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Tomorrow school starts. yikes. This has been a very long summer break indeed. I'm not sure if I am ready to study, but that shouldn't matter too much. I'm only supposed to take 3 classes a semester, how crazy is that? I'm thinking Japanese, something about Japanese civilization, and history of Japanese women. I think I can transfer those, except the language class, for major credit. Tomorrow I will also go to an aikido class and see how that goes. On a side note, I am noticing how much speaking Japanese has effected my use of English, and it is strange.
Tomorrow is also the day that I move into Soky's room. We are going to attempt to share a room here at the mansion for 3 weeks. eeg. scary. if we survive, we will be fine in the apartment. so its a good make or break kind of test.
I was going to go to ochanomizu today to look around used instrument stores and consider buying a new instrument to not practice enough, like i so often do, but the weather is poor, so the trip has been postponed to a yet undecided date.
I was somewhat looking forward to actually experiencing 4 distinct seasons. But I think that in Tokyo there are only 2. Two days ago it was summer, and yesterday was winter. In changed 10 degrees Celsius in 1 night. How strange.
oh, one more thing. apparently andrew levine is in raul's circle at kansaigaidai (his college). pretty cool.
okhaihaibaibai

Some good news

Everything is going well with the housing. Tomorrow I will go back to Sophia, buy some insurance, and have them fill out the forms for becoming my guarantor. Soon enough they will transfer my homestay money back into my bank account, and I will make a huge payment for the new apartment on the fourth of October.
Takahashisan from the UC Tokyo study will try to get Soky and I cheap rooms here at the Mansion. It's usually really expensive. I think she will be able to get it taken care of, even if she feels bad asking the man here. So, we are lucky to have her on our side I suppose.
Soky seems to be doing a lot better already, just learning that he won't be at the dorm much longer seems to have cheered him up. It should be a good year.
Also. We wandered around the school a bit today, and when we were walking down the hallways of the clubs building we ran into some guys from the Aikido club. I asked when they practiced, and I will go check it out on Monday night. I'm a bit excited. I also learned today that I'm expected to take far fewer classes than I thought. Unfortunately, I told Sakabasan that I wouldn't be able to make it to tea ceremony tomorrow, and I will be really busy so I thought I should play it safe, but I am looking forward to being able to go with her to that in the future, as well. Tomorrow night though, I will meet with the guys I played soccer with before (they don't mind if I'm late, I think), and we will play some sport maybe? or just hang out? I invited Sokai too, and hope that he will come.
The new animal collective is really good too. osusume.
Can't wait for school?. naw, i still don't miss school, ha. but i am looking forward to various club activities, and am also looking into moving into the apartment, teching it out, and inviting people over for dinner and whatnot. I think it's about time to learn how to cook. and when i go back to UCSD, if my mom isn't too busy, maybe I can learn a thing or too from her.
Oo oo, I'm going to get a hanko too. Thats the red stamp you see on Japanese things, they use it instead of signatures. It may be expensive, but I'm looking forward to my katakana hanko (foreign word alphebet). I bet they don't make too many of them. I'm exited.
Alright, I'll try to have more positive updates in the near future. but no promises.

I think everything is settled

I'm going to move in to a pretty sweet apartment in Kameido on Oct 21, with my friend So-ky from UCSB. There is an Ikea in Japan, so we are set on furniture. Also, I think we'll buy a dreamcast, so that covers everything else. We may end up sharing a Mansion room until then, which is pretty make or break, but should work out.
Yesterday I was playing the latest guilty gear arcade game, which I had done a few times before. Except this time I got dominated repeatedly by someone playing May, it was a learning experience.
Today I'll go to Sophia and see if they can get me a guarantor and what not.

ok. bbfn.

Housing update

Yesterday I moved to room 819, my shortest move thus far. I can stay here as late as October 1st. Also, yesterday I found a place that I think I'd like to move in to. I'm not sure who my roommate will be. But I can figure that out afterwards. It shouldn't be too much of a problem. The place is in (Yappari) Kameido. its got 2 rooms and a kitchen for about 880 dollars a month, I think. Which is pretty good for Tokyo. Unfortunately that place won't be open until the 21st, so I'll have to figure out what to do until then. We will see...

I'm back

in the Mansion. I'm living in Seth's room. Last night was Jerich's room. Next week I may move to Jameson's room. I have no idea where I'm going to live for the next year and it is frightening. I find this city lonely in general, and I feel like I have been saying goodbye to various people way too often for the last 2 or 3 months. Anyways, the prospect of living alone for the next year seems scary. Living in a dormitory doesn't appeal to me either, though. If I am unable to live with a host-family, and the previous one doesn't count :), I think I will choose somewhere that is nice and in a good location, even if it is expensive. I think that if it was too small to have people over, I would be sad. I also think that if I didn't have this Jasso scholarship, I would consider traveling around Japan until winter quarter, then coming back to UCSD and graduating. Life in Enc wasn't so bad. (although I would be returning to a different place.)
On a more positive note, life will be okay. I'm looking forward to joining a martial arts club, I miss human interaction. I think the way the humans, especially in Japan, don't touch each other stresses me out. That may sound weird, but there is something very refreshing about getting thrown around. On the other hand I really don't like hand shakes anymore. Bowing is easier, and Japanese people are terrible at shaking hands. Perhaps I will teach them. They have a poor sense of the rhythm, firmness, and duration. Maybe I need to take a step back and decide why these things are important, and then teach. In any case, if they think that they are going to make me feel more comfortable by offering out a handshake, well, at least their heart was in the right place.

I forgot to mention. Someone killed themselves in the Mansion today. So if I start referring to it as the haunted mansion, I'm still just talking about the kameido weekly mansion, so try not to get confused. I don't know any details, because I decided not to care, please try to do the same.

The reasons that my host family was bad are fairly interesting, but I don't feel like writing about it right now. Sometimes it seems funny, other times just really unfortunate, and still other times it just seems tiring to talk about. They gave me a set of rules that they wanted to me to sign, and my friend made a copy. I'm not supposed to show people/distribute the rules, but I'm not sure about Seth. Basically, I'm probably not going to eat cornflakes again for a while.

I'll probably update again soon. furusato wo yoku omotteiru kara.

Today is the prison break

I will explain later

You aren't going to believe this

The other day when I was walking through Kameido station, I saw The Rock. I was too embarrassed to ask for an autograph though.

Alright, time for a post.

We go on the roof of the mansion sometimes, and it's really fun. I like it up there. There is a great view, the breeze feels nice at night, and it is pretty much the only communal space we have here.

On Friday, I went to the elementary school. It was very fun, and the kids were cute. I visited a 3rd grade English class. We played a game that was aimed at teaching them the names of 4 or 5 fruit. They did a dance, practiced a basic greeting, and got our autographs.



Friday night everyone had to work late, so we didn't end up doing the big meal or whatever we had planned. I'm referring to the plan the I had made with the salary men from the ramen shop. Anyways, I ate there, and the guys gradually funneled in. I went back to one of their homes out it Saitama-ken. It was quite an experience. The city itself reminded me of the towns that line the freeways in the central valley. At first I could only think that it was like vista, but when my mom mentioned the central valley I realized that that was what it really reminded me of.

When we got to his house, I met and talked with his wife and son for a while then went to sleep. Mamechan, as the salary man is called, snores violently, and I wasn't able to sleep well.

After a tasty breakfast we drove about an hour out to Mt. Tsukuba. We rode up to the peak in a cable car. The view wasn't as good as it could have been, because it was overcast. He wasn't really into hiking I suppose, but we missed the ride down, thus having to wait 20 minutes, and I took advantage of the opportunity to walk around a bit. The mountain itself was very nice and tranquil. I greatly enjoyed my brief stroll.








On the way back to his house we stopped for lunch. I found it funny that he chose to stop for ramen of all things. I guess he just rally likes ramen. When we arrived back at his house we were to take naps in his living room. He napped, but I felt awkward and either embarrassed or vulnerable or something, and thought it would be to strange to fall asleep in his living room while his family was going about their daily routines. Also, his earthshaking snores probably would have prevented me from falling asleep had I tried.

For dinner he and his wife prepared a feast that included tempura, rice with mountain vegetables, cucumber salad, yaki-tori (chicken), inarizushi, edamame, and miso soup. It was great. But for some reason the wife didn't eat with us, and I felt a little bad about that.



The man also has three daughters all about the same age as me. One I saw briefly during breakfast, I said good morning. One I saw standing in a room looking the other way for a moment. The other, I did not see. That was the extent of my interaction with them. I talked to the brother more though. He is an astro-physicist in graduate school, studying something about sending radiowaves light years away to learn about space.

Today I met with Sei Sensei for lunch, she took me to a delicious Japanese style restaurant. The table we sat at was in an enclosed room with a tatami floor and a small mantel type area with a wall scroll. It was cool. She showed me some pictures of her family and young daughter, maybe a year or 2 old? I'm not really sure. Afterwards I studied a hung out with binodo and anji (those are the katakana versions of their names as I understand them.) We went to a couple markets, ate some foods, went on the roof, and shared some music.


I've been asked what a salary man is by a few people. It is a word to describe the basic white class worker in Japan. It is the equivalent of a company man. Someone that general works for one company for their entire career.

Future post preview

Today I went to a Japanese elementary school, it was fun. Tonight I am going out with my salary-man friends, and will spend the night at one of their homes in the suburbs, and do sight seeing tomorrow.

I'll be sure to talk about it afterward.
Also, I'm meeting Sei sensei for lunch on Sunday.

Not much longer

My class ends in less than a week, and I'll be moving to my new home on the 14th.
To think that my room here is smaller than my bedroom back home is very strange. I think that I will really enjoy living in my room back home while I finish out my stint at UCSD.
My collection of juice cartons is growing with each day, I still haven't decided what to do with them all. Tomorrow, I plan to drink milk, just for fun.

Yesterday I was invited to go get korean food in shinookubo, a korean area. Me and seth went, and jay treated us. He had won a jackpot at pachinko, believe it or not. We had yakiniku, some chicken stew type dish that he described as sweet and korean alcohol called souju (i think) for those who were drinking. It was all tasty.

We then moved on to part 2, another korean restaurant, where we ate live octopus. It was only the sliced up tentacles of a small octopus, but still quite an experience. Those suctions are pretty amazing.



Part three was a classy bar on the 25th floor of the prince hotel in downtown shinjuku (the business center of tokyo). He had a $200 (retail $30) bottle of whiskey that they were holding onto for him since he had not finished it during previous visits. I really enjoyed walking into that classy establishment dressed in my traditional encinitas garb.



The view was very impessive, and the fruit platter delicious. The mango was particularly tasty. Jay is a very interesting guy, a hard worker and a bit of a high-roller with his mind set on entering korea's parliament and reforming international trade agreements. Seth is also good people, a cs major who is serious about comedy. I think he'd like to pursue some sort of performance career, but i'm not sure.



If I never go back to a bar like that, I won't mind at all. Classy isn't really my scene. But still, it was quite enjoyable, and I'm very glad that I went.



ha, i think she saw me take this picture.

I'm uploading some pictures to my flickr.

The pictures are of:
Some of my fellow classmates and I making then eating curry on the roof of the mansion.
A couple pictures of class and then a picture of another curry meal.
A gathering at a classmates apartment for yakiniku and socializing (he doesn't live at the same place as the rest of us.)
Many many pictures of my walk around rogoku sunday morning.
Another paint/drawing

here is the video of the band i went to see last week.