Really Short

Yesterday they played 雪やコンコン outside my window in the morning for who knows how long. I guess they are anticipating winter. さーな。 Either way, that was annoying. My host mom made yet another hat for me. She really is inspired, and i really like this new one too. I wore my new pants today to school and I got a lot of comments. They were really nice comments too. I even confused a couple blokes into thinking that I was wearing a dress! haha. Tomorrow I leave for Hokkaido which should be awesome! I'm very excited! It was beautiful yesterday. It was so perfect that I wore shorts and a T and went and laid out in the sun next to some harvested rice fields. That was awesome. I also woke up late today for school, by about 45 minutes, but I made it in time! woot, talk about luck. I even had time to try my luck with the bank to no avail; for some reason I cannot withdraw any money despite having seen the direct deposit sheet in my e-mail. Also, there are these poop-shaped sugary snacks that my family likes. I was afraid to try them at first, but once i had one or two....I couldn't stop! There's the picture.

Sometimes there is a quick change in attitude and feeling that you can't explain. I'm sorry for feeling that way with some people.

雨が降ってるの

It has been raining now for almost, if not for a full, 24 hours and I am quite certain my pants are going to get wet again. I'm just going to say that next week I only have 2 days of school before break so I am very excited about that-woot! Hokkaido and Tokyo are on the horizon and it should be loads of fun. I have just spent the last of my October stipend ($400) last night on food and so I was really worried that I wouldn't get my November one for a while and need to borrow from friends for a few days while I recovered and waited for the direct deposit. No worries though, today I received the confirming e-mail of another direct deposit and so I am back on top. Either way, Dad or Mom if you're reading this could you please transfer some of my money into my ND account? I'll try and contact you. I know that Tokyo's hotel for 2 nights is going to cost me only a little less than $60 (way to go hostel!) and then my train tickets are going to be a bit steep but I imagine around $100 round trip should be about right. That leaves me with 240 to spend on food & souvenirs in both Hokkaido and Tokyo over about a 4 day period (this trip is going to be nuts by the way. Luckily Hokkaido is only about an hour and a half away by plane so the trip so that shouldn't wear down the energy level. Prolly have to arrive at the airport about an hour before departure (which, logistically has not been calculated as far as time and money). I have to do a little more research about what I want to do and see in Hokkaido but I think I have a certain couple things in mind that would make me a happy traveler. As far as Tokyo goes though...I'm pretty clueless except for the fact that I want to see Harajuku and Tokyo Tower (maybe even go up in it). For the most part I feel like I might go head first into the whole experience with vary little foreknowledge of the city. Karen says that she has a friend there that could show us around and that idea seems like the most ideal to me.
Yesterday I went with Regina and Marla to an Izakaya to chill. Basically these places are the coolest restaurants that you have ever seen. I felt like a kid in a treehouse with room service! And the room had little tables and those great square pillows that I really should know the 日本語 for. The music was not of Japanese origin but it did not distract me or annoy me at all; they played some grand piano and brass for most of the time. There were sayings written on the walls (next to caveman-quality drawings of little boys falling down??) and the food selection was wide while the service was impressively alert. It has been the only place so far that I have gone to in Japan (besides my house here) that requires its patrons to remove their くつ, shoes, before entering. It was so cool! I was pretty spent and not that hungry but I somehow ended up paying 1000 yen by the end of the night (you go ahead and look up the conversion on that baby). Totally worth it. Rob, Cristine, and....yeah I don't remember her name, all joined up with us later and partook in the festivities until it was late and we were tired. G

げり all over the place.

デスノート

Things keep happening. Today I drank some coffee, sent a letter home (finally), e-mailed my adviser (finally), ate some boiled peanuts (no good), almost missed my stop in Ichinomiya from drifting asleep, cancelled my trip out to the Zen Monastery next week because I'm going to be in Hokkaido during that time, received a knit hat from my host mom! (It has a big ball on the top and a pin on the side), sang to Mohawk Mike while wearing Regina's scarf, got a 9/10 on a quiz when i should have been marked as an 8.8 (didn't inform the authorities), ate a panini for lunch while talking to my Nihonjin friend Yuka about what I did yesterday, faked that I forgot about the takoyaki party yesterday, realized that I had an extra 5 days to turn in my homework, learned that Ikebana (or the art of flower arrangement) students actually have midterm and final exams on how to arrange flowers, did not have enough money to buy lunch so i had to borrow 500yen from a friend, felt uncomfortable with my spanish-speaking abilities, wondered why or if my Japanese-speaking abilities were worsening, finally did my job as a student and got paid for it (basically I had to listen to two sets of teachers-in-training today and then review their performance....for money! FINALLY!), got a few comments about my Walgreens hat, talked about Kosovo, Serbia, and Albania with Diana, met up randomly with Marla and Reinosa-san on the way out of the subway station, found a grown up version of Alicia with much curlier hair and felt all homesick for a few moments, was asked by my hostparents if i could take three days off of school to visit her sister's apple orchard (wtf?), watched another episode of Death Note (strange show), considered buying a bottle of wine, stayed up until midnight, wrote a really long and incorrect sentence, and did and thought many other things that I cannot remember now and probably had told myself at the time that they were thought to remember them so that I could write them here...things, and yeah I'm in Japan.

Cher Cher

Ah Tuesdays, the wonderful Tuesdays. Why are they so perfect? It's the fact that class always gets out early on a Tuesday, leaving the whole day open to do whatever you want. Which meant that I went to see Starfish. The results from the oral exam that I took yesterday (funny story there) will be in by Friday or Thursday i think. Ok, but about yesterday: I show up really early right, like a quarter to nine or so, and I check the day's schedule and see that my turn comes up at 11:10am. So I have plenty of time (I wasn't too upset that I had so much time on my hands. I didn't look up the times last week and now I had the chance to study more....or to lay down on the grass and enjoy the sun.). However, for some reason between that time and my exam time I got the notion that my exam was at 11:50 instead of 11:10. So I mosie on over to the examination room around 11:40, take a look at the schedule on the board there, and freak out because I had missed my exam by a half hour! To make matters more asinine, I had drank an espresso shot to pump myself up for the test. SO I'm totally pumped and nervous now and then the prof walks out and I say, "I'm sorry! I thought my test was at 11:10!"......yeah. So he pauses then says, "It was." They ended up letting me take it after everyone had gone. Whew!
I went home after my crazy history class. I need to e-mail Kathleen Opel, shoot I keep forgetting that! Not good! Then today was Tuesday so we all left early and Regina and I went to this little cafe that she had been raving about for about 3 weeks or more, Cher Cher, and it was awesome! I had the best parfait I have ever had! It was a vanilla/coffee/caramel/almond?/cookie/minty goodness in a tall glass with a long spoon. Reckers did not compare. The shop is only open for mildly erratic times which made it very hard to get there while it was open. There is only one person that works there and she has done an amazing job decorating the place to have a real, almost American East Coast beach house/Northern minnesota, built-in-the-1890s-and-then-given-a-modern-renovation-type feel home/shop. It felt like one of those ice-cream parlor/antique malls mom and dad take all of us kids out to sometime in eastern MN. You guys know the places: the ones with the random old garden & kitchen tools hanging on the wall, chipping paint, those places. It was so homey. And she played this French song that I recognized!
Then I watched the Tiplets Belleville (strange movie that will take a second watching to really appreciate) and headed home. It was a wonderful stay is all I need say.
I made it home, ate, worked on hw, and wound down the night. It is very hard to mail a letter out from Japan because they do not sell envelopes in their post-offices....yeah, weird, Japan.

Complainte de la Butte

Chilean food and Aquariums

チリ料理と水族館。Saturday Regina came over (after a long delay) to whip op some delicious Charquican. We were missing a few main ingredients (namely the aji Chileno) but it still turned out nicely. We even put together a little tomato/onion/olive oil salad on the side and served some Chilean wine to top it off. レヒナさんのホストファミリー一宮市に来た。Her host dad sits up so straight on the floor that it kindof freaked me out. He had better posture than Regina and that's saying a lot. The food tuned out OK overall and my host mom even offered that the Mr.牛田 take the wine with him--that was generous of her.
I worked on making some warasole (I think that's how it's spelt), a traditional Japanese indoor shoe. I feel like wearing it out to school one day though. They are made out of straw and my first one turned out quite ugly. I'll have to post a picture some time, so for now just do a search online. I had some sake with my host dad that night (The picture is of the glass you use to drink sake, a gyunomee) . It was cool. We joked around a bit. He was SO red from his little bottle of the stuff but then again he is 82 and Japanese! The Nagoya baseball team, the Dragons, won a really big game yesterday too so he was really happy about that and we watched a couple highlights before we called it a night.
Today I we went to the aquarium. By we I mean Wakae, Kento, Satsuke, & I went to the very beluga-loving aquarium at 名古屋港。Now, it wasn't rip-roarin fun--no--but I had a good time with my family there and I think that they had a good time too. We saw so many fish (some which I had never seen in a zoo before), a show with jumping dolphins (you'll have to ask me for the video for that one), and a very convenient observation tower from which you could see all of the port, the Italian Village, and a small flea market which we didn't end up going to because we wanted to head over to Osu to see the festival. Either way it was wonderful (Kento poked this strange-looking whale model in the eye a couple times), but I became so SO tired out that I ended up really sleeping on the subway ride back to 金山。金山からオスへ行ってまつりを見た。て埋まらなかったと思った。I mean, it had some strange shows (not including the taiko show which has not ever let me down) but overall it wasn't too much different that Osu on a non-festival day: shops and people everywhere. I was soooo tired by the end of it all. I napped when I got home, finished the shoes later, and then indulged in the best sushi of my life as made by master-chef Wakae. The meal was easity worth in the $30-40 range and made up of salmon, tuna, shrimp, eel, octopus, caviar, and a few others that I could, and still cannot not name.

so all's well that ends with sushi.

SICK!

This past week i was sick. That's all there is too it. Sick. I went to the Matsuri on Sunday with Uchi and Yuuka and Regina and I had this fried chicken at a restaurant and i got sick. REally Sick. I was sick from Monday morning (monday sucked) until yesterday (thursday). Headache, fever, stomach ache, back cramps, dizziness, and the most sleepy feeling i have ever had in my life. I basically drank about 5-6 liters of water between the last 2 days to recuperate from my dehydration (stomach ache, dehydration...you do the math) Oh it bit major balls. Not to mention that mondays are one of my longest days. That was the worst case of the Mondays that I have ever had. Mallory actually asked someone else if I was on crack because I looked like a druggie monday morning. Yeah, that bad. I am SO glad that I packed those Pepto-Bismol before coming though! Those things saved me these last couple days. Yay Pepto-Bismol! But to some I either played off the sickness so well (or they just don't care about me) because they didn't notice that i was sick at all this week. I'm going to go with the later mentioned idea miself.
I don't want to re-cap the entire week so i wont (being that this is my own, by-he-力-of-my-own-will blog), instead skipping ahead to today. Except to say that that fateful Sunday we saw these Peruvian peeps that set up on the streets of Nagoya playing Andean music! (Thanks Regina for the pic) Regina was SOOOO excited! And they were pretty good too! It was such a surreal moment because we're in Japan, listening to this Peruvian band...oh and there was this poster with Brad Pitt on it in the background advertising for a cell phone company; what a crazy global world we all live in! Ok moving on-------- Today I had a test in Japanese; they have tests each week that encompass 2-3 chapters at a time. Then we were givin' a heads up on this upcoming project for our class that has to be an oral 発表 on some place that I would like to go (within Japan) someday. All the major cities are going to be taken i know, so I think I'd like to pick a small city in the middle of the main island to research, somewhere "on the neck of the dragon so to speak. That way people begin to see outside the box of the regularly traveled areas and into the real Japan (I should talk, seeing as I haven't the foggiest). Then after class I headed with Regina over to a local supermarket with dirt-cheap prices to grab some of the food for tomorrow's Chilean lunch: Charquican. Oh and it was POURING RAIN. I was soaked so badly that I actually stopped at a convenience store, bought a new pair of socks, and after slipping them on -- and before putting them in my squlauwshy wet shoes--covered each foot in a plastic bag. Yes, genius. I had dry feet for the rest of the day.

I looked silly on the subway with my two bags of groceries.

名古屋まつり

How do I add more pics to this thing....It only lets's me upload 5. Bleah. Anyhoo, these 5 are from the the Nagoya City Festival. The one above is of a group carving out chopsticks! Fun!
NHK is basically the main News broadcasting station of Japan and so of course they had their own float and mascot in the parade!
These are basically simplified and much cheaper versions of the golden whales that you will find on the top of Nagoya Castle. They are the symbol of Nagoya and the source of their pride.
I am not sure who the women were supposed to represent but the parade progressed as a sort of acted timeline of Japan with various wars reenacted during the progression of the ceremony. These women are most likely wearing typical clothing from one a certain distinct point in Japanese history. The performances that everyone put on were spectacular.
Now this last picture is of a group of taiko players. I just thought the drums looked awesome! I think I might post more pics.....facebook perhaps? さーなー

What do I write here? Hi! Welcome to my Blog!

For those of your just joining me, thank you. I am in Japan. I write stuff online for kicks and for later reference and maybe, just maybe, for someone to actually learn something. The big thing in today's news: TOYOTA: トヨタ factory!!!
Basically today that's all I did besides a little bit of class in the morning. We left 南山 at about 1pm heading towards the plant. We made it there in about 45 minutes. The tour was short but I was able to see the entire plant assembly process (or at least the most interesting parts). Thinking about it, it would be pretty strange to work in that factory knowing that at any moment some tourist might be watchin your every move...judging you! Actually there was this one worker that tried to look cool but just about got clothes-lined by a steel rod as she worked. Our tour guide was 親切 and her accent was impressively well worked out save for a few words. She alwasy asked some kind of obvious and almost insulting question like "At eye level there are doors. Can you see the doors?" Basically the doors were bright colors and about 10 feet in front of us so there was no way we COULDN'T see them. Now asking that kind of a question once is ok, twice is almost expected if she did it once, but sooooo many times our visual and mental capabilities were challenged with nearly insultingly かんたん easy questions like that. It was fun.
No pictures!!! (they said) You can clearly see how that worked out for me. The womens bathrooms were entirely pink-including the toilets (or so I heard). 95-97% of the work in Toyota is done by robots (which was basically my preconception of how i thought all of Japan would be run but really isn't). Only quality control and some parts attachment is done by manual labor. It was all very clean. There even was a short Q&A at the end where some...questions were...answered. Ok, after the walking tour was over I was ready to go back home because that was where the fun ended (except for this cool, instrument-playing robot in the showroom) I was tired after the tourからです。
But now I'm home and writing to you, Mr./Mrs. New. I hope you enjoyed this short entry and the couple pictures. Stay tuned for more. Weekend excursions come to mind.

Un dia de mi vida...

Antes de irnos de esta tierra tenemos que ver el horizon y el sol quando llegue para decir...hola mundo! Hola flor! No hay razon para irme pero cada vez voy...y no se! porque voy! Es me vida y ya no puedo cambiarla hoy. Sometimes I write random things.
Be sure not to tip the waitress in Japan. Not that I did that anywhere yet...it's just that I thought about that now. The weather is definitely cooling down here in Japan. The futon cover that was in the closet is the warmest thing that has ever blanketed me ever by the way. I must buy a futon cover when I get back to the states. They are absolutely essential for any amount of cold weather. Today I finally picked up my registered alien card at the ward office. I HAD to do that by today if I want to work a couple hours over the next few weeks to make somewhere around $50. It's not too much money but it's not too much work really. It's just going to be listening to a sensei-to-be for an hour and a half for 4 thursdays; I'm not worried....should i be????!?!?! oh...no...
I met up, this was random, with Mr. Mexico today while walking to the ward office in 一宮. I know! really random! First of all, there are dozens of cities in the Nagoya area, Ichinomiya is VERY far away from campus, and lastly there are VERY FEW foreign exchange student in 南山 let alone a minuscule amount of foreigners period in all of 一宮 so I was basically stunned. I couldn't believe i ran into him.
I got back home early (4ish) and my host fam was way surprised. We had sushi today 「手巻き寿司」　てまきずし or something like that. It was, as are ALL of Wakae-san's dishes, delicious! I played Kento in a couple games of Chinese Checkers, regular, checkers, dominoes, memory, and that box game that ya taught me dad. I beat him in checkers(both kinds), and the memory game; he beat me in everything else. It was a lot of fun. I think my Japanese was the worst today that it has been in some time.
Satsuki-chan had some friends over today and they wanted me to say hello like 100 times. Then they asked me to grab the piano book on the table...yeah...i thought they said that they wanted the book on the piano. SO I started walking over to the piano and they started laughing until i finally figured them out and brought the right book at which point her friend says 「頭がいいですね！」　which roughly translates to "oooh he's pretty smart isn't he" with sarcasm. Thank you..brat.
Also, I don't think I wrote about this yet, but yesterday at the station i was looking at brochures while waiting for my train right...and this guy, he must have been looking down at a paper or something, just COLLIDED! BAM! head first into a sliding glass door! The sound was so loud that it made a girl next to me jump. SMACK! The best part was that he tried to play it off like it was no big deal. It was hilarious! but no one laughed....until he walked away. I was so glad the people laughed tho. I was starting to believe that i was the only one that saw it happen or that the Japanese had seen EVERYTHING soo many times that this kind of occurrence was just old hat. I couldnt hold it in though, it was just to -BAM!-funny.
In other news: Train, Plane, or Ferry?
AND: Say hello to friendly old ladies who wish you a safe trip home.

I want to put captions on my pictures.

花火

This weekend has been a fun one to say the least. Friday as you may recall involved some opinionated sampling of various fine drinking establishments. Saturday however proved to be a much more enjoyable experience. Saturday really began sometime around 3ish when Regina came all the way over to 一宮 for the main event later that night. しかし、before going out to that, we headed over to the self-proclaimed "bread-momma's" house to enjoy a little manual labor. (odd sounding sentence) We met up with Brian who was, I feel, awkward as always, and who had only woken up about 10 minutes prior, and we 作るed some bread. We made some small dinner rolls, other spiraled pastries that were later filled with potato paste and custard (separate pastries mind you), and pizza crusts. We sat around and talked a bit while sampling some of her pumpkin pudding and freshly made apple juice--100%. All around her house she had a garden with many many plants both flowers and fruits...i suppose some veggies too, and we picked some of the figs and munched on those for a bit. As I reached for one especially ripe one in the tree it broke off and instead of landing softly splattered nearly flat into my palm! skaaaa-wish! それの後に花火に見に行ったよ！花火見っければバスに乗らなくちゃいけなくて、満員バスだったよ！みんな花火が見たかって、誰も車を使いたくないからと思う。出た時花火の所でも人々がいた。どうしようと思った！しかし、花火の所は広場だったから、大丈夫でした。It really was amazing. The kind of fireworks show that i saw was spectacular. It was timed with the music and we were REALLY close to the show! There was one part in particular that really moved me though. The act was done to an older, slower song about 日本 and, about 60% of the way through they lit up a center structure that was made up of several hundreds of smaller stationary fireworks that all lined up to form the silhouette of Mt.Fuji . 富士山。And as I watched this performance and the sky lit up...I looked around and found myself almost perfectly content. Really very happy. I saw all the family and friends that had come out to watch teh fireworks together, I saw my host family and host brother Kento and host sister Satsuki enjoying the show, and I saw Brian, and I saw Regina. And I was happiest because I saw her. Bittersweet happiness.
We went home after that and relaxed. It was a very good Saturday.

I did nothing on 日曜日 except eat WAY too much miso-soba or something like that. Did they actually think ANYWONE can eat all that? I ate that at 1:30 and I had to wait until 8pm before I had the slightest hint of hunger agian.

万歳！

三

Third entry this month. Today was the last official day of something. That's a little sad. All in all though a really great day. Class is getting a little repetitive so there are certain things that we do to keep ourselves entertained. Annoying the professor would be one of the many things that we do. Even though we have been here for about one month...it feels, at the same time, that we have only been here for a week and that one month is unreal, AND that we have all been here for much longer than one month and--again--that one month seems off because it feels like we have been here much longer. No matter how you twist it, we're messed up.
Tomorrow I am watching fireworks with my host family. They will be held near 一宮 and I should be going with a couple other friends too.
Lastly, tonight we went to a place called Soda Pop near campus that served really well done burgers and Mexican food and the atmosphere was phenomenally well put together: bull-horns, American flags, inflatable corona bottles, neon beer signs, the works. And they played Offspring....a lot. It was a real American feel...save for the fact that the waiter only spoke Japanese. There were even Tabasco bottles there that had labels in Japanese on them!
Still forgetting where I park my bike...

A little more

Encuentro que 今ジェトコスタをのっている。For the most part it is a fun ride. The last few days have been warm and sunny with a much lower humidity (thank god). The temperature I feel is between 70 in the morning and 80ish at the highest. It's a really nice temperature. Some leaves are starting to fall(a couple actually fell right on me and I kept them as book markers). In school the other day many of the　留学生 aka me gave little presentations on our schools. Naturally I was psyched to do it. I wore my ND hat and shirt and Marla had an ND movie to show and there were plenty of pamphlets to see too. Many of the students were discouraged from coming tho because they have to get a really high TOEFL score to be able to attend I think they said. Either way it was a lot of fun! Pictures! Regina seemed like the only one representing her school there, but she had a large crowd anyway. "On Wisconsin!"
Afterwards I came home to munch on some delicious dindin or 晩ご飯。その晩ご飯の写真は違う晩ご飯で、今日の晩ご飯です。It consisted of what i would classify as shrim n muchroom rolls (as opposed to egg-rolls), some sweet potatoes & green beans, the most delicious Tofu "steak" with eggs you would ever find, of course rice, and お茶(green tea) to drink. It was great and it left me full to the brim. Not to mention she served a frozen banana desert later.
I had forgotten that this was the month of Ramadan and because I have habitually followed it since going out with Janine you can imagine my shock to find that there were only about 9 days left of the month. Now it would be rude to tell my host family to cook me breakfast at like 6 am or so so I decided that after breakfast I would not eat or drink anything until 晩ご飯。 Call me crazy but it's for awareness not only of the Muslims in our world but also a personal awareness of my dependence on basic things like food and ESPECIALLY water. I'll be sure to stay hydrated by drinking plenty after dinner (don't worry mom&dad).
As for Japan, people on bikes are not aware that other people on bikes may be using the same sidewalk. That is all.

この世界へ

どこまで行っている？誰もわからないね。Dame un cancion y te doy una poema de mi vida en este instante.　　Dame tu amor y te doy mi corazon sin pensar.
Hay veces en mi vida que pienso que hizo algo malo. Pero no malo como un ladron pero malo como una respuesta incorrecto. Y todos me miran. はずかしい。何をしようか。
Today was uneventful and cold outside. There really is very little to report. Yesterday was more eventful really. I went to see Regina and we talked again. There are some things in this world that you cannot control I guess. One of those things happens to be who you fall for. As it so happens, I'm in Japan for four months....only. Sorry mom and dad for the sentiments but I know that you can understand me. It's funny the way someone who I have never known these 20 years can have such a strong current on the ocean of my life. I say it's for the better but it's the worst thing that I can imagine right now.
誕生日おめでとう！レヒナさん。　It was the first and only one that I'd have with you.
明日いっしょうにどこかへ歩きに行くつもりだぞ。この週はさい後のいっしょうにの週です。