It's just a jump to the left

Okay, I officially decided that all interesting things happen on Saturday. Mostly because this is the day I let myself hangout and spend a little cash. That and we have cultural class today which terminates in us visiting random places in Tokyo. It gets very interesting.

But this morning was interesting. I went to bed late last night and figured that I’d use my American alarm clock for the first time having to get up around 6:30. I have to use a special adapter to plug it in because they use a lower voltage here, but it turns on, I set it and I go to bed. I awake in the morning and look over, 5:30. I love that feeling when you know you have more time to sleep. So I go back to sleep and have a wonderful long dream. Wake up again and look over: 6:00. First thought: hmm, that’s strange, though that dream took longer. After all sleep takes place in 20 minute cycles and entering deep sleep when REM occurs usually takes more than one cycle. I start noticing that it’s also brighter out than it usually is at 6:00. I then look over at the Japanese clock I use when I don’t need an alarm: 7:10. Turns out my alarm clock keeps time based on the frequency of electricity it receives.

It seems to be linearly related as well. Here's the math: US uses 120 volts. I set my clock at midnight last night. 7 hours and ten minutes later, it has only kept track of 6 hours. Take 360 minutes (6 hours) divided by 430 (7 hours 10 minutes) and then multiply that by 120 volts. You get roughly 100.46. How many volts does Japan operate on? You guessed it: 100 volts. Interesting? Well, write your own blog if you feel that way!

For those of you still paying attention, I was about to leave for class on Saturday. Here's how it usually falls: morning is culture class and afternoon is a tour of someplace in Tokyo. The first part can be a bit boring. The class is taught in English, but covers fairly simple subjects that I know already due to my Japanese classes at OSU. But the afternoon, well, the afternoon provides me my time to pose with whatever I can find. It's time for another round of pictures.

This picture brought to you courtesy of Chef Boyardee 

If you look closely you can tell this is a fountain. It's where people cleanse themselves before entering the temple.

Namu Amida Butsu, bitches

 Nice Teeth!

 Hmm, does anyone find posing at a grave slightly sacrilegious? Still, if that guy (or his family) was willing to put this caricature on the tomb, I don't think he'd mind.

For the life of me, I can't think of a clever caption. Me, old women, flowers. Hmm...

Kitty Cat! (Inside joke)

Before you ask, I have no idea what these are. Amusing though.

So that was my tour for the day. Afterwards, I went out to a birthday celebration for two girls both named Christina. First we went to a Japanese restaurant where drinks where had. Afterwards, kareoke. Unfortunately, they didn't have any Warren Zevon here, so I chose to sing Hard Rock Hallelujah by Lordi. I sang another song by Lordi as my first song when I was in Japan last time so it seems fitting. People where appearently surprised that I would sing a heavy metal song. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

A few addendums. As I was riding home on the train today, I noticed there was a sign advertising Nectar fruit liquor. The reason this is important is that two years ago when I was here, I ordered something called Nectar at a bar, thinking it to be non-alcoholic. Damn you fruity delicious beverage, you broke my personal rule. (Before you say anything, Chris, "gayest thing you've ever done" (Amber, I hope you get the reference)).

Secondly: While I'm pretty the song referencing titles are for my own benefit, here's last weeks answer: Lawyers, Guns and Money by Warren Zevon. This refered to my law school application, the guy I met talking about rearming Japan and the student loan having come through. Okay, a bit of a stretch, but I had three minutes to think it up before I got kicked out of the school.

Chris, if you don't get this week's reference, I disown you.

I was gambling in havana, I took a little risk

Hmm, I was actually worried I wouldn't have anything to talk about for the week. All that happened was a bunch of studying and working on my law school personal statement.

Oh, and my student loan finally came. I celebrated by going off my all ramen dinner diet and got a big mac. Now those who know me know I despise American McDonalds, but I heard they actually use meat over here in Asia. The result? Pretty much the same. On top of that the meal set cost me about 8 dollars. From now on I eat only Japanese food.

Secondly, I went to get groceries for future dinners, but could not find anything I really wanted. There are these things called kanji which make up the Japanese alphabet and there are about 2000 popular ones. I know about 500 and my food vocab has always been weak. So as I strolled the isles, I had no idea what most the products were unless they had a picture. This is a big problem for making anything with multiple ingredients. Also, the prices for fruit are extreme. I can by about 20 strawberries for 6 dollars.

So as I said, the week had been slow, then came Saturday. Saturday was my first cultural class, which was taught in English. Mostly we went over what I already knew (traditional art forms and a little history), but during lunch break some friends and I were having trouble figuring out where to eat. While we were standing on the street we were approached by a Japanese man who asked if we were Americans. After we replied to the affirmative, he started going off on his own experiences abroad. He apparently had study political theory in America and spoke English, French and German. Now he is speaking quickly, and in his native Japanese so I'm catching about every other sentence, while one of my friends is completely oblivious. Another is slightly more fluent than I, but is likewise mostly missing it. Our interjections amount to "yes" and "I guess that is so" and he is off again. I start to get a little worried when we broach the subject of the Japanese army and nuclear weapons. We are perfect strangers and to be talking about such a politically charged subject is strange, even in America. In Japan we are approaching the political dissident side of things. Luckily, we back away from the subject. My friends and I make motions to leave as we have a limited time for lunch. The man apologizes for taking up so much time and accompanies us to a cafe where he buys us lunch. Naturally, we try to refuse, but the man is very insistent, and we don't have enough language mastery to continue our refusal without seeming extraordinarily rude. We talk about baseball over lunch and then we leave for class. All and all the situation was extraordinarily surreal.

Next, the Edo museum. We went, we saw here are some pictures:

They carried important people around in this, took about 4 men.

Damn you lens flare. Anyhoo, pretty picture featuring Tokyo (known as Edo then)

A statue of the emperor who decided the city needed a name change

Kickass suit of armor mostly for show. All that shiny stuff is actual gold. It is held together by silk and weighs about 80 pounds (and the Japanese aren't known for their stature)

A bell.

Picture shop. All these pictures were printed with carved wooded blocks as opposed to the metal ones used in the west. These pictures used to cost cents on the dollar (inflation adjusted), but in the modern age they go for around five. Damn you cost inflating nostalgia!

This is suppose to house a god and its weight is unknown because they refuse to weigh a holy relic. I saw about 20 men carring it in a picture later so it can't be light.

Kabuki. Japanese theatre performed by all men. Ironic because it was first performed by all women until the emperor got upity

My personal favorite. Give you a hint why: larger than a breadbasket, capable of generating its own gravity well. Give up? My ego. Those of you who have access to facebook can see pictures of my last visit. I enjoy getting a picture with every statue I come across.

Well that's about it for the week. See you next time.

There is a house in New Orleans

How this blog will work (hopefully)
Okay folks, finally got around to creating a blog. For those of you who got the forwarded email, sorry for the repeat. Since I don't have access to internet at home I plan to try and update this every weekend and tells what has been happening. I'm afraid I won't try and do much editing as I have little time. Also to note, all posts will be titled in reference to a song and my situation, however obscure. This weeks one is easy and my mom guessed correctly in that it is to House of the Rising Sun by the Animals. Rising Sun: Japan, moving on.

First thing to say, I sort of wish I was a girl so the the address of this blog would be a pun...
Anyways here goes the first post:

Sunday the 9th: I first thought I was in trouble when I exchange money in Chicago. They were selling yen at 71/$ and buying them at 94/$. As my entire trip was calculated on 81/$, this was not good. I exchanged about 500 dollars this way and spent the time I was waiting on the flight worrying over how to reduce costs. More on this later.

I enjoyed my flight over here because I, for once, had a decent selection of movies. This time I got to watch Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Winters Bone.

The first was an enjoyable sequel, but it fell prey to the hollywood feel good vibe. The good guys win, bad guys lose and it adds nothing of interest to think about. That and I believe the writing was a little off for Gordon Gekko. He tries to do a follow-up to the greed is good speech from the first movie and it falls fairly flat.

Second movie, damn. Aunt Monna was right in this being a good movie. The acting and setting was excellent and the people sort of reminded me of life in Danville, of course minus the meth. All of it felt very real and anyone who likes thrillers should check it out.

Anyways, when I first got to Japan all was going very well up until I actually got into my homestay family's part of the city. For the life of me I couldn't get in contact with them via either of the phone numbers I was given. That is when I made the dumb mistake (and I knew it was dumb when I did it) of trying to track down their address on my own two feet. An hour later with about 100 pounds of luggage, I was wiped. I had managed to make it to grocery store near where I knew my family lived. The problem is thus: there is something in Japan called a chome (cho-may) that is basically a city block that is about a mile on every side. Inside this city block is all the houses people live in split up by a number of alleys running every which way. I know there is a rhyme and reason to the alleys, but I could not figure it out at the time. Long story short, finally got in contact with my family and they picked me up at the grocery store.

My house is fairly small for the amount of people and is made up of a kitchen/living area, 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and 2 toilets (they keep the bath and toilet rooms seperate here). I have this to say: I'm glad I got used to sleeping out on the porch back home because they don't have in house heating. They do have portable heaters, but I'd feel guilty using them for an entire night given the price of electricity in Japan.

Monday the 10th: Yasumi! (a break). Thank god my host family told me today was a national holiday, otherwise I would be standing outside my school with my thumb up my...well you know. My host father spent the day showing me around the neighboorhood by bike. I figured out where the grocery store, the library (free internet) and the post office were. The most important of these is the post office because here you can use your american bank card to withdraw yen. I took out 10,000.

Oh, I should introduce the cast of our little story:
Murai: homestay father who spends his time managing the household and finding tenents. I think this is how the family makes most of their money.

Quyen: Vietnamese homestay mother who teaches cooking and Vietnamese

Take: You'll meet him later

Adam: Other tenent, Austraulian who does computer programing for some stock trading firm and is better at Japanese than me.

Martin: French-Canadian tenent who spent his youth selling canabis (since it's legal there) and then bought a bar. He is was so successful that he opened his on clothing store and is currently looking for a new venture to hold his interest. He can appearently afford to spend about a month travelling the globe. I'm jealous. But we won't be hearing much more about him because he left as of today (Saturday the 15th). He's scheduled to return for 2 days before going back to Canada so we'll see how that goes.

Tuesday the 11th: First day of class and I was a little nervous. Firstly, I had not recieved any information on arriving such as when it began (I guessed 9 as that is when classes usually began) and secondly, I was using a map to find the place and we know what happened last time. The first trouble I ran into was finding a place to park my bike I was borrowing from my host family. They told me to go to a place could MISHOP (Mitaka International Society for HOsPitality), but I had absolutely no luck. Spent about about an hour trying to find a safe place to park it until I settled on a local shopping center. This put me late for my 9 o'clock deadline, but luckily it didn't end up beginning until 10. All we did for that day was have a welcoming ceremony and take a placement test. I placed into an area where I know I was already farmiliar with the grammar, but my small vocabulary and poor kanji (non-phonetic characters of which 2000 are usually used and I had studied about 400) skills. I plan to spend most of the time ketching up on these two areas. I got back and made myself a bowl of ramen, I plan to eat a lot of it in the coming weeks.

Wednesday the 12th: Finally found MISHOP. It was, as it turns out, about a 50 yards from where I ended up parking yesterday. Class today was orientation for US students. We went over the rules and learned about important things like the Japanese subway system. This night I checked my bank account and found my Monday transaction had been executed at about 80/$. That was a load off my mind. Anyways, tonight I met and was attacked by my family's son. He is 11 and completely fluent in english (a little discouraging). Here is a picture for your viewing pleasure:

For the next few night I spend about an hour wrestling with him before his bedtime (if it weren't for this I'd never get to study).

Thursday the 13th: First day of real class. Not really anything to note here. We are going to spend 1:30-4:45 every day studying the language. On Saturdays I will sometimes have culture class. I think my speaking skill is in the top of the class, but other surpass me on my afformentioned weak points. I've also began adding onions to my ramen so they don't get boring. In the morning I eat a meal my family prepare that usually consists of lettuce, toast, milk, yogurt or fruit and some form of meat. The most interesting thing I've had is what amounts to a fish hotdog. Mmm, combining the quality of hotdogs and my taste for seafood, how can you go wrong (that's sarcasm for you folks reading at home). I can't really complain because my family has gone out of their way to help me out with whatever problem I seem to be having.

Friday the 14th: Getting the hang of classes. What I really need to learn are grammar words (like noun, verb, passive, interrogative and whatever). They through these words out and the rest of the class nods like they understand (and, to their credit, they probably do). After class I tried to find a book in the library I could read, but too many have kanji. I ended up with a childrens book that I would liken to the Phantom Tollbooth as far as subject matter, but slated for much a younger audience. I made it through about three pages before I had to quit. It's really embarrassing being twenty three in a crowded library and reading a childrens book. I know it's silly but I just had to set it down. Thankfully Take has manga at the house I can read.

Saturday the 15th: I've been trying to get my law school personal statements set up, but I can't seem to find the right thing to talk about. All the examples I've read have the person surviving something like an earthquake. All I've done is slept through one (last time I was here incidentally). I came to the library to make some headway, but I've just been killing time and writing this blog. Okay, time to get back.