Home Home On The Range August 7, 2008

yes, i am home. i apologize if i havent gotten around to seeing everybody yet (Paul and Amy especially!). i kind of went through a two week period where i didnt actually want to go anywhere or see anybody. im not sure if it was a weird depression thing or just a me being lazy thing. right now im in columbia in my apartment. my two roommates arent here yet so it is just me and my doggy murry. its very quiet, almost too quiet. i dont have internet or t.v. right now because i want to wait and see what the rmmts want to do. i never watch t.v. so i can do without it, but internet is very important so i hope we get it soon.

i just found out that i will probably graduate in december. im so incredibly pumped about that. the only problem is that i have to take 18 hours in order to do it. i think i can handle it though, and its way better to do it this way then have to come back next semester for just one class. i still dont know what i will do after graduation, but i think once amber gets back from D.C. she and i will come up with a plan. part of me wants to go back to japan, but i know that i wont have friends as good as amber if i go back there. anyway, im sure ill figure things out before long. i only have 5 months left either way!!

Space-between-Space-men June 26, 2008

I LOVE THE NEW INDIE JONES MOVIE!!!

Why I love it:

Nuclear blast survival rate: 100% (bonus body scrub down afterwards)

Snake rope! The look on his face…really i would pay ten bucks to see just that scene…

The space-between-space aliens…

Malt shop rumble.

Really there are too many good things about this movie to write about. Pretty much every scene was good, except the swinging through the trees with monkeys part. That was just too unbelievable. I mean, the aliens part was more believable than that…So was surviving a nuclear blast in a fridge and going down three waterfalls in a boat car.

I’m glad I went with the people that went too. They are all my faves: Max, Vivian, Eskil and Mikoto, Keenan and his GF, Mikki, Zane, Phil. The movie discussion we had afterwards was hilarious. Almost as good as the movie. I’m really going to miss these guys. It’s hard to believe that in a couple of weeks I might not ever see some of them again. Terrible.

A night or two ago almost the same group of people walked from NishiKita to Don Quixote, and all we did was sing early 90’s and bad rap songs at the top of our lungs the whole way there. Today Max made a mix cd of most of the songs we tried to remember the words to but just couldn’t. It’s soo good. I have a new appreciation for Nelly. From the Lou, represent! Also its really funny to hear Max sing Wham!’s wake me up. When he says “Jitterbug” in that low voice of his I can’t help but laugh out loud.

I need to get a box from the post office to send all my presents home. I have too much stuff. AhhhhhhhhH!

Tell Me Why June 16, 2008

I just came in from studying outside on the chushiba. or quad. whatever you want to call it. i had to leave because some guy was walking around singing `I want it that way` by the Backstreet Boys at the top of his lungs. Guess who now has that song stuck in her head…

There are black hairs all over this keyboard. I wonder whose head they used to belong to. Whoever it was they apparently have dandruff too. Or maybe they were eating wafers, who knows?  

So Saturday night was fun. I went to an all night dj/live show. I actually knew a bunch of people that went. There were the music club boys, and all the Aussies, and other random gaijin I`ve seen around from time to time. Remember my post about the guy who makes poo stickers? Well, he was there and I actually had some pleasant conversation with him. His name is Kota. He told me about how a few days ago he was sleeping and then got a call from the landlord. Apparently one of his pipes had broken and water-damaged the apartment below his. When the roto-rooter guy came to fix the pipes, they discovered that the reason for the breakage was that the pipe had become too clogged with pancake mix. Pancake mix. I guess Kota really likes pancakes and he eats them almost everyday. Over time, the buildup in the pipes just got too thick. I dont know about you, but I find that hilarious. Pancake mix. haha. He told me other funny stories too, like how he doesnt have a job right now and just makes poo stickers and videos for bands. Maybe thats not funny now that I write it down, but he made it humorous. Anyway, I like the way he talks; slow enough for me to understand. He had a really cool hat and for some reason he was wearing biking tights under his pants. He gave me another free poo sticker. This one is going on my laptop. Got to be able to show it off in class.

Yesterday my host mom and sis took me to a nice kimono shop and I bought a really pretty yukata. Its black and purple-pinkish with sakura blossoms all over it. I think it is quite lovely. A good souvenir to bring home. I am really looking forward to the graduation ceremony…I want to wear it! Im probably going to be annoying and wear it around the house when I get home.

I have exactly one day less a month before I leave for home. Yikes.

I dont really like going to school during the summer. When the weather gets nice my brain cant focus at all. I just want to be outside. The rainy season here really isnt as bad as I thought it would be. There are an equal number of sunny and rainy days. Lately its been mostly sunny, the rain only coming at night, which is a nice relaxing sound to fall asleep to.

This weekend there was a huge earthquake in northern Japan. I dont know if youve seen it on the news or not, but there was this one mountain that literally fell in on itself. This huge mountain just disappeared. Crazy. Luckily it was an area where no one lived, but still there have been 9 or so people who lost their lives in other parts of the prefecture. They say the Chinese earthquake triggered this fault to go, and because of the way Japan is situated on four faults, the next big earthquake in Tokyo and/or Osaka should be soon. Scary.

 

I really should be doing my Kanji homework…. June 10, 2008

…but instead im posting pictures. Matt’s request. enjoy.

Coming Home June 4, 2008

so the date is officially set. i will get into KC on the 16th of July. then ill spend a few nights with jeff and the fam, go back to macon, and from there get things taken care of with my apartment. of course i want to get home and see my family, and what will be left of my friends, but i also would like to stay here. i feel like im just getting settled, finding friends and whatnot. there is a ton of stuff i still need/want to do here, but there just isnt enough time to get it all done before i leave. it really is a pity. but at least ive made up my mind to come back! i have actual goals in mind now! its freaking me out!

on the other hand im looking forward to getting the dirty work of graduating out of the way. just one more year. and in may when i graduate, my host family will be visiting st. louis to go to their daughters wedding and that will be awesome! im also looking forward to getting my english skills back, as i feel like i cant write coherently anymore. also japanese keyboards make it hard to use apostrophes so i always leave them out.

also, when i get back i know im going to be a total couch potato as i try to watch all the movies that came out while i was over here in japan. also, i gotta catch up on season 4 of the office. i havent heard if it was good or not, but im looking forward to it. and i cant wait to get some decent cookie dough ice cream. the japanese have mastered eating raw fish but they havent caught on to mixing raw chunks of cookie dough with ice cream yet.

Everything is Different in the World of Me May 19, 2008

My friend showed me this hilarious britcom called Mighty Boosh. I imagine lots of people have heard of it, but being me I hadn`t heard of it until now. I can safely say my favorite episode so far is the one about the Crack Fox. If you haven`t seen it please look it up on youtube. So weird. Lovely.

Lately I`ve been feeling extremely homesick. For awhile I was really not looking forward to going back to the states, but now I can`t wait. Although I`ve been able to make a few friends here I don`t feel attached to them at all. Lately I have been feeling really antisocial and I feel like it takes too much effort to even engage in simple conversation. I`d rather sit around looking at stuff on the internet than make any effort to interact with people around me. I don`t know why I`ve been feeling that way. Maybe I am just tired.

This weekend my class took a field trip to a very small village way out in the countryside. I think in terms of size you could say it was like going to Bevier for a weekend. It wasn`t even as big as that. There were no convenience stores or anything. No McDonalds even. The only thing the town could boast about was the fact that it had an onsen. And a ramen/udon place, which was really just someone`s house turned into a restaurant. We were literally eating in someone`s living room. It was nice to walk around in the backwoods, looking at all the abandoned houses and getting attacked by vicious, foreign bugs. The landscape was beautiful and the weather couldn`t have been more perfect. The locals were all super-nice, as country folk tend to be, and we even came upon a group of people celebrating the end of the rice-planting season. They were obviously elated to see a strange group of foreigners bumbling about. They offered us juice and beer, and then told us if we put money in the local shrine and prayed that we would have good luck. haha. We all had a good laugh at that one. I really love the old style thatch-roof houses that were there. Except now they all have these weird metal covers over the top that are truly not attractive. No one wants to pay to repair the thatch all the time anymore, which is understandable I suppose. We had dinner at the hostel that we were staying in. It consisted of duck shabushabu with the usual vegetables of onions and mushrooms, etc. There was also fried shrimp that was cold and damp and not very palatable at all. But the meal was, in all, very satisfying and I was surprised that it turned out so good. We also had plenty of sake, because the teacher said the rounds were on him. Score! Anyway, we played mini-golf at the place in front of the onsen and it was a riot. There were no bricks lining the small courses so of course it was really hard, but I haven`t enjoyed a game as much as that in a long time. Other than that we just walked around forever looking at rice fields and learning that no one wants to live in the Japanese countryside anymore. Well, young people don`t really want to live there anymore, which I identify with. You couldn`t pay me enough to live somewhere like Ten Mile or Bevier. I would never live there. Ever. Well, maybe when I`m 70 and can`t drive a car or walk farther than from the couch to the fridge. Maybe.

I read in the paper this morning that a man in Iraq killed his daughter for talking to a British soldier while she was doing volunteer work. She didn`t even have real relations with the guy, but simply because she liked the guy he killed her. Violently. He stomped on her throat, kicked her, strangled her and then stabbed her to death. Her brothers helped him. Her mother was horrified and is now in hiding from the family, but still had her arm broken and was beaten before she could escape. Now, I don`t claim to know anything about Islam or especially radical Islamist beliefs. I only know the bare minimum about that religion. But, from the sounds of it, these “honor killings” are a load of crap. I`ve heard about this long ago, and of course I know it has been going on for a long time, but it was still shocking to hear such a terrible story. I couldn`t focus on anything after I read about it. I just kept thinking about how somebody could feel that moved by their religion that they could kill their daughter so brutally, and feel completely good about it. The father actually said that if he had known that his daughter would embarass him so much he would have killed her the minute she came out of her mother`s womb. Wow. And the man is not in prison. The guards actually congratulated him. I couldn`t believe that. The poor girl didn`t even get a proper burial. I`m sure she wasn`t the first and won`t be the last girl this happens to….arrrrgh.

This is a perfect example of why I usually don`t read the newspapers.

April 24, 2008

So today at our “coffee hour” my Japanese friend Kazuki was standing there talking with me and a new girl named Jessica. He saw the small necklace hanging around her neck and asked, “Is that your boyfriend?” I looked at the pendant and immediately keeled over with laughter. She turned a bit red and laughed. Through my giggles I said, “Kazuki, that’s Jesus.”

how unnatural it is… April 17, 2008

…to be in the deepest of sleep and then be jolted awake by an earthquake. last night i was laying in bed and felt a pretty good shake, but i was awake for it so it wasnt that bad. but we just had another one and it woke me up out of a deep sleep and my heart nearly shattered through my chest. neither of the earthquakes were severe, but its still very unnerving. you never know when a big one will hit. anyway, its 4:50 in the morning and my adrenaline level is too high to go back to bed.

so i have decided that i want to come back to japan for graduate school, even though earthquakes are scary. i really enjoy life here, and i actually have friends now, which is why i never write in this blog anymore. too busy. plus, i feel that if i want to speak japanese, which i really do, then i will absolutely have to come back here because there is no way that in just a year i will be anywhere close to being fluent. so there you have it.

i really should try to write here more often, there are too many things i want to say and my brain is cloudy (maybe because its 5am?) and when you let too many things go unwritten you forget what you had to say in the first place.

I met a guy who makes stickers of poo March 30, 2008

I really did. Last night Viv and I went to see Shiyogo play with his band Bogulta and there was a guy there selling stickers  in the shape of poo. The word for it is unco, which I did not know. So yeah, lots of fun. We almost missed our train at the end of the night though, and had to run full speed for what seemed like forever but was actually only about 100 meters. I am soooooo incredibly out of shape. I couldn’t breathe. Neither could Vivian. It was bad. So bad. Anyway, Bogulta was jawsome. There were also several really good djs that mixed it up. I danced and Viv stood there pretending to. Met a lot more Australian people. They are everywhere! I learned that Aussies don’t say shrimp they say prawn. The club was really cool and it was next to Umeda Sky Building which I had never seen up close before. It was nice. There are water fountains.

Two days ago Viv and I went to go see Shabushabu play in Kyoto. He was really nice and invited us to come early so he could show us around the city. He has a cute blue car. We first went to eat at this incredibly cool, I wanna say diner but that isn’t the word. It used to be an old bath house but it was converted into a cafe-ish type of place. The tiles on the wall were dandy. The food was good. Then we were going to go do something else but shabu had to go do sound check so we went back to the venue. While he was doing that Viv and I walked around the area. The cherry trees were blooming and it was really gorgeous. We bought Heineken and sat next to the river. I like that you can have a beer almost anywhere in public and it doesn’t matter. Next to a river, on the train…   Nice. Then the show started and we went inside and blah blah. Turned out to be a really nice evening. Shabu is hilarious and I really like him. But, story of my life, he has a girlfriend. Sigh. Not to mention he is starting his residency at a Kyoto hospital soon, so probably won’t get to see much of him at all after tomorrow. 残念ですね。

Other than hanging with these guys I haven’t done much else this week. Just letting the time pass until classes start again next week. That will be a bummer. But there will be new people coming so perhaps it will get more interesting. And maybe I’ll join a club. Something athletic so that every time I go up stairs I won’t feel like I’m going to die… : )

Around the world… March 23, 2008

Last night was the first time I went to a live show in Osaka!!! I found some interesting bands on myspace and befriended a guy named Shiyogo who is in a band called Bogulta. He said that there was going to be a good show and invited me, he even put my name on the guest list!! I only had to pay about 6 bucks, but everyone else paid over 20!! ahaha. I think I might have also received something of a gaijin discount, being that I was the only gaijin there and apparently this was a really underground show (and by the way guest list in Japan does not mean free, it means free drink, which was why I was so surprised at the price they charged me…). Anyway, I took my friend Viv and we had a blast! The music was actually incredibly good, probably the best stuff I’ve heard coming from Japan. There were lots of really nice people there, and I actually made some friends! Shiyogo is terribly かっこいいいい！I couldn’t get over it. He is in two bands here, one is going in June to the major music festival in Spain that is apparently a big deal all across Europe. He is also an artist and does covers for bands and books and things of the sort. I saw some of his work and it was groovy! Viv and I also became friends with a guy whose band is called shabushabu. His music is, well I don’t know how to describe it but Viv and I both loved it. There are toy guns and recorders involved. His English was really good because he lived in Minnesota for three years when he was young. He chatted with us and we found out that he was a med student who just graduated and starts work next month. I find that pretty amazing, because I can’t imagine the time it takes to study medicine, practice your music, play shows, etc etc all at the same time. Crazy. Anyway, we danced and had really awful tasting rum and cokes for free, and at the end of the show we went with all these people to a different party kind of down in the Namba area (which was pretty far from where we were originally in Umeda). We knew if we went that far we wouldn’t be able to catch our last train home but we went anyway. Shiyogo wasn’t going to go but we peer pressured him and he gave in. He and the guy from shabushabu gave an impromptu performance which was mediocre at best, but bless them for trying. None of us caught the last train so we just stayed at that place and danced and met people from Australia who are teaching English here and made faces at their Australian friends back home on a webcam. We played hot potato too. And one girl had an big Alf doll there for some reason. Totally jealous. At about 4 in the morning we were all beat but we went to Sukiya and ate some food. Then it was finally time to catch the first train at 5. I left a lot of stuff out of this story, and just gave the skeleton of events that happened. It might not sound like it was that great, but it really was. I am so glad Viv went with me, and was incredibly surprised that there actually is a scene here. It took me long enough to find it jeez, what is it, six months now? There is a big show next Saturday too and I can’t wait to go.

check out shabushabu on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaKcTfE3Bso&feature=related

viv, me and shiyogo.