weee

just thought i'd drop in and say INTERNET IN MY ROOM TOMORROW! WEEEEEE

oh and here is some amazingly yummy candy. It doesn't taste amazing, but the wrapper told me that it is DOUBLE what most candies are. so it is.

Hey look. Its me again!

So so so… welcome back everyone! Looking forward to reading another post from moi? I’m touched. ^_^

Anyways, quite a bit has happened since last post. I am somewhat settled into my classes, although I am pretty sure I should drop a few because they really don’t count toward anything academic. Dangling credits is the story of my trip to japan sadly.

Oh well. I wrote that last bit a while ago… and I did end up dropping a few classes so now I’m almost at the least amount that I can take, which is a good thing. Less school work and more play for moi makes a happy japan-friendly noobie ^_^

So….. Japanese music really is not too great. I have found out. Well some of it at least. Yesterday night me and my French buddy (Julien be his name. He is uber snazzylishious) Got to talking about music and how I only ever listen to classical music. The conversation didn’t stay just on that because we talked till 3 in the night and I have a first period class… so that wasn’t smart (teehee!) but we talked about a lot of good stuff… such as video games, Japanese girls, music… etc… Hey get your mind out of the gutter! We were talking about how Japanese girls and men seem to be very separated.. Which is somewhat confusing to us. I might delve deeper into this subject later… but what I want to talk about now is music! So stop confizzleating me! Sheesh! :D

Ok so basically our 5 hour talk ended with us leaving my room and going to his room to copy some of his music since mine is all crap. This sounds good in principle, buuut it ended up taking FOREVER. First my flash drive is only like 512 mb or less… so we filled that up… and then he lent me his 1 gig one.. And we filled that up… so in the end I got two flash drives and a DVD full of music. After this we got to watching his music videos of random stuff such as this Chinese girl who plays a violin to like electronic music… interesting… that it be… interesting…. anyway its fun I must admit. However, this morning I felt like poop X_x. But I took a nap so now I’m better. I just have to figure out what to do with today!

Ok so I guess today I will… oh I don’t know… listen to some of the 5 gigs of music I just got?! Weee! He has never seen Noir (anime) but he had the soundtrack for it… which is something I’ve wanted for ages! For an anime it has AMAZING music. Honestly.. AMAZING! Do I sound excited yet? OH WELL I THINK I WILL TYPE LIKE THIS BECAUSE ITS SO FREAKING AMAZINGISHLY AWESOME THAT I GOT IT THAT I WILL SHOUT IT TO EVERYONE EVERYWHERE… EVERYWHERE I TELL YOU EVERYWHERE!!! MWUAEEAHAEHEHAHAEAEHAEHAEAE….

Ow.. My head hurts… shouting isn’t a good idea. I guess I’m done shouting for a while. NOT hah! See I caught you all off guard! I bet you were not expecting that! J

Anywho… random davidness is something most people don’t comprehend. Specially when they don’t speak English I’m finding out more and more >_> It is fun though.

So… what else has happened that is interesting since I left the states? Not a lot. Basically Japan has been David learning that his Japanese is really really bad. And then finishing Japanese class and going and walking around yokohama while speaking English. It is fun I must admit. I need to buckle down and study a lot harder though… so that I can be good enough to talk with Japanese people by next semeseter. That’s my goal. Everyone root me on with a “hu-ha” cheer in me comment box pretty please. That’s what I harvest my energy from… my commenteres cheers!

So what else have I wanted to tell all them peoples back home… It is hard to remember to blog about stuff when I don’t have a camera OR internet connection. For all of you peoples who have been wondering where all the pictures from this strange foreign land are, well… they will come when I finally buy a camera and get internet connection.

Oh that’s right. Something interesting. I played soccer with a bunch of Koreans! It was very fun. Everyone ACTUALLY knew the rules of soccer. Granted not everyone was a great soccer player, but they knew not to touch it with their hands and whatnot…

Oh what’s that? My performance? Oh of course I rocked.. Scored like 50 goals… :’( ;”( okok you caught me! I am so freaking out of practice that it was hard for me to dribble the ball! It is very frustrating. I knew what I was supposed to do but couldn’t’t actually do it. It made me want to cry alittle. In fact on the inside I believe I was crying. :’( (side note… I’m listening to this Noir music… some of which is very sad… VERY SAD… so I feel like crying right now. Why’d you all have to bring up a touchy subject :’( meanie heads! *Bawls like a little baby*) ohhhhkay….. Moving on…. Soccer was fun. I didn’t have cleats but some Korean dude lent me his (he was injured anyway) however they were too small for me… by like a size.. So ouch poor lil toesies.. :’( I am going to buy some soon. Every Saturday I will be playing with these people, so I need my own things.

Soccer is fun… I forgot how much fun it actually was. Minus the whole being sore the next day.. Right now my legs hurt :’( dang.. ow… itai! X_X

Ok enough self pitty… oh no not enough yet! *kicks his dorm in the shins* I hate where I am living. Fine fine, its not a HATE but a dislike. I am going to try and move dorms but I have a feeling they are going to tell me that I can’t. It is worth a try though because here is really really bad X_x. dang pesky spiders. AND outside my window every morning around 8ish is a bunch of little kids. Dang schools… and did I mention the birds? Oh, there is no sleeping past 7 in the morning in this dorm… never…. Never ever… never ever EVER! *cries*

Anywho… It really isn’t THAT bad but heck this is MY blog so I can make it seem as bad as I want ^_^

I need a haircut.

This music is fun.

Ow my leg hurts..

Hmm so I wonder why the spiders don’t band together and try and eat the birds… oh they do in some places… Minasawa should be one of them….

I’m kinda hungry…

Oh dang it.. I forgot you are all still listening to my thoughts! you peeping toms you… I guess I will be off now!

Bye bye noobies! ^_^

- 蟋蟀

Tada yokohama!

Tales from drunken parties!

Mina-san, Konban wa!

Look, my Japanese is already freaking amazing. I know how to say "everyone, hello!" in Japanese. Impressed ain'tcha. Oh I know you are. You know what else will impress you even more? Pictures of my dorm room! you will finally get to see how nasty a place I am living in. Oh wait, that’s right I haven’t had time to complain about the dorms here! well lemme get started. First off, showers cost 100 yen. I get 10 minutes of wonderful warm water, and then BOOM frozen solid. The cold water is like a ninja that sneaks up behind me in the shower and stabs me with an ice sickle. I'm surprised it even flows when it is that cold!! ok, I have ranted enough about the showers, I guess... now on to nasty point two of the hell hole called Minesawa Dorms. The walls. The walls in my room are fairly good compaired to some of my friends, but they are still amazingly bad. The paint is kinda cracking in places and the walls could use a good scrub down, too. Them all dirty, eww! Because the paint is cracking in some places I am scared to actually wash the walls in case part of them fall off, which HAS happened in some of my friends rooms. Its amazing. It’s like half the wall just fell off… so for now, my room is going to stay looking all crappyish.

Anyway we haven’t even gotten to the really scary part of my living quarters. The spiders! Ahh they are everywhere! THEY ARE ALL OUT TO GET ME! I SWEAR! IT’S A CONSPERICY! Ok… so they are really after the preying manti, crickets and mosquitoes, but it is still scary. They are ALL over the place. And by all over the place I mean literally inside our dorms. On the first floor there are about 4-5 spiders living in each shower stall and on each light. I must admit though, I haven’t gotten a spider bite while living here… and there really aren’t many mosquitoes because of them… so I guess its an OK trade off. It feels so weird though, in America there would NEVER be with spiders anywhere. We squish spiders when we find them. SQUISH SQUISH SQUISH! Never cohabitate with them! It is hard, but if I can get a good picture of them with my 1.2 mega pixel camera… I will. It is hard though, because they always spin their webs around a light. Using a cameras and taking pictures straight into lights that are on isn’t a good combination. Oh well. Oh and I think I forgot to mention, these spiders are HUGE. At least 5 inches with legs. They are big enough to eat birds… and maybe small children! Poor poor children!

Anyway enough about the freaky arachnoids. Lets move on to something a wee bit more fun. The classes! They are akin to 90 minutes of hell. Ok maybe not THAT bad, but they can get extremely boring. Ever listen to someone who can’t talk English well… talk for 90 minutes? It ain’t a fun thing. Fortunately for me, Japanese classes are taught all in Japanese. That’s right… 90 minutes of Japanese… and then a 10 minute break… and then another 90 minutes of Japanese 2 times a week. ALL IN JAPANESE! AHHHHH. The teacher might say 9-10 words in English, but all the rest are in Japanese. It is amazing. Completely different from class in the states. But the truly amazing part is for the most part I actually understand what is going on!

This brings me to how my Japanese is progressing. Right now, I can understand the topics of conversation so-so. And in fact, if it is the teacher talking to someone else I almost always know what to say as an answer. The weird part is that when the teacher talks to me I always get so nervous that I completely lose all my Japanese skills. This also happens out in the real world when trying to talk to native Japanese speakers. It’s really frustrating. I think I need more practice speaking, but this is hard to do because I can’t really speak well enough to talk to anyone! It is the same problem as trying to make Japanese friends. How do you make friends with someone who can’t talk English when you can’t talk their language?! Totemo tanoshikunai…. (not very fun.) Anyway, I HAVE made a few Japanese friends. Basically the people who hang around the international student center and can speak so-so English.

Soo… there have been two memorable nights that I’ve had (minutes the typical going out to eat with the other foreign students) since the last post. One was the night we went to Shibuya. Tokyo baby. I went clubbing in Tokyo with some friends. Woot woot! Lemme just say it wasn’t very much fun. I tried dancing alittle… that wasn’t fun. But apparently all the girls think I’m hot because a lot wanted to grind with me. Grinding is just awkward. The slutty club like girls are all like “Oh touch me all over” basically and I’m all like “err your good looking but I don’t really want to fondle you right now.” “oh that’s cute… now fondle me, bitch.” (I added that profanity because it so fit’s the typical clubbing girls atitude!) so that’s my impression of grinding. Btw, Dancing isn’t fun. Its official. Oh did I mention I don’t like dancing at clubs? Anyway I’ve decided that I am NOT a club guy. If I had to categorize my “drinking” (granted I don’t really drink) type it wouldn’t be get-drunk-then-go-dance-at-clubs, it would be sit-around-and-do-karaoke-while-wasted. So I guess that makes me more like a Korean and typical Japanese than American. Oh well…

Another fun night involved the same buncha friends. It was an impromptu all nighter with drinking games. Basically, we went out to eat at a place at Yokohama-eki (which means Yokohama station, so… downtown Yokohama) After eating we decided to go to karaoke. Karaoke was fun. A buncha somewhat not sober people singing songs… what isn’t fun about that!? After about an hour of karaoke we decided to get a bottle of whisky and some coke and go back to the girls dorm (it was closer… and its co-ed so don’t get all “WHAT HE WENT TO THE GIRLS DORM” mom and dad! ;D ;D) and played “never have I ever.” It was pretty fun. I didn’t get drunk, but the other two guys passed out at about 3:30... The girls and I all stayed up though because they didn’t drink nearly as much as the two other guys. The funny part is one of the guys got so wasted at 5:30 when we went home he was still quite drunk (we ran outa alchohol at around 1:30) Amazing, eh?

Soooo that’s basically my life so far. Study for some, party for some… kinda the same as the states only everyone is Asian and I can’t talk with strangers. I hope my Japanese gets better soon. (sounds like its sick or something doesn’t it! ;D)

Anyways I’ll cya all next update! ^_^

-David

ello!

crap, well i'm sitting here, with my computer AND internet (which doesn't happen very often...) and i dont have time to post. I'll tell you all about the past few days soon! buuut i'm going to go sign up for internet in a few minutes with my student tutor... it'll prolly take a while to set up in my room, but at least i'll eventually get internet in my room WOOHOO! and then maybe i can post more, who knows.

Cya all later, and me sowwwie that i can't post a longer more informative post... w/ pictures!

Week uno!

Konnichiwa mina-san! Well, it has been one week now. A whole week in this strange country. Ok it isn’t really THAT strange compared to America, but it is obvious that it would be more strange if I could speak the language. I do have people stop and stare at me occasionally because of my height/skin color… which is a little weird. It is kinda fun at the same time though. For instance, today my friends and I were standing on a street corner talking and a car slowed down just to look at us (there were no traffic lights or stop signs… he shouldn’t have stopped like he did…) Anyway, since it has been a week, let me recap for all my loyal readers… all two of them X_x.

Walking. That’s right. Walking. Walking. Walking. Ok, first week recap is done. You think I exaggerate? BAH HUMBUG is what I say to that! No, honestly, we walk at least 7 miles a day. that’s right 2-3 HOURS of walking. So this is why no Asians are fat… I see…
Well other than the walking, which did take up most of the first week, I’ll quickly run through the most interesting times. Less see… which subject should I start with first? There are quite a few…

Ah, I know. The first night (imagine that!) Well, the most interesting parts of the night were that I got to eat a BUNCH of una-don (an eel dish) for about 5 dollars and I cut my foot from over walking in brand new sandals. It wasn’t just a blister or a sore spot, it was bleeding by the time I got home. This resulted from me and two other JOY students decided to go on an adventure. We somewhat got lost which resulted in us eating at a random backstreet restaurant. It was quite a quaint little shop, but mmmm it was very good. But because we got lost, we walked about 4-5 miles to find this shop. 4-5 miles in brand new sandals. Sharp, painful, and evil brand new sandals! AHH THE PAIN! AHHH!… ok, ok, so I’m exaggerating, but they did hurt by the end. Sadly I forgot to take a picture of the cut, so I only have one of the scab 5 days later on my phone. Someday I’ll figure out how to get some pictures of Japan up here!
Anyways, so that was the first day. And now here’s the second day!

The day of the test… Ah! The placement test was all in Japanese. I mean ALL in Japanese. No English instructions, and the teachers even talked in Japanese before the test so most of us didn’t even understand what we were supposed to do! I suppose that was part of the test, but still… The test was quite long and confusing… I basically guessed on everything other than the kanji, I knew enough of those to get into the right class there, but the grammar… pfft no way. It wouldn’t even have mattered if I studied on the plane, or studied the week before I got here, or studied ever. It was way too hard! I got placed in the lowest class originally buuut through my smooth talking and uber skillz I bumped myself up to the second class. It is pretty hard, we have had three classes now, and it is honestly 90 minutes of class each, and the teacher might say 7-8 English words. Scary, no? The amazing part is I’m normally not lost. Even after a week of hearing Japanese EVERYWHERE my listening skills have grown a ton. Now if only I could get a huge vocabulary and have some speaking skills suddenly pop up I’d be set!

Anyway, enough about the test… I like to repress painful memories after all… for the rest of the day me and the other gaigokujin wandered around Yokohama. We didn’t really do anything exciting or… really anything other than walk. One of the fun parts of being here is the culture though. No no, not Japanese culture… the Moroccan/French/german/sweedish/westcost…etc culture. It is fun stuff. On day two (which I AM still talking about, kinda) we got into a big conversation at dinner about how the British call apartments “flats” and all the other different words we use. It was a bunch of fluent English speakers and 1 Japanese girl at the table though. Asuka, the Japanese girl, is pretty good with English, but since we were just throwing around random vocabulary and talking fast and loud and 2-3 of us were talking all at the same time, it musta been very confusing for her. Oh well. Anyway after dinner we all went back to our rooms and slept. (the girls dorm is like 45 minutes away from the college… but it is SO much better than Minesawa (the guys dorm))

Day three, I went to a few classes and… yep you guessed it more walking! I don’t remember what we did on this day really.. I think we tried to get cell phones but the store wouldn’t give it to us because we didn’t have our alien registration cards yet… who knows…. All the days are kinda running together in my head now…

On day four… it started off really boring… we didn’t do anything.. Buuuuut that would all soon change. At around 5 me and one of my friends went to try and get our cell phones again (still without the alien card) We DID actually get them this time! Hurray! Btw, cell phones here are about 20 years more advanced then cell phones in America. Yeah its crazy. After standing around for about 2 hours while they activated our phones, we and the Japanese person that was with us (his name is kosuke) went out to eat with some people kosuke knew. It was a pretty yummy place to eat so the food was good, but after that he and his friends decided to take us to the made café. Basically, this is a place where the waitresses dress up like anime characters (maids) and act like the customer is their master. At first I was like, *gulp* is this onea those perverted Japanese places?! Have no worries though, it wasn’t. I think that a lot of the atmosphere was lost because I don’t understand Japanese, and they probably were talking in the uber polite way that maids probably had to talk… who knows. In the end it was basically just a 5 dollar glass of tea and 3-4 perverted Japanese men drawing the girls in notebooks. It was my first experience with the amazingly open pervertedness of male Japanese. Dang I’m glad I’m not a girl. :D

Anyway I am getting kinda tired of typing so I think I’ll save days 6, 7, and 8 for later. And maybe by then I will be able to get some pictures of Japan for everyone loaded up here.

Soo… yeah. Toodles!

-David

PS: Yes, I’m lazy. So up going to upload this, my first draft, now. Who knows, someday maybe I’ll go back and edit this so it is a better post, but hey…. I never said I was a writer! (in fact one of my first posts I said, “don’t expect well thought out good writing here!” or something such as that!^_^)

PPS: be happy, I just ran a spell check ;D

Konnichiwa mina-san! Well, it has been one week now. A whole week in this strange country. Ok it isn’t really THAT strange compared to America, but it is obvious that it would be more strange if I could speak the language. I do have people stop and stare at me occasionally because of my height/skin color… which is a little weird. It is kinda fun at the same time though. For instance, today my friends and I were standing on a street corner talking and a car slowed down just to look at us (there were no traffic lights or stop signs… he shouldn’t have stopped like he did…) Anyway, since it has been a week, let me recap for all my loyal readers… all two of them X_x.

Walking. That’s right. Walking. Walking. Walking. Ok, first week recap is done. You think I exaggerate? BAH HUMBUG is what I say to that! No, honestly, we walk at least 7 miles a day. that’s right 2-3 HOURS of walking. So this is why no Asians are fat… I see…
Well other than the walking, which did take up most of the first week, I’ll quickly run through the most interesting times. Less see… which subject should I start with first? There are quite a few…

Ah, I know. The first night (imagine that!) Well, the most interesting parts of the night were that I got to eat a BUNCH of una-don (an eel dish) for about 5 dollars and I cut my foot from over walking in brand new sandals. It wasn’t just a blister or a sore spot, it was bleeding by the time I got home. This resulted from me and two other JOY students decided to go on an adventure. We somewhat got lost which resulted in us eating at a random backstreet restaurant. It was quite a quaint little shop, but mmmm it was very good. But because we got lost, we walked about 4-5 miles to find this shop. 4-5 miles in brand new sandals. Sharp, painful, and evil brand new sandals! AHH THE PAIN! AHHH!… ok, ok, so I’m exaggerating, but they did hurt by the end. Sadly I forgot to take a picture of the cut, so I only have one of the scab 5 days later on my phone. Someday I’ll figure out how to get some pictures of Japan up here!

Anyways, so that was the first day. And now here’s the second day!

The day of the test… Ah! The placement test was all in Japanese. I mean ALL in Japanese. No English instructions, and the teachers even talked in Japanese before the test so most of us didn’t even understand what we were supposed to do! I suppose that was part of the test, but still… The test was quite long and confusing… I basically guessed on everything other than the kanji, I knew enough of those to get into the right class there, but the grammar… pfft no way. It wouldn’t even have mattered if I studied on the plane, or studied the week before I got here, or studied ever. It was way too hard! I got placed in the lowest class originally buuut through my smooth talking and uber skillz I bumped myself up to the second class. It is pretty hard, we have had three classes now, and it is honestly 90 minutes of class each, and the teacher might say 7-8 English words. Scary, no? The amazing part is I’m normally not lost. Even after a week of hearing Japanese EVERYWHERE my listening skills have grown a ton. Now if only I could get a huge vocabulary and have some speaking skills suddenly pop up I’d be set!

Anyway, enough about the test… I like to repress painful memories after all… for the rest of the day me and the other gaigokujin wandered around Yokohama. We didn’t really do anything exciting or… really anything other than walk. One of the fun parts of being here is the culture though. No no, not Japanese culture… the Moroccan/French/german/sweedish/westcost…etc culture. It is fun stuff. On day two (which I AM still talking about, kinda) we got into a big conversation at dinner about how the British call apartments “flats” and all the other different words we use. It was a bunch of fluent English speakers and 1 Japanese girl at the table though. Asuka, the Japanese girl, is pretty good with English, but since we were just throwing around random vocabulary and talking fast and loud and 2-3 of us were talking all at the same time, it musta been very confusing for her. Oh well. Anyway after dinner we all went back to our rooms and slept. (the girls dorm is like 45 minutes away from the college… but it is SO much better than Minesawa (the guys dorm))

Day three, I went to a few classes and… yep you guessed it more walking! I don’t remember what we did on this day really.. I think we tried to get cell phones but the store wouldn’t give it to us because we didn’t have our alien registration cards yet… who knows…. All the days are kinda running together in my head now…

On day four… it started off really boring… we didn’t do anything.. Buuuuut that would all soon change. At around 5 me and one of my friends went to try and get our cell phones again (still without the alien card) We DID actually get them this time! Hurray! Btw, cell phones here are about 20 years more advanced then cell phones in America. Yeah its crazy. After standing around for about 2 hours while they activated our phones, we and the Japanese person that was with us (his name is kosuke) went out to eat with some people kosuke knew. It was a pretty yummy place to eat so the food was good, but after that he and his friends decided to take us to the made café. Basically, this is a place where the waitresses dress up like anime characters (maids) and act like the customer is their master. At first I was like, *gulp* is this onea those perverted Japanese places?! Have no worries though, it wasn’t. I think that a lot of the atmosphere was lost because I don’t understand Japanese, and they probably were talking in the uber polite way that maids probably had to talk… who knows. In the end it was basically just a 5 dollar glass of tea and 3-4 perverted Japanese men drawing the girls in notebooks. It was my first experience with the amazingly open pervertedness of male Japanese. Dang I’m glad I’m not a girl. :D

Anyway I am getting kinda tired of typing so I think I’ll save days 6, 7, and 8 for later. And maybe by then I will be able to get some pictures of Japan for everyone loaded up here.
Soo… yeah. Toodles!

-David

PS: Yes, I’m lazy. So up going to upload this, my first draft, now. Who knows, someday maybe I’ll go back and edit this so it is a better post, but hey…. I never said I was a writer! (in fact one of my first posts I said, “don’t expect well thought out good writing here!” or something such as that!^_^)

PPS: be happy, I at least ran a spell check ;D

Weeeeee a recap of me life so far....

Konnichiwa from the land of Japan! That’s right, I am finally here! All of you will probably not see this until a few days after I write it because we don’t have internet in our dorm rooms. I will get it later, but to get it we have to pay per month and sign up for a contract and all that kind of stuff… what a hassle!

Anyway, let me recount my first few days in Japan. Ah this might take a while, so I think I will probably break it up into 3 posts or so… buuuut first the nice 17 hour plain ride.

hey look! It’s a plane, it’s a bird, no wait! It’s David flying all over the world with a bunch of Asian people! That’s right, there were soooo many Asians on the flight that I felt weird taking out my genki (Japanese) textbook and studing elementary Japanese with so many fluent speakers around… I‘m such a noob! So… guess what, I didn’t.

Anyways, let me regale you with the most interesting details of my flights.
First flight: destination, Chicago Ohare. I don’t remember much about this flight. (interesting detail, eh?) Basically I had the excitement of taking off and then promptly fell asleep for the remainder of the trip, only to awaken to the captain informing us that we were about to land. God did bless me with a nice person to sit next to, though. It was a lady about 40ish or so, and her child, 11. The child played the violin so we had an instant connection. I talked to both of them during the 10 minute take off. She was into sudoku and her child was into Harry Potter. Anyways, I got her to help me find what gate my next flight was leaving at. It was basically my first flight, how am I supposed to know how the airports work? Anywho….

Flight number two: The long one, 13 hours and 42 minutes, not counting the 1 hour delay. That’s right, 1 hour… supposedly, they filled up one wing with gas but forgot about the other wing, so our plane was tilting more than a drunk trying to walk home. It really wasn’t nearly as hard a flight as I thought it was going to be. I didn’t even use all the battery on my laptop OR my PDA, amazing eh? I did finish “House” though (that’s a book my mommy game me to read on the plane! ^_^) In all honesty it was a pretty fun flight. I read till I got bored, then watched some of the onboard movie (which was in Japanese) and then watched some shows I brought along on my computer, and then I slept, then read till I got bored, then watched some of the onboard movie (which was in Japanese) and then watched some shows I brought along on my computer then I slept, then read till I got bored, then watched some of the onboard movie (which was in Japanese) and then watched some shows I brought along on my computer then I slept, then... etc :D

After the flight landed in Narita, Japan I had to go through customs (which took a little time but no problems arose) and grab my bags before jumping on the bus to YCAT (Yokohama basically). It wasn’t too hard, minus the fact that I accidentally went to the wrong bag place so I didn’t find my bags for a while…. How was I supposed to know that when it says (FLIGHT 881: B4) it meant I was supposed to go to the B4 and not the B5 bag area?! Oh ok so it was silly of me, but after about 15 minutes I figured out that this was NOT the right place to be.

So, after finally grabbing my bags, I jumped onto the bus to YCAT. This is my first experience of being the "token white guy"! Hurray! I was the ONLY non-Japanese person on the bus. I felt a wee bit silly about 15 minutes into the trip though, because I forgot to ask the dude I sat next to if the seat was free ( I know how to do that in Japanese, but if he replyed with anything other than “no you can sit here.” I‘d have been uber confused!) Oh well, I’m allowed to be rude cus I’m just a silly gaijin, eh? ^_^

After I got off the bus at YCAT (hey “at YCAT” rhymes, sugeeeeee!( sugee is Japanese for cool!)) my student tutor was waiting for me. Saito-san. His English is not very good but its good enough to get around. I think it might be a vocabulary problem, so I say everything to him 2-3 times in different ways to help him understands. It is alittle fun, but a little frustrating too. Oh well, it is still good that he is my student tutor because he is very nice and knows where we have to go and what papers I have to sign and put my stamp on. Yep, we get a Hanko, which is basically a Japanese signature stamp. It is supposed to be the last name of the family you belong to, buuut I don’t have one so we just got something that somewhat sounds like Webster. I’ll have a picture of it later on probably!

Anyway after catching a takshi (or at least that’s how my student tutor pronounced taxi) and driving through the strangest backstreets, we finally got to Minesawa dorms. At this point I was in total asian overload (not really… mostly just sleep depervation, I‘d been up for 26-28 hours or something… but asian overload had such a good ring to it!), so I went to my room and fell asleep.

My tutor did something really nice though… he got me two gifts: tissues and toilet paper… two things they don’t provide here! No wonder rent is so cheap! I pay for my own electric bill too… and there are spiders everywhere… no wonder rent is so cheap, for real! Anywhoooooo….. the first night I was in Japan I fell asleep at 8. Not good to set a pattern! Ever since then I fall asleep early and go to bed early. I feel like my parents! Ahhh! the sad part is even the few nights I have fallen asleep at a reasonable time, like midnight or one, I still wake up early because of my lousy bed. It is HORRIBLE…. today I bought a futon to lay on top of it though. because tonight is the first night I get to test it I’m excited, woohoo!

More later, I guess...

toodles for now!

-David

PS: btw, this is the boring part of the trip, just wait till you hear about what we are doing here! (mostly it is boring too, but thats because you have to walk FOREVER to get anywhere.... i need a bike... bah... X_x... later!)

Once again,

I am aliiiiiiiive!

sadly internet here is few and far between. They put a nasty gate right in the middle of the path to the only internet connection which i have and it is closed pretty early at night so i can't get to the one internet hub me has! soooo not fair.

anywho, i will be writing updates in my room probably and posting them later, who knows. so far i've had a crazy time in japan. what with all the random mormon churches i've gone to and the chinese temples... thats right CHINESE in japan, wtf? and the getting lost in the backstreets and trains and... eating stuff that i have no idea what it is... and the maid cafe (random story there.... wtf is up with japanese people AHH THEY ARE INSANE I TELL YOU... INSANE!!!


anyway i'll update later, toodles!

I'm here! Japan! woohoo!

buuut i hardly have any internet connection. its hard to type on this somewhat weird keyboard so i'll update later when i can finally make my computer work!

T'was de night before... AHH A 16 HOUR FLIGHT!

So, once again, Greetings all!

I am updating from my nice new laptop (its great but my bank account doesn't like me for getting it.. hehehe...!) And, I just happen to be in the hotel (which has wireless)... and it just happens to be the night before I leave for japan... and... and... WHAT POSSESSED ME TO GO TO JAPAN?!? Oh yes.. that silly little notion of learning japanese and japanese culture. silly me, silly me.

To be honest, it hasn't hit me yet. I know a few posts ago I said it had, however that was but a fleeting thought. I do not think that it will hit me until I land in Narita and realize something such as, "oh my goodness... they are all so short... and me 6'1"... I AM GODOZIRA! (thats how the japanese would say "godzilla")

Anyway, time for me to get some sleep. I do have an exciting day ahead of me. Well, its more like stressful and boring I suppose... >_>

Farwell,
-David (not japanese this time since I dont have a japanese imput thingy on my new laptop yet! :D)