HELLO

Space Children Gathering

2008-05-11T05:25:00.000-07:00

MMMMM Golden Week
Delicious vacation time

For my tasty Golden Week vacation I went with my friends off to Aso Mountain where we ate curry and listened to music and slept uncomfortably in small tents. All good though! Uncomfortable sleeping conditions ain't so bad when your home pillow is actually made of plastic beads. Mmmm, delicious plastics.

The trip down to Mt. Aso was kinda long, but it was filled with goodies. I started off in the morning from my buddy Dave's apartment. We got picked up by one of our friends with a car, and headed off to Shimabara to meet up with all the other people we were going with.

We took the ferry from Shimabara to Kumamoto-ken, where Aso is at. The ferry was tops. Since it was such a beautiful day, I went up onto the roof of the boat with a couple of other friends and we soaked in the sun and imitated Titanic poses until it was time to get back down into the cars.

From there, the drive was kind of confusing. None of us were really entirely sure as to where the campsite was on the mountain, or how we were supposed to get there. Luckily, we already had some friends up on the mountain who happened to be coming back down to grab some stuff from a convenience store who showed us the way up to the place.

Driving in, we went through some really beautiful scenes and passed a bunch of cows spray-painted with numbers. They were both pretty rad.

There were tons of Japanese hippies up on the mountain, along with quite a few foreigners who made a pretty long trip for the festival. Oh yes, we didn't just go to the mountain on our own accord, I am not so nature-friendly. There's a bi-annual music festival that goes on up on Mt. Aso which is filled with Japanese hippies and graying construction workers who paint in their free time. Well, okay, just one graying construction worker who paints in his free time, but he was a good dude.

Actually, this post is kind of dumb. I have nothing to say.
We made a campfire, that was fun
some crazy japanese dude came over and sprayed sake all over himself
lots of dudes had teepees and I was jealous
Some guy put paints out in front of his car and let people paint it up
tons of delish curry
I saw a full-circle rainbow
lots of dogs (I want a dog)
Also a turtle (not so much)

ANYWAY
I get to miss more school this week too because I am heading off to Kyoto and Tokyo. Should be killer.

HEYOOOOOOOOO

2008-04-30T04:29:00.000-07:00

UH WHAT
Yeah still here, still aliving it JapanLand
READ THAT AS YOU WILL

It's been a long while since I've dropped some knowledge on you dudes so I guess I better just RECAP things which have happened in the past few weeks/months WHATEVER IT'S BEEN A WHILE

MARCH
was cool. I think. I don't really remember when things happened and all that. Wait I think already posted in March about the whole 99 islands and all that jazz. Okay March DONE

APRIL
is this month right now. Things have been happening and they have been going well. I had a big ol' spring break (two weeks! and a little more!) and that was rad. Been playing a lot of Super Smash Brothers and Mario Kart Wii and stuff. That too is rad, but probably to a lesser extent.

I think it was in April that I went for Hanami, which is when everybody in Japan stops what they're doing to go to the park and admire the Sakura flowers blooming before they're all blown off the branches and the trees are just left with boring green leaves instead of pink flowers. I ate a carrot while there. It was unwashed, but I peeled it.

I went to a TALL SHIP festival in Nagasaki recently, which was pretty cool too. Some of my friends brought some cricket stuff and were fooling around with that. There were a TON of hawks hanging around, chasing birds and being generally intimidating. I think one of them ate a small dog. Or a child.

COMING UP
is GORUDEN UIIKU, or Golden Week. Golden Week isn't really a week, but rather a collection of holidays in such close proximity that they usually end up taking entire weeks and giving everyone a wonderful, relaxing break. This year, however, a lot of the holidays fall on the weekend which is a BIG BUMMER. Oh well. Anyway, I'm going to a mountain. Should be fun. Plus I miss two days of school which is goooood newwwws.

Shortly afterwards, I'll be making the trip to Kyoto and Tokyo with the other exchange students and taking super touristy pictures being all OOOH AHHH LOOK AT THE SIGHTS! That should be fun.

More on that stuff when I actually do it. Pictures and all!

A Whole Bunch of Islands

2008-02-27T00:15:00.000-08:00

Okay yeah so
Last weekend I went over to Sasebo, a nearby city, and checked out the Ninety-Nine Islands with my host family. The city itself has a big American Navy port there and a ton of Americans walking around, or at least a lot more than I have been used to recently. I've heard it also has a Nike store there, which I will have to make my way back to check out, seeing as they are supposed to have shoes in my size because of the demand from the Americans living there.

Anyway. Ninety-Nine Islands. I don't believe that there are actually 99 of them, I think in Japanese it's just a way of saying "A whole bunch". They're pretty nice, though it seems like they'd be pretty annoying to navigate because it's just a bunch of tiny islands and shallow areas lining the coastline.

I took a boatride around one of the areas of the islands with my host family and took a WHOLE BUNCH of pictures. GOOD FUN. However, it was kind of an odd day; It was alternatively sunny and snowy all day long, and kept on changing on our hour-long boatride, so while taking photos on the deck I pretty much froze several times over.

But it was good! It was definitely fun, and I wanna go again later when it gets warmer. Afterwards we saw a whole ton of people at the docks having かき, or oysters. Turns out it was the last day of the season for them, and I guess everyone was getting what they could before they were gone for the year. I'm not such a huge fan of oysters so I had none, and I already had a HUGE Sasebo burger earlier, so I was full up.

Sasebo burgers are pretty much just burgers that some dude saw and thought, "Nah, I don't think that'll give me heartburn fast enough," and proceeded to put on various other meats, vegetables and a fried egg on top. And as questionable as that sounds, it was DELICIOUS. I wanted to get another to bring home, but I didn't. So that's that. Good story.

But yes. I mentioned shoes earlier, didn't I? I believe I did. Well, the reason why I'm bringing it back up is because I am a big fan of shoes. I love to get me a new pair of sneakers. So getting into Sasebo, the only place near me that has anything in my size, I was sure to get myself some shoes. Some tasty, tasty shoes. I am talking DELICIOUS WHITE NIKES. Air Force 1 mid, which I have been meaning to get a pair of for quite a while. I am not sure yet whether or not I will keep them pure white or if I'll paint them up to my own liking. Maybe I'll just let them get dirty and then clean them up to be painted. Anyway I'll figure it out.

So anyway. Not too much else to talk about. I went to an onsen, or hot spring, this weekend as well with a couple of friends. It was ridiculously cheap, like six bucks. Or at least I think that's cheap. I'm pretty sure it's cheaper than anything else you could hit up in America. But anyway yes. Weird stuff in there. There was a sauna that you rubbed salt all over yourself that reminded me of getting a big slab of meat ready for grilling or ovening, if that word makes any sense to others.

So yes yes. I think that covers everything going on over here and all. Please enjoying pictures.

EDIT OKAY NEVERMIND for some reason blogger refuses to accept my photos
I'll figure something out
YOU WILL HAVE PHOTOS

Chats

2008-02-13T04:14:00.000-08:00

So hey guys. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Man where is this dude at? Why hasn't he posted in such a long dang time? Is he even alive anymore? Did he get got by one of those Vespa Mandarinia Japonica deals? That would be a bummer."

But Hey! I'm still here! Still kicking, still moving, still making it.
I haven't really been traveling or anything much, so I haven't had all too much to share with you guys. However, I've been sitting here for a while waiting for something of note to come up to talk about, and so far nothing HUGE has come about, but I figure I might as well just let you all in on what's going on.

So alright. Okay. Time to talk.
I'm gonna try something different here. Something I think might make telling this story a bit easier. From here on, I'll be writing this out like a little interview. I find it's easier to just chat about stuff rather than going into a whole writing mode and cranking out paragraphs of nonsense, so uh, here we go.

ジェレミー: So Jeremy! How's it going over in Japan?
Jeremy: Ah well, it's going fine. The weather has been kind of crap, but it's started clearing up now.
ジェ： Sounds good, sounds good. So what have you been up to lately?
Jer: Eh, nothing much. Just hanging with friends around Nagasaki prefecture and getting through school.
ジェ： Ah, school. How's that going for you?
Jer: Actually, right now it's pretty dang boring. Usually I got some classes up at the college that keep my attention and give me something to do, but the semester ended sometime back in January so I've just been going to the high school for the past couple of weeks. It's pretty boring.
ジェ： Ah, bummer.
Jer: Yeah dude. Plus all the dudes I knew up at the college have bounced back to their respective countries, so that was a bummer too.
ジェ： Ah, no good. So what've you been doing back at the high school? Been hitting up class over there?
Jer: Uh, yeah, sorta. I go to a couple of them but to tell you the truth, I can't really understand them much so I kinda just space out or read a book.
ジェ： Uh, isn't that kinda bad? Aren't you supposed to be learning the language and all?
Jer: Well yeah, that's what I do at the college. And then I practice it back at home and when I'm out and about.
ジェ： What about with the high school students? Shouldn't you be chit-chatting with them and all?
Jer: Well I definitely would if they didn't run away every time I approached them or if they actually went out every once in a while. I don't really get much of a chance to hang with them.
ジェ： So wait, who have you been hanging with?
Jer: Mostly teachers. English teachers. But before you say anything, yes, I still get a chance to use my Japanese when I'm out with them.
ジェ: Well alright. So then what else has been going on lately?
Jer: Uh, well last weekend or so I went off to Nagasaki to check out the lantern festival they got there which is pretty much just a copy of the Chinese lantern festival and all. It was pretty cool; there were lanterns all over the place in the city, in all shapes, sizes and colors.
ジェ： Oh cool. So what sort of stuff did they have there?
Jer: They had your normal Chinese lantern deal all around, but also a bunch of other stuff like a Pikachu, Guan Yu, some fish and a STEGOSAURUS.
ジェ： Oh nice! Do you have any pictures of them?
Jer: Yeah, well uh, about that. I sorta ain't got them right now, but as soon as they pop up, I'll load them up.
ジェ： Alright, well then, what else have you been up to lately?
Jer: Actually, not too much. One of my friends got the new Smash Bros. lately, which is pretty fun, but other than that, nothing is really going on. I found a site with some books online that I've been reading from lately, and I'm trying to get moving on photography and all that, seeing as I haven't been doing all too much over here. I've been feeling a bit cooped up around here lately and I've been getting a bit restless, so I'm just trying to put my energy into stuff instead of just stagnating and sitting around thinking about nothing.
ジェ： Ah, well at least you're trying to get stuff going for yourself.
Jer: Yeah, I've not been doing too much stuff over here and been feeling kinda bummed about it, so I figure it'd be good to just start moving so I don't end up being totally mentally static when I get back to the States.
ジェ： That's good, that's good. So anyway, what did you do today?
Jer: Well I got started on moving myself, so I went out for a little walk out back behind my house to take photos.
ジェ： Nice, nice. What's back there?
Jer: It's like this river/canyon deal with some tiny little open field areas and some woods that I haven't yet really made my way through.
ジェ： Oh yeah? Why's that?
Jer: Well on my way over there, I met some weird homeless dude who was hanging around the coals of his dead fire, and he started talking to me in his weird Nagasaki けん dialect.
ジェ： Oh, weird. What was he talking about?
Jer: I dunno, I could only understand a little bit. He kept talking about how it was dangerous to be alone in Japan or something but I kinda disregarded that because all the Japanese have a weird perspective on dangerous places, and he kept trying to give me something wrapped in newspaper from his moped thing.
ジェ： Wait, he had a moped?
Jer: Yeah, probably not a moped, just a little scooter thing. I dunno, it was a Honda deal
ジェ： So wait, why do you say he was homeless? How would a homeless dude be decked out with a scooter deal?
Jer: I dunno man, he had a whole little abode set up at the entrance to the forest with a woodpile and bedroll and all that. Plus homeless dudes back home have cars sometimes, why can't homeless dudes here have scooters?
ジェ： Alright fine. Whatever, you win. Did you get any good pictures in at least?
Jer: Yeah I think I got some alright ones. I figure I'll post some that I've played around with a bit.
ジェ： Alright, that sounds good. Well, I guess we should probably wrap this up.
Jer: Yeah I am getting kinda tired of doing this.
ジェ： Yeah, and typing up my name in Katakana every time I switch voices is getting pretty tedious.
Jer: Yeah, let's never do this again. From now on, just normal posting.

2008-01-20T04:28:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to let you guys know that I might be dead as soon as the weather starts warming up again. It turns out that there's a humongous monster that resides here in Japan that rears its ugly head every year. Also it is apparently a distant relative of Mothra. It's the "Asian Giant Hornet" or Vespa Mandarinia Japonica, and it can spit acid right into your eyes, no joke. Plus the venom has pheromones that call over even more hornets to spit more venom and gnaw at you with their gigantic mandibles. 30 of these dudes can take on 30,000 normal honeybees and kill them all in just a couple of hours, and then gorge themselves on honey afterwards. I can't even be in the same room as a yellowjacket without peeing myself, so I'm pretty sure I'll be done for if I cross paths with one of these things.

So yeah bugs. They aren't any fun.
Anyway. I've been doing things over here in Isahaya. I moved families once again, and found out that I won't actually have five host families, but I'll just be going back to my first two host families again. I don't really understand why they did this instead of just making my stays longer, but uh, I don't really understand a lot of things over here.

The new family is nice. My first weekend with them, we made a trip over to the local Buddhist temple because it was still the New Year's time and they went to pay respects to their ancestors, or something. I dunno.Then this weekend I went to a botanical garden with the host mom and her sister. It was pretty nice, but it seemed really strange to be in the middle of winter and checking out palm trees and all that. And uh...I really don't have anything to say for this post. I'll just put pictures up.

the truth is that after reading about that wasp hornet killer bee thing I read a bunch more about creepy insects and now I'm really paranoid and all I can think about are gross bugs, so uh, I'll just leave off here.

2008-01-04T02:25:00.000-08:00

It's the New Year's time here in Japan, which as far as I can tell, seems to last a lot longer than it does back in the U.S. Lots of people go to temples and all that, so I went to a couple with Alex, the other American exchange student here in Nagasaki prefecture. We went to the Suwa Shrine, the biggest shrine in Nagasaki prefecture, located in Nagasaki itself. A ton of other people were there as well, and it was quite interesting to see. I took a time-lapse video of us walking up the steps to the shrine, but it turned out to be a shorter trip than I expected, so the video is kind of quick. Also, I didn't really think the whole time-lapse thing through, so at times it can get a bit choppy. If you've got some video know-how though, maybe you can go through it a little slower.

For New Year's day, we had a meal of special New Year's-only food. Most of it was pretty gross. Actually, I can't honestly say that I enjoyed the meal. Most of the stuff came covered in some weird glazing that hardened into a plastic-like covering. However, the next day I also went to a New Year's dinner in Nagasaki with Alex where we had some KFC which was a little more edible. Apparently KFC has become a sort of traditional food in the end of year/New Year's time of year. I would be all OH GOODNESS THAT IS GROSS about that, but seriously, KFC is such a better choice than the stuff they usually have.

So uh, I don't really have a whole lot to say here. I guess, uh, have a happy New Year and all, even though I am quite late on that. As for a New Year's resolution, I don't really have one. Never really did make them anyway, because I usually just forget about them in a week or so. I dunno. New Year.

Fukuoka once again

2007-12-26T03:53:00.000-08:00

GUESS WHO
I guess if you don't know
you can wait a paragraph or two

On Christmas Eve, I set out with a couple of friends to Fukuoka once again. This time instead of a day trip, we went to stay for two nights. My friends were going to Fukuoka Airport to fly out to Thailand for their winter vacation, and I was accompanying them for fun, and so that I could go see a concert going on in the city. When we first got in, we got all settled in the hotel, which was placed right near the HIP and HAPPENING area of town, and was super convenient for pretty much everything we wanted to do.

After that, we set out to explore the city a bit, and came upon a huge toy/comic store that had all sorts of stuff for sale. I found a whole bunch of bearbricks and kubrick figures, and picked up a tron lightcycle in wireframe. It's fantastic; the stand that it comes with is supposed to be the trail that the lightcycles leave, and there's a little wireframe dude to go along with it.

Some fool on ebay is trying to sell this for 50 bucks

The rest of the day we pretty much just walked around looking at stuff, ate, and then went to karaoke. The next day I walked around with Ryan, a dude from Vancouver, and we just started wandering around, looking into stores and exploring. Eventually we ended up in an indoor snowboarding hill and we were all "Whaaaaaa? Where did this come from?" It probably wouldn't have been so surprising (I mean, they have these things elsewhere), but most everyone we had talked to had no idea about things like this, or even just an average skate park (Ryan is a big BMX dude. I uh, I didn't really care all too much).

We also found a ton of different stores just by walking around. Ryan happened to share a big interest in sneakers with me, so we wanted to hit up all the same places and things worked out well. Unfortunately, neither of us are really able to find sneakers in our size, because we both have pretty big feet (sizes 13 and 14), but that doesn't stop us from looking around.

For dinner we found a Jamaican restaurant near the hotel. Some of you may be thinking "Why is he eating Jamaican food while he's in Japan? How silly," but after having Japanese food every day for a while it stops being "WOOOO JAPANESE FOOD EVERYDAY" and becomes "food." It was my first time having for real Jamaican food, and it was pretty dang delicious. We talked to the owner of the restaurant, who cooked our meal. Turns out he was born in Jamaica, but moved over to New York later on.

After all that, Ryan and I went to go see Carl Cox at some club near the hotel. It was a bit odd though, because the venue limited the audience to 300 people, and even then there couldn't have been 300 in the club. The Japanese don't seem to do concerts and live shows like we do back in the States, or anywhere else for that matter. It seems that instead of going to see a huge name play at a local club, they would rather go and sing at a television set. Go fig. Also, even those who do go out to the club just kind of end up being sweaty, dancing out of time and making a lot of noise. However, as much of a bummer as that sounds, the awesomeness of Carl Cox totally made up for it (his dancing was supreme).

The next day I saw my friends off and went off on my own to walk around and look for stuff. I didn't find all too much, but I did manage to snag a fantastic photo in one of the bookstores.

It's nearly Christmas in Japan

2007-12-22T00:59:00.000-08:00

Presents came in the mail today, including cookies, clothing and a, uh, a chicken. The weirdest part about it wasn't the fact that a chicken came through the mail, but that my host mom actually called it. She was holding a big box and I asked her if it was a present, and she said, "Yes. Probably chicken," opened it up and BAM, chicken.

Today was the first day of break, and I did nothing, which was nice. For the past two weeks or so, I haven't had a day like that, so it was good to just sit around. However, my delicious red bean paste bun was stolen by the small yappy-type dog at breakfast, and then he bit me afterwards, just to be a dick about it. The worst part about it is that I can't do anything to get back at him. It's not like I can be all "WELL YOU'RE FAT" or "YOU GREEDY LITTLE PIG-DOG I HOPE YOU GET INDIGESTION" because he's a dog and can't understand English. At least I can spread the word that he's a little porker all over the internet, and really needs to lose weight.

Seriously. I think he's like 17 kilos when he's only supposed to weigh 12. He's a pudgy little sausage dog. My host parents have just recently started him on some diet food because he is SO FAT.

Also last weekend the Rotary club threw a Christmas party for the exchange students and past exchange students. It was at Huis Ten Bosch (again) and we hung out there for a little while afterwards. They had a bunch of lights up for Christmas, and we happened to catch the lighting ceremony, which involved a bunch of elves, gospel singers from NYC, and some lady singing Silent Night.

The party and all was fun, but they kind of dropped a big disappointment bomb on us while we were there. Apparently the Rotary exchange students won't be meeting again for a Rotary thing for another 5 MONTHS. That is ridiculous. Back at home, the Rotary students met almost once every month. Even after we meet next, there's no saying if we'll have any other meeting afterwards. Probably not, because the next time we meet is pretty much the last month of our stay. BUMMER. Also, it was revealed to us that they hadn't really planned to bring us to meet other exchange students in other districts, like they do pretty much everywhere else in the world. I don't think they've totally got the whole "socializing" thing down here in Japan.

But anyway
I'll leave you on a good note
I'll leave you with a photo of me looking like a TOTAL STUD

UPDATE: Apparently the presents were end-of-the-year presents, not Christmas presents. Also we ate the chicken and it was delicious.

Pancakes<

2007-12-19T01:53:00.000-08:00

NONE of you guys voted for waffles?

what is wrong with all of you

Big ol' music post

2007-12-10T23:54:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you something about Japan: they have horrible pop music. Not like the average terrible pop music we experience in America, but rather some sort of mutant strain that has grown invulnerable to all criticism from more sensible beings and because of this, has flourished. I think that if I were forced to live with no music other than J-pop, I would choose to ease the pain and off myself early. Seriously. It's that bad.

The worst part about this, however, is that unlike America, where other genres of music are also popular and are listened to, it seems that every high school student listens only to the pop music of the time, and knows nothing about other types of music. Well, that's kind of a lie; they also listen to American pop, like Green Day, Avril Lavigne and Dumb People. So pretty much if it weren't for my iPod and my wonderful internets, I'd probably be bashing my skull into concrete over here.

Anyway, since it's December, the month of lists, I figured I would just name a couple of songs that are keeping me sane over here right now. Some are new, but most are probably older seeing as it's kind of hard to keep up with the tons of music available on the internet by oneself.
ANYWAYHEREWEGOLIST

ACTUALLYWAITHOLDUP
Are you sure you want to click that link? This is really just a big post of me rambling about music. There's absolutely nothing in here about Japan. Just wanted to let you know before you trudge through half a page of boring half-assed descriptions of songs.

Feist - Pretty much anything and most remixes
I heard that Feist was nominated for a Grammy in the catagory of "Best New Artist" which is kind of funny, seeing as she's really not all that new. For all of you who don't know, she's been doing a bunch of music stuff for a while, and is a member of Broken Social Scene, another band with fantastic music. But anyway, it's good she's being recognized because her music is great. And not only that, there's a ton of great remixes of her songs out there as well. A couple of the ones on heavy rotation over here are Mushaboom (K-Os Remix), Sea Lion (Chromeo Remix), and 1234 (Vanshe Technologic Remix). The originals of all those are also really great songs.

Mystery Jets - You Can't Fool Me Dennis (Justice Remix)
When most people hear the words "Justice Remix" used to describe a song, they usually expect gut-busting bass and grungy, cranking synths. This remix, however, is very much out of character for Justice. Sure when you compare the original to the remix, the remix sounds more like Justice I guess... But really, it doesn't have the same Justice feel as their other songs do. However, this isn't a bad thing, I just wanted to let you know before you jumped in. The original of this song is also quite good, and quite different. I really feel that a good remix is different enough from the original that they can both be played back-to-back and be enjoyed and two separate songs (Unlike the Daft Punk remix of Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out"). Also, it might be interesting to some that Erol Alkan actually produced the Mystery Jets' new album. Apparently they're one of his favorite bands. Go fig.

Peter Bjorn & John - Let's Call It Off (Girl Talk Remix)
Some of you might remember Peter Bjorn & John's song "Young Folk" from earlier on, and Diplo's fantastic remix of it (which is a great song, no matter what stuck-up naysayers like Ry Lester say I AM CALLING YOU OUT, RYAN). Well, here is another remix of a different song of theirs, this time reworked by Girl Talk. Somehow I seem to find remixes that simply don't fit an artist's MO; first the Justice remix, and now this. Girl Talk's glitchy and hyper style is noticeably absent from this remix, but like the Justice remix, it's still solid and definitely worth listening to.

The Black Ghosts - Any Way You Choose to Give It (Boy 8 Bit Mix)
This song is absolutely too much. This song makes me want to high five a velociraptor on a dirtbike while fighting terrorists. Tora Bora, here I come.

But seriously, this is remix is full of WIN. I first heard it on the Light Sound Dance mix by the Aussie outfit the Bang Gang Deejays, and it was one of the tracks that just stuck. There's something about the chiptune-y clicks and blips juxtaposed to the crunchy bass that makes a perfect bed for the vocals to shine through. The vocals themselves are provided by Simon Lord, the singer for a certain british band named Simian. If this sounds at all familiar to you, it might be because the members of Simian Mobile Disco both came from Simian, and Justice's hit "We Are Your Friends" was remixed from a song originally recorded by Simian. Again, full of WIN.

However, be a little careful when choosing which version to listen to. There are two versions by Boy 8 Bit, the Dub and the Mix. The main difference between these two is that the Mix has vocals while the Dub is just the beat. They're both good, but I find that the vocals add so much more to the song that the Dub version just feels like it is missing something big. Also, the original is also quite good, and you can find that at their myspace.

A-Team - Get Money
Slow money is fo' sho' money
Fast money, that "won't last" money

Yelle - A Cause des Garcons
Plenty of good remixes for this song, but I like the original quite a lot, so I figured I'd just go ahead and post that. Yelle's other stuff is also pretty fun to listen to, and a bunch of her songs are being remixed by some good electro artists and are getting pretty decent exposure all over the interwebs.

Justice - Phantom Pt. II (Boys Noize Remix)
It's taken a while, but people are starting to remix more and more of Justice's new album other than just D.A.N.C.E., and the results are fantastic. AND YES I KNOW I'M A LITTLE LATE IN SAYING THAT. However, that being said, there are still some D.A.N.C.E. remixes that are pretty good. I know a CERTAIN SOMEONE (cough cough CHRIS cough achoo) will disagree with me, but I think the recent Benny Blanco remix of D.A.N.C.E. featuring Mos Def and Spank Rock is pretty solid. Also check out the Chewy Chocolate Cookies remix of Genesis.

Muscles - Ice Cream
This is a FANTASTIC song. Really there isn't another way to describe it. Muscles has some other good songs as well, including a remix by Riot in Belgium. The singer sounds kinda weird, but that's not a bad thing.

Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor & Shake a Fist
Hot Chip's last album, The Warning, was full of tons of great songs with beautiful melodies, though I didn't really know that a couple of months ago because I was just sticking Over and Over on repeat (coincidence!). However, after missing the back button on my iPod a couple of times, I was exposed to the rest of the ablum, and I was pleasantly surprised. They're releasing a new album soon, and I won't be making the same mistake. I've been giving each of the songs that they leak on the internet a good listen, and they've all been solid songs, including the two above. If anything, give "Shake a Fist" a listen.

Kriss Kross - Jump (Customised by D*L*i*d)
I'm not gonna pretend to be all nostalgic about this track and say "Oh I remember when those dudes just came out, man I am OLD SCHOOL STREET CRED" because I had no idea who these people were before this remix, and plus, I was three at the time these guys came out. However, none of that stops me from liking this track, because it is a solid, crunchy bass banger. Also apparently these guys are planning a comeback. We'll see how that goes. Personally I don't see too much comeback potential in a rap group remembered for being a couple of teenagers who wore their clothes backwards (thank you Wikipedia).

Well anyway
I think that's about it for now. I don't want to be making this post TOO huge. Maybe I'll have another big ol' music post later one. You know, if I have the time. HO HO that was a joke because pretty much ALL I HAVE IS TIME HERE. ALL I HAVE IS TIME.

They do Christmas wrong here

2007-12-09T00:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Chinzei's Hallelujah Chorus concert. They had practiced it every day after classes at school for the past three days, and even though I wasn't going to participate in the singing of it, I had to stand with the rest of the students for an hour each time as they practiced. The concert itself was pretty nice though. They held it at some big concert hall instead of the school so that others could that others from the city could come and watch, and so that other acts could participate. The stage had a big drop-down mural/curtain that depicted various scenes of Isahaya, including the Buddhas carved into stone I had written about this summer, and the bridge that they have on every storm drain throughout the city. I'll try to get a picture of the actual bridge itself sometime soon.

I was a bit tired when we got to the concert hall, and I tried my very best to stay awake, but after the first performance by a bunch of kindergarten-aged children, I passed out. I managed to wake up during the next performance, but it was just a bunch of middle-aged women singing Christmas stuff, so I fell asleep again. A Jazz big band performed after them, and managed to hold my interest enough so that I wouldn't fall asleep. However, they didn't really play stuff that was all too interesting. It was all stuff like Sing Sing Sing and In the Mood and other stuff I haven't really heard since middle school.

The Hallelujah Chorus wasn't really all to much to talk about, seeing as they forced all the students in the school to participate, so on average, not a whole lot of effort was put in. The school's band, however, was fantastic. I don't know if I've written about them before, but they're seriously good. Whenever they play anything, it is flawless, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the fact that the Japanese are ridiculously well-behaved when it comes to stuff like practice. For the sports teams they don't even have a coach there most of the time; In the entire time I have been here, the Kendo coach has been to practice probably less than twenty times, yet each practice the kids go through the whole routine and actually work on stuff on their own. I'm sure the band is no different.

Today I didn't really do all too much. Woke up, ate some cereal, looked around on the internet, had lunch. After lunch my host parents took me to see their new house. I think they've lived there before staying here (they refer to this home as their "temporary home") and they've just rebuilt the house on the same property. We tried getting in, but my host mom couldn't find the key she had hidden before.

When we came back the house we're currently staying at, we drove around a bit and they showed me some stuff that's near to the house that I never really knew about before. They showed me a tree that's apparently 600 years old, and is actually not a single tree, but two trees that have grown together and are now intertwined or something. It had a bunch of supports and metal bands holding it together, which looked a bit odd. I'll try to get some pictures of it sometime, if I get the chance.

Also nearby is a jail, but we couldn't really see much of that except the fence. Also they had an apartment building literally next door to the complex, which I thought was a little weird, but then again it is Japan and they probably figure "It's jail! No way they're gonna break out, that's why it's a jail!" or some other strange logic.

I would like to point out that this was the first super-short weekend I've had in quite a while now seeing as all my other would-be short weekend were elongated either by Rotary events or special circumstances, and I must say that I hate them. One day is not long enough to make up for a whole week of school. I am making a promise to myself right now that after I get back, I am never giving up a weekend day to do work- or school-related EVER. And if I absolutely can't avoid it, I will take the following Monday off. One day is totally not enough.

Also there is a new poll
ROCK THE VOTE on pancakes

At least you have your health

2007-12-03T01:09:00.000-08:00

I hate it whenever something bad happens, or when you get disappointed about something and someone says, "Well at least you have your health." I'm always all, "Yeah health is nice and all, but I still really want that pony/wish I didn't have to deal with all this junk." However, this usually changes whenever I get really sick. Like Sunday. Whenever that happens I'm always groaning, "Oh noooo, my health, where did you goooooo?"

But before I start talking about being sick and all, Let me tell you about my weekend before this grossness all started. Because, really, if it weren't for getting sick, it would have been a pretty alright weekend.

It started off with me heading off to Nagasaki to meet up with Alex, one of the other rotary exchange students. We both had school off because our schools both had testing going on which we don't really need to care about at all seeing as we are exchange students who don't understand a word of what the teachers are saying. I met him at the Nagasaki train station, and we went to an Indian restaurant nearby that I had heard of from a friend. I was pretty excited to have some Indian food because it had been months since I'd eaten any. The food itself was pretty tasty, but afterwards it felt a little like a brick in my stomach. At first I thought that this was just because it was a relatively big lunch to what I normally eat, but now I believe it to be the culprit for my illness.

Also, while we were at the station waiting for a table to open up at the restaurant, I found a Half Life 2 arcade machine and tried it out a bit. It was pretty fun. That's pretty much it about that.

After lunch, we were faced with deciding what to do. When faced with an entire city to explore, usually I would be up for anything and ready to spring to action. However, when the entire city speaks a language that I only have a small understanding of, and I've got a stomach full of toxic cement, I act a little differently. Plus we had plans to work around; apparently there was a Christmas party that Alex was invited to, so I was going as well. So we just decided to wander around the shopping streets in the area.

We found a couple of stores that were interesting, mostly shoe stores and the whole streetwear themed thing. In front of one of the stores was a bargain bin of sorts, and they had some of the worst clothing ideas I have ever seen. Most of them had these weird button-on sections that were meant to fool other people into thinking you were wearing more layers than you truly were. Like there would be a hoodie with a button-down shirt on the inside, only it wasn't truly a button-down shirt, just a collar and button section from a shirt, secured to the hoodie by more buttons. They even had fake cuffs buttoned into the sleeves.

After a while we went back to Alex's host house, which is absolutely ridiculous. First of all, it is located in an area called "Temple Town," which is pretty much just made up of a ton of Buddhist temples, so while walking around, you can see a ton of really nice looking temples. And then to top it off, he actually lives in one of them. His host family looks after the temple or something, so their house is built right onto the side of the temple. It's a pretty nice house, and the temple itself looks awesome too. However, it's not exactly what you would expect from a Buddhist temple. The Japanese don't really "do" religion the same way everyone else does, even if it's the exact same religion. So instead of having a humble temple to go and meditate at, their temple is totally decked out in gold. And instead of the monks being celibate, vegetarian, and living a spartan lifestyle, Alex's host dad is married, eats everything and pulls out two separate two-litre bottles of sake to sip on each night at dinner.

Anyway, we hung out at the temple for a little while and headed out to meet up with the Rotarian who would be taking us to the party. We were waiting for him at the station when we noticed some girls walking by in high-heels, and we got talking about how even though almost every girl in Japan wears high-heels, none of them know how to walk in them, or have this weird bow-legged thing going on that makes it just look odd. Then we starting doing impressions of the walk, the girls see us, start copying us and right as we look the weirdest, the Rotarian shows up all "Oh hey guys here are presents." (Alex got a fleece. I got a weird t-shirt)

At the party we met quite a few people who could speak some English, because it turned out to be put on by a local English school. There were some Americans there, and one really tall guy, Mark from Perth. When I say really tall, I mean really tall. He was slouching a bit, but he was still a bunch taller than I was. The party was fun enough. We talked to a bunch of people, mostly about the same stuff I always talk about here (Where I'm from, born. What am I doing here. Can I speak Japanese. How long will I be here...Also if we are eating someone will undoubtably comment on my skill with chopsticks). At the end of the party, there was a raffle and some lady won an all-expense-paid trip to Osaka. Mark from Perth was all "Man if I win this I'm slipping the ticket to you guys" which was nice but the lady next to him ended up winning instead. She was really apologetic about it though, which I found pretty funny. In the US whenever anyone wins anything they're all YEAAAAAHHHH GIMMME THAT I WON I WON I WON (maybe this is just me) but instead here they're all "oh man I'm really sorry I won and took away the chance for others to win this fabulous prize."

When the party was over, the others headed off to a Karaoke bar, but we opted out because I was feeling pretty awful by that time, and also because I kind of hate Karaoke. I've never really been one for singing things unless it is really loud, obnoxious and includes guitar solos (Guns 'n Roses - Welcome to the Jungle).

That was pretty much the end of good times fun times. The next morning I woke up with a headache and stomachache. Later on I found out that I also had a fever going on. No idea what it was when I woke up, but by the time I got home it was already around 38.5 C (101 F). I had some breakfast with Alex, and explained to him that I felt absolutely awful, so we would have to wait until a later time to do stuff. I had actually thought about going out that day when I woke up, but looking back it's a really damn good thing I decided not to. Instead we just hung around the house again for a bit, and then I had to bounce to catch the train home.

I planned on getting a 1:59 train back (dumbest time, just make it 2) so I left with enough time to quickly buy a ticket and walk on board casually. However, when I got off the streetcar, the clock read 1:55 so I hurried over to the ticket machine and put the only bill I had left in my wallet, a \5000 bill (apparently the "\" just shows up as a slash on western computers, but it's the yen symbol over here. Just uh, just pretend it is a yen symbol for me), and chose the first button I saw with the kanji for Isahaya City on it. However, I should have taken more time to examine my choices because after I noticed that the machine was taking longer than normal, I looked up a little above the button I pushed and there was a little sign that said "6回" which means "6 times". Before it really hit me how big of a mistake I made, a thick stack of tickets popped out of the machine, along with my change. The normal ticket costs about \450, so this mistake left me with around \2500 instead of the \4550 I was expecting, and I wasn't pleased. However, at this point I was already afraid the train was about to leave and the next one was an hour later, so I had to decide whether to accept that I was an idiot and keep the extra five tickets and hopefully use them one day in the future, or somehow try to return them. I decided to see what I could do with my limited Japanese in the help booth, so I ran inside and just blurted out "Excuse me. Mistake. I have six, I only want one. I don't understand kanji," which I guess was enough for the person to understand that I was just a confused foreigner, so she tallied up what the tickets were worth and handed me back the change, and I booked for the platform.

However, that wasn't even the end of it all. The train I had thought was the one heading to Isahaya turned out to be a completely different train, and so when I ran up to one of the conductors and asked him where it was heading, he responded, slowly, that this train was different, and pointed me in the direction of another train, further down the platform. I didn't really wait for him to finish whatever he was saying (not like I would have understood it anyway) and started running to the other train, and to my relief it was marked "Isahaya." What a relief.

Now this should have been the end of all the terrible stuff I had to go through while sick, but when I got to Isahaya, I noticed that my cell phone had run out of battery, and I didn't have my current host family's number written down. I had a bunch of other numbers that I tried with a pay phone but absolutely nobody picked up. My only choice to get back home was to walk. It was four kilometers and it was a big bummer. I did, however, see an Impala on the way back which was pretty cool, but not really cool enough to make up for what was going on.

When I finally did get back, my host mom took my temperature and oh noes I had a fever so she told me to rest in my bed. She also put an ice-pack type thing on my forehead which I guess is sort of like when people put towels on their head when they have a fever, only this one was disposable and smelled like a mix between Takoyaki (balls of fried octopus), windex and rubbing alcohol. Pretty much the next two days after that have just been staying at home and recovering. Now I'm doing much better and I've started going back to school again.

Ninjas and Hot Springs

2007-11-28T21:50:00.000-08:00

Last weekend while all of you guys were all ohhhh my tummyyyyy ohhh tooo much turkey I went to some place and did some stuff.

First stop was this small amusement park. Sort of. More of a ninja/samurai themed mock town, but uh, sans samurai. So really just a ninja village. And while that sort of sounds like OH WOW NINJAS (or oh lame, ninjas, depending on who you are) it really was pretty underwhelming (not very random either LOL INSIDE JOKEZ). In fact, I tried to tell my host family beforehand that I was totally fine with not going at all and kept trying to hint that I wasn't really all that interested, but I didn't really know how to politely decline on that sort of thing in Japanese, so we went anyway.

The first thing we saw at the place was a display of different ninja weapons and tools, including a pair of shoes with wooden floats attached for the purpose of walking on water. However, I have watched Mythbusters so I know that unless the ninja had a large amount of cornstarch handy, he wouldn't be crossing anything anytime soon.

We also went into a haunted house which was spoooOOOOooOOOoooOOOOky. All kinds of scary things, like dudes with ping pong balls and spaghetti on their face, and mannequins.

I did, however, get to paint a cup with something or other and I guess it's gonna get glazed and fired up in the kiln so it'll look real nice. We gotta wait a month for it to be finished though, so I guess we're gonna return there for that. Pictures when I get it back.

After the park, we went to a nearby hot spring. I gotta say that the hot spring was much more enjoyable than the NINJA TOWN. There were a ton of people there though, seeing as it was a national day off (their labor day equivalent, I think). We had some maccha ice cream when we left as well, which is always a plus.

The next day I hung out with Elina (the same girl I went to the baseball game with), who I now live really close to. We went over to Ohmura, which is a town pretty close to Isahaya. Same place that we found the store with all the second-hand stussy and supreme and all. We went to a different store this time, and I managed to find a pretty good present for the Rotary Christmas party. I'd tell you what it is, but I gotta give it to someone so for now it is a SECRET. You'll find out soon enough what it is though.

We also found some Curry and Wasabi flavored Ramune (marble soda) at the same store. Fighting our better senses, we bought a bottle of each to try. The wasabi one was just a let down. All it did was smell weird and taste like nothing. BOOOORRRRING. The curry one, however, was much different. It smelled pretty strongly of chili, yet tasted like normal ramune. The smell was strong enough to freak out Elina's dog, Alex. We tried to give him some of the soda to try, but he wanted nothing of it and ran away to hide under a table.

On Saturday, I didn't really do much except get a haircut. It's short. Real short. And I know that back at home whenever I got a haircut I'd always be all "man this is so short I am not pleased with this haircut" and everyone was always "man what are you talking about I still can't see your eyes", but this time I am for real serious. It's not a bad thing, but it is really foreign to me seeing as I've spent the last four or five years with long hair. I find myself doing all sorts of stuff out of habit that no longer make any sense with my short hair. Like flipping my head quickly when I look to the side to get my hair out of my eyes, or shaking my head when I put on shirts and sweaters to get my hair unruffled. Also, washing my hair is REALLY weird now. I keep grabbing for hair that isn't there and probably look like a fool doing so.

Also, the haircut gets big reactions at school and pretty much the past few days has just been listening to people say "Eh? Bikkurishita!" (Eh? I have been surprised!). The librarian couldn't recognize me for the first few seconds when I walked in on Monday, which was pretty amusing as well. And that, uh, is all I really have to say, I guess. I would think of a way to wrap all this up and end this post well, but I can't be bothered.

Oh wow hey the layout on this post is really bad with the photos
sorry
oops

GOLLY GOSH

2007-11-23T03:14:00.001-08:00

OOPS, guys
All you people at home must have been all "Man Jeremy sure is leading a boring and uneventful life this week, what with all the non-posting and all. Possibly he is ashamed that he isn't eating a turkey this month or listening to Christmas tunes. Possibly." The truth is though that I am actually just real lazy. I had a pretty rad and filled-up weekend last week, and I've been stalling every time to post about it because of all the typing on this computer.

Also I like to put photos up with these posts and the USB connection on this thing is SUPES slow. Like right now I'm transferring some photos from my big camera and it's taking twenty minutes where it would take probably less than a minute on my own computer. It's a bummer but at least I have a computer to use.

But anyway let's deal with the most recent issue; Thanksgiving. Japan doesn't really know of Thanksgiving, or turkey (or real bacon, or real hamburgers, or maple syrup, or...) but that isn't such a biggie for me because I'm not that huge of a turkey fan; I enjoy it on a sandwich every once in a while, but Thanksgiving has always been about stuffing for me.

However, I believe that my meals this weekend have pretty much made up for it. First, on Thursday night (which would have been T-gives morning) I went out with my host parents to celebrate my host mom's birthday. We went to some local fancy steak house and it was DELISH. Japanese steak, as far as I can tell, is cut up into smaller parts (meh) and cooked with a ton of butter and garlic (YESSSSSSS) and also has several dipping sauces, because they're big into that here. Then the next day I went to a hot spring with the host family which was nice and relaxing, and we had some Osaka thing for dinner called "Favorite fried" or someting. For reals, "Favorite Fried". Fried what? DUNNO. Then today I hung out with my pre-host family and we went out for Korean Barbeque. Of course they tried getting me the spiciest dish in the house but I WAS TOO MANLY FOR IT.

But enough of food. That was a large paragraph. Or at least it looks kinda big in this posting form thing. ANYWAY, let's talk about this trip. It started last week Thursday; I boarded a train towards Sasebo, a nearby city. I met some of the other rotary exchange students there and our Rotarian chaparone. We got off at the "Haustenbos" stop, which I figured was just Japan being weird with names. Turns out that's how they interpret the Dutch name "Hous Ten Bosch". Go fig. Hous Ten Bosch was pretty cool; it's essentially an amusement park to showcase uh, well, I dunno. I think someone mentioned something about the environment, and another person something about Europe, but nothing was really expanded upon. The park/city thing place was split up by little canals that you could take boat rides though, which was fun, and the whole place lit up like a Christmas tree at night, which looked pretty nice.

The next morning we had breakfast, checked out early and headed off to our second destination, Kudamoto Castle (Kudamono? Kudamodo? I FORGET). A lot of it was still under re-construction, but it was still nice to see. The fortifications were pretty huge, and it was MUCH larger than the other castle, Shimabara Castle (the grounds were probably thirty times bigger). I met a tourist from Shanghai there and I tried introducing myself in Chinese. I guess I must be really out of practice though, because she decided to talk to me in English instead. FAIL.

After the castle we made our way to Aso Yama, or Mt. Aso. On the way though, we stopped at a farm that was in the mountain range surrounding Mt. Aso. Apparently Aso is a volcano, and created a ring of mountains around itself when it started spitting lava out and all that. The farm had a bunch of animals including pigs, cows, dogs, goats and all that. I got the chance to milk one of the cows and uh, I...uh...I did not enjoy it. It just felt weird. The dogs were great though and we sat around and petted them for a while. The pigs were sleeping most of the time, and when they finally got up, they just grunted a lot.

We left the farm after having lunch there and made our way up to the volcanic crater of Aso Yama. It was freezing cold. Not only that, it was really damn windy up there too. On top of that, it was foggy. Pretty much perfect conditions, eh?

At the end of the day, we made our way to the hotel. This was the comfiest hotel. Each room was a double with a built-in sound system, flat-screen TV and a big bath. The rooms themselves felt like cabins, and all had a back porch that looked out onto the mountainside. Not only that, but the hotel had a hot spring of its own. We spent a lot of time in that hot spring. The best part was, it had an outdoor section as well as an indoor one, so we were able to go out at night and stargaze while soaking in the bath.

The next day, we got up early again and set out to some suspension bridge set up over a big ravine. I'd give more details if I could, but seriously, that's pretty much what it was. The Japanese decided to build the bridge over the ravine in hopes that it would draw crowds of tourists who wished to see it. They were right. Tons and tons of people come to see this completely useless bridge. There was a traffic jam from all the cars trying to get in when we first got there, and when we left, the line of cars trying to get into the parking log stretched on for longer than a mile. It would be hours before those people would finally get into the lot, just so they could cross a shaky bridge, take a picture, turn around and go back to the car.

We then went to some town with a small wooden bridge. Don't know what the deal was there.

Afterwards we headed over to Kijima, an amusement park nearby. It probably would have been more fun for me if all the stuff wasn't so damn small. On pretty much every ride I got thrown around and got my legs all banged up. It also would have been a MILLION times more fun if the giant hampster ball they had advertised wasn't put away for the day we went. That being said, it was fun. We got some sort of special pass so we were able to go on all the rides we wanted.

And that was pretty much the end of the fun times. After the park we went to Saga to stay at another hotel. The next day all we did was go to the Rotary District meeting and we watched some weird presentation on childbirth and ancestry or something. No idea why they showed us that. At the very end there was a HUGE buffet though, which made up for the boring and weirdness of the whole thing.

And uh, I guess that is the whole trip. These posts are kind of big. Like the last one was pretty dang big as well. I guess I'll try and make these things a little smaller from now on. Maybe then I'll actually update regularly as well.

Fukuoka: EXPLORE

2007-11-12T03:27:00.000-08:00

We started the day early. Really early. We had a 6:45 train to catch, and since the Japanese are all about being early, my host dad said, "Well you'd better get up at 5:40. I'll drive you." So I woke up at 5:40, and again at 5:45, 5:50, 5:55 and finally, for the last time at 6:00.

The train we caught was the Kamome, which is the second fastest train service in Japan, after the Shinkansen (bullet train). It was really nice; plush leather seats and quiet cars with big windows to look out of. Well, at least they were quiet before we came in. LOL NOISY FOREIGNERS HOW RUDE.

On the way over, we caught the sunrise over the ocean. The pictures I took of it are a little weird; they kinda look more like a sunset, but believe me, it's a sunrise. The reason why I set it that way was because if I had taken the photo with a brighter sky, the sun's color would have been totally washed out. And really, the best part of the sunrise was the sun's brilliant orange. However, after the sunrise lost our attention, there was really only a bunch of hot air balloons over a factory (like eight of them, I could only get two in the photo) to distract us for the rest of the two-hour ride.

After getting into Fukuoka, the first thing we did was make our way to Ohashi Machi and find a tattoo parlor we saw online. I was going with four other people, and three of them were going to Fukuoka pretty much just to get a tat. I didn't get one for three reasons; 1) It was expensive 2) I'm pretty sure Rotary would not have appreciated it and 3) I wasn't sure of what I would get. Just getting a tattoo without knowing for sure you want it is pretty dumb. Some would say that it is a pretty taboo thing todoo (do you see what I did there).

Unfortunately, we got there early. Really early. We waited around for almost half an hour until ten, when the place should have opened, but nobody opened up shop. After a while we finally called the guys, and they said to come back at 11, so we went for some food and came back. They told us that they would be able to get all three tattoos done in a row if we returned at 4, but any earlier they would have problems with other appointments coming in. We agreed that this would be a good idea. I happened to see that they had a Futura Labs sticker up on their door, so I asked them where it was before we left, just to make sure I had the right place written on my map, but when they marked down where they thought it was, it was in a completely different town than I had marked. I figured that they would be right because, well, they live in the city, so I followed their directions.

Turns out they were completely wrong. I was right. However, even though we followed their instructions and walked quite a ways out of our way, it wasn't a complete loss because I found the only CitiBank branch in the city, and the only one I've managed to find anywhere. Oh, and uh we saw the Evisu store too, which is alright...I guess...sort of...Evisu sucks

I was really happy to find the CitiBank branch because pretty much it's the closest one to me, and I figured I could get my traveller's cheques changed there, and get some money out of my account. Well, as it turned out, the one day I chose to travel to Fukuoka also happened to be the day that all the banks decided to close their vaults, so no cheque changing. The ATM worked though, which was good...I guess...sort of...

The Evisu store was really just odd. Evisu itself is already just kind of meh (selvedge jeans with no selvedge edge? that pair with the tons of back pockets? the entire Evisu Genes line?) and this store really only had two things that truly interested me: a bunch of stuffed animals including a tiger (most likely fake), an armadillo, and some lizards and more, and a bunch of fishing equipment. There was a golf bag made out of denim there as well as other sports-related clothing, but I guess it didn't really seem all that weird in context with the tons of fishing rods and lures. Also, a fishing jacket made of denim. I would rant about how dumb some of these ideas are, but I'd just start talking a bunch of denim terms and all making me look like either a big douche or a big dumb with too much time to read about, uh, jeans.

After leaving the Evisu store and walking in the general direction of the supposed location of the stores I wanted to visit, we came across an area of town with quite a few stores. Most of them were stocked with American stuff, because the Japanese are in love with American clothes and pop culture, though you wouldn't know it by looking at your average Japanese hipster, because their clothes are absolutely ridiculous, or sometimes, just depressingly bad.

While walking around, we got distracted by a mannequin of Colonel Sanders off in an alleyway. Normally a mannequin of Colonel Sanders wouldn't be all too surprising because they have one in front of every KFC here, but this one was special; he was black. Some store owner must have acquired this guy somehow and decided to paint his skin brown, give him a pink suit and blue eyes. We went into the store that the mannequin was promoting, and inside I learned exactly how to run a successful thrift store in Japan; just buy stuff from H&M, cross out the price and charge three times as much. It seemed to be working out for those guys.

We also happened upon an XLarge store in the area, but that was actually kind of disappointing. There were some cool snakeskin Puma Clydes in there, but pretty much everything else was a button-down shirt. I'm not really a button-down shirt kind of guy, so that wasn't all too exciting for me. They did, however, have some rad plush spray-cans.

In some other store, I found an AMAZING belt. It was a pirate-themed belt complete with treasure chests and parrots, and I would be wearing it right now if it was anything bigger than a size 30. In the same store, I also found some great pins and buttons, which served as a good consolation prize. It was weird though; a bunch of the pins that the store had were centered around Vietnam. Like, every other pin I picked out of the dish was either VIET-VET or VIETNAM GREEN BERET or POW/MIA. No idea what the deal with that was. Maybe the Japanese government is subtly trying to introduce the idea of WE NEVER LOST THAT DANG WAR before they start the high school presentations stating that Vietnam was a "political defeat" not a "military defeat". Boots on the ground. Ah, Memories (horrible ones).

Finally, we got to the Stussy/Futura Labs store. Stussy was alright, but they didn't have any of the great colorways I had seen earlier in Nagasaki. I was there mostly for FL, and damn, did it deliver. First of all, Futura seems to have some sort of obsession going on with track bikes right now (sort of like all NYC/SF hipsters) so the whole store had a bunch of track bikes around the stairway, and tons of shirts with biking themes. All of those things rocked. Also, there was a TV playing some biking races. That was a little less rocking. Much more of a swaying motion from that one. The most rockingest thing in the store though, was a belt. It was blue beyond belief. I took a picture of it, but it doesn't do the color justice. Something about it was just so bold that it jumped out of itself and ate your face off (in a good way). However, it was about 100 USD so uh, yeah I didn't get it. As much as I wanted to get it, I don't think I could live with myself if I impulse-bought a belt if it didn't come with at least a half-way decent buckle, even if the color was amazing. That is too much. That is going too far.

After visiting all these stores, we were running short on time, so we made our way back to Ohashi Machi to get to the tattoo parlor on time. However, it's really not a good idea to go get a tattoo without having eaten (something about going into shock and blood sugar levels and all that) so we hurried to find a place to eat. We eventually found a yakiniku place (korean barbeque) with about half an hour left. We ordered quickly, and inhaled the food when it came to the table. We paid super fast and dashed out the door towards the tattoo parlor. We hurried as fast as we could because we only had about ten minutes to get there, and it was probably about fifteen minutes away by walking. Somehow, we managed to get to the place on time, and everyone got their tattoos. They all turned out well, and everyone was happy with what they got.

Afterwards, we went to look for one last store which was completely out of our way where we were walking before. Of course, finding it on our own was completely impossible because Japanese addresses are totally messed up (I'll explain them once I understand them which will be never). I even tried asking several store owners where I could find the place, but they couldn't figure out where it was, because really the only way you can find a Japanese address is with a huge map of the city, which nobody had. Finally, we found someone who was willing to call up the store (I had the number) and talk to the guy to find out where it was. He even walked us there. What a rad dude.

The store, SDI, was pretty cool. They had a couple of nice Nikes in there, including the Doom Dunks and woodgrain dunks. I was looking for one thing in particular (the Rocksmith Barack Obama shirt) but it turned out they didn't have it. Not too surprising because while searching for the store that would carry it on the internet, I just came across a ton of Japanese I didn't understand, so I just clicked whatever looked right. I guess I should try harder next time. However, the store seemed like a mini version of the type of stores I like back home; they even had copies of Frank 151 magazine. Unfortunately, seeing as it is Japan, they were charging for them so uh, no thanks.

After all this, we finally headed back to the train station to have dinner and get back on the last train to Isahaya. Got back at like 11:30 or so. Full day.

NOTE: That one guy from the previous post with all the weird clothes? Don't worry, he's totally fine; those shorts are Batman-themed. That makes everything okay.

Fukuoka daytrips feel like whole weekends

2007-11-10T17:26:00.000-08:00

Made a day trip into Fukuoka yesterday. Started early, ended late. I'll give you guys more of a description later, but right now just hang loose with these pictures. I think some of you will recognize most of the stuff in them, but for those who I know won't, you can still enjoy the Japanese sunrise and black Colonel Sanders.

2007-11-09T04:04:00.000-08:00

Oh boy I just came back from having dinner out with the new host dad. We went to one of those sushi places where all the food comes through on a conveyor belt. You know the type; the ones that have like two things of sushi on a small plate moving around and everyone's got a huge pile of plates next to them when they're done eating. Anyway, I never been to one of these places before, even though they have them in the US; I had always heard that they're really expensive, as all US Japanese restaurants are, and that the sushi wasn't even all that good anyway. However, this place was fantastic, and was pretty cheap for Japan. But keep in mind that "cheap for Japan" pretty much means you leave thinking "oh man I didn't have to mortgage my house to pay for this meal. What a deal!"

This is why having Rotarians as host parents is pretty fantastic. Pretty much all of the members of the Rotary club are well-off, and love to show it. As a result, whenever I attend a Rotary function or go to dinner with a Rotarian, they're always all YEAH DUDE MORE FOOD RULES. If, uh, any of that makes any sense.

But that all kind of falls through when it comes to other stuff, for example my cell phone. I should be getting one on Sunday, and it's been a long time coming. At first I thought I could just get one and it would be fine, but I asked my host dad and the Rotary club was all NO DUDE. That was unrad. But then a few weeks later my host dad just says to me out of the blue that I could get one, but I would need to pay for it myself. I guess they must have thought I was demanding them to provide me with a phone or something, which would explain why they wouldn't allow me to get a cell phone in Japan, the land of cell phones.

And the Rotarian's help would be much appreciated with the cell phones here in Japan, because they are absolutely ridiculous. Like batshit insane over-the-moon ridiculous. I was looking at the plan for one of the companies, AU by Kiddi, and their absolute cheapest plan is about $17 bucks a month, and that's only after I get a student discount by lying and saying that I'll use the service for a year. And that fee only means that I can have a phone with connection. All other calls and emails I send with the phone are charged additionally. Rad, right? One of the teachers at the college uses AU and she pays like $60 USD every month and she gets 8 minutes free. I don't know what's more ridiculous about that; the fact that for sixty bucks she doesn't get above ten minutes of talk time, or the fact that they chose such a strange number as eight. They could have gone for five and I would have been like "well hey at least it's a nice, sensible number"

The other option with AU was to get a prepaid phone, but with AU the prepaid phones don't have email, which is huge over here. Email is the texting of Japan, only bigger because it's email. Everyone already uses it, but now you can get it on your phone without having to shell out for a blackberry. Luckily for me, SoftBank's plans are much more generous. It seems like they have a much better idea of what cell phone service should be like, even if they don't know how to come up with a name that makes sense for their line of work. Basically, both their prepay service and price plans both allow email and all that junk, and they have a super-cheap (by Japanese standards) monthly rate that I could actually manage. Also, I think you can pay the monthly bills in convenience stores. I dunno what that's all about, but I guess it makes sense.

But anyway this is all pretty much useless right now seeing as I'm getting it one day after I could really, really use it. I'm gonna be heading up to Fukuoka early tomorrow, and hopefully see some rad rad stores. I got a list of a few places already planned out, but I hope to see some interesting stuff on my own. I can't really research much for stuff seeing as everything is in Japanese and that stuff does not roll with me right now. However, I've been able to find the addresses for the local Supreme, Stussy, and Futura Labs. Should be raaaaaaaaaaad as long as I actually find the places. Japanese addresses are weird. James-O can attest.

Also, I've been warned that Fukuoka is "dangerous", but that was coming from a Japanese person, so that probably means that as soon as we enter the city, we'll be swarmed by a whole pack of cuddly puppies and be given all the ice cream we want. Additionally, rains of candy, streets of gold.

BONUS
Mickey Mouse in city 17
maybe four people who read this thing will get this
everyone else will be all WHAT? WHAT IS A VIDEO GAME DO THEY HAVE VIOLENCE I HEARD TEEVEE SHOWS HATE VIDEO GAMES DOWNFALL OF OUR SOCIETY CORRUPTION OF YOUTH CATCHER IN THE RYE

2007-11-05T04:53:00.000-08:00

Hey remember two seconds ago when I said it would be silly if it turned out that I actually had a computer at my new host family? No? Well, look down an inch or two then I guess. Yeah, there it is, last sentence of the pre-link post.

well anyway, it's actually sillier than I could have possibly imagined. Instead of having absolutely no computer, this host family has decided to let me borrow one of the laptops and ran a cable into my room so that I can use the internet in here. It's kind of an old computer and I can type faster than the letters appear on the screen, but at least it's a computer.

Anyway, this new host family is pretty nice. I've only got a host dad and mom in this family though, because all their children have already graduated from school and moved to Tokyo. They do, however, have two dogs. There's a middle-sized, old dog that just sort of wanders around doing nothing, and then there's a tiny little dog that's the most hyper little thing ever. At first it seemed pretty cute all jumping up and running around. I was even fine with it scratching at my door because it wanted to be with me, the new addition to the household. However, the cuteness stopped when he started scratching at my door in the middle of the night, waking me up and keeping me from falling back to sleep. The worst part was that he only really understands Japanese. I had no idea what to say in Japanese to get the dog to finally stop, so I just resorted to saying "Dangiiiiit leeeeeaaaaavveeeeee", and hoped he would catch on and quit.

The change of house also means that I have to take a different bus home now. The bus is called the "Shimabara line" (remember the castle?) which I thought was just a coincidence, but after talking to some of the people on the bus, it turns out that they actually do live near Shimabara, some even on Unzen, the mountain nearby. That's a long way to come for school every day. Like an hour and a half for the bus ride each way. I think. Thankfully for me it's only like ten, fifteen minutes.

What can you get for $2

2007-11-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

HEY HEY
moving houses today
heard the next house doesn't have a computer (which I think is weird because this is Japan. They have so much damn technology stuff everywhere you might as well be living in CYBERLAND)
So, I might not be able to update for a little while, or if I do, not with pictures. However, if it turns out that the family does have a computer, this will all seem very silly.

Anyway. To see me off to the next family, my current family, the Hashimotos, took me out to dinner at a nice restaurant. We ended up having Korean food because I really wanted to have some spicy food. I still find it really odd that they don't have spicy stuff over here. I mean, Americans don't really have much spicy American food but at least we have hot sauce and Mexican (kind of) food. The food was delish and I probably ate too much because I am still pretty full from it (it's about lunch time now, next day).

But that might be because I didn't just eat a lot there, but pretty much the entire day yesterday was centered around food. After Kendo practice, I headed up to the college where they were having their bi-annual $2 festival, where nothing was $2. Seriously. Everything I bought was either around a dollar, or closer to three. I don't even know why they call it a $2 festival, they don't even use dollars over here.

Since I am the "new guy" over here at school, everyone at all the booths were pulling me around being all "EAT OUR FOOD". Each group of students from the same country would make something to sell that was from their country; The Brazillians made some meat pocket things, the Filipinos made some chicken and pineapple thing (DELICIOUS), the Koreans had noodles, the Taiwanese had Bubble Tea, the Mongolians had onion pancakes (better than it sounds) and the Thai made jelly with fruit and corn ( ): ). I had all of those things and I really wish I didn't. But there was no avoiding it because, as I said, everyone was dragging me around shoving food in my face.

But the festival had more than just food, it also had music! College band music, none of which I think was original. First there was a band with a girl singer who couldn't sing in tune and three guitarists with one guitar line. Added bonus; the guitarists couldn't play in time, and neither could the drummer. Then there was another band with a bassist who could barely hold a line, another out of time drummer, a stumbling soloist for the guitar part and yet another singer who couldn't sing. Finally, there was a band that had "Pirates of the Caribbean" for walk-on music and a singer in a cowboy hat (cue "you're doing it wrong" photo) who introduced himself as Jack Sparrow. All the bands reminded me of a lame little brother who wants so desperately to be rad, so they try to copy their older brother in everything they do, but only end up being a walking parody of their idol. Kind of mean, but seriously, they were pretty bad. I think 29 Degrees would have definitely stolen the show if they had performed.
And they would have had better singers too
No joke.
(lol youtubz if you have no idea what I am talking about)

also quick PS
Download Ice Cream by Muscles if you haven't heard it yet
TOO GOOD!

Candyblog: Halloweenday Edition

2007-10-31T01:14:00.000-07:00

HEY DUDES
Halloween is a day for candy. This is why a good candyblog would come in handy on a day such as Halloween. Unfortunately, all you get is this.

BEST HARD CANDY EVER. The fam used to get this back in Hong Kong, and I think I might have found it once in America, but it's been a super long time since I've had it. If you haven't guessed yet, it is a SOUR candy. I remember it being OH SO sour, but I guess my tongue broke or something because now it's just kinda sour, but still delish.
Also, they are nice enough to give you instructions on how to eat the candy, created by Roy Lichtenstein. TRUE STORY: once in middle school I commented on Ry's Roy Lichtenstein shirt and he didn't believe that I knew who he was. I tried to tell him that I took a modern art history class but he mumbled something about Wagner and turned away.
This stuff is so good. I'm not quite sure what the name is, but the description in the brown oval says that it's "chocolate pie". It's not really anything close to pie, but it's still fantastic. It's like a flaky cracker thing that's injected with chocolate and given a toasty top.

I'm pretty sure Dars isn't Japanese at all, but I've never had it anywhere else, so it goes on the blog. I expected Dars to be something pretty rad and have plenty of tasties inside, but it just turned out to be a bunch of small milk chocolate bars. At first I was all LAAAAAAAAAAAME but it turns out that it's actually really good tasting chocolate. Sort of like Ghana, only better. Also, the pink dot up on the flap is probably one of the raddest and most useful things I've ever seen on a chocolate box. The three colors show what temperature the chocolate is at, so you can tell if it's been melted, frozen, or if it's just at the perfect temperature.

ALSO
Remember that Maccha stuff I was talking about? Well I also had some Maccha Kit Kats which were pretty tasty, but I have yet to find it again. Just imagine some Kit Kats that are green. And taste like delicious green tea. FANTASTIC.

I know that many of you are going to be doing things tonight to celebrate Halloween, but I want all of you to be safe. Seeing as every other place on the internet is giving out safety tips for tonight's festivities, I figure I will as well.First of all, if you see a baby DO NOT GIVE IT ALCOHOL. I'm not entirely sure about what will happen, and that can only mean that HORRIBLE things will happen. Secondly, if you happen to be handling any pencils tonight, for God's sake, don't point it at anyone or use it for anything other than writing and drawing. Doing so could be DANGEROUS.

That's all you really need to know for safety on Halloween. Well, not really. There's probably a ton more of stuff but I'm not gonna bother with any of it because that was just a lame way to post some pictures I had and maybe write something about them.

Actually, wait. I do have one more thing for you guys to do. All of you in college right now, try to get your whole dorm to fill a room up with candy and get somebody to go swimming in it like Scrooge McDuck does in his bank. Take a video and send it back. Style points if you dive.

HALLLOOOOOWEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNkinda

2007-10-28T05:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went with my host father to go see the Shimabara Castle, which is about an hour away from here. As you can see from the photo , it was a really nice day. A little windy, but nothing too too strong; just strong enough to mess up my hair for every photo I was in.

Photos weren't allowed inside the castle which was a bummer because there was plenty of interesting stuff that I wanted to show you guys. They had a ton of samurai armor, lots of really interesting sword hilts and other stuff from that sort of time period. On the top floor they had an observation deck. The view would have been great but they put a dang fence up to make sure people wouldn't fall off. This dude was also hanging out in the castle. He wanted to give me a ride on his ox/fire/cart thing, but uh, I already had a ride. Instead I just snagged a SUPER SECRET pic.
Outside they had a bunch of stands where people sold antiques and clothes. In one of the booths Ultraman tried selling me some guaranteed genuine watches, but I already bought one from Megazord so I had to turn him down.
After the castle, we went up the volcano that was in the area. Getting up there took what seemed like forever, because the road up was super curvy and all the cars in front of us took it really unnecessarily slow. After driving for quite a while, we made it up to one of the observation posts. It must have been right 0n the edge of the face facing the wind, because the wind was SUPER strong up there. Everyone who was up there had to lean into the wind constantly to avoid being blown over, and every once in a while a huge burst would make everyone stumble and fall over. After hanging out in the winds for a few minutes, my arms were freezing cold so we rushed back into the car and took off to see the national park they set up further up the mountain. It must have been on the opposite face or something, because the wind was totally calm over there.
My host father also showed me around a natural hot spring in the area. Walking over there, I could smell the springs about half a block before we actually got to it; it wasn't very strong, but I could definitely smell sulfur in the air. And then when we got there, there were huge clouds of steam from the springs that would blow right into my face and those smelled something strong. There was a hotel and spa right next to the hot springs that used the water as their hot water source. Apparently the surrounding neighborhood did as well, which I thought was pretty cool.

Also, there were a bunch of people selling hard-boiled eggs at the hot springs. My host dad called them "spa eggs" and told me that they cooked them at the hot springs themselves. I guess they just came across some hot springs while real hungry one day, took a big whiff and were all "MAN THIS IS A SIGN". He said that they were supposed to be really delicious, but to tell you guys the truth, they tasted exactly like hard-boiled eggs that I would make on the stove at home.

After getting back and telling my host mom that I wasn't able to take photos of the armor in the castle, she was all DANG THAT AIN'T NO FAIR. Turns out her dad owns his own suit of armor. So today we rolled on over to their house, which is less than a five minute drive from my current house, and checked out the armor. It's not a for real ancient samurai armor set, but it's still pretty cool (she said it was made about twenty years ago). Also, her dad had a katana as well, which came in handy because a tank attacked the house while we were there and I had to chop it up, because, you know, katanas can totally do that (I saw it on the internet).I think most importantly though, her dad owned a HUMONGOUS teapot, complete with a sad-looking dog statue. Then we went over to her older sister's house, which was probably under five hundred feet away (I guess family sticks close together here). They had just gotten a baby pidgeon which, to tell the truth, was actually kind of gross. I mean, birds without feathers just kinda look odd. Especially when they open up their wings, because it just looks like a skeletal being awkwardly flopping about. It was still a pretty rad bird though. Except when it pooped on the table. Nothing is rad when it poops on a table.Then after lunch I went to meet the Rotary exchange students here in Isahaya for something or other. I don't really know what the significance of the meeting was; they just said a bunch of stuff in Japanese and gave us cake. Also, they told us that in the future, we're gonna go to a Mt. Asso (giggle!), where we will get to have the delicious Asso Milk (tee hee!).

Later on I went over to my English teacher's, Mr. Tysen, house for a Halloween party. They don't really do anything for Halloween over here even though all the stores are all OOOOOHHH HALLOWEEN ORANGE AND BLACK. So Mr. Tysen, an American, has set up a small course of houses where they know there'll be candy for his kids and friend's kids to go trick or treating at. When we went out with the kids, they rushed ahead of us so quickly, so by the end it was just me and the other adults walking back to the house without the kids. All the other adults and I hadn't dressed up as anything except Mr. Tysen, who was dressed up as a pirate. So he was left walking around at night, dressed up as a pirate during a Halloween party in a country that has no idea what Halloween is. FUN TIMES.

2007-10-22T22:46:00.000-07:00

I don't really have enough for a full blow CandyBlog Deux, and really, this stuff isn't candy. It is, however, the best idea ever.

Dear readers (apparently there are a ton of you now) I give you baked potato flavored potato chips.Just think about that for a moment.
What they've done here is amazing.
They've taken a potato and said, "Hey, I feel like having some baked potato. Why don't we cut this up, fry it, and pile a bunch of artificial flavorings to make it taste like a baked potato? Also let's put some Hokkaido butter on it. I love that stuff."
Note to Japan: Next I would like to see some sausages that taste like bacon, cold noodles that taste like ramen, and fried chicken that has the texture and taste of boiled meat.

For some reason, the Japanese are all up ons Hokkaido butter. Apparently it's the best butter in the country, but I'm pretty sure it's the only butter in the country. I think Hokkaido is probably the only main island that has conditions that allow people to raise cattle (I think it's about the same latitude and climate as New York state), so the whole thing just sort of seems kinda dumb to me. Kinda like seeing a bunch of grass and being all, "Oh man was this grass grown in soil? Oh dang that must be some pretty superior grass you got there. Much better than non-soil grass."

Also, they do a bunch of weird flavors for anything over here. It's kinda like how England has some pretty unusual but delicious flavors, only uh, weirder. So far I've only really had these baked potato flavored chips and some bologna flavored ones, but I've seen some dumpling flavored ones around that I've been meaning to try. I'll keep you posted.

Ain't nothing much happened here for a bit, but I'm supposed to be heading off to a volcano and a castle this weekend, so we'll see how that goes.

Bunkasei

2007-10-20T02:43:00.000-07:00

Today was the culture festival of my high school over here. It took up pretty much the entire week in preparation, just like the sports festival. Each class transformed their classroom into some sort of exhibition of Japanese culture. Or at least, that's what the school intended. Instead, each class just sort of did stuff they thought was cool and went on from there. My class' theme was "time travel" and "illusions & trick images". But uh, the time travel was really just HEY LOOK AT OLD THINGS and the illusions were mostly MC Escher paintings and woodcuts.

Other classes had a bunch of signs up telling people to check out their rooms. One poster said "Let's Balloon House!" and I thought to myself, "yeah, that sounds like a good idea. We should balloon house." It was actually a pretty rad setup. There were nets on the doors to the room, and a ton of balloons filling up the room. There was such a ridiculous amount in there, they came up to about my chest. I asked someone how many balloons they put into the room; six thousand. SIX THOUSAND.

Some other classes also had a wedding dress made out of tissue paper, some candy, and Spiderman 3 (best movie ever). The school also put on a bunch of performances and stuff, including some plays and music stuff. The school's brass band was really damn good. I remember someone coming up and saying "Oh hey come check out the band, we're number one in Nagasaki prefecture," but I was all "Listen, son, I've studied under Nicholas Nigel Gerard Gooch 'Momma Mia' Mariconda. Get your fool self out of here with your sub-standard trash out of here before you embarrass yourself any more," and with that, he bowed his head in shame and left the room. But seriously though, the band was ridiculously good. They played a bunch of cool charts and a couple of the students played some pretty good solos, which reminded me of how much I need to practice and that I hadn't really since I got here.

Also, there was a dude with no arms. Or at least, no real arms. He had these two plastic arms, one with a hand and the other with a manipulateable claw. I didn't understand anything he said, because he was talking in Japanese, but from the pictures he was showing, I guessed he was hit by a car or something. I figure that usually people who have horrible stuff happen to them and then talk about it at schools are grumpy or have a mission or something, but this guy seemed pretty peppy. He also kept taking his arms out of his plastic arms and it kind of creeped me out. He also did a huge calligraphy painting for the school, which was pretty cool. However, how awesome that might sound, I actually have seen something even more mind-blowing. In Taiwan I saw some dude painting fans by holding the brush in his mouth, because he was completely armless. And it wasn't even just coloring and junk, it was quality decorative painting. Sorry fake-arm dude, but armless painter man takes the cake on this one.

But yeah, anyway. The different themes of the classes were pretty interesting. The Interact Club (a Rotary-related club whose meetings I attend because, uh, they tell me to. I don't understand anything at those meetings either) had a nice display of their mission and some of the awards they've received (a ton), and other clubs did some good stuff too.

Like look at this. This is the program for the school festival. Oh look! ESS (English Speaking Society. More like "Everyone Freezes Up When I Speak English To Them Society") has "Global Warming" as their theme. You can see my class, 1EI, up at the top with "Taimu Turaberu" as the theme. And there are a few other things and uh.....oh.......oh my...
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DAMN YOU DISNEY
DAMN YOU ZAC EFRON
DAMN YOU VANESSA HUDGEONS

KENDOOOOOO

2007-10-14T04:12:00.000-07:00

Kendo pretty much took over this weekend. I started my weekend on Saturday with Kendo practice at the high school early in the morning. They were preparing for the match on Sunday and practice was mostly just packing for the next day. After that, I went to a Kendo demonstration set up by the Rotary clubs of Isahaya City for the exchange students at Nagasaki Wesleyan University.

They had one of the top 100 Kendo fighters in the entire nation there helping out with the demonstration, as well as three guys trained in actual swordfighting. They set up a wooden post with a bundle of tightly packed straw strapped to the top, and this is what one of the dudes did to it.

BASBDBASDBASDB
I GUESS YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN WHAT HE DID TO IT IF THE INTERNET WASNT BROKEN AND TOOK A YEAR TO NEVER UPLOAD A VIDEO
HE CUT IT A LOT
REALLY EASY
THAT IS WHAT HE DID

Then they asked for volunteers to try it out. Did Jer go up? Yes he did. Did he fail terribly? Yes he did.
Holding the katana was ridiculously scary. I was shaking a little the entire time. It was heavy, and I was really afraid I was gonna let go of it and it would fly into some guy's head and they would be all DUDE WE GOTTA CUT YOU NOW THAT WAS NOT COOL. So when it came time to cut the bundle, I made it about halfway through, and knocked the post to the ground. Oops. One of the other exchange students had better luck than me, but he also wasn't able to cut through the whole thing. TOUGH.

Also, there was a camera crew there and they interviewed me about the katana stuff. I still don't really know Japanese all too well so I just sort of stumbled through a bunch of words and then smiled. This is the second time I've been interviewed on camera here in Japan and pretty much my strategy has remained the same.

A little while later after a performance by two of the swordfighter dudes, somebody said something in Japanese and a ton of people in the audience started calling my name and pointing to me. Then the big Kendo dude called me over and told me to put on the Kendo armor because I was going to be fighting a match. I tried telling them that I haven't ever played a match before ever, but they didn't understand English so they were just YEAH ALRIGHT PUT THINGS ON HIM AND GIVE HIM A STICK. LET'S SEE WHAT THIS DUDE CAN DO.

Normally the Kendo participants have traditional dress on and all that, but I just had jeans on and the armor over it. Like I said, I was completely unprepared. One of the rotarians had just given me my own shinai (kendo bamboo sword) so I used that. I actually didn't do too bad for my first fight. I went up against a girl, and I'm pretty sure the judges went super easy on me, but I won the fight.

Afterwards we had sushi.
It was delicious.

VOOOOOOM NEXT DAY
Woke up at six today. Well, six-thirty, but the alarms started at six. I biked over to the school to meet the other Kendo guys at 7, and we left in their cars for the Kendo meet. On the drive over, the car we were in had a TV in it. I'm not talking one of those hang-over-the-back-of-the-driver's-seat TVs that plays DVDs, but an actual TV that got real TV channels. The audio was playing constantly, but the video only came on whenever the GPS wasn't being used (they used the same screen), like at a stoplight or something.

The Kendo meet was pretty huge. It was at some sort of sports complex with a baseball field and tennis courts outside. We went into the Basketball court building where they outlined the Kendo areas on the courts with tape. Then they started practicing before the match. There were a MILLION people there. It was redonk. Also, the girl who I had fought yesterday was there too, along with all the other people from the demonstration. They all recognized me and waved, which was nice the first time, but after passing them by for the seventh time I started looking for alternate routes around them because it was really awkward passing by and having absolutely nothing to say, but still trying to share the same enthusiasm they had.

The matches were fun to watch, and I got a bunch of cool photos in. However, for some reason sports gatherings always make me feel kinda sick. I don't know what it is, but I just start to feel like shit after a while at any sports gathering. After a few hours at the meet, I got a headache and fell asleep, hoping it would go away because I forgot my excedrin at home. I woke up to a bunch of the kendo kids and their parents saying "good morning" in Japanese to me but I wasn't fooled; it was still around noon, and I still had a headache. Luckily I was able to communicate that I had a headache and one of the parents happened to have some ibuprofen or tylenol and gave it to me. A bunch of water and another nap later, I was doing alright.

When we got back to school from the meet, we went inside to see the coach and he didn't really seem pleased with the club's performance. We had to sit on our legs for a huge speech from him which I didn't really understand, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. I guess the first-years weren't acting like he wanted them to and they didn't do so hot during the competition. The speech must have really sucked for them, because it sucked for me and it was neither directed towards me (can't participate in competitions, too old) nor did I understand any of it. It was terrible because sitting on our legs for so long hurt like a motherfucker, especially on the hardwood floor of the Kendo room. We have to do it every day for practice, but usually only for a minute or so. I'm not sure how long the lecture was, but I do know that when we went into the room the sun was out, and when it was over, it wasn't anymore. After the lecture everyone had pins and needles like WTF. Most of the Kendodudes couldn't stand up, and the team captain almost fell over trying to walk. I guess seeing that made sitting through that whole speech worth it.
seriously dude he was all whooooaaWHOAAA and had to grab onto one of the other guys to keep from falling and almost everyone else was going around on their knees because their legs were so dead

2007-10-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

Uh just a quick question here
you guys wanna scrap a few bucks together and get this?
I think we could make it into a pretty rad pad.
Link

MONgoro

2007-10-12T04:25:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had to bite your tounge to stop laughing because you're afraid it might be rude?

I did today, and to tell the truth, what I was laughing at really wasn't all that funny. In fact, I think the fact that I was laughing at it probably makes me a douchebag.

Today we had to give some speeches in class on national festivals back at home (I didn't because I am so NEEWWWWWWWWW) and uh, some Mongolians went up to talk. Now I would like everyone to understand that I have absolutely nothing against Mongolians; I think they're fine people. However, the way they say "Mongolian" in Japanese along with their accent just made me fall apart in class. Pretty much all they were doing was saying "MONgoro" (with a swoop up to the "n", and a slide back down on "goro") to describe their national festival, and every time it was mentioned, I cracked up.

After the first dude went down, I thought I was safe. I had made it through his speech without bursting out loudly, but I was teetering on the brink the entire time. But then the second Mongolian went up after him AND HE DID THE EXACT SAME THING. By the end of his speech, I was biting my toungue and crying from laughter. I never cried from laughing before. I figured it would be from laughing at something ridiculously hilarious, but apparently for me it happens for the dumbest reasons ever.

When class was over, I felt like a big douche for laughing at how they talked. Hopefully they won't get angry and team up on me because there's like five of them in the class. And if they didn't realize I was laughing at their speeches this time, hopefully they won't give any more speeches about their home country's customs, because I dunno if I could make it through another speech.

DELISH DELISH DELISH DELISH DELISH

2007-10-10T04:39:00.000-07:00

DELICIOUS FOODS
That is what Japan is full of.
All of you probably know about sushi and sashimi and all that stuff, and all of it is delicious. But I'm gonna tell you about something that you might not know of (I certainly didn't), and it is DELISH.

It's called かつおのたたき and oh man it is so good. It's lightly roasted bonito (fish) that only gets cooked a little of the way in. The rest is raw like normal sashimi. It's sort of like eating sashimi, only that the flavor is much stronger because it's been cooked a little. You dip it in soy sauce just like sashimi and sushi.

MMMMMMMMmmmm.
Yeah it may look a little gross to you dudes, but I assure you that it is top notch stuff.

Also I figured I'd explain the new blog title. It's from possibly one of the best hats ever made. There's a Chinese dude in my Japanese class who has this pretty garish hat with a bunch of grungy newspaper print stuff up on the front and THE HEAD THAT ROCKS spelled out in rhinestones on the brim. I haven't gotten a chance to read the whole hat yet, but the one part that really caught my eye was a small span of text on the front that just said "Donuts in Demand." I really can't think of anything more hardcore to put on a hat. The second part is just a shirt that I saw someone wearing and really wanted to steal.

Classes at the college are a little odd right now, because the teachers teach only in Japanese; some know a little bit of English which helps smooth things over when I have a real problem, but since there are so many different languages spoken by the students, it just makes more sense to teach in Japanese. So sometimes I don't get what's going on, and I have to ask either Brazilians and Fillipinos who speak english as a second language or the Chinese students for help. Either way, I'm learning Japanese through a pretty roundabout way.

Nagasaki Kunchi

2007-10-08T03:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to Nagasaki to see the Nagasaki Kunchi festival with the other exchange students. It was HOT and HUMID out. Like, really damn hot. We had a couple of hours before we had to be at the performance so we walked around the city and saw some of the sights and pretty much right at the first place we went to I was already sweaty and all I wanted was to go back to the hotel and take a shower. We mostly saw stuff that I had already seen because I had been into Nagasaki before, but many a couple of the other students don't stay in the Nagasaki area, so we went again. We saw Dejima, the only port in Japan that was open to foreigners during the isolation, the memorial to the 26 martyrs, the first 26 Christians who were massacred when Japan began its isolation, and a bridge that's famous for looking like eyeglasses. The Kunchi performance was pretty interesting, and it was fun to see what Japanese festivals were like. Plus we were in the VIP section, which is pretty rad. Most of the performances involved a bunch of dudes pulling a really heavy boat (I heard they were over two tons) on wheels around, and trying to go as fast as possible towards the guests of honor and stopping before they hit the table. One of the groups almost ran through the table and the lead dude got pressed up against the table and everyone in the crowd was all "EEEEEHHHHH????!!!" Also check out the dude who pops up right after the boat leaves. That guy was super rad. Every single time the performers did this (and they did it a whole ton. every single group ran off and on like seven times) he would stand up, along with some other people, and start throwing his arms up yelling "BANZAIIIIIII" to get the crowd to call the performers back. Tons of other people from would also run out onto the performance floor and yell too. It was loud.

They also had these real big "umbrellas." I guess they started off as umbrellas, but after a while just developed into what they are now because people just kept piling tons of shit on top of them. These things were really damn heavy too; over 100 kilos each. Pretty much the theme of Nagasaki Kunchi should just be GUYS CHECK OUT THIS THING IT IS HUGE. All they did with these was having a single person lift it by themselves and run around, stop, spin and repeat.

My favorite boat was the Dragon Boat. The dragon head was absolutely ridiculous. Not only did it have horns EVERYWHERE, teeth that could not possibly fit in its mouth and bloodshot eyes, it also breathed fire. It was most definitely the raddest boat.

At the end came the most impressive display of the entire festival. A ton of big dudes ran out carrying a big wooden carriage thing and ran around a bit which was all MEH ALRIGHT YEAH OKAY BRING BACK THE DRAGON. But then they threw the whole thing up into the air and caught it with only one arm. Knowing the Kunchi, it was probably pretty heavy. And you can't see it in the video, but in the carriage are three kids plaing drums, even as they're tossed up into the air.

Then afterwards we had din din and went to bed. Today we went around to more places I been already like the A-Bomb museum and Chinatown, but we saw this pig so it was all worth it.

I really don't have anything else to say, but I want to put these pictures up so HERE I GO. Hopefully most of them will speak for themselves.

Stay Classy

2007-10-04T03:04:00.000-07:00

SO I was looking through FACE magazine (a free magazine that's distributed in many different cities here on Kyushu, each with their own edition) and I saw that there was a photo section on the Isahaya Nonoko, a festival celebrating something or other where they sold a bunch of fried chicken (or at least that was my experience with it). A lot of the photos were pretty much the same formula; either a dude in a tee jus' lookin' tough or two or three girls flashing the peace sign. Then I came across this picture:

WHAT A HUNK. Seriously, this dude looks rad. He's probably famous or something. And really strong. But yet he manages to keep himself down-to-earth and approachable (ladies, take notice). If I met this dude on the street, I'd probably give him a high-five and a hug.
yes mom I will keep a copy for you

But uh yeah, normal stuff. I been holding back on this for a little while because I'm a pretty lazy dude, but I just wanted to share a couple of photos of the first language book I read when I came over here. I decided that I should get at least a small understanding of the Japanese language before my actual lessons started, so I took out a book from the high school library. Mostly it is pretty normal, but it has a few gems hidden in the pages. Most of the time it is just teaching you how to say stuff like "I visited a Shinto shrine" or "Does this train run to Tokyo?" It also teaches you some things that you would be more likely to use in your everyday life like "How much does this cost?" or "I've seen several UFO's and have even talked with a Martian."

I find myself saying that almost everyday over here. I'm really glad it was in this book, or I'd be struggling with my pocket dictionary all the time. However, the book is a little strange with the topics it brings up at times, especially with the way it presents them. One moment you're talking about buying a camera and your new pad, and the next you're talking divorce. Does this seem a little abrupt to anyone else? I mean, you were just talking about moving to Kamakura together. Aren't you guys gonna try and work it out? (this came up at least twice in the book. I got no idea why they seem so fixated on the subject)

But probably the best part of the book is the pictures it uses for the lessons. I'll post a few favorites. And by "a few" I mean three. Because I am lazy and it's not worth going through the book again to find good examples. First up is their depiction of foreigners in the book. Notice the Japanese man is always pretty normal looking; his eyes are composed of an iris and pupil with the whites surrounding it, and his face is in a pretty normal position. The white foreigners, however, always seem to have trouble with their hair when they arrive in Japan, and their irises seem to turn all sprially in their eyes. Also I guess they got less oxygen over in Japan because the foreigners who are unused to the environment are constantly gasping for breath.

This picture here almost made me laugh out loud in the middle of class. LOOK AT HIS FACE. LOOK.
Oh yeah and uh I started classes at the college. It's better than spending my whole day either reading things from Fark in the library or doing nothing in classes I can't understand. I met some english-speaking people in my class too which is good because basically for the past two months all my converstations have just been WHERE ARE YOU FROM DO YOU LIKE JAPANESE FOOD DO YOU LIKE JAPAN HOW ABOUT DEM JAPANESE GIRLS HUH HOW TALL ARE YOU DO YOU LIKE GREEN DAY WOW YOU HAVE SOME BIG FEET HEY LET'S ARM WRESTLE CAN YOU SPEAK JAPANESE DO YOU LIKE PUDDING. And before any of you are all "oh ho ho, how humorous, Jeremy" I would like to say that I have actually been asked all of those questions, including the pudding.

CandyBlog I

2007-09-28T04:20:00.000-07:00

When I applied to be an exchange student to Japan, I told the people interviewing me that I wanted to "experience a different culture" and learn Japanese and all that. That was all a lie. What I really wanted was easily accessable delicious candy.

And Japan delivers!

There is a ton of good candy here

A TON.
(I MODDED my blog. Click the link like it says to open up shop)

Let's start with Maccha.

Uh as you can see it's not really candy at all, it's really more of an ice cream. However, it's also my favorite sweet over here so it gets first mention. Maccha is basically green tea ice cream, except it's kinda icy, like if they froze creamy green tea and just crushed it up a whole bunch. This one pictured above is weird because you don't really eat it like ice cream at all, but suck it through a straw. It's probably the best thing to buy when you're walking outside on a hot day.

They also got Ghana here. I was expecting something WACKY and CRAZY from fun-loving Ghana, but it's actually just milk chocolate. Pretty good though.

Crunky. Old favorite. Best part? You know they were going for "Crunchy" and just ended up with this name, but they've made no attempt to fix their mistake, even though the description of the candy spells "crunchy" out perfectly.

LOOK will you please LOOOOOOOK I DEMAND ATTENTION. I really didn't have high expectations for this stuff, I just bought it because I want to try all the candy in Japan and because the name was so obnoxiously stupid. Also notice that it says it is "A La Mode". Don't be fooled. There is no ice cream.

It LOOKs kinda cool though. and it TASTEs pretty bad. The only passable flavor out of the four (pineapple, strawberry, caramel, banana) is the caramel, and that's really not anything exciting.

BUT THERE'S MORE! Still with the A La Mode, but no ice cream to be found. I probably should have avoided getting this after having the normal LOOK but uh, there was a maccha flavor and I couldn't say no. It actually isn't that bad, except for the strawberry. The other flavors are kurogoma (black sesame) and chocolate.

Oh man choco flake. Choco flake is so good, you don't even know. That is how good it is. It's pretty much what every chocolate flavored cereal tries but ultimately fails to be. This is because they are only chocolate flavored. Choco flake totally changes the game and just covers corn flakes in chocolate, which kinda sounds grody at first (chocolate and corn) but really it's just like cereal, only a million times better. It's great frozen too. I have yet to try it with milk, but believe me, I will have tried it before this year is over.

I thought this stuff looked pretty rad. Chocolate balls in an IMPENETRABLE metal bottle? Yes please! Unfortunately, this was because I assumed that the chocolate balls would have something interesting about them, and had to be encased in metal because it was too rad for plastic or cardboard packaging. Turns out they're just chocolate balls.

This was the biggest disappointment. I could fix the picture on this but it let me down so hard that I ain't doing nothing for it anymore. Just to clear up possible misunderstandings about this, I love dark chocolate. I used to think "the higher the percentage, the better!" But that was before I tried this absolutely disgusting bar of poison. I tried two squares of the stuff and I barely made it through the second square without dying of dehydration. If posed with the choice of either eating an entire bar of this stuff without milk or never feeling joy again in my entire life, I would be hard-pressed to make a decision.

THERE WILL BE MORE CANDY

I am going to tell you about Chromeo

2007-09-27T04:13:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you about Chromeo. They are probably one of the best bands around, for real, for real. Their stuff is hilarious and amazing at the same time. Not "hilariously awesome" or "awesomely hilarious" but just hilarious and awesome simultaneously. And let me tell you as a person who is also simultaneously the best person ever and also possibly the funniest thing to walk the Earth, that it is no easy task being these two things at once. Not for me though. I'm just gifted.

Let me tell you about Pase Rock. He is most definitely one of the best rappers around right now. Super tight lyrics, super smooth flow, and super rad fashion. Plus the fact that he brings Amanda Blank around helps too.

Now let me tell you about Bonafide Lovin'. This is my favorite song from the new Chromeo album. Sure, Tenderoni and Fancy Footwork are great songs, but there's just something about Bonafide Lovin' that just can't be beat.

Where does this all lead?

To a very predictable end

Chromeo - Bonafide Lovin' (Eli remix ft. Pase Rock) via Pinglewood

Let me tell you about my mad skillz

2007-09-25T03:48:00.000-07:00

When it comes to sense of direction, I've got a pretty damn good one. You could put me in a maze the size of Manhattan with blindfolds on and I'd meet you at the exit half an hour later all "sup dudes, wanna snag a burg'?"

However this amazing superpower of mine (seriously, it's that good) failed me today when I went out to the camera store to buy a tripod. Instead of going with the path I knew pretty well, I decided to go a different direction so that I could take pictures of some new stuff. It seemed like a pretty good idea at first; I was just crossing a different bridge than I usually do, and going this way would just take me to my bus route which I could follow to the store. It would have stayed a good idea if I had just followed my original plan, but I decided to create my own shortcut to see if I could get there quicker. WHAT A RAD PLAN, RIGHT? Yeah it was rad. All my plans are rad. Especially Master Plans.

But unfortunately I must have run out of rad points or used up my special meter or something because after probably half an hour, I was walking down a road I was sure I had never seen, and seeing signs for Nagasaki, which is a good half-hour away by car. I knew it was stupid to think that I was in Nagasaki at the time, but I was all "oh dang oh dang what if I'm in Nagasaki. Man I ain't even got a cell to call my host fam." It was even dumber to think this seeing as signs for Nagasaki are fucking everywhere in my town; tons are near my school, and even more on my bus route.

After another hour and a half of walking over train tracks, over bridges, under bridges and through parking lots, I finally made it to my destination. And of course once I get in, the tripod I was thinking of getting wouldn't work for my camera, and I didn't want to buy any others without looking around online. So pretty much I walked around for two hours until it was too dark to take photos, didn't get anything from the store I was walking to.

I went back home the way I knew how, and it ended up taking about a half-hour or so. Pretty much I completely failed today at doing anything. While walking back, I thought "at least there ain't anybody around to chastise me for being out late on my own" (plus my school's got a rule about being out past 8; you can't be out past 8) and then a second later "Oh, hey Mr. Tysen" -Oh, hey Jeremy (checks watch). What are you doing out so late?- SWEET JUST WHAT I WANTED. Mr. Tysen is the only American at the school other than me. He's an English teacher who also acts as a translator for me at times. Perfect dude to meet out on the street!

YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS

Goatse

GOLLY GOSH I'm just on a posting SPREE, aren't I?

2007-09-22T04:56:00.000-07:00

Today while Cmills and Hrod were off rocking out to Armani XXXChange, Pase Rock and Amanda Blank, JLaw was biking to school (on a Saturday) to go to kendo practice even though school didn't have class. Rad right? Yeah dude, that's turbo.

Afterwards, I went out to take some photos, but it was too dark to get anything that actually looked any good. I'm gonna go out again tomorrow and see what magic I can work. Probably not very good magic. Most likely very low-grade "oh hey here's that bakery I was talking about" magic.

After getting back, I went out with my host father and older host brother (still younger than me though, he's 17 and his little brother is 9 or 10) for やきとり(grilled chicken, but they do more than just chicken). Most of the stuff was pretty good, but some of it was just weird. Like the pig's knuckles. I don't think I'll be jumping at the next chance to have those. I had some chicken liver that tasted alright at first, but then the texture hit me; it feels like eating a really soft, chalky pastel. Like the ones you use with the smudgy things in art class.

My host father ordered pig's feet for me to try, even though I protested. He kept saying "Challenge! Challenge!" which kind of reminded me of Street Fighter, only with weird food. It was actually pretty good though, but hard to eat. It was really fatty, which was delicious, but there were probably 20 bones in the entire thing. I heard some thing where a third of the bones in your body are in your feet, or maybe it was thirty bones, but either way there are far too many. It seems that pigs are like this as well. This proved to be a bit of a problem because although I know you're just supposed to throw urrything in your mouth and spit the bones out afters, I hate doing that with anything. I hate eating watermelons and spitting out seeds. I hate eating a plum and spitting out the pit. I never eat sunflower seeds the way you're "supposed to." The way I see it, doing that is like having a mini-vom-bomb minus the stomach acids.

Here are some pictures:

A place called "Lipstick" right next to a place called "Grandpa" with tinted windows. Nothing is odd here. NOTHING.

This is the city's shopping center downtown. They close the roads that pass through it from 10-7, which is what the sign up front is all about.

That ad on the left there is for a Pachinko casino. Pachinko is ridiculously popular over here. They even have TV shows on how to win it, which I think is pretty dumb.

"Pizza Dream's? I dunno man, it looks kinda like a Domino's ripoff to me..."

-No worries, man. This dude said it's the real deal.- "Oh, in that case, alright. He looks like a man I can really trust and I feel that I can relate to him."

Just so you know

2007-09-22T00:56:00.000-07:00

http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/major-biological-discoveryinside-the-chernobyl-reactor/
THE SLIME
IT WILL EAT US ALL

also I kina really want to go into Pripyat
wear a long leather cloak
call myself a STALKER
die of radio-ation poisoning

Also
I used to think that anime was absolutely ridiculous because they would make super hardcore shows about tennis players or baseball pitcher, but really, that's not so bad.
At least, it isn't once you see a commercial for a super hardcore show about a bakery.
Which I just did.

Let me tell you about sugared donuts

2007-09-21T07:40:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you about my bus stop. It is someone's driveway.

Not even the driveway, though, just the part where the sidewalk has to dip down to meet the road. It's kinda lame, and kind of annoying seeing as there's a for real bus stop maybe thirty feet away. But uh, I don't really wanna shift over and then have my Elvis-loving bus driver get all weird with me (not that he isn't already. Did I mention that he invited me out to lunch a little while ago? Because he did. It was creepy).

However, right across the street are two primo-supremo city sites that I am a big fan of. The first is A COOP, a small market. I go in there after school each day to get an apple, because apples are delicious. As soon as you go in, there's really cheesy midi music playing in the background, and periodically a recording of a man yelling "CHEAP! CHEEEEEAP! IT'S SO GODDAMN CHEAP DAMNIT, BUY SOMETHING!" Or at least that's all that I can understand of what he's saying. As rad as the music and yelling is, I usually just go in and out for my apple.

Right next door is a bakery that I finally went into this morning. I had been planning on going for a while, but for some reason I never decided to. It's a small bakery called "Languedoc", but while the sign up top says that, the text on the window says "Rangue Doc." It's a pretty impressive display of engrish. I'll get a picture of it soon. Anyway, this bakery has a bunch of really typical Japanese-western weirdo blend bread-things that most Japanese bakeries have. Mostly they're hot dog roll-y things with noodles or sausage or cheese or mayo or a weird combination of those things. Sometimes they look and sound really weird and kind of off-putting, but they're always delicious.

However, the most important thing about this bakery is that it has sugared donuts.
Sugared donuts
are
the
best.

I don't know why, but I haven't seen them anywhere in the US. I'm sure it's probably in my face all the time, but I never see them anyway. Urrybody has glazed stuff and frosted. All I want is some granulated sugar on my nut. That's all it is. But it is the most delicious donut ever (apart from tres leches, but I don't really even consider that a donut, it's like a mini-cake). The last time I had a sugared donut was back in the summer after freshman year when I went to Hong Kong, and now I can have them every morning until I get so fat that I can no longer walk to the bakery. But that'd be fine. I figure by that time, I would have gotten to know the people at the bakery well enough that they would set up some sort of delivery service for me. If not, I'll just send my little host brother out to get me a case of donuts each morning.

But seriously, I don't know if you guys really understand how happy I am that this place has sugared donuts. I got really excited after finding out, and I had to calm myself down so that I wouldn't weird out the bus people when I got on. And I made this post pretty much just so that I could tell you about the donut. Apples are alright and all that, but this donut, it is too good.

2007-09-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

Baseball is pretty huge over here. At pretty much any time during the day, you can turn on the TV and see a game going on or a recap of the week's most recent games, including Red Sox and Yankees games. They even get a feed of the YES network for the most recent Yankees games with Japanese commentary dubbed in.

I got the chance to go see a Japanese team play today, which was pretty rad. What was radder was that the two teams were the first and second in the league. The local team was the Fukuoka Soft Bank Hawks, and the visiting team was the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. What's with the weird names? Sponsers (or owners, rather) Soft Bank is a cell phone carrier, and Nippon Ham makes ham.

I learned a new trick on my camera!

The stadium was called the Yahoo! Dome. It wasn't really all that big and couldn't hold a huge amount of people, but it was still super loud in there, mainly because when it comes to cheering, the Japanese are redonk. The entire section opposite home base was filled with fans dressed in jerseys, holding signs and these weird noisemaker/bullhorn contraptions. Everyone in this section was standing for pretty much the entire first seven innings, and cheering almost constantly. I guess each team has a cheer section or something, because both the home team and the away team had people with drums, trumpets and tons of other stuff that were used in their fight songs.

See that Asahi Beer ad?

If someone hits a home run into it, they get free beer for ten years

TEN

Also, they don't have a seventh inning stretch in Japan. As far as I know, the just do this:

Thousands of balloons! (also one guy that sucks)

And then after the game is over, they have fireworks. Indoors. And confetti.

Pretty much the jist of this is that Japan wins.

This is very important

2007-09-15T08:13:00.001-07:00

http://www.koreus.com/video/baseball-cloche-pied.html
Please explain what is happening
seriously, I want to know

Japanese TeeVee is still really odd

2007-09-12T04:54:00.000-07:00

I just watched a show where four guys dressed up in bug uniforms tried to do a backflip on a bar. The bar started off being a meter high, and then with each successful flip, was lowered a couple of centimeters. It eventually got down to 25 cm and one of the guys actually managed to flip through it somehow. Whenever someone couldn't, though, a really weird lady in a bee costume would come out, eat something gross (like fermented soybeans or garlic), and breathe into the guy's nose through a tube while someone else held him down and covered his mouth.

Also, I tried fermented soybeans yesterday. They call it なっと(natto) over here, and I'm pretty sure you'll never find anything in western cuisine that will ever be more disgusting than this. This stuff makes the idea of eating cockroaches (thanks France!) seem brilliant. I seriously don't understand how anyone came up with this idea. The stuff looks like spider eggs with cobwebs still attached. I just don't see how someone would have come up with these things. Either someone just found some soybeans which had fermented and thought "Yes, I will eat those", which is a pretty disgusting thing to do. Or, someone actually thought up the idea of leaving soybeans alone until they had started leaking an extremely offensive substance, then pour some sauce on it and eat it up. I don't really know which is worse.

Pictures for those who really want them (you don't)
Normal and fermented soybeans for comparison
YUM See how the cobweb stuff sort of covers to the chopsticks? Yeah, I had to switch sticks after that to avoid puking because it was still on there and it got over all my other food.

Tuna is a fish

2007-09-08T22:53:00.000-07:00

I always thought that tuna just existed as meat in cans, and that STARkist (not sun) would just come by, slap a label on it and send it to the grocery store. How dolphins figured into that I never really figured out. Turns out that they're really just GIGANTIC FISH.

lol take pix

They didn't cook the fish at all, we just had sashimi. Or at least, they didn't cook the body. They did, however, cut off the head, split it in two and "baked" it in the most jerry-rigged oven setup I've ever seen.

MMmmmm...appetizing. How was it cooked again? Baked? Oh, what did they use to cover it?
Oh cool, that's very reassuring.

I was really hesistant to try it, mainly because I am a processed-food kind of guy (wonder bread, american cheese and hot pockets plz. Veggies and vitamins ain't really my bag) and also because the guy who gave me a bunch of stuff mentioned "gelatin" and "collagen", both of which I plan on never consuming, while dropping the meat in my bowl. Also some dude was eating the fish's pupil which really turned me off. However, despite the strange fats and optical humors, I did try the fish and it was delicious. Kind of tasted like a hamburger, which was weird, but a delicious hamburger.

The sashimi was pretty damn good though. They had many different types of cuts because we ate from the entire fish. Different parts of the fish have more fat than others, and those cuts are much more expensive and sought-after because they supposedly taste better. I don't really fully agree with that.

This small portion of tuna would set you back around $100 USD. The reason why it's so expensive is because it has so much fat. Everyone else seemed to love it, but I could barely finish one piece. After maybe five chews, you were pretty much just chewing fat, and I had to force myself to swallow it to avoid spitting it out and offending the people who were hosting me.

DA CHEEP(er) stuff. As you can see, this meat is redder, meaning there's less fat breaking it up. I really prefer this stuff even though it's considered less-desirable in Japan.

Despite the weird fish-eyeball stuff and the super fatty sashimi, the food was really good. Really expensive though. I was told that the fish itself cost about $1000 USD, but I'm sure it was more. Plus, the hosts hired professional chefs to set up, cut the fish and prepare the food, so they paid even more for that. However, the Rotary Club hosted the event, so I'm sure it wasn't a problem for them. There were probably 50-60 people there (Rotary members and their families), but the fish was big enough that they were able to feed everyone and also give each family stuff to bring back home as well.

Sports!

2007-09-08T03:59:00.000-07:00

Guess what's rad!: I learned how to say "migraine" in Japanese today!
Guess what isn't!: I had one today.

It might have happened because it was so damn hot today (a bunch of people got heat stroke), or it might just have happened because I get them every once in a while. The worst thing is, I see it coming (literally, my vision blurs) and I can't do jack about it, except find the excedrin for when it hits.

Anyway, the reason the heat was so bad today was because it was the Chinzei Gakuin High School Sports Festival today. They had a bunch of events, but all I did was the Tug-of-War. It was tons of fun and my team won. I was pretty damn sure we'd lose to this one team because they had a mountain of a man as their anchor. Seriously a mountain. It's even in his name. However, we emerged victorious and I'm pretty sure it's all due to the fact that I am a beast.

I also marched with the rest of the Kendo team. Some dude on the soccer team saw me and was all "OOOOH AMERICA SAMURAI". The soccer team was super enthusiastic and really into the whole marching thing, chanting the Japanese equivalent of "left, right, left". The kendo team, however, was a bit more relaxed. We didn't even really walk in time or anything, and just sort of went around the track. Somehow I always seem to pick the sport or team with the absolute least amount of spirit.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOsup?LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLEND?
Uh so I forgot to post this yesterday but I don't wanna go back and change all the day references to make it correct, so just understand that this all took place yesterday.

Also, other than the sports festival and headache, I got a HUGE bag of Choco Flakes. SO GOOD. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Choco Flakes, it's pretty much just normal corn flakes covered in a thin layer of chocolate. Sounds like it should be gross (chocolate corn?) but it's delicious. And plus, all those chocolate cereals you eat are probably made from corn anyway, so it's not much different from stuff you've already had.

HOT PIXX

2007-09-07T03:22:00.000-07:00

First and foremost, check out the Sartorialist's blog
LOOK LOOK LOOK AT THE THIRD PIC
WHAT A CHIC CHICK
GO GO GO
http://www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com/
http://www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com/
http://www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com/
http://www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com/
http://www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

Today we got off early from school because we have the sports festival to rest up for tomorrow, so I took the early bus home and went around taking some pictures.

MAH HAUSJapanese driveways are small. Very small.I don't know why, but I find this super rad-looking. The reason why there are so many wires is because the houses are so damn close together.This looks like it should be a one-way street, but no, it's two-way in Japan.

Spinna fo a face

2007-09-05T05:10:00.000-07:00

This attacked me when I was going to bed one night. It made a big THUD when I knocked it to the ground. I hate bugs.

ALSO. Kendo is rad. It really tires the forearms though. School is super long over here. I get a bus at 7:20ish, and school does to 4:00. The first bus leaves at around 4:20, but I stay for Kendo which starts at 4:30. The last bus leaves at 7:00 PM and I jump on that to get home at around 7:30. TWELVE HOURS. TWELVE. Classes are kind of a bore sometimes, but I spend a lot of time in the library during the classes where the Japanese would be too much for me to understand. This'll only last until October anyway, when I start taking Japanese at Nagasaki Wesleyan University. Once that happens, I'll probably only have class at Chinzei (the high school) on Saturdays.

NEWS FLASH: School is still School

2007-09-04T03:53:00.000-07:00

I don't really know what I was thinking when I decided to go abroad as an exchange student. Maybe I was thinking that school in other countries would just be people doing backflips and giving each other high-fives. Maybe I thought that I would enter the front door on the first day and a rad dude would surf by me screaming "Cowabunga!" and a massive beach party would start, and would continue until the day I left.

Well no matter what I thought, school in Japan is totally not what I thought it would be. School in Japan is just school, but in Japan. The sports afterwards are pretty rad though. I started up Kendo today, which was fun. I didn't really know what to do for the first day, so I got an english teacher (the same one who's been my guide) to help me talk to the Kendo teacher. I got all sorted out with the teacher and went to watch the practice to see what everything was like, but I ended up actually trying some of the exercises out. It was pretty fun, but I have to wait until later to actually put the armor on and participate in the actual sport.

There's also a sports festival coming up this weekend, and the school is preparing for it everyday after lunch. Instead of having classes as they normally do, everyone changes into the active wear uniform (yeah, they're big on uniforms here) and heads outside to get ready for the festival. Usually a bunch of people come up to me during that time to introduce themselves, or to see if I remember their names (I never do, I should probably work on that).

Bax 2 Skool

2007-09-03T05:55:00.000-07:00

Do you know what Japanese people love? American people! Even more than that? New York! Every time I told someone I lived in New York they went wild. But then when I told them that I lived there for about four days and that I really lived in Connecticut for far longer, the response was usually, "Eh.....NEW YORKU!" My guess is that they only really know about New York and California and possibly not messing with Texas.

The school I'm going to isn't bad, but I'm told it's kind of a sporty school, which is good in some ways and bad in others. It's good because that means they'll go easy on my academically which is really good because I still have no idea what's going on language-wise. However, it's also bad because I'm about as sporty as a dead slug. It's also a very Christian school. Everyone goes to chapel in the morning and has a bible and hymn book with them (in japanese) and listens to a sermon given by the head teacher (in japanese). This is where I zone out.

My homeroom teacher happens to be an English teacher, which is good because otherwise I would be lost half of the day. There's also an American English teacher here who's been a guide of sorts for me, and he's helped out a whole lot. He's going to bring me into some of his upper level English Conversation classes to have the class practice their English on me. However, I don't really expect too many questions seeing as almost all the kids I've talked to (or rather tried to talk to) are too shy to speak English. Everyone is really afraid to say something incorrectly, and they totally freeze up when faced with an English question. Of course I've been trying to talk in Japanese as well, but the students I talked to were in the English-Speaking Society club and they still refused to speak.

Though there are some students who are quite different. Today we had a big meeting in the gym to decide who will do what games at the sports festival (I signed up for the tug-of-war, thumbs up) and I got called over by several groups many times to talk to them. Most of the time there was one person who spoke some English and their friends would ask questions through them. There was also one guy who called me over to his friends, pointed to some dude he called "champion" and had me arm wrestle him. I lost.

Also for some reason I get along really well with bus drivers all the time. I dunno why. This bus driver is no different. We had a converstation (kind of, mostly just trying to get each other to understand what we were saying) where I learned that New York is full of pretty women (like the song!), LA exists and that his hobby is Elvis. Also, for some reason I'm pretty sure everyone in the world knows how to say "hello" in Chinese. EVERYONE. On the bus all the dudes around me knew how to say it. Of course when I asked if they knew anything else, nobody did. Just hello.

Anyway, I'll put up pictures later. I just moved into my new host family's house last friday and I haven't had time to hook up my camera to the computer. However, I'll leave you with this gem. It's not mine, but I think you'll agree that it is simply amazing.
http://www.ebiztutors.com/images/paul/00a.jpg

2007-08-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

CLICK DUDES THERE IS A VIDEO
UP TOP

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

Japan has very little spicy food of its own

2007-08-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

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.

Shooooooooping

2007-08-26T18:29:00.000-07:00

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

Nagasaki

2007-08-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

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.

Rotary and School

2007-08-23T04:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Hoooooooot springs

2007-08-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

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.