Okay so I liked. I suck.

Amanda has been really really bad at updating the blog this semester. Super bad. This is not because I've been having no fun and therefore nothing to report, actually I've been too busy with adventures (whether good, bad or exciting, it's a mix) to update since I get to sit in my off time with my friends here on the couch instead of being locked away on the third floor at 7pm with nothing else to do but kill time until I could leave for school in the morning. So this semester has been much much better, one for the obvious reason that I'm still here and didn't have to leave again (woo hoo!) and that everything else is great. I have more friends, more freedom, more comfortable futons, etc. etc. :)

As for what I've been up to, I just finished escorting my Mom and James around Japan (we hit Osaka, Hirakata (city I live in), Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, and Miyajima), then I turned around and over the weekend said good bye to Alex (boyfriend!! erm, I mean yeah that guy I'm dating (!!)) because he's in China on his vacation for a week, and then I also had to plan Erica's birthday fun for this Wednesday. All of this is on top of the normal stress of papers, submitting my stuff to Williams Mystic, quizzes, tests, lectures on pet cemeteries, and general chaos. Needless to say I got it all done and I'm closing in on the May 1 deadline for all the Mystic stuff. The folks doing the admissions thing are being very nice and understanding (and I hope) kind of impressed that I'm doing this from Japan.

The boring school stuff is that I can't be late to class anymore because I've been late almost everyday this semester (usually only by like 3-5 minutes and if you know me or work with me you know this is pretty damn good for me) for my Japanese class so now I get up 2-2 1/2 hours early to get to class. I've been good for a week now! I've got to read up on the legal system in China for my law class (which is making me more and more nervous that Alex is there the more I read, not a good thing.), get ready for a role play in my history class of Perry entering Japan, doing a paper for that class on Wako (Japanese medieval pirates) and a paper on Yuurei (Japanese ghost/spirits). Next week is Golden Week, which is normally a week off for the Japanese, but we only have two days of class (Tuesday and Wednesday) so aside from bugging Alex about his trip (he gets back Tuesday) I'll be doing day trips around the Kansai area and hopefully getting some papers out of the way.

I normally don't get to do posts because I'm distracted at home and I want to update everything and start where I left off, which is hard when you have a billion things going on and you stopped updating a few months ago. So I'm going to try to bring you up to speed as best I can. Erica turned 23 this year and has the "aging syndrome" that Tessa has where they both freak out at getting older and normally end up a drunk ball of tears. Erica didn't want anyone to know when her birthday was and it was going to stay that way but I somehow figured it out and committed it to memory months ago last semester and have since tortured her with that fact. Luckily I told a few people a week or so in advance and we got a plan together: we were going to get a few people together, give her a roll out piano and a rirakkuma video game (it's the relax bear that's friends with Hello Kitty and you make hot cakes (pan cakes) in it), and get her drunk.

It was a success on all levels, although word got out and WAY too many people knew about her birthday than she would've liked. Also we had to face the problem that she's vegan and we lucked out on finding an ice cream cake in Japan, but a vegan cake was pushing it. Instead I MacGyver-ed up a "cake" with Tracey's help. I took a bunch of birthday candles, melted them onto a Jack Daniel's bottle and then surrounded that by open bars of black chocolate on a plate. It was awesome and made Erica very happy.

After presents and cake we went over to Daddy's Shoes (the local bar that's a block from our dorm) and proceeded to drink fairly late into the night. Most friends made appearances and even poor sick Maura was a trooper and hung out. Tracey and I both had exams the next day but I got to be around 3am and Tracey at 5am. Luckily I saw this coming so I got up early and had been studying not only at the bar (lol) but a few days prior too. The best part of the night, for me at least, was our RA Misato getting really drunk and wandering around the bar "helping" people study Japanese. At one point I turned to her and said, "Daijyobu Misato-chan? Yopparai desu ne!" (Are you okay Misato? You're drunk!) to which she turned and said, "Amanda, that was perfect Japanese. ... I hate you." Everyone cheered at the last part because slowly but surely I've made her more and more gaijin.

Well more later when I can get my stuff together!

Going to Tokyo

I'm running late for the night bus that leaves at midnight and takes 8 hours to get to Tokyo! I'll be in Tokyo until next Friday.

So I'm sorry I haven't posted, I just finished midterms and now I'm off.

Take care guys I promise more later!!

PS Hali if you could get my a tshirt that'd be awesome.

Email me if you want anything from Tokyo.

Part 1 of probably 3: The Whole Alex Thing

I'm going to do a bunch of little posts today in the hopes of updating everyone, but killing them by doing on LONG post.


I officially have a boyfriend. This is Alex (above) and as you can see he lets me give him hell and I'm super happy. As to how I ended up meeting him, he doesn't go to Kansai Gaidai, but is really close friends with Erica, who was my first and I guess longest friend here in Japan. They're both from RI and because of that I've gotten a lot of grief for going half way around the world, rooming with a girl and now dating a guy from a state next to mine. They both went to (or in Erica's case still going to) University of RI and he ended up with a degree in English. He doesn't go to Kansai (the whole graduated thing) but he's here working for NOVA an English teaching school based in Osaka. He works most days until 10:40pm, which is crappy for dating, but his "weekend" Monday and Tuesday so we work around it. We actually met before this semester, ironically on Halloween, the first night Pat and I had a huge fight, so Erica took me out to Daddy's (local bar) and Alex came into Hirakata to hang with our group for Halloween because nothing was going on in Osaka. We hung out that night and after the first five minutes I made a Final Fantasy VII reference and we got a long really well. Later when I left he came to my birthday party and talking with me through AIM the whole time I was home.

Apparently he liked me the first night he met me and was bummed that I was engaged, but also everyone else (Erica, Tracey, Nadia, Maria, Kim, Drew) thought we hit it off really well and were convinced we'd get together. Kim and Nadia thought this to the point where when they left and knew I was coming back that they asked the others to "keep them updated" on the Alex/Amanda front. I on the other hand had NO CLUE what was going on. Well, when I did get back to Japan Erica and I hung out with Alex one of our first nights back, in Osaka, where he asked me out. Now, please note I said yes to a few dates because he's a really great guy and I liked him, but I honestly didn't want a boyfriend even though I'd been single for three months. We went on a bunch of really corny nice dates (we went on a Ferris wheel to give you and idea of cheesy), but in my defense I hadn't dated since I was 15 so I was totally psyched. After a few weeks I decided I would like to make it official so we're boyfriend girlfriend now. I have no idea how normal people do this relationship wise, but I'm very happy.

He's an awesome guy and I'd like to show exhibit B:

Here he looks kinda grumpy because Erica took a million pictures of us that night, but I want you to look at me. I'm smiling. Like seriously "I'm so freaking happy" smiling, which I haven't done in what feels like forever. Sure I've smiled in the past few months but here you can see how freaking happy I am. He's so sweet and if I had to compare his personality he's like a combination of Dan (my old roommate) and O'Neil. He makes me laugh, he's nice and he cleans up pretty good for work. :)

I'll stop now, but I figured I needed to update everyone else who hadn't heard through the grape vine that I have a boyfriend. :3 Okay I promise more posts later on Japan happenings!

Happy Valentine's Day

Hey Guys! Time to let you all in on the magic world of Manda's Japanese Valentine's Day! You see Valentine's Day is celebrated in Japan, but since this is Japan they can't make things simple so get ready for some confusion. Valentine's Day is today (Feb. 14) and if you're a girl and have a crush on a guy you go ahead and give him some chocolate. Not chocolate or sweets you buy in the store mind you, oh no chocolates you make. At Kiddyland (also known as the place with Hello Kitty stuff galore or where Manda spends most of her time and money) they sell little kits with pans, cake mix, frosting mix, etc. to make these things at home. Another important note is that Japanese kitchens do NOT include an oven. They have a toaster, toaster oven, a fish cooker and microwave, but nothing like an oven. So these little kits are for little cakes for toaster ovens, which takes me way back to my easy-bake oven days. Anyway once the said girl makes and gives her cakes/sweets to her crush the story doesn't stop there. Oh no, a month and a day later on March 15 is White Day. White Day is the day that if the boy likes the girl he gives her a gift of sweets in return.

This is how it's supposed to work, but there's variations on this and basically Valentine's day is just like it is at home with friends giving friends gifts, people going on dates and the rest of us sitting on the couch watching Walker Texas Ranger reruns on the superdrama channel at the dorm (it's the only English channel aside from CNN). What's funny is that you're supposed to give back to the person who got you something on Valentine's Day three times the amount when you give them something on White Day. This means that some people decide to give gifts on Valentine's Day for the sole purpose of getting more candy on White Day. There was only one example of this time, which was this crazy Japanese girl named Mayumi. She sat on our couch and asked us frank questions, such as turning to Drew and asking her if she's a lesbian. Then asking her again later and the next day. Drew is totally not a lesbian, but she can't live this down. It's too funny. Anyway, she was on the prowl trying to give out as much candy as she could so she could get more on White Day (she explained this to Tracey, that's how we know her true motivation) This lead to a game of cat and mouse on campus of Erica and I trying to avoid her for fear of getting caught and being forced to give candy on White Day just because she wanted us to, not because we wanted to. Thankfully it was 5:30pm and we were done with all our classes when we went down to the foreign students' mailboxes when low and behold Mayumi was waiting. Thankfully for me she didn't remember my name and didn't have a gift for me, but Erica wasn't so lucky. The other twist here is that Erica got candy from her Teachers all day but being vegan she can't any of the chocolate if it isn't black because of the milk. Drew reaped the benefits of being with her off and on today and getting to eat all her candy.

How did I spend my Valentine's Day? Pretty tired, I was up late on Valentine's Day Eve because I all of a sudden had some sort of maternal instinct kick in. I biked to Hirakata-shi to save the 440yen in bus fare and I figured I needed the exercise. Once downtown I got supplies to make a cake for Alex and some little Tiramisus for the girls, yarn for Drew's present, and to drop off my registration for my alien card. On the way back I stopped at a market that was selling vegetables super cheap. I'd bought some curry packets before except I didn't have the veggies you need to make curry for curry rice (You make curry like a stew and put it over some white rice, I loved it at home stay). This market was selling most vegetables for 100yen a piece or so I thought. I tried to pick out two carrots when they explained it was 100yen a basket for the carrots! Everything looked fresh and in the end tasted wonderful. I was able to get 1/3 a daikon (HUGE white radish), a head of lettuce, three carrots and 9 small potatoes for 380yen (like $3.50). It was awesome and cheap since I only had 1000 yen on me! :) I got home exhausted and cooked up two pots of the two different types of curry, sweet and medium. I had to read the instructions and realized once I got home that I'd misread the ingredients already. I didn't need the daikon or lettuce, but I needed onions. ;___; I totally screwed up and was worried I couldn't make it up without the onions and I knew the closest store was closed (it closes at like 6, it was 6:30pm) and plus I was tired. While I was debating on my mishap my Dutch roommate Myrthe was around and after hearing my problem gave me two small onions which worked perfectly! I was making two pots since I didn't know how to make small portions and so I was making it for the whole flat and so Myrthe got an extra helping and an IOU for some onions. After much chaos of boiling water, cutting veggies, getting the Japanese rice cooker to work, translating instructions, swearing and getting the curry to thicken I had two pots of curry enough rice and a few hungry roommates willing to try my cooking.

Everyone survived and actually really liked it! Success on many levels and if I can find the packets at an Asian market in the states I can officially add another item to my ever expanding culinary repertoir: grilled cheese, tacos, scrambled eggs, shake and bake, and now curry rice. ;) My adventures in the kitchen didn't end there. I stayed up in the hopes that my roommates would go to bed, but Drew and Tracey stayed up until 1am and I just gave in and started on their Valentine's Tiramisu while they were awake. The instructions were far more confusing, but I got most of the way through ti with no problem. Until it came time to start assembling and I realized my little pack didn't come with the clear plastic strips that you make into cones and set in the little tray making a cup to put the tiramisu parts in so it looks pretty and perfect when you're done. So I resorted to using our clear glass cups and started on the whipped cream. Here I misread the instructions and added the egg whites and sugar BEFORE I whipped the cream, which made it not whip at all. Thankfully I had enough cream and egg whites to start again, but no sugar. I whipped it up and then tried adding some of the previous unwhippable cream so I could get it semi-sweet. It worked out pretty good and the end results looked edible. Plus the little bits I tried were good so I put them in the fridge made up little valentine's labels with their names and a note and went to bed at 3am. I wanted to get up at 8 and set them out on the table for them to find that morning, but my alarm went off and I was to tired to get up so when I did get up at 10AM only Myrthe got to see the final product. Later that night though everyone ate them for dessert and said they were really good. Yeay again! I know what you're thinking, Erica can't eat that because she's vegan, which is true. To fix that little problem I got her a handkerchief with her favorite character (relax bear or Rillkuma in Japanese) and put a bar of black chocolate in there.



After going to bed at 3, I got up to a super rainy day and a vocab quiz. I biked to school holding my umbrella (mad bike skills and now I live in a neighborhood so biking isn't as dangerous as before Mom and Dad) and aced the quiz. From Japanese class at noon I had everyone of my classes in a row, after Japanese it was Struggle for Justice where we built our imaginary nation's laws, Japan and it's World and then Death in East Asian thought which ended at 5:30pm. I got to bike home in a little drizzle and chat with Erica. Once I got home I did some homework, cleaned up, and reheated some curry. The only thing else that's excitement is that our garbage didn't get emptied by the cleaning ladies for a few days so it smelled BAD and made the whole flat smell awful. Erica's solution was to take the bag out and put it the hallway. I've been on edge all night fearing Okaasan's inevitable arrival to give us crap, while Erica looks forward to the challenge and Tracey just wants some drama because she's bored. These are the people I live with.

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's been a stressful couple of days

This weekend happily is a three day weekend because Monday is a day off too thanks to them founding Japan on Feb 11 660 BC, yep BC. Anyway I didn't make to grand of plans for this weekend so when Erica wanted to go shopping for shoes and a flightsuit at this trendy mall called Hep5 in Osaka I went along for the ride. Plus it gave me a convient excuse to hang out with Alex, and well shoes were involved. :) Hep5 is one of the bigger shopping malls in Osaka and has a HUGE ferris wheel on top of the building. Making the building itself not hard to find since it's a block from the station. Right? Yeah Erica and I screwed that one up too thinking that this sign on top of a hotel was the ferris wheel and walked 10 minutes in the completely wrong direction. Thankfully people in Japan give good directions and we found our way back.

Hep5 is also cool because at the ground level there's a big open area where they have two giant sculptures of sperm whales (a mommy and baby) suspended from the ceiling, except they're bright red.

We wandered around a great many of the floors only to find that everything was very expensive and very much present Japanese fashion. Note: I probably couldn't fit into it and it'd look super dumb, I'll post examples later. Trust me, I tried some "large" shirts on and well, that ain't happening. Thankfully I have enough clothes with me, so I won't go naked anytime soon.

Back to our mission, we didn't find the flightsuit, we didn't find shoes, but we did find socks and a huge Disney store. Although we could've found more, but the mall closed at 9pm and we got there around 8-8:30 due to school getting out late and us getting lost. So we ventured up to the restaurant floors that didn't close until 11 and tried to find a place Erica could eat at (she's the vegan one). No problem though there were plenty of pasta places and we settled on a cute one near the front so we could people watch too. In the end the people watching was great but the food was really really bad. We could put our fingers on it, but there was this weird tang to everything. Not very yummy, plus the chicken in mine wasn't really chicken breast I think it was the various parts. Also not so yummy.

To make up for the bad food and little shopping I convinced Erica to journey to the 8th and 9th floors to play video games and do purikura (print club, those stick photo booths) and she agreed. Here's the thing, I ALWAYS want to do purikura I love it. In Japan every arcade has at least 4-6 of the machines with different borders, backgrounds, lighting, stamps, etc. and they're so much fun to do and the pictures always turn out great. We settled on one that had cool ghosts and stuff so I promise I'll scan them soon and post them. As we divided them up a nice lady worker came over and told us we'd have to leave since it was already 11 and the whole building was closing. We snatched up our stuff, headed out and got on the train. I said goodbye to Erica at Yodoyabashi since she wanted to head home and I was on my way to Tenoji to see Alex when he got off of work. It was right after we said goodbye that I realized that I didn't have my frog purse. In Japan I only use one wallet I put both credit cards, Kansai ID and my money (in this case a newly pulled out 20000yen, $200). I had a train card, but only with 500 yen so I didn't even know if I could get off the train without my wallet! I was glad that in this case I was going to Tenoji where Alex would be waiting right outside the gates in case I needed more money he could lean over the turnstyle thing (they're more like gates here) and lend me the money so I could get out of the train station. I didn't need it though, I had just enough. I kept texting Erica to see if she had my wallet by mistake, but she didn't, which meant I stupidly left it at purikura. Hep 5 doesn't open until 11 and I had a sushi thing at 11 so I couldn't go all the way there and back to Hirakata to make it for sushi.

I worried about my wallet the whole night and even during the sushi rolling party the next day. I tried calling and using my crappy Japanese skills to talk to the lost and found dept. of Hep5 at around 8am, but after a while I couldn't understand and had to give up. They knew I was missing a wallet and I described it, but I think they were trying to tell me that they couldn't look for it until the building opened. So after much stress Erica came with me back to the mall (yeah I had to drag her kicking and screaming) and the game room had my wallet! With all my money inside!!

I love Japan! Now it's Sunday and we're all heading to Nara to play with fuzzy deer!

I think I was missed

I know it's ironic that when I didn't have internet I updated far more frequently than now when I have internet all the time. The past two weeks here in Japan have gone by so fast. I'm having a great time and school is picking up. I dropped Reading and Writing and added another English class, Japan and It's World to 1860. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that, but oh well. Today was my death day, not just because I had death class, but because I had class from 12 to 5:30 all in a row, no breaks, all subjects. I survived and tomorrow I just have Japanese, which I need to go to the language lab to hear the assignment to do. I'm probably going to get to bed in an hour so I can get up early and get that done before class.

Aside from school the big excitement is that I have officially been to a club and I've been twice. It's okay I'm so glad that I have Alex and Erica to hang out with because the way clubs work here is tricky. You see there are bars around campus, but if we wanted something that was bigger than a bar the size of a bread box we have to head into Osaka. It's easy to get into the city I used to hop on the train right in front of my house, but now I have to get on at Hirakata Shi with is a five minute bus ride away from the Seminar house. It isn't a huge deal everyone goes in a big group when we go. Anyway the last bus to the seminar house is at 10:30pm and the last trains go at midnight. This isn't conducive to going to a club and heading home at 2 or 3 am. So what most people do is go in groups and stay at the club until 5 or 6am when the trains start up again. If you get super tired you can rent a room at a karaoke bar for 2000 yen (20 bucks) an hour, which isn't awful if you split it five ways. Or you can take a nap in one of the big comfy internet cafes. There are also places in Tokyo I've heard about that are like lounges where you can read all the manga (books) you want and they have comfy chairs or cots, but I haven't seen them here.

Anyway I never went before because I was at homestay, plus the idea of being out ALL night sounds like a pain. Here's where Erica and Alex come in. Erica hates clubs but she goes because everyone goes and it's a good time either way. She also can't stay up until 5am and neither can I, enter Alex to solve this problem. Alex (who I'll talk more about later) lives in Osaka because he works for NOVA a company that has English teaching schools across Japan and has his own apartment in Osaka. We know him because he's a good friend of Erica's from home (Rhode Island) and he lets us crash at his place when the three of us get bored at the club. Erica gets the vinyl couch and Alex sacrifices a mat from his three-four layered stack of futon mats (lucky bastard, if you remember me struggling with my TWO at homestay). Anyway I get a mat from him and we all hang out at his apartment playing old Final Fantasy games on the Super Famicom (Japanese SNES) until we fall asleep.
We've done this for the past two Fridays and every week Erica and I sit on the couch as people start making plans to go to Pure (yes that's really the name of the club) and promise we'll be going somewhere else. But there's no where else we know of that's as good or that anyone else is going to so we go off with Tracey, Drew, etc. and we have a good time. Pure has a pretty good set up, it's in Osaka a few blocks from Namba station and is next to location its next to a Karaoke bar (good for the afore mentioned reasons) and has a convenient (conbini) across the street, which is an added bonus if you get hungry. The layout is even cooler. You go down stairs, show your ID (for me my Kansai ID works because it has my birthday with the word birthday written next to it in Japanese) and then go to the window to pay you 1500 yen (15 dollars approx) and you get an arm band and a cup. This means you can go in and out of the club and you get unlimited drinks as long as you keep bringing back your cup. It's a sweet deal coming from the land of $6 cocktails on Nantucket.

Then you go past the little counter and through a GIANT WOODEN DOOR that would make Bilbo proud. The ceiling in the little hall way leading up to the door is low, even for me. Once you get into the club itself you're greeted with the dulcet tones of loud hip-hop and rap music. Trust me past this point things start making less and less sense. All the music is English and LOUD and there's a dance floor, but right to your left is the bar where all the staff speaks English and some of them are even Gaijin (foreigners) along with most of the clientell, which is a major reason Erica and I want to find a new place since we can hang out with Americans any damn time. Either way there are some Japanese folks and they're a hell of a lot of fun. There's a locker room where you can pay 300 yen to lock up your coats, purses, etc. I recommend taking out your cigarettes because you can light up anywhere in the club, which is awesome just for the novelty of it. Outside the coat room there's a little room across from the bar where you can play pool. This room also has a bookshelf that slides to the side Scooby Doo style to reveal a staircase that goes up to the VIP room. The VIP room sits on top of the locker/pool rooms and has glass windows letting anyone down by the bar able to look up at you like a giant fish bowl. It's a neat design and I can't do it justice with words. Anyway continuing straight past the bar there's a place for tables and straight head is the bathroom and if you go right there's the dance floor. We spend most of our time near the bar, in the pool room or in the hobbit hole. The hobbit hole is this little area where they've made a cave out of concrete and put a little table in there. It's tiny and I have a ton of pictures of us in there. On top of the hobbit hole is a stair case so that the stripper-esque dancers can go up on and dance on. You can't tell when you're in the hobbit hole, and when you're outside the dancers are just amazing. I just can't get over the fact that they get PAID to dance in the club up there for atmosphere. Yes guys, there are pictures of this on flickr. No Mom they don't get naked and NO I haven't gone up there, it's employees only and they are hiring.

Our first trip to Pure (at least my first trip) had me and Erica hiding in the hobbit hole from the loud music and sipping on our girly drinks. The entrance is a little below the floor so you have to step down into it so we were at about knee level and saw these cute Japanese girls in construction boots that were seriously boots. They went up to their knees! I thought they were so cool that I snapped a picture from our hideout. I wasn't secret squirel enough and they saw the flash and came to see what was up. They sat down with big smiles on their faces and we explained how much we loved their shoes and we chatted away for a good half hour. Alex showed up from work at some point and it was the first time I'd seen him since I left in November. So everyone was so happy to meet one another and we really hit it off with them here's a picture of Erica and the two girls (Aiko and Natsumi):

Aiko is in school to become a hairdresser and Natsumi is an English major at a college in Osaka (I couldn't remember the name) They were so nice and gave us suggestions on where to shop, etc. Erica got their cellphone addresses and we still text them back and forth. Heck we saw and hung out with them for a majority of the time we were at Pure this past Friday too! I love making random friends :) I still text Yuri (the girl I met when I got lost on the train) and I might get to go see her house in Kyoto!

The club is fun, it gives us an adventure. I'm going to leave my post here because I have to get up early tomorrow, but more on my other adventures later!

I know it's ironic that when I didn't have internet I updated far more frequently than now when I have internet all the time. The past two weeks here in Japan have gone by so fast. I'm having a great time and school is picking up. I dropped Reading and Writing and added another English class, Japan and It's World to 1860. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that, but oh well. Today was my death day, not just because I had death class, but because I had class from 12 to 5:30 all in a row, no breaks, all subjects. I survived and tomorrow I just have Japanese, which I need to go to the language lab to hear the assignment to do. I'm probably going to get to bed in an hour so I can get up early and get that done before class.

Aside from school the big excitement is that I have officially been to a club and I've been twice. It's okay I'm so glad that I have Alex and Erica to hang out with because the way clubs work here is tricky. You see there are bars around campus, but if we wanted something that was bigger than a bar the size of a bread box we have to head into Osaka. It's easy to get into the city I used to hop on the train right in front of my house, but now I have to get on at Hirakata Shi with is a five minute bus ride away from the Seminar house. It isn't a huge deal everyone goes in a big group when we go. Anyway the last bus to the seminar house is at 10:30pm and the last trains go at midnight. This isn't conducive to going to a club and heading home at 2 or 3 am. So what most people do is go in groups and stay at the club until 5 or 6am when the trains start up again. If you get super tired you can rent a room at a karaoke bar for 2000 yen (20 bucks) an hour, which isn't awful if you split it five ways. Or you can take a nap in one of the big comfy internet cafes. There are also places in Tokyo I've heard about that are like lounges where you can read all the manga (books) you want and they have comfy chairs or cots, but I haven't seen them here.

Anyway I never went before because I was at homestay, plus the idea of being out ALL night sounds like a pain. Here's where Erica and Alex come in. Erica hates clubs but she goes because everyone goes and it's a good time either way. She also can't stay up until 5am and neither can I, enter Alex to solve this problem. Alex (who I'll talk more about later) lives in Osaka because he works for NOVA a company that has English teaching schools across Japan and has his own apartment in Osaka. We know him because he's a good friend of Erica's from home (Rhode Island) and he lets us crash at his place when the three of us get bored at the club. Erica gets the vinyl couch and Alex sacrifices a mat from his three-four layered stack of futon mats (lucky bastard, if you remember me struggling with my TWO at homestay). Anyway I get a mat from him and we all hang out at his apartment playing old Final Fantasy games on the Super Famicom (Japanese SNES) until we fall asleep.
We've done this for the past two Fridays and every week Erica and I sit on the couch as people start making plans to go to Pure (yes that's really the name of the club) and promise we'll be going somewhere else. But there's no where else we know of that's as good or that anyone else is going to so we go off with Tracey, Drew, etc. and we have a good time. Pure has a pretty good set up, it's in Osaka a few blocks from Namba station and is next to location its next to a Karaoke bar (good for the afore mentioned reasons) and has a convieint (conbini) across the street, which is an added bonus if you get hungry. The layout is even cooler. You go down stairs, show your ID (for me my Kansai ID works because it has my birthday with the word birthday written next to it in Japanese) and then go to the window to pay you 1500 yen (15 dollars approx) and you get an arm band and a cup. This means you can go in and out of the club and you get unlimited drinks as long as you keep bringing back your cup. It's a sweet deal coming from the land of $6 cocktails on Nantucket.

Then you go past the little counter and through a GIANT WOODEN DOOR that would make Bilbo proud. The ceiling in the little hall way leading up to the door is low, even for me. Once you get into the club itself you're greeted with the dulcet tones of loud hip-hop and rap music. Trust me past this point things start making less and less sense. All the music is English and LOUD and there's a dance floor, but right to your left is the bar where all the staff speaks English and some of them are even Gaijin (foreigners) along with most of the clientell, which is a major reason Erica and I want to find a new place since we can hang out with Americans any damn time. Eitherway there are some Japanese folks and they're a hell of a lot of fun. There's a locker room where you can pay 300 yen to lock up your coats, purses, etc. I recommend taking out your cigarettes because you can light up anywhere in the club, which is awesome just for the novelty of it.

Another exciting Friday Night

I'm sorry I'm a week behind in all of this! Tonight I have a bit of a lull before more excitement. I'm in the flat waiting for Erica's second phase of hair dye to finish dying and so we can rinse and run out to Osaka. She went from kinda blonde to totally blonde then to black with a pink streak. And I helped!

No I didn't dye my hair although the pink was tempting. :) Well we're running out the door to go meet our Kansai mates and the two girls we met last week. I promise more pictures later and more of a post.

More fun in Hirakata-shi

Another day, another batch of craziness. A good example of how funny this place is, I'm sitting in the computer lab next to campus' international playboy. Yes, we have one. Apparently this guy was only known in infamy a few days after getting to school. He's homestay but was living in Seminar House 3 (my seminar house) when he invited a Japanese student over and was having "extramarital" relations in the shower when a roommate called Otoosan (dorm dad) and he came up stairs and caught them in the act. Poor Otoosan, I can only imagine that it took years off the guys life, but I'm more amazed the roommate called that in. Typically you'd let something like that slide or give them a warning or something. Just common curtosy, but then again I have no clue what the Emily Post protocol is for this.

Anyway, so this guy was just talked about around town for a while and all we knew is what happened and that he was from Princeton, NJ, was rich, traveled the world and ontop of being fluent in Japanese was as truth would have it, a playboy. After our late night on Friday (trust me I'll get there, super swear) Erica and I sat delirious on the bus with our stuffed animals from Kiddy Land when this guy from Kansai sat next to us in the back. We started up a conversation since we're the only white people on the bus going to the college so we must be classmates. Plus it was early so we all had fun stories to tell. After a short while Erica and I finally look at one another and realize that this dude is the international playboy. Nice enough guy, which sucks because you're supposed to hate a sleazy ball like that. He makes for good stories so I'm sure he'll popup again in the future. I just brought him up now because he was a computer or two down from me in the lab and asked how far we were from Nara.

Last night I started this post: Right now I'm sleepy and want to go to bed, but I can't since my temporary roommate Maria (new from Columbia and hence different person than last Maria) is talking on the phone whilst sitting/lounging on my bed. So to avoid awkwardness I'll just wait till she's off the phone. It's not a huge deal it's just that I've been on a weird schedule since coming back on Thursday night and going at a weird pace ontop of being jet-lagged to all hell. Friday morning I got up at 7:30am unable to sleep and spent the whole day doing paperwork, paying fees, taking tests, meeting up with people, thanking people, looking at clubs, etc. I had to take my placement test whilst the teachers graded everyone else's and I sat out in the hall. They said I just had to pass section B to get into level 4, but it was kind of easy to I tried section C too. It wasn't too terrible, it was all stuff I'd seen before in my level 3 class, but since I didn't study quite as much as I should've it was pretty fuzzy. I had to take Kanji reading sections too and during that one teacher came out and asked how I was doing and reminded me that I shouldn't guess if I don't know the answer, this was as they were grading my previous sections. Yeah. Total vote of confidence there. I also had to do my listening with one teacher all on my own, while he stared at me and I strained to understand what in the hell was being said on the tape. This was followed by an interview with another teacher who wore one of those damn face masks you wear when you have the plague so I couldn't understand him for most of it. The final result was that I ended up in level 4. Yeay! But I'm section A, not so yeay. Level A is the LOWEST level of 4 in existance and therefore I think they just bumped me up to get rid of me. I'm actually okay with that since level 4 for them is the start of level 3, which I survived Uotate (evil Japanese professor at UF) for two semesters and passed so, here's to hoping it isn't going to kill me.

Post from Today: As for my English classes I got two that I really wanted. I registered after everyone else so I didn't get into painting, but since I'm a nerd the classes I wanted were no where near full. Yesterday (Monday) I had Death in East Asian Thought for the first time and from now on I'm just going to call it Death. I love the name it's so damned angsty it's fun. Death was great though, the teacher seems nice and we have to write a few papers or we can take a test or just add 4 pages to a paper. It's a nice system and the topic seems fun. We're studying everything from medical definitions of death, to pet cemeteries, ghosts and cremation. Skippy! Tomorrow I have my other English speaking class for the first time. This one's called: Struggle for Justice. Another great class title. This one is taught by my Japanese Law professor from last semester and focuses on criminal justice systems complete with a trip to the court house and prison! :) This semester is going to rock.

As for my daily life thus far it is also going very very well. I live in Seminar House 3 (with the crazy militant Okaasan) and got switched from floor 5 to floor 2 so I could live with Erica (RI girl, vegan), Tracey (British), and Drew (Ohio) who were my original roommates last semester before I did homestay. I get the added bonus of a new roommate DJ, she's Korean, but from Canada and very very quiet so we don't know much else. I'm just hoping she's not an ax murderer. Oh, and Drew's new roommate and my new flatmate is Myrta (I'm probably spelling it wrong), she's great fun and fits right in with the rest of us chilling in the lounge of the flat. She's from Holland and lived in Tailand for 8 years from when she was 5 until she was 13. She's really nice and fills us in on little things from Holland. Example: Miffy is not called Miffy in Holland, but instead is Nijntje and since she's from Holland that's her name. Either the Americans or Japanese changed it to Miffy at somepoint and she just thinks that's weird. Another added bonus was that she knew who Tin Tin was and loved the calendar I got. :) I couldn't explain Tin Tin to Erica so I'm so happy she was there to back me up. His name isn't Tin Tin either, it's Ga-fee-ya, which is the name of his hairstyle and a sound on the end making it sound cute. So I guess he's Cowlick chan or something in Holland.

I promise to update you about Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and today later on. I have to run to class, but I will leave on an up note: I couldn't be happier. I am so happy to be back in Japan, I love my friends here and I love my living situation. I watched the temporary roommate leave on Saturday and Sunday to go with their host families and I thought I'd miss it. I thought when I had to do laundry or cook I'd regret not going off with a Japanese family. I don't. I love being in the dorm and although we speak English there I'm learning a lot in other places. I'm planning on joining the archery club and maybe the art club to get out there and practice more. I already have Yoko and Yuri texting me to see when I can meet up to chat.

More later! :)

I have arrived

I'm here! (again!) I got in at around 5pm Japan time last night and I text messaged Erica as soon as I got off the plane because I was so excited. I'm so glad I did because she was in the airport too. She got in an hour before me and what's funny is that I didn't know she was there, since I thought she was texting me from the dorm. So you can imagine my surprise as I'm just getting out of customs trying to find the bus and I get side checked by a blonde Erica. Later that night I was jumped by Tracey, hugged by Drew and today I was full on body checked by Maria. So needless to say I've had a very warm welcome.

Erica and I chatted like crazy while we waited an hour for the bus, then we chatted like crazy on the bus, then I hung out in her flat for a good portion of the night. I filled out the paperwork and I'll be moving from Floor 5 in Seminar House 3 to Floor 2 where Erica, Tracey, Drew and my new roommate DJ (she's Korean and from Canada) and flatmate Mareta (from Holland, no clue on the spelling) are going to live it up this semester.

I'm so happy to be back, the niceness and warmth I get from my buddies here makes up for all the awkward coldness I get from the staff at Kansai. Because you see, I missed registration, my placement test, everything because I didn't know everything was on the 23rd and 24th. So I'm registering at 2pm, I've spent the morning getting my ass handed to me on the placement test (because I was the ONLY one taking it I had to sit in the hallway outside the room where they were grading it and get a personal interview). Now I'm going to go pay more fees and hopefully get my laptop registered. I have it hooked up to the coffee shop's wifi, which is a super blessing since I had to renew my Norton anti-virus and they wouldn't let me register until it was done, but I couldn't use the internet until I registered. So it's an endless cycle of Japanese b.s. that I thwarted with my advanced knowledge of the internet.

The post I don't want to write and never thought I would

Patrick dumped me.

If you don't know where I've been or why I've been sad, this is why. He said he struggled with his emotions for months, because over the summer and after I was in Japan he realized he didn't love me anymore. So he waited until I was in a phone booth outside a trainstation in Japan at 7am to tell me. For me it came out of nowhere.

I feel like the biggest piece of shit alive. I have no idea when or why this happened. I guess I'm just the kind of worthless person that you can propose to, promise to marry and then leave when they need you most. I've had tremendous support from everyone and I'm telling myself it's not true (that I'm worthless) and I can move on, but it hurts too much. I've gone through every type of emotion imaginable and in this post I wanted to be calm and unbiased and I'm sorry if this hurts a lot of people. I haven't wanted to write this because I know Mrs. Prugh might see it, and this has hurt her and my mother more than me in a lot of ways. I'm sad because I loved Pat's family and I'm doing my best to mend my ties with them so I don't loose everything over the past seven years. I'm also trying to be friends with Patrick, which is hard, but hopefully not impossible.

The same day this happened my mom told me she had to go back on Chemo. because they found things in her system they didn't know were cancer or not. I used this combined with my failed engagement to get Kansai Gaidai to allow me to return home and be able to come back in January. Right now I'm home, working and meeting with friends and trying to heal the best I can. When I got to the states I found out that my mom does have cancer, they caught it early enough so the cells haven't formed yet, so with the chemo she'll be fine. We're all hoping for the best.

Also going on, my grandmother has colon cancer and can no longer care for herself so I haven't seen my father because he is in Missouri helping move her to a place either a home or with my aunt where she'll be better taken care of.

I would like to thank everyone that has messaged, emailed, IMed, called, written, and knocked on my door. My family: Mom, Dad and James. Jer. Along with the Japanese crew: Erica, Drew, Nadia, Maria, Marika, Tracey, Kim, Alba, Alex, Matt, Limmer-san, Milka-san, Riho, Chinatsu, Yoko, Yuri and the staff of Kansai Gaidai. The Park Ratz: Tessa, Kirk, Shelly, O'Neil, Jared Gators: Elmer, Jay, Carrie, Hali, Mr. and Mrs. Prugh, Chris, Cavin, Jon, Danny, Renate There are tons more, I'm just too tired to figure out everyone. Know that I am so happy to have you all supporting me. I couldn't do this without you.

Hi, this has to be posted

Hey guys, most of you know already, but I'm facing some problems right now. I can't get into it here, this really isn't the place. I felt that I had to mention it because it will affect my posts in either tone or less frequent posting for quite a while.

I will try my best to catch up on the past few weeks and keep every one updated on what's going on. Today I skipped all my classes and so that you don't worry, I do have a good network here. They all skipped classes (Nadia and Erica skipped a field trip), drew me pictures, brought me food and we went to Hirakata Shi where I got the new Pheonix Wright game for DS, a big teddy bear and a bunch of cute things.

Also so far Danny's winning the plant contest. *hint hint* I'm going to go eat vegan tacos now, yes you read that correctly.

Friday and Saturday October 20 - 21, 2006

Sadly, I've been busy this week with a bunch of little stuff, so there's no one big thing like last week (Mid-terms) that I can point to and say "THAT's what's making me go crazy". This week I've had friends here have breakdowns, a pimple from hell (yes, you needed to know that because I can't deal with it anymore), I'm entering a photo contest with this photo, renewing my stay here (I have to fill out paper work for next semester, everyone has to do it), lunches with people, and to top it all off I slept wrong on my mats Tuesday night and I couldn't move my neck for all of yesterday. It sucked and I tried my hardest to massage it out an to play it off as a joke, but by the end of the day I was exhausted and going to check my mail box when I bumped into Maria and her new boyfriend-type person Victor. As we were talking about how tired I looked (and felt) she finally burst out laughing and said, "I felt bad for you all day, since you were walking like this (mimics me with my head slightly turned and not moving)" So much for poise and grace. :3 atleast today it feels a lot better so I have the ability to turn and face people when they talk to me without turning my whole body.

Anyway, the whole point of this was to talk about my weekend or atleast the first part of it. Friday I was so tired from exams that I didn't want to do a single thing. Maria found out she didn't do so well on an exam and went home early and so I had to tell Hilda we couldn't go out to our favorite bar for an end of exam hell week drink. She didn't mind she was equally as exhausted so it all worked out. I went home and went to sleep early because I wanted to get up super early to meet up with Kim at the train station to go a Kyoto flea market at Toji Temple. I had the sinking feeling Kim wouldn't be there at 8:30 and low and behold I was right. She doesn't have a cellphone and also does homestay so it's really hard to set up stuff with her, she promised she'd ask her host family if she could go with me, but as I found out later on Monday she got nervous with her hostmom getting upset about something on the phone and didn't ask. >__< damnit Kim, I knew she'd back out on me when she said on Friday, "yeah, umm if I'm not there at 9, you should go without me." Well, I went ahead at 9 and had a good time anyway. The Toji temple is still a functioning Buddhist temple behind Kyoto station (that HUGE one that Pat and I took pictures of Astro Boy at). I wandered around the complex and they were selling all sorts of things, antiques, crafts, food, plants, trees, furniture, the list goes on and on.

Needless to say my Mom would've died and gone to Asian yard sale heaven. It was awesome, sadly she's not going to be in Japan on the 21st because that's when they hold this market everymonth. Pat will be here so I told him we have to go since he'll be able to find a good sword for his collection. There were a million things I wanted to buy and I kept getting lost in all the little side streets of booths that were set up and due to the massive amount of people there. I saw a TON of gaijin (foreigners) so that kinda disrupted the mood, especially when they misread yen. I know I know, I'm the same way and all tourists in a foreign land can make mistakes, but this woman seemed like she'd stepped right out of Nina Hellmans and into this booth filled with expensive trees, "Oh my God, is that tree $3000? Is it really worth it? Oh, it's only $300, that's not too bad then." It's still a tree and I can't do her voice justice here, but rest assured if you've ever been to Nantucket you've heard it. When you hear it, it makes your skin crawl.

The things I did end up getting was some awesome food:

Chicken nuggets on a stick and some coffee thing I picked up at a conbini (okay convience stores here are not called Cumbies, 7-11, etc. they're tons of chains from the aforementioned 7-11 to Lawsons and so from here on out they're going to be called conbinis. It's what we call them and it's just easier to type. lol). I don't have a picture but I had a pancake sandwich with red bean paste in the middle ealier. Seriously, I've grown to LOVE red bean paste, it is filled with delicious and awesome. There were tons of other types of food for sale at the booths, I have pictures on flickr, but to high light a few, they had seaweed still in salty water for sale as well as all types of spices, meats, beans and finally pine tree branches with all the needles on them. Now, I don't know if this was meant to be eaten, but they were a hot item and at this point I wouldn't be surprised.

My booty (yar) I ended up with is as follows:

There's one thing here I didn't get that I really really wish I had, it was an actual board for playing Go. It had little feet and everything! Even if I don't really know how to play Go (it looks like Othello) I could've used it as a little side table. It would've looked awesome in my dreamhouse living room. The kicker? It was only $20 (2000 yen) ;____; I couldn't have gotten it to my host family's house let alone get it to the states. The pictures is here *SOB* It was juuuuust to big to carry easily. Gah, anyway the things I did get were pretty cool. First I'm sure you noticed the Tanuki, it's geisha tanuki. :3 I there was a little booth with
a dog sitting on the tailgate of this car and I wandered over to say "hi" because it was a chiwawa looking thing (I did not go over to make friends with a german shepard) and it was super friendly. He was hanging out right next to this table of stuff and I caught the sight of the girl tanuki out of the corner of my eye. I fell in LOVE with it. I noticed that she was also pretty cheap (about $10 or 1000 yen) and I was psyched, then I noticed there was another tanuki. She's pouring sake and there's a boy tanuki (also in kimono) holding out his glass. He was also $10 and now I was faced with a dielma: I only wanted to get one and they were seperate, but I should I split them up? Well I had a flashback to the movie Whispers of the Heart (or the Cat Returns I don't remember) either way, in the movie there's just the boy cat statue and it's very sad to be split up from the girl statue. So I figured what the hell, I'll tell Pat I got us two tanukis and he can't hold it against me for long. So, I got them both, but since they were wrapped so nice and I want them to make it home okay I only unwrapped the girl for the picture. I do have the sinking feeling that just looking at this my mom is going, "Oh my God that thing is ugly, what the HELL does she see in that thing?", maybe there's plenty of you doing that. I just have a feeling it's one of those things I like but Moms just don't get. Pat my think it's ugly too, but it's perfect and is going to become a Prugh/Nicholas family heirloom that will be passed down for generations and that everyone thinks weird and no one wants, but it's Great-Grandma Manda's favorite thing from Japan, they'll have to keep it around. :3 My furture grandchildren are so screwed.

I also picked up a plant for $1:

I know, if I can't have a pet I get a plant. I'm hopeless. Anyway, it's supposed to have flowers like foxgloves on it and I'm trying to keep it alive. It's still really warm here, but it getting colder at night so a lot of plants have been dying yet the leaves have a few more weeks (so I've heard) before they change color. So far I've done really crappy on the "taking good care" scale. I live on the third floor of my little Japanese house and to give it more light (the man I bought it from said direct light was best) I put it up on the railing of my balcony. Yeah, I also have to hang out my laundry and in doing so knocked it off the balcony and didn't notice until I was leaving later that day. ;____; I found it in pieces on Minami's bike and immediately tried to get it all back together before anyone noticed and it died. Later that night after my bath I snuck outside and was trying to find more dirt to repot it (it fell out of the pot no less) when my Otoosan came home. Picture
this, it's late (like 9pm) you're tired from work and you're just coming the gate when the gaijin comes out the front door holding some sort of little plant and is looking around in the dark for dirt. After the oblitgatory "What the HELL" look from Otoosan I quickly explained that I dropped my flower (I didn't know the word for plant) and I was trying to fix it (again, don't know the word for dirt or repot). I pointed to my room and showed him my plant and he smiled and was SUPER nice and gave me a little trowel and showed me where I could get some dirt from a windowbox they weren't using, then he wished me luck and went inside. This was an act of fate that he came home when he did, I was very close to giving up on finding dirt I could use from their plants and do a 5AM ninja mission to the neighbor's yard to get some soil. I know I should've asked Okaasan or Otoosan in the first place, but I didn't really know how and I didn't know if I was allowed to have a plant in my room/balcony. I don't really see why I wouldn't be able to and in the worst case they'd make me keep it in the garden with all the other plants. I thanked him later and he said "you're welcome" and smiled again, so I'm going to assume that they don't mind my little plant.

Now, what you guys can do for me is NAME my plant. It needs a name and you can either email me or leave comments with the name idea and I'll pick the one I like best. If I pick yours I'll give you something cool from Japan. I have a few things already and depending on who wins I can tailor it to them.

As for the rest of the pile-o-stuff: I got the geta (Japanese sandles) for $10 and I found out later that they could fit my feet, but the straps are too tight so I can't fit my feet in them. If you have smaller feet than me and want some sandals, let me know. I got the manga at the book-off (used book store chain I'm addicted to) near the train station. I try to hit any book-off I see because they're all over Japan and they have different things depending on what the people in that area have been turning in to the store. The most expensive book I've gotten is around $5 and most times (like the three you see here) are $1 a piece. The one on top is a series called, "Zombie Power", I haven't read past the first chapter, but with a name like "Zombie Power" how could I not. The thing with the pig and flowers on it is a little towel because 2007 is the year of the pig/boar so they're already gearing up for it. I haven't opened it and I might give it to Grandma since it's nice and she's in need of a present. Plus it has no Japanese on it - Bonus! The stamp is the kanji 恩 which means grace (on), my great grandmother's name was Grace and I like the way the kanji looks and I wanted to get a Japanese stamp to use on my books as "this is Manda's book" type mark and I found this in a box of stamps at total random. It was $3, so I had to. :) The final awesome thing I got has several pictures in flickr, it's a padlock. I don't know how old it is and I highly doubt it's a millions years old and belonged to the Empreror. That would be nice, but I bought it because I really liked it. It was in a booth with a bunch of other locks and the one I got wasn't even out when I stopped to look at them. The really neat one was one shaped like a fish that was $70. I guess what makes me like them so much is that instead of numbers they use kanji (Chinese characters) and when you match them up the lock opens. I took pictures of the ones that were out, since they were cool, but way too expensive for me to justify getting a giant fish shaped lock. As I was looking at one and trying to read the kanji the owner of the booth walked over and started talking to me. He asked if I was a student and could read kanji and I told him I could read a few. He then reached under the table and pulled out more locks and explained that he had a bunch more if I didn't see one that I liked. He continued to explain that he had other sizes that were different prices. He pulled out smaller ones and their prices ranged from $30 - $50, until he said, "but for you, $20 and $30". I was tempted to get the $30 one, but I knew most of the Kanji on the $20 one and it was cute. I couldn't read all of the handwriting so he helped me out and showed me that it did unlock and now I know the kanji that do it. Of course I bought it and thanked him very very much.

I took two or three steps outside of his booth when an older (60-70's) woman was off to my right in the middle of the street with all the people and she got my attention somehow. She was making something out of flowered paper and she started talking to me (I think that's way I stopped). She wasn't in a booth or anything, she just started to fold the paper and asked me if I knew about origami cranes. I didn't recongize the Japanese word for cranes, but after (tsuru) going with "bird" I confirmed that's what she was talking about. I whipped out a quick sentence about how in high school I knew how to make them but regrettably now I'd forgotten. She was very nice smiled and hand the crane to me. Just before she did she showed me how if you hold on to the front and pull on his tail his wings flap. I have never figured out how those cranes are made, still don't, but now I have one. I asked her how much it was because I honestly had no idea why she stopped me or made this, but I acted eternally grateful and impressed (I didn't act, I seriously felt that way) This whole thing is weird because I have no idea where she came from and why she stopped me of all the gaijin there. She may have heard me talking to the man with the locks, but I didn't see her there and it was very random. I also don't know where she went after I thanked her up and down for the crane. She went a few steps ahead of me and disappeared in the crowd. She's one of those people that you meet and swear are supernatural because there's something about them and then they're gone. Either way I still have the crane and it's going with the tanuki in the family heirloom box.

Did my day stop there? Hell no! I went back to my homestay and dropped of the booty (sorry I'm in a pirate mood and am going to abuse that word to no end) especially since I was carrying my plant in a bag and he was getting beat up and I didn't want the tanuki couple to break if I got bumped into something. My plans for that evening included meeting up with Riho at Makino Station so I could visit her apartment for dinner. He kept bouncing emails back and forth trying tofigure out when I should head over and what I should bring/do for dinner. Eventually I went to Makino around 6pm and I met Riho and her friend Chinatsu at the Life (supermarket, same chain as the one across from my house) right next to the station. At first this was SUPER awkward because I felt like Riho was doing this because she felt really bad that I was having trouble with my host family (Was, things are cool, but she helped me through the lonely part) and so she invited me over for dinner. Her friend was nice, but I had no idea how to act around them. When we got back to the apartment they started to make dinner and I wanted to help and it bugs the hell out of me to just sit and be a guest. They were super super nice, they gave me the "seat", which is a pillow with a back since we're all sitting on the floor and they gave me the nice cup/bowl and set up with a tv and Final Fantasy III to play while they worked on dinner. I of course didn't turn on the tv and half play FFIII and mostly kept up a conversation with them from the other room. Thankfully dinner wasn't very "makeable" because it was nabe. Basically you have a special hot plate with a big pot on it that you put in the middle of the table fill with flavored soy sauce (or water) and boil everything and anything you can find. Mostly it's gyoza (chinese dumpling things, kind of like egg rolls), cabbage, carrots, potatoes, mochi (rice paste, which is delcious), etc. It's like a soupy stew and you pick out what you want once it boils.



It was super good and after chatting with them a bit I started to have a really good time. They seemed happy too, to the point where Riho finally said, "Amanda I didn't know you talked this much!". She said it in a happy way, not a "omg shut up" way so all was good, I didn't seem like a American recluse anymore and I found out a lot about my host family from Riho. Apparently I'd been going about the whole talking thing all wrong. I was asking Otoosan about his day and telling Okaasan about my day. The way Riho put it, Okaasan is a more personal person and likes to talk about herself more than hearing about you, so I should ask her about HER day. Meanwhile Otoosan is much shyer and is sympathetic to other people so he doesn't want to talk about himself you have to tell him what YOU'RE doing. I got it backwards and although I didn't get bad results, I've been getting much better ones working the system the other way. I also discovered that Minami (host sister) did not graduate high school early. She stopped going when she was 16 and finally has gotten the certificate that allows her to take enterance exams for college, but she hasn't yet. I asked why and Riho explained that she had the same good group of friends in middle school, but they all went to different high schools and Minami didn't try to make new friends. As a result she was miserable and although she's pretty smart didn't want to go to school anymore. I asked how in the hell the parents put up with that and apparently Okaasan spoils her a bit or at least sympathizes to the point where it's okay. I can't blame Minami, I have no idea what would've happened to me if I didn't have Tessa and Kirk around in high school, I probaly would've been okay. Especially considering how bad middle school sucked, but either way, good info to keep under my hat. I also heard that Soji does have a girlfriend and that she's super protective of him. Then Chinatsu laughed and said something in Japanese, which they then explained meant... unattractive. Apparently she's the jealous type, but she really doesn't have any grounds to be pitching a fit. I have no idea what to think about this, but I guess it's good to know that if I ever see her to be super nice and not be nice to Soji in front of her.

Overall, after Chinatsu helping me through FFIII, much joking around and major smack downs in a Mario Kart DS three-way. They were super happy to have me over and I felt so much better about my host family and having friends here in Japan. :3 Happy Saturday. Sunday was also crazy.

(NOTE: okay I finished this on October 30, over a week since it happened. I promise I'll have a flood of things before this weekend. :3)

Ready for the weekend

I think I've already used that title, well whatever. I'm totally exhausted right now. The Japanese elementary school students kicked the gaijin crap out of us at dodgeball, dancing and just about everything else. I've never had so much fun! I'll explain in detail more later (yeah I know I'm about a week behind on the old "detail" thing) but it will probably go down as one of the funniest most endearing experiences of my life. I even applied to be the english club leader for next semester. :3 it would mean doing a class about once or twice a month that would be all in English and organizing this same trip next semester. Nothing that I haven't really done already, plus it will look awesome on any resume ever. Hopefully I can get it, or atleast get to visit this school again.

I'm at campus right now and going to be late for dinner because I wanted to upload the pictures now. Please be aware that most of these pictures will ONLY be up THIS WEEKEND. They are super strict about having children's faces on the internet here so I'll upload them now and then make them private on Monday because other students will be using my account to upload their photos and we'll be sharing the private address with the teachers. After a few weeks I'll change my password and all will be fine, but for a good while you won't see the pictures with children in them for a long time. Just be aware. Also if you do have a flickr account (howie ginne *cough cough*) you can see them regardless when they're made private. I really want that job so I'm going to try and do this as best I can.

I also uploaded the flea market pictures. I don't know why they didn't go with the first batch. I must have worked Flickr too hard. lol.



This is my favorite pic and since you can see everybody in it I'll have to take it down. ;___; So enjoy it while it lasts. Yes, I'm getting a shoulder rub from a bunch of fifth graders. Actually the one behind me is Yuka and her sister (twin sister, mind you) Honoka is in the red shirt sitting down. They were awesome.

Anyway, have fun you guys, whether you're in Syracuse right now (God I WANT to be there, but hey I'm leaving the dream here) or at home being awesome. Or in Florida watching a football game and chilling with Chunky Monkey.

All is full of love

This week has been good. Very Very good. I wish I could post something longer, but although I've been sitting here for hours I haven't put together anything. The flea market, festival, Riho's Dinner, Riho's Birthday and all other drama will have to wait.

<3 goes out to Hali, Nata, Mom, Dad, Pat, James, Granmda, Steinmetz and everyone else dealing with crappy stuff in the states and/or helping my sorry ass out.

Yes, I know the title of this post is from a Bjork song. I felt that crazy little icelandic singer was appropreate for such a random post. Regardless, my iPod and Camera are both working. :3

Mid-Term Hell

Yesterday didn't go so well, with the screwing up my oral exam and all. Today was okay, I hate to angst all over this blog, but I'm just wicked tired and this week can't be over soon enough. I was late to my arch class and I honestly had a panic attack as I got to the door. The lights were on in the room and the teacher had started, but I just couldn't open the door. I couldn't see a chair until I noticed one all theway in the front and I paniced and decided I couldn't go in the room and wouldn't. So I went the the bathroom and went down to the lounge to relax and ending up meeting some pretty cool people. I was working and over heard one of them say something about Extreme Blue and another thing that reminded me about Clone High (old Cartoon James and I love). Then I realized they WERE talking about clone high and I threw out a random quote and made some new friends from Oregon, Oklahoma and Colorado. Skippy.

I got home a little late and Okaasan was pretty cool about it. We chatted a bit at dinner since Soji was late and Otoosan hasn't been home for dinner in atleast two days (last night was no different). Then Okaasan decided to give me a lesson in how to sit at this little table thing, because apparently I suck at it. I always end up having my legs cross-wise because they go to sleep really fast if I just kneel on the floor for an hour. Pillows help, but my circulation sucks and therefore it doesn't work. I always have to keep both hands on the table (which is just weird, you aren't supposed to have your hands on the table unless you're eatting with them) and I had to be right up against the table. Honestly, when I had to get up to refill my drink I almost fell over because my legs were so tingley, but I look at this as ninja practice. I know it's nerdy, but it's the only way I'm going to get through this. Atleast I can sleep now on a nice soft bed. :3

Today's exam went well, I think. It was the writing portion to my everyday class and tomorrow I have the written exam for my reading and writing class. That includes a fuck ton of kanji, and yes that's an actual unit of measurement for kanji. Kanji's the chinese character stuff, okay nevermind I don't think I can explain it on this blog to mom and I know Hali and Renate get it. Heck, Hali's kanji is harder than all of ours since she doesn't get any other writing system to work with.

Now I'm working on being late for my law class. I'm kicking ass, but I didn't do the reading today so I'm going to suck. Man the bar this week is oh so low. Love you guys.

Today, Wednesday 18th

Sorry that last post was late, I used Skype on Monday to get in contact with everyone and cover the bases and thanks to mid-terms and just general chaos I haven't been able to get one on one time with Mr. Computer. One thing I did get today that was filled with awesome was a program for iTunes. It's called Mytunes Redux and you know how if you use iTunes on a network you can see other people's playlists and listen them, but not do anything else? Well this lets you take and download the songs onto your computer. For someone with no downloading abilities and a network filled with people from around the world, this is GREAT. Kim watched in mock horror at some of the things I downloaded and then approved of pretty much everything else. I have no idea what anyone would say if they looked at my collection of music as a whole, it's very very random.

Today's midterm was my oral exam for level three, which involved me going into my teacher's office and pretending I was visiting a family called the Yamashita's and being late. I figured she'd be doing the test, but I got in to find out it was the TA and my teacher was sitting at her desk behind this cubical thing with a little tape recorder proped up behind me. I did everything I was supposed to up until "Yamashita-san" asked "Blah blah blah go nin blah blah desu ka" Seriously, that's how it sounded and I froze up. I heard "go" (five) and "nin" counter for people and it was a question so I asked, "who?" and then she repeated it to the same effect. I was supposed to finish off by asking five questions so maybe this "nin" thing was wrong, so I launched right into my five questions and we ended. It was bugging the HECK out of me what the hell she was talking about and after talking to a few other students they explained what it was. She asked, go NEN, which means five YEARS, as in the sentence "Five years from now what do you want to do?", this has NOTHING to do with what we practiced and my response of "what music do you like?" probably was the most wrong answer ever. I officially suck in every sense.

So I sat with Maria, who equally fouled up her fourth level test, and I got in some computer time and we all got lunch with Victor (Maria's new bo), Patrick (Kim's ex-bo, yes, AKWARD), Nadia, Kim, and Maria. It was nice, I've been pounding down the green teas today on top of an espresso this morning and an apple tea. I should be twitching by my Arch. class and be up late enough tonight to get ready for the written mid-term tomorrow. I swear the conbini on campus will be the death of me. They have excellent drinks of all kinds in cute bottles and little snack cakes that either have monkies or strawberries on them.

I'll be around next week sometime. Good luck to Nata and her presentation that she just found out about and the 130 pages of reading. Good luck to all your other folks too.

Sunday, 10/15/06

This weekend was again, the fun high impact action filled roller coaster thrill ride it always is. Actually before you get your hopes up that was sarcasim. I only even saw my friends once and then spent most of the weekend eatting, doing work, or hanging out up in my room. Friday I was totally bummed and a freaking witch to top it off. Class got out for most of us at 5:20, which is way to late for a Friday, especially when I fell asleep in class. It was architecture and I didn't fart or snore or anything horrible, I just nodded off and woke up with a jolt seconds later when my pen hit my paper and I drew a huge freaking line across my notes. I looked stupid, but the lights were off and everyone else naps or reads anyway so I guess it wasn't bad. Regardless after that adernaline rush of excitement, I wandered outside to wait for Maria since we'd planned to go back to the bar this week to, but promised we'd only drink two beers. Pinkie swear and everything. We weren't feeling up for it earlier so the other plan was that I was going back to the seminar house and going to fix her new iPod (her music that she ripped from her CDs in Spain via Windows Media Player wouldn't let her import them into iTunes because it was "protected", I did it with my iPod so I was going to see what was up). Actually one thing I didn't even think of was the language issue, I have no idea how I would do it if it was in Catalian (she doesn't even use Spanish, it's ANOTHER rare Romance language). Anyway, she saw me and said she had to talk to someone, stood me up and then I got messages from her later saying that she'd gone on a date with this boy from Mexico. Can't blame her, I just wish I'd known so I could've made new plans. Instead I got thrown into a group with Drew, Nadia, Doug and Charlene (girl from UF that I don't know) who were going to do Karaoke in Hirakata-shi. This involved Drew and Doug taking a bus while Charlene, Nadia and I biked to the otherside of campus to Charlene's homestay so she could ask if she could go (because she doesn't have a cellphone, which is dumb. I live by the darn thing, it makes everyone so less stressed, your host folks know where you are and you can tell them what's up and not feel like a bastard, sorry I'm ranting.) Then we had to bike to Hirakata Station, so lots of biking, I hadn't eatten all day and I was just flat out grumpy. By the time we got there I was just about a crabby as you can get. I snapped at Drew and finally had to realize how much of a pain I was being and apologized. Then we went to the Conbini (convience store) and got some food. All was right with the world. Then we did karaoke and things went horribly, horribly wrong.

Like I mentioned it was a bunch of girls and one guy and sadly we made him suffer since most of the songs we thought everyone would know where very very girly. Yes, there was Cher's "Believe", with Lion King's "Hanuna Matada", something from the Little Mermaid, "Girl's just want to have fun", and many others. Poor Doug. We did help him through a Metallica and a System of a Down song, so it's cool. It was a lot of fun, I'm glad I got the stick out of my rear end early and had fun.

Saturday I planned to hang out at the hostfamily house. I had to leave once to get my bike at Hirakata (I took the train back on Friday night to save some time). Aside from that, nothing. Sunday I was supposed to visit Riho's family, but she emailed me Saturday afternoon on my phone to let me know we couldn't go because she had a job interview on Sunday and didn't find out until JUST then. That made me sad, but she emailed me later to see if I wanted to have dinner at her apartment this weekend, I haven't gotten back to her, but yeah I'll go.

Right now I'm in an Udon coma. I didn't know these existed but that udon (Japanese noodles) is hitting me like a ton of bricks even though I finished eatting them two hours ago. My hostfamily took me out to anUdon place and at first I didn't know how to order and I wussed out and ended up just going with Kitsune Udon, it's good and I know I'll eat it. I wasn't all that hungry and the picture looked small so I figured I was good. Then my host mom lets me know I should come here with my friends because when you just get udon (like I did) they automattically make it a double for the same price. ;____; here's the food as it showed up:



Seriously, that's large enough to KILL a man. Of course due to my relationship and lack of being able to communicate with my host family I ate the whole thing because, that's just what you do when people you don't know so well buy you things. Regardless of how much it hurts you eat the tofu and LIKE it. Hence, why I'm passed out on my floor typing this and unable to move. I don't even want to think about dinner. Oh God, that's only a few hours away. Whimper.

Trust me, nothing exciting

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, nothing super great has been happening, so no super surprises. I have mid-terms in both my Japanese classes next week and I've had a test in every subject in the past two weeks except for Architecture, which had me do a five page paper on Todaiji. Fun.

Last weekend was a hoot and a half Friday Maria, Hilda and I decided the week sucked so hard we were going to a bar across from campus right after classes got out at 6:30. We didn't leave until 11, needless to say it was fun, but we most certainly are not going to do that again anytime soon. I mean, we're going again today, but probably only for an hour and that's after I fix her new ipod. I won't talk more about the bar adventures because the two people who read this daily are my mom and Hali. My mom hates hearing about me being drunk and Hali knows first hand how I get when I'm drunk, so no new ground to cover there. I was safe and fine and my host mom (who had to let me in because she locked the door using the chain and forgot) thought it was hysterical. She gave me crap for the rest of the weekend.

See that's another thing that's made me feel down this past week. My hostfamily is Japanese and they're... just... different. I'm at the stage where I'm not a guest, but I'm not family and even though they've had 16 host kids they aren't really sensitive to how it feels to be a student in a house where they don't talk to you. I started getting embarassed about my Japanese recently and didn't say a word aside from "Now?" "Good Night" "I'm home" and "yes" and things got worse on Sunday when Riho (girlfirend of a prior host student) visited and everyone was happy and I was lost. I then got frusterated as hell (if you can do that) that I hadn't progressed and I was such a screw up at all of this. Even in America I constantly think people are mad at me and so when I don't speak the language I just KNOW they're mad at me, even though they're not.

So I decided I'd just email Riho on my phone and ask her what the heck was wrong with me. I apologized for being embarassed and quiet at dinner (they mentioned that I got drunk on Friday and I got embarassed, but they thought it was funny, so I didn't talk much) and explained why. She emailed me back right away and we talked for a good hour or so via email on the cellphones. It was an amazing help, I email her about once a day to let her know how things are going and thank her up and down for just listening to me. I try to talk more about random stuff and last night I had a bit of a break through when my host parents started talking to me about my pets at home and I asked them about pets they had as children. Sucess on many levels, plus I feel less lonely at home.

That was Friday and Sunday, on Saturday I got up and went over to campus to get my bike and visited the seminar house for a few hours. I walked in the door and I found all the roommates in the bathroom and half of Nadia's hair on the counter. Apparently she wanted to donate her lovely long hair to cancer patients and had Erica cut her hair for her in the bathroom. Erica did an awesome job and it was cool to see Nadia's transformation. This week turned out to be the week of hair cuts with Kim deciding to cut her own hair and Maria cutting Matt's hair because he wanted to shave his head and we just couldn' t deal with that. No, I haven't had anyone cut my hair, I'm fine. The reason why we have to cut our own hair is not that there aren't any hair salons here, quite the opposite. The thing is everything, EVERYTHING, is made for a specific body type, because everyone here is Japanese. They all have Japanese skin tones, hair, etc. That's not racist it's true, because at home we don't seem to realize it but we made products for all sorts of hair color, types, skin tone, skin sensitivity you name it. Here their market is a single type, so you wouldn't bother making shampoo for blonde hair if no one has it. Therefore, Nadia, being from America (who is Chinese) has never had such shiny hair and clear skin because they have a wider variety of products for her body type than in the states. The rest of us just suffer and we also can't go to normal hair salons because our hair styles differently. A lot of the types of layering I see in girls hair around campus just wouldn't work with my hair. We have heard of a few gaijin salons in Osaka and are waiting to see how they are. I'll keep you posted.

Anyway, Saturday was great because we hit the store and I picked up some supplies for making PB and J. I miss it, it's easy and delcious. Now, what I didn't realize is that not everyone loves PB and J, I sat down back at the dorms and whipped open the jars and starting making a sandwich while Erica drooled over her own jar of peanut butter. Suddenly Maria walks by behind me and comes to a screeching halt, "WHAT are you doing?!" We (Nadia, Drew, Erica, Me) just turn and go, "Making Peanut Butter and Jelly?" Maria goes on for a good five minutes about how that's just wrong, gross and you should only put one on a sandwich or toast, and finishes by saying, "I always see that in the movies and thought it was a lie." This has had me amused all week long. We all keep asking Maria if she wants some PB and J and the face she makes is just priceless. We asked Tracy (from England) if she hated it and she said she'd heard of it, but never tried it and didn't see how it was that good. We also asked a few Japanese people and they seem to think it's okay, but don't swear by it. Meanwhile, I can distinctly remember my Nana saying when I was four or five that I could live off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches everyday for the rest of my life. Erica says she still lives off of it and what makes our dependence depressing is that here in Japan Peanut Butter (NOT Peanut Cream, that's like a sweet crappy subsitute) is $5 for a little jar. ;____; Also, no Fluff, so I know exactly what Pat's bringing me this December.

I could write a whole other post about neat things I've learned about childhoods from the international students here. There's a few that I've mentioned, first is that kids love playing in the dirt. I saw this at the Okinawan Festival and Maria noticed it too and we both thought it was kind of neat. She was in Spain, I was on Nantucket, Erica in RI, Drew in OH and here there are kids in Japan who couldn't be happier making giant dirt castles. The other thing I wanted to mention I learned last Friday from Hilda and Maria. Hilda is a girl from Munich, Germany and is very very sweet. I don't know how we got to talking about it, but Maria said that when she was little and they were visiting their family cottage in the Pyraneese Mountains, she and her cousins begged their parents to let them go camping over the big mountain. Finally their folks gave in and said they could "camp" next to the pool for a night and they did. They were in their own beds by 11pm. Meanwhile Hilda said she and her brother also begged their folks to let them sleep outside in the backyard for a night and when they did they also ran back inside. I did the same thing, before I was in girl scouts I wanted to go camping in my backyard and I got my parents to let me sleep in my pop out tent on the otherside of the fence (we must have just moved to the Old South Road House) and I got so scared by the shadows on the wall that I was back inside within an hour.

Sorry that was random, back to the important stuff. Monday was a day off so I went to Osaka by myself because I couldn't convince anyone else to go with me. I wandered around Umeda looking for the huge electronics store (the one that makes Best Buy look like a 7-11), but I couldn't find it. I don't know if it's by Osaka or Shin-Osaka Station and I'm just dumb. Anyway, I wandered down to Namba and I found a bunch of stores there and hooked myself up with a headset and webcam for a total of $30. Sweet deal. So Tuesday I went into school early and called up my parents and Pat on Skype. The next day I called up Tessa and today I called Olivia (not home), Renate, Elmer, Parents and Pat (not home). I also learned from Renate that my blog isn't allowing comments so as I was talking to her I fixed that. Comment away! If you can't tell me and I'll fiddle with it some more. I'm sorry I haven't called everyone yet, I have a small window from 9am to 11am my time where I can get in calls before class. After 1pm it's 12am where you guys are and I can't call most people. The other time I'm free is from 5 to 6pm and it's 4 to 5am and I'm pretty sure that doesn't work for you either.

This has also been the week of bad news, because no one will tell me bad news on AIM or through email. So the moment I call people all the bad shit gets passed along, which probably added to my bummer of a week. First family stuff, my Grandma has colon cancer and will most likely recover, but this has caused everyone to realize that she can't live on her own anymore and will move in with my Aunt Linda down in Arkansas. Not my Nantucket Aunt Linda, my actually Aunt Linda, she's a set of twins with the one that's a missionary in the Phillipeans. A friend of the Prugh's had a bad car accident and is recovering, but it was quite severe. My cat's not dead, but my dog's (Jemma) got a new lump and she can't move as easily ontop of slipping and falling alot. She's going to go to the vet and I'm sure she'll be fine until I get back, but it's said to see the little puppy wheels start to fall off. Tessa's dog Jackson, aka Jack-Jack, General of Fort Jackson, and just an awesome dog was put down two weeks ago and I just found out. He was old and part of the same generation as Aoife's dog Sadie (who died last summer) and Taylor's dog Moses (who died earlier this summer), so it's not a huge surprise, it's just sad to lose a good puppy friend. I can't imagine going to Tessa's and not having him woof his ass off at me. I actually can't think about that because I'll probably cry, nevermind. More bad news? Yep, in my more recent phone calls I found out a friend's grandfather died. I never met him, but it's just sad to hear most of your friends sad on the phone even for a few seconds.

I hate to end on a depressing note, so I won't. I talked to James and he's kicking but in Football and they won their game today (yesterday for me? God I don't know how to say that) . Also the Gators are #2 in the Nation in football. GO WHALERS GO GATORS and there's two more baseball games left here so HANSHIN TAIGAAS GAMBATTE~! (Hanshin Tigers are the team here, in case you couldn't read my awesome Japanese) The plan is simple for the weekend, hanging out with the crew tonight, home early (like real early), Saturday study and chill, then Sunday going to Riho's family's house in Nara. :3 I can't wait! I hope things are better for all you folks! I promise more frequent posts Hali and Mom! <3

Ready for the weekend

I really do have a nice host family. Honestly a lot of things I want to rave about were supposed to be in different posts covering sleep, bath, food, tv, etc. Screw it. You'll get a mix and love every second of it.

Most importantly I eat like a GOD here. Everything I eat is delicious and unlike anything I've ever had, I can't describe it, I try not to eat too much in the day because I know there will be something yummy waiting for me at home. It might look strange and I will probably eat it wrong, but hell it'll be good. I know my Mom will know what I'm getting at, but does anyone else remember in the movie verision of To Kill a Mockingbird when they invite the poorer farmer kid over for dinner? Then he asks for syrup and puts it all over his potatos while everyone at the table looks on in horror until Scout finally jumps up and calls him on it. Yeah, I've had that moment several times over here at dinner and it's been hilarious. I think they give me weird things that are hard to eat just to see what I'll do and I'm glad I don't dissappoint. The first time I did it was with white rice. We have white rice at everymeal and it's getting to the point where I need it at everymeal, I've just gotten that used to it being there. Well, in the States we put soy sauce on white rice, it makes sense, plain rice is dumb and soy sauce is already there... so I go ahead and try to do this here. Yeah. Big no no. Not to the point where I get banished from the table, but everyone did laugh at me and was seriously confused that we did that at home.

Here what you do is put kelp or seaweed on it, which is cool. It's like the didn't have the spices we used so someone went out in a boat reached over the side pulled something up and said, "Yeah you dry this sucker out, this'll be delcious." Every bit of seaweed takes different, good though I can't explain or compare it to anything we eat at home.

I'm running on a a tight schedule today and with the three day weekend I probably won't post until Tuesday. So hang tight and I'll be back!