starting to feel at home

As the title says i'm starting to feel at home in Kumamoto. There are a few things i could wish for (a closet, not having to live out of my suit case and what not) but as soon as i move (nov 7th) i get those and it should really set in. I know my way around (kinda) i am getting better at reading and talking to people to get what i need to done. I walk out of buildings on campus and feel ok with it not being the UofM. Its nice.

speaking of moving. the new dorms....ROCK!!!! my friend Yudai (well jamie's friend first but yeah) has a part time job moving all the new stuff into the dorms. So today he said to come during his lunch and we could see them. THEY ARE AMAZING!!. i get a book shelf, a real bed (no more futon and bean pillow...yes!) a closet, a dresser, and drawers under my bed. also i have a little porch thing to hang clothes on, a desk and....AN AIR CON!! each room has one. then we have a shower room, washing machine, brand new IH heater (stove top thingy)a microwave, a microwave oven, table. so much and more. plus its brand spanking new! so amazing.

What else has been new you ask? Not much. well everything thats only since its japan and not the US. I love the food, the people, and even the school. I had to ask my teacher if i could miss class for 2-3 days to help out teach at Mt Aso. I was petrified and carefully figured out how to ask her politely in japanese and everything. Figured out reasons why it would be good for me, etc, then i get there and start to ask and she just goes "wow thats a good school, that would be good for you. we will figure out when to reschedule the quiz's" and i was shocked. also she totally destroyed all my careful work haha also because of the school festival and one of my teachers having to leave on personal matters, i have 2 classes in the next like two weeks. its amazing haha. i suppose the experience is just as important as classes are.

Tomorrow is Halloween and it should be amazing. I get to see a live concert on campus starting at 7 (jamie's friends Taiyo and Ichinose are playing and invited kk and myself) then going with KK's tutor Junko down to Jeff's bar for a halloween party. All while in costume. I'm going to be a giant pikachu. so amazing. There will be pictures.

Speaking of that i need to start showing some.

yes kumamoto castle!
there will be more soon. and more writing but now i need to go downtown. Then off to watch "L: Change the world" is friends!

how time flies by..

So its been 3 weeks now since i have arrived in japan for my year long study. Oh and how fun it's been so far! On friday, (after kk went off for her fun weekend in yokohama) Yudai and I went to find me a bike. yeah someone thought letting me buy a bicycle/ride said bicycle around japan was a good idea. mwahaha. vroom vroom. I bought a "mama chari" or the style of bike mom's usually ride, in an awesome bright green (pictures soon!). i ride it all the time and its fun but slightly scary. Japan has super narrow streets and having small cars whiz by you is a little unnerving, i think at least.

The weekend pretty much consisted of me thinking i was a bad ass and riding my bike everywhere. it was great. On saturday night i decided to head down to Shimatori and Kamitori (two big downtown area's) to eat dinner and grab mr donut. When i show up, what do i find? a freaking huge downtown art plex! i was confused so i walked over to the crowed of people in front of starbucks and started trying to figure things out. They were handing out adorably small samples of coffee so i drank one and went to see what else i could find. Finally some really nice helper gave me a pamphlet that consisted of the acts, the location and the times. I spent a good 4 hours walking around looking at everything (taking pictures of course). The coolest thing was this giant painting of a tiger that two guys were working all throughout the course of the evening. turned out great! followed closely by the clown (hate hate hate clowns) wearing a sparkly american flag vest. pretty much sweet. he was dancing to a quartet of saxophonists.

Sunday i was running a muck again (yeah thanks british people -sarcasm-) and ran into two other exchange students. we chatted for a bit then George and myself went to get food (Paul, from stockton cali, would have gone but no bike. the night before George and him got in trouble with the police for riding together on a bike). I can say that there have been few times when i was stared at more then when i was walking around with George (you know 6'6" British dude) who kk aptly named "G-zilla" . Good times

Monday was deemed by kk as "the try and cry" which basically ment that she was going to talk in japanese as much as possible. figuring this was a good idea, i decided to join in. Yeah it was effing hard. We went to eat Okonomiyaki for lunch with our friend Yuka. sweet jesus Yuka is patient. She was really good in correcting us, understanding what we were saying even if we couldn't fully say it. Sooo nice. The rest of the day was spent in the Library on the internet and doing homework. woo homework. Before bed KK and i watched めいちゃんのしつじ (mei-chan's butler) the stupidly addicting drama we started watching as a joke. no kidding its effing addicting. WHY!!!???

Today has been pretty fun too. I have this class called "key words and expressions in japanese culture". The topic for class was "vertical relationships" and other stuff like that. so we were talking about dates and who pays and what not. It was pretty hilarious, apparently Americans are weird haha. we speak plainly to people, we don't want to always split the bill or have the guy ALWAYS pay for dinner, we hug and kiss our parents (like if we are leaving for a long time. apparently thats a big no in japan), its ok to hold hands in public. I dunno we are weird i guess haha. But seriously, the keeping the navel string thing we talked about, thats just weird.


Things i've learned:
- always downplay a gift if you are giving one (oh its a boring things but please....or.....it may not suit your taste but here...) even if you think its the best gift ever. Also when receiving a gift you need to ask about a billion trillion times if its ok, then thank them a million more times.
- if you hang out with someone and it was fun, sometime within the next two weeks you need to say "thanks for the other day" or they might feel bad.
- everything in japan goes at a slow pace. its super polite to extent conversations and what not. so don't be in a hurry, its impolite.
- noh drama still sucks (ok maybe that hasn't come up yet but seriously)
- if you have an s-rank butler, at one time or another he will do an awesome slow walk towards you with great lighting. ( true story, the drama taught me that one)

good times, food friends, and a new place

It`s been a while since i`ve written and so much has happend. Lets see if i can give a summery of everything without typing for ever and a half.

Lets see. First about my classes. I`m currently taking 7 Japanese language classes, 1 culture class and 1 english literature class (seriously it was the only thing that fit into my schedule and i had an hour to find 1 more credit). I don`t have class on fridays which means i always have at least a 3 day weekend to explore. Thursdays are pretty tough having 4 classes that are an hour and a half a piece. ouch. Classes are fun and i`m meeting alot of new fun people. Oddly enough the people I have been hanging out with are Japanese, not the exchange students (well other than kk). I hear japanese being spoken alot and I would like to think my listening is improving, I need to make a bigger attempt to speak in japanese instead of always falling back on English. I will try.

So other than classes KK and I have been wandering around Kumamoto trying to figure things out. That became alot easier when Jamie came down to visit for the long weekend. He arrived on Friday night and we ate with his friends Taiyo and Ichinose (who are amazing). After that we returned to our apartment and ended up laughing till super later. We woke up and surprised Mao (who was supposed to meet kk and I to hang out but had no idea Jamie was there). what followed was an amazing day:
- used kimono sale- jamie, kk, yudai, mao, and yuka all went and looked at old kimonos. unfortunatly i`m too but for japan so all the sleeves were short haha. I`m going to look at a few other places while im here.
- Went downtown and ate ramen (oh god kumamoto ramen is the best), then we ate mr donut, after that we just hung out for a while untill we went to kumamotojou (the castle) to see what was going on. Mao told us that they were lighting things in the moat and we wanted to find out what it was all about. Turns out to be the autumn festival or something (i`ll double check and update). It was amazing. we walked around for a while, ate some pork and horse (yeah i said it, horse) had some delicious smoothies with the giant tapioca balls, then laughed hysterically when the kumamoto castle mascot (a giant inflatable castle costume) came onstage and was danging and jumping and singing. After that we met back up with Taiyo and Ichinose and went to to "free time". That basically means we did karaoke till super late for not very much money haha. so much fun.

Next day we met up with Aiko and went to suisenji park. Walked around there, took a billion pictures then went back downtown to meet more people. Later that night we went to a Yakinikku place which turned out to not only be all you can eat, but also all you can drink for only 2000￥ (about $20 for 2 hours)...well for the girls mwahaha. it was so much fun, everyone got along so well and we all just enjoyed each others company.

Monday came and we had to say goodbye to Jamie. It was sad but I know he`s coming back for christmas so thats good. I made alot of good friends this weekend and I`m excited to continue hanging out with them.

Today its back to school, but fond memories were made. Jamie showed us alot of neat tricks around kumamoto that will come in handy (i need to buy a bike! kk won one but i didnt. boo) It was also really cool to hear stories about Jamie and his time here and to realize how much fun and how good it is for your japanese (once again i need to speak more japanese!)

Thats all for now but i finally got wifi working on my laptop so while I`m on campus I can finally upload pictures. yes! so i`ll post some and a link to my photobucket.

quick update

things japan has taught me:

1- if you are asian, you will speak better japanese than i do

2 - begginer lvl test means "comfortable for people who studied for 2 years", intermediate lvl test means "what...i havent seen most of this. aka difficult" and advance lvl test means ".....wha...?"

3- futons and bean pillows are only comfortable for so long

4 - i am addicted to the internet

5 - every effing bug is like a billion times bigger in japan

6- i am a scary foreigner to everyone but children, who then run up and speak to me. adorable

7- i am about a 4 inches too tall for everything

there will be more...i promise

Wow i`ve been lazy

Yeah so i had planned on writing in this all the time but without reliable interent i obviously haven`t. I`ve been writing alot down on my laptop so expect a big recap post coming up here as soon as i stop being lazy.
Tomorrow is the big placement test, so im kinda freaking out but it`ll be ok. Just need to remember to breath. so far everything (minus orientation where they speak really fast japanese at me) has been fun. Oh but the stupid recycling system is a pain. save the earth i guess.
Yesterday i met up with a friend of mine, Aiko, that i haven`t seen since high school. it was so great to catch up and see each other again. we had alot of fun. Got me a new cell phone (i can totally watch tv on it, and i have), went to a crazy busy starbucks (yup tastes the same), went to a really cool store with a bunch of kyoto products, then of course went and ate and a ninja restaraunt. the ninja who let us in totally tricked at the door, made us try to open this impossible door then opened another one haha. was awesome. then we unrolled the scroll menu and picked out some tasty food. ninja sushi, shrimp with mayo and more! soo good. everytime they came in they would say "nin nin" . i pretty much aspire to work there. and Naito sensei looked at me funny everytime i said i wanted to grow up to be a ninja. then a ninja who used ninja magic came in. pretty much the best card tricks...err i mean real magic ever. seriously i was amazed. also the table was garnished with bread shurikens...seriously!? yeah seriously.
after that we went home and i studied some, and by study i ment kinda looked at kanji and then watched tv on my phone, oh well . after i get home from eating and the 100￥ store im totally studying. (test tomorrow and all)
Oh i found out who my tutor and advisor are (yeah, i forgot no post so you didn`t know it took me forever to figure this out) my tutor is really nice, her name is Koto Tanaka. Her english isn`t that great but i guess im not in japan for english. i had probably the longest converation ive had in japanese with her. It was nice, she knows rachael too from the judo club which i thought was awesome. My advisor (i get to meet him on tuesday) is Ozawa sensei. Hes the JUDO, TAIKO, and KENDO guy!!! sweet jesus all awesome things. I`ve bene pretty much set on joining the kendo or taiko club from the begining so this is a sweetly ironic and awesome turn of events. the only downside is he doesn`t speak any english. once again good since i`m here for japanese but bad since he has to advise me on classes. oh well, im sure it`ll work out.
I promise I will write again soon about my sweet japanese adventures. you know, brave new world and all


Caty