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...!
Friday, April 25, 2008
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...!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Finally, Ichi Maru Maru...!
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.
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.
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!
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