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)