It's midterms so I was able to catch up...wait what?

6/17-6/26

Nothing too exciting has happened, well at least no epic trips. There were fun things of course but it has also been midterm time so I've had to actually focus on my school work a bit more (and not grand adventures meant this was very easy to update). This has really paid off. I got a 100 on my first music test and my Japanese teacher praised me on my speaking test (which might just be her being polite, she never told me the grade). Going to a school that isn't "Work" Forest makes me feel smart again!

Other than school I've got lost looking for a place called the Pink Cow, I saw Indiana Jones (btw the scene where they are testing the atomic bomb was fairly awkward in a Japanese movie theater), and had my first visit back to Espoir. I have no idea what he did but after washing my hair he put something in it, wrapped saran wrap around my head a few times, and had me sit under some machine while something shaped like a donut rotated around my head. I was also given a bottle of something to start using after I shampoo. I'm not really seeing much difference...

I also went to a Digital Youth seminar Pecha Kucha style. Each presenter had 20 slides and each slide was only up for 20sec. This let us get a brief intro to several different topics. Actually being in Japan has allowed me to see presentations by many respected names in Asian Studies. I never actually considered that as a benefit of being here but I'm taking advantage of it and learning as much as I can.


Picture time:

My hair after going to Espoir. My hostmom kinda failed with my camera so this was the best picture I have. It looked good when it was first done but in this picture not only is it blurry but I had already managed to mess it up in the few hours between him playing around with it (it's sort of curly if you can't tell) and going home and taking this picture.

My rental phone with my panda castanet charm. Recently the bottom half of him fell off.


And now, because I don't have more important pictures of some grand event, some Engrish:
"Ribbon Orange: You can satisfy not only your thirst but your heart with this."
It really was very delicious orange juice. This is the engrish of over exaggeration. Some things you can get away with in Japanese but just don't really work in english.

This is the most common type of engrish: understandable just with the wrong word

"It is safe even if ther is a disaster if this T-shirts exisits."
My favorite so far. Engrish of the highest degree: typos, incorrect grammar, and a message that doesn't make sense no matter what language it's in.

Hakone for the win!

6/15-6/16

I went on the school arranged trip to Hakone. The entire area was completely gorgeous mountains. It's definitely high up on my list of "Awesome Things/Places/Events/People/Etc. in Japan" We had a bus with a sweet little tour guide. Laura and I think she had a crush on our student guide. He was translating her Japanese into English for us and she blushed every time he talked to her.

Our first stop was Owakudani. Here we saw (and smelled) sulfur springs. Despite the smell the place was really cool. Local legend said that if you ate one of the kurodamago (black eggs-so named for the black shell they gained from being hardboiled in the sulfur vents) you would live for seven years longer...I had two. They were really delicious, I don't know if that stemmed from my hunger, the prospect of living an extra 14 years, or if they were actually different tasting because of how they were prepared. Owakudani had a whole franchise going around these black eggs: Hello Kitty wearing black egg costumes (I've determined you're not a real Japanese tourist attraction unless you have some sort of specialized Hello Kitty souvenir), egg ice cream (surprisingly delicious), black egg keychains (I bought one because my panda that's on my phone lost the bottom half of his face), etc. Since my watch battery decided to die I also bought myself a new watch. Its analog but instead of regular numbers it has kanji!

Next stop was an open air art museum. Not something I would have thought to do on my own but actually one of the highlights of the trip. There were tons of large art pieces basically strewn about the side of a mountain. Many of them were interactive, including two giant sunny side up eggs whose yolk you could bounce on. Ryan had lost his camera so we stuck together and had lots of fun taking pictures (with my camera) of each other posing with various pieces of art. After that we went to Kintoki Shrine. After a while shrines are pretty similar, but this one was unique in that it wasn't really touristy. Since it was up in the mountains we were the only people there. Gave it a very natural feel-it looked like something straight out of a Miyazaki film (we kept waiting for Totoro to jump out). The feel of the place really made you want to act reverent. Of course that didn't stop us from exploring when we saw a path leading up the mountain. Every few feet along it there were large piles of stone balanced on top of boulders and usually near tablets with kanji on them. The fact that we had no idea what they were for made it all the more exciting.

Everyone was pretty much worn out after that so we were glad to hear we were headed to our ryukan (traditional Japanese inn hotel). It was called Hakone Kogen Hotel. Each room had tatami mat floors, futon to sleep on, and yukata to wear around. We all immediately stripped down, put on our yukata, and went to the onsen before our dinner. This was a little different than the one I had been to before. For one, there was only one bath inside and one outside. Also, considering the number of people in our group (twenty something), there were a lot more naked white chicks than at my first onsen. After everyone had relaxed for a little bit we all got back into our yukatas and went to our traditional Japanese style dinner. There were little pads to sit with your legs folded underneath you (a position that didn't last long for most of us) and many small plates set in front of each seat. I can't even begin to describe all the food (mostly because I don't know what most of it was) but it tasted pretty good. There was also a karaoke machine provided for us in the room. I even got up and sang Hotel California by The Eagles with a few people...and there wasn't even alcohol involved. After that the girls all decided we wanted to see the outdoor onsen, which we took over for the night-not deliberately but I think the Japanese ladies got intimidated with all of us . It was a lot of fun and afterward returning to our rooms we had what pretty much boiled down to a sleepover. When we returned the staff had put out the futons for the four of us in our room. They were all one next to another on the floor just like sleeping bags spread out for a sleepover. We made tea (which took two tries because I put in way too many tea leaves the first time and turned the water a strange dark yellow color) and stayed up until obscene hours of the morning talking.

The next morning was a buffet breakfast and one last trip to the onsen before departing for our two stops of the day. First was Odawara Castle. Very cool, they had even converted the inside into a museum and there were suits of armor from the samurai who had lived there. For some reason in one of the courtyard areas there were monkeys (in a cage) and an elephant (Japan's oldest-also in a cage). Next was Saijo Temple. This one was really cool. We had to climb over 700 steps to get to the top where you could buy your fortune. Even though it was in Japanese we all had our student guide help us translate them-mine wasn't too bad. Unfortunately my camera had died so I don't have very many pictures, which is sad because this place had so many neat things to see. For example, Japan's largest geta (those weird shoes with the two supports-think Mugen from Samurai Champloo) and tons of statues and studying monks.

Overall Hakone was one of my favorite places so far!!!

The fog in the background is from the sulfur vents. It did not smell very good.

One of my kurodamago . It was really good and I get to live for another 14 years because of them ^.~*

Hello Kitty rocking the kurodamago style.

There is no way I can do the Art Museum justice but I want to put up pictures of some of my favorite pieces...and some of the funnier ones of me and Ryan. If you don't know why I like this one you don't really know me. dragon+person flying=what I want to be when I grow up...I don't know what that would be exactly (probably a Dragonrider of Pern ^.^) but I'll figure it out once I find a dragon

One of the first things you see when you walk in are a pair of giants eggs that you can play on.

One of my favorite pieces.

Another one of my favorites and this one I could play in.

Ryan and I having fun on art

You won't believe how bitter I am that only small kids were allowed to crawl inside of the nets. If you look closely you can probably see the Japanese children who were actually allowed to climb around in it.

I took another picture that tried to make the hand look like it was floating in air but it was blurry.

This piece was entitled "Miss Black Power"

The outside of this building was cool enough...

...but the inside was what was really impressive. You could also climb a double helix staircase to the top and look out over everything.

Kintoki Shrine

Our room at the ryukan before the futon were put out.
My roommates and I (me, Laura, Kat, and Liz) wearing our yukata at the hotel.

Japanese food of unknown variety.

photographic evidence that I did karaoke (Ryan, girl-who-happens-to-be-from-NC-but-I-can't-remember-her-name, me, Liz)

Odawara Castle. Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures inside.

Some of the few pictures I managed to get at Saijo Temple.

There were so many beautiful things like this. Plus stopping to take pictures was a good excuse to stop and take a breather as we were climbing hundreds of steps.

This cool looking shrine greeted us after a few hundred steps (only a few hundred more to go)

After passing under this my camera died :(

culture, birthday suits, and childhood fears

6/10/08

Today was a school holiday so I signed up to go on a trip with the Pacific Culture Club. My goal was to get as much Japanese culture in one go with an expert explaining everything so that I'd have more to say about my trip than "I saw some cool things but I don't know what they were". Meeting the group was rather a surprise since only two other people had signed up. So the three of us plus our guide (a Japanese student from the school who could speak english) went to the very cool traditional Japanese style house of these two elderly Japanese ladies. The older was the sensei (teacher) of the younger (she had to be over 60 herself) but they were both still going strong and ready to show the three young foreigners some Japanese culture. Since there were so few of us we got lots of one-on-one attention.

We started with a brief Shinto (the traditional Japanese religion) ceremony and then they performed several pieces on the koto, a stringed instrument. Afterwards they let us play too allowing me to discover that being in Japan had not suddenly given me the musical talent I had always wanted. So even though I kept forgetting whether the higher numbered strings were at the top or the bottom I did eventually manage to play the very simple Sakura song. We also did calligraphy-I got scolded because I kept doing it wrong...still no magical development of artistic talent. Then Liz and I both got to put on yukata (summer kimono) and we all had a tea ceremony together. The tea for the tea ceremony was really bitter and a shade of green I would call "not-quite-radioactive". Sitting in the traditional way made my legs fall asleep but it was hard to sit any other way in the kimono.

After all the artistic type culture we went to an onsen. Andrew, as the only guy in the group, opted out. Myself and the two other girls went to enjoy some quality relaxation time. Onsen, for those of you who don't know, are hot spring baths. The closest we have in America is probably a hot tub at a spa. However, onsen are very different. Most notably, everyone is naked. At first this was embarrassing (especially since Liz and I were the only two white people there-everyone kept looking at us) but it quickly became something that you didn't even notice. It's really hard to recreate the feeling of the place, but if you ever get a chance to go to Japan this absolutely must be on your list of things to do. At this place there was one indoor bath and several different outdoor ones. After undressing and grabbing the tiny towel (if I held it in front of me long ways it more or less covered the essentials) you get to take in with you (but make sure you don't put it in the water!) you first have to rinse yourself off. After getting clean you can then get into the onsen. The water is really hot and you immediately feel yourself relaxing but the really interesting thing about the water at this onsen was that it was brown. It had stuff in it that's good for your skin. One of the baths had rocks at the bottom that felt really good on your feet as you walked over them and another had an electric massager. I'm not quite sure how this worked with the water but if you sat at a certain point you could feel the charge on your back. If you got too close you muscles would start to contract and your hands would twitch. It felt really weird, not bad, just weird. Then when you're all done soaking you can go back inside and bathe. they provided shampoo, conditioner, body soap, etc. We were there for over an hour, just relaxing and talking. I really wish we had something like this in America, it was so indescribably refreshing and really easy way to hang out with friends, the being naked part really does become inconsequential very quickly and even makes it easier to connect...stop being perverted.

Afterwards we ate okonomiyaki. Not as good as the place were we cooked it ourselves (I think I wrote about going to Asakusa to do that) but a lot cheaper.

I'm going to put the pictures at the bottom so hopefully my formatting doesn't get all wonky...and oddly enough there aren't any pictures from the onsen.

6/13-6/14

On Friday YR, Kevin, and I met with some of our Japanese friends from Winston. They made reservations a Japanese style restaurant in Shibuya where each group was given their own little room and you summoned your waiter by phone. The restaurant had a fun, swanky feel with its super low ceiling ( I had to duck at times and poor Kevin he's 6'6", sometimes this country isn't very accommodating to him) and dim lighting. We ate lots of food and drank some. The problem with trying so many new dishes is that I never remember what they're called. I tried Asahi super dry beer which was good and some fruity drink that was better.

Today (Saturday) I was awakened by my first earthquake. There was a 7.0 magnitude quake several hours from where I live so what I felt was about a 3.0. Still, since I'm up on the ninth floor I woke up to the building swaying and everything around me shaking. It wasn't really too scary (though the fact that my hostmom had already left for work was a little off putting because the whole time I kept wondering if it was going to get worse and what the heck I should do if it did) but watching the news this evening and seeing the damage to those who had caught the worst of it was a little nervewracking. I asked my host mom what to do for future reference and we have a meeting place and whatnot setup. She kept reassuring me, probably because I told her natural disasters were one of my biggest childhood fears, and telling me that all the buildings were designed to be earthquake resistant. Bleh, a least the event itself wasn't as traumatizing as I though it would be. Since it woke me up I was a little groggy and not really sure what was going on. I kept thinking "is this it?" Both in the sense of, "it's finally happening" and "this isn't so bad, fun even". Nothing even fell over in our apartment things just shook for a little bit. But still.....
In other news, I had steak for supper! Yay, beef!!!!

Now for some pictures:

Our two teachers playing the koto.

Me, not so skillfully, playing the koto.

Yes, my eyes are closed. No, I wasn't trying to look asian. Cool yukata though.

The back of my cool yukata. This was just the quick way to tie the obi. Our teachers' obi were much more intricate.

Liz and I were the only two girls so we got to wear the two kimonos that they had for people to try. Very lucky.

Thats the whole group, except our Temple student guide (I can't remember her name at all)

I want to have a house where I can legitimately have lawn accessories that look like this.

Epic fail

Wow those pictures......sorry it's hard to read, I'll do better later.

Yokohama

6/8/08

My host dad is home for the weekend. Tonight we ate sukiyaki. It really is a lot of fun to cover the table in newspaper and just start cooking right then and there. I drank some sake with him. I actually like the cheap stuff (it came from a carton, I'm assuming it was cheap) better than the good stuff that I got to try yesterday.

Speaking of yesterday, it was the really fun day of the weekend. I went on one of the school trips to Yokohama. Everyone met up at this swanky mall type place at which out first stop was a Pokemon store. Everything was Pokemon-even the registers were shaped like Pokeballs. This was the start of what quickly became the theme for the day: cute. All around us everywhere we went were adorable babies and if there weren't babies there were small dogs wearing clothes. I can't fathom why someone would think their dog would want to wear suspenders and a skirt.


After the childhood flashback that was the Pokemon store Ryan and I had some delicious gelatto and got stared at by a baby (probably her first time seeing white people) and went up Landmark Tower-the tallest (I think) building in Japan. It was a little foggy so we couldn't see Mt. Fuji but the view was still amazing, though you had to stay in the building.



From there the whole group took a ferry ride that eventually landed us in Chinatown. The streets were lined with vendor selling food, fortune telling, and many other oddities. Ryan and I went off and ate in a little hole-in-the-wall place and our peanut chicken, fried rice, and jasmine tea was really delicious. Here another baby kept playing peek-a-boo with us. We were still a little hungry so we bought some momo-pan from a street vendor. It was a bun stuffed with peach flavored filling and the outside was decorated to look like a peach-delicious! After that we went into some touristy type stores and tried on all the Chinese looking clothes and I bought a panda charm for my cell phone. Next the whole group went to this area called the Bluff and to a park near there. It was pretty but the view from the Bluff wasn't what I was hoping considering buildings between the lookout and the water.



















The last part of the day was optional. But myself and several friends decided to do it. We went to the Zaim Cafe for a school Digital Youth event. We had some time to blow before anything started so before that we hung out near the major league baseball field. The fans were really loud. Now Ryan and I really want to go to a game. When we went back to the cafe there were various things going on, including sake tasting (woohoo the legal drinking age in Japan is 20!), a shamisen (a type of stringed guitar) player, a really trippy fashion show, and a rock band. The verdicts= sake: so-so, shamisen: really cool-I would listen to that now, fashion show: I hope they were trying to make a statement because the clothes were more costumes than anything, but it was still pretty cool, rock band: good enough but you couldn't hear the singer. There was some other stuff on the venue but I had to leave since I was about 2 hours away from Chiba and I didn't want to miss the last train home.

I'm going to try to figure this picture thing out. Though I won't be able to put them all up here considering I took about 150 for the Yokohama trip only.

Yes I am already behind thank you very much.

5/31/08- 6/7/08

Recently I've just been living life here in Japan. I checked out the local library and got stared at for browsing through all Japanese books that everyone knew I couldn't read and then I got stared at again for reading children's books. I also went with my host mom to pick up my host sister and two of her friends to go to a soccer practice/tryout thing. To the best of my understanding it's a combination of a college player All-Star team and minor league. Mimi seems pretty good! Afterwards my host mom and I ate at Mos Burger and I drank melon soda-delicious! On a few of their signs was an interesting Engrish (japanified, botched English) slogan-Hamburger is life. I also met my host brothers girl friend. I haven't met him because he's in school in Australia but I met her. I had fun sitting around eating pastries and listen to them speak Japanese. I was asked to give a message to my host brother for his birthday. She was really nice. For Japaneses class we had to ask a Japanese person to take a picture with us and ask another Japanese person to take it so I asked her and got my host mom to do it...and yes using my host family and friends is a perfectly legitimate way to do my homework >.>

The past 3 weeks rolled into one post

Okay well, here is everything that I've been typing in Word up until now. Sorry it's so much at once.

5/15/08-5/17/08

I'M IN JAPAN!!!!!!!! I still can't believe it.

Well, travel was long but still fun. I watched a bunch of movies and played some strange game on my little tv thing in the seat in front of me. As YR and I arrived in the Tokyo-Narita airport we met a bunch of people who are doing the same program as us, so we were all able to help each other figure out where we needed to be. Customs took so long that YR and I were late for meeting our host families. Turns out we each only have one adult in our houses full time. My host mom is great. She's really sweet and even though she doesn't speak any english we've both been trying really hard to communicate. The first night we went to a restaurant and I had sukiyaki. It was delicious! After than I just went to sleep in my futon, which consists of no more than a pad a few inches thick, a pillow, and the fluffiest comforter I’ve ever seen.

Today was a lot more exciting. We had our first group orientation thing. Because I'm doing homestay I had to get to the meeting place (Machiko Square in Shibuya) all on my own. It was very nerve wracking but I made it somehow. I actually had to talk to some security guards in Japanese to find the square itself. Machiko Square is a popular meeting spot for young people. As far as I could tell it just seemed to consist of a dog statue, though this was right at the edge of Shibuya so that could be why. I met YR and Patrick (the one other person who showed up who was doing non-dorm housing) and our Temple student guide. All the other temple students were there too, but for our Shibuya tour they split us up by where we lived so YR, Patrick, and I had a group all to ourselves.

Our guide showed us a bunch of stores where we could get whatever we needed (I would hope so in a 9 story department store). Then we ate lunch at an Indian restaurant and I had butter chicken. You’re given a giant piece of bread (nan) that you dip into this chicken soup-delicious. After that we went to a park. When we arrived, Reggae music was playing and a bunch of booths were setup. We had stumbled on a Jamaican festival. It was really fun to see all the Japanese people dancing to Bob Marley and decked out in the Jamaican flag colors.

We left the festival to go to Meiji Shrine in the park. Some other festival was being celebrated that involved a giant homemade statue of a man, a horse that was all decorated, taiko drumming, and a bunch of women dancing. I’ve already embarrassed myself as a gaijin. One of the women came up to Patrick and forced him to go dance (and of course he wouldn’t go unless the rest of us did). She gave him her festival over shirt and we all went and tried to do this traditional dance with a bunch of Japanese women. We quickly left after the dance to the entrance of the shrine where we washed our hands and mouth and then I bought a charm for scholarship (hopefully it will help…) and wrote a prayer on a card.

After enjoying my first vending machine drink and arriving back, as I was walking from my stop to my house, a man from a hair salon came out of his store and gave me his card and asked if he could do my hair and let him take pictures. He didn’t speak English (though he kept saying the word model), so I don’t know how well I deflected him. It seems like fun but I wasn’t about to agree to something like that without having someone (preferably who spoke real Japanese) there to make sure nothing sketchy happens. He seemed harmless enough, so hopefully I won’t have any problems walking to my station everyday.

When I finally got rid of the hairdresser I got home, turned on the TV, and passed out watching sumo wrestling until my host mom came home covered me up with a blanket. Then I got the chance to meet my host sister Mio (her mom calls her Mimi), who is home from college for the weekend. She’s my age and plays soccer. She seems nice, though she doesn’t like DBSK …at least she made a face when they were mentioned. We had delivery sushi for supper and the Mio and I both passed out around 9:30.

So my first little bit in Japan has already been really exciting and full of surprises (Jamaican festival, propositions to model, delivery sushi, etc) and I hope it continues this way. I’ll try to keep everyone posted, though I really do suck at keeping up with journals-I’ve never had one that actually lasted. But maybe the motivation of bragging about sharing my Japan experiences will keep this going over the summer. Also, I’m typing this in a word document, so hopefully when I get a chance to post this in my LJ I can figure out how to include pictures and whatnot.

5/18/08

Today was a free day between the orientations of Saturday and Monday. In theory I should have slept in but my schedule is still messed up so I woke up around 6:30 (I didn’t let myself leave my futon until about 9 though). However, considering I have to wake up at 6:15 tomorrow to make sure I catch my train on time to get to school for the orientation, this might not be a bad thing.

After getting up and bathing (there is a way to do this correctly and I’m pretty sure I’m not doing it) I went with my host mom and sister to the Waseda University campus to watch Mio’s soccer team play. For some reason (which was skirted about in a very Japanese fashion) Mio herself wasn’t playing. Her team was really good (they won), which makes sense because she goes to a sports education college. In fact, they are ranked number one, though I’m not sure if this is in Japan or in their area only. A whole bunch of Mio’s friends were there. I’ve determined that, so far, talking to people my own age is scarier than talking to adults. The soccer game basically took up my entire day.

Before the game we had a lot of time to blow so we went to McDonald’s. I tried the teriyaki burger that I heard so much about. It was pretty good-just seemed like they slathered some teriyaki sauce onto a hamburger…

For supper we had tofu burgers, shark fin soup, rice, and veggies. After this my host mom used her phone to send a video of me to her husband (who lives away because of work-I get to meet him next weekend) and her friend who I can go to Church with next Sunday.

5/19/08

Today was another orientation. This one was much less exciting. We had to sit through long talks about rules and rule breaking. Overall, I’d say it was better than Wake’s orientation because the people in charge all had funny stories about past students who got in trouble. After all the boring talk we were again split into groups according to where we lived and shown around Roppongi (I’m not sure if I spelled that right or not) Hills, which is like a self-contained town in Roppongi, which is a part of Tokyo. So today was boring and classes start tomorrow. Though the website is down so I can’t figure out when my first class will be…hopefully it will get straightened out.

Also, my host dad sent a drunken video reply to my video text that was sent yesterday. It was really funny because he was cradling a bottle of sake and his face was very red. I couldn’t really understand what he was slurring saying but it was something along the lines of “I’m looking forward to meeting you”. Okada-san had asked what type of guy (celebrity) I liked and I said Johnny Depp. She agreed and took out her phone to show me her “Johnny Depp”, and thus I got to see my drunken message ^.^ I’m looking forward to meeting him in person this weekend.

5/20/08

Well I figured out when class was. Today I had Ideology and Social Change in Japan. It’s an upper level sociology/Asian studies class which is a little intimidating but hopefully I can handle it. It actually seems really interesting, though there will be quite a bit of work. For every reading we have to turn in a one page paper…and there is a lot of reading. Also, there is a big group presentation. Bleh. Though I did go and introduce myself to a group of people and we started talking about topics. The professor let class out early since it was the first day so I went with one of my new friends (I’ve already forgotten all of their names) got my student ID made. We ran into Kevin there, he was too tall for the blue screen they had set up to take out pictures and so had to crouch down XP I decided to be super productive and went and did other errands (I should now have a rental phone on the way!).

The rest of my day consisted of me exploring my town. I found a convenience store really close to the apartments and I bought a chance to win a One Piece toy which I didn’t realize until I tried to buy the stuffed Zoro doll and the lady showed me that instead I had to buy a card and draw for what I could win. So instead of the doll I ended up with a card case with Zoro on it. After that I just picked one of the main roads and walked down it for a while. The only other place I actually went into was a used manga/CD/DVD/game store. One of the most interesting things about doing the homestay is that I haven’t seen any other non-Japanese (or at least non-Asians) around at all. It’s a really interesting feeling. I think one lady grabbed her kid and walked on the other side of the road when I walked by. I’m not sure if that had anything to do with me since I’m pretty sure I don't look that threatening…she could probably tell I have baby-snatching tendencies (and thanks to Nina I have the perfect bag for it).

5/21/08

Well today is the second day of classes and my first day of Japanese and Music. I was really worried about Japanese but I could actually understand almost everything the teacher said. Unfortunately, I probably will be moved to Oral Intensive II. I say unfortunately because the textbook for the class was the same as the one we used last year at Wake and we were going to start at the beginning. However, in the first part of class the teacher had us fill out an information sheet, including how much Japanese we had studied and what textbooks we had used. So since taking this course would basically be a repeat of things I had already done and I told her my speaking skills were what I needed to work on the most (and my placement test clearly showed that my grammar-all stuff I learned over a year ago and hadn’t encountered since the test-sucked), she said I should go to tomorrow’s Oral Intensive II-the same class with Yuan-Rui and Kevin. The familiar faces will be nice, but I always seem to freeze around YR when trying to speak Japanese. Oh well, I’ll get over that I’m sure.

As for Music Class, I actually think I'm going to enjoy it. The teacher really has a passion for the subject.

This morning before leaving for classes, Okada-san and I went to the station to get my commuter pass, since I now had my student ID and could get a discount. The paper gave the prices for the students in the university housing-a three month pass should be about $200. Lucky me spent that much on a one month pass because I didn’t think to carry $500 (the yen equivalent) around with me…

5/30/08

Wow it really is necessary to do this everyday. I’ve definitely already forgotten a ton of stuff that I’ve done. Most people will probably be relieved to avoid the blow by blow.

YR and met at Shinjuku and explored the area (in the rain) and went into a giant shopping center. We had curry for supper at this little joint (the cheapest we could find) and went to this little bar in Shibuya that was only 300yen (about 3 dollars) for any drink you wanted and the cover charge was also only 300yen. It was nothing more than a hole in the wall but I had my first alcohol in Japan-sadly a screwdriver because I couldn’t read anything else on the menu. We talked to some interesting people and before we left we agreed we had to talk to a Japanese person. Unfortunately, we didn’t know any Japanese pickup lines ^.^; There were actually a lot of foreigners there (no cute Japanese guys that weren’t already talking to somebody) so I finally told this one girl that I though her skirt was “kawaii” (cute) and we talked to her for bit and YR took a picture with her. The most memorable part of the run down bar was that there was a random Japanese business man sitting at the bar reading a book with drinking. I have no idea how he could concentrate (or see) but he was so out of place with his suit and briefcase that it really stuck with me.

I went back with my host dad to talk to the guy at Espoir. It looks like I’m going to be doing it…I’m going to be in a modeling competition. I get my hair and makeup and clothes all done for it. I’m really excited/nervous.

Speaking of my host dad, I finally met him this past weekend. He was nice. The first thing he did when we met was pull up Google Earth and lookup High Point and Wake Forest. He also took me and Mimi to one of those sushi places where the sushi rotates and you pay by the plate. The price varied depending on what color plate you ate. We at a lot, so I’m sure it was expensive.

Sunday I went with my host mom and two of her catholic friends to a Japanese mass. It was really interesting. The church had little English pamphlets so I at least understood the readings. The couple, who are old enough to be my grandparents, will be taking me with them every weekend. I’m really happy I was able to find a church to go to. Afterward I ate Italian food with my hostmom.

Yesterday I went with my friend Laura to Yasukuni shrine. It’s pretty controversial place…though I haven’t finished my homework reading yet so I can’t tell you why. It was really cool. Laura and I ate delicious noodle-the kitsune soba was best soba I’ve had so far. We took lots of pictures and went into the museum.

Today was also surprisingly fun. I didn’t really have anything planned so I just went to the train station to go home. I accidentally got onto the wrong line. So after I turned around a got onto the right line there just happened to be a guy from my Japanese class riding in the same car that I got on. He, this other guy, and two Japanese girls were going to Asakusa to eat okonomiyaki. The girls invited me along…I felt a little bad for crashing what the guys probably wanted to be a date, but I think we all had fun in the end.

It finally happened

I did it...I've finally set up this blog to chronicle my adventures in Japan. Now that I've been here for three weeks and have been faithfully (for me anyways) keeping track of everything, I'm finally going to get around to sharing it. Not that my extreme lack of writing skills will do this awesome country justice but you all deserve to hear about what you're missing out on ^.^