I'm doing this slightly out of order because something really weird just happened to me.

For Christmas, Adam got me tickets to sumo yesterday, along with an all-expenses paid weekend in Tokyo. Honestly at first, I was a bit weary of the idea of seeing a bunch of fat men pushing each other, but I decided to go for the cultural experience.

Well, first of all, I met Adam in Akihabara (where the train from my city ends) and we went to possibly the only decent burger restaurant in Japan. Seattle Burger is a little restaurant that seems to know how to make a good, greasy burger along with some of the crispiest fries you could ever find, even in America. Considering McDonald's uses sausage in half of their "burgers," I was looking forward to an actual American meal.

After that, we made our way a whole two stops away to Ryogoku, where the world's largest sumo stadium... thing... is located. We arrived a couple of hours after the competitions started (it's literally an all day event), but it was still just the no-name wrestlers fighting. Most of the seats were still empty, but the fighting was pretty interesting. There were a lot of fights that were anti-climactic, but some were fairly engaging.

After an hour or so of no-names, the mid-level sumo wrestlers start. The seats also start to fill up. These fights were a bit more interesting... Some guys were literally slapping each other across the face for half of the match they were competing in.

After a couple hours of those fights, the matches between experienced wrestlers began. The place was full. Most of the fights ended much faster than those with the low-level guys, but some were exciting. The two highest ranked (who are from Mongolia, I think) were put up against some guys who were doing pretty lousy to assure them going on to fight each other. Even so, one of the highest ranked almost lost his footing a couple times, but eventually won.

We (Adam, I and 6 other people) had originally planned to go our for chanko. Chanko is a hot pot with meat and random vegetables and is known for being a traditional sumo meal. Well, every place in the area was full (and not to mention very expensive), so we wandered around a bit until we stumbled upon an Indian restaurant and settled on curry.

-Next day-
Continuing the sort of traditional weekend, I went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum, also located in Ryogoku. You start on the top floor and work your way down through time. It gives a whirlwind history from mediaeval times to fairly recently (a bit after the war), so it was pretty neat. We also went to some special exhibit that's going on now that didn't really seem to special (except for the fact that the whole thing seemed to be one huge 3-hour line to look at pictures), but afterwards we found the holy grail: A restaurant that served real Belgian waffles. OK, Japan doesn't even sell Eggo's. I haven't seen a waffle iron anywhere. The closest thing to an actual waffle I've had was a tiny little packaged waffle-like cake from a convenience store that tasted like crap. Of course we had to get waffles. (They were delicious, by the way.)

Well, to wrap up the weekend, Adam and I wandered around Akihabara a bit in search of the new Kakitori-kun game for myself (it teaches all of the kanji through high school level) and the oh-so-elusive DS Browser for Adam. After I found my game, we continued walking in the station's vicinity to look for other game stores. As we were waiting at an intersection, possibly the most horrifying thing ever happened to me.

I was standing there, minding my own business, zoning out because what else is there to do at an intersection... When suddenly I'm grabbed by the head and shaken around, all the while being yelled at in gibberish "English". What the heck? I close my eyes and try to shrink away from whoever is trying to tear my head off, and Adam and I are both in too much of a shock to really do anything for a few seconds. After I'm let go, I see a middle-aged Japanese man who is trying to communicate with us in something that he seemed to think was English. He says something like "Oh, I see" (because I guess he didn't notice the guy standing next to me?) and then "Is ok?" and starts to hold his arm out like he wants to touch me again. I'm just staring at him, completely confused and in shock. Luckily Adam was there (and thankfully calm enough to not draw any more attention to us) and told the guy that it wasn't ok to grab me again. Suddenly the guy seemed to act like nothing had happened and he tried acting like he just wanted to practice English. "How I speak?" or somesuch he tried spitting out. Adam diverted the stranger's attention away from me and told me to go somewhere else, but I was too scared to really move anywhere without being with someone I knew. After about half a minute, Adam pushed me ahead and we walked off, apparently much to the dismay of the weird man... He continued to yell, moan and scream for a few seconds as we walked off.

OK. First of all, you don't go around grabbing random white girls' heads. That isn't going to do anything for anyone. Secondly, why do you ask the guy if it's ok to touch the girl? Sorry, but it's my body, my head. If you want to get near me, ask me about it, not someone else. Thirdly, why try to pull of the stunt of acting like you're just trying to converse when you practically just got done assaulting the people you're trying to talk to? That's just stupid.

Ugh... I'm very glad, though, that I was with a guy at the time. If it was another girl, it possibly could have been messier, and if I was by myself... Well, I don't even want to think about that. So needless to say, I won't be going to Tokyo anytime soon without a guy friend... Luckily some of the guys here I hang out with plan on going there in the next month or so, so I won't have to avoid the place or anything, but... Ugh. I'm still confused by all of it.

But of course, the one bad thing that happened this weekend had to happen less than 20 minutes before I headed home. Blah. Oh well, it was still a great weekend.


Anyway, I'll update soon enough about Christmas break. I put some pictures up and will link others from Adam's account (ones with me in them, of course), so... Hopefully you enjoy. I added almost three pages of stuff (yea, I haven't uploaded any in a while), so be sure to check them all out.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eahamilt/


Adam's stuff:
Some guy giving out free hugs in Harajuku. Notice the eye shadow.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2377/2178251640_8979080fec.jpg?v=0

Random group shot in Tokyo:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2393/2176755341_2179cc7fbd.jpg?v=0

Me taking a picture of a robot:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2395/2177546248_4c2fdb7d4c.jpg?v=0

I'll be posting another kind of long update thing in a few days, but I'll go in order to keep things organized. So I'll talk about the concert I went to and finals here.

First of all, the brilliant green's concert. Basically what happened was this: About a month ago, Adam and I went to Chiba (a nearby prefecture) to some random college where the concert was being held. Since a concert for a somewhat famous band was being held there, we figured the college would be pretty big. Wrong. We also figured that  since it was in a fairly large city (Chiba, from what I saw, seems to be probably about... midway between Fort Wayne sized and Indy sized, maybe bigger, so it's a decent size) that we wouldn't have any problems. Also wrong. 

First of all, the "university" was a whole 5-10 buildings, if that. They were having a festival that day, and I was under the impression that all universities had awesome festivals like Tsukuba's (which consisted of three days of food/alcohol vendors on campus along with random performances everywhere). Not even close. The festival was only a few tents selling food. We wandered around a little bit, but it was really awkward. We got looks from everyone we went by. People even stopped what it was they were doing to stare at the two white people walking around campus. There was even one group of girls that were inside a building we happened to be walking by that suddenly turned around all at the same time, only to stare at us until we were out of view. Nice, warm feelings, right?

Well, after that embarassment was the concert itself. The band, as expected, was awesome. There's really no other way to say it. You could tell they were live, but they still sounded great, which is pretty rare it seems. Well, that's all fine and dandy, but everything else kinda sucked. First of all, it was in a gym. Not a big gym. Nothing like North Side's old stadium seating gym. Not even as good as their new crappy gym. This was on par with a middle school gym. Which meant the acoustics were pretty horrible and there wasn't much room. Another problem was the crowd. Oh, the crowd. There was one guy (*one* guy) who actually seemed to be getting into it. He was jumping and dancing all over the place, screaming, having a good time... Everyone else was fairly robotic. They stood there, threw their hands out on the choruses (I think it's mandatory at Japanese concerts or something), cheered slightly when they felt like it, yelled for an encore (which I think is also mandatory), but there wasn't any feeling. The only thing keeping me from being like the random Japanese guy bouncing around was the fact that I didn't want to stand out any more than I already was as the white girl. The band didn't seem too happy about what was going on, either. Towards the end when the encore was starting, the vocalist said something along the lines of  "You people don't have enough power. Don't you want to be here?" So... She was kind of offended. (Keep in mind this is their first sort-of tour since 2001, I believe.) But yea. Overall it was good. The transportation ended up costing more than the tickets, but it was a fun trip.


OK. Now for finals. Two of my papers I should have done fine on. One of the teachers grades very subjectively (yea, she's really professional, as you can tell), so hopefully she doesn't count me off for anything stupid. I had good sources and everything, so I shouldn't have a problem. The other paper I'm sure I did fine on. I had another paper, but I wasn't clear on any restrictions or regulations whatsoever (except that it was to be at least 6 pages long), so hopefully that goes alright. As far as tests went... Hm. Good question. My first grammar test was horrible. Kate and I both left having very bad feelings about that. The teacher kind of fails at her job, so basically unless you're Chinese or Korean (both infinitely more similar to Japanese than Romance/Germanic languages), you had problems in the class. Pretty much everyone who spoke some sort of European language (German, Latvian, Estonian, Polish, etcetc) had problems with the class. My other grammar class I think I did better on (the teacher was much better, though some things still confused me), so I'll see how that goes. My reading class... Two of the readings I think I did alright on, the last one I wasn't so sure on. If she's a nice grader, I'm sure I did fine, but sometimes really small details throw me off. The same goes with my writing class, but the teacher seems to grade very objectively. She isn't the nicest teacher here by any means, but I'd be willing to say she's probably one of the best language teachers here that I've had. My speaking final consisted of a speech, and the teacher is really nice and seems to only measure students based on their own improvement, so I'm pretty sure I did well in that class. 

Well. I have one more final to talk about, and it was possible the most painful final ever. Listening. The teacher is horrible. She cancelled 4/10 classes for "personal days" with no prior announcement and expected students to come to her make up days during break AND to accept the fact that she moved the test to a different date because of her irresponsibility (though because it was her fault, she ended up giving the same test three times, depending on people's schedules, thankfully). Well. First of all, this is basically what most of the test looked like:

Random Japanese__________________ particle _________________. __________________ word______________ another word__________________. Random Japanese__________________Random Japanese__________________    ____________________. 


She played the things twice each, not starting them at the same point either time (which threw me off a lot). I missed about half of the fill in the blanks. The speaking is so fast it's almost impossible to catch everything to write it down, not to mention she has word (blank) word (blank) word (blank), so even if you catch one word the first time around, chances are you'll only get one of the other two the second time around. Horrible test layout.

My second complaint with this test is what happened afterwards. Kate and I finished very close together, and when we turned them in, she called us back. I thought at first she was going to say we cheated or something (we were sitting next to each other), which I could understand if she asked. No. That wasn't it at all. She started telling us "Blablabla you need to write the kanji (Chinese characters). When a Chinese person hears this word, they see the kanji. You need to do that too. Blablabla." Um. Right. Because ENGLISH speakers know kanji fluently. Yes, I, as an American, know the 10000 kanji a Chinese person knows. Another thing that really peeves me is that a lot of the vocabulary I didn't know. I wrote down the hiragana (the Japanese alphabet) for the words I heard. If I knew that the word had kanji and I knew that it was the right kanji, I used it. If I don't know what the word means, I can't exactly use kanji. Blah. Another thing that both Kate and I both kind of thought the teacher said (we aren't sure because she was being an idiot and not saying anything straight up) is that we may have been failed for not using kanji for our answers. There are a few problems I have with this, if this is what she meant. First of all, it was a LISTENING test, not a writing test. It was to test our ability to hear what was being said, not to write kanji. Another thing is that nowhere on the test or in any sort of mentioning of the test before the little talk afterwards did the teacher say anything about kanji being required when answering. So yea, I'm very annoyed about that class. I'm hoping I passed just so I don't ever have to take one of that teacher's classes again, because she was a horrible teacher. Blah.


PART TWO:

Somehow this saved after it deleted itself, so this is two updates in one. 

Got my grades back. All A's and B's somehow... No complaints here. Started new classes already. Most seem like they'll be pretty decent.

For fall break, I didn't do much. Kate and I went up to Fukushima-shi (where Adam lives) and had a big Thanksgiving potluck. I made stuffing (which considering I'd never even eaten it before, it turned out really well), Adam got KFC (no turkey in Japan, after all), Kate made cookies, and other random people brought caseroles, potatoes, bread, and other good things. 

Aside from that, I went to an elementary school concert for local marching bands. OK. They were seriously the most coordinated little kids I'd ever seen. At first, I was pretty amazed at how well they were marching and playing. But after a while, I noticed that despite the fact that they played everything perfectly... It all sounded the same. There wasn't really any emotion behind it. It was just playing notes that happened to sound good to them. They even somehow managed to make the Star Trek theme not very climactic... It was disappointing.
We also tried to go to a little onsen town. An onsen is a hotspring. Well... We had planned to go to this really pretty one that was both free, outside, and in a river in a really beautiful location. It turned out that only about 4 busses a day went out there from the random little city, and we had already missed the ones that would put us there while it was still daylight (because it gets dark at like 4:00 now). Well, we ended up finding an "onsen" which was comprised of a cute little hotel and a couple of public baths. It was the first time I had ever been in one, and it was alright. Kate and I were the only two people in it for a while, and when we went to take a break because of the steam, I noticed my foot somehow got cut so we decided to just stay out.


OK, that's all boring. I'm really tired right now, but I just got back from an awesome concert. Kate and I went to a Dir en grey concert in Shinkiba, Tokyo. We showed up like 3 hours early. We got in line, and found out it was just the merchandise line. There were already about 300 people waiting.... Three hours before the show started. Well, we got our obligatory concert t-shirts and decided to go wait around back where the line would be forming. We waited. And waited. And waited. Watched people. Waited. Finally people start coming out barking orders through megaphones. We didn't know what they were saying, so we just jumped in line as close to the front as we could.

Bad choice. Turns out the fanclub got priority spots, and they went by ticket number when letting people in. We were 1880 and 1881. Going by groups of twenty, we ended up having to wait outside in the cold (not coats because we put them in the lockers), so that wasn't too fun. 

We got inside, and immediately there was a bar. OK, cool. We went into the room where the concert was. Pretty big and already mostly full. We took two (standing) spots and waited. And waited. And waited for about an hour. Finally sime white guys come out on stage and start singing. Opening act was from America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Years

They were pretty decent at first. The vocalist was pretty strong, decent sounding. The band was skilled... but all of their music sounded the same after the first three songs. And it lasted for about an hour. Ehhh.... After that, they leave after making it seem like they were leaving about 5 times. Fifteen minutes of preparation on stage.

Lights dim. Crowd cheers and immediately crunches closer to the stage. I think I moved about 15 feet forward just because of that. Despite moving forward, there was a line of people who still didn't move much forward. They held their arms out in front of them and wouldn't let anyone stand in front of them. The band members start coming out and everyone goes crazy. The music starts. The headbanging starts. Good reason to make sure you have room.

Well, the concert was really good. Lots of people jumping. Lots of people headbanging in extremely confined places. Lots of screaming along with the lyrics (which included one song where everyone started yelling "psycho killer" over and over again, which was hilarious). A lot of their songs they played I wasn't too fond of, but live... It was great. Not that I've seen many bands live, but they definitely are one of the few that are better live than recorded.

Despite the fun, I made a horrible mistake. When the band members were throwing guitar picks, drumsticks, drum... things... to the crowd, one of the picks skidding across the ground and stopped in my area. Another girl and I start looking around. I don't see it. I stand up. The girl dives... right under my foot. I was stepping on it. Damn.

OK, so I don't really care that I didn't get the pick. It would have been neat to say "Hey, I have Kaoru's guitar pick," but... I'm sure a high school girl would appreciate it much more. Some guy standing next to her didn't seem to happy, though... He got pissed and started giving her the middle finger (which is really weird coming from a Japanese person), which I thought was uncalled for.


Well, I had more to say about it, but after all of it, I'm too tired (it's 1 AM). Luckily I didn't have class today and don't have class tomorrow, so... I can sleep in. Yay.

 I have my first final today. No idea how I'll do, though. I'm taking the test a week and a half early (with another section of the same course) because I don't want my fall break split in to. That means that I will have the last class after I take the test, so... Hopefully I know what I'm doing. The grammar I'm ok on (actually, fairly far ahead), but my vocabulary isn't as great as everyone else's. 

This should be fun. Hopefully I can use a dictionary on this.

I had started a post here, but somehow it got deleted when I tried to insert a video... So I will eventually write about it, but since I have a final on Friday (and have problems in that class) it probably won't come for another few days.

Last week work was cancelled. Whatever. Today I go in, and the kids are brats, of course. I guess having a younger teacher means they think they can be rowdier. Oh well.

Well, after class, I find out that I was getting paid for the showing up and sitting there that I did two weeks ago. I was told by another worker that the job paid 3000 yen an hour (a bit less than $30), but I'm assuming that because I haven't had any experience teaching English before is the reason I'm getting paid 2300 yen an hour (a bit less than $23). Still not bad for a part time job for someone who hasn't graduated. I think I'll be doing it once a week next semester, so hopefully the classes I want don't conflict because this would be good for a resume and for the extra $30 a week I'd be making.

Anyway, Saturday I will be going to the Brilliant Green concert in Tokyo with Adam. Well, it's not really in Tokyo, but it's a short train ride away from there. I think... It's probably about an hour away from here, but considering that the tickets were less than $15, I'd willing to take a bit of a ride. Plus I haven't ever been to Chiba or another university (Chiba is the city where the university is that the band is playing at) since I arrived, so it should be fun.

Finals are coming up as well. It's really stupid because one of my teachers randomly decided to cancel four classes (when it only meets ten times), and now at the end of the semester she is trying to schedule make up days, AND she wants to reschedule the test during break. I emailed someone in the international center to ask if that was approrpiate or even allowed, because... Well, I want a week long break from classes without any interruptions from a class that I hate. (It's listening, which is basically the most pointless class in existence. We listen to news, which I could do in my dorm room if I chose to.)

Strangely enough, I have actually been making a lot of homemade food recently. I even got bored and made a bunch of pita bread (which was really good when it was just done). You can make more in a toaster oven than you'd think. The best thing that I've tried is probably this:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Garlic-Chicken/Detail.aspx
I like garlic, and I like chicken. It's simple and doesn't take much at all, so it's a pretty good meal.

Anyway, speaking of food, I need to cook dinner. I'm watching Pokemon, sadly... Which isn't quite as painful in Japanese as it is in English, but it still isn't quality TV. Sadly, the best things I've seen tend to be anime. The news shows parallel game shows as far as annoyances go, so I tend to avoid anything live action. Half of the TV shows here revolve around random stars (mostly JPop stars from what I've seen) either showing how little they know about Japanese culture via flipping cards with climactic music and telop usage, talking about their personal lives and how normal they are while people gasp in awe at the fact that stars actually eat food, or "news" that follows a similar format with slightly more mature people.

So I had my "interview" for "eikaiwa" tonight.

First of all, it isn't really eikaiwa. Rather than conversation, I will be teaching grammar to mostly first graders (one 13 year old and one kindergartener) from American textbooks. They all have about a 2nd grade comprehension of English, so needless to say I was stunned to see 7 and 8 year olds speaking at a 7-8 year old level.

Second of all, I didn't have an interview. I showed up, and the woman said "Oh, you can sit in on your class with the current teacher. Here's the textbook." So basically I showed up and got the job.

Another thing that surprised me was how casual the dress was. I put on my dress pants and a nice shirt because I figured that... you know... it's Japan and an interview. Well, I met one of the workers (the owner's daughter) when she came to pick me up at a meeting place (because I didn't know where the school was). Well, I even took out my industrial piercing (which partially closed already because of it). The daughter shows up dressed about how I usually would but a bit more gothic. Heavy makeup. Tattoo showing (which surprised me most of all about her). Oh well. I definitely won't be pulling that when I start working next week, but I might gradually dress a bit more casual.

The best part is they didn't ask to see my passport or work permit, so I assume that either I'm volunteering or I will be getting paid under the table. Either way is good for me, because I don't want to deal with legal paperwork, and honestly I think that would make me not take the job... Just because I don't want to worry about any of that crap when I don't understand the language enough to read the technical jargon they would throw in my face.

So. This should be fun.

I really thought I would update this more. Oh well.

Everything is going fine. I might be volunteering at an English conversation school in the near future for an undetermined period of time. I got a reply and am supposed to be having an interview sometime soon (that time also is undetermined), so hopefully everything goes well with that.

I got my quena today. I made tacos for dinner, so I didn't notice it at first, but the quena definitely smells like chili powder. I don't know if the maker did that in hopes of making it seem authentic or if it just happened, but it doesn't smell all that great.

I might finally be going to a concert here. The first band I wanted to see sold out. The second band I couldn't see because of school/friend visiting the day that I could go. The concert I really wanted to go sold out in less than a day, which still annoys me. So now I'm hopefully going to be going to a newly-reunited Brilliant Green concert in a couple of weeks. Oh well. It's super cheap to get in (about $13 US), so no complaints here, even though I wouldn't really call myself a fan.

I'm sure more has happened, but I can't really think of anything right off hand... The hot water situation here sucks. When they say it's on between 2pm and 10pm, what they really mean is: You can actually use the hot water between 6 until it runs out. And that only applies when there isn't more than one person using hot water at once. If two or more people decide to take a shower at the same time, your hot water will be cut in half, and so forth.
Not a pleasant situation. Eh... Oh well. It's only really annoyed me once, and that was when I was in the middle of washing my hair when suddenly my water temperature dropped about 15 degrees, leaving me with soap in my hair for about 15 minutes while i waited for the water to become free again.


Anyway... That's about it. When I think of something interesting to write about, I'll try to remember to put it here.

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/17231400391.html
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/17223900391.html

First earthquake since being here. The X is the epicenter. I only felt the one that started in Ibaraki-ken. The map is really neat. You can zoom in and find out what certain parts/divisions of the cities got out of it. The part I'm in, Tennodai, only got a 1.

A bit ago I was playing video games and suddenly my room started shaking. It wasn't bad or anything. When no one seemed to mind than anything was shaking, I thought I was crazy until I finally found this site that listed up to date earthquake information for Japan.

Well. It wasn't as traumatic as I expected. Just a bit... unexpected. It only lasted a few seconds, so... Meh. If it weren't for the fact that it was a bit late when it happened and everyone I know well enough to run over to/call would possibly be asleep, I would have gone to confirm, but oh well. As long as none worse come, I'll be ok. Though I think there's some earthquake research center in the city, which is neat.

So I haven't really been keeping up on this or my pictures. Sorry?

Well, quite a bit has happened in the past couple of weeks. Japanese language classes are pretty difficult. I'm in six language classes, each for a different thing. Every class meets once a week, which is nice, but there is a lot of homework. So it balances out. The classes taught in English are interesting but seem really easy. Not really a whole lot of work or anything, so they shouldn't be too bad.

I finally went to Mount Tsukuba. Last weekend Adam came down to visit me and we decided to walk/climb up the mountain. That's good, because I didn't want to go up it by myself and I guess Kate just wanted to take the cable car up (and down, I assume). I really wasn't looking forward to my first trip up the mountain being a 10 minute train ride, so the 90 minute walk to the peak was nice. Not to mention, the biggest part of going to a mountain is going up it, right? It was so pretty and peaceful, I don't see why you wouldn't want to climb it, but... Oh well.

anyway, I definitely wasn't thinking when I decided what to wear and put on sandals and a tshirt that showed every drop of sweat through it. I also didn't bring any sort of hair band, so I ended up keeping my hair out of my face by tying my keychain lanyard around my head. Not the most glamorous accessory, but it worked.

We took the longest route because it seemed like it would be the easiest. It probably was (the shortest route was practically straight up the mountain, supposedly taking 40 minutes), but it was still a lot of work for me. There was a lot of slipping because of mud and bad shoes, but it was still really fun. Somehow we ended up switching trails when we were almost to the top. There are two peaks, and we were heading towards one of them (the "female" peak). We had walked 1.7 km and had .7 km to go, I think. Well, we walk about what seems to be about half that and we come across another sign that says we still have .8 km to go. No idea how that happened, so we ended up going to the other peak instead. It was really nice though. Towards the top there was a little stream that you could drink out of that had the best water ever. It was really cold and perfectly clean. Afterwards I had the great idea of bottling it since I was almost out of the drink I had brought with me, but it was too far to go back to get any.

When we were almost to the top there was a big series of small stairs to go up. Just what I wanted. Well, there wasn't much at the top. A few shops. An observation deck that rotated around, showing a panoramic view around the mountain. It was pretty nice. I stayed up there for about 30-40 minutes and then took the cable car back down (too tired to make my way back down, and it was almost dinner time). It was a pretty ride, but not nearly as pretty as the trip up.

This week... Hm. I decided to buy a quena online to play in the club I joined. We're allowed to borrow instruments, but there are 40+ people in the club, probably, and considering most people play at least one instrument and own at least one of their own, I assume that everything is almost always checked out. I got one to keep for the next couple days, but I don't want to keep it checked out too long. Not to mention, I think there are only two or three spare quena, and I think they may even be one of the group members'.

The school festival is coming up soon. My friend Keith, who is staying in Morioka Japan for this semester will be in the area around then so he'll be coming to visit me for a couple of days. Hopefully the festival will give something to do.

And I meant to make more meaningful comments, but I'm half asleep. I posted new pictures. Some of them may be on the second page as well since I haven't uploaded any in a while. I think I may have put something like 20 up tonight, so enjoy. I think Adam may have taken a few of me when we were at Mount Tsukuba, so whenever I get them from him I'll be sure to post them as well. My camera died almost immediately after getting to Mount Tsukuba (I knew it was going to happen and for some reason didn't bring batteries. Go figure), so that's why there aren't a whole lot posted.

Also, a couple of the pictures I uploaded are slightly inappropriate. Not intentionally, of course, but random English things with strange double meanings in English.

Oh, on another random note, I had my first Japanese style pizza since arriving here. There's a buffet place in the mall here. It was very... commercialized. The pizza was alright, but they have weird things on it. Like corn. Corn is on everything and is everywhere. Pizza. Soup. Salads. Probably even water. Well, anyway, they also served curry at a pizza place. Pasta (some was good, some was really gross and had seaweed and stuff in it) was put out every few minutes. Overall it was alright, but not some place I would want to visit often. The Japanese have a weird way of taking things from other countries and making them worse. Much worse.

OK. Sleep now. Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eahamilt/

I haven't updated in a while because I've been busy/lazy.

I still haven't gone to Mount Tsukuba, but hopefully this weekend I will get the motivation to go.

I went to Tokyo last Saturday. First stop was Asakusa. Went to the temple, but not in it, got some temple food... Bought a couple gifts and that was about it. On my way out I happened to notice a weird store. I didn't go in, but considering the place was called Condomania and there were animated pictures of condoms all over the front of the store, I can only assume that they sold condoms. I heard a few years back that Japan was the leading seller in condoms worldwide and that there were even door to door salesmen for them. I don't really know if that's true or not, but that store definitely didn't hurt the rumors.

After that I went to... Kichijouji? I think so. I'm in the South American music club and was going to go there to check out instruments. I plan on getting mine online, because even with shipping they're infinitely cheaper (I plan on getting a quena, by the way). I've found a couple names of quena makers that apparently sell high quality instruments for fairly cheap, so hopefully in the next week I'll be buying one.

Following Kichijouji, I went to Harajuku. I have been wanting to go to Harajuku for some time just to see the gothic-lolita/JRock styles. It isn't as fashionable as it used to be, but it definitely still has a following. I found a lot of really neat (and very expensive) stores that I wanted to get stuff in. It was kind of strange, because most of them are literally underground. Wandering by above-ground stores, I noticed stairwells going down that had mannequins with neat clothes on and just went downstairs to check things out. The stores were all fairly small and didn't have much selection to choose from. I can only assume that's because they don't sell much. Considering a skirt is about $150 US (that I would have bought if it didn't cost more than anything else in my wardrobe), I can only assume that it is a very niche (and rich) group of people that buy the clothes. They were all really nice when I was walking around their dank basement-stores, but... Fashion is too expensive.

After that, my trip to Tokyo ended. I didn't really take a whole lot of pictures (I forgot my camera and was stuck with my phone), but I will upload pics that I've taken in the past week or so soon.

In other news, I tested into 600 level Japanese here. I guess that's about 400 at Purdue. Well, that's great and all, but considering everyone in the classes have taken different Japanese language programs, everyone knows different vocabulary and grammar. So while I'm ok with learning the grammar points (the stuff we're going over now I've already done), I can only understand about 60-70% of the vocabulary currently. I bought a couple books in Japanese (a collection of HC Andersen tales and Through the Looking Glass), so hopefully once I start reading them regularly I'll pick up less school-related vocabulary.

I've also started a couple of other classes. The most interesting by far is about the Japanese educational system. It meets two periods in a row once a week. (All classes seem to meet only once a week from what I've seen.) I've only gone to one class so far, but we ended up focusing on controversies in modern Japanese education like textbook fallicies, bullying and other stuff... So hopefully it continues to stay interesting.


I also have found out a few groups I wanted to see live will be performing soon. I need to get tickets for one concert soon (it's next month), and another singer is going to be in Tokyo in December. I wanted to go to her concert earlier this month, but it sold out months ago so hopefully I can get my ticket early enough this time. Another group I sort of listen to off and on got back together and will be playing in/near Tokyo sometime soon... Wondering if I'm going to go to it. It would probably be fun, and according to Time Magazine they were one of the ten best bands in the world in 2001, so it might be worth seeing live. Considering Radiohead and U2 were also in that group, that seems like an excuse to see them live.

OK, I'm getting tired. First full day of classes. Not bad considering three days a week I only have one (early) class, but Monday and Wednesday will be pretty crappy. Oh well.

I just got a cell phone today. Finally. It's pretty.

http://www.au.kddi.com/english/product/lineup/a5527sa/index.html

I got the blue one. My number with Japan's area code thing is: 8108067335613

I can also email on it (eahamilt@ezweb.ne.jp) but don't email that unless you absolutely need anything. Calls/emails all take away from my plan.

Well, I need to start paying attention to the news. After hearing notifications all night in the halls (they even had them in English, which hadn't happened before), *really* bad winds that even knocked my phone out of my window, lights flickering when I had both the room and bathroom lights on... I woke up to find a message from Adam telling me a typhoon is heading towards Tokyo, which means that a typhoon is heading towards Ibaraki prefecture. That means there were flood, storm, high wave (and we live a bit away from shore) etcetc warnings and all that crap. This was at like midnight last night that he sent the message, and I had already fallen asleep, but from what I read this morning it seems like the typhoon hit land at about 2 am. Right now it seems like things are calming down for the most part, but I think that having no idea that the "storm" that has been going on all day/night is actually a typhoon shows that I've been in Indiana too long.



Watching the animation, it kinda looks like the typhoon is skimming across the east cost of Japan, meaning that I probably was in the center of the hirricane at some point. Kinda neat, I guess.
http://www.weather.com/maps/news/atlstorm6/westpacsat_large.html

I start classes tomorrow. I don't register for a few weeks, so I get to try classes before going, I guess. I'm thinking about taking basic Russian. Yea, taking Russian in a native Japanese class will be weird, but I figure mostly basic parts of each language should be used so it could be fun.

I took my Japanese placement pre-test and I think I tested too low for my actual skill level, so I'm going to see about that.

Next weekend Kate and I may take a trip to Akihabara to look at electronics, go to a maid cafe and ride to Mount Tsukuba, so that should be fun. I doubt we'll actually ride up it, but I think there are walking trails and there are definitely cable cars going up and down. I'd like to take a car one way at least so I can take pictures and stuff. I don't know if I want it to be foggy or clear, though... I guess when it's clear it's nice because you can see as far as Mount Fuji, which would be neat... Though riding around, it looks so much prettier when it's foggy. Not that you can see much of it, it just has more of a mystic feeling, which goes along with the mythology, I guess.

If anyone wants to be cool and send me things via snail mail, my mailbox address is:

Elizabeth Hamilton
Ichinoya Syukusya 34-416
Tsukuba University
2-1 Tennodai
Tsukuba, Ibaraki
305-0006
Japan


Letters to Japan cost about a dollar (I forget exactly how much), and shipping for packages can get kind of pricey, just so people know.

After talking to Adam for a bit before going out, I decided I wanted yakiniku. Yakiniku is thinly sliced meat that you cook at your own table. It's probably some of the best meat you will ever have, and if you can find it in America (West Lafayette definitely has a place, not so sure about Fort Wayne), you should try it.

Well, I look up on the Tsukuba-Wikipedia type place (http://tsukuba.wikia.com/wiki/Tsukuba) and it seems like the closest place is Gyukaku, a Korean restaurant about 3 km north of here. We go up there, find the sign to the restaurant, but no restaurant is there. We see some signs pointing towards Shimotsuma and Mount Tsukuba (we plan on going to both at some point), and the view of the mountain was really nice from where we were, even though we couldn't see all of it. I will hopefully be biking there sometime before it gets too cool. It's a bit of a ride, but it should be doable. I'm not so sure I could ride my bike up the mountain, but I know I could ride it there.

We then decided to go to the mall again and got lost on our way down south. We ended up finding where all of the other yakiniku places were, though, so I guess it wasn't a complete loss. Well, we find our way to the mall and decide to try some cheesecake that my tutor suggested. I think they get their cream cheese from here in Tsukuba, and it is really good. By the time we left the mall it was getting dark already (which happens at about 5:30 here). We remembered we were supposed to meet our tutors for fireworks, but not what time, so we hurried back to the dorms. Turns out we had a good amount of time to spare.

At 9 we met Mayu, Kana, Ben and whoever his tutor is. I thought we were going to be watching fireworks because it seemed as if a festival was going on, but instead we played with sparklers out by the pond in back of the dorms. I think that was actually more fun than watching fireworks.

Well, other than that, I did a bit of research on Mount Tsukuba, the mountain I want to go to, and it turns out it possibly has the most important part of Japanese history/mythology attached to it. The two gods who created Japan and were grandparents (?) of the first emperor (I could be wrong on that, I haven't taken ancient Japanese history in a long time) are enshrined there. They apparently went to Mount Fuji for a place to stay, it refused, but Mount Tsukuba took them in. The mountain has twin peaks and apparently is beautiful year round (it's called the purple mountain and apparently has wildlife and vegetation that's really nice to see). So I'm pretty excited about going up there.

A few more pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eahamilt/

About Mount Tsukuba if anyone is interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tsukuba

I realize I've already told some people a lot of this, so ignore the repetition.

Classes start Monday, but apparently foreign exchange students don't need to register here for almost another month. Basically we go to classes that sound interesting, and then register when we can. I can take up to 6 Japanese courses per trimester, which I plan on doing, so I'll need three or four more classes to have a full schedule. Should be pretty easy.

Other than that, Kate and I decided to try and finish some stuff up today. We got TVs at a used appliance place, got our first Japanese encephalitis shot, and a few other things. Well, when we get back, Kate had some stuff to do because there were problems with her room. I leave to go to the convenience store. When I get back to the dorm, I try to put my password into the security device to let me in, but it won't let me in.

They changed the passwords today. Previously it was just your room number, but they changed it to our actual passwords. I had an idea of what mine was even though it was just random numbers, but it wouldn't let me in. I went to the office and asked for someone to let me in. Someone came and let me in and made sure that I had the paper with my password on it. I go back downstairs to check and see if it works.

Of course it doesn't. Because I didn't have enough trouble explaining this in Japanese to begin with, I need to go do it again. So I go back to the office, and because no one speaks English at all, I end up having to try to understand all of this technical crap about the security device, blablabla.

Well, in the end, it turns out that somehow one of the numbers got screwed up. Got it figured out, so everything is fine.

Before that, though, we wanted to find a ramen shop. We finally found one that was open and ordered our food. We didn't know what to get to drink, and we found something on the menu that sounded like it would be juice (lemon sour and plum sour), so we ordered those. We get the drinks, and as we take the first drink we realize that they are alcohol. We both felt kind of stupid having accidentally ordered alcohol in a ramen shop at 11 in the morning, but its kind of funny I guess.

The past few days have been mostly wandering around and getting things situated. I bought some stuff for my room, mainly some curtains and a refridgerator, and a bike. Yesterday I got lost for a couple of hours after buying my bike. You can't bring bikes on the busses, obviously, so I had to ride it back to campus. There are paths leading that way, but the branch off too much to know which way to go. So Kate and I ended up asking about 5 people along random streets which way campus is.

On our way back we found a 99 yen shop. Thats basically the equivalent of a dollar store here. Yet again, I was surprised to find alcohol sold in a place that would never think of selling it in America.

Other than that, we had about 5 hours of orientations yesterday. A lot of it was talking about stuff we needed to do that most people have already done.

Something that was pretty much confirmed in the orientation was that there are no rules in the dorms. We didn't get any lectures or anything, and the only thing that we were told to do regarding dorm rules was to sign a contract stating we wouldn't wear our shoes in our rooms. There are no RA's here like there are in America, they sell beer in the cafeterias, I'm fairly certain alcohol is allowed in the rooms, I think you can cook in your room... It doesn't seem like there is a limit on appliance sizes, there hasn't been any mention of not having people of the opposite sex over, nothing about noise regulations or anything. Maybe they just don't have those kind of problems here.

Anyway, I'm getting ready to go to the hospital. The city is much smaller than what it was made out to be, and since there are forests everywhere, I figured getting the Japanese encephalitis shot would be a good thing to do. I guess no one else has gotten their's done yet, so hopefully it won't be a problem before I get the series finished. Mosquito season ends sometime in September, so I should be ok by the time spring comes around.

And here are some more pictures. Not as informative as my last ones, but they're pictures nonetheless.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eahamilt/

Today Kate and I decided to go ahead and buy a bunch of crap for our rooms. Curtains, garbage cans and the like are not provided like they are at Purdue, and we figured that we didn't want our rooms to be light at 5am or have trash everywhere. Fun.

Well, today I started my catalogue of cat pictures. The dorms in this area have cats living around them, which is really awesome. I think I saw about four of them today, and they're really cute ^_^ There's one that looks kind of like Kiki, but I haven't seen him to take a picture. Students (or someone else, not sure who) leave food out for them. Pretty interesting.

Well, other than that, I've had more contacts with wildlife today. At dinner I went to the cafeteria near here. Right when we got into the place, I definitely saw a huge cockroach on the floor. Crawling around. Taunting me. I still decided to go ahead and get food, which was a bad idea. The ramen tasted like crap. There was a bug in the water. Fun.

Luckily there is a convenience store that sellssandwiches, fruit, instant noodles, drinks and other stuff that I will probably be eating until I can get a refridgerator. I went to Jusco, pretty much the Japanese Wal-Mart, and found an electric frying pan for like $20. I think the next chance I get I will be buying that so I can cook real food that doesn't have cockroaches in it.

Blah.

I arrived in Tokyo on Sunday. Didn't do much that day because of jet lag, but the next day was really busy.

First of all, Tomo, Yuki and Fuku-chan took Kate and I to Tsukishima. It's a district in Tokyo that is known for its Monja. Monja is a traditional Japanese food composed of cabbage, batter and whatever kind of toppings you want. You fry it at your table yourself, kind of like okonomiyaki. It was pretty good, but someone ordered a kind of monja with cow sinew in it that was kind of strange.

After that we went to Marunouchi to shop. No one bought anything because everything was too expensive, but Marubiru had a really nice view.

I think after that we went to Akihabara, the electronics/anime central of Tokyo. We looked at cameras a bit and then went to a maid cafe. A maid cafe is basically where hardcore (male) anime fans go to flirt with cute waitresses. It's a lot like a hostess club because the waitresses flirt a bit, bring you drinks, etc, and you can't ask for their phone numbers, touch them, stalk them or anything like that. Most have some sort of anime/lolita theme. The one we went to was Japanese-styled. You aren't allowed to take pictures in there, which sucks, but if you pay for it you can have a polaroid taken. It was a really cute place. There was a rock-paper-scissors competition where the winners got prizes. They treat you like royalty and call you sir/madam, use magic wands on your food and talk in really scary high-pitched voices. They're kind of a taboo because of the anime fans' reputation, but a lot of people go just to see what it's like. There was a group of boys at a table next to ours, and when one went to get his picture taken the others were calling him a pervert from across the room. It was pretty funny because as soon as he was done getting his picture taken, one of the other guys went to get his done.

After that we went to Shinjuku for dinner. It was my first time at a ramen shop, and it was really good. It's nothing like the instant stuff in America. There's meat, vegetables, the noodles are fresh, and you get a *lot* for your money.

When we got done eating, we went to a bar called Wan. When you walk into the bar itself, you go down a hallway that is lined with rocks with rock slabs to walk on. You get your own room, so it isn't like a place to party or anything. It's more of something to do with a small group of people.

That was pretty much the end of our night, and today Kate and I arrived in Tsukuba. When we were driving into town, the first thing I noticed was that there were a lot of car lots. I thought that the city was probably bigger than I expected (it was officially named a city in the 80's, I think), but after driving more it was obvious that it wasn't. The closer we got to the university, the less civilized it became. By the time we arrived at our dorm, we were completely surrounded by trees, cicadas, mosquitos and other bugs. The whole road to campus is tree-lined, and as soon as you cross the street between Tsukuba and Tsukuba University, you can see an immediate difference in landscape. Other than that, it is extremely hot and humid here. Tokyo was pretty bad, but it was nothing compared to this. It isn't too bad right now since it's late, but when we got here, I was sweating just standing waiting for our guides.

We ended up having to bring our suitcases up 4 flights of stairs because none of the dorms have elevators, which didn't help. After that, I got help opening a bank account, getting my foreignors registration card and learned a bit about cell phone plans, but I have yet to buy one because I need a student ID card for the discount.

Other than that, not much happened. I guess the weather is only really bad for another month, then it cools down a bit. Then it cools down a lot and gets really cold. Guess I'll have to get used to some strange weather.


pictures from Tokyo/Tsukuba:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10513379@N04/

I got in Tokyo yesterday afternoon. I fell asleep before nine, so now I'm awake at 6 am here. It's really sunny, so I assume I will have to adjust to that. I'll post some pics when I actually take some.

At dinner last night, I was offered alcohol for a toast. I thought it was weird because generally, families don't drink beer together at dinner in my experience. Oh well. They have some weird fruit cocktail-type thing in cans that doesn't really taste like alcohol (which is what I tried). That could be because it only has like 4% alcohol, but... Iunno. Kinda neat, I guess.