I Blog That Emotion

And that emotion is awesomeness. Some people might claim that awesomeness isn't an emotion , but I beg to differ.

Anyway so Monday was a day of great coolness and whatnot. I woke up very tired because I had to stay up late preparing for the high school visit that we had yesterday. Normally when this happens I'm able to refresh myself with a nice shower. However this time my roommate was using the shower, and I didn't have time to take one after him. I ended up having to go to class completely out of it. The upside is that even though I was falling asleep, I was able to still display enough knowledge that the teacher was satisfied. So clearly once class was over I went to go sleep.

So now I woke up, and it was time to finish preparing for the high school visit, which I dreaded more and more as it drew nearer and nearer. Desperately I created cards for pictures. I thought about what I wanted to say. I wondered if I had done enough.

Finally it was time to go. Everyone got in the bus, all feeling very nervous. The journey to the high school seemed to take forever, yet it was still not long enough. We got there, and with almost no instruction, we were sent off to the classrooms. For the first 10 minutes of class, I didn't have anyone there who spoke English, and, due to lack of instruction and Japanese skills, I didn't know how to get started. Eventually though, Dr. Otsu showed up and help me get started, and once we got started, it was a lot of fun. We played Pictionary and telephone. Pictionary was OK; Japanese people are very good at drawing. Telephone was a little more fun because it was interesting to see what they would come back with. For the second class we did, the students understood English better, and I had another exchange student with me. The downside however was that the teacher I was paired with this time was more strict and that made things harder in a sense. The whole experience was a lot of fun, and the only downside was I wasn't able to take a picture with either class.

After we got back to campus, some of us went to work out. The gym here is pretty weak, but it's better than nothing. It was really nice to finally be able to get some exercise. Afterwords I felt great, but I was also hungry, so I made pasta. For the first time since I came here, the sauce came out right. I ended up making so much food that I had to share it with twice as many people as I had planned. It was probably good in the end though because I might get food in return.

So basically at this point I was ready to write my blog about how awesome the day was, but I didn't have time. I instead went to see if one of the other students needed help with her homework, and I ran into Aimi. I ended up talking to her about various things like anime, American vs. Japanese culture, and Japanese language for like three hours. It was a lot of fun that it just added the the awesomeness of the day. The downside was that I ended up staying up late again, but it turned out not to be a problem today for some reason.

So point is that I had one awesome day.

Phillip and the Blog Factory

Well here I am. Pushing out blog after blog after blog. I think the real question at this point is “Is this getting boring, tiring, or none of the above. With my editor, me and I don't know why I'm allowed to call myself that because I'm sure you've realized by some of my more recent blog posts I rarely proofread my work, breathing down my neck telling me another blog must go out, I wonder is it really worth it and still fascinating to the reader.

Anyway I last left off in my talking about how I almost got myself lost in Mito. So let's try to remember what happen next. Uh....Well I believe that night went to Bou's to celebrate a friends birthday. Originally we were going to go to nomihodai, but it was more expensive because it was a holiday. Actually now that I think about it, we were gonna go to nomihodai the next night and went to Bou's instead for that reason. Point is on those nights I went out and met some new Japanese people, expanding my horizons beyond the few that I'd previously met. Also over the past few days I learned never trust Seiko because she's a trickster. Anyway both nights were a lot of fun. We drank we laughed, my wallet emptied even more.

I think Thursday we went out for ramen again, which was awesome as always. Sometimes a good bowl of ramen just hits the spot. This is the night we learned how incredibly easy it is to get N flustered. After the ramen we decided to take a gander inside a Japanese book store called Book-Ace. There we encountered all kinds of wondrous purchasables. There were tons of movies, most of them for rent, books, used video games, cell phones, CDs, magazines, and so on in that fashion. I could not spend enough time in the store nor could I leave without purchasing a cheap game, which even though it all happens to fast for me to read I think it is actually helping my Japanese.

Let's see I guess that really just leaves last night. We went out to Bandoutarou's, and I got myself Gekikaramisonikomiudon and ordered it all by myself, after the Japanese people taught me out to read the Kanji. After a few of us, including me, returned to the dorm while the others went shopping at Kasumi. After some time it was 11:30 and my friend decided he wanted the American version of The Ring because like the bad storyteller I am I left out that we had watched the Japanese one earlier in the week. So we made a mad dash for Book-Ace and managed to get there with time to spare. After that we got back to the dorms and after much talked it was decided to watch the American version of The Ring, which I didn't really feel like watching. So I didn't. I went back to my room and watched part of Amelie instead, which was nice.

So what have I left out of this tale you ask? Elite Beat Agents. I got this game almost two years ago now, and I've been playing it on and off since then. Right now I'm in one of those on stages where I'd actually kind of like to at least unlock the hardest difficulty. So a couple days ago I got to the last song, and I can't seem to beat it. I can get pretty close though which is always frustrating. Anyway after this blog is up I might be back to trying to beat that.

Until next time remaining readers.

When Blogs Attack

Well so here we are. Another blog post. Well today I don't have too much to say. Last night we celebrated someone's birthday. I bought a game called Jump Ultimate Stars, which is like Super Smash Bros with manga characters. It's pretty cool, but I'm gonna have to learn a lot more Japanese to be able to play it.

Anyway so my real motivation in this blog post is to introduce a whole brand new second never seen before, at least in this blog. I'm of course talking about “Misadventures with Joe.” In this section, I will talk about some sort of thing I did that ended up going horrible wrong (or just wrong and I had to spice it up a bit). So this time in Misadventures with Joe, I went to Mito Eki (eki means station in Japanese) with another International student. So we go there by the 23 bus, the only bus I know goes to the station. So we go clothes shopping, , which is really expensive in Japan, and then we went to the toys and games store so I could look at the used DS games. So my friend goes to get a stuffed animal for this girl at a bar we frequent. When he gets back we decide it's time to go because we have nothing else we want and we're not sure when the bus stops running.

So we get to the bus stop and realize we just missed the 23 back to the dorm, but we notice another one is coming in like 30 minutes so we check out another shop and come back. Then we wait....and wait...till we realize that it was a holiday, and the last bus had left over an hour ago panicked, scared we don't know what to do. We don't know if another bus will take us back towards the university. We're not sure if we can walk. A taxi just seems too expensive. Then my fellow adventure thinks he remembers that the 1 and 11 go close to the school also. I wasn't as sure about that though. Also even if it did, we wouldn't know which stop to get off at. That's when my fellow adventurer had a epiphany. He had read the manual they gave us for Japan, and he knew it said which bus go by the school. Luckily I had decided to bring my bag, and I had it with me. We found out that the 11 and 1 did in fact go by the school, so we hoped on the next bus, which happened to be the 11 and bolted towards school, unsure where to get off.

Now here we are. Riding the bus. Nothing looks familiar. People get on and off. We still we don't see anything familiar. Then finally my fellow adventurer recognizes some scenery and hears the bus recorded audio call out the stop for Tokiwa Daigaku, so he presses the button to get off. When the bus stops I now know where we are because we walked by one of the restaurants on our way back from karaoke. My fellow adventurer tries to lead the way back to school, but he starts off going the wrong way. Luckily I have a good memory for places so I take the lead of the party and march us right up to the school gates. Usually the gates are closed at this time, but today for some reason they're open, so we were able to take the short way back to the dorms. We both managed to make it back in one or more pieces.

Well that's pretty much it so I'll probably be going now. Watch out for the next attack.

Blog University

Well yesterday was the first day of having classes other than Japanese. Now this marks the beginning of me loosing all my free time to studying and work, but if I don't sleep hard enough I imagine I'll still find time for stuff.

Anyway I imagine that you'd like to hear about my first day of classes, or maybe you DON'T want to hear about them but you'll at least have to read about them if you read this blog. Anyway so after not getting quite enough sleep I somehow managed get to class even though my alarm clock died before it went off. Class was class and then I went out and FINALLY bought an umbrella and then got some lunch. After that I got back and arrived for the new classes. This is where the fun part begins if I didn't scare you off earlier in the paragraph.

So I arrived in my first class. This class is taught by two teachers. This first one showed up. She seemed somewhat interesting, but then the other teacher turned out to be very cool. He worked for Sony for nearly thirty years, and during class he asked us out for drinks at least four times.

After that we had a break because the religion class was canceled, though I don't think I'll be taking that class.

Then we had our compulsory class, which was OK but seems mostly like a counseling class. Apparently because of the Northridge people, we have write an essay every week that doubles as their blog. I can't imagine writing about my experiences week after week. I think that would drive me crazy.

The last class we had was with the guy from Sony again. Yet again he said we should go drinking. This class was also very interesting. It was about the Japanese way of thinking and how that differs from the American way of thinking. He personally selected or wrote all the materials he expects us to read, and they all seemed much more interesting than a lot of the stock stuff we have to read in American colleges.

So yeah I didn't really do a good job of making it exciting, mostly because I've been writing this in pieces throughout the day when I couldn't think of anything better to do, but my first day of full classes was pretty fun. Perhaps now I'll do something else.

A Blog to Remember

Well today is the day that all my regular classes start, which mean this is either the beginning or end of my adventures. It feels like I've done so much since I've got to Japan, and while I feel as though my adventures in Japan may be getting repetitive, they are not any less fun, for me. See I realize that saying “Hey I went to this place again” isn't really the most interesting thing to do. So this is the blog where I have to try out amping things up to make them sound more exciting. Now maybe after this change today with classes and all that it won't be necessary, but it's still good to practice things, right?

Before I get some regaling done though, I think I will do a thing of “Tom, Don't Eat That!” So I think this was almost a week about, but I had natto sushi. For those of you who don't know what natto is, it's basically fermented soy beans. Now the area I'm in is famous for making this food, and every Japanese person here loves to eat it. It's supposedly very good for you. So let actually get down to what natto is like. It takes like beans. Really really gooey sticky bean that you can chew forever and ever. And yeah so it was weird. Bottom line readers, natto is weird, really weird. It's too sticky to really enjoy, but it's eatable as long you don't smell it first.

So yeah anyway after that last blog I went to the second hand store. Now second hand stores in Japan are places of wonderment where all your dreams can come true, except apparently finding an original FamiCom. Once you walk into one of these stores though, you're sure to find something that catches your eye. There were actually two seperate buildings. One was for music, movies, and games, and the other was for appliances clothes, and really whatever else. I spent most of my time in the first store, which is called Hard Off. I saw many things there that I thought about buying. The decision of whether or not to buy something plagued me like some sort of killer vaccine or something. So I decided to take a break from all that and wander down the last isle I hadn't check out. At first I thought I saw some movies I recognized, but then I soon realized that I did not. The movies I found there, let's just say there were one of the first things ol' Abey asked me about when I got to Japan. Yeah so soon after that I departed from my adventure to that store. I've been back a few times, but I haven't been able to decide on anything.

That night we decided to attempt to do something epic, have a cooking night. Almost all the foreign students in the dorm ended up cooking their dinner in the kitchen at the same time. This turned out to be quite the challenge. We were dodging each other left and right. We weaved in and out of each other as we moved through the kitchen. We shared pots and burner desperately trying to get all our dishes completed. Eventually we manage to come up with a feast that king or archduke would be proud of, since those guys probably don't really know how to cook anyway. After having our filled we all pitched in to clean up and went out separate ways.

The next day some stuff happened. I don't really remember what, but I'm sure there was a dragon involved at some point. Then after that we went bowling. Now hopefully when this gets going I'll actually have a picture of the place in this blog, which would be a first for this blog so try to be excited. So anyway, we went there and bowled. I did the best, but I didn't do too well. Many people didn't do as well as they normally might. We decided to have a competition. Between the two teams. It was very hard to tell who was ahead because the other team bowled much slower than we did at that beginning, so we were a frame apart for most of the match. On the last bowler, their worst player, we ended up being tied. All she had to do was knock down one pin. We put the pressure on her. She threw the ball. In the gutter. Last change. Tension was high all over the room. She got into position. Approached the lane. Threw the ball. And oh yeah I forgot to mention that a couple people were drinking some beer out of a paper cup, but one of them said it tasted better in glass. Oh yeah and that last person knocked down like 9 pins so we lost.

After that we goofed off in the arcade and then ate some food and went home late. I didn't get to sleep till late and that kind of sucked for this morning. The next blog update will probably come pretty soon because I wasn't able to get this one posted yesterday. So maybe my blog says this was for Saturday, but really it's for Friday morning.

Hell Is Other Blogs

Hello a welcome to yet another blog installment of Phil MacBanus' Japantime Fun-Blog. Now since last time, I've actually done pretty much nothing. Except for go to Pachio-co again for nomihodai and then get some karaoke on immediately after that. That was fun as I assume you can imagine, but for the sake of some of the people I went with, I will not go into anymore detail than that, but we did have a good time. Oh also we didn't have electricity for like 4 hours yesterday and that was pretty awful.

The reason I wanted to do a blog today, even though I didn't have much to talk about, is to mention some of the differences between America and Japan. Now I know people know about the obvious differences such as they drive on the other side of the road and speak Japanese. There are little things though that one might not even care to think about until he or she was here. For example in Japan, you turn keys the other way to lock and unlock them, and the position of the deadbolt is opposite. Vertical is unlocked and horizontal is locked. Also, in America it is quite common to pay only with credit and debit cards, but in Japan only a few places take cards. Toilet handles to flush toilets point down and many public toilets have two types of flushing so that water can be saved if a big flush isn't needed. In Japan, expiration dates are down the hour that they will go bad. Also the fish is so fresh here, that you can't even smell it when you walk by the fish market.

I found yet another difference while going to all the stores I went to. It seems in Japan that generally things that are cheap in America are more expensive here, and things that are expensive in America are cheap here. So like I couldn't find a shirt for less that $30 when I was shopping. To be fair I haven't yet looked over every single store yet, but since Japanese people care more about fashion than we do in America, it is not surprising. Also fruit is more expensive here especially melons, which I guess are very popular. You can buy pre-cooked meals in supermarkets for as low as $3. There are probably more things I'm forgetting, or really I'm just too lazy to keep thinking about them.

Well yeah Japan is crazy different, but not so different that I'm suffering or anything. The people here are insanely nice and very understanding of my limited Japanese skills, which become less limited everyday. I think that's all a feel like writing for today. I might go to the second hand store tomorrow and pick up a famicom; they're only 500 yen.

A Big Blog of Garbage

So yeah sorry about the lack of updates, I’ve done so much stuff that I don’t really think I can remember it all, but I will try to talk about some of the more interesting things.

So after that whole Pachi-ko experience I think we had our tour of Mito. We saw several sites. There are pictures of them on facebook. So hopefully you can piece together what the pictures are of if you actually know me in real-life. If not then I guess that too bad for you and maybe you should just ask questions in comments somewhere.

Something interesting about this day though is we rode the bus for the first time. The way it works is you get on a stop and get a ticket. Then, when you get off you pay the amount it says to pay up on the board, which probably isn’t a good explanation without a pictures, but it’ll have to do. Also Japanese bus drivers are complete pros. seriously it is hard to convey the amount of skill require to drive a bus on streets that are two lanes that would be considered on lane in America.

At the end of the day we, some of us went with someone we met at the welcome tea party to Kappazsushi, which is a kaitenzushi place. Now for those of you who don’t know, kaitenzushi is a type of restaurant where sushi goes around on a convey-belt and you pull off what you want. It’s two pieces of sushi for 105 yen on most plates. Also, if you have a special order you can use a menu to ask for certain items, and a shinkansen train will bring it out to you.

Then next day I believe I had my first Japanese class, which went ok. After that, we went to the bank to get some more Japanese currency; the USA decided to be lame so the exchange rate went down from 92 yen per dollar to 88 yen per dollar and we got screwed out of more money. After that we went to Mito station. I bought Kanji no Sonomama for $30, which is awesome because it costs double that in the US. During that whole ordeal, three of us got separated from everyone else, so we went to McDonald’s. Apparently McDonald’s in Japan is not like in the US, so if you find yourself in Japan, it’s probably best to order something they don’t have in America. After that we went to the arcade and had curry. Curry was awesome, but I ordered mine too spicy. I’ll give 1000 yen to anyone who can eat a level 10 plate.

We did karaoke that night. Karaoke is Japan is awesome. Suffer with my lack of giving details.

The next day we did nothing all day, then had ramen. Japanese restaurant ramen was really cool. I’m really starting to get hungry at this point.

After that we did some more nothing and then went to Mito station to check out some shops. We went by car, which was very interesting. Japanese cars and very small and Japanese drivers are also very skilled. They can back up like crazy. Here, almost everybody backs into parking spaces, and they can do it very quickly. When we were by Mito station, we went to a place called Mister Donut. There we learned that donuts in Japan are expensive and less sweet, but still good.

That night we went to this Japanese bar I just remember I forgot tell you we went to the night before. One of our roommates works at the bar and some of us had gone the previous night, and he comped us drinks, so we felt obligated to go back. This bar is awesome. The people there were so cool, and there was a cute little girl who became very fascinated with one of us.

Now as habit as the blog goes on I become more and more tired of writing. I mean I’m not some kind of writing machine made to write for other people’s entertainment. Last time I check I’d not an English major specializing in composition, nor am I am anthropology major doing a study on Japan. , though I did think about studying anthro at one point. Anyway this blog is about my trip to Japan, I think, so I should get back to writing about that. Point is I don’t really feel like being descriptive right now so I won’t.

Sunday, which is yesterday as of this writing, we went to a mall. There were lots of clothes stores there. There was nothing in my size. Everything is so expensive.

So that’s pretty much it I think. Not much to say after all I avoid saying just now. Comment with your question, and I’ll blog again at some point.

My Three Blogs

Well yesterday was quite the interesting day, or so I’m claiming to hook you into the story. I wake up, enjoy a nice lazing about. Today I have a towel and soap so I can enjoy a nice shower. Then I leave to walk down the hall to our meeting, which I then remember is halfway across campus. Luckily, though, the campus here isn’t too big so I was able to make it in time. I hope you were expecting a big and interesting tail, only to be crushed by that anti-climatic whatever.

So we sat around at orientation. It was as you’d expect for an orientation. The whole time though, the building dread of the placement test to coming down upon us. Then it did come and the written test was really hard. After that we had an interview and which was really weird because I have practically no speaking experience. So I practically did terrible at that.

After that us Fresno people went to Kasumi which is a food market to buy some lunch. On the way out, there was a café and one of the guys suggested sitting there to eat our food. After sitting down we were told in Japanese that we needed to buy something to stay. Luckily we were able to understand them. Towards the end of the meal, we were approached by some Japanese people asking us if we were English teachers. One of us told them that we were in fact university students.

After that we took a tour of campus. A lot of the tour was in Japanese, but it wasn’t too complex so it wasn’t too hard to understand. Apparently they have a museum of museology here. I have no idea what that is.

After the tour we went to a welcome tea party where we introduced ourselves in Japanese. I managed to get completely relaxed when my turn came, but then SOMEBODY started talking behind me and it through me off. After that we ate and talked to people. I had pizza with pepperoni, corn, and pepper on it. It was good. Apparently most people really overate, but I didn’t because I was too busy talking to people. At one point our Japanese teacher blindsided me and started talking to me in Japanese. It was so loud I couldn’t hear him, but he probably thinks I couldn’t understand any of the Japanese he was speaking to me.

When the party was over we went to the dorm. Then we went to a place called Pachi-ko, which has all you can drink for \1280, roughly $12.80. My drinking skills impressed several people. All those study sessions for international business paid off. After that we went home and I slept.

Well it’s almost time for another orientation. So I’ll just end here. TTFN

A Blogful of Dollars

I wrote this yesterday Tuesday September 7 but couldn`t post it till now.

Well now that I`m finally in Japan, this fun-blog can really kick off. So first off, I`m sure you`re interested in how the traveling was. The answer: awful, sort of. Traveling to LAX was pretty uneventful. We got there with no real problem. Got some food, met up witht he people from the other school. Then as we`re getting on the plane I get upgraded to economy plus, which granted me an extra 5 inches of leg space. So at this point the trip`s looking pretty freaking awesome. This however is when the bad times start to roll in.

So we get on the plane, and the flight people tell us that there is a problem with communications that they need 30 minutes to fix. So two hours later we`re disembarking from the plane so that they can get us a new one. Almost 4 hours after we were supposed to take off we finally get in the air for an 11 hour flight. Now just a little side note for those interested, when flying to Japan, the plane doesn`t go straight over the ocean. It flies up near the Bering straight and then back down. I just thought that was kind of interesting.

So anyway after watching the same movie five times and a lack luster meal we arrive in Japan. One thing was apparent upon arrival, it was very humid here, and I was very glad I was wearing shorts. So we`re met at the airport by some of the Japanese students, luckily we were able to e-mail the university to inform them that we would be late. We ended up missing the welcome party that they were gonna have for us, but we went to Coco`s instead, and after that we went to Seven Eleven and got some breakfast for the next day. Also, the slippers they have here are way too small.

The following day we go through some orientation, filled out some forms, and applied for work permits and alien registration, but at lunch we got some food in a convenience store, which of course means it`s time for “Tom! Don`t eat that!” Today I had onigiri, which is rice filled with some sort of awesome wrapped in seaweed. After struggling immensely to figure out how it opened, I manage to bite into the ball of I didn`t really know what to what it was. Point is though is that that didn`t matter because whatever it was tasted delicious. Best part too is that it was very cheap. Bottom line readers, onigiri is delicious and they should sell it in all convenience stores even in America because it`s that good.

After that we bought our necessities at the \100 store and the supermarket across the street. There were so many interesting things at the \100 store it was hard not to buy more that I needed, and I probably did. When we got back I don`t really remember swhat I did, but I ended up falling asleep at some point. Enough of that though I`m done for now. Check back later.

Fear of Blog Planet

So tomorrow I leave for the mythic land of Japan. Land of robots galore and whatnot. Anyway I am now packed and filled with anticipation for what is to come. As I leave my friends and family behind, a new chapter of my life begins. Unfortunately I neither know what the chapter number I'm on nor the title of it. This matters not, for in the land of Japan they do not use numbers. Well they do, but that doesn't sound as cool. Actually I have spent so much time packing I really forgot what I was talking about. Plus this movie I turned on to pass the time is distracting me slightly.

Well anyway I hope I remembered everything. I'll try to post something more interesting as soon as I can in Japan. Expect pictures of stuff at some point in the future.