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...!