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The Japanese reads "American Style Donuts"
The flag is French
QUALITY

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Japan has very little spicy food of its own

Yesterday my host family and I took a trip out to the countryside. Or at least I thought it was the countryside. Turns out it was still part of Isahaya City. I used to think that Isahaya was kinda small, but that's just the area I was in. It seems that cities are defined differently here in Japan than they are in America; in America a city is just a humongeous town, but in Japan they're a collection of towns, which is why Isahaya, where I am staying, has both an urban center and a whole bunch of rice paddies. Huge rice paddies.

So yes. We went to a ravine that had a bunch of small pools and waterfall-like things. There were a lot of small kids there who were playing around on the rocks and sliding down the waterfall, which seemed like the perfect natural waterslide. I wanted to try it, but I didn't have any swimming clothes and I didn't want to get wet. But that happened anyway because I slipped on a mossy rock and fell knee-deep into the water. Soaked my Air Max 90s. After that, I just walked around barefoot which was nice because the water was really refreshingly cold, and it's hotter than hell over here.

Afterwards, I got a fresh change of clothes and we went to Uniqlo. The last time I tried going into Uniqlo in Nagasaki, it had closed about a minute or two before I got there. I thought we were going to have to drive all the way into Nagasaki, but it turns out that there's a store right here in Isahaya. I got a pair of red jeans (finally) and a killer silver-foil Kieth Harring UT shirt. Also, it seems that Uniqlo has started to make Raw Denim for like fifty bucks. That's ridiculous.

For dinner, we went with my host mother's friend to a Korean restaurant. The food was great. I think we went because my host family knows I like spicy food, but we haven't been able to find much spicy food elsewhere. Everything they think is really spicy doesn't really seem like much to me. So they got a bunch of chili peppers for me to put in my food, which made it a little spicier, but really that much. However, the friend's daughter tried a bit of chili and turned red and tears started rolling down her face so uh I guess they would disagree.

Also while we were heading out, we saw some farmers spraying their rice paddies with pesticide or something. Wonder how they do it in Japan? A spray gun? Maybe some sort of pellet launcher?

No.

They use an RC helicopter.

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Shooooooooping

Went to a recycle shop yesterday which is pretty much the Japanese equivalent of a thrift store. I went to two shops; the first kinda sucked and didn't have much good other than electronics and CD. The second, however, was kick-ass hard-rocking.

I don't really get it. Nagasaki isn't exactly hipster-city and the surrounding area isn't even close to metropolitan, so I don't understand how this thrift store that's not even in the city had a bunch of Stussy, Supreme, XLarge, and even Bape (PARTY FAVORITE!). They had tons of jeans there too, which reminds me that I gotta find a good pair of Japanese selvedge denim to waste my hard-earned money on.

Speaking of jeans, they had the most ridiculous shoes I have ever seen there. I had no idea that these exist, but they had a pair of Evisu High-tops for sale. Unfortunately it was a size 11 or something, so I couldn't pick them up. I could just barely shove my feet into them, but it felt like I was walking on bound feet. The only shoes that fit me there were a pair of Dunks that were so trashed I was surprised they still held together. I kinda wanted to pick them up, but I think whoever wore them before put them through some sort of pulveriser to make them the weirdest, most unfomfortable pair of shoes ever. The back was all worn down, but the front still had a bunch of padding. It was like walking in sand. Really pinchy, leathery sand.

They also had a pair of original stan smiths there, and some OG Air Jordans. But they also weren't in my size and were probably $600 USD.

There were also a bunch of kubrick toys there too. They had a Batman set there, but absolutely no Batman figures. They had Catwoman, Selina Kyle, The Penguin, even a fucking penguin missile thing that nobody remembers, but no Batman.

However, though I wasn't able to pick up any Batman gear, I did get my hands on a rocking Play-doh shirt and a NeckFace X Supreme tee. RAAAAAD.

Oh yeah I also went to a barbecue thing with a bunch of really devout christians which was a little weird but the food was delish.

Update:

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLPOSTPIXX

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Nagasaki

So I live about 20 minutes away from Nagasaki. I went in today with my host sister to see the history museum and the A-bomb memorial as well. It was super hot going over there (37 degrees celcius) and it was still super hot and humid the whole day through. Luckily though, most of our time was spent in air-conditioned buildings.

We went to the museum first, which had an exhibit on some dutch dude's book of fish from olden times. It had a bunch of weird models of Edo period monsters and mermaid mummies which I forgot to take pictures of, but I did remember to nag a picture of this:

Chub Mackarel. What a fucking name. If I had a pet fish, it would be a Chub. Anway. The fish were pretty cool I guess. I mean, as cool as fish can be. The museum also had another section with stuff about historical Nagasaki which was cool to learn about. If you guys had taken East Asian Studies, more commonly known as China-Japan with the infamous Chi-An Lin, you would know that Nagasaki was the first Japanese port open to foreigners and the only way into the country during the period of isolation. That's pretty much what I got from this museum exhibit except that there were also pictures and dioramas and models, such as my friend up top of the post here. I forget what she does, but she looks like an idiot so I took a picture.

The museum also had a tortise shell jewelry shop on the grounds where they were making jewelry on site. We went in to watch the guy do his work and ended up in a conversation with him where he showed us various objects made of tortoise shell and told us how much they were. Everything was ridiculously expensive, and he said that if we were in Tokyo, we could expect to pay triple what it cost here. For example, there was a hairpiece that cost about $2,000 USD, and in Tokyo it would probably be more than $7,000. That was ridiculous also there was this:

Does that look like it's worth a million bucks? Well it's worth eight. That is too much. Where the hell are they going to find a buyer for that? Who goes into a store and says to themself "Yes. Yes I do want to spend eight million dollars on a boat that has a piece of coral stuck in it and can't even float"? Well anyway. They also had a guitar pick there for 1000 yen and I was thinking of getting it for Matt but then I realised how stupid that was. Aren't guitar picks like a dollar? The guy said that they sound really good, but ten dollars for a guitar pick is too much. I'll get you dudes better stuff than that. Or maybe I'll just get the boat and you guys can all share.

After the museum we went to the Peace Park which had a huge statue representing peace. According to the Japanese, peace is a big dude with longish hair and a face that looks too small in comparison to his body and head. The Peace Park had a bunch of statues that various countries had sent over. The hypocenter was nearby as well. The memorial there was an obelisk that stood in the middle of a circular court. I thought it looked pretty nice because all the bricks in the entire surrounding park pointed inward towards the hypocenter which made for a nice effect. The memorial was also nice but I want to talk about the TV programming I am currently watching so we'll cut that short. I understand that could possibly be one of the most offensive things anyone could do, but I think I'm making the right choice.

Alright yeah the TV shows here are amazing. The show I just watched was basically a bunch of guys standing over the grating of a subway ventillation duct and listening to the subway passing by. They all really seemed to enjoy it. At least, enough to spend the entire episode of their show doing it over and over again (I gotta try it). After the first time they came up with a bunch of stuff to better listen to the subway, including using flags to determine when the train was coming and using PVC pipes as a way to listen in and cut out ambient noise. They even went to the point of getting headphones and a boom mic to get a better sound. Then they got a map of the subway system and used it to follow the train around town. It was fantastic.

Now I'm watching what seems to be the Japanese response to Sealab 2021. It's a bunch of old cartoon characters who are sent out on missions or something. I dunno exactly what it is. But what I do know is they got a baseball pitcher (for reals, not cartoon) to throw a spoon and then they measured how far it went. This is Japanese TV.

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Rotary and School

Today I had to give my "speech" at the Rotary meeting. It was pretty much just me saying the dumbest stuff that I could manage to spit out in Japanese. It seemed to go over well but I think that was just because they were so surprised a foreigner could say some Japanese.

The meeting was really weird though. Other than my speech, there was also food, which was completely normal, and another man's presentation, which was completely out of place. He started off with some thing about obesity or just being overweight in general which seemed a little odd, but at least kind of made sense (those rotarians gotta keep healthy). But then he went into a pitch for Viagra, which no matter which way you look at it, is weird. And he kept saying stuff that the rotarians all found very funny, but the speaker just seemed embarrassed the entire time.

Afterwards I went to the high school that I'll be attending. I got measured for my uniform and filled out some paperwork to get enrolled. It seems like I'll be taking all the classes with the other kids for the first month and then I'll take Japanese classes at the university within the same school system. I dunno how classes will work then though, because the teacher himself didn't know either.

There are a bunch of clubs at the school as well that I might take part in. They have a brass band and theater and all that, but I think I'm gonna go with the kendo, though it's another two hours every day. However, I also get to hit people with sticks, which I'm sure is worth the extra time.

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Hoooooooot springs

Went to some hooooooot springs a day or two ago. I was expecting rocks and bubbly water and maybe some trees and kimonos. What it really was was like a water park. Kind of. It was an overcast day so there weren't too many people there. We only really went into the indoor area anyway, which was pretty much a big massage pool thing with a lot of water jets. Saunas too, which was nice. Outside there was a big wave pool but I think it was shut down because so few people were there. There were also some slides but they didn't interest me. It felt kind of weird because this was my first full day in Japan that wasn't spent in an airport or hotel. I'm pretty sure I stuck out like a sore thumb because there were no other foreigners there at all.

The actual hot springs were sort of like a spa-like thing. Everyone was naked in there, which was uh, a little weird. The springs were separated by gender though so no HOTT PIXX. You gotta wash before you get in the baths, so there are a bunch of stalls to do that in. Japanese showers are a bit different than the western world though. Instead of stand-up shower stalls, you usually sit down on a bath seat and use a shower head or fill a basin with water to wash yourself. The hot springs themselves were nice to sit in, and there were saunas in there too (YES).

We also did some weird hot-stone-sweating thing. Changed clothes into something they gave us to sweat into and went into a big room with a ton of hot stone beds. Of course since I'm kinda tall for Japan, the towel they gave me to put down on the stone so I wouldn't be burned was a bit too small. I ended up having to curl up a little to avoid burning myself. After maybe 20 minutes of sweating out, we hurried over to an ice room where there was a big pile of snow in the middle (I'll put up pictures later). And then after cooling off for a minute, we went back in to sweat out again. I don't know why anyone would do this, because it wasn't really that enjoyable and I didn't notice anything too rewarding about it.

After the hot springs we went to a shopping complex full of outlet stores. I went into the Vans, Nike and Addidas stores to see if I could find anything, but of course nobody in Japan has even heard of size 13 shoes, unless they're the ugliest models of some shitty action boot. But I did see that they're really into court forces here instead of Dunks, which is kinda weird because they never really make any court forces worth buying.

Also, did you know that Japanese voice-overs are some of the best things on television? I mean seriously. I was watching some commercial for 24 where some dude was trying to lower his voice a ton and saying stuff about Jack Bauer which just came out as "KO CHI RA JACK! JAPANESEJAPANESEJAPANESE". I dunno what they say afterwards, but they repeat that first part about fifteen times in the commercial.

There was also some magician's show that was overdubbed. The show was pretty much just some guy walking up to girls and flexing his magical muscles but the voice overs were what made it. Every single scene sounded like a conversation between a schoolgirl and a really lechereous old man. That's pretty much what all Japanese television is. For serious.

EDITUPDATE:
Pictures are very important

Gang tats not allowed

Giant shaved ice

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I got into Japan at about seven last night. I was already supposed to be in Tokyo by three but our flight was delayed in Chicago and I had missed my connecting flight to Nagasaki. A bunch of others in the exchange program also missed their flights and the airline gave us free hotel rooms and bus tickets to get there.

The hotel itself wasn't bad, but there wasn't all too much to do there. I mainly just hung out with two people I had met on the flight; Dylan from Phillidelphia and Noelle from New Jersey. We had nothing to do but we didn't want to go to bed so we just hung out in Dylan's double room and watched 24 Hour Television, which is pretty much just softcore porn with a bunch of audience members yelling things at the people on stage.

We also hit up the vending machines. These things will make me go broke within a week. They have everything you need and it's all delicious. Also, the drinking age in Japan is 20 but the vending machines have beer in them and no way of checking for ID. They believe very strongly in the honor system in Japan.

I've already moved into my first host home, but it seems like I'm only here for about two weeks. School starts on the first of September for me and I think I have to give a one-minute speech in all Japanese in about three days so I have to improve my language skills pretty quickly to survive. It's not going so badly, but I keep forgetting terms I've already learned and all that. However, this is also just the first day so we'll see how things go.

I don't really have much else to say and I'm tired so I'm just going to end this here. Plus I gotta wake up early tomorrow because we're going to some local hot springs which should be fun. But then again, I've also seen videos of the ridiculously crowded Japanese water parks so we'll see how that goes as well.

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