Chris, and he bought dynamite that I didn't realize actually exploded out confetti and smoke. He shot me close range, I screamed in alarm, and everyone stared and went dead silent. They thought I'd really been shot or something. After the party we went out for a while then came back and watched Silent Hill. It wasn't that scary... so Sunday we watched テケテケ, a movie about a creature drawn to red that kills people. It wasn't really scary at all either.

Link to more pictures.

As far as long ago things go, I tried to upload the Kyoto trip pictures but didn't get them all there. But they are on facebook if you want to go seek them out. Here are a couple to tide you over.

Shabu-shabu dinner. We put the meat and veggies in the water/sauce and it cooked

Train station interior

2010-10-27T12:06:00.003-04:00

So I never posted pictures, but I have done this:

Other things I've done:
-Bowling
-Aimless shopping
-Found Root Beer and Cherry Coke
-Biked in a typhoon
-Learned I can't actually stay the whole year
-Decided to plan a hotspring trip
-Possible Tokyo/Okinawa trips
-Turned down possible job at daycare
-Started cooking own meals in the dorm

Kyoto and Stuff

2010-10-08T02:13:00.004-04:00

Don't have time to add pictures and stuff now. This will either be edited or I'll make a new post. Most likely the latter.

Sooo, went to Kyoto a weekend or two ago. Started off with meeting by the cafeteria and loading up on a bus. Went to the train station. Got on the shinkansen for a few hours. That's the super fast bullet train. Took a bus to Nara and went to a temple. We fed deer. That's really the most interesting part that I remember. But we went to Kofukuji and Todaiji temples. Then arrival at the hotel and check in before leaving for dinner. It was shabu-shabu, which is kind of a hot pot. One side has water, the other some kind of broth. You get a plate of veggies and one of meat and you cook them. Endless food and drink. They didn't provide us with a ride home after so we had to walk back to the hotel through the dark. I was with Jeremy and Julien though, and both are advanced Japanese speakers, so we made it back fine.

Saturday we woke up and went to Sanju-sangendo, then to the Kyoto International Manga Museum. Lunch at a random hotel that wasn't our hotel, for some reason, then back on the bus to visit Nijyojyo castle and then Kinkakuji, which is a golden temple that actually looked really cool. Then we got free time to feed ourselves that night, and went to bed. Though, most everyone went to Osaka, me, Chris, Christ, Brian, and Mitch stayed at the hotel and watched the Watchmen.

Next morning we get up and check out of our rooms, leaving our bags in the lobby. Then we wandered around 'til it was really time to leave WikiBrian took us to a nearby temple and the most fun part there was that there were pigeons everywhere and you could feed them. So we fed pigeons all morning. Got back on the bus, I got sick and still am sick a week or so later with the same cold (though it's going away), and we rode back to the train station, got back on the Shinkansen, arrived at a foreign station, and once more Nogami-san said "well, that's it. Find your own way home" and then he left us. But, we made it back.

And that was the Kyoto trip. I definitely prefer Fukuoka. Kyoto is full of tourists, is crowded, is hard to find your way around in, and we kept getting ditched by our adviser. It was a lot of rushing between temples to tour too, and each one was stuffed full of tourists. We'd get about 1.5 hours at each and by the end we'd all be in this big group sitting around waiting to leave again. We never stayed entertained for the full time.

I need to figure out how to send postcards, how much it'll be, and also where to find some neat ones.

The week after Kyoto was pretty laid back. Didn't do much exciting. Just going out to find new places to eat at and stuff. I'm going to get on photobucket and make a new account for more pictures. My posts are too plain and photo-less now. Then I'll have things to talk about once I see pictures I've taken since I've last posted some.

Kyoto

2010-09-23T14:00:00.003-04:00

What have I done lately? This week went by so quickly because I only had two classes. Natural world, we spent watching a video that was actually narrated in English. Then I had my Japanese writing class on Wednesday. We finished learning Hiragana and are about to move on to katakana.

Uh, it really is hard to think of what I did. Just the usual stuff. Had an anime night tonight. Made people watch Ouran High School Host Club. Christ likes it, Mitch didn't watch, Chris and Brian cringed a bit. I giggled. One of my favorite animes right there.

Then I left to shower and sleep. Ended up also packing and taking out the trash, then settling online to update this. We're leaving for Kyoto in 4.5 hours so I really need to get a move on with that sleeping thing. I'm not sure why it's so troublesome to manage.

The Kyoto trip seems like it'll involve a lot of tour busing. Friday and Saturday we have 6 hour tours to go on. We're taking the shinkansen to get there in the first place, which is the super fast bullet train. Friday night we have the group endless drink and food dinner, with the shabu-shabu hot pots as well. Saturday we're turned loose to find our own dinner. Sunday we get a lot of free time until the ride back home. We'll see how this trip goes. Should be fun

Update

2010-09-20T08:49:00.001-04:00

So... haven't posted in a while again. Finally uploaded some images to help me figure out what I need to say. Though, I've already reached the limit in photobucket. Whoops.

Went to that festival with people. Then we went to this castle during a night bike ride. Got back just in time for a group picture of the dorm. Saturday I had class in the morning but the vocab quiz was postponed so I don't have to worry about it again for a while, since I don't have that class this week. Then we went to a Softbank Hawks baseball game. We left because it was 4 to 1 and we were losing and Brian was restless. So we went to the mall next door and shopped around, and later found out that they'd pulled off a comeback win. Also missed out on taking pictures on the baseball field, which kind of bothered me, but I guess it's alright.

We did something at midnight, got back and found out people were deciding to head out at 3am to bike to a park. So we joined in, which meant me, Chris, Christ, Brian, Abdul, Alecs, Aliyah, Edwina, Jennifer, Roxane, and maybe a couple more I'm blanking on went out. The park was crazy. The first one had an Eiffel Tower of ropes to climb up. The second had rope bridges and tunnels that skinned us up as we raced through them. We played freeze tag on the playground and you couldn't touch the ground so it was tough.

Then we decided to bike to a place to watch the sunrise and lost everyone but Brian, Aliyah, Chris, Christ, and myself. On the way we heard a dog barking ahead from the dark, Christ panicked and screamed to run for it, and we realized a short while later that it was just a puppy that wanted attention. We got to the beach and sat on a wall to watch the sun come up, then headed off to a pancake place only to find that they only offered a breakfast buffet at that time and it didn't involve pancakes. So we left and returned home to sleep.

Woke up, did stuff. I hardly remember what. No class Monday so we slept in, then biked to Tenjin and went shopping. Chris bought a bike so he could go with us without constantly borrowing. Me and Mitch stocked up a bit on Mountain Dew because there's a machine in Tenjin with it. I have three cans in my fridge now. About to meet to watch either Spirited Away or Howl's Moving Castle because several people haven't seen it. Not sure whose room we're going to do it in, so I have to go check that out.

I thought I only had class Tuesday this week, but I have one on Wednesday too. I forgot that I have two different Japanese teachers then and only one canceled. Oh well, that's still not too bad.

Blah

2010-09-16T16:04:00.003-04:00

Haven't done much lately. Haven't uploaded pictures either. That'll be done sometime that is not now.

Just wanted to say that I went to a festival the other day. It was just rows and rows of tents selling food, merchandise, or games. There were a couple haunted houses, but we didn't go in. Aki and Shin took us, so we had real Japanese guides to show us around and help us navigate the train. It wasn't as bad as the fireworks one getting home. We weren't stuffed in and squeezed front to back, since then everyone had left at once and here people just left when they felt like it.

There was a shrine at the festival too.

Uh... I bought a bike today. Almost everyone in the I-House has one, and if you don't, you get left behind. People bike to Tenjin now. That saves us 500 yen every time. An hour walk there is 20 minutes on bike. We're more inclined to go out to places because biking is so much faster. It's pretty great. I'll let anyone who cares to try guess the color of the bike I got. It's awesome and I want to take it home somehow. But it sucks going uphill.

Then we went to this place with a giant USA flag above the door. It was Texas themed. The waitress wore a cowboy hat, as did the cooks, and they served steak and burgers. Except, the burgers had no buns, and both were served on a bed of bean sprouts. Otherwise, it could've passed as a resemblance of home, though it definitely tasted great. My burger slab had cheese cooked right in.

Next we did homework, watched a Very Potter Musical Sequel, I showered, and now I'm about to crawl into bed.

Not sure what the plans are tomorrow. Class and then paying my rent at the bank. Dinner somewhere, bed... then wake up for Saturday classes. Japan sucks in that regard. You don't tip, everything can be biked or walked to, tons of other cool things, but you have to make up missed classes on Saturday, even when the teacher is the reason they were canceled in the first place. Another thing is, I don't think you can take home leftovers from restaurants. I've never seen anyone do it.

Oh, but classes are canceled on the 20th and 23rd for holidays. Then Friday we're leaving for Kyoto at 7:50am so we're skipping that day of classes as well. I hope we won't have to make those up...

Update

2010-09-13T15:35:00.004-04:00

So, haven't posted in some time now. Haven't done too much really. Friday was spent lazing around. We played a lot of Brawl mostly. Saturday we biked to Tenjin, but biking was difficult and I was left behind for a long while. Caught up and they immediately said "Ashley's here, now we can leave!" We'd gone to a book store. But, I went inside with Brian and Chris and got manga adaptions of Miyazaki's Spirited Away since they had the whole set and each book was $1 about. The rest of the group went to eat nearby, so then we headed off to return to the dorm.

Everyone has a bike. I kind of feel like I need one too because if you're walking and everyone else is riding, you're left behind and ignored. But, I won't until I found out some things, like if I get to stay for the year.

There, me, Chris, and Brian gathered up Christian, who'd had to give up on the bike trip 'cause his tire had a hole, and we went to some crowded, noisy Japanese food place. After a late night swim at the beach to follow and a couple card games, we headed to bed.

Sunday... another lazy day? I hardly remember doing anything. Just went to Sunny for food. Didn't even bother eating out.

Monday, had my single Beginning Japanese class of the day. Lunch in the cafeteria. Around 5 we headed to the public library to see what it's like. It was closed so we decided to walk to this pretty far off mall to look for food. Ended up being a shopping mall with only two food choices; an expensive cafe, or McDonalds. We finally caved and ate at McDonalds. I have to say, it wasn't bad. We got big burgers and lots of fries, but small drinks. I had a teriyaki burger, and it was wonderful. Then we walked to the closer mall because I'd found a hat I wanted and we wanted to find a cheaper one. We ended up finding the same exact hat for a bit less, so I bought it. couldn't help myself. I've been searching for a hat for forever.

Umm... Then we headed back and watched Pirates of the Caribbean 1 while Brian and Christ decided they wanted to straighten my hair. And now bed.

Hmm

2010-09-09T13:45:00.005-04:00

What have I dooone lately? Uh, Thursday. Thursday is my long day. I start at nine and end at.. something. But today my last class was canceled. Normally that'd be awesome, except here when a class is canceled, it's made up on a Saturday. So I'm not very thrilled about that.

I'm supposed to go to some free baseball game on the 18th, but I have two make up classes that day and I have no idea what time any of those three things start at.

Christ keeps braiding my hair, begging me to seriously dress as Laura Croft, so that may be more than just something I say and never return to.

At some point I played badmitten with Chris and all of the French kids (Corallie, Brice, Linda, Thibaut). Andrey and Alecs joined in later, but it was pretty awesome fun.

That day we also went to an Italian place for some food resembling home. We tried to find the source of the good smelling place the day before that and ended up at an Indian place.

Forms are due tomorrow to extend my stay here to a year. Waiting to hear back from my school if there is room for me to do that. Meanwhile, I'm turning in what I have ready tomorrow to the office. Er, I guess it's today now. I'm not really sure how the time passes so quickly. We go do homework in someone's room and suddenly it's 4am. It's only 3 right now though. But, we're already talking about how miserable we'll be back home after all the stuff we're constantly doing here. Uugghh...

ANYWAY. Tonight we tried something new for dinner. I had my first sushi! We went to the conveyor belt places, where the sushi goes by and you grab what you want. Though, we kind of just ordered specifically what we wanted. I had 2 tempura, other shrimp, and tankotsu, which is pork. Each plate had two sushi on it and it was pretty awesome. The tempura was my favorite, followed by the pork, because both of those were warm and cooked, not cold and raw.

On the way out, we noticed an ABC Mart in the mall and rushed over. Christ and I had made a deal to buy awesome shoes at some point before heading home. Well, we did. The ones I got were on sale for about half off, putting them at around $31, which I thought wasn't too bad all things considered. Besides, they're awesome.

Let's see... after that is when we got back and jumped right into homework. I have three classes tomorrow, one of which involves a presentation on America's health problems.

Heading to bed now... but first one more picture.

Lazy Day

2010-09-07T14:47:00.004-04:00

Today I did nothing. We went nowhere. I went to class, then sat in my room until I was retrieved. We went to a little shop while waiting for others to end class. There was one of those seats with the storage space inside, so I peeked in... and there was a helmet with a head inside it in the seat. It was terrifying.

Then we gathered up people and went to find the source of a good smell we often walk by. We ended up at an Indian place. There seem to be quite a few around. While there, we realized that Chris says baggle instead of bagel. He followed the scene perfectly, so much that I first thought he was faking it. "You're saying bagel wrong." "No, I'm saying it the same way you are!" "Bagel." "Yeah, baggle!"

If you don't know what I mean, watch this.

Anyway, we watched the last Lord of the Rings movie, then Christ braided my hair and begged me to dress as Laura Croft or whatever from Tomb Raider for Halloween because my hair's so long. Meanwhile, Brian was staring fixedly at me as he examined me and envisioned the type of make over he wants me to try. Apparently he's really good at dressing up girls, and I'm his newest target.

I also need money to pay for my dorm, and for my school to reply to my email so I can extend my stay, because they haven't and I feel lost and nervous. I need to get this stuff turned in.

Oh, and that typhoon that was supposed to hit? We got like.. a little gust of wind and sprinkled showers of rain.

Typhoons

2010-09-06T14:39:00.003-04:00

So apparently it's Typhoon season, and one's supposed to hit tonight and continue on pouring well into tomorrow. We have to watch the school website to see if it causes a class cancellation. Though here, that just means it'll be made up on a Saturday. Still, everyone's hoping for it. The eye of the storm was supposed to go right over us, but then it veered off, so I don't really think we'll get such horrible weather that classes will be called off. Though, I can hear the wind hitting at my window a bit.

Anyway, today was... uneventful? Had Japanese class again. We had to answer questions into a microphone and it was recorded so we could listen to it later or something and compare to how much we've improved. We also had a quiz and I think I did pretty well on it. We'll see on Wednesday, probably. Tomorrow all I have is Natural World.

But after class we went to Tenjin, where we ended up eating at a burger place. I found out I can't handle greasy foods anymore, or something. It upset my tummy pretty badly. Anyway, while we were eating we heard this man suddenly go "GAIJIN" really loudly, which means foreigner, so all our heads jerked around toward him. Then he asked where we were from. We said America, and he replied with "I thought all Americans were large". I guess that's a compliment..? It surprised us, in any case. It was an older man with a college looking kid with him.

Christ looked at shoes and we decided we're going to someday buy horribly colorful shoes for ourselves, Brian bought a shirt, and I got mountain dew from a vending machine to take back. Only got two though.

Then we ended up watching Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, to continue from the first that we watched last week or something. It's now pretty late and I've showered and am ready for bed. So goodnight!

Fireworks, Shrines, and Extensions

2010-09-05T14:12:00.006-04:00

So, Saturday... What did I do? Nothing really. Woke up, went with Christ to Hotto Motto for lunch. It's an obento (lunch box) place. Um... oh! I went to a fireworks festival. The cost and time of travel wasn't really equivalent to the fireworks though. Like, we left at 6pm and got back.. probably closer to midnight? But they were neat. They had huge ones and the hundreds of people there would make sounds of awe in union at every one of them. Some fireworks were smiley faces or heart shaped too.

But you know how you always hear about people being stuffed onto Japanese trains and things? It was like that. There were a ton of people there and no room on the train. So a girl grabbed my bag to make sure I stayed with them and pulled me onto the train behind them, where I was squished up against two people; Jeff and some random Japanese guy, with a random girl pushed into my back. It was really awkward, since with the train's constantly stopping and going, everyone on board would rock and sway into everyone else. It was really hot and awkward and scary.

Anyway, instead of going to bed after getting back so late, I got online, Skyped a little about extending my stay to a year, and then was dragged off to the beach, at midnight, to go swimming. It was actually a lot of fun. We stayed for a few hours. More I-House people kept showing up. We swam and joked until we realized we were freezing and finally headed back. But not before Alecs had dug a massive hole and we'd buried Christ in it.

Then, a 3am Sunny's run left us with various sweet breads and sugar highs, so we watched TV on someone's computer and finally crashed around 5:30am.

Then today, Sunday, we woke up and went with Christ's friend Eri to a shrine. Chris came along too, as well as one of Eri's friends. We met at the dorm, then hopped on various trains and ended up at an Italian place for lunch. Then we got on another train and went to the shrine, where there was also a museum. We prayed at the shrine for good luck and drew fortunes. I got the littlest amount of luck so I had to tie mine up with others in the hopes it'd increase later, or something. It was actually really cool though. Christ and Chris both got the luckiest luck so they kept theirs on them.

We also tried mochi, which is kind of like this stretchy, chewy rice paste/dough filled with bean paste. It was alright.

For more pictures, visit this album.

Got back, hung out in the lobby then met on my floor's lounge to work on homework. I realized quickly that I'd accidentally already done mine thinking it was due my previous class on Friday so all I had to do was study. But there's kind of a lot, though I know large chunks of it already. We have our first lesson quiz today. I'm not really sure why I'm still awake.

We all studied together for quite a long time until I realized I was falling asleep and left. But taking out my contacts always makes me briefly feel wide awake again so I'm waiting for that feeling to pass and uploading more pictures. Hooray?

Seriously working on the steps to extend my stay for a year. I remember having complications trying to get the proof of my money last time so I guess I really need to get on that again.

Friday~~

2010-09-04T01:30:00.002-04:00

Title says Friday but this was made Saturday. I guess that's alright. Um, yesterday marked the completion of our first full week of class. I had Japanese in the morning first, because Health was canceled since the teacher's at a conference in.. Hong Kong? Or something. All the professors seem to be constantly wandering off on conferences around the world.

After Japanese was manga class, though we didn't watch a movie so it was kind of a let down and more boring than last week's. Disappointment.

It's like... 2:30pm here right now. I'm about to head downstairs and see what people are doing, if anything. Or maybe I'll just wait for Christ to answer my mail asking the same question.

Oh, I'm already regretting the decision to return the futon. It actually did help. The bed was still hard with it, but without the mattress is a rock and it's painful. I'm pretty sure I have some bruises from laying on it. I wonder if some place would have cheap bed pad things that I could get... I might have to check on that later. Haven't yet paid my dorm rent and stuff for this month either, but I did withdraw the money to get it done so I may do that today too.

Still debating the one year thing, though I'm running out of time to submit it. I may, I may not. I don't know.

Canal City II

2010-09-02T13:17:00.006-04:00

So, went back to Canal City. Mitch and Christ hadn't gone, and apparently neither had Jeremy so they all came too. We ended up with a group of ten or so, 'til Robin mysteriously disappeared.

I was in class all day. 9am to 6:20pm. I am exhausted and I still have a CD to listen to. But it'll be really easy so I'm taking a blog/picture post/shower break. So I started with psychology, chapel break, beginning Japanese I, lunch break, intercultural communications, beginning Japanese III, and finally ended with economics. Apparently we're taking a trip to Nagasaki that day, so that should be cool. The communications class is going to this big rival baseball match between schools or something too, but it's over the weekend, as an extra thing. We were all excited to go until we realized it's the Sunday we'll be in Kyoto. Oh well, I guess.

After class we went to the dorm, swapped books for cameras, and headed back out. So, took the subway back to Canal City. It's the stop after Tenjin, and it starts with a G, but I keep forgetting what it's called. Goin, maybe? I'm not sure. But we started with the Pokemon Center again where some people stocked up. I got a Jirachi 'cause it's super cute. Jeremy got one, and three others including Roark and Arceus. I forget what the last was.

Um, then we wandered the mall a bit. Canal City is a giant mall, by the way. We found a store full of Miyazaki stuff from all his movies and I finally got my phone a keychain strap thing. I am no longer a social outcast! Mine is the cat with the strawberry that's on the far left of this picture:

Christian got one of the little forest sprite things from Princess Mononoke.

We ended up getting ramen, which I'm kind of getting tired off. It had a strong smell too, and not in a good way. That's where Robin disappeared. He's allergic to meat or something, and ramen's cooked in fish.. broth or something like that. But instead of saying he was going, he just vanished. He was lurking outside and then poofed. I haven't seen him since and am assuming he made it home.

We finally left a while later too, then had a mini-study party of me, Chris, Christ, and Brian in Brian's room. I did all my homework except for the CD listening, since Brian's laptop doesn't have a CD drive for some reason.

I'm on Skype right now kind of lingering to see if anyone will get online. This blog's time settings are wrong and I need to fix it, but it's currently just about 2:30am on Friday morning. I need to shower after this, then listen to the CD real quick and get to bed. I don't have class until 1pm tomorrow, but I'm meeting people for lunch at noon. I also have to pay this month's rent and fees tomorrow or so too.

More pictures here.

Canal City

2010-09-01T12:24:00.002-04:00

Guys, I update every day and I can't help it. It's become a before bed habit.

Anyway, today I woke up and went to my second ever beginner Japanese class. She moves really fast, but I'm sort of maybe catching on? At least with numbers and time I can do it. Not sure about sentence structure order and stuff, but I'll get it. Every one of my closer friends here seem to be in the other classes, pre-intermediate, intermediate, and advanced, so I can ask for their help. A couple Japanese people have offered help if needed too, so I'll be fine.

After class I got back and did my homework in the lobby with Chris' help for part and did the rest myself. Then it was announced everyone was heading to Canal City, Corallie said that I was coming, so I did. It was awesome. This giant mall with a stream of sorts running through it. There's a pokemon center too. Amazing. People split up, deciding to go shop and eat and meet back at 8:30pm. Then they realized it closed at 8pm. So we told them we'd head on since the food places around seemed expensive. We looked around for food, got all the way back to the subway, and then realized some people wanted to go back home to have ramen, which we do every day almost. So three went on back and six stayed.

That Growlithe is the first thing I bought for myself that wasn't necessary for living.

We ended up going back to the mall, since the food places there actually stayed open 'til around 11pm or so. We picked this Korean place and all ate together. Me, Corallie, Jeff, Roxane, Nancy (Wing Wa), and Jenny and we had a pretty awesome time. I think we had at least 20 people come initially and it's hard to do anything with so many people. Most food places seem to be small and can't accommodate us all and it's hard to decide on things to do. So a group of six was perfect.

I had like.. a veggie plate. Four pieces of meat, tons of mushrooms and onions and stuff. I ate it all but there wasn't much.

After that we stopped by a crepe place we'd passed a million times and there was a discount if you got a crepe and a drink. So I got a chocolate brownie/ice cream one with a melon soda and they were both super amazing.

Then we found a random shrine so we stopped to take pictures and they closed the door behind us so we got there just in time for closing. In, pictures, out. Done.

More pictures can be found at this link.

Finally returned to the dorm and I joined Brian and Christ in watching music videos. Ended up switching to playing Robot Unicorn Attack. I set the bar at 50,000 and we called it a night soon after. I'm in every single class tomorrow. Starting at 9am, ending at 6:20pm. I get breaks from 10:30-11am and 12:40-1:30pm and that's it. Japanese psychology and society, beginning Japanese, intercultural communication, beginning Japanese, and Japanese economy. I hope I don't get a ton of homework. Um, we recently parted for bed. Chris scared the crap out of me and Christ because we're still freaked over that movie. I screamed, Jeremy, Justin, Andrey, and Mitch all came out of their rooms to see who was dying, I apologized and now I'm in my room. I wish I could've seen their faces to see how mad they were because I don't have my contacts in right now. I'll apologize again tomorrow...

Have to pay rent tomorrow too so I need to withdraw some money for that and pay it. Our t-shirt design came in and is amazing so we're turning that in for the final order tomorrow too. Then we're going to Canal City again since Christ didn't get to go and we'll need a break after the solid day of classes. I think he's in all but one or two also. There's also some phone keychains at the pokemon center and we're in desperate need of them since without them we're social abominations.

And, that's it. I'm going to bed because I have to be up in 7 hours.

Okonomiyaki Day

2010-09-01T02:32:00.000-04:00

I was kind of kidding about the whole starving comment, but we do tend to go to the 500 yen and under places instead of the 800 yen and up places. We still get a lot of food and I've yet to be disappointed. Except for that 200 yen single piece of tempura. Today we had... something that starts with an O. I think it's Okonomiyaki. It was wonderful. They're kind of like pancakes with toppings baked inside. I forgot to take a picture at the start, so here's one of my mostly eaten dish. And also Christ and Shin. And me and Shin.

Shin is Christ's friend, who is super awesome and our new best friend. He grew up in Fukuoka and wants us to enjoy it, and knows all the good places. He's taking us to the zoo sometime and speaks really good English so we were actually able to talk. He was shocked it's my first time out of the country and said he'd buy me a handkerchief if I got homesick and cried, and also offered to help me learn if I needed it. Anyway, we all tried each other's food. I got cheese, Christ got beef, Shin got two (something and mochi, which is a kind of rice paste). The mochi was a shared one for tasting purposes. Cheese was my favorite. A lot of people didn't like it apparently, or at least the sauce, but I thought it was amazing and me and Christ plan on returning sometime. Though a few people just sat there, didn't eat, and then went to Sunny (the grocery store) afterward.

Speaking of Sunny, last night we watched Paranormal Activity on the big screen in the projector room. It was scary. I was grabbed from behind twice during it, once by Chris and later by Brice, and it was terrifying. Chris screamed in my ear when he did it, and I screamed every time anything happened. Then more creepy ideas were put into my head and we have this long running joke that's horrifying to me and hilarious to everyone else. I'm trying to ignore it. It's like... funny, but still terrifying at the same time and it freaks me out.

But, after the movie I joined Christ and Brian in watching True Blood, though I had no idea what was going on. They ran out of episodes so we took a 11:30pm Sunny run and each got a snack and a drink that we split with the others to taste test things. Mostly bread. They have a ton of bread. In short, it was all pretty amazing. I have two bags of assorted bread to try because late in the day the bakery bags them up randomly and sells two bags for 300 yen.

Anyway, that was last night. This morning I woke up and went to class, the Natural World of Japan. It was admittedly boring and I wanted to sleep. But I didn't. It was all introductory stuff so I'm hoping the actual field trips and things will be awesome. She did have a lizard in a vial though. She passed it around and one of the Korean girls screamed and dropped it when she realized it was alive.

Later, I was talking to Kisha in the lobby and we both have the same sized foot so we decided we'd someday go shoe shopping together. I need some good walking shoes that aren't super painful super quick and they have some really awesome shoes here. Then people went to class, I hung out in my room until I was called to dinner, I met Shin and we ate, we left, Edwina and Brian were drawn into an arcade where they played Time Crisis, we left and returned to the dorm, Shin left, me, Christ, Chris, and Brian went to Don Quixote for various things (I got soda and soap), we all did our Japanese homework together(ish), I showered, I returned to my room to get online where I am now, and I'm heading to bed very soon.

P.S. - Mosquitoes here are miserable.

First Real Day

2010-08-30T05:13:00.002-04:00

So I woke up, woke up Brian, and went to meet Jeremy, Chris, and a couple others for lunch on campus. We tried out the other cafeteria, which seems way nicer and possibly cheaper as well. I managed to order exactly what I wanted this time too.

Then was my first Japanese class. There's 11 of us in it. (Americans) Me, Tess, Abdul, Jenny, (French) Corallie, Simon, Linda, Brice, (Czech Republic) Daniella, (Chinese) ...oh gosh, I don't know their names. But we worked on introducing ourselves. I'm going to write it here to make sure I've really got it memorized.

Hajimemashte. Ashley Desu.
America kara kimashta.
Sei-nan daigaku no ryuugakusei desu.
Senmon wa pasokon to business desu.
Shumi wa pasokon to e desu.
Doozo yorushiku onegaichimasu.

Translation:
Nice to meet you. I'm Ashley.
I'm from America.
I'm an international student at Seinan university.
My major is computer business.
My hobbies are computers and drawing.
Please take care of me.

We had to recite it today but we have to memorize it again for Wednesday. I knew the first and last lines already, at least.

Let's see... had some room forms to turn in, stating the condition of our rooms and that we got our keys and stuff. We went to turn those in, but it started pouring on us while we were out. The thunderstorm from yesterday is lingering. But me, Mitch, and Christ went to the bank to withdraw money. Oh, I asked about the JASSO scholarship and he said they were done giving them out, as in assigning who gets one. But I don't think he understood that I was asking if I did get one or not. Others are getting theirs on Wednesday. I really don't think I got it, which means I... will starve or something. I'm really kind of super stressing out.

But I just got a text that they're heading out for dinner, so I'm off to see what cheap deals I can find. Then we're watching Paranormal Activity in the projector room. Later!

Ohorikoen

2010-08-30T01:44:00.002-04:00

So today we went to a park. It was right in the middle of the city, surrounded on all sides, and had a large pond and nature trails and a kid's playground. It was pretty beautiful. I took a TON of pictures so check my photobucket for more of them. I'll even give this one its own folder, I think. (I did it! Link.)I kept just turning around, seeing something, snapping a picture in passing, and moving on to review it later. So I'm about to see how these turned out once they finish uploading from my camera.

Oh! We got on the wrong train on the way to the park and had to turn around and backtrack. I think we went two stops past before realizing it and getting off to fix things.

That was the main thing we did today. Went to Ichiran or something, which is the famous ramen place around here. Me, Tess, Andrey, Chris, Brian, Christ, Abdul... It was admittedly really good. They have some sort of special sauce that turned out to be spicy. For the first time, I finished my bowl.

(Andrey, Chris, Brian; personal booth with collapsing walls and water tap; my ramen)

Then we did the park, and after that we researched how to get to Marine World and decided to scrap the idea for now. It involved too many subway transfers and that would be costly. Plus, the site didn't tell us what stop to end with. So we scrapped that and opted for ordering pizza. Then we realized the pizzas were tiny, we only got 5, and there were like... 20 people trying to get some. So me, Brian (not the blonde Brian), Christ, and Mitch went to this Italian place in the mall. I got seafood dorian or something, which was not what I expected. There was rice instead of pasta. Rice is impossible to escape! But now I know to try the lasagna or something if we ever go back.

Someone else ordered dominos. We caught them on the way back from getting movie snacks (I finally have snacks in my room for when I'm starving!) and stopped the delivery guy, who gave us a menu. The pizzas are small and expensive so we'll just do that on special occassions. Tomorrow we're supposedly watching Paranormal Investigations. Tonight was Lord of the Rings 1 'cause as I was starting Pirates of the Caribbean, Jeremy saw LotR there and said it was his favorite movie ever. So we switched, at the cost of sleep. I don't have class until 1pm, but we're eating in the cafeteria at 12:10pm so I have to get up a bit early still. But not as bad as them.

First Japanese class tomorrow! And that's all I have all day. Someone told me that I had 3 hours of it tomorrow, but that's a lie. I only have 1.5 hours of class. So we'll see how that goes.

Gotta get to bed now! Night

PS. Deborah, I read every one of your comments. The tempura was good, so next time I hope to get more than just one so I can really enjoy it properly.

Phones~

2010-08-28T23:56:00.000-04:00

Got our cell phones today. Went through Softbank. The one nearby sold out yesterday and the others around don't carry prepaids. So we went back to Tenjin and found a store in the huge underground mall thing that sold them for 3200 yen, which is about $32. The calling card was 3000 yen and the unlimited mailing was 300 yen. They had three prepaids left so me, Christ, and Brian all got one. Mitch was on the fence, but later decided he wanted one too so we went to an above ground SoftBank and... it was twice as much for the phone, almost. But he bought it, so we all have phones. I think they don't have texting, or something like that. When they exchange messages on their phones, they're sending them to email addresses. So we set up our email and have been taking advantage of our unlimited mailing. Those who have phones have exchanged numbers, via this awesome thing they have where you just hold up the phones and they scan each other to send the information. So far I have Jeremy, Andrey, Mitch, Brian, Christ, and Corallie's numbers.

(yay phones~~)

I'm currently mailing the pictures I took with my phone to my email so I can post them up and then go to bed.

(tempura and my chopsticks ability, octopus, Christ's reaction after eating the octopus)

Oh, here's the subway we're always using:

Um, we stayed out forever wandering around and half-effort shopping. We split up and me and Christ tried to find keychains for our phones but failed and returned empty handed. We watched a bit of TV, then headed off for dinner with a bigger group, finally trying Hotto Motto, an obento (lunch box) place that's pretty cheap. They give so much rice! I can never finish it.

After that we played some Street Fighter and Tekken in the projector room, we being mainly Christ, Chris, Brian, Andrey, Jeremy, and others who kept coming in and out. Then we shifted to the outdoor deck and now I'm inside and covered in more fresh mosquito bites. They are everywhere.

After this is posted, I'm going to shower and sleep. There's a kendo championship tomorrow but we meet at 7:30am and no one's really feeling it. So we may go to a park and look into a "night aquarium" that apparently has dolphins.

I leave you with this:

Arcade Time

2010-08-28T01:57:00.000-04:00

Alright~ So today was the first day of classes. I had Health Issues in Japan as my first class at 10:40am. Then we met for lunch in the cafeteria where I made a fool out of myself trying to order without understanding. Finally I pointed to a picture and the boys behind me read it to the lunch ladies. Beginning Japanese was canceled today, so then I started to just chill until 4pm and then go to the study of society through manga and anime class. But Christ and Brian showed up at my door and said our certificates were in. They let us get phones earlier than mid-September. So we ran off to get those, I got some notebooks for class, and then we went to manga class. We watched a satirical short movie on stereotypes in Japan and it was absolutely hilarious. It was about the guide to getting a date by following a certain set of steps. Supposedly it's on youtube. Hm... eh, I can't find it.

Then we went to get our phones, but apparently the SoftBank only had 3 prepaid phones in stock. So we went to another electronic store and they didn't even sell prepaids. So we went to Tenjin again, with a girl named Maki who was in our manga class. She helped us find things more easily. We went to the Tenjin SoftBank but they didn't have the model others got, it was more expensive, and they said it didn't have the features the others had like a built in English-Japanese dictionary. So we put it off. We're meeting in the lobby early tomorrow morning to go to the original SoftBank, since the one in Tenjin cost more and takes 500 yen to reach. We'll ask about the prices, features, and then how long it'd take for new ones to arrive for us to buy.

Um, after the phone chaos we went to a super crowded ramen place. I need to stop because I can't finish a bowl, they don't ever seem to have smaller sizes, and it's a waste of money. But, after that we went to a new arcade and played around a bit. I think Maki really wanted to do one of those photobooth things and we didn't end up doing it. I suddenly feel kind of bad, but I have her name and I'll add her on facebook, so we'll have another chance. If there's one universal thing I've found, it's that every country here has facebook. Some of Maki's friends were at the arcade though, and we watched them play a claw machine game for ice cream.

After that arcade we went back to the one we'd gone to previously, Taito Game Station. It's 5 floors of games, including a casino type place. Edwina found some coins so we played a little and I won a small prize on my first turn of 8 coins. Um, watched Brian and Christ play DDR, Edwina and Chris play Tekken, then her and Brian play some war shooting game for apparently around 40 minutes. No wonder our feet were all dead.

Japanese business man playing DDR:

Edwina's awesome go against a Japanese guy:

Shooting game:

Then we finally got back to catch the train with time to spare, because I was told that it shuts down at midnight and doesn't restart until 5am, even on Friday night. Oh, it was much more crowded everywhere tonight though. There were at least three streetside singing performances too, but Maki was in a hurry to get where we were going so we never stopped to properly watch. They sounded good too.

(Christian, me, Brian, Edwina, Chris, Mitchell, Maki)

Got back, collapsed into the chairs in the lobby, and then split for bed after being attacked by a giant mosquito thing of doom.

Though, I checked my computer to upload pictures, saw my mom had tried skyping me, and called her a couple times until she called back. So I just got my first verbal interaction with home, and I'm actually talking to her right now.

Heading out on another cell phone attempt tomorrow, then maybe a night aquarium or something.

Part 7 - COMPLETE!!

2010-08-27T03:46:00.000-04:00

I can’t sleep here. It’s really hard. I went to bed after 3am but I woke up at 6am. It’s now almost 10am, because I spent a long while just laying there refusing to fully get up. But now I have and I feel like there’s nothing to do. Our opening convocation doesn’t start until 12:15pm.

Alright… so I finally went and it started with a photo of all of the international students together. Then we went to the auditorium where they introduced all of us, and the teachers and others who were there, and then we went to this party thing. Really it was just a… mixer? Free food to lure the Japanese college students in and everyone had name tags so we could meet each other. But here we actually had to go on stage and introduce ourselves in front of everyone. I was standing by a guy named Daisuke when we realized, and he said I had to introduce myself in Japanese and he told me the word to end with. So I started with “nice to meet you” in Japanese (hajimemashte, but that’s misspelled), said my name in Japanese, then switched to English to say where I’m from and how old I am, then went back to Japanese to say “please take care of me”, which is what Daisuke taught me to end with. I’d never been sure of it before. Yuroshiku, onegaishimasu. I spelled that wrong, sorry.

So after that we went to get our phones but realized that they still didn’t have the cards we needed yet so we have to wait another day. We got our computers set up with internet instead, and then went to submit our t-shirt design to the shop. It is AMAZING and looks totally official. I’m totally wearing it on the plane back. I ordered an XS and all the guys got smalls, and the shop owners looked completely baffled by those choices. I think they were calling us fat. But we held them up and they all seemed to work fine. They were also supposedly American sizes.

Then we went back to the gyudon place, which is the beef on rice with onions that’s so good. The high schoolers from the ramen shop were there! The ones that gave me the free juice. They walked in, did a double take, and then enthusiastically waved at us before sitting down.

We left and for a while we were in the projector room of the building, which only has one Ethernet port so we have to take turns using it. We ended up using Brian's computer to look up funny youtube videos and stuff. It was me, Brian, Christ, Chris, Jeremy, Linda, Corallie, and a couple more people in and out. The three first listed, including myself, lasted longest.

Classes start tomorrow! We packed up and compared schedules, checked class times, and made lunch and after class meet up plans to finally go get those phones. Then I came up here and spent FOREVER trying to update this website. Finally caught up now and this time is current and not altered in any way. It's really almost 4am, but I don't have class until 10:50am. I'm going to take a quick shower and fall into bed.

Goodnight! Leave me comments.

Part 6 - Almost Caught Up

2010-08-25T23:34:00.005-04:00

So today they told us the rules on computers and stuff. We were divided into groups. About 16 people today, 12 tomorrow, 6 the next day, and 3 the last. So I get my computer registered tomorrow, but we did go visit a computer lab to get our school accounts set up with passwords so I emailed my parents and checked gaiaonline.com and facebook to see if anyone was thinking I’d died or anything. I had emailed home from the Apple Store but I hadn’t done anything else because I had been using a little iPod touch and it was hard. Apparently I also misspelled my dad’s email address on accident. I’m thinking it auto-corrected me and put hugging instead of huggins maybe. I don’t know.

Japanese keyboards are awkward to use. The space and back keys are really tiny so I kept missing and hitting keys that made me start typing in Japanese characters instead. So I frequently had to go back and correct it and switch it back again.

After that, we went to the cheaper cafeteria on campus for the first time. It was finally open, sort of. We went at 11am and it opened at 11:30 so we sat down and waited, then went through and placed and order. I don’t know what I got. It was like… pickled cabbage with pork or something, and… something green. It was good though. I got a bowl of rice too, but it was plain so I dumped it on my other stuff and ate it all together. Someday I’ll go back around campus taking pictures of everything. I forgot today. So the following were taken by someone else.

(cafeteria and fancier cafeteria food displays)

After lunch was a campus tour around the library and gym specifically. We also went into the chapel and an auditorium. This is a Christian school, apparently, so that’s why there’s a chapel here. It all looks really cool, and today there were suddenly a ton of Japanese students back. Maybe their summer break is starting to end? They start classes a week or two after we do, and we start Friday.

(inside chapel and inside gym)

Um, Christian and a few others went to register their laptops ‘cause they’re in today’s group, and once they get back we’re going to look at phones and hopefully get one. The prepaid’s are 3000 yen for the phone, with the cheapest calling card also for 3000 yen. Then you can get unlimited texting (though to them it’s mailing, because they are actually just sending emails with their phones) for 300 yen. So a total of 6300 yen for a phone, which is about $63. The 300 ($3) is monthly and you just buy the phone cards as needed. We all figured we’d be mailing way more than calling so that’s why we’re getting the unlimited amount. If we discover we’re not really using it, we may cancel, but I really think we will. Anyway, a phone will also serve as a good clock. I’m using my iPod right now.

I’m just chilling in my room right now, cooling off and waiting for them to return with their working laptops to make me jealous. The air blows right on me so it gets cold pretty quickly after the initial cooling down. It actually cools off really quickly too, so we’re supposed to keep our AC off while we’re out of the room and it’s not really that big of a deal to follow that rule. We also can’t walk on the carpet with our shoes on, and that’s a little harder to adjust to. I need slip on shoes. We can’t enter the gym without shoes either.

Oh, we haven’t seen Brian all day and we’re kind of worried. Apparently he lost his key last night so he slept in Andres room. He slipped out early this morning and no one’s seen him since. We think he’s scouring the sands of the beach for his key. It’s $250 if we lose it because they have to replace the entire lock. I keep mine attached to me or my bag via a carabineer clip thing I took off my keyring at home.

It’s soooo humid here. We’re dying every day. The information packets we get are just used as fans while we’re walking around. The campus tour was brutal. But I’m so glad I’m here. The campus is awesome, the students are awkwardly nice, I’m getting to know people from all over the world, and everyone’s getting along super great.

Classes start Friday too and I’m ridiculously excited to start attending. I really want to learn Japanese most of all so I can have less awkward conversations with people and order food a bit less cluelessly. I’m really dependent right now.

Okay well, they finally came back and we went and tried to get phones but they wouldn’t let us without our alien registration confirmation. So we walked there for no reason. We returned, then went back out again for something… I’ve already forgotten what we did. No wait, I remember. It was volleyball.

Hung out until dinner time, picked up food at Sunny’s, and ate in the dorm kitchen.
It was Alecs’ birthday so everyone was going to the beach, and we’d decided not to go, but got pulled in anyway and headed off. It was pretty fun. We did that thing again where we chat up the locals and pictures end up taking place all around. But Alex left his bag up by the shelter instead of on the sand with us, and someone stole it… it had his passport, wallet, and room key in it. We filed a police report, but none of us really knew what to do. Brian also lost his room key so he’s just keeping his door open every day. I can’t even imagine. Um, after that we hung out in Christian’s room for a bit, watching some youtube videos. Jeremy showed us some from England and we showed him Double Rainbow, while Simon showed us a video of a guy jumping into a lake only to find it’d frozen over. Bed around 3am.

Part 5 - Feet Have Gone Numb

2010-08-24T23:24:00.003-04:00

Day two of orientation. Woke up and went to take the placement test. Those who had no experience were divided a bit from the others and got a different packet. It was a set of questions that basically had us rank different methods of learning. The beginning Japanese teacher was the one who constructed the test, so we’ll see her again on our first day of class, on Monday.

I just realized that it’s only Tuesday. I feel like I’ve been here forever already.

For lunch we went back to Sunnys, which is the grocery store nearby where we get everything food related. Then we had to meet back and we went to the Sawara ward office for our alien registration cards, which we will get in about three weeks. We need them in order to make our cell phone contracts, but since I’m getting a prepaid I shouldn’t need a contract, so we’re going to try and get ours tomorrow. But for the alien registration you need two passport sized photos, so don’t forget to bring them with you or you’ll have to take extras here. Others did theirs in a roadside photobooth for 700 yen, about $7.

After orientation stuff ended we spent forever looking for a ramen place, until a man finally led us there. GS Ramen. It’s pretty cheap, except I can’t eat a full thing of ramen. I’ve never come close yet and I end up wasting so much. I had Christian eat some of mine to make it look a little more finished. But while we were there, there were some guys sitting at the table beside us, and in front of me, so I made eye contact with one by accident, smiled, and got a smile back. And I looked at another a little while later and waved, and he nodded. Then I heard them talking and I hear “kawaii”, which means cute, and a minute later they walked up and set down a carton of juice on our table and said to mix it with our water. They let us keep it, so it’s in my fridge right now. So… me being a friendly foreigner got us free juice. They said they go to Seinan also, but in the high school department. I’m in the university, but maybe I’ll see them around. It’s a little hard to tell people apart though, since we’re new and so massively outnumbered. But, on the way out the owner of the place also called me cute as I was paying.

Anyway, Alecs' (from Hawaii/Colorado) birthday is tomorrow, so we went to the beach. Natsumi, one of our advisers, had made him a cheese cake so we tried that, some people drank a bit, and most people went back. We stayed and talked with a group of girls who were nearby. One of them, Abe Hanako goes to Seinan too, and she said to say hello if we saw her there. She’s a business student and knows a bit of English. She helped me talk to one of the girls who was trying to talk to me, acting as a translator a little. But I can recognize words like, if someone says “____doko___?” I know they’re asking where I’m from because “doko” means “where”. And I know “mina-san” is “everyone”, so when they ask about mina-san they’re asking if we’re all from America, or going to Seinan, or something like that.

Eventually they left, and I left, and I went to bed to find everyone again in the morning.

Part 4 - Are we Dead Yet?

2010-08-23T23:19:00.000-04:00

Okay, so today was the first day of orientation. We met up and went over rules, who our advisers are, when we can have people over, and all of that. The lunch break was long and we kept meeting, leaving, then meeting again so it took forever for us to get a chance to wander off and do stuff again. But we did go over fire drills and used fire extinguishers to make sure we knew how. We shot them toward construction cones, only they were green.

After that, we went to the beach again because it was well into the 100s, apparently. Started up a game of beach volley ball, finally branching out of the hit it back and forth game on the water. A lot more people came too. Linda, Corallie, Simon, and Brice all came. They’re the French students. Robin, Brian, Mitch, Abdul, Christian, and Cayleen came. Megan from Canada came, as well as Edwina from England. Then while we were there, Aki showed up. He’s one of our advisors. Jeremy appeared, another from England, with Alex from Hawaii and Andrey from Russia. They didn’t swim, but they joined in when we moved to the beach for a real game.

We got our picture with four random Japanese girls who were there too. We did the same thing at night when we went back to the beach again just to walk around. The first time, Yuuichiro approached us, so this time we kind of approached others. Two groups were burying a friend in the sand, one because he’d lost rock paper scissors. We took pictures. Then we ran into another larger group and merged a little before we decided to head back to the dorm.

BUT, between beach trips we (me, Tess, Abdul, Christian, Mitch, Brian, and Robin) went out to karaoke. It was crazy. You go upstairs and find your room, and the hall was so cool but the room was like a sauna. All of Japan is like a sauna. We were dying, but it was really fun. They had Lady Gaga and Muse and even Justin Beiber.

I also finally tried out Mos Burger. It’s this burger place that puts a ton of weird sauces on their burgers. Mine was like… I don’t know, but it was brown and lumpy and had onions in it. There was also a white sauce and it was really messy. I should’ve taken a picture, but I’ll probably go back someday. Though it was a little pricey.

Part 3 - It Never Ends

2010-08-22T23:48:00.000-04:00

So, today was really busy. I don’t think I’ve ever walked so much. Ever.

As soon as I came down I walked out of the elevator and saw everyone standing around waiting and ready to leave. So I ran back up for my camera and money and then we followed Saki off to a little restaurant where I had… a mystery. It had noodles, bean sprouts or something, cabbage, a pink flower thing, a spongy yellow thing… I tried it all and most was really good.

So then we parted ways. Half of the group went to a café, half went with Saki to shop. I got a 100 yen shower basket, which is about $1. I also got a little handle towel, sunscreen, and a beach towel. It’s kind of dumb to bring a swimsuit and not a towel. I realized this yesterday when we went to the beach and I had nothing to dry off with. So, now I do. It has Chip and Dale on it. Um… that’s all I bought today. I tried to keep myself limited.

Next we went back to the dorm, changed, and met up again for the beach. The water’s really warm, but we had a ball and we did the whole “try to keep it in the air” thing. A group of three Japanese joined in briefly and then moved on, probably because we were terrible at it. We continued for a while, until Mitchel freaked out about being bitten by something and we all dashed out of the water. I think it was a crab, but he said he felt scale. The only certain thing is that he was bleeding from a tiny cut on his foot. Then we decided to walk toward the baseball dome, and I was wearing sandals in my swimsuit with a towel, and I walked through a mall like that feeling very awkward, but no one said to leave or get dressed or anything so we went on. We walked forever, and I have three blisters on each foot, at least. Four of them required bandages because they began bleeding. My sandals are NOT walking shoes.

Thennn… we met up with Josh, who said he knew of this awesome place to eat. So we washed up and went. It felt like we walked forever, and then he realized that our group was too big to eat. So they went to a like… $8 ramen place and we started to go into the original place, until we realized it was around $7-8 too. So we moved on and found a cheaper little place where we got this bowl of beef, rice, and onions for 350 yen, around $3.50 in US. It was amazing. It kind of reminded me of my mom’s pepper steak. We sat at the bar. Most places seem to have a bar, with some seats on the side. Usually people avoid us, but an older woman sat next to me, and after I retrieved the water pitcher that Brian stole and set it down with the handle pointed toward her, she complimented his and my chopstick abilities. Oh, by the way. You tend to get free water with whatever you order. There are little cups on the tables and a pitcher of water there to serve yourself. Chopsticks are in a box on the table/counter to retrieve too.

After that, we went to Tenjin again, then realized things were closed because it was Sunday and headed right back. But we did walk through a massive underground mall that had a fountain decorated with playing kappa, which are little water sprites.

We decided to get sodas and head to the beach, where we sat in a group on the sand just talking about stuff. Then this Japanese guy just kind of plops down in the middle, declares he’s learning English, and starts chatting with us. It was actually really awesome. A short while later, he invited us to this little on the beach grilling out thing his friends were having, so we joined in and they asked us where we were from and what we were doing here. I got dragged off a little apart because Yuuichiro told me to sit and I was immediately surrounded. But when the guy realized I couldn’t speak Japanese, he switched to choppy but understandable English. They went to a college nearby and I told them that all of us went to Seinan and were students too. A lot of us also seemed to be 21. Random arm wrestling broke out and I got sucked into one round against a little Japanese girl. I won~ xD

Abdul vs. Yuuichiro:

But they took our picture, with all of us, Japanese and English, and then another with just us foreigners, and Yuichiro kept shouting that we were all best friends. They probably wanted to brag that they’d met and interacted with us, I think… We gave them an email address to send pictures they took to, so we’ll see if that really happens. Regardless, it was a ton of fun and the first time we’d really been sucked in by natives. In case I never get the proper picture, here's a smaller group one:

After that, we went to Christian’s room because no one wanted to sleep, and we chatted and played a card game and at M&Ms. But it’s now almost 2am and I have to shower. Orientation starts tomorrow and we have to be ready by 8:50am.

Goodnight!

Part 2 - The first full day

2010-08-21T23:34:00.004-04:00

Saturday morning I found I couldn’t sleep. I don’t have a clock so I can’t fully tell what time it is or set alarms or anything. Supposedly we’re meeting in the lobby at 1pm to go back to the beach. But because of the gross futon stuff I just laid across the top of it and I kept getting cold and waking up. Or hot. So I kept adjusting my AC but now I decided to just get out of bed. I’m leaning more toward the idea of buying sheets and returning this futon. I haven’t had to pay the rental fee for it yet, so I hope/assume it wouldn’t be a problem to return it. I have a really bad headache and sleep deprivation.

Anyway, my computer says it’s almost 8:30pm, so that would mean it’s about… 9:30am here. The sun’s been up for a while and it feels way later. My head’s pounding though, and I can hear a large group in the distance outside shouting things in union. I looked out but didn’t see them.

Oh, I’ll talk a little about the room while I wait. So I walked in initially and it was an oven. That’s partially why I went back out with Eri and Naoko so quickly. It’s cooled off now. I have a remote control for the AC to turn it up and down. It’s in Celsius so it’s a guesswork game. Anyway, you walk in and there’s a little area with a tile floor. You take your shoes off and switch to a carpet. On the left is the toilet. On the right is the fridge. Then take another step and right is the large closet, left is a little indention into the wall with a sink. Then past that, you leave the little hallway and enter the larger main room, where the bed and desk are. There’s also a little balcony outside my window that I haven’t gone out on yet ‘cause it’s so hot. My room’s temperature is quite nice at the moment. But, when I first came in we turned the air on really high and I opened all the closet doors and everything because it was even hotter in them than the room itself. The hallway outside the room is really hot as well.

Let’s see… I have this form of dates to remember. It’s currently August 21st here. 8:50am on the 23rd is orientation. Then august 26th at 11:50 is an opening convocation. I have to lightly dress up and “light meals will be served”. I need to buy a clock or watch that I can set an alarm with. Or recruit a neighbor to wake me when she wakes. Linda’s right next door. I can’t get a cell phone for three weeks, because I have an Alien Registration card to get, which is required when you get a phone. Well, it actually says it's needed for when you make a contract and I just want to do prepaid, but I guess I’ll wait. I have to go to a ward office to get my registration card. I apparently have to bring 2 pictures of myself for it. I brought my extra photos from the visa stuff, but apparently these images are bigger and waist up, so they’re useless..? We'll see.

Most of our advisers seem to be twenty or twenty one also. I just looked over the papers I was given more fully and there’s a list of them all with their pictures and names and a little about them. Speaking of pictures… I will now take some of the room.

Oh, and it says the cafeteria opens at 9am and that it’s near the gym… but I don’t know where those are. I vaguely know how to get to the main campus. It’s down the street and down a turn. Apparently, lost room keys cost $250 to replace, so I’m never letting mine out of my sight.

I’m giving details like this in case someone who’s reading decides they want to come here. They’ll already know little things, and could have pictures ready like the ones I don’t and stuff like that. Trying out my plug converters now. They don’t have a power converter. They just change 3 pronged plugs to 2 because they only have 2 prongs here. Cross your fingers that my laptop doesn’t blow up… OKAY. It didn’t blow so I think we’re good. Oh, and I came kind of expecting wireless everywhere. It says there’s one available but I can’t connect, and we have to use wired net in the dorm, so I have to go buy a cable.

I keep hearing people walk by and I’m wondering if I should open my door up as an invitation to bug me. I was so excited last night when we all went out for ramen together. I was so worried about how to meet people or being the only one here or something. So when the tons more came piling in after that, it was even better.

I think I’m starting to starve again so I’m going to eat and drink more water because I felt super dried out after the flights and it hasn’t passed. I need waaay more sleep than I just got too, but we’ll see. Maybe I’ll do better with some real sheets. I’ll see what I can find. Andrey needs sheets too, so maybe I can go with him.

----

Saturday night entry:

Today I bought a lot of stuff, but I hope it was necessary stuff. First, I got bedsheets. A set with a lower sheet, top sheet, and pillow case. Then, I had to buy a pillow to put in that case. I got conditioner because I forgot to bring some and my hair is crazy in this ridiculous humidity, and I also got an alarm clock. I had planned on waiting until I got my cell phone and using that as an alarm. My US cell phone won’t even display the time because it says it’s searching for service. My laptop is set to US time, and I just set my iPod touch to Tokyo time. It's got a pretty quiet alarm though. We aren’t getting cell phones until at least September 1st because they require an alien registration card that we aren’t getting until then, and I have to make myself wake up for orientation on August 23rd. So… I bought an alarm clock. One of the cheapest there. I admit my iPod probably would work just fine, but part of me just wanted a weird little clock with Japanese and military time. It also shows the temperature. Just have to figure out how to work it. Saki helped me pick it out and said she’d help me set it up too.

While out shopping, we stopped at a KFC. It was really good, but kind of expensive and you got a small amount of food. Though, I did get a free glass of water because what I ordered didn’t come with a drink. They didn’t ask, and just set it on my tray. I had super crispy chicken tenders and fries and it was all tasty, but we all were craving Japanese food, since we were in Japan. We also stopped at a very large mall where people bought other small things before going to the main store, Don Quixote. I am pretty certain it’s written in kanji or whatever on the storefront, but it’s the name of a store that has everything. I got each item mentioned above from it. It’s overwhelming, it’s so bright and plastered in flashing lights, talking ad screens, and brightly colored signs.

On a side note, I plugged in my laptop. Its plugged in now, actually, and the power box thing in the cord is making little sparking/rattling noises and it’s freaking me out. It did it yesterday so I quickly unplugged it. One girl told me hers did that and shorted out. But then Chris said our voltage isn’t far enough off for it to be a problem, and I'd been told that too. So he came up to my room briefly to check the something numbers of my power cord and they are between what numbers the Japanese power/voltage/whatever can handle. So I plugged it in a short while ago and it’s making that weird noise every now and then, but it is working. So I think I may keep it unplugged while I’m gone or at night, but plugged in when I’m using my laptop.

The beach trip:

After that, we all went back to the dorm, changed, met up in the lobby, and went to the beach. All meaning, myself, Tess, Abdul, Josh, Chris, Christian, Brian, Hinako, Yuki, Mitchell, Jeff, and… I think that may be it. First, we swam in the no swimming part because we’re dumb and no one told us. It took forever for a security guard to come up and tell us to move, though he was really kind about it and not curt at all. We had been wondering all along why no one else was swimming, or why those jet skis were so close… We were in their area of water.

So we circled around instead and found a very populated beach, with tents and food and lots of people. I think one of the tents had people performing live music and the people running the beach were in full kimono and stuff. So, we swam, and picked up the game of “pass the volley ball around and see how many hits we can get in before it hits the water”, and also picked up the male French student, whose name I learned is Brice. Pronounced Breece. He joined in on our game, as well as a couple Japanese girls from the school who entered the water in full clothing.

We stayed out there for a good couple hours or so. My face is red (though it already was just from walking around), and my chest got burnt a bit too. Nobody had sunscreen.

Well, after that we still weren’t done so we got changed and showered and then headed off to Tenjin:

We had to hop on the subway. It’s pretty straight forward, actually. Everything’s translated into English in small text beside the characters, and there’s a light display that flashes destinations in Japanese and then in English, and then a voice speaks out in the same way. In order to get your ticket, you figure out the cost for the place you need to go, put the money in a machine, and it pops out a ticket. You take that, scan it at the little gate things, and it pops back out. Keep it with you. Sorry if this is obvious stuff, but I’d never been on a subway.

Basically, the whole time was spent walking. Forever. I’m dead. About the same people from the beach went, give or take a few. We had me, Tess, Abdul, Justin, Brian, Christian, Chris, Mitchell, Jeff.

We stopped at a little Japanese shop where I had udon noodles/soup for 150 yen, which is roughly $1.50 so I was pretty pleased. It was the perfect amount too. Right when I started feeling too full, I ran out of noodles to eat. It was cool too because you go in the front door (they all have long vertical buttons on them to push to make them open, by the way) and in front of you is this machine listing all of the food options and their price. It’s in Japanese, but some of them had pictures. The Udon did. Otherwise, some of the more advanced speakers read it off to us, or at least what they could decipher. Anyway, you placed money into the machine, pressed the icon of what you wanted, and it spit out change and a ticket. You give that ticket to the waitress, and they make your food. There were also large pitchers of tea out, and little cups, which you had to serve to yourself. It was complimentary and on every table.

We also stopped at a video arcade. I think it might’ve been called Taito Games. It was huge, with 5 stories of games, each story having a different theme. They had rock band, DDR, shooting games, racing games, dart throwing, a casino, claw machines, and even a whole floor dedicated to photobooths. The boys were afraid to enter it, because suddenly all of the stairway pictures had turned super girly. So they sent me up to investigate, since me and Tess were the only girls there and she was somewhere else. So I ventured up, and found it was just all sorts of different themed photobooths. There were boys up there, mostly because they were couples getting pictures, so some of the guys came up to see, and I also found Mountain Dew in the vending machine. I had to buy it, since it was the first one I’d seen. It tasted great too. Apparently Japanese drinks don’t use corn syrup and that’s the major difference from America’s soda. But, Mitchell saw me drinking it and raced off to get one too. We’re going back, partially for the Dew and partially because Christian really wanted to play DDR and didn’t get a chance too. I need my camera at all times.

THOSE JAPANESE ARE INSANE AT THEIR VIDEO GAMES. This guy’s fingers were a blur of motion in one of those games like rock band where you hit the key at the right moment. Only, he had buttons and there were 9 of them moving ridiculously fast. Another guy was playing some sort of ultimate drummer game like rock band, but it had a drum set with five or so parts and two peddles. There was also a game played the same way as Elite Beat Agents, but instead of tapping the screen like on the DS, they shot the screen with a gun.

Anyway, we left and just started walking. Brian wanted to go to some bar his friends had told him about back home, so we went to find it and discovered there was a 15,000 entrant fee. None of us wanted to pay, I don’t drink, and those who did weren’t in the mood to do so. So we put that off for another day and continued walking. We were definitely in the shady part of town for a while. Escort clubs, bars, a poster of a topless girl outside a doorway… But we were in this large pack of ten, so people avoided us. I wouldn’t recommend going out exploring alone.

We actually ran into another group of Americans earlier who were there on vacation. We stopped and talked a little because it was the first time we’d seen foreigners who weren’t attending our school.

Then we parted ways. We found an Apple store and went in, and it took me a second to realize what everyone was doing huddled around the iPod touches. They had wireless and they were emailing home. So I quickly logged on to do the same, and I sent my parents an email that I hope they’ve read. It should’ve gotten there around… 9am? I don’t remember what time it was we sent it. But, I did it just in case something happened and Eri hadn’t sent them a message telling them I made it. I mentioned also that I’d been to the beach, we were in Tenjin, and that internet should be around august 26th or so.

I really can’t think of or remember what else we spent our time doing. It was a ton of roaming, stopping, debating over if we really wanted to find a cheaper bar or just go home, and eventually going home won out and we headed off. We got back to the subway and piled on, making people nervous with the presence of our large, foreign group. I think the subway stops running at twelve, so that’s pretty important. We got there right at 11pm.

A word of advice: When traveling with a large group, always make sure everyone’s accounted for. At least twice we left someone behind, realized it, and raced back to find them again. When you’re separating from the group, tell at least two people before you go. That way if one of them wanders off too, you have another who can tell people where you’ve gone and to wait for you to get back. For instance, I slipped off to the bathroom briefly, in the very busy and very large arcade building, and told Christian specifically not to let anyone leave without me. We did end up losing one person there. We also left two people in the little place where we stopped and I had udon. One person was left in both places.

Anyway, got back to the dorm and a couple more people had arrived. I met Aki, who knew Brent and Teresa, two people who go to UNCG with me and studied at Seinan Gakuin last year. We spoke in our awkward broken English to Japanese that I’m so often found doing. Especially with Yuki, I have to rephrase to make sure she understands, but she’s fun and it’s fun. I was also formally introduced to Josh, who is from Texas, and Jeremy, who is from England and therefore has my most favorite accent ever. I had seen them before, but we finally exchanged names and shook hands and talked a little.

It is now 30 past midnight and I’m very tired. I couldn’t sleep last night because of the dirty futon freaking me out. I laid on top of the clean side and had my sweatshirt over my legs. It didn’t really work out. But now I have sheets and the futon under it as padding on the mattress. Since I already rented it for the first month and can’t turn it in yet, I figured I’d use it a little while longer instead of paying for nothing.

I’ll figure out how to set my alarm clock tomorrow. Oyasuminasai~

First update of many

2010-08-20T23:38:00.001-04:00

I wrote a ton of stuff during the 6 days I didn't have internet. I'd get on in my spare time and start writing. So I'm going to divide it into posts by day by setting the time and date myself. Here goes~!

Made it. The following is a long tale of what happened on the flights.

Soo, got to RDU at 4 something am, checked my bags, and was told they’d be sent directly to Fukuoka. That would supposedly dispel my previous worries about having to find them in in Tokyo just to recheck them again. Well, had to part ways with mom and dad right after and head off through security. Made it, and followed a woman who I’d spoken to during to our gates, since she was headed to gate 22 and I needed gate 23. Apparently she’s a UNCG grad student in the nursing program. Well, we parted ways too ‘cause her flight left earlier, and I waited on mine for a good… two hours, maybe? Loaded up. Stuffed oversized bookbag at my feet. Rode off into slowly rising sunset at 6:20am.

Arrived in Dallas about three hours later or so. First began following signs for my terminal, ended up getting on their sky shuttle thing. It took me to the right terminal after several stops elsewhere. A currency exchange was right across from the gate. So I did that and got myself 22,000 yen for my first week here. I think we go to a bank as part of orientation, so sometime between August 23-25 I’ll learn how to withdraw money here. Then I called home and called Deborah and waited around for an hour or two once more before they finally began loading us up. This was the thirteen hour flight. I got on the plane and sat down, and a few minutes later a Japanese stewardess came up and asked if I wouldn’t mind moving ahead just one row/seat. So I did, and I lost my window seat that I’d had reserved since June.

At first I was a little upset. But as the old Japanese man beside me said, we had a lot of leg room, and with no seats in front of ours, whenever I had to get up, I could do so easily without walking over people to get out. They fed us a lot, it felt like. They came by the first time with drinks and a little pack of pretzels and I ate mine slowly so it filled me up. Ten minutes later, they came by with our first lunch or dinner or whatever. Beef and mashed potatoes or chicken and curry rice. I got the chicken, but I couldn’t eat it all. It came with sushi, a roll, and more. I felt bad leaving so much, because the man beside me ate every speck of his meal. Then it was back to shifting around and trying to get comfortable. We had a little TV screen and tray that popped out of our chairs, but I never ended up watching any movies on the TV. I just watched the flight path information, which said how much time we had left until arrival. By the time we reached 6 hours remaining, I thought I was going to die. My legs were jello and I kept getting up to move around but it wasn’t really helpful and it was terrible being stuck there.

At another point they brought out another meal. Or… something. I think next was a ham and cheese sandwich. They’d often come by offering drinks and stuff too. Um, I began talking to the Japanese man beside me after a while. He apparently had been living in Alabama for 18 years, teaching physics there, but is now retired. He’s still heavily accented though, and was returning home to Tokyo for a couple months to, I think he said, prepare for a return home. Let’s see what else… I really can’t sleep on planes, I found. I’d shift around trying to get comfortable, but my back was sore and aching and soon my shoulders were as well. My skin is bruised from carrying around that bookbag so stuffed with stuff. Um, they brought us another meal about an hour or two from landing. Pizza or chicken and rice. I got pizza, and the middle was not that cooked so I ate the crust around it and left the middle sitting there. But this came with fruit, cantaloupe and strawberries, and those were the best things I’d ever tasted.

Oh, you know how RDU said my bags would go straight to Fukuoka? Nope. During takeoff, a stewardess asked me if I was alright, ‘cause I guess I was nervously staring out the window. I ended up asking her about what I do about getting my next boarding pass. I was switching from American to Japan Airlines, so I didn’t have my JAL boarding pass yet. I also asked if she thought my baggage would really go all the way through, because I was given customs forms to fill out and bring through with me. Anyway, she said she’d find out, and with a few hours to go, she came back to find me and said no, my bags did NOT go all the way to Fukuoka. They stopped in Tokyo. So that meant I had to get them, go through customs, find a boarding pass, find the terminal, and get on my next and last flight. Well, maybe I ooze a helpless aura or something, but the Japanese man decided he was going to lead me through the airport. So when we arrived (at 12:30 instead of 1:05, I might add), he took me through the airport. There’re two buildings to terminal 2 of Narita, the satellite building and the one with everything else. We were in the satellite building, so there’s a shuttle that goes between the two and nowhere else. We rode it to the main, he took me to the immigration line, and waited for what felt like forever for me to get through. The line was long, but when I got up I just handed them one of the two forms I’d filled out on the plane. Then I had to place my pointer fingers on a scanner and it took a picture of me too. Then he walked me down to find my bags, which came out as two of the last bags through, and then he walked me down through customs (all I did was give them the other form from the plane, saying I didn’t have anything dangerous and they didn’t even check. I just went on), and then to the baggage check area for Japan Airlines (JAL) which seemed really far away. He kept pointing things out to me, like the information desks we’d pass, so that I could do it alone on the way back. And once I’d checked my bags, I turned to thank him again, and he was mysteriously gone… So I went to find terminal B myself and arrived with little trouble and still an hour left. I just sat there, as I did for every gate. Paranoia kept me from wandering off to buy a drink or anything. Once I found the gate, that’s where I’d stay until they loaded us up. Oh, after getting my boarding pass or one of those things, I had to go back through security. They had the liquids in a bag thing and I had to pull out my laptop, but they didn’t make me pull off any shoes. Once again, I passed through the metal detector with no trouble.

For this plane, they had us go through and check our boarding passes, and then load up on a shuttle that took us out onto the runway. We unloaded from the bus and climbed up a stair ramp to board the plane. I took some pictures of it ‘cause I thought it was neat. All my other planes just had us go through the tunnel to board. Oh! By the way, when I unloaded from the Dallas to Tokyo plane, it was like stepping into an oven. It was so hot in that little tunnel, and again when we boarded the bus and lined up to get onto the plane. But the plane itself wasn’t too bad, and unlike the others, it had music playing overhead. Apparently you could plug in headphones somewhere and pick your own music selection. I think it changed often too, because there was a paper that said Today’s Music Section on it. I didn’t check because I was dead and not intending to do it. The flight was only about two hours or less.

So we headed off. I had another window seat to stare out of, getting my first real glimpses of Japan. Saw a huge baseball field and lots of stuff. Took a couple pictures once I reminded myself I have a camera. The flight was spent looking like I was asleep while wishing I really was. But the thing I noticed was, I was the only student aged person on the flight. There was no one else going to Seinan Gakuin on it. So I unloaded again at 4:45pm Fukuoka time (13 hours added to EST time) and went to get my bags, then slowly headed out into the lobby area, looking around for someone with a sign with my name like the email said.

Instead I hear an “asheri?” out of the corner of my ear and turn to see two girls staring between me and a piece of paper. They had a sheet with all the foreign student’s faces on it. So I went over and she said her name was Eri and she had studied at UNCG. And the other was Naoko. I have both of their email addresses for whenever I get email (should be August 25th, and yes I am typing this up beforehand. I don’t have anything else to do really). So they picked me up and helped me buy a subway ticket. We loaded up and then switched to a taxi, and finally arrived at the school. An RA was there, Shuhei, and he gave me the secret code needed to open the doors to the dorm. I dropped my stuff in the room and… there were only two other people there, two French girls who had both just showered. So instead of bother them to start off, I went with Eri and Naoko to the nearby grocery store, Sunny’s, and got some noodles and a couple drinks because I had no idea what I was doing for dinner. We returned, they left because they’re not I-House residents, but actual Seinan students. Oh! Since I don’t have email for so long, I asked Eri to email my mom. xD She agreed, so hopefully mom got an email last night saying I’d been picked up successfully and was here and safe.

The first night:

After that, the two French girls, Corallie and Linda were in the lobby on our floor, so I dropped my food in my room and talked with them a bit. Then we ran into Momoko who said they were all going out for ramen. So we joined them, and ended up with a group of ten people streaming into this little ramen stand with these business men at the bar all staring at us. To sit, there was either the bar stools or little tables with the straw mats. We sat at the tables and ordered ramen and talked a ton. At my table was Corallie, Christian, and Yuki. Christian kept acting as a translator between us and Yuki because her English wasn’t super great, but later when I talked one on one with her, I was able to get my words across pretty well. She knows of Uchuu Sentai NOIZ and wants to see the picture I have of myself with them. xD

Let’s see… we went back to the dorm after that, and went up to our rooms to put a couple things away and were supposed to meet in ten in the lobby so we could go to the beach. I don’t have a watch or anything so I went right back down really quickly… and everyone had vanished. So I was standing there awkwardly waiting, and around 10 or so a ton of people suddenly came pouring in. They’d all gotten in on a later flight, all ending up together. I jokingly complained about how lonely I was being the only one on mine and exchanged names with too many people to remember. We went for a walk around back to Sunny’s grocery to show them, and I bought a giant bottle of water and everyone followed suit with their own purchases. This bottle is massive. And it was 97 yen. About a dollar. There were tiny little normal bottles for 97 yen. So I couldn’t pass up the huge one. There was also a pack of six of the giants for 499 yen and me and two guys had each gotten one. We discussed all chipping in a little and splitting the pack, but ended up just getting one each for now.

Because of their size and weight, we dropped those off at the dorm, and went to the beach. Though, it was more like standing on a wide sidewalk/strip of concrete at the edge of the sand, under an overhang with benches. I learned a ton of names, and have probably totally switched all the faces they belong to. There were a lot of people there… another Eri, Kisha, Jennifer, Andrey the Russian (from Cyprus), Linda and Corallie and another guy, the French, Jeff and Christian the New Yorkers, and uh… other people. One guy’s from Colorado. I think that was Robin? I’ll get it down eventually.

UM. It was super hot. It’s like a sauna. We were all sweaty and gross and my picture was taken and I know I looked terrible. I would have a copy, but I don't remember who took the picture. But later we walked back to campus, missing the turn a couple times before finally making it back. Then we basically all went to bed because it was 11 and we were all jetlagged still.

Not super happy about the rented futon sheets thing. First off, I don’t even know how to properly apply it. Second, there’s bloodstains on one part and the pillow is a tiny thing stuffed with hard little beads or something. I can’t sleep on that Dx May end up asking if I can return for a refund and by my own. I am grossed out, but I have to sleep. I haven’t in… a very long time.

HOURS LEFT

2010-08-19T02:39:00.001-04:00

DAZJJJJJJJJJJJJJDANDKLANFHWAGNDUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSHHSDNDAO[LM;DADHAIKLFD NA

Now that I've done that.. I just wanna do it again. 8D

SO. It's 2:40am about. Getting my parents up at 3:30am (I don't sleep lolooolollol). Heading to the airport at/by 4am. Plane leaves at.. 6:20am? Dad says you need to arrive two hours early for international flights. I dunno if that's true, but at least it'll prepare me for the hours of sitting I'll have to do between every other flight I'm going on.

Withdrew some money to last me through my first week. Gonna exchange it into yen hopefully at RDU. If not, gonna try to do it in Dallas. Then it's off to Tokyo and then finally to Fukuoka, where some people should be waiting for me with a sign and my name.

UUUGHHHHGHGGHHHHH /showofmaturity

First flight ever, you guys. EVER. I'm not even as nervous as I seem right now, but there is some lingering anxiety. Dad plotted out entry and exit points for each of my flights, and though I know that's subject to change, it makes me feel better. I'm all packed up. Sitting surrounded by two bags and a bookbag right now.

Tokyo's stay might be a bit of a rush. one hour and fourty minutes to unload, find my bags, go through customs, and find my next and last plane. We'll see how that goes...

I dunno what else to saaaaay Dx
Just that I hope I forgot nothing and my bag won't be too heavy. I have no idea 'cause we have no way to weigh them in my house. One's more full than the other. And heavier.

ANYWAY. Um. I miss all you guys at school who keep inviting me to things I can't come to. ; u; Should have internet up and available on August 25th, so look for me then!

Wish me a safe first trip!

One Week

2010-08-12T03:57:00.003-04:00

So, almost exactly one week from this very moment, I will be scrambling in a panic and getting ready to go. Yes, my plane leaves at 6:05am. Dad says I should get to the airport around 5am. It's currently nearly 4am (for those in a different time zone). I feel like I'm making this post out of an obligation to do some kind of count down. I mean, I've been mentally doing my own, but that's not the same, right? Right.

Update time~~

Bought a power converter thing so that I can plug my laptop in over there and not be stuck with it dying on me. Apparently they only have two pronged wall plugs, not three.
Got a travel kit of contact solution to take on the plane, as well as a larger bottle to put in my checked bag.
Bought some pants so I don't have to worry about buying expensive overseas jeans.
Dad printed out lots of travel tips and the plane layouts of the flights I'll be on. He also looked into the same route I'm taking that flew today, and found that one of the legs of the trip has wireless net on the plane. So I can email my mom and tell her I at least made it part way. She's panicking.
Still deciding if I'll be taking my phone with me even though it won't work over there. Need to be able to call once I land in Dallas to, again, calm my mom's fears. I've seriously never been on a plane.
Visited my grandpa today to say goodbye. Won't see him again until Christmas. Also ate at Drydocks, which I love and will miss, but it's kind of a rare treat anyway.
My grandparents are showing up Friday and leaving Saturday, also for the purpose of seeing me before I disappear around the world. Either an aunt is coming with them to show me stuff she got from her own visit to Japan, or she's just sending stuff with them for me to cluelessly stare at without explanation.
My aunt's trying to get up with us for a lunch, probably at Kanki, but it's hard to meet up around her.. busy work schedule. Probably happening Sunday.
Friday is also a going away type of party with friends, during which we will watch a Disney movie marathon because we are awesome adults.

...I'm not sure what else to ramble about. 8D
If you have plane tips for me, post 'em up!

Ready to Go

2010-07-26T18:35:00.002-04:00

Alright, so the final things I was waiting on before leaving:

I told my bank I'm going to be in Japan so they don't freeze my debit card.
Dad ordered me a super emergency credit card to use in case my debit card's ever lost.
I got a new laptop that actually runs properly so it won't break down while I'm in Japan. They also offer tech support in Japan if something does happen.
My visa arrived today so I'm all stamped and approved to go.

Dad has a big bag in mind to send with me, and I'll bring my backpack as my carry on with my laptop and stuff. Al of my study abroad/school information/maps of Japan are in one convenient folder to keep with me at all times.

I'm going to my doctor tomorrow for a yearly checkup. That's kind of off topic though...

I've had a lot of friends give me plane advice, like moving around, drinking water, and other things. Feel free to offer more! I've still never been on a plane and it's highly doubtful I will get to before leaving. The business trip I was going to go on with my dad? They decided to take the private jet so I can't tag along anymore.

I feel the need to go eat at several places that I'm really going to miss before I go. > >

Breaking it in

2010-07-15T01:58:00.000-04:00

OH HEY~

So, this is my Japan blog. Here I will be updating with random stuff that I do while in Japan and hopefully be throwing up all of these awesome pictures I expect to take every day of everything I see until people get fed up and stop talking to me. |D

So, if you want to keep up with me while I'm gone in random weird time zones, add or watch or subscribe or whatever you do on this website while I figure out how to use it.

I'm leaving August 19th, for those keeping up with it/who care. That means I'll arrive in Japan August 20th, which is the first possible dorm move in day. Then orientation starts up on the 23rd.

I was told that I may not have internet up to a week after arriving. They put us in groups to have our computers configured with their wireless or something, and the groups aren't based on what order we arrive. With my luck I'll end up in the last one, so we'll see what happens.

ilu gais
~Spazzie