Tired... but I took pictures!

So my apartment is located in Kameido. Its about a 25 minute train ride from school, which I can't stress enough as being one of its best assets. I'm paying about 500$ a month for rent and around 60$ on the utilities, which all in all is a pretty good deal. The trains are right across the street out front, so its a little bit loud until 12:30 at night, but other than that, you can't really beat the price and location.

Its my room... Obviously a little empty because there is no reason to buy furniture for a few months. I have a tatami floor and sleep on that futon there, which I sometimes roll up. Excuse the mess please!

Views of our kitchen area. Its likewise very messy... Still it has about everything I'll need. The fridge was actually a gift and everything else came from craigslist.
Here is the shower/tub. It used to be moldy, but I did my mother proud and cleaned that all up.
Another view of my room. Once it warms up, I'll hang my clothes outside. TV is also from craigslist.... and I actually brought my wii from home.

Second Day of class hits even harder

Maybe its because I was going from 9:15 - 20:15 with a whopping 7.5 hours of classes (its pretty hard to be retentive for 7 hours straight). Anyway, with day two out of the way I think I've settled on my classes for this semester, so I'll go ahead and lay it out for you.

Intensive Japanese 3 - basically the same class as last semester. 3 hours/day 5days/week. This class takes up a lot of time, and I probably can only retain 50% of the material we cover, but I think that is still more than enough. Sure it starts at 9:15 in the morning, but what would be the point of living in Japan if I didn't get to ride the rush hour trains!
These aren't my pictures, but I'm sure you can get the general idea of what my morning commute looks like. I haven't bothered taking a picture, because frankly, I have enough trouble just finding my own hands in this mess.

History of Japanese Language This looks interesting. It basically covers the changes in the Japanese language reaching back to the around the 10th or 11th century. Quite a lot has changed since then, and I'll try and bring back few select tidbits that I learn in the class to enlighten you guys as well. Though I'm not sure how many of you are interested in Japanese linguistics. As for today's fact, The Japanese language is unique in that it is one of the only ones with more than two first person pronouns (ie.. I, and Me in English). Which is true, because off the top of my head I can already name six.

Translation Methods: Japanese to English Finally this class rounds out my schedule. My hope for this semester is to bolster my language abilities, and hopefully this class will contribute the most to that goal. For one, the class is meant for students at a Japanese level two above my own. So that is a good start. I don't think it is insurmountable though, and with some hard work I should be able to make it to the finish (albeit not with a good grade). As the name implies, the class is about translation. While we just work on about 10 1-page articles, review, stories, poems, etc it is unfathomably difficult (at least from what I gathered at the first lesson) to craft an appropriate translation for any piece as you undoubtedly have to sacrifice literal translation for natural sounding translation and aspects of the meaning, tone, or intent are bound to be lost. Anyway, if I ever drop-off the blogosphere, its probably because I'm wildly lost in a mess of Kanji in this class.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
On a side note, I bought a PSP with my job money!

I went with the sexy Mint-Green color exclusively available here in Japan! It functions as a web browser, music player, video player, and of course a game player (which I haven't money to buy). But besides that, my main reason for buying it was (parents take note!) its SKYPE functionality .
Essentially, at any wireless hotspot I can hop online, log into my skype account and with my headset attached make cheap phone calls to anywhere in the world. For those that are unaware, skype allows you to make class to any computer for free and any land-line for a little under $.03 per minute. So basically, as long as I have my PSP when I travel, I won't have to worry about being completely without a means of communication.


TO DO UPDATES:
JOB
APARTMENT (its dirty....)
花見

Also how many people that view this have Asian fonts installed... just out of curiosity... does my next line look like crazy japanese characters or a bunch of boxes/random characters (note... that may be a silly question... as Japanese and random characters could potentially look the same to you!)

日本は、東アジアの東方、太平洋の西部にある島国である。

An Update with many pictures and few words

So last week, a friend called me and asked if I wanted to go to a fertility festival... and of course how could I resist. The town where this was located was only an hour and a half outside of Tokyo , so it wasn't much of a hassle anyway. And this was probably our first day of nice weather since I had been back.Some Taiko drummers!
This place was packed with people, especially foreigners (which is a bit disappointing where you are looking for an authentic japanese festival) but what do you expect at a festival devoted to phallus's.
A Japanese cartoon mascot reimaged as a phallus.
A statue at the shrine we visited.
Proof that it was a nice sun shiny day, and look at the cherry blossoms in the background, unfortunately the temperature has since dipped down and killed all the blossoms.
Big wooden phallus.
Shinto shrines normally tie those ropes around trees, but in this case, they are wrapped around a penis.
You can buy phallic candles, candies, vegetables, hot dogs, statues, etc.
A Daikon Radish carving competition, later on in the day, these were auctioned off.
The festival also feature a parade through the streets, this place was packed as they carried 5 or so shrines through the crowds with music playing and sun beating down on us. Somehow this day really made me glad to be back in Japan, if only because I don't know many other places where I could get the same experience.

Alright, I'm off to prepare for class

short-and-sweet and then some sleep

And so I went home for a month...


These pictures are the only proof that I was ever actually in the US.

It was nice to stop by school and say 'hi' to a few friends that are graduating in the spring. But in the end, its just a strange experience to show up and see life going on without you (not that I didn't expect it) and I would have preferred to be here in Japan if I only I could have worked out a way to do that where I wouldn't have gone insane.

It was nice though to take a chance to zoom-out and relax, taking time to figure out what I wanted to accomplish in my last 5 months here. Study harder basically... I am miffed that studying at home didn't pan out (I didn't really think it would) and am frustrated with how poor my japanese speaking ability has rusted while my listening has remained relatively constant. I'd equate it nearly to being mute. Its like I can understand what people are saying, but am having an extraordinary amount of difficulty expressing what I mean to.

Anyway, with my family visited, my head straightened out, and precious $$$ saved. I returned to Japan... into my new apartment...


I LIVE IN THE BOTTOM LEFT!

Unfortunately the weather has been rather nasty, my room is messy, and school starts tomorrow... so I'll update on this later!

Not so sweet goodbye's..

So, by the end of my last semester. I was really starting to feel friction between myself and my host mother. I guess that all in all the experience just wasn't working out for me as I had hoped for it to pan out. Sure I had plenty of opportunity to practice japanese over the dinner table, and sometimes even had the chance to practice during arguments with my host mother (I'm told this is the best way to learn next to getting a girlfriend), but I just never really felt like I had ever moved into the Taniguchi family.

More or less, I felt that the family was renting a room in their house rather than trying to host me. I was never shown around, when guests were over I was either told to wait upstairs or to try and come home late, and it was just generally hard to enjoy my life at school and with friends when I was expected back home by six everyday (and if not, risked paying for a meal that I wouldn't eat). My host siblings, while fun to talk to, spent far too much time studying for me to actually build a relationship with. And not having internet, and spending most of my time in my room really made home a lonely place.

In the end, I decided to move out (after-all why should the Taniguchi's be pinching MY pennies, when I can do that myself). While I will miss my homedad, I certainly won't miss the monotonous toast breakfasts and chilly nights. Besides things are much better now (more on that later).

As the semester counted down, I sorta dropped the bomb on them at the last second. I had decided to use my refunded homestay money to go home for a month instead of trying to live with them over the break. At first my host mom argued that I didn't need to go home, but I think I showed that I was intent on my plans. In the end I got back about 650$ and got a flight for 574$, so it was most likely cheaper to go home as well.

I wish I had made the decision much earlier in the year, but seeing as to how I was in Japan, and the cost of living is so high, I just didn't really see anywhere to escape to. On my final night, there was no special going away dinner, and in the morning, no sad goodbye's, but they did give me a gift. This heart-cookie. Needless to say, it left a very sour taste in my mouth.

From what I've learned. Its quite common for other students to run into host family that seem to be much more worried about making money from hosting a student than actually hosting them. One of my friends actually just picked up and left one morning, and then showed up at the school's office, I guess I should be thankful that things didn't work out that bad, and I'm glad to see friends this semester settling in with homestays sound much better.



Oh and here is a giant penis being paraded through the streets... we'll get to the story in a few more posts. In the meantime, trying to pick class for both Sophia this semester and UVa next semester at the same time is really putting me in a bind and making me realize that I don't know what I want to accomplish in this last year. Still, my tentative UVa schedule is:

Intro To Linguistics
US Foreign Policy
Chinese Politics
Elementary Chinese
Japanese - Lost and Found In Translation
Language And Prehistory

So with the exception of Chinese, they are all high level classes... still I mean chinese, might as well be a high level class... but after having studied Korean and Japanese... how much harder could it be?

I hear the echoes of heels at night.

Girls here don't seem to think they are adults unless they are constantly wearing heels.

久しぶり！

It took awhile, but the stars have finally aligned just right to move me to blog. I guess I let things get a little out of hand. I'll give you a very fast rundown of whats been going on though in chronological order and with pictures!

After returning from Korea, a bunch of friends showed up here in Japan including homeboy-Ravi and girlfriend-Jen. Sadly I can't really remember what went on. But looking over my pictures I at least see some Karaoke (what else in Japan).



With that done, it was time for exams, this wasn't nearly as tough as I thought it would be. I think I maybe have overstudied (is that possible) considering what was expected of me, and the fact that I had solid grades going into the finals anyway. So in the end I finished off the semster with:
International Relations = A
Intensive Japanese = B

Still, to celebrate, a few friends and I snuck up to the top floor of one of the Sophia buildings. Brought ourselves a few drinks from the コンビに (convenience store)　and enjoyed the sunset over 新宿(Shinjuku).

After the semester was over, there wasn't much left in the way of things to do and time wound down as I wished some students safe trips back to their homes. Its sad that some people were only here for half a year and I won't be seeing them again next semester. Especially since, they are going back to their home countries and so my chances of ever seeing them again is pretty slim. Thats why you have to be glad for the advent of sites such as facebook, or even just the internet in general.





居酒屋(Japanese-style bar)


回転寿司(Rotating Sushi Restaurant... you are charged but the plate... and that 'just one more' mentality always ends up costing me)

Anyway, a few big bits of news to cover. Break here in Japan was from February 1st to April 11th (yes I'm still on break) and I had no clue what it was I would do for that time, so...
I moved out of my homestay (unhappily)
I returned home for a little over a month (happily)
I returned to Japan reinvigorated and ready for a new semster (happily)
I moved into a new apartment (happily!)
Friends from my school in VA are now here in Tokyo for the next semester (including Jen)
I got a job

So in celebration of me being back on the blog.. I'm going to update you on all these topics... later... maybe one update a day... who knows!

In the meantime, I'm back... thanks to everyone who claimed to actually be reading the blog and told me while I was at home...

See you tomorrow.

Here is me at a penis festival... in case you thought you weren't going to check my blog