You finish work and it’s beautiful sunny warm weather outside. You want to go outside and enjoy the weather, but today you’re supposed to lift weights. This means spending that time inside your apartment, and by the time you finish the sun will have set.
Do you:
A) Suck it up and lift weights inside your apartment.
B) Ditch the weights and head to the beach. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

The correct answer is…..

Hidden answer C.

You haul all your lifting stuff outside and do it in the parking lot of your apartment.

And that’s how I enjoyed my Thursday evening.

So I haven’t written for a long time. This is partly because I don’t have much to write about. I could write about some of the weird shit I see at school, but then again, I could use that time for other stuff. Other stuff tends to win.

But here is a quick update regarding my life:

The new school year started. The teacher I deemed kind of crazy who yelled and argued with students and who I generally did not enjoy teaching together with was moved to another school (all teachers get moved after 3 or 5 years in Japan, it wasn’t because of something she did personally). The new teacher is a fresh college graduate and male. Even though it’s his first year teaching he is a great teacher and I really enjoy teaching with him.

Then my one other junior high school. Three of the middle schools were combined to form one school now. As a result the school is relatively crowded. It clocks in at over 100 students! Haha, this is huge for my area. Anyway, I think the school is better with more numbers and I have a lot of fun there. Though English class is horribly boring as I have nothing to do and stand for 50 minutes. Seriously. It’s gotten to the point where I try to print Japanese news articles, hide them in the English textbook, and then read them during class.  But besides English class, the students are a lot of fun. Most of the crazy students are at this school.

I also actually socialize with some of the other teachers in the apartment now (actually just last night was drinking with a few teachers). So life in general is all much better and rainbows and happy-face sunflowers and great. I feel like I could actually work another year here and it wouldn’t be so bad. If it was the same circumstances as last year I would end up crazy. I would do something crazy and make international news. Or bitch on a blog, but either way, I would end up fucking crazy.

And then personal details.

I finish my contract on August 5th. I will be moving to Tokyo. I’m starting the job hunt and getting ready to apply to more teaching jobs. So I’m just kind of waiting for my work to be over here and start another new life in Tokyo. I really want it to get warm soon so I can head to the beach and swim and get some UV rays on this pale white body. Since I don’t have a family to chop wood for here, I need to work hard to get a tan. I’m also looking forward to shirtless running. The old Japanese ladies on their walks will be shocked.

As you can see I also started weight lifting. It’s been a few months now and I’ve gotten a lot stronger.  I weigh about 163lbs (74 kilos) right now, so I guess I’ve gotten bigger. I want to gain more weight, but lately my weight won’t go up. I probably need to eat more, but I am already sick of the time I spend making food and don’t want to spend even more money on food. I’m guessing I’ll probably be increasing my diet next week though….gaining weight isn’t very complicated, but it sure is a pain in the ass.

So that’s all. Time to get back to my daily life.

Japanese schools have this weird rule where you can only work at a school like 3 or 5 years, and then you have to move to another school. School also ends/starts in the spring, so right now we just had a bunch of teachers leave.

and some new teachers come in.

Which also means new people living in my apartment building.

Since I was in our “district office” during all of this, I saw the new people come in and do their official greeting (greetings are very important for work here). In particular, I was delighted to see there was another male coming to work at our elementary school who also had just graduated from college (ie, almost the same age as me). He is living at the teachers’ housing as well.

And in his first night here he came over and we talked, and I had a longer conversation with him than any of the other teachers I’ve been with here all year, and it turns out we have a ton of common interests.

At this point it sounds like I want to date him or something but oh my god I’ve been alone and bored in my apartment for too long in this small town. So I’m just so happy that there’s someone around my age I can hang out with now.

It turned out that we both totally love the same band in Japan, and later after he went back to his room he came back again with their live DVD and we kicked back and watched that.

living in the middle of nowhere is so much better if you have at least 1 other person to suffer through it with you.

Keeping with the trend of writing my updates very late, I think it’s about time I share some of the Tokyo love. (edit note: this was actually written about two weeks ago, but adding pictures takes awhile so I am finally just posting it now haha…)

I already wrote about Odaiba. If you remember, it’s the place which had the “Mexico Festival” and that awesome night skyline view of Tokyo. I’m writing this at work right now on my laptop so I can’t check, but I don’t think I’ve written any other Tokyo specific articles.

This time I’d like to share some pictures I took around Christmas. Some of them I actually took in November, but they have Christmas lights in them, so let’s pretend I took them around Christmas.

When writing about Tokyo I’m not sure how to sum it up well…..it’s HUGE and I love it. I guess those are the two most important points. New York can’t even really compare to the sheer size of Tokyo. Japan is a tiny country, so everything gets built tall and high. They compensate for things they lack. The amount of people is amazing too. Again, even with all the tourists, New York doesn’t compare.

The downside of Tokyo? It’s costly. Even just to get around. A short train ride is going to cost you anywhere $1.50 to $3 one way. Sure, that sounds cheap, but if you want to go see a few different places you can easily end up spending $10+ one day riding the train. After you factor in eating out, doing things, and maybe buying an odd thing or two (and there are many odd things in Japan) Tokyo will steal your money if you’re not careful. To my knowledge, there is no unlimited ride train pass that you can pay a monthly fee for. Also, unlike NY, the trains don’t run all night.

What the fuck.

This either kills the partying as people who want to go back have to cut out at 12am, or it makes the party go alllllll night until 5-6am when the next trains start.

So we’ve covered that Tokyo is huge and expensive. I’ll now cover the geography of Tokyo. It works something like this:

On the very right is Tokyo station. Because of it’s name, it may sound like the central station or something, but it’s actually kind of far from a lot of important places. The most important thing about Tokyo station is that the shinkansen, the bullet train, comes into Tokyo at that station. So if I’m cruising into Tokyo on that baby (while my wallet is crying, $100 one way from where I live) I get off at Tokyo station.

Next is the big orange line, this is the “center line”. It cuts through the middle of Tokyo. It’s straight and fast. It’s the line I use the most, because where I stay in Tokyo, alllll the way on the left of this beautiful map, Kichijoji, is on this line.

Intersecting the green and orange line is Shinjuku. In one day some million people pass through this train station; it ranks in at #1 for the amount of people using it in a day. The green circle here is called the “yamanote line”. Around the green circle are many famous places in Tokyo, so it’s a pretty important line. If you think about Manhattan housing all the famous places in New York, you could say that the yamanote circle is the Manhattan island of Tokyo. Just above Shinjuku on the green circle is Shibuya. Shibuya is a shopping/party district. Shibuya square is famous for all the people always crossing it. It’s seriously like a sea of people slowly ebbing forward. Lots of young people (even younger than me, god I feel old) hang out here. There’s even a kind of term, “Shibuya girl”….so the place has a distinct personality. Usually associated with drinking and fashion. It’s a good place. If you’re out with a couple friends walking around at night, you’re bound to get countless people asking you to come to their restaurant. Most bars/restaurants in Japan (in big cities) tend to send people outside to find and bring customers in.

A good strategy is to put your hand out and tell them “No!” in English like you would tell a dog. Other times it’s fun to just strike up a conversation with them. One time in Sendai (big city close to me) we decided to communicate with them only in English. No Japanese whatsoever. This was also a good experiment, and the guy was really cool and did his best. He actually could communicate the prices and everything to us. He also had this funny looking mustache which made him look like a Japanese Luigi and he also always made this cute goofy smile. After taking us to his shop he was also the server at the restaurant and him and one of the girls with us got engaged. It was a good night.

roppongi at day

There’s also a train that goes straight from Kichijoji to Shibuya, so I don’t have to transfer from Shinjuku. This lets me be lazier so it makes me happy.

If you look and see the red and blue lines coming out from Shinjuku, those are there to represent some of the several other train lines and subways in Tokyo. Shinjuku has the most transfers available in all of Tokyo (probably close to 10 different lines run through there), but I have no clue exactly what they are or where they all go, so yeah…. (what can I say, I’m a fucking country boy right now)

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Ok, yeah, whatever. I don’t think many people reading this care for a geography listen. But I like to feel that my writing is somewhat organized and has a point, even if it’s just a illusion I’m casting on myself. So today I am going to present some shots from Roppongi and Kichijoji. Why Roppongi and Kichijoji? What the hell is Roppongi? Read more and find out!
Roppongi (RO-pon-gi) is known as the “foreign” district in Tokyo. Normally walking around in any big part of Tokyo, you’re bound to see a foreigner or two, but go to Roppongi and you’ll see tons of foreigners. Especially at night. The place is notorious for it’s nightclubs; big black men from Africa pose as “African-American” New Yorkers and try to bring you in their club while Japanese girls starving for an exotic experience are on the hunt for males who are (1) not Asian and (2) not incredibly awkward and creepy (KY+キモイ). Those are probably really the only qualifications. I only speak from rumors though, not having actually gone to a Roppongi club myself. Or a Tokyo club for that matter. I try to make clubs a rare occasion. Going to a club when you’re in a relationship is like going to a restaurant with friends but not ordering any food….you’ll enjoy the atmosphere and have fun but you don’t get any damn food.

It’s also a very rich area of Tokyo with thriving businesses. Or businesses that were thriving; Stocks down, world economy, blah blah. Ok moving on. People in Tokyo are normally pretty fashionable, with some people dressing nice, some people dressing from 10 years ago, many girls doing whatever is the trend-of-the-moment (think about how big sunglasses invaded America before…there’s always some trend like that here), some doing some kind of weird Japanese fashion, and some people making their own style. In Roppongi, people dress expensive. You’ll usually see most people dressed for work (in Japan this means a suit. I would not be surprised to find garbage men wearing a tie in Japan) or in expensive brand clothes.

(Outside the  mall, inside, and Tokyo Tower from Roppongi)

Roppongi is just over the top luxurious like that. The moment you get off the subway the station is themed with gold colors. It’s kind of like Las Vegas in how it tries to show off obscene luxury.

But the Christmas lights were pretty. And even though the shops in the mall were pretty much all a few levels above my pay (someday I will be a CEO!!!), the mall itself was really cool and very nice looking. It was kind of like a labyrinth design. But a pretty labyrinth. With nice marble and shiny lights.

Kichijoji is a few stops away from Shinjuku. It is not a huge area, but the express train stops there and it is well known, so I guess it is somewhat kind of a big deal. It’s also where I always stay in Tokyo, so I know it decently well now. The famous Seikei (say-kay) university is in Kichijoji, which is also where Chiaki goes to school. For people reading this blog who are somewhat into Japan and may have seen the TV show Hana Yori Dango, Seikei is the school they used for the fictional school in the show (can be seen around the first minute in the linked clip). It’s also somewhat of a joke played on the real school, since in the show it’s said to be the school for the richest students in Japan, but it is also actually known as “お嬢様” Ojousama, the “Princess/Lady” school in real life.

Kichijoji was also voted the best place to live in Tokyo last year, and Chiaki makes sure to remind me that almost every time I am in Kichijoji.
It has several small shops for shopping and places to go see, while also having some larger department stores that are common in Japan. If you are in Tokyo and want to escape the very crowded and huge feel of the likes of Shibuya and Shinjuku, yet still go to a place in Tokyo that has some interesting stuff, Kichijoji may be worth a visit.

It also has the coolest Okinawa restaurant in all of Tokyo, so if you are in Kichijoji head on over to Tidakankan! It’s near the Tokyu department store.

There’s also the guy who owns an Indian restaurant in Kichijoji. That’s not a big deal, but what’s funny is that he stands outside all day, every day, advertising for his shop. He’s kind of become a landmark in Kichijoji for me. Every time I walk by he starts to speak English “Hello, would you like some lunch?” The man is damn persistent. If I walk by, and come back 10 minutes later, he’ll have forgotten the first encounter and invite me in again.

There was also the dancing and singing Santa machine. Please look at my previous entries if you missed this. Oh and this nice bar which I’ll never go back to again. It’s a whiskey bar that is literally on the other side of the block where Chiaki lives. So I’ve walked by this place probably 20 times and I always thought, “Damn I want to go to this bar!!” So Chiaki and I were on our way back on Christmas day and I was feeling good so I said “Let’s go to that bar!!” Walked in and he didn’t say there was a charge to sit down, despite there being no one there. Two simple drinks for over $25, ouch. I wanted to get another drink ……

Please tell me your bar has a seating charge before I sit down!

More pictures/writing about Tokyo….uhhh sometime. I’ll get around to it since it’s Spring break soon which means I won’t have anything to do at work all day!

I guess you write a journal update.

Especially if  it’s been awhile.

This post will have no objective. I’m just going to write about stuff going on in my life.

Recent: I turned in my form which says whether or not I want to recontract for another year at this job. There was a big circle around the “I do NOT” option.  So it is official that I will not be on JET for another year.

I guess I’ve never written it on my blog. But since about October I decided I won’t be doing another year.

That doesn’t mean I’m leaving Japan though. I am just going to move to Tokyo and find another English teaching gig. After doing that for one (one and half maybe) more year, I want to find a job in Japan which doesn’t have any connection whatsoever to teaching English.

IE, some sort of career oriented thing. Unless I wanted to go on to teach English at university (or teach about teaching English) and get my masters, teaching English ain’t a career at all. Anyway, if I was stuck doing this my whole life in Japan I would definitely go crazy. Even if I became a full-time regular instructor at school, I would go crazy as Japanese teachers work too much and get paid too little.

Something else I also found out: if you didn’t like middle school when you were a student you probably won’t like it as a teacher too much.

Don’t misunderstand. I love my students and having fun with them. I just hate school as a system, which always tells you what to do and tries to control a large chunk of your time, often with things that I would consider a waste of my time. This is only amplified more so in Japan, where the students often get to school around 8:10 and don’t leave until 5-6pm. This is not an exaggeration at all. It’s not every single day of the week, but almost everyday… (another note: this is not really an option either. I know many students in America who do sports/band have the same problem, but those things are volunteer. every student here has to do some activity…whether or not they are good at it or whether or not they like it)

And also there’s the fact that almost no one really wants to learn English. And even for those that do, they will try their best with the class material and study the textbook but ultimately go home to their Japanese family and watch Japanese TV and listen to Japanese music, the opportunity for progress is low.

Ok all of this is making me sound really bitter. I’m only a little bitter. I’m not negative — I’m just a realist.  This job is great but it’s all about perspective. I love my job as an opportunity to give students an “international experience”. Simply, giving them an opportunity to interact with someone who is not Japanese. Especially here in the countryside, besides having me in the class, they will pretty much never see any foreigners. I think it’s a pretty significant thing for the Japanese government to actually try to bring people from around the world (there are other teachers from Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Scotland, South Africa, Jamaica etc) and show the kids that a world exists outside of Japan.

So if you come to Japan to teach English and expect to turn the kids into awesome natural English speakers and make everyone love English, you will most likely be sorely disappointed.  If you come wanting to interact with the kids and give them a chance to broaden their views/experience a little, it will likely be a good experience.

At least at the UO, this whole “multi-cultural” experience and broadening our views thing was getting a lot of attention recently. There are a lot of people who just think “why?” and don’t really care for it.

I’m not going to debate that topic, but I just want to make sure my readers don’t confuse the “multi-culturalism” topic in America and the internationalizing Japan topic. They are two entirely different beasts. America is already pretty diverse, but Japan is a country where something like 97% of the population are Japanese born people. Living in a country which is mono-cultural (I’m making up words here as I go) affects how many people perceive things. For example, when students often struggle with English, or if you ask them if they think they can become great at English and they answer no, the common reason given is “Because I am Japanese (日本人だから)”.

I never heard anyone at my high school say they can’t learn a foreign language because they are American.  Even just saying it sounds ridiculous.

Saying that has no meaning. If I hear a student say it and I have time, I’ll try to challenge them. “Why? There are plenty of Japanese people with good English.” I’ll try to get them to think more along the lines of, “I never use English, or I only speak and hear Japanese all day” etc.

Last night I went to a drinking party with one of my elementary schools. That was great and fun. It was a restaurant near my town that I haven’t been to for about 3 months. While talking to the owner he tells me, “you haven’t been here for so long I thought your girlfriend dumped you and you went back to America!!!” (my response: ふられるわけないよ！ “Like I would be dumped!”) Fun night.

As I have work today, after I finished drinking I went back home and went to sleep. I woke up once and was very surprised….”Why are the lights on?? Why I am sleeping in my jeans? What time is it???” I checked my phone and it was 5 am. Normally I can never sleep with lights on. I need it pitch black. How have I been sleeping for so long with the lights on? And in my jeans!

Then I stopped thinking and it all came back to me, “Oh yes. I went out for a few beverages last night.” I love that feeling of waking up and being like “How the hell did I get here??” and then in a few moments having the realization of what went on.

Last week I was invited to a party by my Japanese friend. Her mom runs a business which takes care of elderly folk. They had some kind of recent expansion or something, and so they decided to have a party to celebrate it. Me and my friend were the only non-Japanese people there. They did it at home, but they had karaoke set up.

Some of you might remember me writing that old Japanese women love talking to me. During the party, I also found out that given the opportunity they love dancing with me too. Many old Japanese ladies started dancing with me, and then some of them started dancing with me close. It was kind of awkward, but I thought that they don’t get to have fun like this very often so it’s ok.

After the party my American bud and the girl who invited us went out to karaoke. I drove to karaoke with no problems. I sang karaoke for two hours.  I started driving home.

Then I noticed my car was driving very oddly. I heard a thump thump thump noise. I pulled over and inspected the tires to find that my front left tire was flat.

What the hell? Let’s revisit the paragraph before the last.
“I drove to karaoke with no problems. I sang karaoke for two hours.  I started driving home.”

How did my tire get flat while singing karaoke for two hours? Someone slashed it or something? I find this hard to believe. I have no idea what happened, but it sucked.

I tried to drive home on the flat, but that didn’t work. (I also tried to pump it, but it didn’t work at all) I called my friend and he told there should be a spare in the back of the car.

I laughed and joyfully replied, “Henry! There is no tire in the back of my car! I don’t have a spare!”

“Check under your trunk, idiot”

Oh, there’s a tire there!

I started to change a tire for the first time ever. Everything was going smooth until I tried taking off the flat. It wouldn’t come off. I was very confused. Is there some kind of lock? Do I have to do something else first??

I gave up and waved someone over to help me. Then I found out, the tire is just bolted in very, very tightly! I was doing it right, but just not with enough force!

I started to put the spare tire on. Then the nice person told me very kindly, ” I think it’s backwards!”. Thank you Mr. Kind stranger! What a fool I would have been to put it on backwards, haha!

Then we put the tire on and he drove off. Finally getting my tire on and ready to drive home (now 4am) I felt very happy. I went to my car, cranked the engine and put my foot on the pedal.

Huh?? It’s still driving very oddly.

Maybe the bolts aren’t tight enough, the stranger said the bolts should be really tight. So I try to fix that and I go back to my car ready to drive!

I Insert the key. I crank the engine. I push the accel.

This time it won’t even move.

What the fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck (このブログは子供向きではない – This blog is not suitable for children). It’s 4:15 and I want to go home. I started just screaming in my car.

Ok, calm down. What is going on?

I look at the tire more. やっぱり, the tire looks really odd. Maybe the kind stranger is kind, but not so smart. Maybe the way we put on the tire is really backwards.

’twas so. I put the car up again, take off the tire, turn it around and put it back on again.

Time to test. I head back inside the car, insert the key, crank the engine, put my foot on the gas…..

and the car takes off beautifully.

Fuck you Mr. Kind stranger.

My American friend had more trouble driving home. After calling him about my flat, he tells me, “my car just died on the freeway. I’m stuck on the freeway”. His engine completely died, and his car stopped on the single lane freeway around our city. Oh, it was not a good night for Americans driving around Ishinomaki city that night! He is currently trying to battle the dealership for them to replace the engine/car, as he apparently was sold a very bad car.

Also a few months ago I accidently put kerosene in my car. In Japan gas stations often have pumps for kerosene since everyone uses it to heat their home. The pump itself didn’t have it written anywhere that it was not regular unleaded or that it was kerosone….there was a small sign in front of the self-serve area but I couldn’t see it where I was.  I could make it home (about 40km) driving on kerosene though. The next day the car didn’t start.

Oh, and I originally thought it was diesel which I put in my car, but found out weeks later it was kerosene.  That was a waste of $300…..

Ok, I think I’m done. Going to prepare for my one class and study some Japanese. Part of the reason my updates are getting less frequent are due to me wanting to focus on Japanese. Writing in English for over an hour doesn’t really do much for my Japanese. I’m getting/trying to get pretty serious now as I have a lot of studying/practice to do if I want to actually be able to use this language in some relation to a career.

I’m teaching in a 5th/6th year (students are so few they have to combine the class) elementary class. We’re doing this activity with their textbook where we play bingo using square cut-outs of pictures of things like a pyramid, beach, kangaroo….stuff that represents countries AND have been normalized into Japanese language (if you didn’t know, Japanese borrows a ton of English words and transforms them into Japanglish)

After the game the students listen to me read some characters rambling on about how “I want to go to Italy. I like spaghetti and pizza” and then the students are supposed to match the characters and countries and reasons.

….Yeah, it was an exciting class today.

Ok, well, the last minute was interesting.
After doing that work with the textbook, we practice saying “I want to go to (some country)”. The students actually all wanted to go to different countries and I was quite surprised in the variety of their answers.

I’m getting off track. I promise the point of this story is coming soon.

So next we start trying to get students to explain why they want to go. Simple stuff. I told them I want to go to Italy because “I want to eat pizza and spaghetti”. Students slowly start explaining their reasons.

We get to one girl. She wants to go to Australia because “Doubutsu ga suki da”….Wait that’s not English!!!

Girl, this is English class!

So we start trying to teach her the English, “I like animals”….she struggles to say it so after she does say it I get the whole class to practice and we start screaming “I like animals!” “I like baseball!” “I like pizza!” and one more time “I like animals!” (I can be pretty intense in the classroom sometimes, which is quite out of character in the usually nowhere near intense and quite boring Japanese classroom….I find enjoyment in the irony of acting so intense in an environment where the students seem apathetic and dead. I’m sure the students don’t get it though.)

So after that practice I figure she can do it…I stand next to her at her desk, initiate the conversation and try again

“Where do you want to go??”
“I want to go to Australia”
“Why?”
….she’s still struggling
…she’s trying to piece it back together
“I…like…uhh doubutsu…doubutsu nan dake (what was the word for animals??)…uhhh”
the student next to her starts trying to help her and keeps saying “love, love, love!”
she gets more confused…
“I like…love..like…love…love…”

“I love you!”

After the initial one second what-the-fuck shock and silence, everyone bursts out in laughter and I realize that I just had a student tell me she loves me.

It was time to end the class, so I tell the students “というわけで、授業が終わります (And with that, class is over now).” As the principal is watching from outside the class (he couldn’t hear anything, but he saw the now very lively class), I walk around and individually say goodbye and “I love you” to each of the (8) students. Then at the end I tell the Japanese teacher “I love you” and gave him a hug.

Whenever I go to elementary school a student always escorts me to the class at the beginning of the class and back to the teacher’s lounge after class. By chance, today it was the student who confessed her love for me. She walked me back to the teacher’s lounge red and embarrassed.

I can’t accept your love Ayuka-chan, but today’s memories will always be in my heart.

I do feel a little guilty, so to erase that guilt and free my conscious I decided to share this awesome movie I recorded of something awesome in Japan.

I think this was on Christmas day. Maybe the day before. It doesn’t make a difference. Also, I apologize for shaking the camera so much, but I was hypnotized by the robotic Santa’s dancing and started dancing with him.

I’ll eventually make a longer post showing what Christmas is like in Japan (mostly Tokyo), but like everything that will come months after the actual date. Ha.

i miss this place.

We will now move onto day 2 of Okinawa excitement.

Day 2 started with a most excellent trip……down to the hotel cafeteria for a complimentary breakfast! But unlike the standard hotel breakfast in America, this one actually had stuff other than…waffles. They had all you could eat salmon (not fancy good salmon, but it’s still fucking salmon), scrambled eggs, and a yogurt-fruit salad desert type thing. I gorged myself out on these three items and was REALLY looking forward to having breakfast again the next day.

Waffles are awesome only until you stay at hotels for 10 nights in a row and eat waffles for 10 mornings in a row. At least one person reading this will know what I mean.

So, after filling myself full of energy it was time to head out and explore Okinawa!

In particular today’s events were occupied by the spectacular Churaumi Aquarium (Chew-Ra-U-me …U like in “Food”). This is known to be one of the world’s best aquariums, a reputation which it well deserves.

If you look at a map of Okinawa, you will see that our hotel and the aquarium are about separated by a distance of half of the island’s size. However, with the island itself being very small and nearly all the driving being done on a freeway, the trip didn’t take more than two hours!

the fish at the top should not be confused with a plane

A side note, but on the way I drove by some army trucks and saw some Americans! I waved at them as I sped past them. It may sound strange, but I was really excited and felt happy to see them…some kind of feeling like I was almost back in America or something. I was also very happy to be driving on a freeway and going around 75mph. 75mph is incredibly fast in Japan.

Churaumi is a pretty big place. The entrance has some nice scenic walking paths with awesome views of the sea. The front all leads down to the aquarium itself, behind the aquarium are many other things. Like, the turtle room (YES!), seaworld-like dolphin show (YES!!), and even its own beach area for visitors (…ok we skipped out on this). They also have this really fun water spray/shower fountain before you go inside the building. You can use this to cool down, or to act like a child and play in the water.

I’m going to talk about the aquarium now, but I’m too lazy to look up the facts so I’m going to type whatever I can remember about it. It may or may not be correct.

The main exhibits in Churaumi are separated in two gigantic tanks. One tank is (what I have so scientifically dubbed) “the tropical fish” tank, and the other is the “oh-my-god those are giant fish” tank. In between those tanks they also have a lot of smaller other tanks that house only one or a few type of fish. Here are some pics from the small tanks:

When you first come in you are looking at the tropical fish tank. I thought this was really cool. Instead of just making one huge room with a perfect viewing of the whole tank, it’s divided into sections. There is only one tank, but you will see that tank from about 4-5 different rooms. The reason is that the tank has been made to be like a natural habit, and that different sections of the tank have different environments so you end up seeing different fish from each of the views you get. Each view not only has different fish, but the scenery itself and the feeling differ in every habitat.

It keeps things interesting, and it also keeps people moving. Something somewhat important in an aquarium crammed full of tourists.

I’m just gonna toss pictures out at you now.

this was choreographed with the kid. pro camera skills

who's watching who???

After seeing all of this it was onto the tank with the big fish, which is what Churaumi is really famous for. If you’ve been to an aquarium in the last few years of your life it’s all probably really boring….just fish swimming around in a tank right? But I haven’t gone since I was like 8 or 10 or something (I saw willy in Oregon!), so I was all like, “there’s fish swimming around in a tank!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I was a big fan of the manta rays. There’s something about them that’s so cool….it looks almost like they’re flying or something and they’re just gliding around in the tank with no worries and like they own the place. I know Christmas is already over, but next year I would like a manta ray that can fly and breathe outside of water. If someone got this for me I would be their best friend forever.

And we got to also see the room where they keep and maintain all the tanks. They also do other stuff like raise new fish.

By the way, that glass which holds the tank with the huge sharks……it’s about 7 feet thick. Yeah. But of course, when you look through it you can’t tell at all (ha, I wrote a cool fact to give this slide show post some more substance….)

And then there were dolphins (some are whales!)

And my favorite…..TURTLES!

Ninja or not…….turtles are awesome!

That's all for now folks, but I promise I'll finish talking more about day 2 soon! But I gotta go eat now!

In America, we have souvenirs. These are typically bought for yourself or companions, but sometimes are also given to family or friends. They also tend to be small nit-nack things. It’s not a social rule to bring back enormous amounts of gifts from traveling.

In Japan, they have “omiyage” (oh-me-ya-gay). These are gifts that you bring for other people after you travel somewhere. The gift is supposed to be something that the area is famous for, so the idea is you bring back something local.

Let me be absolutely clear on the subject: Japanese people are fucking serious about omiyage.

Not following the omiyage rule and not bringing back things to people you should (people who did some favor for you, your coworkers, fellow members of some club, family and close friends, people who gave you omiyage before….after all of the possibilities play out, it really turns into “anyone you’ve met more than two times”) could be seen as shunning them, or you just look plain rude. As a foreigner, these are one of the times when being an outsider deals us a good hand. If a foreigner doesn’t bring back omiyage, it is likely assumed that they just don’t know. If they do bring back omiyage, it’s amazing that they did know and they look like a super-star.
Oh, and omiyage almost exclusively includes food. I’d have to say that 90% of omiyage gifts are food which is supposed to be local specialty of the area. If it’s not food, it’s probably more expensive and is something that is reserved for the people actually close to you/important.

It’s a huge business – more so than gift shops in America. Any place with something – anything – to offer, has at least 3 omiyage shops (Yes, even my town which is located far away from everything in Japan)

Given the importance of it, this also means I’ve had to endure lots of omiyage shopping on my trips. After eating out during the first day, we went to check out some (many) of the omiyage shops around the street.

This of course took a lot of time.
And omiyage shopping was of course not finished that night.
And I of course had to go back to the same shops again to finish the omiyage shopping.

And of course this was not only limited to trips inside of Japan, and I of course endured hours of omiyage shopping in NY (which in this case was, gift shop browsing but its basically the same thing).

However it was still fun as Chiaki and I observed a certain effect I have in Japan — middle-aged Japanese women around the age of 40-50 apparently love me. Most Japanese people assume Americans can’t speak their language well, so if they can hold a conversation they tend to become shocked. My theory is that the 40-50 women are still old enough that they haven’t had much contact with foreigners and that they think Japan/Japanese has no popularity over the world and that very few foreigners speak Japanese, BUT they are young enough that the foreigners aren’t scary and have a cool factor. Almost anytime we go somewhere and there are some middle aged ladies they love talking to me.

So we go inside this shop and the lady starts talking to us and realizes I can somewhat speak Japanese. They have a special type of alcohol made only in Okinawa that I had been taste testing that night. We ended talking about it, “Awamori” (the alcohol), and she asked how it was and then kept offering me sample shots  from the huge variety of Awamori (which is hard by the way, most typically around 25% but also up to 60%) they have in the shop. I tried a couple and then she kept insisting for me to drink more. I think I also had made it clear I wasn’t planning on buying anything, but she kept insisting “ああ、いいよ、いいよ。飲んでね～” (Ohh, that’s ok don’t worry! Just drink!).  I also had my sunglasses with me at the time and she told me that I need sunglasses because my eyes are blue so sunlight is brighter to me than Japanese people who have black/brown eyes. I have never read anything scientific to back this up and can’t find out anything about it online, but this summer when I put on sunglasses on I had several people tell me that I need them because my eyes are blue but Japanese people don’t need to wear sunglasses because they have brown eyes. Again, I’ve never heard of this before and I’m never really quite sure how to respond to it, especially when it’s usually people much older than me telling me it and I have to use my “respectful” Japanese around them (polite Japanese is boring).

After leaving the shop I promised to come back later (during the future second round of omiyage shopping) but I couldn’t remember which shop it was and didn’t end up seeing her again. I think she was very sad.

And this concluded my first night in Okinawa. I got to drive an awesome rental car, go to Shurijou, go out and get some Okinawa food while listening to Okinawa music, and then had a 40 year old store clerk try to get me drunk. Pretty good for being there half a day.

Day 2/more landmarks continued later…..

In September I was able to ride on a pokemon plane and go to Okinawa! This post is about my trip.

First let me start by saying that I am a liar and I didn’t get to ride on that pokemon plane but it would have been really cool if I did. Anyway, I went to Okinawa for 4 nights. Left Tokyo on 9/21 and was back on 9/25. It really wasn’t enough time. The schedule was packed tight and there wasn’t much time to just be lazy and relax, or to just travel somewhere without much of a plan/destination. One of the things I liked about the trip to NY was that it was so long I could be plenty lazy and still see a lot of stuff. Not this time.

So as soon as we arrived it was off to get the rental car and then to one of our tourist destinations – Shurijou. Since we were doing this right after landing in Okinawa at about 4pm, this also meant by the time we got there it was already dark. The picture in front of the main castle ended up sucking because of this, but I really liked the night atmosphere around the place and it was great that it wasn’t crowded.

Welcome to Shurijou!

-jou means castle, so you can think of it as Shuri-castle. I’m used to calling it Shurijou though so I’m gonna keep doing that. When you fly into Okinawa you’re likely to be flying into the biggest city on the island, Naha. Shurijou is in the same city, at the top of a hill that kind of overlooks the whole place.

Shurijou is one of the World Heritage sites, so I’m sure you can find a lot more information online about it if you want to read.

Since it is on a hill, a lot of the place is comprised of stairways leading up to the main castle. The whole place seems to be separated on different levels, with it seeming like a village leading up to a castle. I thought it was all very cool. In fact, I thought the castle was the most lame part of the area. The beginning of the site made me feel like I was in a ninja town or something.

Inside the castle is very small and cramped.  I think old Okinawan people used to be even shorter than most present-day Japanese people. Oh, by the way, this castle was built several hundred years ago, back when Okinawa was still independent.

This sign told me that the castle has been destroyed and rebuilt several times.

Now this is what I believe is the coolest part of the whole castle – the miniature castle that was built for display. They built a miniature castle / courtyard and filled it with tiny lego-like men to recreate what old military gatherings used to be like.. It’s extremely detailed. Look!

The first picture makes me feel like I am actually there with all the lego-men. I can feel their sincerity as they sit Japanese style and show respect to their leader.

In the second picture look at the detail given to the flags and ornaments for ceremony. The people also have name plates so you know who not to fuck with.

Here in the third picture is the king of Okinawa!!! A proper king knows how to keep a beard.

In the fourth picture is the monster of legends who attacked Shurijou and was the cause of one of the four times it had been destroyed!!!

After seeing the awesome display, it was time to leave Shurijou because there was nothing that was going to top that display. On the way out we got a picture in front of the main castle, I used strange Japanese to ask the girls who took our picture if they would like to have their picture taken, Chiaki schooled me on “asking people if they want me to do something” (this is my term for the grammar), and we went to check in at the hotel.

The castle itself. I guess they still do work to fix it up because as you can see it's under construction.

I wanted to go to an Okinawa themed restaurant so after dropping off our bags we went out. A restaurant that had a sign saying “live music” grabbed my eyes and I decided that we had no choice but to go there.

When you go to eat out in Japan there is often a non-optional seat charge. Almost as soon as you sit down you are brought some sort of small snack-ish type food that is explained as the reason for the charge. However, I have never once felt that the food I got was worth the $4-5 I paid to sit down.

This time that food was fried cartilage from pigs’ ears.

I tried it at first and thought it was ok. It kind of reminded me of Kimchi (the sauce/flavor, texture is completely different).

Then Chiaki had to go and tell me what I was eating. Every time I looked down at my chopsticks my mind screamed “PIG EARS!” and I felt a sting of hesitation. I tried to put it in my mouth but ever since I found out what it was I wasn’t really able to eat it. The flavor actually started to wear off on me (it was crunchy without a crunch…so hard you couldn’t chew on it), so I don’t think it was just psychological, but that was a huge factor.

The music was great. I love Okinawan music. I have a video from another restaurant we went to! They’re pretty similar so I don’t really need to write about twice. In the video is a performance by two guys, who I thought were actually better than the girl and guy at the first restaurant. Since I love you all so much you get to see the video of the good group. Their costumes are also pretty radical.

The last thing I have to say in this post and about Naha city in Okinawa.

What the hell was with all the stray cats????

Walking back to our car from Shurijou we saw about 4 different stray cats. Two were from the same litter and they were such cute little kittens. Also on the way to the restaurant after stopping at the hotel there were about 5 more cats.

I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving. I think I ate some curry that night. I tend to eat curry often. In retrospect, I should have at least made some mashed potatoes for nostalgia.

So what has been going on with me? Well, not a whole lot, but last week was great. For starters, I got my laptop on Thursday! I can’t even put into words how relieved I am. Internet, music, movies (my dvd player was broken), Skype, games, studying, work…..yeah, I use it for a lot of stuff. If it wasn’t for my laptop, I wouldn’t be writing this journal entry now!

And the other reason last week was great? I went to Tokyo. Ohhhhhhh, Tokyo is always great…..

But enough of these recent updates. Who cares about the now? I am all about the past. In particular, I’m all about two months in the past. Since things that happened two months ago are all the rage right now, I decided I’m going to write about something that happened two months ago. Coincidentally, this is also when any major updates of my life on this blog stopped appearing. But that’s really just coincidence…..psychologists have done studies to show we can find reason or patterns in anything if we rationalize enough, so stop rationalizing.

Other than a really cool looking guy in that picture above, you might notice a shrine like thing and a weird building. This is our setting of our topic tonight, Odaiba (Oh-die-ba)!

An actual scale "Gundam". An example of the random stuff that comes to Odaiba

What is Odaiba? It’s one of my favorite places in Tokyo. I went there my first time I went to Japan, and I’ve gone twice now since I’ve been here. Odaiba is a man made island in Tokyo.  It is home to some fun game centers, an amusement park, and some shopping malls/interesting sight (the building with the weird sphere thing is Japan’s Fuji network TV station and the public is allowed to tour it free, for example).  It also always has interesting stuff going on too.

Besides actual scale sized Gundams, why else is Odaiba so awesome? Let me tell you a story children. Please sit down.

So there Chiaki and I were with some time before our trip to Okinawa. We needed something to do for a night. I don’t like to overthink this crap, so I just remembered my first time in Tokyo and how awesome Odaiba was, and got excited and insisted immediately that we go to Odaiba. My friends will know this well, but when I decide to do something and get worked up about it, I get really really excited and any negativity that could pose a threat to my own positivity goes in one ear and out the other.

And so my idea wasn’t met with the same level of excitement as I brought to the table, but I didn’t waver one bit. It had been almost two years since I had been to Odaiba and all I could remember was how awesome this place was.  I quickly shot down any reasons that made it seem like Odaiba wasn’t anything but the ideal place to go to that night, we both got ready to head out, and then we jumped on the next train.

The train ride itself was pretty cool (sorry, no pictures of that…I was too mesmerized to remember to take pictures). You actually have to get off the normal train line in Tokyo and take a monorail to Odaiba. The station is really spacious, clean, and futuristic seeming and the train itself is nice. But it also passes through some of the nicer places of Tokyo and has beautiful views of the city landscape. For me, the train ride itself almost proved my point that we should go to Odaiba (but after spending more time in Tokyo and becoming accustomed to the city landscape I think my fascination just proved that I live out in the fucking country).

So after 40 minutes or so, we arrived in Odaiba and get off the monorail.

Hmm??

What’s that sound?

Some kind of acoustic guitar??

Are those horns playing with it??

Also, why are there so many people here tonight? And why are they all going in one direction?

Something was out of place. Chiaki and I went to investigate what was going on. As we get closer and closer, I begin to realize the very unlikely live show taking place. We get to the stage and turn the corner and are greeted by some men in hats……

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.
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Dorothy, I don’t think we’re in Japan anymore.

Are you kidding me?

Fiesta Mexicana in Japan??

I had never even seen a latino person in Japan before this night. What the fuck.

But no matter how surprised I was (I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing), I was happy.

The music was great, the people were lively, and there was dancing. You can see the atmosphere here!

Ohhhh. That’s right. Now that I  have my own laptop I’m making professional quality blog updates that include videos. And that’s not all…..there’s still one video that will appear in this very post. WOW!

Anyway, so there was the main event of fiesta Mexicana.

But there was one more reason I was excited for fiesta Mexicana. Actually, it was pretty much the main reason I was really excited.

Mexican food.

I have seen one Mexican restaurant in Japan thus far.  By now, I have also spent quite a bit of time in Tokyo, so I have been around and seen tons of restaurants.

But this was FIESTA MEXICANA. It would be a crime not to have Mexican food! After leaving the main stage, we immediately went to search for some Mexican food.

On our way to find some tacos, we also found out that they were not only celebrating and sharing the great food of Mexico, but also the great drinks.

It even has a lime float, just like every Corona should!

Also what is not photographed are the numerous stands which were selling Tequila shots…..Fortunately, I don’t think I saw any Hose Cuervo.

And so then we finally arrived at Tacos!

Only one of those pictures were taken with my knowledge.

It was great to eat a taco that night, but all  it did was remind me how much I wanted to eat some Baja Fresh. And now writing this entry two months later I am again reminded that I NEED TO EAT SOME BAJA FRESH WHOCARESABOUTSUSHIANDRICENOTME.

Ahem.

We went to some of the mall/restaurant areas after finishing up with fiesta Mexicana. Again, we found another event going on! Most of the readers won’t know this, but some will:

It was a display for the manga/anime One Piece! There is a new movie or something coming out (came out?) so they had this up….anyway it was pretty fun to walk through and see : )

We kept going around Odaiba and I was impressed again. Odaiba probably has the best view of Tokyo. It’s not up high and you can’t see all of Tokyo, but you can see the night skyline.
But pictures suck at capturing the great view from Odaiba. And since I’m really cool, and kind, and nice, and a humble person, I prepared another video for you all!

The bridge in the middle is called Rainbow bridge. If you search it on youtube, I’m sure you can find some more cool videos of the area.

And that ended night one in Odaiba~~~

So what was the point of this story?

(1) Odaiba is awesome
(2) Steven was right about going to Odaiba.

on the way back I noticed a place called SEGA JOYPOLIS.

Hmm, what’s this I thought?????

It was an amusement park!

It was already 9pm, so we had no time to go. So we decided next time we would come to Odaiba.

A month later we set foot in Odaiba again.

Objective, JOYPOLIS the amusement park.

One problem — we got off the train one stop early and forgot the way there. So we wandered around in circles for an hour before we finally got there.

As we got close to Joypolis, there was once again, something going on in Odaiba!

It was a performer and her monkey!

He did lots of cool tricks and it was fun to watch for a few minutes (got there just as it was ending) before we got in Joypolis. But this monkey is also important because since that day I have seen him not one, but -two- times on TV. Myself having seen him in person, I also feel that I am basking in the monkeys fame since “I was there”. He’s also special because he attacked one of the hosts on the TV show. It wasn’t vicious or anything, but he kept jumping on him and pushing him down. And giving him mean looks (I’m serious).

Of course Joypolis was a blast as well. It had some really good rides, and then some mediocre ones. One of the things that stood out for me was that I got to take a picture with Sonic!

The room of living dolls was this horror-type experience. It had a story about a mother who lost her daughter in the war, and then to bring her back made a doll the same size and put a human heart in it to bring it to life. Basically like Frankenstein. Everybody gets led into the room where the story is told and we all sit down around this large table. The room itself is full of creepy dolls with glowing eyes. And of course in the front-center of the room is the queen doll herself, the living doll.

You are given these headphones to wear and they turn off the lights in the room. The headphones play the story with some kind of 360 degrees sound system. It felt very, very real. As the old lady in the headphones was telling the story she walks around the room in the circle. It was done so well I had to actually check if there was anyone in the room. It was hard to tell if there were noises coming from around the room or from the headphones.

After Joypolis I had a delicious cheeseburger and some onion rings at a restaurant in Odaiba, which I was also very pleased with.

And that brings me to the end of my adventures in Odaiba so far. I want to leave with one more great thing from Odaiba.

This is an environmental awareness……display, statue, quiz-thing. They have some information about rain forests being destroyed. Then there is a quiz also, the question in the display roughly reads “In one year how much area does the destruction of the earth’s rain forests cover?” The correct answer is the largest amount of area that they give in the answers, and if you answer it correctly then the bears will begin to cry. I am trying to look sad in this picture in sympathize along with the bears.