My Blog...or How My Parents Know I'm Still Alive: crazy professors are the best

7/3

Today found me back in Yokohama. This time for an extra credit trip my professor had set up. This was a little different than my previous visits because the group of us rented bikes a rode around town. The prof. is a really knowledgeable guy and had lived in Yokohama for a while, so he knew a lot about the area. However being in a big group on bikes made it difficult to hear what was being said at times. We saw quite a bit. For example, there was a really big market in two large brick buildings that used to be factories. I got TC a souvenir there (hehehe but I'm not telling what it is). We also went to Chinatown where I enjoyed a butaman (pork bun) for lunch. I bought a t-shirt with kung-fu pandas on it-allegedly as a souvenir but I've already opened it. We also went to the Bluff and took a bunch of group pictures in front of the ocean view. On the way we stopped at an archery (kyudo) range and watched them shoot for a little bit. We also stopped at an otaku store. That was fun to see a whole bunch of life-size models of various comic book characters and movie characters.

The next part was a bit crazy. My prof. took us yakuza (Japanese mobster) hunting. He himself is white leading a group of young, mostly female college students through "Japan's third worst neighborhood". It's actually not bad because of the yakuza but because it is a migrant town where all the foreign workers who take the low paying Japanese jobs and send money back to their family. Sound familiar? I never felt particular unsafe though there were a few rather unsavory looking characters about. My teacher had stopped to tell us something when two guys came up to him and started talking. I couldn't hear what was being said from where I was but afterwards my prof. told us that they were asking about us. Here is my rendition of the prof's tale of what happened:

prof: This is a group of college student biking through Yokohama
am (Asian male): You should be careful there are a lot of yakuza around here, but don't worry it's not late enough to be dangerous.
prof: Oh really? (good job playing the ignorant foreigner card)
am: yeah, in fact this guy *points to man next to him* is an oyabun (boss)
prof: Oh really?
am: yeah, you don't lie about things like that around here, it would get you in trouble.

So not as grandiose as yakuza hunting could have been, but ultimately it was probably a nice safe encounter with the tamer type of gangster that comes out during the day.

After that we went to eat supper. Our prof. recommended this Korean place. I wouldn't have thought it was a restaurant at first because it's two big red. It was actually much more extensive than it firs appeared since our large party was led to a back room with a larger table. It was the best Korean food I have ever had! We ordered a bunch of everything and shared. There was kimchee, bulgogi, bibimbap, and some other stuff that I don't remember the names of.

7/4

Well Independence was fun. I didn't think I would do much here but I ended up getting together with Laura and some other friends from Ontakesan and watching the movie Independence Day (I thought of you Mommy :D ) and we bought some American food to eat. After the movie we went to the konbini and bought some fireworks to shoot off by the river where we hung out for a while. All in all a pretty good time.

7/5

I spent the night in Laura's room and we worked on our really big midterm together. I also got invited to go see Tenimyu with my friend Jill. Tenimyu is a musical based off of the anime Prince of Tennis. It should be really fun but it's right around finals time so I'll also be really busy.

Yokohama pictures: