Random Observations

Time to go all Seinfeld on Japan.

 

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What's the deal with nearly every girl wearing high heels despite the realistic obstacles set before them?

1. Nagoya's a very hilly city. Naturally, Nanzan Daigaku is no different. Half of the school is downhill, and some girls still wear 3+inch heels to school. We're not even talking about the bitch of a commute some might take to even get to school.

2. I've been told off by a girl in heels when the typhoon was nearing to be careful and go home, while it was currently pouring outside…

3. Sure, most of the girls are short, but is it worth it when most of the guys are short as well?

However, the more I thought about it, they're probably building the muscles of their ball of the foot to be iron-grade strong as a possible defense against chikans. Hey, I don't want to be at the other end of a Japanese girl's foot when she's pissed off. You know how some spindly character in an anime and still crush boulders without effort? I don't want to test the origin of that theory.

 

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The TV says, "A typhoon is coming."
The newspaper says, "A typhoon is coming."

The Japanese people say, "A typhoon is coming."

The gaijin say, "A typhoon is coming?"

 

As the typhoon comes, Mother Nature says, "It's only going to rain for half the day, sorry!"

 

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Culture shock happens in many different ways.

 

To some, it may be a catalyst for their own emotional problems. To others, it may be the cause of their problems. We've been told at orientation that culture shock actually has a graph that goes from:

 

Arrival bliss à confusion à anger at location à acceptance à adaptation à go home à reverse culture shock

 

To help visualize the graph, a ryuugakusei arrives high on the happy scale, falls deeply, and recovers just in time to go home.

 

On a lighter note, to those who define culture shock loosely, it may be the ingenuity of a faucet above a toilet bowl to conserve water by washing your hands with the water that's destined to be used in the next flush. My friend was totemo bikkuri shita of that particular cultural difference (sorta?). ^o^;

 

As for me? Not really any culture shock, whether it is literal, mental, or emotional, but maybe physical (holy crap, I get tired at 11pm…). But since we have to put something down on the worksheets (yes, worksheets that revolve around a supposedly 100% guarantee that every student gets culture shock), I put down how the Japanese wash their clothes every single day without fail.

 

So supposedly, I can wear the same thing over and over again for a month, and it'd be perfectly fine. XD

 

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"In Japan, girly, effeminate men are considered to be manly, while buff, burly guys are considered to be gay. You might think this means that cute, girly girls are then lesbians, while boyish, tomboys are straight. But that's not the case at all. Everyone in Japan is a lesbian, except for gay men who are straight." –Gaijin Smash

 

I always found this quote from one of his blog posts to be fairly interesting. Of course, it's one of those weird generalizations of a culture, but it's an interesting one, but particularly more for popular culture than anything else.

 

One of the Japanese girls that I've talked to said that most of her previous ryuugakusei friends have always been culture shocked (bwuaha) at how the guys here take care of themselves in the hair, fashion, makeup, etc. department. It was kind of ironic for her to ask me if I was surprised by that.

 

I haven't kept my crossdressing a secret really. I've referred to it occasionally to my friends and even in class a few times.

 

However, I realized a couple of things. First off, the guy clothes here are much more feminine than in the States. I'm talking capris, nearly skinny jeans, and fabric that's not meant to have anything more than a +1 charisma and possible -20 defense.

 

Secondly, even if I were to attempt to buy clothes here, it's a good possibility that most clothes that look cute, men's or women's, would not even fit on me. I've seriously seen guys that have legs thinner than my arms Okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but the crazy thing is that it's not by much. O.o;

 

In fact, the only thing that seems to distinguish guys from girls is skirts/dresses and heels. Anything involving a pair of pants is automatically thrown up into the androgynous category.

 

I like to believe that I have a pretty good gendar, especially after working as a critic on a gender forum to help people improve their skills in looking more as a male or female. But I have to admit, the Japanese are so hard to even attempt to gendar.

 

It doesn't help that a good number of uniform-age girls (middle-high school) have short hair and enough masculine facial features to look like a boy in a sailor uniform, which, when compared to guys who look nearly identical to them, except that they're aren't wearing a skirt, confuses the hell out of me.

 

Anyway, I thought about what would happen if I actually did wear my usual outfits here.

 

With the amount of training the Japanese have with guys that look like girls…

 

I'd probably end up using the men's room in a miniskirt.

 

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I hate pink. That's not secret.

 

Yet somehow, I'm attracted to pink things.

 

At home I have pink jewelry, a pink blanket, pink shirts, pink nail polish….

 

I think I came to a revelation here. I still hate pink to the level of abhorrence, but I think that's starting to change.

 

I bought a yukata, and knowingly bought a pink obi to go with it.

 

Well, fuck…

 

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Japan doesn't have Halloween, and many other American holidays. I was severely disappointed before coming because I love Halloween, especially in recent years because I like getting dressed up for it, but knew that I probably wouldn't get a chance to celebrate it outside of the American friend circle.

 

I have on my schedule, three parties lined up. I'm in charge of managing the party at my own homestay house with my okaasan. I have a party at the dorm, and another at my okaasan's American co-worker (a teacher) as well.

 

I wonder if I can bring Drag Ball over here too as a 'Ford tradition. >.>

 

~=~=~=~

 

My host parents are mean. After a few days, they blatantly call me okashii, and they're determined to make me fat.

 

Once, I told them about how Philly's weather is rather erratic at times, and then my okaasan says that it's because I'm there.

 

The other night, we had shabu shabu (hot pot, pretty much), my okaasan was telling me about how konnyaku (Japanese potato) that's zero calories and how it's good for diets and stuff, and then proceeds to dump spoonfuls of meat into my bowl, and give me dessert, even when I say it's fine.

 

On the equinox national holiday (that the ryuugakusei still had to go to school on), you're supposed to eat ohagi, a special Japanese sweet made for that day. My okaasan was telling me about how they eat it every year, and that it's very special, and that it's traditional, etc. This was after coming home from a yakiniku house, where we had a huuuge dinner, especially since Lies was there, and they wanted to spoil her addiction to meat.

 

So they guilt-trip me into eating the ohagi, and then I realized that they weren't eating it. I called them on that and otousan san said that he was just gonna eat one tomorrow (but in reality, he wasn't because he doesn't like sweet stuff), and my mom "ate one already."

 

Total bs.

 

Apparently, I'm not allowed to go home until I gain 10 kilos, or when I'm 220 lbs.-ish. I keep telling them that I don't want to do that, and yet, they keep feeding me awesome food…

 

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I sometimes feel like Japanese culture contains things that I imagine as Japanese kosher. There's a protocol for nearly every single thing that you do or say, and every Japanese person, young or old, rude or polite, sleeping or awake, follows it mostly to the 't.' It's kind of creepy knowing that if you so much as forget to put your money on the money tray to pay for stuff, time stops, and everybody stares at you with a "you didn't use the tray…" and subsequently plots how to be passive aggressive against you for the next week to show how they disapprove of what you did or didn't do.

 

Thank god I can still pull the gaijin card. ^^

Some Accomplishments

In this past week, some cool things have happened.

The first of which is at this famous gold foil making place (yeah, yeah, name to be inserted later) where we had a chance to have a 'gold sticking' experience. What this involved was using gold and silver foil about a micron thick (not kidding), tape, glue/lacquer, and a smooth lack jewelry box to create a design.

This craft essentially involved creating and manipulating negative space by using the tape as a medium and foil the colouring method. For some odd reason, Kirby was in my mind and the time, and was completely stuck there, so I had to draw a design of him. I didn't really think about how hard it'd be to make a round shape with tape and negative space, but it turned out pretty well.

http://photos-e.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v335/159/64/1472430019/n1472430019_29348_3391.jpg

=~=~=

So on Friday night, a group of us went out to karaoke for some singing and nomihoudai. When you do nomihoudai, it is essentially all you can drink. The place we went to had an entrance plus nomihoudai fee of 3000 yen. And we can stay there for as long as we want. In this case, their closing time was 5am. We came in at 7pm.

o.o;

We had 10 hours of nonstop karaoke and free drinks. Thank god most of them were drunk because I suck at singing. XD I learned a couple of valuable lessons from that experience.

First, Lychee Orange cocktail is awesome. That was pretty much the only thing I really drank that night.

Second, just because it's a song that you might know, Karaoke changes things up sometimes by repeating a single line over and over and over again because it's the only part that most people know apparently, or changing the tempo of a song. It's mostly the English songs that this happen to because it's hard to sing English fast.

Third, they have probably a total of 5 different live shot videos that are used for more than one song. Any kind of song that deals with relationship automatically goes to this video of a guy that looks very similar to Carrot Top being denied by this girl walking her dog, stalks her and gives her a letter before running off, only to sit lonely on a beach before she comes to him, takes off his ear buds, and then proceeds to put one back into his ear and share the other one with herself.

It was okay the first time with "Oops, I did it again" but after showing up every 2 or 3 songs, it got really old, really fast. It had a brief jump in hilarity around 3am when the alcohol started setting in though.

I wonder how much does it pay to be a professional karaoke actor because I could've sworn I saw the same lady in other videos.

Concurrent with this adventure was the super scary typhoon that we were supposed to have that night. The main reason why most of us chose to stay was because since we thought that the city would completely shut down, we might as well stay rather than fighting our way back home walking because the trains were shut down (us hour-plus commuters have to think that way). Throughout the day, there were policemen blocking off roads in preparation and all that stuff. Other Japanese students were telling us that it's better off not to go at all, or leave really early because the scheduled attack was around 10pm.

We were all afraid and locked down inside the karaoke box drinking and singing our night away. The windows are blocked by boards to provide sound proofing and stuff. I was curious, so I slid the window open to see how bad it was outside.

http://photos-e.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v335/159/64/1472430019/n1472430019_36196_1723.jpg

The incredible typhoon was laid waste to the city as you can see here with the biggest piece of destruction that we found the next morning.

http://photos-f.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v335/159/64/1472430019/n1472430019_36205_3306.jpg

Thank god we stayed all night. Otherwise, we wouldn't even make to the station. >.>;

Moving on, I told my okaasan that I wasn't going to go home until Saturday night, after spending the day at Ossu Kannnon, and then going to my friend Cheesy Saltines' welcome party at her house. Even though my parents are both going to be at work, and my host brother is going to be at school, I still somehow felt obligated to stick with my original plan of staying out because I didn't want to surprise them out of the blue by changing up plans suddenly, which is kind of rude.

>.>

<.<

Okay, so I wasn't really being that thoughtful. I didn't want to climb the 10 minute mountain road that it takes for me to get home from the station.

The solution was obvious of course.

I would sleep on the subway. *cheers*

The Meijo line is the main subway that goes in a circle around the city. Since everything is automated, you slide your commuter pass/ticket into the entrance of a station, and when you slide it at the exit station, it makes note that you've completed your commute.

A slight loophole in this is that you can ride around as many times as you want, and not get charged for it unless you exit the station.

Here's the exact log from my journey with no changes besides names:

5:55 am (Nagoya Daigaku)

- Starting my journey of ~6 hours on a train b/c I essentially have nowhere else to go.

- Jump-stars and Candy Pills are going home to get stuff/sleep after 10 hrs of karaoke nomihoudai (lychee orange = good)

- Gonna carabineer my bag and all that for some modicum of safety

-Probably eat after a couple of rounds.

- how long those it actually take to get back to Nagoya Daigaku?

6:05 am (Ozone)

- Jump-stars and Candy Pills leaves

- I'm hungry

-Starting Jump Ultimate

6:06 (Heian-dori)

- 2 punk kids from Ozone gets off. They looked high.

6:16 (Sakae)

- Soo Many People this early

6:22 (Kanayama)

- Technically ends here, but goes to Yagoto

- prob change trains there

6:29 (Horita)

- Offed Game

- Sleepy, might sleep after all

6:39 (Yagoto-Yagoto Nisseki) [ed: this is where my writing starts to crap out]

- I wanna sleep

7:07 (Sakae)

- Just woke up

- AC right on top of me is cold

7:13 (Kanayama)

- train operator switches

- I can probably pull this off after all

7:38 (ゆがおか) [ed. yes, in Japanese because I couldn't remember English at the time]

- pasted Nagoya (#3)

8:25 (Nagoya)

- Not paying attention anymore

-just sleeping

9:13 (やがとう)

- Just woke up

- Not hungry much, but will be

- need to brush teeth and wash up

9:26 (なごやDome前やだ)

- Decided to hang out at Ozone for breakfast

- Actually need to use the restroom anyway

=~=~=

The ride took about 3:31 hrs/mins but I learned a lot of things and created a lot of questions from those things.

First off, why the fuck is there a rush at 6am in the morning on a Saturday?! It takes roughly 40-50 minutes to do a roundtrip on a train, so using an average, why do you need to be anywhere at 6:30ish in the morning? This doesn't include commuting on the other trains that go out into the outskirts of the city.

----well great, took me a week to get this far. Might as well post this and move on to more current events

Chotto Hen

So a slight combination of classes starting, being lazy, and catching a virus on my computer has delayed my updates here and elsewhere.

 

Anyway, just wanted to bring some recent news up on here.

 

Last weekend, IES went on a field trip to Kanazawa, where we stayed at this awesome ryokan with 3 different baths, including a co-ed open aired bath.

 

Now the first thing that people would do hearing that is cringe or go "oh-ho?~" XD It really isn't as embarrassing or pervy as you'd think. The males and females are separated at the entrance, and everybody is required to wear a towel over the body/privates. It's like hanging out at a pool, only with the knowledge that only a towel protects your modesty. At the very least, they do have a separate far off pool for women who feel that they still need their privacy.

 

The manager of the outdoor bath is an obaasan, which makes sense because I'm conviced that obaasans secretly rule the country. They're everywhere. They're the people that clean up the subway stations, train cars, streets, just about anything and everything. And they're ninjas about it. If you dropped a bottle on the ground, it'd disappear before it hits the ground and then you'll black out to find yourself face to face with a legion of obaasans, who'd do something nasty, like feed you natto, or make you feel abysmally guilty for making the obaasan with a major back hump pick up your trash. oO;

 

But yeah, in this case of the ofuro house obaasan, she makes sure that everyone wears their towels correctly, both men and women. This is why having an obaasan makes sense. If you have an ojiisan, it's an automatic 'chikan' alert when he 'helps' the girls. Take two other guys who were in the changing room with me at the time. One of the guys wondered if there was a bigger towel size, and she ushered him back into the room just so that she can say "chotto hen" (that's weird) and open up the towel (it's a multi-snap fastener style around the waist) so she can fasten it for him. My friend just stood there awkwardly speechless.

 

Then comes the other guy. She just walked over to him, opened his towel up, then said "chotto hen ne" before fixing it for him. Awkward silence occurs, and I ninja-ed myself out of there before she attempts to call my hip region "hen" for whatever reason. All in all, the one thing that I learned from this is that obaasans are immune to being pervs.

 

Somehow…

Cat Scrubbin’

The first thing that comes to mind today is how one scrubs a cat.

 

It started off innocently enough. We were getting our art materials for the various courses that require them, and some of my friends are taking the ikebana (flower arrangement) class. Included with their starter pack is this piece of wood with a ton of nails on one side akin to a deadly brush, or flower arrangement base, whichever is cooler-sounding at the moment.

 

On Sunday, my okaasan introduced me to our neighbor across the street, a cute little obaasan. Before I go on, let me give a bit of a background for this story.

 

The obaasan owns a cat. At least, I think it's one. Every night, without fail, I go to sleep listening to the wails of a dying animal, most notably those of a cat. Putting two and two together doesn't require an Asian calculator. I'm guessing that it's a pretty old cat or something.

 

Back to the somewhat present. As I am being introduced to this obaasan, she's scrubbing her cat. Okay, so some people wash their pets in front of their house out in the open. The cat's lying on it side on a rag of some sort. As we talk, I see the obaasan scrubbing the cat as if it needed some polish. oO;

 

It wasn't *scrub scrub scrub.*

 

It was *Skshh skshh skshh.* I was thinking to myself, wtf.

 

At the time, it seemed pretty normal, until she held the cat by the front legs and flipped it over like a fish being de-scaled. The cat just flopped there before the obaasan resumes the skshh skshh skshh. This happened over and over. Flop over flop. Skshh over skssh. The only reason this story came up was because the ikebana base reminded me of a brush, and I wondered what would've happened if the obaasan just happened to be an avid ikebana practitioner, and mixed up brushes…

 

Oddly enough, I didn't hear any dying wails, but there should've been some. At the time, I took it nonchalantly as it went on, but in retrospect, it's just about the funniest thing I can think of that has happened to me so far.

 

Well, there has been a lot of funny things that happened to me, but I guess this qualifies as one not directly related to me.

 

Yay, I finally got a phone today!!! It took us over 2 hours to somehow finish, despite having all of our paperwork essentially done yesterday. -.-

 

As the lady called my okaasan for permission (>.>), I noticed how her voice jumped into the hyper pitch range. I've always known that in Japan, especially in the service industry, the faster and higher you talk, the more deference you are giving to the other person. I believe that the pitch range goes somewhere like this.

 

Deep à Husky à Casual à Puberty à Schoolgirl à Pikachu à Hyper Pitch à Dog whistle

 

I'm sure that there's some intermediate levels in between those, as well as varying degrees, but that's essentially what I've broke it down into. This is why I always fail half of Japanese listening tests. First they'd have the male guys talking, and it's all "oh, I got this."

 

Then the girl starts talking, and the recorder somehow manages to record her voice, play it back in slow capture, and still manage to explain how Hamtarou crossed the bridge to get some chestnuts for Ribon, kick Taishou in the nuts, and saved the world from Burandon chasing his tail.

 

I'm exaggerating. She'd probably just get to the part about Taishou and aizuchi (back-channeling conversation) the rest just to throw us off with a 'ne,' followed by a 'ne' from the guy, and 'sou desu ka' the rest of the time, and still somehow get her meaning across.

 

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, I finally figured out how to use the infrared thingy to send my information to other people's phones with just the information I want, and how my name is spelled and all that jazz. It's a super cool function, and it beats the whole "I'll call you and just save my name" method.

 

It's getting late, and I have to study for a test tomorrow that would decide whether or not I am really worthy to be in the 400 level, which unfortunately requires that I know everything in 200-300. That's both books of Genki. Can I cram almost 2 years' worth of material into my head tonight?

 

Probably not. I'm just gonna play with my phone.

Everything’s in order here

I figure that I ought to update this more often.

 

Or as randomly as possible, which seems to be the case of what's actually happening here.

 

I already know that I have a strange effect on the world around me. It's pretty much a proven fact that it's never boring around me. And when it is, it's just the calm before the storm. Part of it has to do with me being a totally weird person, but weirdness attracts other weirdos and things kind of happen.

 

Take for instance, this girl I shall name Lies. Great girl, same program and all that. We started off as pretty normal, and now we behave worse than little children. I'm talking, "she poked me!" and "nuh-uh, he did it first!" to our other friends, especially to our poor friend Temple. I'll explain the names in a little bit. It really does not seem like things are that weird in type, but it's one of the "you have to be there" things. All Lies does is say her namesake as a rebuttal to everything I say, do, or even think. It's terrible, and today, she _blew hard into my ear enough to make me fall out of my seat in the subway_.

 

Of course, I kind of poked her in the side of the stomach earlier, and I had it coming. I just didn't know when, and she kept having an innocent look about her. Kind of sucks sitting next to her not knowing when she would strike back. In between getting videotaped by another friend, and stared at by obaachans, it was pretty damn embarrassing. Thank god I have a mostly complete lack of self-consciousness.

 

Temple is Lies and my 'mommy' of sorts. She actually lives in a small Buddhist temple, whose caretaker teaches piano during the day. The temple used to be pretty old and worn until she watched a "Pimp my Ride" version of old Japanese temples where this American architect or something comes and "pimps" the place out. In addition to renewing the temple, they added on a super modern house to the side with nearly invisible (among the wall) doors. It's pretty cool, but after nearly a lifetime of working in construction, I could see where they cut corners a bit to finish the house quickly, namely with the spackling technique and somewhat uneven leveling at some points in the house. All in all, it's an amazingly pretty house though. I just get insanely anal when it comes to observing sometimes.

 

Speaking of houses. Holy crap, I'm in a nice one. Japan is notorious for crowded homes and having a bit of dirt is a luxury here. Not to mention cars (the public transportation is the main mode for most of the country), garage, multiple floors, etc. I mean, it's not uber rich, but it's quite comfortable here, in my own room with my own bathroom down the hall. They have a dog too, a really cute two-year old mostly golden retriever mix. I don't know where the other half come from, but neither does my okaasan. My family has two cars, a sweet home theater system (that they actually don't use that often at all), a piano, an authentic tea ceremony tatami room, a rock garden, and a garage. The little things matter as well, like having a complicated security system or eating really great bread from a depaato (Japanese department store) for breakfast.

 

Oh my god, food. I love the food here. I have not tasted something that terribly turned me off besides things that I already know, like onions/scallions or pocari-sweat like substances. I go to sleep full every night. I wonder if I'd gain a ridiculous amount of weight because I'm not exercising as much as I would be back in the states >.> <.< . um…yeah. But hey, at least I walk a lot.

 

Yes. I walk now. To those who know me personally, that's a huuuuuge feat. I get so tired everyday just from walking. It's sick. I hate walking. My house is on the top of this huge hill that takes about 15 minutes to climb from the station. That's where my exercise comes in. No more biking for me. I'll just climb a mountain wanna-be every single night. -.-

 

The sad thing is that I know that I would not be as tired if I was on a bike and rode up the thing every day. But yeah, I walk now, more because I have no choice. I am trying to get into the cycling club to appease my bike addiction. Do any of you have any idea how hard it is for me to find cruiser style bikes attractive? I mean, seriously. There have been some sleek road bikes here, but the sad thing is that I have yet to see one being rode.

 

That's something I've noticed about Japanese people. A good number of them can barely ride a bike. I see people riding bikes at a pretty slow rate, and shake immensely. It hurts just to watch them. I'm not talking a little shaking and then fix themselves. I'm talking a constant steady shake. I might be a bit harsh on this observation, but consider it my bias on cruisers. I absolutely hate those things. They need a "Pimp my Bike" show. If they have "Pimp my Temple" in Japan, I'm pretty sure they'd have something like that for bikes.

 

Oh yeah, one last thing that happened today. I went to get a phone with some friends. Getting a phone in Japan is pretty hard. You need your passport, student ID (for the student discount), and an alien registration card/proof certificate so that they can make sure that you're not some scheming American who came to steal their technology and hack the unlock code back home in order to use their phones.

 

There are phones here with flippy screen television technology. Okay, so imagine a regular rectangular flip phone. Then turn the screen 45 degrees clockwise, and it'll turn into this. http://www.itechnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/softbank_sharp_911sh_2.jpg

 

And it picks up a decent reception to watch tv _for free_. Hot damn, no wonder Americans need to steal this technology. In my case, it was between this type of phone and a camera phone http://www.mobile-t-mobile.com/uimg/SoftBank-920SC.jpg that's pretty sexy. My friend Candy-pills and I were deciding on a phone, and we happened to choose this one. 5 megapixels in a camera phone. oO; that's better than my camera on a good day. I'm sure most people would lean towards the cool flippy Japanese sexy television phone that you can't get in the states. But hey, I'm choosing functionality over novelty values. I think that's a fair trade.

 

Here's the thing about Japanese cell phone plans. If everything goes right, I will be able to have unlimited texting/calls between other Softbank phones, free incoming calls/msgs, including international, low rates per 30 seconds to other phones, and other miscellaneous per-usage charges for one low basic price. If you buy the phone upfront, there is no cancellation fee _at all_, even if the plan says 2 years or so. That must cost a lot right? Well, obviously the phone itself and activation fee is pretty hefty, but wait till you hear the price per month.

 

Alright, brace yourself.

 

Braced?

 

I'll give you one last warning.

 

315.00 JPY = 2.90062 USD

 

No, that is not a typo. For less than 3 dollars a month, I can get all of that. All I gotta do is make sure that I'm only calling/communicating with other Softbank users, and be frugal about my usage to other people, and I'd literally be paying less than ten cents a day for a sweet phone with service any other Japanese would enjoy. The upfront cost for me would be ~$200 for the phone itself, which is marked down because of the plans that I sign up for as a promotional price and can later cancel (in fact, encouraged by the Softbank staff to do so) to keep the monthly price low. Keep in mind that this is with a student discount and economical usage.

 

Okay, so I had all of my paperwork ready, the lady finished scanning my certificate of alien registration files, etc., etc. I was just about to sign.

 

I repeat. I was just about to sign.

 

Then she notices, "Oh, you're nineteen."

 

Holy. Hell.

 

In case you didn't know. The official age to do anything in this whole country is twenty. Which sadly includes, yes, buying a cell phone.

 

What happens next was embarrassing. My friend Candy-pills is also 19. We went as a group. Lies already got her phone, and was supposed to cancel stuff today. Our other friend, Curly, wanted to buy a phone too. Candy-pills and my friend, Jump-stars, did a ton of research, and was ready to buy a phone there as well.

 

So here's how it all went down.

Lies forgot her passport.

Curly did not get her certificate of alien registration files yet.

Jump-stars forgot his certificate of alien registration files.

Both Candy-pills and I were too young.

 

It was a day of epic fail. Especially considering that we were there for at least an hour or more asking every question thought possible (well, Jump-stars did most of the work. Candy-pills and I just messed around the entire time). Candy-pills and I now have parent permission forms for our host parents to fill out and bring back to the store so that the saleslady could call and confirm with our parents (yes, they actually double check that) that we have permission to buy a cell phone on our own.

 

Here's to tomorrow. >.<

I is in ur Japan, raiding your ‘conbini’

Arriving in Japan, there are a couple of things you should know.

 

First off, make sure that you do not watch the airplane movies in German or else you will not be able to effectively talk about the movie with the rest of the group that you will meet very shortly.

 

In terms of baggage claim, they are amazingly fast and efficient. As soon as you get off the plane and walk to the next room where the baggage claim is, it is more than likely that your luggage has already arrived. I was debating on whether or not I should put some kind of timer inside my baggage next time I go to Japan and see if I could beat it. It really is that fast.

 

Customs was a funny thing. The regulations now need fingerprints scan and facial photo, which is not too bad. The whole deal with the guy looking back and forth between my passport and me for good five minutes was weird. Especially when compared to the next station where you proclaim any dutiable stuff and how much money you have (is this like, Customs part 2 or something?). Yeah, it went something like this.

 

"Hai, kochira ni itte kudasai." (Please come over here)

I then put one of my suitcases on the belt, and then give him my customs form and passport.

He looks at the passport, and then asks me,

"Nanzan Daigaku desu ka?" (You're going to Nanzan University?)

"uh, hai." (Uh, yeah.)

He then closes the passport, looks around sketchily, and then does that thing where you move closer, hunch your shoulders up, and waves his hand to tell me to move on.

Confused as I was, I just did it.

 

Apparently, he didn't even need to check if I was carrying anything worth a duty, or if I was bringing anything illegal into the country. I could've brought a year's supply of Prozac to sell to the Nihonjin and he wouldn't have cared.

 

There's also a section on the customs form that asks if you brought more than ￥10,0000 ($1,000) or so in cash. Yeah, students obviously don't carry that much money. That's why I brought the Prozac.

 

So my unlock code never came. And T-mobile lied about how there was coverage in Nagoya. I have yet to get any service or Wi-Fi anywhere. It's terrible, especially with the lack of internet. There happened to be a single public internet at the hotel we stayed at the first night, so I sent an email out to T-mobile to let them know. Customer service said exactly 24 hours. The website says 24-48 hours, and sometimes up to 7 days.

 

Last time I checked, that's a huuuge delivery margin. I need a phone by the end of the first week, so hopefully, it'll come. I don't feel like renting a phone for just a month or so and get my code the next day. Anybody with a T-mobile Shadow code want to help me out?

 

At the hotel, the first thing I noticed (sadly enough) was the TV programming. There's a pamphlet on top of the TV called "Watch the Rainbow Channel." Any guesses on what that is?

 

Yeah, it's a 24 hour adult channel. The pamphlet was complete with sample pictures of topless Japanese girls. The front itself had a pic of two girls that were obviously naked going for the lesbian effect. XD

 

The next thing I noticed was that the bathroom was a pod. Seriously. The toilet was one of those high-end multifunction possible killing machine ones, and the shower was nothing more than a handle attached to the sink. It was hard not to think of myself as a dish being washed as I turn the handle to change the faucet flow. The water gets amazingly hot, amazingly fast.

 

I dislike hot water. I'm the type that tends to shower in lukewarm, maybe more on the warmer side, but that's it. Hot water is too much of a shock for me. I sucked it up though when we went to the ryokan in Inuyama where they have a hot bath.

 

I approached it like a regular pool. It's cold/hot when you get in, but once you submerse yourself, it gets a little better. It was a bit awkward with everybody being new to the whole 'nekkid while you bathe thing' but after a while, it became a meh issue. Needless to say, I totally forgot to bring my towels with me, including the washcloth-sized one used to cover up. -.-;

 

So in reference to the title. I've only been to the conbini (convenience store) twice, but I already feel like that is too much. Conbini are awesome. They're much more than your regular 7-11 or corner store. Prepared food is always plenty. There's a lot of drinks to choose from. And best of all, the clerk is always so happy and helpful. They say every single part of the transaction. From the irasshaimase (welcome!) to the price of every single item to how much change they'll give you back. I'd imagine it would get tiring after a while. Too bad we can't give tips because they do an awesome job. Damn the establishment for emphasizing how to perform their jobs well as a minimum requirement, so there is no need for tips. The same applies for restaurants as well, as I had experience in Maido!, the local Japanese supermarket near Haverford.

 

The food here is fishy. I think there has been, maybe, 4 pieces of non-fish meat so far. It's not too bad, but the ryokan that we stay at serves really traditional food. Even though I eat most, if not all of the food, I still end up really hungry a lot of the time. Hopefully, once I get to my host family, I'll be able to eat the good ol' plain stuff, like curry rice. Woo!

 

This is long for a post. The next post will focus more on the activities we've done so far.

I'm hungry....

That's all I can think about right now. You know how when you stay up really, really late, and you usually get a case of the munchies?

I got some mad munchies right now.

I finally finished packing around 4ish. That was mostly because I was sitting around watching TV and taking apart my camera and all that unnecessary stuff.

I think I got my bags to be at a reasonable weight, but we'll see. I need to get so food in me before I leave.

I don't know when I'll have internets, so I just wanted everybody to know one thing before I leave.

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Forget this, I'm hungry. I am convinced that Japan is entirely made up of food according to the ludicrious number of food topics whenever somebobdy talks about the country.

I. Am. Going. To. Eat. Japan.

Seriously, no lie.