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