Interesting Facts about Japan PART 2

Yo.  Interesting facts number two has arrived.  This time it’s a countdown, although they’re not listed in any particular order.

20)  In Japan, there are a more than ample amount of clothes with English writing on them, but I’ve found very few that have even reasonably coherent English on them.  They’ve even managed to make no sense with a single word, by printing “RACISM” on a shirt in sparkly lettering.  WTF.

19)  Another thing that boggles my mind is the prevalence of tiny shops in residential areas that can often barely be distinguished from ordinary houses, usually only by a sign out front or hours posted in the window.  Maybe it’s because I can’t read much, but I can’t understand how these places stay open.  My only guess is that they’ve somehow developed a returning clientele that manages to keep patronage at an acceptable level.

18)  Of all the hotdogs I’ve eaten, the ones I’ve eaten in Japan are by far the best, even better than Phil’s hotdogs, if you can believe it.  Moreover, they came from a Seven Eleven, which in Japan has it’s own bank and is one of the most popular convenience stores around.  Does your head hurt from confusion yet?  If not, then let me introduce the “Big American Dog,” which is basically a corndog, except for that it’s level of deliciousness sends me into spasms of delight every time I eat it.  It also comes from Seven, along with the most convenient ketchup/mustard packet I’ve ever seen in my entire life.  I’m planning to bring some of these home as souvenirs, after which I will gladly educate anyone I give them to on how to use them.  They’re that amazing.

17)  While I’m on the topic of food, I might as well mention the eggs.  Eggs here are fresher, the chickens are clearly healthier, and it’s one of the things I’ll probably miss quite a lot when I come back to the US, which is plainly unfortunate.

16)  Japan is responsible for quite a few international flavors of Doritoes, some of which are quite strange.  Here’s a link to both the complete list of Doritoes flavors, and a list of only the strangest ones.
(link died and became an ad)

The strangest 35

Japan is responsible for 27 out of 35 of the ones on the bizarre list.  Not to spoil the fun, but that last flavor is "chili tacos" and was probably not translated simply for amusement's sake.  In my opinion, the picture is amusing enough.  Also worth noting is that here Doritoes are synonymous with corn chips.  I’ve never seen any other brand, so if you want corn chips in Japan, you want Doritoes.

15)  A couple of curiosities about Japan’s department stores.  First, they can often found to be playing instrumental versions of older English songs, and second, I sometimes find small TV’s tucked away on the shelves advertising a nearby product.  I could see this being in the US as well, but I haven’t seen it yet.  They’re usually for either a kitchen appliance or some sort of alcohol.

14)  I’ve found Japan to be a good place for seeing interesting birds, maybe just because the birds I see are different from the ones I have at home, but it’s interesting nonetheless.  I think the birds I see the most are the giant crows that inhabit Tsuru and other areas.  If you’ve ever noticed the prevalence of crows in anime, know that there’s a reason for that.

There’s also a bird that I have yet to identify that occasionally gets really energetic and starts screaming at everything.  That one is quite annoying.

13)  Another true story that anime tells is the frequent use of umbrellas.  Tsuru at least doesn’t seem to get the sideways rain that I find in Wisconsin, and hence umbrellas are more effective at combating the frequent rain that falls here.  They’re also used for snow, which I’ve found more effective than I thought it would be.  In response to the popularity of umbrellas, almost all stores leave an umbrella rack outside their doors for customer’s convenience.  The Japanese even have a word that means “sharing one umbrella,” namely “aiaigasa,” which is frequently abbreviated as “aigasa.”  Also common is drawing an umbrella with two people's names under it to mean that they're in love, or something.

Regarding alcohol:

12)  One of my favorite things about alcohol in Japan is the widespread availability of a drink called chuuhai, which is composed of shouchuu (similar to vodka), tonic water, and some sort of flavoring, usually just fruit juice.  My favorite is lemon, as I mentioned in the previous blog entry.  These are kind of like Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff drinks, but having said that, Japan’s version is better.

Their lack of corn syrup makes them go down easier and taste better.  There are a wide variety of brands and flavors and alcohol strengths, and these drinks can be found relatively cheaply at almost every store I’ve ever been to.  Not only that, but…

11)  In Japan, every single alcoholic drink is required to have both nutrition information and alcohol percentage on the label, including beer and other softer varieties.  Also, in the case of chuuhai, the percentage of fruit juice is also found on the label.  I’ve found this to be so convenient and sensible that I’m actually pretty mad that this isn’t required in the US.  I swear it seems like all a drink manufacturer needs to do is throw a little alcohol in something and suddenly the need for any labeling whatsoever (except for the government warning) goes out the window.  I’ve never questioned this before, but if Japan can label their drinks, so can we.  So what the hell?

10)  Another interesting thing about alcohol consumption in Japan is the legal drinking age and how it is handled here.  I knew before coming here that the legal age of drinking is 20, the same age as that of adulthood, but what I didn’t know is that anyone can walk up to a cash register with no ID and purchase a drink.  This gets some question marks from me, but apparently the legal drinking age is barely, if ever, enforced.  This is why when Naru gets raging drunk in a restaurant, Keitaro tells her to calm down so that she doesn’t get busted for underage drinking.  The owner of the restaurant would probably be upset if he found out that she had ordered drinks while underage, but at the same time no one would be asked for ID to remedy the problem, and I doubt that his place would get shut down as a result of selling to minors unless it was in extreme cases.  Long story short, it seems the legal drinking age is enforced more by random citizens than by police or store clerks.

9)  Another thing police don’t enforce, because it isn’t illegal here, is public drunkenness.  So basically, I can go into a store, with no ID, buy a drink, walk outside and crack it open in front of a cop and we both say good evening to each other and go about our business.

8)  Final alcohol fact:  Considering the tendency of things to be more expensive in Japan, Alcohol is fairly cheap.  I’d say about the same price as it is in the US.  One exception is beer, which is probably more that twice the expense it would be in Wisconsin.  There’s a distinct reason for this, but I can’t remember what it is.

7)  This is probably true for other countries as well, but I thought I’d mention it here anyway:  When I go to certain websites in Japan, they automatically switch to a Japanese version of the site.  I find this endlessly annoying.  Unfortunately, as yet, I cannot read Japanese, and were I to want to go to the English version of the site it is impossible without a proxy because the default address takes me to it’s respective Japanese version.  Grr.

6)  Okay, so I knew that Japan released far more dating simulation games than the US, but I was astounded upon seeing their quantity.  Even at the small game store a few streets down there’s a couple of entire sections dedicated to them.  Also, I think most of these games have characters of high school age or below, which even if you don’t find worrisome you’ve got to think that’s at least a little strange.

I think Japan needs to encourage its youth to date, rather than telling them they should just study harder all the time.  More of them might also have realistic expectations about relationships by the time they reach adulthood.  I have heard that this tends to be more of a problem here than it is in the US.

5)  Over packaging is also more of a problem here than in the US, if you want to look at it that way.  This is brought on partially by the gift giving aspect of the culture.  If someone’s going to receive it, then it ought to be covered in a least three layers of packaging or they might suspect they aren’t special enough.

Where did four through one go?  I ate them. Goodnight everybody!

Aftermath of Kyoto

I’d like to be writing this as a blog entry, and when you see it I’m sure it will be, but for the moment my internet is not working and I don’t know why.  The password I’ve been using for the last couple of months has become unusable.  I wonder if my internet service has stopped.  I also plan to release a blog entry for every day of my Kyoto trip, but I don’t know if that will happen. I had intended to write these entries over the course of the trip, but that was a ludicrous idea, and I was barely able to make brief lists of topics to cover in each.  My hope is to write them sometime though.  We took lots of pictures, so maybe they will help jog my memory.

I’m pretty depressed at the moment.  Most of the time I can’t muster up the drive necessary to study Japanese independently, including reading manga in Japanese, and today when I finally do my internet goes down and the school computers are unavailable.  When that happens, I tend to fall back to recent dependencies that I’ve developed:  caffeine, alcohol and ice cream, none of which are particularly inexpensive, although I suppose it could be worse.

Moreover, Tina is sick and hope she gets better very soon.  In my absence of things to do I don’t mind taking care of her as best I can, but I hate to see her feeling unwell, especially because she’s the only human being I frequently interact with.  On that note, I feel like my Japanese is getting worse, and of course I don’t really think that’s true, but my lack of study really does make me feel like my learning has stagnated.  Hence my finally working up the drive to end my spell of nonstudy.  And when I can’t study, I play an arcade drum game and eat the shredded cheese that I found in a specialty store in Kyoto.  Apparently.

Over here I’ve developed a strong liking for lemon based alcoholic beverages, of which there are quite a variety that all put Mike’s Hard Lemonade to shame.  Not only that, but each and every one lists it’s alcohol and juice content by percentage.  It’s amazing.  One of my favorites is called Strong Zero (I believe it has zero calories), and due to my being such a lightweight, one can at 100 yen can get me as tipsy as I ever really want to be.  Hence the creepy person in Kyoto that twice approached us asking, “Do you wanna drink all you want?” carries no appeal, as an all you can drink special of any kind would surely be far more expensive.

I appear to have run out of things to say.

How things are going

So I'm really on a roll today with blog posts.  First I post something relatively pointless, then I post something I've been meaning to post for a while, and now I'm posting about my mundane, everyday activities, which are getting more exciting as time goes on.

As of yesterday, I am currently on spring break, which for most college students in Japan is like summer break in the US, meaning that it's long.  Most of the time I've been here the rest of the world around me has been on spring break.  My spring break on the other hand will be about two weeks.

Because I am on spring break, we will be going to Kyoto.  This is likely to be our only large trip while in Japan (large meaning that we'll be staying a few nights and riding the shinkansen.)  Tina has already decided on many places that she would like to visit. I will look at a few tomorrow.

Since the intensive portion of the course is over, upon coming back from break we will both be choosing classes for spring semester.  Not many classes are really up to us, mind you, but it's exciting all the same.  I've run into the problem of wanting to take more than I'll be able to, which I think I can resolve by telling myself how much I've been wanting to study independently and reminding myself that I'd also like to set aside some time for computer science before my college plans go sour from my lack of doing so.

I'm also looking forward to warmer weather.  I've decided that once it gets just a little bit warmer, I'm going to walk up to a mountain and just climb it.  I've already picked out a couple peaks I want to reach.  If you think that's nuts I'll remind you that although the mountains around me definitely qualify as being such, they aren't very big.  I anticipate being able to go up and down one easily in a day.  One the other hand, I also think that it will give me some excellent exercise and fulfill the video game oriented part of my brain that likes clearly defined challenges set out before me that I can achieve with a little bit of effort.

More things to be excited about.  I've decided to make some trail mix for myself, because I love trail mix, and have purchased supplies to do so.  I am, however, missing MM's, which I will undoubtedly have to find a substitute for.  I have not seen them.  Tina says I ought to toast the almonds I bought to get a little bit more flavor out of them, so I will try to do that tomorrow.

I don't know if you knew this, but K-pop (Korean Pop) is amazingly popular in Japan right now.  A lot of artists sing in a combination of Korean, Japanese and English.  To give a few examples:  2NE1, Girls Generation, 4Minute, and the group I recently discovered through my host family, Kara.  In fact the song Go Go Summer has been stuck in my head a lot in the past week or so.

There's also a song called Itsudatte Bokurawa that I heard at the local bookstore and got hooked on.  (And before anyone notices and comments on it (or to clarify in advance for other people currently studying Japanese), that last "wa" is は and no I won't romanjinize it any other way.)  I'm afraid a literal translation doesn't really make sense in English, but itsudatte means "always" or "at any time" and bokura is a softer sounding male pronoun that means "we."  The "wa" tacked on the end indicates that the previous word, in this case "bokura" is the subject of... well this isn't a sentence, but if it were the "we" would be the subject.
(EDIT:  I originally posted a link to the video on youtube, but it didn't work from America and has since been taken down.  It seems Sony Music never intended to leave it up for long, and does a good job of monitoring reuploads.)

Yeah, I don't know if that made any sense at all, but I thought I would give it a shot.

Right now I'm reading though the children's manga, Chi's Sweet Home.  It's a combination of easy and difficult.  Easy for obvious reasons, but also hard because the speech is so casual that it can be hard to know what I should be searching. And in the case that I do find it but it presents me with several meanings of one word and the context does not make it obvious enough, I'm still screwed.  Furthermore, the cat speaks in "kid language," which often forces me to take a stab at what it's trying to say before I can even figure out whether or not I already know the word it's using.

It helps that now Tina has the English translations, which I've found to be generally pretty reliable, though they already killed one of the jokes involving parallel speech between the (human) mother and the cat over the course of her trying to bathe it.  I would read harder manga, but the pace ends up being so ridiculously slow and although I can understand the meaning in the end (usually), I don't absorb enough of the vocabulary that I just had to look up to do so.  One of my major goals is to get better at reading manga though, and I think if I can read it out loud to myself (plus other things of course) I can keep in relatively good practice with Japanese after I leave the country.

Well, it's getting pretty late, and I think I've said most of what I wanted to say.  Soon(ish... sort of) I'll post my next interesting facts entry, which I have a steadily growing list for.  I think it'll have twice as many interesting facts with a little bit less ramble than last time, so please read it when it comes out.  Please and thank you very much!

Oh!  And I don't mind receiving contact from any of you!  Please feel free to let me know how you are doing or if you have any questions for me I would be happy to answer them.  Last I saw, this blog was about to hit 1,000 page views.  I am very happy!  Thank you all very much!  I hope you continue to stick with me and read my blog.  じゃあね～

My Trip to a Japanese Hotel

NOW with PICTURES!

So this all began, from my perspective, with one of the program coordinators for the Tsuru program, Fumi-san, informing me that I was to attend a party on Tuesday.  This was not uncommon.  Since coming here I've been invited/coerced into going to several events that I would describe as parties, at the school or at someone's house or apartment, and I figured this would be no exception.  However, a couple of days before the party took place I learned that we had been invited to a rather high class hotel by the owner, who I gather is a contact of Fumi-san's, though I never found out for sure.  We were to have dinner and there was a hot spring that we could go in if we wanted to.  It would be just foreign exchange students and their tutors.

Despite being a little bit baffled as to why we had been invited, and free of charge no less, Tina and I both thought it would be a lot of fun, so on Tuesday evening we boarded the bus that would take us to the hotel, located next to the beautiful Lake Kawaguchi (which now that I'm typing it out, sounds like it means "river mouth."  Just a fun fact.)  It's sad that I don't even know the name of the hotel, and therefore am having trouble googling a picture of it, and even more sad that Tina didn't bring her camera so that we could take some ourselves, but for now teksht will have to suffice.

Upon arriving and discovering just how upscale this hotel looked, we were surprised to receive three room keys for those of us that wanted to stay the night.  Tina and I had class the next day, and had not even finished our homework, so that option was unfortunately not for us.

After dropping stuff off in one of the rooms, we headed to the dining hall where we were met with an extravagant, buffet-style meal that featured steak, Japanese food (including sushi), Chinese food and dessert.

As surprised as we were by this meal, we were a little bit more surprised by the horde of Chinese people that arrived 20 minutes after us.  I'm quite a bit hazy on a lot of the details surrounding the arrangement's of that night, but it seemed to me as though this was their party and we had been invited to crash it.  As penance, the students from Tsuru were asked to each sing a song for karaoke afterwards.  I would say "we," but frankly they didn't have any English songs I knew (that I saw at least), and I can't read very fast in Japanese even for songs I do know relatively well in that language.  Tina was in the same boat, so it was impractical at best to ask either of us to sing, and no one really expected us to.  Our tutors did though. ^_^  Despite the fact that a larger portion of the Tsuru students sang, it was still mostly Chinese guests, as their group was quite a bit bigger than ours.  I have no idea why, but the Chinese students that sang were all really good, like, illogically good.  They also sang in Chinese, Japanese and, go figure, English.  This was also marked a two for two rate of me hearing the Evangelion theme song at a karaoke session in Japan.  Apparently that one is pretty popular.

(For people who don't know it and are curious:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A62011nyXNI  It's the TV version, although the one sung in karaoke is always the full version I think.  I included this one because it has subtitles and less disturbing footage than the first video I clicked on.  I'm pretty sure Evangelion is one of the most popular anime of all time, but also one of the strangest.)





In case you haven't noticed yet, I've given up on that two finger/peace/victory pose business.  It doesn't suit me very well.

t was around this time that Tina and I started seriously considering staying the night even though it sounded like an academically bad idea.  For one, it was looking like we were going to have to leave soon and miss our chance to go the the hot spring.  Besides that, we were also just having a lot of fun.  I decided to compromise by texting Fumi-san and asking her whether or not she thought it was okay.  Never did get a text back from that <_<;;

Anyhow, following dinner we and some of our friends went out to fetch something to drink.  Although it hadn't been clear to Tina and I at the time, we had been planning to go to a bar.  The bar that people seemed to have in mind was tiny and packed to the brim with people though, so what we actually wound up doing is grabbing alcohol from a convenience store and bringing it back to the hotel.  Before drinking though, it was hot spring time.

Personally, I had never been to a hot spring before, and didn't know all of the procedures for how to do so. I'll give them retrospectively here (for a hotel specifically I guess):

- There was a room immediately next to the hot spring where you take of your clothes.  You should have a big towel, a little towel and a yukata, which is what you'll wear when you're done (and clean ^__^)
- Before going in the hot spring you wash yourself so that you're clean before you enter.  It's best to use as hot of water as you're able to while you do this, so that you won't have too hard of a time getting into the water.  If you're extra cool, you'll dump the bucket of water over your head to rinse off, because that's the cool thing to do. =D
- Remember that little towel I mentioned?  Bring it into the hot spring, get it wet, and put it on your head.  There's no reason for this, but it's part of the experience.  Don't bring your big towel in, like I did.
- When you begin to feel faint, you should probably get out.  If you're at a nice place, the other room will have stuff like a hair dryer and a scale so you can see how much weight you sweated off.  (At least that's what I think it's for.)  Dry off and don your yukata.

It was really refreshing ^___^.

After that we sat in a circle with some of the Chinese guests in one of our rooms and played a Japanese drinking game, but instead of drinking if you lost you had to either answer an embarrassing question or do an embarrassing thing.  We didn't have enough alcohol for everyone to drink when they lost. xD  It was kind of like truth or dare, but you didn't get to choose.



Tina's embarrassing thing she had to do was give me a kiss, and wouldn't you know it, everyone was making such a big deal out of it that I was actually embarrassed.



Around 1 a.m., Tina and I retired to one of the other rooms that we had thankfully been given the opportunity to share by our lonesome, and went to bed.  The plan was to wake up at 7, eat delicious breakfast, and get on the bus that we had arranged for to take us back to our apartment.  From there, we grabbed all of our school stuff, walked to school and finished our homework before class started.  Shapow.

(Of humorous note was the fact that Fumi-san only noticed my text the following morning and, freaking out a little bit, came to class to see if we were there.)

Blog entries coming up soon:  Interesting facts about Japan Part 2, and probably something to do with Kyoto, as we will be heading there in 2 days.

I'm skyping with Nick and Caz RIGHT NOW

The only important thing I'll be noting in this entry is that I've noticed that everyone always apologizes for not posting stuff in every blog that's owned by someone lazy, so I'm going to stop doing that.  No matter how many creative ways I can think to say, "I'm sorry," it's inherently old before I do it, so enough of that.

Anyhow, SHOUT OUT TO CAZ AND NICK THAT I'M SKYPING WITH RIGHT NOW!

NICK IS SELLING THIS CAR:

THIS ONE

CAZ LOVES THIS VIDEO:
THIS ONE

TINA IS DRINKING EXPIRED MILK!  WOOO!

A real blog entry later tonight, probably.

Some Stuff or Something

As you may have guessed from the title of this entry, it's going to be pretty random.  Subjects to be covered:  my slightly worse homesickness, me whining about how busy we are, my desktop background recently having been changed, my current level of Japanese ability, all the things I wish I could do with the time I don't have, my washer being kind of a piece of crap in a way unmentioned as yet, instant soba apparently being a terrible idea, previews for the next couple of blog entries, and further information on how I'm currently feeling and what I'm doing.  In no particular order.

Well then, shall we?

First off, the homesickness thing.  Actually, when I really wanted to write about it (about two days ago), it was slightly worse, but I think it's only better now because things get blasted out of my head so often these days that I barely even notice anymore.  Mostly I miss my friends, and that's mostly because here I have very few people to do things that I enjoy with.  For example, I rarely get to play games with anyone, which I find very, very sad.  Of course I have no one to play either hard or soft pad ITG with, partly because it doesn't exist here, but yeah. I also miss my friends' senses of humor a lot, and even humor in general.  I'm getting to a point where I can be humorous in Japanese, but I'm still very obviously limited in that regard.

That combined with and the fact that between school and paying attention to Tina I have virtually no time to myself often causes me to feel very discomforted, frequently prompting me to stay up into the wee hours of the morning to get A, some time to myself, and B, some time to be on the internet while my friends are awake.  I do this more for the former reason than the latter, because while talking to my friends prevents me from being sad to some degree, time away from other people prevents me from going insane, and these past couple days risk to my sanity has been the slightly higher of the two.  As it is with class alone I tend to get mentally broken down after a couple of weeks at a time, and lately the forced extra curriculars have been uncomfortably high as well.  It isn't that they're not fun, they're just very taxing and time consuming.  At this point fun isn't so much what I need (nor is cake, but that's not what everyone else seems to think >_< ).  What I need is to relax.  A lot.  More.

Aside from staying up late, I've been coping by cooking dinner a little less, which saddens me, and trying to take things a little slower, which doesn't always turn out so well.  (Right now it's almost 2 a.m. for example.) I also recently changed my desktop background from a cool looking planet from Starcraft 2 to a picture of a cute, blushing girl with cat ears and giant eyes wearing a skimpy Santa costume and lying on a bed with presents scattered around her.  This makes life slightly easier for some reason.

If I did actually have time to do anything ever (aside from writing this obviously, though I'm kind of making time to do that as it is) I would be studying additional Japanese that I don't have time to think about with all of the other Japanese that's trying to find room in my head, playing more games both with other people and by myself in my room, writing in this blog slightly more often, seeking out the company of people that I'm not actually obligated to spend time with--the exception here being Olle, because in addition to being the only person my age besides Tina who can speak English at a high level, he has a Wii and I get along with him quite well, experimenting with food a little bit more often, drinking more often (though I think my urge to do this stems partly from stress to begin with, and sleeping a healthy amount.

So, with all this apparent sacrifice I'm making, is my Japanese getting better very quickly?  Honestly, I think I would be better off if the workload and pace would diminish a bit.  Actually, that's too simple of a statement.

Lately I've had numerous complaints with both our grammar book and our kanji book, and because of those have wanted to take studying into my own hands on numerous occasions.  Because of these flaws, I believe that some of the work I'm putting into study of these two mediums would be better spent researching online and putting things together myself.  It's not that I devalue what I do learn in class, but with all the time I'm spending on it right now, I can't do the additional work that would reinforce class learning.  I suppose I won't go into my specific complaints just yet.  Later I'll be writing an entry directed at the Japanese learning crowd about what I like and don't like about our books and methods of study, particularly at this pace.

I'm afraid I can't think of a really good place for this next bit, so consider yourself informed that I'm about to randomly jump topic.

Instant soba is a terrible idea.  Don't try it, because you probably won't like it.  Contrary to what I thought, it's nothing like instant ramen.

Another random complaint:  My washer has put holes in one of my shirts.  Why do our washers suck so badly? (Tina has had the same problem.)

Stay tuned for my trip to a fancy Japanese hotel, today's events, and Interesting Facts About Japan part 2.  Onegaishimasu.

Tokyo Trip (part 2)

Ah, hmm... <_<;;

So it's been a little longer than I anticipated on this entry.  Truth be told, last time I paid for my blogging on a Monday and wasn't keen to repeat the process the following day.  Besides that, I ended up going and having myself another interesting experience that day, which I also hope to tell you about, that left me finishing my homework the following morning after riding a bus home.  Shame on me.  By the time I was free enough to write this entry, I was tired and lazy.  So here we are.  It's Monday again, and between all the things I have to do today, it is going to be quite busy, but now that the list of blog entries I wish to post has piled up to four (ye gads...), I have had to move blogging into a higher priority slot.

By the way, for those of you that end up wondering when and if I'm going to post again, and who aren't automatically notified, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that checking once a week is probably your best bet.  Although I still post about twice per week, my posts tend to come in bunches, and therefore checking more frequently will probably tire you out unnecessarily.  And we wouldn't want that.  (Also, sort of worth noting in this regard, I only post links on facebook when I think a wider range of people will find my entry entertaining.  This means that for those of you that wish to read more, waiting for links may make you think this blog has become a wasteland or an abandoned project.  Be assured this is not the case.)

So, back to the purpose of this entry.  I believe I've already talked about all the books I bought and was just getting on to the games.

First off, I bought a Super Famicom

 It's in English.  Why?  I don't know.  Go ask your pop.

The deck itself was pretty cheap, but the cords to connect it were sold separately.  Between that and buying a controller it ended up being a relatively hefty sum, and there wasn't even a guarantee on the system working.  I asked if they'd at least tested it, and they shook their heads.  The bright side of this is that the controller works well and although the cord is short I should be able to use it in the US as well.  The controller port looks the same.  Also, despite the lack of guarantee, it works, and I should be able to sell it in the US to people who hunger for import games.  Speaking of which...



YESSS!  Now I can FINALLY date imaginary high school girls!

The second thing I picked up was a hundred yen game that I actually recognized the title of:  Tokimeki Memorial, a sort of famous dating simulation game from back in the early 90's.  I first heard of it at a Japanese market near Chicago, where Tina picked up the second game (for Playstation) with the thought that it might be amusing to try and play it.  We could never get the bugger to work on an American Playstation though (despite buying a device that promised to make it possible), and even if we could, it would have been all in Japanese, and back then I'm pretty sure neither of us had taken any classes on it.  It may come to use though, if we happen to find a cheap PS1 here...

Anyhow, the idea wasn't so much that ether of us would play this one.  As you may have noted from the price sticker, it was 100 yen, which isn't very expensive.  I'm almost positive that I can sell it for more than this, and I needed a game to test my Famicom anyhow.

Having spent way too much time talking about my excitement over purchasing a dating sim, let's move on to what we did next in Tokyo...

We were all set to leave Akihabara when I realized that we hadn't yet gone to a maid cafe.  For those of you not familiar with the idea, it's basically a cafe with a bunch of cutesy stuff where girls dressed as maids serve you extremely overpriced food and drinks.  The girls will draw your favorite anime character for you in ketchup, and preform "maid magic" on your drinks to make them tastier.  The appeal ranges from fetishists to people looking for a laugh, or as we were, simply to go once because you're in Tokyo and that's one of the things you do there.  Apparently.

Anyhow, pictures are a no-no in maid cafes (rather, they cost money that we don't have), so I've taken the liberty of googling one that looks close enough to the place we went to.  However, the image was taken down sometime in the last couple years, so I'm afraid you'll have to google it yourself.

Where we were there was also a TV depicting more exciting moments at that particular cafe, some of which were pretty amusing.  The day we went it seemed pretty quiet.  We were given three different maids at three different times, because they couldn't seem to figure out whether or not we could speak Japanese (which was understandable).  First we were given a foreign maid who Tina thinks was Siberian, because our tutors not so helpfully clued them into the fact that we couldn't speak Japanese, after which were given a Japanese maid who lost us when she asked if we were ready to do "Maid Magic."  Our final maid was probably from somewhere else in southeast Asia, and spoke English to us, but still did the maid magic in Japanese.  Basically, she traced a giant heart with her fingers, said "Make this food delicious" in Japanese, and instructed us to afterward make a heart with our hands, move it back and forth and then push it at our drinks while saying, "Moe moe kyuuuun!"

Translating this last phrase is a little bit difficult.  This page helped me understand it: http://simonesmith.hubpages.com/hub/Moe-Moe-Kyun, but when it comes to actually translating, I think they failed pretty badly.  The phrase is a meme that originated from K-On!, anime about a high school's music club (to put the premise very, very simply).  Moe literally means "budding" or "sprouting," but has come to be used as slang to refer to intense cuteness (of young girls in particular, not of say, a kitten), particularly in anime and manga.  Even having said that, I feel like I'm not doing the word justice.  We don't have an English translation for it, so you would really have to see it in practice to fully understand it.  As one final example before I exhaust my effort on this subject, maids are definitely a "moe" sort of thing.  Anyhow, "kyun" is only marginally easier.  Kyun is a sound effect.  The Japanese have sound effects for way more than we do though, and this is one of the ones that fall outside of the realm of normal for an American speaker.  It's basically a sound effect for "heart aflutter."  Think "noise a girl makes when she's getting worked up over something either extremely cute or extremely cool, by her standards."

I could have probably just spit this out without that long monologue, but basically "Moe moe kyun" is a bunch of nonsense.  In this particular instance, it's being used as something along the lines of magic words to complete a spell.  Why am I talking for so long about this?

After Akihabara we were more than a little hungry, so we went to a Japanese Italian restaurant called Saizeria, which is both tasty and relatively cheap.  This part is pretty boring, and pretty hazy as well, as during this period we were either in a coma from lack of food or completely wrecked from finally eating food after having gotten very little sleep.  After Saizeria we walked around and looked at some stores and stuff.  That's about as descriptive as I can get.  Feeling that we had squeezed all we could out of the day, Tina and I declared that we were heading home.

Three of our four tutors then brightened up declared that they weren't leaving yet.  I'm beginning to get the impression that this was a routine trip for them, except that they'd taken the liberty to drag two foreign exchange students with them, and that they were somewhat glad to be rid of us.  So much for showing us around. >_<

Following our parting, the more observant and patient of our tutors (who was forced to go with us for train ticket reasons, as I mentioned in part one I think), asked us if there was anywhere else we wanted to go on the way back out of Tokyo, for example to the Pokemon Center.  The answer was a resounding, "Hell, yes."

On the way there, we saw giant underground shopping areas.  Those were pretty interesting.

The Pokemon Center was basically a Pokemon merchandise store, which was good, as it was a good place for us to pick up souvenirs (I say that, even though I didn't buy any).  I'm sure there are also special events there, because I simply can't conceive of there not being, but the part I liked best was this window:

I like the Japanese better actually.  Despite being less flowery, it more correctly says, "Pokemon are always with you," with Japanese wording that I can appreciate very much.  I'd certainly like to think that they are.

There's also this second picture that our tutor took:



Like the delinquent I am...

This entry is getting much longer than I wanted it to be, so let it suffice to say that we planned to do some more stuff, but didn't, rode a train for half an hour, rode another train for another two hours or so in heavily varying degrees of crowdedness, and walked home.  We'll probably go again sometime, but not yet, and we'll plan better with snacks, take our time, and find a good place to hunt for video games and more used manga.  I have instant ramen and doughnuts to eat, so I'll see you later.  (Who want's simple carbs?  I want simple carbs!)  Peace out.

Tokyo Trip (part 1)

Alright, all cocoa'ed up and full of delicious air?  I certainly am, minus the cocoa part and plus a jumbo hotdog with fries, salad and rice.

Before I begin, a couple of shout outs:  First to Tina's mum and her church for sending us delicious goodies to munch.  You'll be happy to know they just arrived and that for now I'll be enjoying the pack of gum and some fruit snacks.  Probably more later.  Second to my parents for teaching me by example how to make tasty fried rice.  I have done so three times, and you'll be glad to know that it has saved me money and two of those times it was very tasty as well.  Let's not talk about the other time.  I've been meaning to pitch that batch for almost a week now >.>

So, the Tokyo trip.

We started out in Asakusa, famous for it's large temple which is now pretty much a tourist attraction but still retains a lot of its authenticity I think.  It's famous for it's giant red thing, as shown here with us standing in front of it:

It's giant and red alright.  No, I don't know what that says, but the bottom kanji is "gate."  Go figure.


































I'll spare you most of the details about this place.  It's an experience to be there, but I don't think the pictures we have really capture the spirit of the experience.  Let it suffice to say that I wafted incense at my head, ritualistically washed my hands, and tossed a coin into a large box and wished for something.  No, I won't tell you what it is.  It's a secret.


Next we went to Akihabara.  Ironically, as fun as this place usually sounds, neither of us found it particularly entertaining.  We went to a bookstore and bought manga, and that was entertaining; we went to a game store, and that was entertaining as well; more on these things in a minute.  That was about it though.  It was interesting to look at, and fun to walk around in for a while (though not as much for Tina as she was starving by this point and no one seemed to find it necessary to feed her =[  ), but the maid cafe was honestly not that interesting--except for "maid magic," that was kind of fun--and I could have really done without my attempt at playing DDR.  It was too hot, way too noisy, way too expensive, the timer on the machine was super short, I couldn't find out how to access the options menu due to Konami's complete lack of standardization in the games and hence couldn't read the arrows at all, and contrary to what I've been told about them starting to make harder songs, I thus far haven't seen it, not that I would have been able to read it anyway.  I'll wait until I get back to the US and play dance games the way God intended them to be: designed far better with no menu timer.


I also in retrospect would have liked to look at more of the random shops, but despite our tutors offers to go to any shop that interested us, I didn't really feel like stopping our group of six to look at the type of merchandise Akihabara has to offer.  Maybe next time I go, especially if I can go off by myself for a little while.  Anyhow, a picture is worth a thousand words, so have 5,000 words worth of pictures.  And some more words.

 AW YEAH

 GIANT BUILDINGS PLASTERED WITH ANIME

AND MAIDS.  Also, who's that guy looking at us??

 AND CUTE GIRLS IN ELF OUTFITS.  Also Assassin's Creed and Left 4 Dead.  Also a tiny picture of Hatsune Miku near the bottom in the center.  Go to Japan and you will never have too little Hatsune Miku.  I've already had far too much.

 Wish we could have gone here.  Didn't obviously.


Before we move on to the next area, I'll get back to the manga and game shops.  For those of you familiar with manga, I give you this sentence fragment:  TWO ENTIRE FLOORS OF MANGA.  I got all of the following books for 105 yen each (at the current exchange rate, just over $1.30; usually the cheapest I can find them used in the US is $4, and that's a stretch).

Actually this one is Tina's, and because it's in color it was a bit more expensive.  It's also the easiest to read.

I made this one bigger because it actually is bigger.  I should have done a comparison.  It was still only 105 yen despite having been roughly $10 retail.  Also, this used to be my favorite manga.

Peach-Pit's famous manga about learning to be yourself.

...and in the Japanese version you get to see the back of her head too!

And this.  I've never read it before.  I decided to branch out.  I've heard it's pretty good.
























If my selection looks kid-ish, that's because it is.  I tried to pick things that were easy to read so that it wouldn't take me half an hour to translate two frames like in this manga:

...which happens to be my current favorite, the problem being that I can't read it hardly at all.


Okay, so I really would have liked to finish this today, but I think you'll have to wait for tomorrow for Part Two.  It's ten o'clock and I haven't done any of my homework.  See you tomorrow.

Missing Home

For this first time today I got a couple pangs of actual homesickness, as opposed to my ever-present desire to eat cheese and play ITG.  Although I'm sure that making the adjustment back to America will be difficult by the time I leave for home, there hasn't been a time yet when I haven't wanted to go back.  Perhaps I'm overstating that a bit, but my desire to return home is like a canvas on which my enjoyment of studying Japanese and of all the things I enjoy here are painted.  It is what it is, and I doubt that will ever change.

 I'm pretty sure this homesickness thing was spawned at a place called Genki Nikoniko Mart.

It was on a day a couple of weeks ago.  Since at this point I'm pretty sure my food entry is never making it on here, I won't pull any details about it.  Genki is the cheapest food place we've gone to since coming to Japan on virtually all fronts.  It was around the time that we really started making food at home, dramatically reducing our food costs.  We're still battling food prices (occasionally losing, but doing our best), and Genki has been our greatest ally. It was there that I bought a bag of state fair carrots...

I can barely get my hand around it...


...as well as a large bag of onions that has been serving us well, and more recently enough snacks to choke a horse.  Oh, and 300g of pickled ginger for a DOLLAR.

There was more before, but I eated it.

Anyhow, I'm way off topic, so back to what I was saying...

Tina and I were walking south, a direction we hadn't been before, mostly because the valley narrows and there's only really one place to walk, so north always seemed like a more exciting option.  We were having a pretty bad time I'll admit, and walking was what we were doing to avoid sobbing into pillows and sleeping all day, you know, the usual temptations that depression and culture shock bring.  I needed to go to the bathroom really badly, so I excused myself into a super market with a giant smiling Sun on the front.  I'll never be the same again.

After using the bathroom I went into the store to find Tina and immediately noticed the store's most distinguishing characteristic: its music.  Every minute of every hour that Genki Nikoniko Mart is open it is playing, on loop, the most energetic, cheerful big band music I can possibly imagine.  Before we knew it the prices, sheer quantity of tasty looking food and the atmosphere the music created, which was almost tangible, like we were wading through happiness juice, had won us over and raised our spirits.  We've been going back ever since.

So how does this relate to my homesickness?  It was the music.  It reminded me so strongly of the part of Final Fantasy VII in which the upper part of Junon celebrates Shinra's new president (after the old one was killed by Sephiroth), that since then I've had two bouts of extreme desire to play FF7, so extreme in fact, that it triggered homesickness the like of which I have never had before.  I can see the scene's play out in front of me, and I start to hear the music, as clear as if it were playing via headphones strait into my head, and all at once I'm hit by the weight of the countless hours I've sat in front of that game, and all the emotion and attachment that I've formed to those experiences.  This summer I think I'll be putting in some hours on the FF7 replay front.  With Albert.  And he has no choice in the matter.

This lusting after video game nostalgia played upon my existing desires to see my friends and here I am writing this blog entry to distract myself.  While I'm at it, why don't I tell you about my trip to Tokyo two days ago?

First off, it didn't go quite as well as either of us had hoped.  The trip was planned and orchestrated by our tutors, moreso by the younger two who, despite their good intentions, were having a hard time finding a balance between herding us around and leaving us to our own devices.  This led to a little bit of exasperation on both of our parts, eventually Tina and I decided to go home, and another one of our tutors, Machiko, was forced to come with us because of an earlier mistake she made in essentially buying my train ticket and hers in one so that we had to stay together.  I don't know whether or not she would have gone home at that time or not had she not been forced to, but either way she didn't seem to mind, and this turned out to be somewhat of a windfall for us.  She offered to take us to the Pokemon Center in Tokyo, and as a result did not immediately go home, but instead spent a few more hours in Tokyo at a far more leisurely pace.  That was really nice.

Having given that short, complainy summary, I will proceed to make a slightly more complete version of events.  Since this is getting rather long, why don't I split this entry?  Click the next entry when you've had some time to breathe and drink some cocoa if necessary.

A small adventure

Today Tina and I went walking for a while.  Here are some pictures we took:

 Also, you'll notice that compared to yesterday, the snow has melted quite a bit.

One of the more fun things about our walk today was that we started out around the time schools were getting out, so we saw a lot of kids of various ages walking home from school.  This would have only been of mild interest, but over half of them felt compelled to say hello to us.  A few also said, "How are you."  At first it was just sort of cute and comical, but eventually the sheer number became a bit staggering.  I've also never met a group that seemed more impressed with our limited Japanese ability.  I was told I would encounter this, but I never suspected that the primary source would be elementary or middle school students.  It was such fun that it sealed the deal on us volunteering at the elementary school.  Now we're looking forward to that.

Anyway, that was all I really had to say for this entry.  See you all later.

PS.  One point that I think I neglected to make in my last entry is that not only do I seldom have time to blog, but also that the entries I would post on typical days would be incredibly mundane due to their routine nature.