With April 3rd came the Japanese placement exam. You read about the results, so I'm not going to talk about that. Oh, maybe it was important to say that I was in good health in case for some reason you thought I may not have been because of Oji-san (the uncle).
Regardless, we ended up going straight to lunch at the Sophia cafeteria that day. They have vending machines and whatnot with select food choices... nothing exciting... except that if I get in the line for ramen then I'll get their own unique version of it, I guess... they call it "Laimen". Hm.
The neat thing about the cafeteria in building whatever (2, I think) is that you can sit on the roof and see a nice view of Yotsuya (kokuhaku?) and the campus. That picture wasn't of the campus, by the way. Neither is this, nor this crow, who was terrorizing me when I was walking rear its perch on the railings of the roof. It was cawing at me and summoning its friends and everything... so I ended up running away. I think maybe Natalie has a video of its evil on her blog. And here are the last two.
Next, a bunch of us decided to go to a nice park. But first, we stopped off for a little joyride around a designated smoking area for salarymen. I almost broke that thing, I just know it... it was pretty frightening to be that far back, heh. Next will be a bunch of pictures from the park. Man, I wish I was a good photographer... I had to scrap a ton of shots (that statue was there, too, and reminded me of a Celtic knot that is on a stone that my Granny gave me). Truth is, though, we all would get sick of looking at flower pictures after a while. I even got bored of the flowers, so I decided to scale a MASSIVE ANCIENT TEMPLE with Mr. Bean, of course!!!
By nightfall, the Sannin plus Jeanette and Hunter tried for the second time to get to J. J. Club 100, and.... and.... we made it! Alright!!! It was completely worth the 2,100 yen that we spent... unlimited games (including popular rhythm games like Drum Mania and Taiko Drum Master!), darts, pool, karaoke, a batting cage, REAL fishing, soccer, manga, videos, random systems set up... it was awesome. I'm not really going to go on about arcades again right now, but there was this horse game where you moved the horse by rocking back and forth. It was hard. And painful.
All of this trouble of finding J.J. Club? Totally worth it.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
"Yotsuya Orientation" and "The Hosts"
Due to the sheer amount of information that I need to post today, I'm just going to do big highlights, mostly giving you pictures followed by information rather than just information. And, to preface this post, I'll leave you with a simple question: seriously??? who the hell thought this was a good idea???
Erhm. Now that that's that, we'll start with a short tour of my room. First comes the spoon that the magician guy in Shinjuku broke with his mind and gave to me. Moving on, there's my drying rack, desk, shelves, cabinets (I have plenty of those)... my bed and the awesome cabinet above that I don't know what to do with... and hey! My shelves.
Sorry that this post is kind of boring so far, but it'll definitely pick up, I swear. Just wait until I get past the university pictures.
So let's go back to APRIL 1st! Jeanette was supposed to be in Japan at 3pm or something, so we all decided just to hang out and wait for her. Hunter actually knew how to get to Yaoko (the supermarket) and lead us there to grocery buying and lunch. I think this was the day that I got like, five or six of this mini-sandwich things that ended up freezing in my fridge a few days later. That was really unfortunate. But the food for lunch wasn't too bad... there's a bakery in Yaoko where you can get excellent dishes such as hot dogs wrapped in cooked bread with ketchup, mini pizza-things, and, my (least) favorite, the BACON STICK (which is a stick of bread with bacon and cheese inside... hmmm).
Returning home we waited and waited until it was really late, and magically she appeared! She's actually living right next door to Jen, so us UVA kids all occupy rooms next to the stair case with the exception of Jen, who is close enough. We went to Yoshinoya again that night where I got another helping of Gyuudon, this time with an added raw egg to mix in. Unfortunately the egg really isn't good for the small size because it makes everything a little too mushy, but it was still purty good.
April 2nd was orientation day, and so we all (remember, Jen, Natalie, Hunter, Jeanette, and I) went to Sophia. After figuring out what trains we needed to take, we finally arrived at Yatsuya station and walked out the exit to face a building with our university's name smack on it (I don't remember the name in Japanese right now, and since Pokemon is in my DS instead of the kanji dictionary weeellllll... you're not gonna know yet)! More or less, this is about the size of the campus width-wise. Also, notice the cross on top of one of the buildings. Originally the university was a Jesuit establishment, and while there isn't a heavy influence of Christianity around the university necessarily nowadays, they still stick to their roots and have plenty of classes offered in the chapel and services to boot.
We had arrived in plenty of time to cruise around until our orientation started so that we could get our barrings straight, and since it was lunch time we set out to find a cheap lunch spot. A little ways down the street we found this awesome vending machine lunch place. The lady serving us was amazingly nice and attentive, they had a water cooler, AND they had a bidet in the bathroom!!! Whoa!!! Most of us were originally attracted by the lovely looking katsudon, so most of us ordered that. You can probably tell what's on it, but if you can't, there's cheese (I think) on top of egg on top of breaded chicken (thank you James for correcting me, it's really pork and it tastes like pork... it must be that I have had chicken on my mind for the past week now since all I've been eating is noodles...) with vegetables on top of rice. Got it? Good. It was awesome. We declared at that moment that we would be regulars at this place. BAM!
By the way, if you haven't heard, Japanese restaurants have these awesome plastic displays of food outside their shop. They look suspiciously real, but if you put your hand on top of the soba (buckwheat noodles) dish here like Jen, you won't get BUUURNED (nor wet!).
After lunch we headed to actual orientation, and to meet the rest of our crew (Mia, Teresa, Sehyun). We ran into the underside where the cross was on our way, and that was pretty neat looking (I wish I could take good pictures... that thing isn't centered at all...). When we got to the area I noticed a vending machine that offered large cups of Real Gold for only 100-en. Sweet!
Orientation wasn't too exciting... it was cool to get a packet with club listings and the course offerings, but yeah, it was orientation. I guess there were two exceptions... one was the opening old white guy who told us that the only reason was up there was because he had to be, and to not do drugs because he doesn't want to have to come to visit us in jail. The other was Hasegawa-san's presentation of "Announcements from the Center for Student Affairs". Part of her presentation was to warn us of cult activity.
Afterwards we got some Japanese students as "monitors" to welcome us and whatnot. My and Jeanette's monitor was Akiko, an English enthusiast who also is on the tennis team, and who happened to be friends with the other monitors that had UVA/DK students, Asuka, who used to play saxophone and directed me to a large instrument shop in Tokyo, and Ayano, who I didn't meet because she was at another table with Hunter and other DK-er Mike. You can view us here (order left to right: Akiko, Jen, Mia, Ayano, Hunter, Asuka, and half of Mike) and here (order left to right: Akiko, Jeanette, Jen, Me, Mia, Hunter, Ayano). By the way, in that second picture... I'm not THAT much taller than all of those people, I'm just on my toes.
That evening Jen was to go meet her host mom and brother of years past for dinner. She invited us all to come, but I was the only one to actually take the invitation. It was a little awkward at first as you can imagine, but it got better throughout the night. They took us to a kaiten-zushi place near the station, and a little way through the meal Jen's host mom gets up and sits at another table with her brother who happens to live Warabi city (this reminds me of when I went to the public bath with my host brother in '04 and we happened to see his uncle in there, haha). That left Jen, her host brother Takuro, and me to eat sushi. Takuro was pretty quiet and didn't speak much English, but that was all the better for me, I guess, since I was practicing splurting out useless facts and questions in Japanese to him all night. In regards to the food... it was great, EXCEPT for the ika (squid). Ika is nasty. In any form. I tried it sashimi-style (with the meat on top of a little rice ball like in the American sushi packs) and it was still... I don't know... starchy? Pasty? The texture was awful. Never again...!
Anyway, here's where the real story begins. In the restaurant, the uncle kept calling to us in some very casual Japanese (and you think *I* slur!). First it was because I kept picking up the sashimi and dropping it (the rice just did NOT hold, I swear! I can use chopsticks just fine...), and second was because he ordered us each a mug of beer. Man, I wish you could have heard him... his voice was very loud, slurry, eccentric, crazy. In fact, take a look at him in this picture and you may kind of understand what he may be like.
To continue, after dinner the host family left and Jen and I were walking back to the DK House, which is the direction that the "host uncle" (as I refer to him) was heading. When we got to the intersection to turn right to go down the long road to our place, though, he motioned us to follow him. And well, we did, since he did buy us beer and he was her host mom's brother after all. Maybe he was showing us a shortcut? But nay, he was sputtering out some other stuff that neither of us understood. After walking for about five minutes or so down some side roads he stops and walks into... well whaddya know, a bar (bet you didn't see that one coming).
(that was sarcasm)
And there we were, in a really, really smoky bar the size of maybe my room and a half length-wise (if that), and about the same width. There were a few guys sitting down and in the corner there were two women who looked about in their 40s with a baby (greaaaat). The women were cackling and stuff, it was quite a stereotypical scene to behold. Right off the bat he orders us drinks that are called ochawari ("ocha" is green tea, and wari is uhhh, iuno). Supposedly they mix the tea with a liquor called shouchuu that is pretty unique to Japan, if I'm not mistaken. Regardless, he also bought us an omelet, and then kept asking us if we wanted more to drink (this is at about 9pm, I think). We kept refusing, telling him that we had a placement test the next afternoon, and, being the crazy guy he is, he was giving us responses that were like saying "baaaaaaaaaaah humbug!" (or maybe something more modern). After we finished the omelet he ordered us this awesome fish that was cooked, as you can see, by taking the whole fish, putting it in a metal thing, and slapping it over a flame (check out it's head!!!). Jen said he called it sakana-yaki ("sakana" being fish and "yaki" being... remember???). Needless to say, we destroyed it, especially after he said the bones were okay to swallow if we happened to.
We got out of there alive after a while and he walked us to a point where it was familiar to get home. That place was a riot... especially that guy and those crazy ladies... luckily Jen was there or else I would have been really confused by everyone's really fast, really unclear speech. Not that I wasn't still, and not that I couldn't have gotten through it... but daaang!
To end the excursion that evening, it was really nice that the host mom took us out, especially me, not knowing them and everything, and it was also nice that the uncle wanted to take us out afterwards with our limited understanding and us not knowing him.
PS: I guess that the first paragraph gave you false hope of short posts... sorry! Part II will be posted soon above.
Erhm. Now that that's that, we'll start with a short tour of my room. First comes the spoon that the magician guy in Shinjuku broke with his mind and gave to me. Moving on, there's my drying rack, desk, shelves, cabinets (I have plenty of those)... my bed and the awesome cabinet above that I don't know what to do with... and hey! My shelves.
Sorry that this post is kind of boring so far, but it'll definitely pick up, I swear. Just wait until I get past the university pictures.
So let's go back to APRIL 1st! Jeanette was supposed to be in Japan at 3pm or something, so we all decided just to hang out and wait for her. Hunter actually knew how to get to Yaoko (the supermarket) and lead us there to grocery buying and lunch. I think this was the day that I got like, five or six of this mini-sandwich things that ended up freezing in my fridge a few days later. That was really unfortunate. But the food for lunch wasn't too bad... there's a bakery in Yaoko where you can get excellent dishes such as hot dogs wrapped in cooked bread with ketchup, mini pizza-things, and, my (least) favorite, the BACON STICK (which is a stick of bread with bacon and cheese inside... hmmm).
Returning home we waited and waited until it was really late, and magically she appeared! She's actually living right next door to Jen, so us UVA kids all occupy rooms next to the stair case with the exception of Jen, who is close enough. We went to Yoshinoya again that night where I got another helping of Gyuudon, this time with an added raw egg to mix in. Unfortunately the egg really isn't good for the small size because it makes everything a little too mushy, but it was still purty good.
April 2nd was orientation day, and so we all (remember, Jen, Natalie, Hunter, Jeanette, and I) went to Sophia. After figuring out what trains we needed to take, we finally arrived at Yatsuya station and walked out the exit to face a building with our university's name smack on it (I don't remember the name in Japanese right now, and since Pokemon is in my DS instead of the kanji dictionary weeellllll... you're not gonna know yet)! More or less, this is about the size of the campus width-wise. Also, notice the cross on top of one of the buildings. Originally the university was a Jesuit establishment, and while there isn't a heavy influence of Christianity around the university necessarily nowadays, they still stick to their roots and have plenty of classes offered in the chapel and services to boot.
We had arrived in plenty of time to cruise around until our orientation started so that we could get our barrings straight, and since it was lunch time we set out to find a cheap lunch spot. A little ways down the street we found this awesome vending machine lunch place. The lady serving us was amazingly nice and attentive, they had a water cooler, AND they had a bidet in the bathroom!!! Whoa!!! Most of us were originally attracted by the lovely looking katsudon, so most of us ordered that. You can probably tell what's on it, but if you can't, there's cheese (I think) on top of egg on top of breaded chicken (thank you James for correcting me, it's really pork and it tastes like pork... it must be that I have had chicken on my mind for the past week now since all I've been eating is noodles...) with vegetables on top of rice. Got it? Good. It was awesome. We declared at that moment that we would be regulars at this place. BAM!
By the way, if you haven't heard, Japanese restaurants have these awesome plastic displays of food outside their shop. They look suspiciously real, but if you put your hand on top of the soba (buckwheat noodles) dish here like Jen, you won't get BUUURNED (nor wet!).
After lunch we headed to actual orientation, and to meet the rest of our crew (Mia, Teresa, Sehyun). We ran into the underside where the cross was on our way, and that was pretty neat looking (I wish I could take good pictures... that thing isn't centered at all...). When we got to the area I noticed a vending machine that offered large cups of Real Gold for only 100-en. Sweet!
Orientation wasn't too exciting... it was cool to get a packet with club listings and the course offerings, but yeah, it was orientation. I guess there were two exceptions... one was the opening old white guy who told us that the only reason was up there was because he had to be, and to not do drugs because he doesn't want to have to come to visit us in jail. The other was Hasegawa-san's presentation of "Announcements from the Center for Student Affairs". Part of her presentation was to warn us of cult activity.
Afterwards we got some Japanese students as "monitors" to welcome us and whatnot. My and Jeanette's monitor was Akiko, an English enthusiast who also is on the tennis team, and who happened to be friends with the other monitors that had UVA/DK students, Asuka, who used to play saxophone and directed me to a large instrument shop in Tokyo, and Ayano, who I didn't meet because she was at another table with Hunter and other DK-er Mike. You can view us here (order left to right: Akiko, Jen, Mia, Ayano, Hunter, Asuka, and half of Mike) and here (order left to right: Akiko, Jeanette, Jen, Me, Mia, Hunter, Ayano). By the way, in that second picture... I'm not THAT much taller than all of those people, I'm just on my toes.
That evening Jen was to go meet her host mom and brother of years past for dinner. She invited us all to come, but I was the only one to actually take the invitation. It was a little awkward at first as you can imagine, but it got better throughout the night. They took us to a kaiten-zushi place near the station, and a little way through the meal Jen's host mom gets up and sits at another table with her brother who happens to live Warabi city (this reminds me of when I went to the public bath with my host brother in '04 and we happened to see his uncle in there, haha). That left Jen, her host brother Takuro, and me to eat sushi. Takuro was pretty quiet and didn't speak much English, but that was all the better for me, I guess, since I was practicing splurting out useless facts and questions in Japanese to him all night. In regards to the food... it was great, EXCEPT for the ika (squid). Ika is nasty. In any form. I tried it sashimi-style (with the meat on top of a little rice ball like in the American sushi packs) and it was still... I don't know... starchy? Pasty? The texture was awful. Never again...!
Anyway, here's where the real story begins. In the restaurant, the uncle kept calling to us in some very casual Japanese (and you think *I* slur!). First it was because I kept picking up the sashimi and dropping it (the rice just did NOT hold, I swear! I can use chopsticks just fine...), and second was because he ordered us each a mug of beer. Man, I wish you could have heard him... his voice was very loud, slurry, eccentric, crazy. In fact, take a look at him in this picture and you may kind of understand what he may be like.
To continue, after dinner the host family left and Jen and I were walking back to the DK House, which is the direction that the "host uncle" (as I refer to him) was heading. When we got to the intersection to turn right to go down the long road to our place, though, he motioned us to follow him. And well, we did, since he did buy us beer and he was her host mom's brother after all. Maybe he was showing us a shortcut? But nay, he was sputtering out some other stuff that neither of us understood. After walking for about five minutes or so down some side roads he stops and walks into... well whaddya know, a bar (bet you didn't see that one coming).
(that was sarcasm)
And there we were, in a really, really smoky bar the size of maybe my room and a half length-wise (if that), and about the same width. There were a few guys sitting down and in the corner there were two women who looked about in their 40s with a baby (greaaaat). The women were cackling and stuff, it was quite a stereotypical scene to behold. Right off the bat he orders us drinks that are called ochawari ("ocha" is green tea, and wari is uhhh, iuno). Supposedly they mix the tea with a liquor called shouchuu that is pretty unique to Japan, if I'm not mistaken. Regardless, he also bought us an omelet, and then kept asking us if we wanted more to drink (this is at about 9pm, I think). We kept refusing, telling him that we had a placement test the next afternoon, and, being the crazy guy he is, he was giving us responses that were like saying "baaaaaaaaaaah humbug!" (or maybe something more modern). After we finished the omelet he ordered us this awesome fish that was cooked, as you can see, by taking the whole fish, putting it in a metal thing, and slapping it over a flame (check out it's head!!!). Jen said he called it sakana-yaki ("sakana" being fish and "yaki" being... remember???). Needless to say, we destroyed it, especially after he said the bones were okay to swallow if we happened to.
We got out of there alive after a while and he walked us to a point where it was familiar to get home. That place was a riot... especially that guy and those crazy ladies... luckily Jen was there or else I would have been really confused by everyone's really fast, really unclear speech. Not that I wasn't still, and not that I couldn't have gotten through it... but daaang!
To end the excursion that evening, it was really nice that the host mom took us out, especially me, not knowing them and everything, and it was also nice that the uncle wanted to take us out afterwards with our limited understanding and us not knowing him.
PS: I guess that the first paragraph gave you false hope of short posts... sorry! Part II will be posted soon above.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Quick Post
I just wanted to let you all know that I tested into Intensive Japanese II, which is exactly where I needed/expected to be placed. Looks like I can make up that semester of not taking 301 and be back on track!!!
On a side note, I'm looking into clubs, and it seems that Sophia has both a "swing jazz orchestra" and small groups, which is great for me. Also, I may be doing baseball here, haha... more on that later! Gotta sleep so I can have a clear head when registering for my Fall classes tomorrow mornin'. Farewell!
On a side note, I'm looking into clubs, and it seems that Sophia has both a "swing jazz orchestra" and small groups, which is great for me. Also, I may be doing baseball here, haha... more on that later! Gotta sleep so I can have a clear head when registering for my Fall classes tomorrow mornin'. Farewell!
Saturday, April 5, 2008
The J.J. Experience
Monday, March 31, 2008
The today started off pretty standard with everyone getting ready to head out to get lunch. With Jen and Dan found to be around, the Sannin were reunited, plus Hunter came along for the trip. The search for a suitable lunch stop was proving to be a rather long journey, and after accusing Jen of being Chicken Boo (don't worry, there was limited understanding at the time from my compadres, too), we finally reached a small ramen shop. I was particularly excited because I hadn't yet had ramen from a non-fast food source on this trip, and this was Natalie and Hunter's first time to visit a "mom-and-pop ramen shop" (copyright Natalie). As expected, the miso ramen that I bought was awesome:not only in flavor, but in its fulfilling nature! It's important to note, too, I think, that they had a water cooler there, so we were all able to get a satisfyingly amount of liquid in our systems as well.
We all destroyed our dishes and moved on. Jen and Dan went their separate ways to try and get Jen a phone and the rest of us headed to do a multitude of things, which didn't include drinking any drinks for half-robots, but which did include the following: Hunter getting passport photos for his gaijin card, Natalie's plan to reactivate her friend's Japanese phone getting rejected by the AU phone company, and me getting some new socks! That's right! I actually broke down and bought some. They're not exactly what I wanted, but they are in fact a little taller than most socks, are Converse brand (yeah yeah, I'm a sucker), and most importantly, fit. Er, well, they fit for the most part (snug)... but I didn't necessarily want to get the "king" size in case they were too big... but maybe that's a silly thing to think coming from the man who had to pay $15 more for slippers because his feet are twice the size of the members of the normal populace.
When we returned I got a few things taken care of and then saw Matt Pollard's comment on a lower blog about some place called "J.J. Club 100", which supposedly was a place where one could play all the games they wanted for a flat rate based on time, not on amount played. Amazed at the low prices that he claimed, I looked into the place and found out there is one only two stations away, so I spread my excitement to Hunter and Natalie and urged them to join me to hunt out the place that evening. At around eight or so we got out of the DK House and headed to Minami-Urawa station.
Lucky for us there was a small restaurant aimed at busy salarymen located in the station that we stopped at (I got some delicious tempura udon). Instead of actually being a sit down place where one orders from a waiter/waitress, the buyer walks up to these nifty vending machines that dispense tickets with your purchase on it that you give to the chefs in the restaurant. If you look at the picture, each button has a different food choice on it, and the choices are usually categorized on these things, I believe, by food type. For example, the red may be soba, the yellow udon, and the blue something else. The purple ones at the bottom are (all?) extras that you can get with your dish, including rice and a ticket that says that you want a large order. Surprisingly this place was pretty quality (six thumbs up from the travelers), so don't be afraid of these if you encounter them!
The real adventure started when we got out of the station. Natalie and I had looked up the way to J.J. Club beforehand, and I, having studied the map, decided to lead the way out of the station and to our destination without the use of a map. The map showed us getting off in a square-like area, walking down a slanted street for a while, making a left when it ended, crossing over a river, and ending with a turn into some sort of gray block (I had no idea what it was on the map). Well, after walking down a slanted road and making a left when it ended, running into a Denny's (Denny's? seriously? out of all the breakfast diners...... but supposedly it's a lot nicer here...... in fact, at one point we wanted to stop in at one for a little while but it had a LINE [!?!?] to get in), crossing what looked like a river, and hopping on someone's porch to pose with an extremely well known pop culture idol, we reached a snag. To the left where the gray block was supposed to be there was a neighborhood. This confused me... why would they put it in the middle of a neighborhood? We thought maybe it opened up a little further down the street so we kept walking. Nope. Natalie suggested we cross the street to the city part because maybe it was over there, so we did. Nope. Thinking that we must have made a wrong turn somewhere, I shouted at some grade schools kids across the street and asked them if they knew where the J.J. Club was. To our dismay, they seemed really confused and responded with a baffling "blah blah something in Japanese jyu-go en." What? 15 yen??? I'll just leave it at that and you can infer what you want. Confused in more ways than one, we continued to walk the streets of Urawa and after a loooong, loooong journey, I decided that it would be a good idea to stop by a Sunkust (think 7-11) to ask for directions again. Surely the worker inside would know where the J.J. Club was!
He didn't. Natalie asked where the nearest station was and the tall, lanky, strangely-colored hair employee whipped out a map, and after pausing a while to get his bearings (which included looking at the map for a little bit and then turning it upside down....................), he pointed at where we were in relation to the station.
We were in the middle of NOWHERE. Completely off our mark. Exiting the store and trudging on to the station, I thought about what happened. The landscape and everything seemed right: the square... the slanted road... the river-looking crevice... what happened??? Well, it turns out that we exited from EAST exit, not the WEST. So instead of going Southwest, we went Northeast.
Now I know what you're thinking. He's an Eagle Scout. How the heck did that happen. Well, guys, I never got my orienteering merit badge! Ha! Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa oh man. That was embarrassing. It turned out to be a fine stroll with my companions, but I realllly frustrated Natalie because she had a map and I insisted I knew where I was going. And while it was a terribly dumb mistake to not look which exit we were going out, it IS scary how similar the layout was in the total opposite direction.
Tired and uninspired we got on the train at the station and proceeded to go back home. Then, we noticed that the next stop was "Minami-Urawa Station". If you're really paying attention, you'll notice that this was the same station that we STARTED at. Instead of being lead back to that one, the Sunkust guy lead us allllll the way to the next station!!! Baaaaaah!
And that's not it! When we finally arrived at Nishi-Kawaguchi station again, we were going through the exit gates and BAM!!!!!! The gates closed on us! Three white kids in the middle of the station being taken to the Smackdown Hotel by the stupid gates. Well, we had to go to the ticket adjuster and pay an extra 10-yen (give me a break) because, since we walked all the way to the next station it, it wasn't the same fee upon our return.
And thus my adventure more or less came to an end. We returned home and slept for the next day of excitement... which I'll post about after I spend some quality time with ISIS and the COD (I have to choose Fall classes on Monday).
Until next time...!
The today started off pretty standard with everyone getting ready to head out to get lunch. With Jen and Dan found to be around, the Sannin were reunited, plus Hunter came along for the trip. The search for a suitable lunch stop was proving to be a rather long journey, and after accusing Jen of being Chicken Boo (don't worry, there was limited understanding at the time from my compadres, too), we finally reached a small ramen shop. I was particularly excited because I hadn't yet had ramen from a non-fast food source on this trip, and this was Natalie and Hunter's first time to visit a "mom-and-pop ramen shop" (copyright Natalie). As expected, the miso ramen that I bought was awesome:not only in flavor, but in its fulfilling nature! It's important to note, too, I think, that they had a water cooler there, so we were all able to get a satisfyingly amount of liquid in our systems as well.
We all destroyed our dishes and moved on. Jen and Dan went their separate ways to try and get Jen a phone and the rest of us headed to do a multitude of things, which didn't include drinking any drinks for half-robots, but which did include the following: Hunter getting passport photos for his gaijin card, Natalie's plan to reactivate her friend's Japanese phone getting rejected by the AU phone company, and me getting some new socks! That's right! I actually broke down and bought some. They're not exactly what I wanted, but they are in fact a little taller than most socks, are Converse brand (yeah yeah, I'm a sucker), and most importantly, fit. Er, well, they fit for the most part (snug)... but I didn't necessarily want to get the "king" size in case they were too big... but maybe that's a silly thing to think coming from the man who had to pay $15 more for slippers because his feet are twice the size of the members of the normal populace.
When we returned I got a few things taken care of and then saw Matt Pollard's comment on a lower blog about some place called "J.J. Club 100", which supposedly was a place where one could play all the games they wanted for a flat rate based on time, not on amount played. Amazed at the low prices that he claimed, I looked into the place and found out there is one only two stations away, so I spread my excitement to Hunter and Natalie and urged them to join me to hunt out the place that evening. At around eight or so we got out of the DK House and headed to Minami-Urawa station.
Lucky for us there was a small restaurant aimed at busy salarymen located in the station that we stopped at (I got some delicious tempura udon). Instead of actually being a sit down place where one orders from a waiter/waitress, the buyer walks up to these nifty vending machines that dispense tickets with your purchase on it that you give to the chefs in the restaurant. If you look at the picture, each button has a different food choice on it, and the choices are usually categorized on these things, I believe, by food type. For example, the red may be soba, the yellow udon, and the blue something else. The purple ones at the bottom are (all?) extras that you can get with your dish, including rice and a ticket that says that you want a large order. Surprisingly this place was pretty quality (six thumbs up from the travelers), so don't be afraid of these if you encounter them!
The real adventure started when we got out of the station. Natalie and I had looked up the way to J.J. Club beforehand, and I, having studied the map, decided to lead the way out of the station and to our destination without the use of a map. The map showed us getting off in a square-like area, walking down a slanted street for a while, making a left when it ended, crossing over a river, and ending with a turn into some sort of gray block (I had no idea what it was on the map). Well, after walking down a slanted road and making a left when it ended, running into a Denny's (Denny's? seriously? out of all the breakfast diners...... but supposedly it's a lot nicer here...... in fact, at one point we wanted to stop in at one for a little while but it had a LINE [!?!?] to get in), crossing what looked like a river, and hopping on someone's porch to pose with an extremely well known pop culture idol, we reached a snag. To the left where the gray block was supposed to be there was a neighborhood. This confused me... why would they put it in the middle of a neighborhood? We thought maybe it opened up a little further down the street so we kept walking. Nope. Natalie suggested we cross the street to the city part because maybe it was over there, so we did. Nope. Thinking that we must have made a wrong turn somewhere, I shouted at some grade schools kids across the street and asked them if they knew where the J.J. Club was. To our dismay, they seemed really confused and responded with a baffling "blah blah something in Japanese jyu-go en." What? 15 yen??? I'll just leave it at that and you can infer what you want. Confused in more ways than one, we continued to walk the streets of Urawa and after a loooong, loooong journey, I decided that it would be a good idea to stop by a Sunkust (think 7-11) to ask for directions again. Surely the worker inside would know where the J.J. Club was!
He didn't. Natalie asked where the nearest station was and the tall, lanky, strangely-colored hair employee whipped out a map, and after pausing a while to get his bearings (which included looking at the map for a little bit and then turning it upside down....................), he pointed at where we were in relation to the station.
We were in the middle of NOWHERE. Completely off our mark. Exiting the store and trudging on to the station, I thought about what happened. The landscape and everything seemed right: the square... the slanted road... the river-looking crevice... what happened??? Well, it turns out that we exited from EAST exit, not the WEST. So instead of going Southwest, we went Northeast.
Now I know what you're thinking. He's an Eagle Scout. How the heck did that happen. Well, guys, I never got my orienteering merit badge! Ha! Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa oh man. That was embarrassing. It turned out to be a fine stroll with my companions, but I realllly frustrated Natalie because she had a map and I insisted I knew where I was going. And while it was a terribly dumb mistake to not look which exit we were going out, it IS scary how similar the layout was in the total opposite direction.
Tired and uninspired we got on the train at the station and proceeded to go back home. Then, we noticed that the next stop was "Minami-Urawa Station". If you're really paying attention, you'll notice that this was the same station that we STARTED at. Instead of being lead back to that one, the Sunkust guy lead us allllll the way to the next station!!! Baaaaaah!
And that's not it! When we finally arrived at Nishi-Kawaguchi station again, we were going through the exit gates and BAM!!!!!! The gates closed on us! Three white kids in the middle of the station being taken to the Smackdown Hotel by the stupid gates. Well, we had to go to the ticket adjuster and pay an extra 10-yen (give me a break) because, since we walked all the way to the next station it, it wasn't the same fee upon our return.
And thus my adventure more or less came to an end. We returned home and slept for the next day of excitement... which I'll post about after I spend some quality time with ISIS and the COD (I have to choose Fall classes on Monday).
Until next time...!
Sannin Podcast Episode 02 - "Scooter"
The second installment of our podcast series is posted on Open Source Audio. Sorry for anyone that was having trouble with the first one... I can't guarantee that it won't happen a second time with this, but it may be worth a shot!
A couple things about the episode: 1) it's broken into three parts due to pauses in our journey, but is recorded in one chunk of time; 2) the title on the heading and the title on the webpage is different because I decided to change it after I had uploaded and the page wouldn't let me update that part; and 3) I did a little audio editing with these, both good and slightly bad, which was first, amplifying the volume (and the audio clips at a couple places in the first and second parts... I remedied that in the third), and second, exporting it as an MP3 so that they would fit on the page (so there's a loss in quality, but, since it's a podcast, I don't think it matters too much, and furthermore the size went from 101MB to 9.24, so easier uploading and space usage!)
Oh yeah, and if anyone listens to these podcasts, PLEASE just leave me a note in the comment box or on my e-mail so that I know whether or not to keep doing them. I know a couple of people have listened to them (and we sure like doing them!), but how many people are interested really determines how much time we put in. Enjoy!
A couple things about the episode: 1) it's broken into three parts due to pauses in our journey, but is recorded in one chunk of time; 2) the title on the heading and the title on the webpage is different because I decided to change it after I had uploaded and the page wouldn't let me update that part; and 3) I did a little audio editing with these, both good and slightly bad, which was first, amplifying the volume (and the audio clips at a couple places in the first and second parts... I remedied that in the third), and second, exporting it as an MP3 so that they would fit on the page (so there's a loss in quality, but, since it's a podcast, I don't think it matters too much, and furthermore the size went from 101MB to 9.24, so easier uploading and space usage!)
Oh yeah, and if anyone listens to these podcasts, PLEASE just leave me a note in the comment box or on my e-mail so that I know whether or not to keep doing them. I know a couple of people have listened to them (and we sure like doing them!), but how many people are interested really determines how much time we put in. Enjoy!
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
IT'S A TRAAAAAAP!!!!!!!!
March 30th, 2008
In the morning, Natalie and I found ourselves Jen-less, but were told by Jen and Dan that they'd meet us at Harajuku at about 1:00pm. Well, normal-time to bed, late to rise is the trend for me until school starts, it seems (I'll keep blaming it on the jet lag... not the perfume), so we didn't get started until late. After showering and getting ready for my day in the oh-so-famous "fashion district" of Japan, I headed downstairs to meet Natalie. Luckily for us, the festival from Saturday was still going on, so we decided to grab a few more items from there to eat. On Saturday I spied this awesome-looking meal of octopus legs on a stick but didn't get it, so it was just as if fate decided to throw the festival back at me once more, giving me the opportunity to eat this lovely dish. Some of you may find that a little disturbing, and, if forced to eat one, would probably throw it away after finding yourself in this situation. But hey! It wasn't so bad! Unsatisfying, of course, so I got some more tako-yaki, but purty good.
After grabbing my tako-yaki and Natalie her second choco-banana, we headed to the station to get ourselves to Harajuku. We got a little mixed up at some point getting there, but that was no excuse for our exactly how late we were. If I recall correctly, we didn't get there until around 2:00pm, so we completely missed Jen and Dan. Regardless, we decided to make good of the day to see exactly what kind of fashion Harajuku had in store for us. If one walks out the exit "where a lot of people are heading" (as Dan had put it in his instructions to get us to where he was) there's a bridge that one can run into that is actually, as I found out, pretty famous for harboring people we dress pretty wildly. What Natalie and I found, though, was that while the people were dressed obscurely, they weren't necessarily as shocking as one would expect. Even in Virginia Beach I have seen some really strange looking outfits due to the Neo-Goth circles, and thus was rather unimpressed. Blame it on the weather forecast or whatever, it wasn't all that crazy. THOUGH, I may say, there was one girl with ripped fishnet wrapped around her face, which was different. Also, one can tell they're in Harajuku, from what I perceive, just by checking out the outfits of the general populous. The norm isn't necessarily to be totally dressed in strange garb, but to have maybe one or two garments or accessories that are outside the norm, which I find to be rather cool about the place.
Also on the bridge there were people holding up "Free Hugs!" signs. These were the second and third persons that I had seen with the sign, and after giving a kid a hug in Shibuya, I decided "hey, why not!". So I gave the guy (who was looking, oddly enough, in about his late thirties...) a hug and Natalie got a video of it. Some advise against this action, but if it makes someone's day, I'll go for it! My mom told me that I'd better shy away from those people because they may pick my pockets, but I don't know... Rest assured though, Mom: Next time I do it I'll give my money to one of my friends!
Next, we headed to a huge hyaku-en shop which is located on Takeshita Street, a long strip in Harajuku that is just an endless sea of people (notice the guy in the lower right of the second picture... I happened to get him in both photos and it's as if he was posing for my camera and not his... ha!). This shop was four floors of hyaku-en goodness, and I ended up getting a little memo book to keep in my camera case. Otherwise, aside from seeing pretty normal stuff in the shop, I would like to note that JAPAN ISN'T AS TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED AS EVERYONE THINKS IT IS. Exhibit A: THEY ONLY SELL WOODEN PENCILS!!! ... okay, so they sell packs of like, two, but otherwise it's all wood.
After exiting we just walked for a really long time down the strip. During the trip I was trying to look for the socks that I needed: tube, two thick stripes at the top, and knee-high. I even looked in girls' sock store (which carried the closest results) until I realized that of COURSE their feet aren't going to come anywhere close to my big honkin' 13s.
So, there was the end to that quest, but not the end to our journey. We headed into multiple shops (not including this one, which Sarah would have loved to visit!). I decided that later on I'd come back to the city to do some shopping, actually, after seeing a few cool items in some of the shops. Natalie ended up buying a raincoat and an umbrella (the umbrella in a store called "Shazzbot", which is supposedly a curse word for the aliens Mork and Mindy) since a) she needed them, and b) it started to rain while we were there.
Getting home took a really long time. Getting into Harajuku station took probably a good 15-20 minutes in itself because people were just packed in a dead stop waiting for people to get through the gates. By the time we made it back to Warabi we were hungry, so we stopped at the 7-11 on the way home and picked up dinner. Add-water noodle dishes were an option as well, but it turns out that we both weren't comfortable just adding any-ol' amount of water in the things, so we settled on some microwavable spaghetti (which they heated up right there for us!) and ran home (I also got some awesome melon bread, I think it's called, which I'll take a picture of next time I get it).
We made our way to our rooms to drop off stuff and grab drinks, then headed to the kitchen to finally eat. The reason this is important is that another guy came in to sit down to watch TV and read and we invited him over to chat with us! Our first friend in the DK House, Hunter Smith, a drama major from Texas U (sorry, he's not Japanese!), turned out to be pretty cool, so we exchanged G-Mail address after dinner and decided to hang out the next day.
That's it for that night, then, and since I have a Japanese placement test in the morning and am a tad smoky right now (I'll explain later), I'm going to get a shower and then hit the sack. Wish me luck!
Until next time...!
In the morning, Natalie and I found ourselves Jen-less, but were told by Jen and Dan that they'd meet us at Harajuku at about 1:00pm. Well, normal-time to bed, late to rise is the trend for me until school starts, it seems (I'll keep blaming it on the jet lag... not the perfume), so we didn't get started until late. After showering and getting ready for my day in the oh-so-famous "fashion district" of Japan, I headed downstairs to meet Natalie. Luckily for us, the festival from Saturday was still going on, so we decided to grab a few more items from there to eat. On Saturday I spied this awesome-looking meal of octopus legs on a stick but didn't get it, so it was just as if fate decided to throw the festival back at me once more, giving me the opportunity to eat this lovely dish. Some of you may find that a little disturbing, and, if forced to eat one, would probably throw it away after finding yourself in this situation. But hey! It wasn't so bad! Unsatisfying, of course, so I got some more tako-yaki, but purty good.
After grabbing my tako-yaki and Natalie her second choco-banana, we headed to the station to get ourselves to Harajuku. We got a little mixed up at some point getting there, but that was no excuse for our exactly how late we were. If I recall correctly, we didn't get there until around 2:00pm, so we completely missed Jen and Dan. Regardless, we decided to make good of the day to see exactly what kind of fashion Harajuku had in store for us. If one walks out the exit "where a lot of people are heading" (as Dan had put it in his instructions to get us to where he was) there's a bridge that one can run into that is actually, as I found out, pretty famous for harboring people we dress pretty wildly. What Natalie and I found, though, was that while the people were dressed obscurely, they weren't necessarily as shocking as one would expect. Even in Virginia Beach I have seen some really strange looking outfits due to the Neo-Goth circles, and thus was rather unimpressed. Blame it on the weather forecast or whatever, it wasn't all that crazy. THOUGH, I may say, there was one girl with ripped fishnet wrapped around her face, which was different. Also, one can tell they're in Harajuku, from what I perceive, just by checking out the outfits of the general populous. The norm isn't necessarily to be totally dressed in strange garb, but to have maybe one or two garments or accessories that are outside the norm, which I find to be rather cool about the place.
Also on the bridge there were people holding up "Free Hugs!" signs. These were the second and third persons that I had seen with the sign, and after giving a kid a hug in Shibuya, I decided "hey, why not!". So I gave the guy (who was looking, oddly enough, in about his late thirties...) a hug and Natalie got a video of it. Some advise against this action, but if it makes someone's day, I'll go for it! My mom told me that I'd better shy away from those people because they may pick my pockets, but I don't know... Rest assured though, Mom: Next time I do it I'll give my money to one of my friends!
Next, we headed to a huge hyaku-en shop which is located on Takeshita Street, a long strip in Harajuku that is just an endless sea of people (notice the guy in the lower right of the second picture... I happened to get him in both photos and it's as if he was posing for my camera and not his... ha!). This shop was four floors of hyaku-en goodness, and I ended up getting a little memo book to keep in my camera case. Otherwise, aside from seeing pretty normal stuff in the shop, I would like to note that JAPAN ISN'T AS TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED AS EVERYONE THINKS IT IS. Exhibit A: THEY ONLY SELL WOODEN PENCILS!!! ... okay, so they sell packs of like, two, but otherwise it's all wood.
After exiting we just walked for a really long time down the strip. During the trip I was trying to look for the socks that I needed: tube, two thick stripes at the top, and knee-high. I even looked in girls' sock store (which carried the closest results) until I realized that of COURSE their feet aren't going to come anywhere close to my big honkin' 13s.
So, there was the end to that quest, but not the end to our journey. We headed into multiple shops (not including this one, which Sarah would have loved to visit!). I decided that later on I'd come back to the city to do some shopping, actually, after seeing a few cool items in some of the shops. Natalie ended up buying a raincoat and an umbrella (the umbrella in a store called "Shazzbot", which is supposedly a curse word for the aliens Mork and Mindy) since a) she needed them, and b) it started to rain while we were there.
Getting home took a really long time. Getting into Harajuku station took probably a good 15-20 minutes in itself because people were just packed in a dead stop waiting for people to get through the gates. By the time we made it back to Warabi we were hungry, so we stopped at the 7-11 on the way home and picked up dinner. Add-water noodle dishes were an option as well, but it turns out that we both weren't comfortable just adding any-ol' amount of water in the things, so we settled on some microwavable spaghetti (which they heated up right there for us!) and ran home (I also got some awesome melon bread, I think it's called, which I'll take a picture of next time I get it).
We made our way to our rooms to drop off stuff and grab drinks, then headed to the kitchen to finally eat. The reason this is important is that another guy came in to sit down to watch TV and read and we invited him over to chat with us! Our first friend in the DK House, Hunter Smith, a drama major from Texas U (sorry, he's not Japanese!), turned out to be pretty cool, so we exchanged G-Mail address after dinner and decided to hang out the next day.
That's it for that night, then, and since I have a Japanese placement test in the morning and am a tad smoky right now (I'll explain later), I'm going to get a shower and then hit the sack. Wish me luck!
Until next time...!
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Sannin Podcast Episode 01 - "Louie"
Hey folks! In case you didn't get enough description of our flight OR in case you just missed our lovely voices, you can check out the first episode of our Podcast, recorded on United Flight 803.
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