So the point was, the schedule gets confusing sometimes. That's not really such a big deal. We do have different teachers almost every day, though, which is odd. Here's a rundown of the teachers:
- Hino-sensei: She's first because I can't stand her. How many days in a row are we going to learn how to ask our teacher if they can do a favor for us??? Dan says: the whole semester. Unfortunately, the girl that sits next to me doesn't get what she's saying most of the time, so when I black out and wake up when I have to talk to her she's just as clueless as me.
- Kobayashi-sensei: The second strongest emotions go to Kobayashi-sensei, who is just freakin' rad. He's a guy in his early 30s, I think, and is really hilarious every day. Our class likes him so much that we took him out to karaoke the other week (pictures and videos are on others' cameras because mine ran out of juice), and to give you an idea of how awesome he is, his first song was "Wild Wild Life" by The Talking Heads. Yeah!!! I used to call him Yoshinoya-sensei because it was the closest thing that I could associate his name with when I didn't really know it... which I'd say is a compliment.
- Noguchi-sensei: My friend German friend Jonas calls him "No-good-chi Sensei" because he speaks Japanese in class until he gets to a simple word and says it in English. Sometimes, he says other words in English, too, but usually it's like, "newgrammarnewgrammar FOOD oldgrammaroldgrammar". But he's pretty hilarious, so I don't mind his oddly-timed English. Last week he showed us this Japanese sci-fi short in class, and supposedly he talked about cremating kids in Natalie's class as an example of picking up fresh bones with chopsticks. He probably said chopsticks in English.
- Silver-haired-sensei: Yeah, I still don't know her name. She's really nice and effective, though. That's about it. I rode the elevator with her yesterday and we talked about how she was in an orchestra, which is cool.
- Remi-sensei: That's her first name, and the only reason I know it is because of X-Men. Her last name is something-yama, but the first day she explained to us that her name was really weird. She's the kanji teacher, which means her class is inherently boring because it consists mostly of us saying words and watching her write words that are in a book we have. It's hard to explain, but if that sounds boring to you, I've done my job. Today was a lot different because we got a new book, but we'll see. She speaks really fast, and since her class is really boring, it's REALLY hard to pay attention. Especially when most of it isn't really important sounding.
That's the rundown of them. As for my performance, I'm on par with a lot of people, I think... and that may the first time since Japanese 102, haha... and as for learning, well... it's a little difficult. I don't know what I covered before, but it's really hard to make a lot of the new stuff concrete. We speed through the grammar with relatively easy sentences and have our quizzes and tests on vocabulary, but we're never really prompted by the teachers to use this new stuff in class. In fact, I think I've barely used new grammar in non-grammar classes because it's not something that's naturally coming to me. The thing is, it takes usage for the ideas of these new grammar structures to actually be realized in everyday speech. It's not that I don't know the grammar or that I don't need to use it, but because I have minimal practice with it, it's like I don't even have the option of doing so... that's how it works for me, at least. Same goes for the vocab--I feel like most of it is learn-and-dump, much like it was last semester in Japanese 310 where I learned a billion kanji compounds and dumped them after quizzes and tests because they weren't relevant and we weren't learning them in an effective system. But that's another story, I guess. The most I've learned vocabulary-wise is from hanging out with Japanese people, and usually the vocabulary is vernacular.
Speaking of speaking, I think the course is actually designed so that we don't focus a lot on speaking because they expect us to be doing that outside of class with actual Japanese people. There are two problems with this: 1) again, we aren't prompted to use the new grammar and vocabulary, and 2) we learn how to speak in everyday Japan rather than classroom Japan. The latter fact is actually not really a problem in general, but just a problem for the class. I REALLY love speaking everyday Japanese and learning everyday Japanese. There's so much more gratification in that than speaking BS in class. I don't know how it is for others, but in my case, I can't usually understand the kids my age well because of their really fast, really vernacular-tempered tongues, not just because of vocabulary alone, because I think that they're using a lot stuff I know in just different ways. I've gotten use to a bunch of these, and have learned a lot of popular words among kids my age, which got me thinking about how awesome a class on everyday Japanese would be... learning modern slang and grammatical deformities of the times. We learn a few, but they're few and far between, and when you're in class using the words you don't have a tendency to use the slang because you're in a classroom.
Oh hey, I just got my pictures from Jen, so I'm going to take a break, get them uploaded, and finish up my homework. I'm trying to go to bed early tonight, so maybe I won't return this evening, but I hope to talk about a topic that Julie keeps reminding me of: the friends that I've made!
On that note, I'll leave you with a video of a song that is wildly popular all around Japan. It's by a 25-or-so-year-old group called the Southern Allstars (no hyphen). I know you won't understand the song... I mean, I don't totally... but you'll get some idea by the title... and you'll understand me when I say that I thought it bizarre when I saw parents dancing with their kids in the video that I watched at Jazz camp this weekend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQwm7HIBLTg
Until next time...!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Teen Bus Squad!!!
This has nothing to do with Japan, but it's too awesome not to post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xctbq9Pd_Q8
I'm featured in it, so keep an eye out.
And um, about that last post... I'll write some more in an hour or two when I start falling asleep while studying kanji. Later!
Edit: Ha! I didn't start falling asleep! Guess it'll have to wait some more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xctbq9Pd_Q8
I'm featured in it, so keep an eye out.
And um, about that last post... I'll write some more in an hour or two when I start falling asleep while studying kanji. Later!
Edit: Ha! I didn't start falling asleep! Guess it'll have to wait some more.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Now about class...
I promised last time that my next post would be about class since I haven't talked about it yet, so let me give you the rundown of how it works and how my week works, and then I'll comment on how I actually feel about class.
Firstly, I am enrolled in two classes: JAPN 270B (Intensive Japanese 2) and ANTH 3-something, maybe 4-something (Japanese Symbolic Practice). Japanese meets everyday for three hours, which covers the first two periods of the day, and ends at lunch, while the Anthropology course starts at 3:15 and goes for an hour and a half Mondays and Thursdays. Now you may be thinking, "wow, three hours is a long time!" Well, by golly, you're right! But, they decided to make it seem like we were shortening it by having two different professors every day to make our sensei numbers total to five. Each sensei has his or her own topic, too, so it's not like one whole day of one subject. Reading, Speaking and Writing, Kanji, and Grammar are the topics that they cover, and here's how it looks on schedule:
Monday: Grammar/Speaking and Reading
Tuesday: Reading/Kanji
Wednesday: Grammar/Kanji
Thursday: Grammar/Speaking
Friday: Reading/Speaking
Not so bad, huh? Huh? HUH??!?! Well, HOLD YOUR TONGUE, KNAVE! This schedule gets terrible, and this is why: we have at least two homework sheets due a day and at least one quiz a day, usually two. The problem with this is keeping track of what is when. What days are which sections (not counting kanji... that luckily falls atzjslfjasf...
SLEEP. Man, sorry, that was nap attack to the extreme. If I don't have baseball tomorrow I'lll blaaaarg
Firstly, I am enrolled in two classes: JAPN 270B (Intensive Japanese 2) and ANTH 3-something, maybe 4-something (Japanese Symbolic Practice). Japanese meets everyday for three hours, which covers the first two periods of the day, and ends at lunch, while the Anthropology course starts at 3:15 and goes for an hour and a half Mondays and Thursdays. Now you may be thinking, "wow, three hours is a long time!" Well, by golly, you're right! But, they decided to make it seem like we were shortening it by having two different professors every day to make our sensei numbers total to five. Each sensei has his or her own topic, too, so it's not like one whole day of one subject. Reading, Speaking and Writing, Kanji, and Grammar are the topics that they cover, and here's how it looks on schedule:
Monday: Grammar/Speaking and Reading
Tuesday: Reading/Kanji
Wednesday: Grammar/Kanji
Thursday: Grammar/Speaking
Friday: Reading/Speaking
Not so bad, huh? Huh? HUH??!?! Well, HOLD YOUR TONGUE, KNAVE! This schedule gets terrible, and this is why: we have at least two homework sheets due a day and at least one quiz a day, usually two. The problem with this is keeping track of what is when. What days are which sections (not counting kanji... that luckily falls atzjslfjasf...
SLEEP. Man, sorry, that was nap attack to the extreme. If I don't have baseball tomorrow I'lll blaaaarg
Friday, April 25, 2008
Potatoes, Nattou, Tea, and GUNDAMU!!!
Ahhhh, a night with nothing to do but sit here. Few and far between nowadays, I'm afraid. I've been doing so much schooling recently that I really don't want to talk about classes yet. I know I've been in for two weeks already and you still don't know what my classes are like, but I swear, all in due time! Plus, that stuff is kind of boring anyways.
Er, well, I guess video game stuff is boring to people, too, but here we are again, starting off the post with my talks about arcades and video games. Don't fret, though, it's not just about what I was playing...
In fact, it starts off with me saying, "Hey Dan! We're not doing anything, let's go play that awesome Gundam game where you sit in a pod!" He suggested Akihabara, Tokyo's "Electric District", and since I hadn't been there yet, I quickly concurred. First we stopped by his place, which was pretty cool (if you're interested, I'd look on his blog), and then we shuttled off to Akihabara. Seeing that it was the afternoon, there was no real presentation of it representing its namesake, so I don't have any pictures of the actual city, but I'll probably go there one night to see it at its prime (or, what I assume to be its prime).
What we did do, though, is head straight for this shop called "Super Potato". This was probably one of the coolest things that Dan could have taken me to, as far as I'm concerned. Basically, the place is four or five stories of every single console game imaginable. And when I say that, I mean starting from anywhere around the Atari 2600 to present day stuff... and to make it interesting to everyone else, most of the stuff was still IN ITS PACKAGING. It was amazing. They even had the Nintendo Glove, Commodore 64s, Wonder Swans, Neo Geos... Virtual Boys (I even played the Wario game for about 2 minutes just for kicks). Heck, I even bought Mega Man V for the Game Boy despite it being in Japanese (that may mean something only to about two people, but it's a very rare [original, possibly Color] Game Boy game that I was swooning over for years and never got because no one EVER had it... it even had the one and only appearance of Tango, Mega Man's cat).
At the top of the store there was a small arcade room full of these arcade machines that had something in them that allowed them to display hundreds of games on one machine. So, people were playing some of the earliest arcade games on these babies. Also at the top they had a chair made completely of (what I remember to be) old Nintendo cartridges and a life-size statue of Snake in Metal Gear Solid 3 garb.
The most amazing section to me, though, was the Super Nintendo section. They had everything... multiple copies of all of the Final Fantasy games, Earthbounds, etc... and what I actually got. That's right, suckers, it's CT in a box (CT in a box, giiirl) that's in pretty awesome condition... for 1,554 yen... aka, $15. I probably payed for my used copy of that back in the day for at least $50, and right now you can get an opened American copy in box on eBay for $60 + $5.50 shipping + 13 hours still left to bid. I'm not saying I could sell this on eBay necessarily since it IS a Japanese copy, but since it's my second favorite game of all time (next to Final Fantasy Tactics), it hold a special place in my heart. They didn't have it at the time, but I also want to get the actual cartridge to play the game in Japanese (Independent Study, anyone? haha).
Moving along, Dan and I went to check out the Gundam game in a Taito Game Station, and first ran into a Gundam game that we weren't expecting. The game is a shooter that involves you holding the Zaku machine gun. On screen you're an ace Zaku pilot going through many of the battles in the actual Gundam show, kicking some serious Federation butt. It's most similar to Time Crisis with a trigger to hide and come out to attack... and you can use Crackers (Zaku grenades) and the Heat Hawk (axe), too (I don't know why I kept doing the definition thing because I'm sure the only people reading this right now would know what they are...).
After I played that game I moved on to the Dance Dance Revolution Supernova that's behind me in that picture and played four songs for hyaku-en with a guy who had a towel (heh heh, good times, no?). I haven't played in ages, but held my own against the expert. Even after the first song my legs and lungs were burning with exhaustion, and after a very friendly game with the gentleman, I had a really hard time walking down the stairs. By the way, hardly anyone was playing that game... people are more into Beat Mania, Drum Mania, Guitar Freaks, Taiko Drum Master, and even Poppin' Music.
Speaking of Gundam and arcades, though, here's another interesting game in the arcade that you'll never see in America (but OH how I wish I could spend all of my mon--er, play it!!!). Here's an example of a game that is played as a fusion between card games and video games. I don't know what the big screen does (like, if it displays any games that players may be playing against each other), but here's how the game basically works from my observations (I'm going to reference it to Gundam, but know that the games range from that to fantasy to even sports... I saw one where people were playing each other in soccer using these cards): you sit at one of the stations armed with your cards of various types of mobile suits (and probably other things) and position them on the battlefield, which is the card grid you see. On screen there's a battle scenario (maybe you can do 1P or more?) in which you have to use your cards to defeat your enemy. It looked like partially a strategy game because the guy was moving certain units to certain places at different times, and the computer's screen was changing in accordance to his moves. For example, when he did certain actions, a video (being shown on there right now) plays depending on what he actually had done to affect the computer. There are also buttons and a scrolly mouse ball to use, but I have no clue what those are. Regardless, he looked really serious and it looked really sweet. Also, there was a card dispenser for a sports one in there where people can buy packs or singles or something. Rad.
The next two photos are for Tony and Nick. If you can't tell what this is at first glance, take a closer look. If you don't recognize it, then relearn your kana... or your history of what absurd games we've played in the past.
Here's a shot for everyone. Why? Because this is the afternoon and the arcade is that crowded. Also, because the game that's being played is Street Fighter II, which is a game that came out in the early-to-mid 90s. This arcade was huge and had rows upon ROWS of games like this: old ones that an astonishing amount of people were playing seriously and even WATCHING. People in America may stop for a song of Dance Dance Revolution because people are looking funny "dancing", but these people were transfixed with the people playing STREET FIGHTER. I'm sure they've seen ENOUGH in the past 13 years! But clearly, they haven't. It was cool to see the new Tekken 6 machines, too, since they were all displayed on huge HD, flat screen monitors... but anyway, there were also those games in which you're a plane on a flat plain and are being constantly bombarded with missiles and stuff in which people just couldn't be touched no matter how impossible it seemed. I think I'll take a video of someone playing that one of these days. It was hard to get a spot in the 2-on-2 Gundam game that I had played a while ago, too.
Lastly about this arcade, there was a small space with books and art work. Your guess is as good as mine.
That weekend I ended up hanging out with my old roommate from USHSD 2004 Yusuke, his girlfriend Karin, and Andrew Pierce (my best friend on the trip). First comes a funny picture of a sign for a "casual wine bar" named "Pee". Yup. Next comes two R-rated pictures. If you don't get what these are from the hint of them being R-rated, then you can look at this picture of Yusuke and me standing outside of the shop. I didn't buy any, in case you all were wondering... but that doesn't mean I can't buy any FOR anyone, haha. In fact, the cashier was a little fussy about the picture taking, heh.
That's in Shinjuku, by the way. Yusuke and Karin go to school there, pretty near the station and very near to the extremely rich district that connects Shibuya to Shinjuku (if I'm not mistaken), where we saw all types of fancy pants stores such as Gucci. This was also there... but just outside of the rich district. While we were still in Shinjuku, we hunted for a kaiten zushi place, and just so happened to wind up at the exact same one that I had went to with Dan, etc. my first night in Shinjuku. This time, though, I ate something even WORSE than the finely-shaped ika (squid).
This stuff is very famous for being rather disgusting for most people. And its name is Nattou. See that stuff inside the wrap that may be called really funny-looking chunky peanut butter? It's not peanut butter, but rather "fermented soybeans". Sounds pretty gross, huh? Well, look at my reaction. That's me almost throwing up trying to down the stuff. You thought that the Creamy Spinach Casserole Jones Soda was bad? Give this beast a try. The texture is absolutely wretched, as it just sticks to every part of your mouth, and the little bean thingies that swim around in it don't help. It was like a mouthful of disgusting tasting, brown snot that wouldn't ball up so that I could spit it out, nor would it go down the hatch. Yusuke ended up finishing it up for me. He loves the stuff.
Afterwards we did some karaoke! If you'd like to see a video of Yusuke and his girlfriend singing "A Whole New World" and not really getting part of it (heh), take a gander:
During the singing, Karin went off to her work, so the guys and me finished up and headed to around the area where she works so that we could walk around for a bit before we ate at the Italian place of her employment. Basically the place that Yusuke lives has about three times the amount of 7-11s that are in Virginia Beach, but instead of being 7-11s they're TV drama shops that are placed closer together because it's a city.
The Italian place was pretty good. I ended up getting a spaghetti dish... but not this one. You guessed it, nattou atop of spaghetti. I'm pretty sure there's no song about that. But anyway, needless to say, it wasn't really Italian food like what you'll find in the States, but it did okay for me. We also got dessert. I ordered Pumpkin Cheesecake, which, again, is better in the States. Ah well. It was a lot of fun to just hang out with Yusuke and Andrew again, and it really made me miss my HSD days. I'm REALLY excited to see my first Japanese friend ever, Tomohiro Ishikawa, who was one of my homestay guys and was my roommate during HSD 2003 at Princeton (here's a picture of him and Aki back then in the old kitchen! he's on the right... I'm still trying to get in contact with Aki). Just thinking about the awesome times that I had both years with these guys and the other people in the program just makes me really nostalgic and so very happy to get the chance to see anyone I can again from the programs. I'll probably also see my homestay brother Masa from 2004 when he makes his business trips to Tokyo!
Bah! Tangent! Here's Yusuke and his girlfriend at the restaurant! They were really reluctant to take it during work hours... but I forced it.
And here comes tonight's side-story! First of all, I hadn't had a Mountain Dew in a month. That may bewilder some of you, especially you guys at home since I probably drank two a night. Luckily, I was able to snuggle up to one the other night because they're in the vending machines at the DK House. At first, I thought it was a really good deal. Look at that huge can! Hyaku-en? No way! Then, I realized that hyaku-en was a dollar. By the way, I think that the Dew tastes a little different here, too... or at least in those big cans. Not as sweet, add something from the C.C. Lemon, and yeah... a little odd tasting.
Natalie has some pictures I need to get of some more McDonald's stuff, but here's one for now. This is the Mega Teriyaki, which is two patties, three slices of bread, lettuce, lots of mayo and teriyaki. I got this tonight, and was lucky to do so because I went grocery shopping at 7, which is when they start selling this burger (is that bizarre or what?). Check out the cool square around the burger to keep it all nice and neat. As mentioned before, it's really nice when your burgers actually look clean. Too bad this thing slid all out as I was trying to eat it and made just as big of a mess as saaaay, ribs. It was pretty good, though I would never get it again due to the fact that it was so expensive. But, I had to just for the experience! You'll get to see the Mega Mac in action verrrry soon. That, my friends, was a monster.
Today, just to write about it, I stopped off at Shinjuku after school to play the Gundam game that Dan and I set out to play at Akihabara but never did. When I made it to the arcade, I went up and played around with my pilot card a little bit. The pilot card, which I got with Dan to see what it was (it cost 300-yen for the card and each game, which is two plays, is 500-yen... so that's why we didn't play), has saved on it my pilot information (name, appearance, records), the mobile suits I have (you have only one to start, and since I picked Zeon I had the Zaku II), and my team, which I didn't have at first. I then tried to sit in a pod and play the game, but for some reason it didn't work. So, I got out of it and asked some Japanese kids standing around if they could help me out. The girl that helped me ended up telling me that the one of eight pods that I was in was not a Zeon pod, so she showed me the other eight pods that I could use. She helped me out a little bit and made sure I knew the controls, then I started the game.
After inserting the coins the game searches for players. Supposedly, as the girl told me, the game connects to places all over Japan and even to CHINA. Crazy, huh? Well, I played some games with just computers and then went to the pilot terminal as the game told me. When you get done with your rounds, you have to go to the pilot terminal so that it updates your card. My card now reads such:
Principality of Zeon Army
Second-Class Soldier (picture of decoration here)
Gureggu (that's my name)
("Title" is supposed to be here, but I don't know what's up with that kanji)
1140 Pilot Points
(Kanji is too small to read for me, but the number is 5... and that's not the number of games I played)
Star Rain, Shinjuku
06 Mobile Suit Platoon
(Platoon Mark here)
08/04/25 16:15
If you want to see the pods and what I was sitting in playing the games I did, check out the home page. After playing a total of six games (that's 1500 yen later... yikes), I got a bazooka for my Zaku II, two upgrades for it, and an Acguy mobile suit. When I was about to leave the girl that helped me out came up to me and started talking to me again, making sure I found out the controls alright and stuff. Luckily, I had a handy manual with me that I looked at before I played, so of course I was good! But, it does take some getting used to since you're not just using analog sticks on a controller at home. You have to use pedals to jump and dash, move the two control sticks different ways to move different ways, etc. Anyway, we talked about how there really aren't any arcades in America to talk about (she asked if we had games like that... haha). She told me she comes here with her friends to play about 4 days a week for 3 games a day... that's at least $60 a week, about. Whoa! I won't be doing that, don't worry, haha. But, I did get to see her pilot card which had like, 25 Federation mobile suits on it (including Gundam itself). She told me to come and play with her friends, so I gladly accepted and left the arcade. How nice it was for her to help me out and be friendly, ne?
Aaaaahhhhhhhhh, I have baseball at 11, so I need to get up at nine. If I didn't need to catch up on sleep I wouldn't be going to bed right now, but I need to, and I am. So, in that case...
Until next time...!
Er, well, I guess video game stuff is boring to people, too, but here we are again, starting off the post with my talks about arcades and video games. Don't fret, though, it's not just about what I was playing...
In fact, it starts off with me saying, "Hey Dan! We're not doing anything, let's go play that awesome Gundam game where you sit in a pod!" He suggested Akihabara, Tokyo's "Electric District", and since I hadn't been there yet, I quickly concurred. First we stopped by his place, which was pretty cool (if you're interested, I'd look on his blog), and then we shuttled off to Akihabara. Seeing that it was the afternoon, there was no real presentation of it representing its namesake, so I don't have any pictures of the actual city, but I'll probably go there one night to see it at its prime (or, what I assume to be its prime).
What we did do, though, is head straight for this shop called "Super Potato". This was probably one of the coolest things that Dan could have taken me to, as far as I'm concerned. Basically, the place is four or five stories of every single console game imaginable. And when I say that, I mean starting from anywhere around the Atari 2600 to present day stuff... and to make it interesting to everyone else, most of the stuff was still IN ITS PACKAGING. It was amazing. They even had the Nintendo Glove, Commodore 64s, Wonder Swans, Neo Geos... Virtual Boys (I even played the Wario game for about 2 minutes just for kicks). Heck, I even bought Mega Man V for the Game Boy despite it being in Japanese (that may mean something only to about two people, but it's a very rare [original, possibly Color] Game Boy game that I was swooning over for years and never got because no one EVER had it... it even had the one and only appearance of Tango, Mega Man's cat).
At the top of the store there was a small arcade room full of these arcade machines that had something in them that allowed them to display hundreds of games on one machine. So, people were playing some of the earliest arcade games on these babies. Also at the top they had a chair made completely of (what I remember to be) old Nintendo cartridges and a life-size statue of Snake in Metal Gear Solid 3 garb.
The most amazing section to me, though, was the Super Nintendo section. They had everything... multiple copies of all of the Final Fantasy games, Earthbounds, etc... and what I actually got. That's right, suckers, it's CT in a box (CT in a box, giiirl) that's in pretty awesome condition... for 1,554 yen... aka, $15. I probably payed for my used copy of that back in the day for at least $50, and right now you can get an opened American copy in box on eBay for $60 + $5.50 shipping + 13 hours still left to bid. I'm not saying I could sell this on eBay necessarily since it IS a Japanese copy, but since it's my second favorite game of all time (next to Final Fantasy Tactics), it hold a special place in my heart. They didn't have it at the time, but I also want to get the actual cartridge to play the game in Japanese (Independent Study, anyone? haha).
Moving along, Dan and I went to check out the Gundam game in a Taito Game Station, and first ran into a Gundam game that we weren't expecting. The game is a shooter that involves you holding the Zaku machine gun. On screen you're an ace Zaku pilot going through many of the battles in the actual Gundam show, kicking some serious Federation butt. It's most similar to Time Crisis with a trigger to hide and come out to attack... and you can use Crackers (Zaku grenades) and the Heat Hawk (axe), too (I don't know why I kept doing the definition thing because I'm sure the only people reading this right now would know what they are...).
After I played that game I moved on to the Dance Dance Revolution Supernova that's behind me in that picture and played four songs for hyaku-en with a guy who had a towel (heh heh, good times, no?). I haven't played in ages, but held my own against the expert. Even after the first song my legs and lungs were burning with exhaustion, and after a very friendly game with the gentleman, I had a really hard time walking down the stairs. By the way, hardly anyone was playing that game... people are more into Beat Mania, Drum Mania, Guitar Freaks, Taiko Drum Master, and even Poppin' Music.
Speaking of Gundam and arcades, though, here's another interesting game in the arcade that you'll never see in America (but OH how I wish I could spend all of my mon--er, play it!!!). Here's an example of a game that is played as a fusion between card games and video games. I don't know what the big screen does (like, if it displays any games that players may be playing against each other), but here's how the game basically works from my observations (I'm going to reference it to Gundam, but know that the games range from that to fantasy to even sports... I saw one where people were playing each other in soccer using these cards): you sit at one of the stations armed with your cards of various types of mobile suits (and probably other things) and position them on the battlefield, which is the card grid you see. On screen there's a battle scenario (maybe you can do 1P or more?) in which you have to use your cards to defeat your enemy. It looked like partially a strategy game because the guy was moving certain units to certain places at different times, and the computer's screen was changing in accordance to his moves. For example, when he did certain actions, a video (being shown on there right now) plays depending on what he actually had done to affect the computer. There are also buttons and a scrolly mouse ball to use, but I have no clue what those are. Regardless, he looked really serious and it looked really sweet. Also, there was a card dispenser for a sports one in there where people can buy packs or singles or something. Rad.
The next two photos are for Tony and Nick. If you can't tell what this is at first glance, take a closer look. If you don't recognize it, then relearn your kana... or your history of what absurd games we've played in the past.
Here's a shot for everyone. Why? Because this is the afternoon and the arcade is that crowded. Also, because the game that's being played is Street Fighter II, which is a game that came out in the early-to-mid 90s. This arcade was huge and had rows upon ROWS of games like this: old ones that an astonishing amount of people were playing seriously and even WATCHING. People in America may stop for a song of Dance Dance Revolution because people are looking funny "dancing", but these people were transfixed with the people playing STREET FIGHTER. I'm sure they've seen ENOUGH in the past 13 years! But clearly, they haven't. It was cool to see the new Tekken 6 machines, too, since they were all displayed on huge HD, flat screen monitors... but anyway, there were also those games in which you're a plane on a flat plain and are being constantly bombarded with missiles and stuff in which people just couldn't be touched no matter how impossible it seemed. I think I'll take a video of someone playing that one of these days. It was hard to get a spot in the 2-on-2 Gundam game that I had played a while ago, too.
Lastly about this arcade, there was a small space with books and art work. Your guess is as good as mine.
That weekend I ended up hanging out with my old roommate from USHSD 2004 Yusuke, his girlfriend Karin, and Andrew Pierce (my best friend on the trip). First comes a funny picture of a sign for a "casual wine bar" named "Pee". Yup. Next comes two R-rated pictures. If you don't get what these are from the hint of them being R-rated, then you can look at this picture of Yusuke and me standing outside of the shop. I didn't buy any, in case you all were wondering... but that doesn't mean I can't buy any FOR anyone, haha. In fact, the cashier was a little fussy about the picture taking, heh.
That's in Shinjuku, by the way. Yusuke and Karin go to school there, pretty near the station and very near to the extremely rich district that connects Shibuya to Shinjuku (if I'm not mistaken), where we saw all types of fancy pants stores such as Gucci. This was also there... but just outside of the rich district. While we were still in Shinjuku, we hunted for a kaiten zushi place, and just so happened to wind up at the exact same one that I had went to with Dan, etc. my first night in Shinjuku. This time, though, I ate something even WORSE than the finely-shaped ika (squid).
This stuff is very famous for being rather disgusting for most people. And its name is Nattou. See that stuff inside the wrap that may be called really funny-looking chunky peanut butter? It's not peanut butter, but rather "fermented soybeans". Sounds pretty gross, huh? Well, look at my reaction. That's me almost throwing up trying to down the stuff. You thought that the Creamy Spinach Casserole Jones Soda was bad? Give this beast a try. The texture is absolutely wretched, as it just sticks to every part of your mouth, and the little bean thingies that swim around in it don't help. It was like a mouthful of disgusting tasting, brown snot that wouldn't ball up so that I could spit it out, nor would it go down the hatch. Yusuke ended up finishing it up for me. He loves the stuff.
Afterwards we did some karaoke! If you'd like to see a video of Yusuke and his girlfriend singing "A Whole New World" and not really getting part of it (heh), take a gander:
During the singing, Karin went off to her work, so the guys and me finished up and headed to around the area where she works so that we could walk around for a bit before we ate at the Italian place of her employment. Basically the place that Yusuke lives has about three times the amount of 7-11s that are in Virginia Beach, but instead of being 7-11s they're TV drama shops that are placed closer together because it's a city.
The Italian place was pretty good. I ended up getting a spaghetti dish... but not this one. You guessed it, nattou atop of spaghetti. I'm pretty sure there's no song about that. But anyway, needless to say, it wasn't really Italian food like what you'll find in the States, but it did okay for me. We also got dessert. I ordered Pumpkin Cheesecake, which, again, is better in the States. Ah well. It was a lot of fun to just hang out with Yusuke and Andrew again, and it really made me miss my HSD days. I'm REALLY excited to see my first Japanese friend ever, Tomohiro Ishikawa, who was one of my homestay guys and was my roommate during HSD 2003 at Princeton (here's a picture of him and Aki back then in the old kitchen! he's on the right... I'm still trying to get in contact with Aki). Just thinking about the awesome times that I had both years with these guys and the other people in the program just makes me really nostalgic and so very happy to get the chance to see anyone I can again from the programs. I'll probably also see my homestay brother Masa from 2004 when he makes his business trips to Tokyo!
Bah! Tangent! Here's Yusuke and his girlfriend at the restaurant! They were really reluctant to take it during work hours... but I forced it.
And here comes tonight's side-story! First of all, I hadn't had a Mountain Dew in a month. That may bewilder some of you, especially you guys at home since I probably drank two a night. Luckily, I was able to snuggle up to one the other night because they're in the vending machines at the DK House. At first, I thought it was a really good deal. Look at that huge can! Hyaku-en? No way! Then, I realized that hyaku-en was a dollar. By the way, I think that the Dew tastes a little different here, too... or at least in those big cans. Not as sweet, add something from the C.C. Lemon, and yeah... a little odd tasting.
Natalie has some pictures I need to get of some more McDonald's stuff, but here's one for now. This is the Mega Teriyaki, which is two patties, three slices of bread, lettuce, lots of mayo and teriyaki. I got this tonight, and was lucky to do so because I went grocery shopping at 7, which is when they start selling this burger (is that bizarre or what?). Check out the cool square around the burger to keep it all nice and neat. As mentioned before, it's really nice when your burgers actually look clean. Too bad this thing slid all out as I was trying to eat it and made just as big of a mess as saaaay, ribs. It was pretty good, though I would never get it again due to the fact that it was so expensive. But, I had to just for the experience! You'll get to see the Mega Mac in action verrrry soon. That, my friends, was a monster.
Today, just to write about it, I stopped off at Shinjuku after school to play the Gundam game that Dan and I set out to play at Akihabara but never did. When I made it to the arcade, I went up and played around with my pilot card a little bit. The pilot card, which I got with Dan to see what it was (it cost 300-yen for the card and each game, which is two plays, is 500-yen... so that's why we didn't play), has saved on it my pilot information (name, appearance, records), the mobile suits I have (you have only one to start, and since I picked Zeon I had the Zaku II), and my team, which I didn't have at first. I then tried to sit in a pod and play the game, but for some reason it didn't work. So, I got out of it and asked some Japanese kids standing around if they could help me out. The girl that helped me ended up telling me that the one of eight pods that I was in was not a Zeon pod, so she showed me the other eight pods that I could use. She helped me out a little bit and made sure I knew the controls, then I started the game.
After inserting the coins the game searches for players. Supposedly, as the girl told me, the game connects to places all over Japan and even to CHINA. Crazy, huh? Well, I played some games with just computers and then went to the pilot terminal as the game told me. When you get done with your rounds, you have to go to the pilot terminal so that it updates your card. My card now reads such:
Principality of Zeon Army
Second-Class Soldier (picture of decoration here)
Gureggu (that's my name)
("Title" is supposed to be here, but I don't know what's up with that kanji)
1140 Pilot Points
(Kanji is too small to read for me, but the number is 5... and that's not the number of games I played)
Star Rain, Shinjuku
06 Mobile Suit Platoon
(Platoon Mark here)
08/04/25 16:15
If you want to see the pods and what I was sitting in playing the games I did, check out the home page. After playing a total of six games (that's 1500 yen later... yikes), I got a bazooka for my Zaku II, two upgrades for it, and an Acguy mobile suit. When I was about to leave the girl that helped me out came up to me and started talking to me again, making sure I found out the controls alright and stuff. Luckily, I had a handy manual with me that I looked at before I played, so of course I was good! But, it does take some getting used to since you're not just using analog sticks on a controller at home. You have to use pedals to jump and dash, move the two control sticks different ways to move different ways, etc. Anyway, we talked about how there really aren't any arcades in America to talk about (she asked if we had games like that... haha). She told me she comes here with her friends to play about 4 days a week for 3 games a day... that's at least $60 a week, about. Whoa! I won't be doing that, don't worry, haha. But, I did get to see her pilot card which had like, 25 Federation mobile suits on it (including Gundam itself). She told me to come and play with her friends, so I gladly accepted and left the arcade. How nice it was for her to help me out and be friendly, ne?
Aaaaahhhhhhhhh, I have baseball at 11, so I need to get up at nine. If I didn't need to catch up on sleep I wouldn't be going to bed right now, but I need to, and I am. So, in that case...
Until next time...!
Monday, April 21, 2008
Not for the Faint of Heart
When I had posted about the last J.J. Club experience, I forgot to include videos that I took inside the karaoke room. Hopefully I didn't explain this already, but Japanese karaoke is a bit different from English in the fact that you go to a karaoke "box" with your friends and sing with each other (and can order drinks and/or food) rather than standing up in front of a crowd. That night some of my friends enjoyed my performances so much that they decided to record me on my camera, and I joined in the fun by recording Hunter.
But take the title to... um... heart. These are scary and really terrible (except maybe Hunter's, which is just hilarious), and you probably won't know the songs. If you don't know at least the artist, spare your ears and go listen to something better. Even Black Sabbath will do.
Video 1: Gunther - Teeny-Weeny String Bikini Part 1
This was recorded during a Sunshine Girls verse only.
Video 2: Gunther - Teeny-Weeny String Bikini Part 2
Here's some real Gunther action (by the way, for all you fans, this was the only Gunther song that they had in the karaoke book... but I guess to have ANY Gunther song is pretty darn awesome)
Video 3: Sixteen Going on Seventeen
I made Hunter be the girl since my voice was deeper. And it turned out sooo beautifully!
Video 4: Shakira - ??? Part 1
I don't know the name of this song, but I guess all you need to know is that this is how I perceive Shakira's singing.
Video 5: Shakira - ??? Part 2
In case you didn't get enough...
But take the title to... um... heart. These are scary and really terrible (except maybe Hunter's, which is just hilarious), and you probably won't know the songs. If you don't know at least the artist, spare your ears and go listen to something better. Even Black Sabbath will do.
Video 1: Gunther - Teeny-Weeny String Bikini Part 1
This was recorded during a Sunshine Girls verse only.
Video 2: Gunther - Teeny-Weeny String Bikini Part 2
Here's some real Gunther action (by the way, for all you fans, this was the only Gunther song that they had in the karaoke book... but I guess to have ANY Gunther song is pretty darn awesome)
Video 3: Sixteen Going on Seventeen
I made Hunter be the girl since my voice was deeper. And it turned out sooo beautifully!
Video 4: Shakira - ??? Part 1
I don't know the name of this song, but I guess all you need to know is that this is how I perceive Shakira's singing.
Video 5: Shakira - ??? Part 2
In case you didn't get enough...
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Sannin Podcast Episode 04 - "Toothpaste"
What happened to Episode 03 you ask? It was never recorded. We haven't had time. Maybe you'll get it soon. But the amount of time between when we recorded this and when I was going to post it was getting waaay to large. But I tell you, the length of this baby is enough for two podcasts.
And without further ado, I present to you:
"Toothpaste"
Enjoy!
And without further ado, I present to you:
"Toothpaste"
Enjoy!
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Catching Up! The 4-Day Post!!!
Approximately sixteen days ago the Sannin, Jeannette, Hunter, and two new friends, Adina and Aaron, decided after our DK House "orientation" (which was us signing stuff and giving it to the people who actually owned the place instead of just Uzuki-san) to go back the Warabi place where you get your gaijin card. The Sannin were going to just get copies of their registration so that we could get our cell phones while the others went to start the process from the beginning. On the way we ran into two art works on the streets of Warabi, the first being a whale submerged in concrete and the second being this wild-looking creature that had the word "Dreaming" engraved on the plaque below. Kind of reminds me of Resident Evil, now that I think of it...
I don't know if I mentioned the characters of the people who helped us last time, but both the nice, easy-to-understand lady and the sweaty, bumbly worker-who-acts-like-an-intern-but-isn't guy were both there. The guy didn't help us this time unfortunately, but instead, staying true to his character, was hurrying somewhere, sweat rolling down his forehead as usual, and ended up running into someone on the way. It was awesome.
As a side note, after about a week in Warabi city the Sannin were pondering its mascot. It's a wallaby. Get it??????
Man, I love puns.
That night we got our phones, which wasn't too much of an experience. Basically, we were all waiting forever until finally someone was available to help us. We ended up getting post-paid phones because the deal was better than the prepaid ones and got to choose mailing address, colors, etc.! Jen did all of the talking and Dan and I played Mario Kart on the DS via wireless communication (I didn't even need to have the game!). Here's a picture of the workers in the phone shop who worked really hard for a long time to get five people registered for their phones. Mine's gold. Bling bling!
As well as celebrating the buying of our phones, it was Teresa's birthday! So, that night our plan was basically this: get phones, eat dinner, go to a bar, maybe sing some karaoke, stay up all night until 5am when we can take the trains to get to Tsukiji, the fish market that supposedly sells some awesome fish in the morning. It went well for the most part.
While cruising the streets for a bar, Hunter got approached by this guy, who supposedly muttered some incomprehensible stuff and shook money at him. We don't know what he was up to, but take a closer look (the picture's bad, but I decided to keep it because so that I could show you what he was up against). Most likely he was a representative of places like these. In the middle of that picture you can see a Starbucks-like logo. That's actually the Starbucks lady with her breasts showing.
The next picture represents the awful luck that I was having taking pictures that night. People just would NOT stop walking in front of my shots! I think that two people actually got in my way of this shot, but I deleted the first one before I decided to keep the rest for the blog.
Here's another picture of an awesome sign. This one's for you, Uncle Dave!
So we finally settled down at a bar. On one side of the table there were the guys (left to right, Sehyun, me, Hunter, Alex), and the girls (Teresa, Jeanette, Jen, Natalie, Mia) faced us on the other. Since I was in Japan I got some Japanese-only drinks. One was a Calpis sour (ridicule me all you want) and the other was a thing of hot sake, which tasted like slightly flavored water.
When it was time to leave, we got the bill and, to make a long story short, we found out that we were screwed by the bar. The drinks were cheap, yeah, but then they charged the people who wanted limes with their Tequila shots for the limes (probably 100-yen) and also charged a ridiculous gratuity that wasn't deserved of the service we got. We left pretty irate, to be nice.
Afterwards we scoured the city for a while afterwards and couldn't really decide what to do. Some people wanted to do karaoke, some didn't want to pay... so we wound up at McDonald's until closing and then at an extremely smoky coffee shop. 5am couldn't come soon enough.
Arriving in Tsukiji, one of the first things that we saw was this, which is pretty representative of the city since it IS known for its awesome fish market. Here're some little guys on a poster that want to welcome you along with THIS DUDE. Needless to say, I really wanted to find his restaurant, but alas...! All I found was another fish.
The fish market journey started with passing the graveyard of Styrofoam fish boxes. I knew them all too well from the Fish House. The entrance and the exit basically looked like this. You won't be able to tell from that picture, but the forklifts and other motorized equipment were just zooming back and forth in that place in a hurry, and if you weren't careful you could get easily skewered by one of those babies. Oh look, the first shot of the day was blocked by a guy with a thing of shrimp (maybe). Cool. Thanks guy. You blocked the guy slicing a frozen fish with a sword. Luckily, he had to do it again. Whoa!
Some of these pictures ahead are not for the squeamish, including the next one of fish in a pool of blood. Buckets like that were all over the place in the market. And, to give you an idea what the whole place looked like, if you can imagine a tight flea market with those pitchforks and people running around like if they didn't get to where they were going and QUICK they would lose their lottery money, well, that's what the place was like, except there was water (both clean and fishy) alllll over the floor. People were constantly dumping water everywhere. Yes, and if the flea market had people cutting up fish all over the place, that would work, too.
They did have some amazing products, though. I've never seen such huge clams in my life. One day I'll probably go back and actually go purchase one. Unfortunately since paces were varied in this quest, stopping was not an option. *warning* Man, poor, delicious fish... poor, delicious octopus. *end* Seeing those was wild, but not as wild as seeing a frozen fish cut in two, or this guy in a poncho blocking my shot. There were also many tanks of things like live octopi, trays of giant crabs, and people in my way. If you look at that one, though, you can see what a fish's insides look like frozen.
We glided through the market with no injuries, thankfully (but some pretty close calls for some of the folks... one of us got stopped/created a traffic jam), and since most everyone was aiming to just get back home, we didn't even get to eat the fish! I was disappointed, but Hunter and I vowed to return one day.
In the station, I was so tired that I was falling asleep standing up.
For more wonderful Tsukiji pictures that don't involve bloody things, I recommend Mia's blog. She took some great ones.
(Arbitrary shots of a cool, Batmobile-ish car)
In Japan you can get some cool, unique sweets. One of my favorites, which I mentioned before, is the melon bread that I buy at 7-11 for 105 yen. It doesn't really taste like melon, but rather like very sugary bread, as you can imagine from the photo. You can also buy a green tea flavored Kit-Kat which is packaged in a nice box and even rather appealing plastics. Lastly, here's a shot of the actual bars. Don't be alarmed, it wasn't vile, but actually pretty good. I'd say it was white chocolaty with a hint of tea thrown in there. In the background there's a drink called C.C. Lemon which I find to be not so good. But, to prevent myself from getting scurvy with the lack of fruit consumption, I thought it would be a good idea to drink a can.
For the end of this post, I'm going to talk a little about the grocery stores. In Japan, the Yaoko supermarket is set up like an everyday supermarket, except that the McDonald's on one side makes it seem a little more like a Walmart. You can buy whatever including fresh sushi in little boxes and baked goods (i.e., the bacon stick) just like at home, blah blah... but when you get to the end things are a little different. First of all, they don't have shopping carts, but only little baskets, so when you bring your basket to the line, you set it on the counter and the ringing starts. There's no conveyor belt, by the way, just a lady taking out your stuff and putting into a basket that was used by the customer before you (in the picture you can see that there's a basket already ready already). In the basket the cashier arranges your groceries very neatly and then rings you up. If you're paying cash in Japan, it is custom for you to put your money in this little tray that has rubber on the bottom (you can kind of spot it if you look closely towards the bottom end of the credit card machine). I usually hand it to them if it's not a lot of coins, or I show them my count. I don't like the plastic thing.
Anyway, you also receive a number of bags in your basket according to how much you purchased. I've never gotten anything more than two, and even though I was scared once, the bags are made of a thick plastic that makes them act almost like paper, so everything fit quite well. You end up actually bagging the groceries yourself at a station like so, which has extra bags if you need them. I've never needed one, so the bags may actually be less effective or something... I'm not sure. But here you bag, put your basket in the pile, and then are off on your merry way. This ends my presentation on the grocery stores.
Er, I lied about that being the end. Looks like I had one more picture, which gets me into one more day at Sophia. On Monday we got our placements and looked around at all of the clubs. At UVA, clubs set up posterboard presentations in the amphitheatre. Here, people parade the streets and approach you. Naturally I was looking for the jazz groups, and I also wanted to try and find the baseball guys. I ran into the "Swing Jazz Orchestra" kids first, which was cool, but their club is completely separate from the small group club, so I got their flier and continued to look. I think the first people I got stopped by was the water polo team, who sold themselves to me this way after I told them I've never played: "It's O.K.! We need eight (?) people to play water polo, and only have FIVE." Hahaha.
I got many other fliers that day including ones for archery, soccer, American football, aikido (spelling may be wrong), and others. Apparently
*I'm too hungry to continue. To lunch! And then I promise I'll complete this part!!!
... Apparently the sports teams seem to think that I'd be a good asset, which I'm guessing is based on the fact that I'm a tall white guy. Unfortunately for me, that's pretty far from the truth. Though, as mentioned, I was interested in one sport, and that was baseball. After being warned that maybe teams wouldn't want foreigners and whatnot I was skeptical about my chances about talking to the baseball guys, but after some choppy Japanese talking I was invited to their party at 1600.
By the way, here's my experience with baseball, which I told them: I played with my brother, sister, and friends on a rec-league team and we didn't win, and then I played on the UTS team in the Fall that won one game. I had to tell them that I played 1st base and left field respectively, and that I was the captain of the UTS team, haha. They were impressed, but I did remind them that it was softball and of the records.
That was my first experience being surrounded by all Japanese people and having to fend for myself in a long time. Actually, it may have been my first ever. There was a black girl there, but I didn't notice/talk to her until the very end of the dinner, so I'm still going to count that as my first time with it. And it went okay.
I've found it really hard to do extremely casual conversations with the amount of Japanese I know. I hardly know how I do it in English, but I do know that I'm not very good at it, even in my native language. My friends and I at home have been trying to randomly approach people and strike up conversations for a while, but it's really weird for us for the most part, and it's even weirder for me in Japan when I have to really try hard to not be monotonous, not be boring, and come off as me. I've always felt that I'm better at showing myself to people through actions, but in some situations it's even hard to do that. For example, take going to baseball practice. I get there and see my teammates for a brief moment before we do something in the field. I don't know anything that translates to a "hey, what's up!" directly... and I feel funny using "genki" as a means of a casual "how's it going?" If I could remember the players' names more easily I think it'd be easier for me, but alas... that's not going well at the moment.
In the end I think I did pretty well. Got to talk to a few of the guys, ask a few questions, got an introduction by the captain who presented himself to me as "Cruise Tom", by which I still call him (especially since I don't know his real name). The food and drink was good... I think that what the clubs do is called "nomikai", which translates to "drinking party" via jisho.org. At these, though, they have both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and an insurgence of different kinds of food that everyone shares.
Here's a picture of the table. You'll notice the girls there. They aren't anyone's girlfriends, but instead are a part of the team. In Japan, baseball teams (at least, in high school and college) recruit females to be "team managers". They help out the team by setting up things, throwing balls at them to hit into the batting nets (hopefully someone will know what I'm talking about), collecting balls, giving first aid, and probably some other stuff.
I'm going to end the post now and get to cleaning my room up a little bit... do some laundry, some vacuuming, and some trashing organizing... as well as study some kanji, woohoo!
Until next time...!
I don't know if I mentioned the characters of the people who helped us last time, but both the nice, easy-to-understand lady and the sweaty, bumbly worker-who-acts-like-an-intern-but-isn't guy were both there. The guy didn't help us this time unfortunately, but instead, staying true to his character, was hurrying somewhere, sweat rolling down his forehead as usual, and ended up running into someone on the way. It was awesome.
As a side note, after about a week in Warabi city the Sannin were pondering its mascot. It's a wallaby. Get it??????
Man, I love puns.
That night we got our phones, which wasn't too much of an experience. Basically, we were all waiting forever until finally someone was available to help us. We ended up getting post-paid phones because the deal was better than the prepaid ones and got to choose mailing address, colors, etc.! Jen did all of the talking and Dan and I played Mario Kart on the DS via wireless communication (I didn't even need to have the game!). Here's a picture of the workers in the phone shop who worked really hard for a long time to get five people registered for their phones. Mine's gold. Bling bling!
As well as celebrating the buying of our phones, it was Teresa's birthday! So, that night our plan was basically this: get phones, eat dinner, go to a bar, maybe sing some karaoke, stay up all night until 5am when we can take the trains to get to Tsukiji, the fish market that supposedly sells some awesome fish in the morning. It went well for the most part.
While cruising the streets for a bar, Hunter got approached by this guy, who supposedly muttered some incomprehensible stuff and shook money at him. We don't know what he was up to, but take a closer look (the picture's bad, but I decided to keep it because so that I could show you what he was up against). Most likely he was a representative of places like these. In the middle of that picture you can see a Starbucks-like logo. That's actually the Starbucks lady with her breasts showing.
The next picture represents the awful luck that I was having taking pictures that night. People just would NOT stop walking in front of my shots! I think that two people actually got in my way of this shot, but I deleted the first one before I decided to keep the rest for the blog.
Here's another picture of an awesome sign. This one's for you, Uncle Dave!
So we finally settled down at a bar. On one side of the table there were the guys (left to right, Sehyun, me, Hunter, Alex), and the girls (Teresa, Jeanette, Jen, Natalie, Mia) faced us on the other. Since I was in Japan I got some Japanese-only drinks. One was a Calpis sour (ridicule me all you want) and the other was a thing of hot sake, which tasted like slightly flavored water.
When it was time to leave, we got the bill and, to make a long story short, we found out that we were screwed by the bar. The drinks were cheap, yeah, but then they charged the people who wanted limes with their Tequila shots for the limes (probably 100-yen) and also charged a ridiculous gratuity that wasn't deserved of the service we got. We left pretty irate, to be nice.
Afterwards we scoured the city for a while afterwards and couldn't really decide what to do. Some people wanted to do karaoke, some didn't want to pay... so we wound up at McDonald's until closing and then at an extremely smoky coffee shop. 5am couldn't come soon enough.
Arriving in Tsukiji, one of the first things that we saw was this, which is pretty representative of the city since it IS known for its awesome fish market. Here're some little guys on a poster that want to welcome you along with THIS DUDE. Needless to say, I really wanted to find his restaurant, but alas...! All I found was another fish.
The fish market journey started with passing the graveyard of Styrofoam fish boxes. I knew them all too well from the Fish House. The entrance and the exit basically looked like this. You won't be able to tell from that picture, but the forklifts and other motorized equipment were just zooming back and forth in that place in a hurry, and if you weren't careful you could get easily skewered by one of those babies. Oh look, the first shot of the day was blocked by a guy with a thing of shrimp (maybe). Cool. Thanks guy. You blocked the guy slicing a frozen fish with a sword. Luckily, he had to do it again. Whoa!
Some of these pictures ahead are not for the squeamish, including the next one of fish in a pool of blood. Buckets like that were all over the place in the market. And, to give you an idea what the whole place looked like, if you can imagine a tight flea market with those pitchforks and people running around like if they didn't get to where they were going and QUICK they would lose their lottery money, well, that's what the place was like, except there was water (both clean and fishy) alllll over the floor. People were constantly dumping water everywhere. Yes, and if the flea market had people cutting up fish all over the place, that would work, too.
They did have some amazing products, though. I've never seen such huge clams in my life. One day I'll probably go back and actually go purchase one. Unfortunately since paces were varied in this quest, stopping was not an option. *warning* Man, poor, delicious fish... poor, delicious octopus. *end* Seeing those was wild, but not as wild as seeing a frozen fish cut in two, or this guy in a poncho blocking my shot. There were also many tanks of things like live octopi, trays of giant crabs, and people in my way. If you look at that one, though, you can see what a fish's insides look like frozen.
We glided through the market with no injuries, thankfully (but some pretty close calls for some of the folks... one of us got stopped/created a traffic jam), and since most everyone was aiming to just get back home, we didn't even get to eat the fish! I was disappointed, but Hunter and I vowed to return one day.
In the station, I was so tired that I was falling asleep standing up.
For more wonderful Tsukiji pictures that don't involve bloody things, I recommend Mia's blog. She took some great ones.
(Arbitrary shots of a cool, Batmobile-ish car)
In Japan you can get some cool, unique sweets. One of my favorites, which I mentioned before, is the melon bread that I buy at 7-11 for 105 yen. It doesn't really taste like melon, but rather like very sugary bread, as you can imagine from the photo. You can also buy a green tea flavored Kit-Kat which is packaged in a nice box and even rather appealing plastics. Lastly, here's a shot of the actual bars. Don't be alarmed, it wasn't vile, but actually pretty good. I'd say it was white chocolaty with a hint of tea thrown in there. In the background there's a drink called C.C. Lemon which I find to be not so good. But, to prevent myself from getting scurvy with the lack of fruit consumption, I thought it would be a good idea to drink a can.
For the end of this post, I'm going to talk a little about the grocery stores. In Japan, the Yaoko supermarket is set up like an everyday supermarket, except that the McDonald's on one side makes it seem a little more like a Walmart. You can buy whatever including fresh sushi in little boxes and baked goods (i.e., the bacon stick) just like at home, blah blah... but when you get to the end things are a little different. First of all, they don't have shopping carts, but only little baskets, so when you bring your basket to the line, you set it on the counter and the ringing starts. There's no conveyor belt, by the way, just a lady taking out your stuff and putting into a basket that was used by the customer before you (in the picture you can see that there's a basket already ready already). In the basket the cashier arranges your groceries very neatly and then rings you up. If you're paying cash in Japan, it is custom for you to put your money in this little tray that has rubber on the bottom (you can kind of spot it if you look closely towards the bottom end of the credit card machine). I usually hand it to them if it's not a lot of coins, or I show them my count. I don't like the plastic thing.
Anyway, you also receive a number of bags in your basket according to how much you purchased. I've never gotten anything more than two, and even though I was scared once, the bags are made of a thick plastic that makes them act almost like paper, so everything fit quite well. You end up actually bagging the groceries yourself at a station like so, which has extra bags if you need them. I've never needed one, so the bags may actually be less effective or something... I'm not sure. But here you bag, put your basket in the pile, and then are off on your merry way. This ends my presentation on the grocery stores.
Er, I lied about that being the end. Looks like I had one more picture, which gets me into one more day at Sophia. On Monday we got our placements and looked around at all of the clubs. At UVA, clubs set up posterboard presentations in the amphitheatre. Here, people parade the streets and approach you. Naturally I was looking for the jazz groups, and I also wanted to try and find the baseball guys. I ran into the "Swing Jazz Orchestra" kids first, which was cool, but their club is completely separate from the small group club, so I got their flier and continued to look. I think the first people I got stopped by was the water polo team, who sold themselves to me this way after I told them I've never played: "It's O.K.! We need eight (?) people to play water polo, and only have FIVE." Hahaha.
I got many other fliers that day including ones for archery, soccer, American football, aikido (spelling may be wrong), and others. Apparently
*I'm too hungry to continue. To lunch! And then I promise I'll complete this part!!!
... Apparently the sports teams seem to think that I'd be a good asset, which I'm guessing is based on the fact that I'm a tall white guy. Unfortunately for me, that's pretty far from the truth. Though, as mentioned, I was interested in one sport, and that was baseball. After being warned that maybe teams wouldn't want foreigners and whatnot I was skeptical about my chances about talking to the baseball guys, but after some choppy Japanese talking I was invited to their party at 1600.
By the way, here's my experience with baseball, which I told them: I played with my brother, sister, and friends on a rec-league team and we didn't win, and then I played on the UTS team in the Fall that won one game. I had to tell them that I played 1st base and left field respectively, and that I was the captain of the UTS team, haha. They were impressed, but I did remind them that it was softball and of the records.
That was my first experience being surrounded by all Japanese people and having to fend for myself in a long time. Actually, it may have been my first ever. There was a black girl there, but I didn't notice/talk to her until the very end of the dinner, so I'm still going to count that as my first time with it. And it went okay.
I've found it really hard to do extremely casual conversations with the amount of Japanese I know. I hardly know how I do it in English, but I do know that I'm not very good at it, even in my native language. My friends and I at home have been trying to randomly approach people and strike up conversations for a while, but it's really weird for us for the most part, and it's even weirder for me in Japan when I have to really try hard to not be monotonous, not be boring, and come off as me. I've always felt that I'm better at showing myself to people through actions, but in some situations it's even hard to do that. For example, take going to baseball practice. I get there and see my teammates for a brief moment before we do something in the field. I don't know anything that translates to a "hey, what's up!" directly... and I feel funny using "genki" as a means of a casual "how's it going?" If I could remember the players' names more easily I think it'd be easier for me, but alas... that's not going well at the moment.
In the end I think I did pretty well. Got to talk to a few of the guys, ask a few questions, got an introduction by the captain who presented himself to me as "Cruise Tom", by which I still call him (especially since I don't know his real name). The food and drink was good... I think that what the clubs do is called "nomikai", which translates to "drinking party" via jisho.org. At these, though, they have both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and an insurgence of different kinds of food that everyone shares.
Here's a picture of the table. You'll notice the girls there. They aren't anyone's girlfriends, but instead are a part of the team. In Japan, baseball teams (at least, in high school and college) recruit females to be "team managers". They help out the team by setting up things, throwing balls at them to hit into the batting nets (hopefully someone will know what I'm talking about), collecting balls, giving first aid, and probably some other stuff.
I'm going to end the post now and get to cleaning my room up a little bit... do some laundry, some vacuuming, and some trashing organizing... as well as study some kanji, woohoo!
Until next time...!
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