No, I didn't die...

Yes I know this blog has virtually died. It's been over a month since I last posted. I should've seen this coming really, when I got out of the habit of not updating daily. The last month has flown by, and I've been caught up and busy and distracted, much more so than the first 2 months here. I'll try to summarize as best I can, but really, there's far too much to say, much more than I could write here.

To my disbelief school finally got somewhat difficult here as the end of the quarter approached. Still not near as difficult as OSU, but enough that between hanging out with friends and doing homework I had little time to myself. Which was just fine really. The past month has been filled with the most of fun I've ever had I think, and I'm more than sad to see it has now ended. Most of the Californians that I met what feels like so long ago have now returned to America, as they were only here for one quarter. From mid-October, I had finally gotten really close to them and really felt like part of the group. As the end of November approached we all spent more and more time together, so I was quite sad to see them go. Thankfully some of our group is staying for a year like me, but at least for now, it doesn't feel quite the same. I already miss our 20+ people group outings.

As far as schoolwork goes, I had a presentation, two 10 page essays, and all my Japanese finals to study for within the last month. Many hours were spent in the library and quite a few all-nighters were pulled to get through that. Still no where near as rigorous as OSU's finals week, but quite time-consuming nonetheless. But it's all over now, and I've already started a new quarter. There's absolutely no break between the two quarters for some reason. Finals week ends, and the next week the new quarter begins. At least, we do get a month off after next quarter.

About two weeks ago before everyone left we all went on one of our last big group outings together to Disney Sea. It's a little different from Disneyland, with different scenery and rides and such. It's must prettier than Disneyland, and according to our Japanese friends, more romantic. The rides were on a whole less exciting, but there were a few highlights. Namely the Indiana Jones ride and the Tower of Terror, which I finally rode for the first time! The last chance I had was at Disneyworld when I was 5, and I was way too scared to go anywhere near it. I was really nervous waiting in line, cause I generally don't like freefalls, but it was so much fun! I don't know if the ride itself was different from the one in America. It kind of bounced up and down instead of just falling straight down all the way once like I thought it would. All in all it ended far too quickly :(

I can't really promise how much I'll update this from now on. I'll try to not let a month pass by again at least.

Tokyo Disneyland

We spent the whole day at Tokyo Disneyland yesterday. It was so much fun, but a really long day.

I decided to be stupid Friday night and go out with my friends, even though I had to wake up at 6. I ended up getting 4 hours sleep. It should've been only 3, but I overslept. Naturally. We were all supposed to meet on campus (about 15min away from my dorm) at 7:30am. That didn't exactly happen as planned. I woke up at 7:05, and got ready as quickly as possible. I got there around 7:40, and we ended up waiting for other people until 8. Finally we headed over to Tsukuba Center and the the Tsukuba Express station. It takes about 2hrs to get to Disneyland. We had to change trains a few times too, and we missed the stop one time and had to double back. But eventually we got there.

The train stop for Disneyland was built specifically for Disneyland, so you basically get off the train station and you're right by the entrance. Everyone was really excited at this point. I haven't been to Disneyworld since I was 5, so I was really excited too. I barely remember anything about it. One of the Americans worked at Disneyland in California, so she's been there far too many times to count. She told us a lot of the inner workings of Disneyland, which was really interesting, like how they work extra hard to hide back entrances, in order to make all the magic seem more real I suppose. What a cool job.

There were 20 people in our group. 4 Japanese, 2 from Britain, 1 from China, and 13 Americans. Since there was so many people, we split up right at the beginning. It's impossible to keep such a large group, especially in the large Saturday crowds. Although we really only ended up splitting into 2 groups of 6 and 14. I was with the group of 14, which was still too many people, and unfortunately we wasted a lot of time throughout the day being indecisive or waiting for other people.

We went to Tomorrowland first, to get fast passes (front of the line passes) for Space Mountain for later on in the day. Then we headed back near the entrance and got in line for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I don't remember much about Disneyworld from when I was a kid, but I do remember refusing to ride Pirates because I was scared. lol. So I finally get to ride it! It was really fun. They had Jack Sparrow robots, and they were so lifelike.

After Pirates we stopped at the hat stall, and a few people bought Mickey or Minnie ears. Everyone was hungry by then so we went to this hot dog restaurant on Main Street. $10 for a hot dog, a drink, and some fries. Oh Disneyland prices... Oh well, I was starving. The hot dog restaurant was the same restaurant my friend worked in at Disneyland in California, so she was really excited to see the Tokyo equivalent. After lunch we tried to get fast passes for Splash Mountain, but they were sold out, so we ended up getting in line to ride the tea cup ride. I was so excited for it, I love that ride. We split into three tea cups and we all tried to go as fast as we could, to see who could the fastest. According to the people who didn't want to ride, my group lost :(

After tea cups we went to Space Mountain and used our passes to get to the front of the line. This was my favorite ride. I love roller coasters in the dark. It makes them so much more fun. After Space Mountain we sat around for over an hour trying to decide what to do, and waiting for people to eat and use the bathroom, and losing track of where people walked off to. When we finally gathered together to leave, it started raining. It was around 3pm, and it rained for the rest of the day.

We walked back near Splash Mountain and tried to find a ride that didn't have a 3hr wait. Which we failed in of course, because it's Saturday, and the park was packed. There were 3 big rides left, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, and Haunted Mansion, all of which had a 3hr wait. We left it up to my one friend, because it was her birthday. She decided we should ride Haunted Mansion, so we got in line. It started raining harder then, and everyone was pretty tired of standing, so I think our excitement levels took a plummet here. It was still fun, just a little miserable at the same time because of the rain. I don't really mind waiting in lines for rides, because I think a lot of the fun of amusement parks comes from the boredom-induced shenanigans you get into with your friends while waiting in line. A good chunk of our pictures are from waiting in line, and since we had so many people, it was usually entertaining. While waiting in line, we got to see the Halloween parade go by too.

Finally, a little over two hours later we got to the front of the line. Even more exciting than the ride, I was just happy to be indoors where it was warm and not raining. In Haunted Mansion you sit on the these moving chairs and you go through a mansion based on The Nightmare before Christmas. It was pretty fun actually (and we got to sit down for a few minutes!), and the special effects were really good. It was dark by the time we got out. We went back to Tomorrowland, and there was only a 20min wait for Star Tours (the motion simulator) so rode that real quick. I'm not really a fan of simulators, I feel like you might as well just go and ride and actual roller coaster instead, cause it's way more fun. Although I do remember riding a simulator just like that when I was little. I think it was at Universal Studios, cause it was Flintstones themed. I remember being scared shitless lol. It was quite anti-scary this time.

Everyone was hungry again, so we back to Main Street to find food. This caused a massive split up of our group, cause everyone wanted to eat different things, and no one could make any decisions. So we split up into groups of 2-4. My group got food at a bakery/deli. I ate some pastry things and a sandwich for another $10. We attempted shopping after dinner, but the shops were so crowded my friend Sara and I decided to leave. We walked through the castle finally. We hadn't even done that yet even after being there all day, and then we went to Toontown where they have all the characters' houses.

An hour later we met up with the remainder of our group, since half of the group already went home. Since it was dark and cold and rainy, the lines for the rides were only about 10min long. So we rode Big Thunder Mountain, the roller coaster, and then went on Splash Mountain. The park was about to close after Splash Mountain so we headed to the entrance.

Just outside the entrance we all got split up from each other, and a few of us waited in the rain for 15min before calling the others and realizing they'd already gone to the train station. We were all quite miserable at this point. We'd been on our feet all day, and all of our shoes were soaking wet, and it was freezing. And of course, the trains were packed to capacity, which made it worse. We had another mishap with the trains going back as well. We got off at the wrong stop to transfer first, so we got back on the train to go to the next stop, but it turned out the train we got on went to the right place anyway. However, due to some miscommunication, some of our group got off at the next stop anyway, so we all got off so as not to be separated. We had to wait 10min for the next train in the cold, and the next one that came was the last one for the night. When we got to the station where we had to transfer to the Tsukuba Express to go back to Tsukuba, we got on the last train bound for Tsukuba. We were so close to having to find somewhere to spend the night, it's not even funny.

Everyone was wiped out, and I half slept on the train. Unfortunately when we got back to Tsukuba, we still had to bike back to our dorms. Mine being 30min or so away. I collapsed in bed when I got home around 12:40, and my feet were throbbing for an hour before I fell asleep. That's what happens when you're on your feet for 18hrs. Despite everything though, it was still the best day ever. I had so much fun.

Messing with drunk people never gets old

Yesterday after class we had our weekly Japanese conversation group meeting. It's supposed to be a group for Japanese students and international students to meet and talk together, but it's really just an overwhelming amount of foreigners with a few Japanese mixed in. Which is still fine I guess, cause we still get to practice Japanese, but I still wish we could meet more Japanese students. I talked to a girl from Vietnam the whole time, for an hour or so. Afterwards the group goes out to dinner for those who want to come. We ended up with 19 foreigners and 5 Japanese. A very uneven ratio. I think the workers were a little scared when the Japanese guy in charge went in to ask if they had room for us all. I know I would be crying a little if I had to serve a party of 24. The restaurant was an okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is like a fried pancake thing that you can fill with a variety of different things, depending on what you want. For instance, meat, noodles, vegetables, seafood, and so on. It's delicious.

At dinner we split into 4 tables, with at least one Japanese student per table. I was with two of the Americans, two girls from Taiwan, and one of the Japanese boys. Like most Japanese boys, he was a little shy I think, and the poor thing had to sit with 5 girls :) He must've been a little nervous cause he bought a beer eventually, and again like most Japanese boys, he got drunk after only one beer. It made for quite a hilarious and entertaining dinner. He was trying really hard to act not drunk when we took pictures, so I started taking pictures everytime he took a sip of beer. To which he would respond by saying "no!" and trying to turn away. We were all teasing him during the latter part of the dinner. Teasing drunk people is so much fun. When it came time to split the bill he split is so he was paying for his meal and about half of each of our meals. I think it's custom here for the men to pay a larger portion of the bill when bill splitting occurs. When we tried to protest he started using male speech and said it was fine. I suppose male speech in Japanese is comparable to the way boys talk to each other in English, but it's a little different here. Women always speak normally, but when Japanese men talk to each other casually they use a few different and very blunt words and slur words together to the point that I can barely understand what they're saying. Needless to say, boys never use this type of speech when talking to girls. Thus, it was quite funny to hear.

Change is good (?)

Believe it or not, the lack of posts lately has not been from laziness. It's not so much a lack of will to write, but rather a lack of stuff to write about. I'm sure everyone else who goes abroad and keeps a blog has encountered the same problem. The initial first few weeks are exciting. Everything around you is new and incredibly interesting, and you make all sorts of unique observations from the viewpoint of your home culture. Eventually that all sort of runs down, and you settle into the usual, normal, everyday routine. The exciting excursions on the weekends become fewer and farther between as soon as you overcome the initial excitement and realize your bank account is crying. So all I really have to say now in a daily post is that I woke up, went to school, ate at some point, did some homework, went to sleep, lather, rinse, repeat. I wish there were more to say, because I like writing in this blog, but for the sake of not boring everyone to tears I decided to only write once in a while, when something interesting happens, or I when have something to say.

8hrs of class should be illegal

Another 2 days in one post. In my defense I got home very late last night and had to wake up early so I just wanted to go straight to bed.

Yesterday I had class from 10-6. I spent at least $10 on snacks throughout the day just to make it through. The university was on Monday schedule, even though it was Thursday. Since Monday was a holiday. Unfortunately Monday is my longest day, while Thursday is one of my shortest. We also had to make up a kanji class in the morning. I went out with the Cali people last night too, so it ended up being a really long day.

I had to wake up really early (by my standards) today, to go meet the girl I tutor at 9. Unfortunately she's really busy, so she had no other time. It was quite a struggle to try to pay attention to her accents and correct her and such while I was barely awake. She wants to do it at 9 next week too...

Our electricity in the dorm was shut off today from 9-4, cause they were working on something I guess. So unfortunately I had to dumb most of the stuff in my fridge. It's kind of cruel to do something like that in the middle of the quarter. For the people with lots of stuff in their fridges at least. Since I had no computer access and was tired I just napped from around 1 when I got home, to 4ish. I goofed off on the computer and played DS after that. I didn't feel like doing homework today. At 7:30 I went to Tori's to eat, and then we left to go to another party for international students and Japanese students. Like the one I went to two weeks ago. It was really fun. We got to talk to a lot of different people. Some Japanese students, a girl from Italy, a guy from Saudi Arabia, some Chinese students, as so on. We were there for about 3hrs. There's going to be another party around Halloween. I'm looking forward to it.

These posts are so boring lately, sorry. Can't go to Tokyo every weekend. It's far too expensive. At least $40 in train tickets everytime. I'm trying to save up my scholarship money for the big trip we're planning for our spring break. Spring break is a month long, so we're planning to travel all through southern Japan. And on winter break we're planning to go up north and hopefully visit some real hot springs and such. Although next weekend we're all going to Tokyo Disneyland for the day. I'm really excited for that :)

Full of ughs

Forgot to post again yesterday. I'm getting worse with this. Anyway, yesterday was the first day of class in a while. I had my speaking and grammar class. In speaking we somehow got on the topic of Obama's Nobel prize. Unfortunately, I was sitting in the front row (assigned seats ugh) and I'm the only American in that class (the others are in another period). So of course she did exactly what I hoped she wouldn't do, and asked me to explain why he got the award since I'm American. I didn't really know how to explain in Japanese, but I stumbled through it somehow.

Grammar was excessively boring. My friend and I started writing notes to each other near the end to try and stay awake. After class I went to Tsukuba Center to buy some food and go to the post office to get my package. Unfortunately they apparently keep trying to deliver you package for 3 days or so in a row. Or something like that. I wasn't quite sure what the guy was saying to me (although I just nodded and pretended that I did), but I was able to understand that is was currently out for deliver still. Then I remembered my phone had rung again this morning, and I had once again been too lazy to answer. I resigned myself to answering the phone the next day, but a few hours after I got home, around 8:30, the postman called and came and delivered it. Yay. Talking on the phone is so scary though.

Today I had kanji class and reading. Kanji class was dull, and reading was as ridiculous as always. It's supposed to be reading class, but so far I've only managed to read 2 pages of the book we're working on. I feel like if she would just give us something slightly easier, just slightly, then we might actually be able to improve our reading, and not just our punching an overwhelming number of words we don't know into the dictionary skills. It's like giving an elementary school kid and adult book and telling them to read it. The difficulty curve is far too high for much learning to be accomplished. Ugh.

I have class at 10 tomorrow, because we have to make up the kanji class that was canceled last week. Ugh, waking up early.

The consequences of laziness

I was feeling really blah this morning so I did virtually nothing today until 4, with the exception of going to bathroom and eating breakfast at 2 I guess. I went to bed far too late last night. Some tv shows can be far too addicting...

I woke up at 11:30 briefly to a phone ringing, and it took me a minute to realize what it was. Not my cell phone, but the campus only phones we have in our rooms. I've never heard it ring before. I knew exactly who it was. It was the postman coming to deliver my package from the US. They can call our rooms from the entrance since the door is locked. Unfortunately, having just woken up, I was far too groggy to get up and answer it, let alone attempt to speak Japanese over the phone. So I just let it ring. They give you a little slip in your mailbox when they can't deliver it, so I have to go to the post office tomorrow to get my package. Oh well, that's laziness for ya.

I finally started doing homework at 4, cause I've done almost none this whole weekend. I did it for a few hours and ate dinner with Tori at 7. After dinner we went to campus for the ending of the festival. I think they had someone semi-famous there, but I have no idea who it was. They were doing lottery results first, and then moved on to crown Miss Campus. One of the people who came to congratulate her was President Obama... or rather some random Japanese kid wearing a really freaky Obama mask. It was really random. At one point during the closing ceremony they showed a video which was a compilation of footage from the various events and people during the festival. Sort of a farewell video. For a brief second there was a shot of Tori and me walking. We got really excited, and all our friends around us were like, "wait, wasn't that you guys?!" lol. I want to see that video again. I hope they put it online somewhere.

After the ceremony they shot off fireworks to signal the end of the festival. They only lasted about 2 min, but they were so much better than the last fireworks we saw. Probably because they weren't so long, and this time we didn't have a rate of 1 firework per 2min. They shot off more than one at a time! Imagine that...

And the apple obsession continues...

I overslept this morning. Even with the cannons firing at 10am signaling the start of the festival again. I fell back asleep as soon as they ended. I did some homework and watched tv until 3. Then I went to the festival again, and met up with the California people. We got some food first and then wandered around a bit. I got apple slices which were incredibly delicious. Best apple I've had since leaving America. I ended up buying 3 by the end of the night.

Some of our group left after a couple hours, and the rest of us bought some more food for dinner eventually. Then we sat on the hill by the lake while we ate, and watched yet even more music groups. Eventually we got bored and wandered back towards the center of campus, where the other stage is. They were showing the same dance show we watched yesterday, so we watched it again. After it was over, we had about 30 min to the next show, so we walked just out of campus and stopped at 7-Eleven and everyone bought some snacks. We missed most of the show that started at 8, some fashion show, but we watched the end. At that point the festival staff began pushing back the huge crowd from in front of the stage, to make room on the ground in front for the dancers.

The next performance was my favorite part of the festival so far. It was an Okinawan dance, and was really fun to watch. It went about 20min. I could describe it, but that wouldn't do it justice, so I've posted it on facebook and youtube. After their dance was over they came out to the audience and pulled us all in to dance too. Although it was really more like the people in the very front were jumping up and down and dancing, while the rest of us were just clapping to the beat.

It was very cold again today, high 50s/low 60s after dark, but I came prepared with boots and a jacket this time. I came home after the last performance. Tomorrow's the last day of the festival. I'll probably end up going again. Just hope I can fit my homework in there somewhere...

Here's the youtube links:
Dance Show
Okinawan Dance Part 1
Okinawan Dance Part 2

Don't make eye contact

I forgot to post yesterday. Whoops. Not that it really matters, I can sum up yesterday in a few sentences.

I had no class cause it was Friday, so I met the Japanese girl I tutor at 1. The session ended at 3, and students were already setting up for the University Festival. They also decided to move all the bikes parked in front of the building I was in, to make room. The girl I tutor asked someone where they put them, cause I had no idea where my bike went. The wheels were locked, but they somehow carried it up a hill and a bit away from where I was. I finally found it and went home. Tori and I went to Tsukuba Center after that, and I attempted to buy sneakers again. Unfortunately they don't really carry anything above a US size 6 here, so I'm afraid I'm out of luck. We watched the finale of a Japanese drama we'd been watching after we came home, and then I came home and watched tv until quite late.

The University Festival started today at 10am. Apparently they decided that no one within a 2mi radius should be asleep while the festival is going, so they fired off cannons at 10 exactly to signal its start. It was able to wake me up fully after I'd been hitting snooze for an hour. We got ready, and Tori, Amanda, and I went to the festival around noon. It basically consisted of a couple performance stages, with various performances running from 10am-10pm, and a lot of food stalls. That's more or less a Japanese festival it seems.

I'm gonna go on a tangent here about the food stalls. Because they are very different from America. In America, stall workers will just sit there and more or less let you take your time to choose and they expect you to walk up to them. Well here in Japan, especially college students apparently, the food stall workers are very aggressive. They take shifts at the greeter by the stall holding the sign, but they don't just stand there, they run up to you if you give their stall even the slightest glance (sometimes even if you don't look), as in, they stand right in your path, and try to get you to come to their stall. If they're not running up to you, they're constantly shouting into the air something along the lines of, "how about some [fill in the blank food]?" and it makes me wonder how their throats don't get sore. It's rather troublesome really, sometimes you just want to look without being bothered, and walking through the food stall sections is a chore in itself.

We sat near one of the lakes and watched the performances there most of the day. In the beginning they had this show for little kids, which was highly amusing, and because it was meant for kids we could actually understand all the Japanese. We wandered around for a while after that, and eventually bought some lunch. After buying lunch we went back to the performance stage, and eventually met 2 of our other friends there. Various modern dance groups were performing for about 2hrs. And they were all really good too. Far better than the average American dancers at college level. It was really fun to watch.

After them it was mostly just various bands and singing groups for the rest of the night. Tori went home before 5 or so, but I didn't want to leave, so I stayed with the others. We mostly stayed near the stage, but ventured out once in a while when we got tired of watching. We saw the juggling club perform at one point. They're really good too. The one kid was juggling knives. Unfortunately it started to get really cold after dark (it's fully dark at 6pm here), so eventually we ducked into the Starbucks in the library and I bought overpriced hot chocolate out of desperation for something warm. Starbucks closed about 10min later, and the workers at the counter gave us and the other customers a very obvious stare down, so we left. We wandered back to the stage afterward, and the others soon left. I decided to stay a little longer and just watch the performers. I finally couldn't stand the cold anymore (it was in the 50s and I only had a light jacket and flip flops) around 7:45 or so, and headed back and took a much needed hot shower. The festival's still for two more days, so I imagine I'll be repeating a similar day tomorrow and the next. It beats sitting in my room all day.

Just watched the new episode of The Office where Jim and Pam get married. Quite possibly the most awesome and touching episode yet. Further proof of just how great a show The Office is.

Day off school because it's sunny?

I'm feeling lazy, so it's gonna be a lame post today.

Typhoon day was awesome. I slept till noon. I woke up and looked out the window, expecting to see a horrible storm, only to find that it was a beautiful sunny day, with blue skies and fluffy white clouds. Some day off school lol. It's the first non rainy day we've had in a while. Although don't get me wrong, it was actually really windy. And I mean really windy. I took a walk at one point, and branches were falling all over the place, and the trees were all severely swaying.

We had a movie day in my room. Although we only ended up watching one movie. By we, I mean the other Americans who live in my dorm area. There were 5 of us. After the movie half of us went to get dinner. Then I went to shower and came home and facebooked for a couple hours... Yes, such a dull day. Tomorrow will be dull as well. The only thing I have to do is tutor that Japanese student at 1. Maybe we'll go shopping at Tsukuba Center, who knows. I do need new shoes... Oh, and the university has a festival this weekend (Sat-Mon) with lots of performances and stuff, so I'm excited for that.

Not a snow day... but a typhoon day?

I had kanji class today at noon, which went considerably better than last time cause I've been studying really hard on my own. I have a 2hr break between kanji and reading, so I just studied. Reading was uneventful. Sorry for the lame synopsis of my day, nothing very interesting happened in class.

It rained today, cause apparently there's a typhoon coming tomorrow. Which we found out today we get off school for. Typhoon day, woo!! We also have Monday off for yet another holiday, so 5 day weekend yay. The Americans who live in the same dorm area as me and I are planning to have a movie day tomorrow, since we have nothing else to do and nowhere to go as it'll be raining pretty hard. It's already really windy and raining hard.

Tori and I watched tv in her room for a few hours, then goofed off on the computer and youtube... then out of the corner of my eye I spied a rather large cockroach scuttle in under her door... ewwwwwww. Such nasty creatures. Neither of us knew what to do, cause we're both utterly disgusted by them. Where are boys when you need them? Luckily it crawled into the box where Tori keeps her trash, and she grabbed the box and we ran downstairs and disposed of the nasty thing in the grass somewhere. So disgusting. I really really would appreciate none coming into my room thanks o_O

I know this is a lame short post, sorry. Maybe more tomorrow? Who knows.

Assigned seats need to stop

Another dry routine day. I had speaking and grammar class today. They both went ok. In speaking we got assigned seats today, and assigned partners for an in class activity. It sucked. We were supposed to come up with a conversation with our partner given a certain set-up situation, but my partner was very confused and didn't speak English, so I was trying to explain to him what we were doing in Japanese, but he didn't seem to get it. I tried to convey the urgency that we really needed to make a conversation before time was up, but he just didn't understand. Ugh. I hate assigned partners.

When time was up we got in a group of 4 with the pair in front of us and they said their conversation for us and then we were supposed to say ours for them. But of course we didn't have one, but the kid finally got what we were doing from hearing the other pair, so we started making up a conversation on the spot. I'm sure the other pair must've figured it out. Unfortunately the teacher decided to visit our group at that time and listened to me and my useless partner make up a conversation on the spot. He said something completely wrong though, and my part was just fine, so hopefully she didn't think I didn't know what was going on. Ugggh. She asked me a question after we finished too, that it took me a minute to understand. I hope she doesn't think I'm an idiot, talking to the teacher just makes me nervous.

Then as a group we had to decide on one conversation and write it on this poster on the wall. All the groups were doing it too. The other students in my group were Chinese so they picked me to write cause my handwriting is more uhh... less messy I guess? Cause I just learned how to write I write very precisely, while they're handwriting is more naturally sloppy because they've been writing that way for their whole lives and they can write way faster than me. Kind of like how you write really carefully when you first learn the alphabet. It's kind of a funny situation when you think about it; that I can write neater. Unfortunately I was feeling a bit pressured and I kept making stupid mistakes in my writing. I hope they didn't think I was an idiot too. I really can write just fine, I was just nervous I suppose, and flustered. The Chinese kid helped me write some of the kanji I didn't know, but everytime I hesitated on kanji, even when I did know it and just couldn't think because of nerves, or I needed more time to think of it, he thought I just didn't know the kanji and would write it for me. Ugggh again. I swear I'm not a moron. I just crack under pressure.

Grammar class was uneventful, so I shall not recount it.

I came home and took a nice long nap when I got home around 3:30. Woke up at 5 and studied and showered and went to eat dinner in the cafeteria. Fun times.... yeah, nothing exciting happened in the evening today. Class at noon tomorrow as usual.

Internal Japanese switch, now on.

Looong day today. I had to wake up early (early as in 10:30) and get ready before noon so I could go pay rent and get clean, noodle-less sheets. I had class at 12:15, but it doesn't matter how late my classes are, I'll never be ready on time. I wasn't late exactly, but I wasn't really ready on time either. I was rushing to class as usual. My laundry still wasn't completely dry either, so I had to wear semi-damp clothes in the cool weather today. I tried to throw them in the dryer for 15min, but the dryers here don't really work. They dried quickly once I got outside at least.

Education was slightly less horrible today, cause luckily I didn't have to speak about my research homework this time. I got an easy question, specifically what factors made me choose to go to OSU, in comparison to what factors Japanese students consider when choosing universities. The teacher was still really mean to one of the poor Japanese girls though. And the class was as dull as ever of course.

Writing class went well. I got back my writing assignment, and I did fairly well on it actually. I had some mistakes of course, but she gave me really good comments too. My Japanese studies/culture class was sort of interesting. We talked about WWII, which is a really fascinating topic to me, and one of my favorite history periods to study. I drew a new picture of a kitty from one of my folders during the boring parts.

After class we went to this Japanese conversation club, which was set up by one of the Japanese students, for international students and Japanese students to meet and talk in Japanese. Which is great for us to practice, and great for the Japanese students that want to meet international students. It was really helpful, I was talking with this girl from Taiwan for a while, and I did pretty well. It's nice to know my Japanese is working again.

After the meeting we went to dinner, which kind of sucked cause we had to ride our bikes in the crappy rain (yay for my wonderful hat). We went to Big Boy's (as in Frisch's Big Boy), which was kind of too American and a little expensive. They had lots of like steak and grilled chicken and stuff. I just got spaghetti cause it was cheap ($6 for a small dish, this was the cheapest thing on the menu). It was fun, we got to talk more in Japanese. I was sitting with the guys from Britain and Amanda and one of the Japanese students. Unfortunately we ended up going off in English together quite a few times, and the poor Japanese kid couldn't understand a word we said. It's hard to resist when you're around other native English speakers. Eventually we vowed to start talking in Japanese, so we could practice, and so he could join in. This sort of worked, we really just ended up going back and forth between English and Japanese. Eventually another one of the Japanese students came and sat with us, and I was trying to converse with him. Which went pretty well I thought. I was able speak without too much stuttering I suppose. But he and the other Japanese kid seemed kind of shy lol, and it was rather awkward when I couldn't think of another topic to say in Japanese, and they wouldn't say anything either, and I would just delve back into English with the others again. It's really hard to come up with topics when you're not a native speaker...

I temporarily misplaced my bike key when we went to leave. The Japanese students were nice and helped me look for it. I thought I put it in my pocket, but it wasn't there, so we looked around the table we sat at. Then the one kid had a brilliant idea and told me to look in that random useless little pocket inside the normal jeans pocket, which of course was exactly where it was. I misplace that stupid key so often.

We biked home in the rain, which was coming down considerably harder than before, so I was rather wet by the time I got home (again, yay hat!). It was 10:15 by the time I got home, we spent over 2hrs at dinner. Then I showered and did homework and stuff, and now it's 3am, and I'm finally done writing my blog yay.

Pictures are from dinner. No one else was looking at the camera in the first picture :(

What I've learned in class so far...

Well today was a rather dull but productive day. I woke up around 11 and got to work cleaning up my disaster of a room. I've been very lazy this week (well, lazy like always I suppose) and I've just been throwing all my stuff on the ground or wherever, and between homework, coming home late, and feeling like crap, I haven't gotten around to organizing anything until today. So I spent a couple hours putting things away, doing my laundry, washing dishes, and so on.

After cleaning I spent quite a few hours translating the first three pages of that book we're "reading" for my reading class. I typed the first three pages into a word document myself (I did this the other day) and then typed in the translation under it. Or at least as good of a translation as I could do. I really don't know how they expect us to learn by overwhelming us like this. That doesn't stimulate learning, it just discourages students.

After homework I took a much needed long and relaxing shower/bath, and then went to Tori's for a bit for dinner and tv. Then I came home and watched (in the most legal way possible >_>) the new episode of The Office with Amanda. Then I did even more homework.

I updated the previous post with actual pictures and for this post, since it's so dull, I thought you all might enjoy a look at what I've been "accomplishing" during the dreadful hours of class. I just finished that one, so I'm planning to start work on another one of my folders tomorrow (the actual photo in the picture is one of my folders).

3 for the price of 1

Sorry I haven't updated in three days. I've been rather busy and have been getting home far too late to care about writing a blog post. I'll start with Thursday.

I had to meet the Japanese student I'm tutoring at noon on Thursday. We had a 2 hour session where we read from a movie transcript again. It's really kind of fun trying to explain things to her. It makes you have to really think about the meaning behind what you say in English, which I don't do too often. It's so natural now, even if you know the meaning of words, it's hard to explain or define. Unfortunately the movie is rather odd. It's some weird movie with Angelina Jolie in a mental hospital and it's chock full of cuss words and sexual innuendos, all of which she asks me to explain. It's rather awkward.

After the session I left to go to my only class that day, History of International Relations. The one with the insane old guy. It was dreadfully boring, as he has a habit of rambling on for an hour about something I could say in one sentence. I'm not exaggerating either. He spent an entire hour trying to convey to us how people in the middle ages didn't view "nations" as we do know, like with invisible borders defining what nation every piece of land belongs too. Alright, we get it, move on. I ended up drawing the entire class. It's still at least more interesting of a class than some of the others offered.

I went out with the Cali people after class, and we eventually made our way to karaoke again. The night ended up being not so much fun, and I didn't get home till 2am, by which point I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. Which I did, immediately.

The next day I woke feeling horrible, so apart from briefly meeting my tutor at noon for lunch, I lied in bed and slept the day away. Around evening I started playing DS for a few hours. There was a party that night for International students and Japanese students, so Tori and I went to that around 10. It was pretty fun. It was very casual and we met new people. There were a few girls from China, some guy from Mongolia, one from Korea, and one from India. And we met a few Japanese students as well. During our conversation with the kid from Mongolia he ended up telling me that, although Tori's is normal, my nose is large. I had been told the same thing by one of the Japanese students I met on Thursday night. I know it's fascinating because no Asian has large noses, but is it really necessary to mention it? I mean it's like me telling them that they're Asian, as if they don't know already. And of course the fact that I hate my nose, thanks so much Mom.

My Japanese has ceased functioning this weekend too apparently, as everytime someone tried to talk to me in Japanese, I would just be completely unable to utter anything and I sounded like an idiot. Although in my defense, sometimes they ask the weirdest questions, and I look confused only because I have no idea why they're asking me that, or I think I heard it wrong. The Korean kid we met was talking to me in Japanese, or trying, and he repeated the question like 4 times, really slowly in the end, and then just asked it in English. He asked me if I knew where Korea is, which of course I know where Korea is. I thought that was what he'd been asking, but I was just so confused as to why he would ask that. I would say most Americans know where Korea is, or at least all educated Americans. Perhaps I should've asked him if he knew where America is?

We went back to Tori's after the party because we still hadn't eaten dinner, so we ended up eating around midnight. I was really hungry and ate far too much too late. I got a little sick later. After eating we were just watching tv and completely lost track of time, and when I thought it was 1:30am, it was actually 3. So I came home immediately and went to sleep.

Now Saturday finally. There was a rather large and famous fireworks festival today, so we had all planned on going to that. We met around 3pm at Tsukuba Center, and one of the Japanese students led the way. It was 45min from Tsukuba Center by bike, after an already 30min ride from my dorm, ugh. Not to mention, those sidewalks were the most pathetic excuse for sidewalks I've ever seen. Sometimes they were just fine, and then other times they were barely wide enough for one bike, and one little wobble and you're either tumbling down a rather large hill or falling into the road. They were like this because the Japanese don't believe in weed killer, and it was all quite overgrown. They prefer to leave things natural. Which is great and all until I need a sidewalk. It was full of potholes as well, and I kept falling into them and ramming my ass into the seat very hard. It was unpleasant.

We got to the place around 4, and it didn't start till 6, so we scouted out a spot to sit (there wasn't much room), and found this rather uncomfortable spot on the side of a hill by a road, that was very steep and muddy and infested with spiders. We had a tarp to sit on, but it kept sliding down and we were still getting quite dirty. I went out with some of the others to buy food rather than sit on the hill. I bought a drink and some okonomiyaki, which was good I guess, just overpriced as usual at festivals.

Eventually just before 6 the road cleared of cars and we sped down the hill and claimed a spot on the oh so much better concrete. It turned out to be quite a horrible show to be honest. Apparently the Japanese take their fun in spurts because the entire show was like a couple minutes of fireworks and then a couple more minutes of just waiting. Sometimes it would be only one or two fireworks between breaks. It was rather boring after a while. Around 7 it actually became cool for about 10min. They were firing them from all over into what felt like a finale. Unfortunately that was the best part. After that we had to sit through an excruciating hour and a half of boring fireworks. Everyone gets really into it here too. Everytime anything would happen people would cry out in amazement and ooh and ahh and clap and stuff. I didn't really get it, it wasn't that amazing. Red, White, and Boom was way better, and only a half hour. We stuck around though, since we'd come so far, so we could see what we thought would be an awesome finale. Well there was no finale. It just ended. So anticlimactic.

Then we had to begin the agonizing ride home, while dodging around tons of people walking and traversing the death trap sidewalks of evil in the dark. It was nasty and humid today too, adding to the misery. We finally got back to Tsukuba Center and stopped by Jusco to buy food. Now we're home and about to eat dinner at 11pm >_> oh well. Although, even though it wasn't massive amounts of fun, we had fun laughing and joking about how miserable it was, that I'm sure I'll look back on it and be glad I went.

As a perfect end for a perfect day I stupidly left my bowl of piping hot noodles sitting on my bed, and then forgot about it and accidentally sat on it and spilled it all over my bed.

Tomorrow I'm doing nothing. I need to do laundry and catch up on my homework. I've done no homework in the past three days and I'm sure I've forgotten all the kanji I've worked so hard to learn already. So sad.

I've uploaded some pictures here now. The first one is of some of the students from the international student party thing on Friday night. I'm not in it cause I'm taking the picture obviously. The rest are of the Fireworks Festival. First of the god awful spider infested hill we were sitting on at first, then of the spot on the street we claimed. And a few pictures of the fireworks that actually came out ok.

Current Japanese Reading Speed = 1 page/2hrs

Well today was long and sucky. I woke up late again and rushed to get ready, cause I had kanji class at 12:15 today. So I biked there as fast as I could only to get to the classroom and see that class is canceled. This university seems to be living in an ancient era where email wasn't invented so such notices are simply written on the blackboard in the classroom. Awesome... I don't know how they can just keep canceling classes like this either, when we're only in class once a week. Whatever. So yeah, I still had homework to do, and I had reading class at 3:15, so I went to the study lounge place and worked on my homework. I had to finish writing that essay for our writing class, which was due today by 4. Just before class my stomach got rather upset and I felt like crap. Turns out reading class was two periods today too, since class was canceled two weeks ago. Brilliant.

I was hoping reading class would be rather easy, but it's not. I don't know why, but I feel like some of these teachers expect us to be fluent, when we're clearly not. We were given a photocopy from a few pages of a book, filled with tons of kanji and vocab I don't know. She gave us a sheet with the readings of the kanji, so I had to look it all up in my dictionary and then attempt to decipher the text. It took about 2hrs for me to comprehend one page. On top of that the teacher uses even more vocab I don't know when she speaks, so I had trouble understanding what she was saying. I don't see why they can't give us like kids books to start with, cause I don't feel like I'm getting much reading practice when it takes me 2hr/page. Well, I have to stick it out though, cause I can't drop anymore classes. It's not as horrible and torturous and evil as listening class was at least.

I was exhausted and tired and hungry after class, but a few of the Cali people were going out somewhere, and I eventually decided to go along. Which probably wasn't the best idea in retrospect, but I didn't want to sit in my room alone. I got to come back to my room first though and drop stuff off. I had to stop by the electric store and pay my 2nd monthly installment (out of 4) for my AC. I was actually able to communicate with the kid working there too, which was nice. After I dropped my stuff off I went to meet the Cali people and we went to this little shopping place near Tsukuba Center. It had a few grocery stores and a 100 yen shop and an arcade and stuff. Some people went to the arcade, but I just wanted to buy some food. I just bought plain bread, since I had a headache and my stomach was still upset. I was really tired too for some reason, but it was still fun. We walked around the 100 yen shop for a while, and the grocery store, then we came home after a little over an hour. I took a much needed bath when I got back. I feel a little better now. Now I need to translate page 2 of the reading for class. Fun stuff.

It was rainy and dreary all day today too. That made me feel even more blah.

I know my posts have been lame lately, but somebody comment plz :( even if only to tell me my posts are lame.

The Glare

Nothing much happened today, so this will probably be another boring post of my daily routine. My life can't be exciting everyday, Jim >_>

I didn't get out of bed till 11, which turned out to be a bad idea cause I had class at 12:15. I was most definitely not ready on time and biked really fast to get there on time. Which I almost did, it was like 12:18 when I walked in. Good enough. I had Japanese speaking and grammar today. Which went fairly well. For some reason every time the teacher calls on me, even if I know exactly where we are and what we're doing, I seem to freak out and babble like a moron. Well it wasn't that bad, I just stumbled a few times and would forget where we were on the worksheet as soon as I was called on. They must think I can't speak well at all. Oh well, my teachers today are nice so I didn't mind. They didn't give me The Glare or anything. I have to work on not stumbling when I'm called on.

I was able to understand most of what both teachers said today, and I was doing pretty well in reading and vocab too. I just realized how much I've learned in just the last two weeks or so (mostly from studying on my own), so that definitely makes me feel good. It makes me realize how much better I'll be in a year. Of course, every time I feel like I'm finally starting to get it, I somehow manage to get myself in a situation where I try to listen and understand, and can't make out anything. There's still a long way to go.

I came straight home after class, cause I had to write my Japanese essay for tomorrow. It was on the good and bad points of internet shopping. It took me a few hours, but it wasn't too bad. The thing I like about these writing assignments, is that they're open ended which gives me the freedom to experiment with whatever grammatical patterns I want. I like to stay away from very simple grammar in writings like this, and instead try to experiment with new vocab, verbs, and grammar patterns I don't know as well in order to see if I'm using it all correctly. It's one of the best ways I learn new vocab. Even if it's wrong, at least I learned. Better to get a lower grade and have learned something than an A for easy grammar. I wish they didn't grade on our every mistake because of that. It encourages people to stick only with what they're comfortable with. Our writing teacher is really the only access we have to a Japanese native speaker who can correct our work. I wish we had access to other Japanese students for such help. Yes, I know I have my tutor and I could very well ask her, but she always extremely busy and I'm sure I wouldn't be penciled in till next week or something.

One of the students from California, Amanda, came over to eat dinner with Tori and me today. She's the one that likes The Office, so we watched that. We (well mostly them, cause my cooking skills are rather limited) cooked some noodles with carrots and onions and tofu. It was good. Tofu no longer grosses me out for some reason. I find it quite tolerable. Perhaps it's because as far as weird food here goes, it's quite low on the list. I've become quite adjusted to things here that I'm sure if anyone from America visited me, they would find utterly repulsive. For one, I no longer have any inhibitions about getting naked in front of other girls anymore. I'm quite relaxed on the foul toilet now. I've gotten used to going to the bathroom in a hole in the ground. And even though it's really gross, I don't seem to care. It only gets cleaned maybe once every 2 weeks, and by the end of that period it is quite coated in grime and other... nasty things. Although don't get me wrong, if I see a western toilet or a nice bathroom, I'm using it for sure. I still haven't gotten over the spiders though. I try not to think about it really. Just pretend they don't exist. Tons of spiders like to sit right on the ceiling of the little overhang in front of the doors of my building, since they're covered from rain, so I have to walk under like 10 spiders every time I go in my building. It's so gross. Thankfully the cleaning lady came today and knocked them all down. I hope it gets cold soon... then the evil creatures will die. Die.

Caution, Beware of Rants

Today was a roller coaster of suckage and yayness. I had to wake up 2 whole hours early today so I could turn in my homework by 10am even though I didn't have class till noon. Ugh waking up early. I ended up just coming home after I turned in my homework and napping till my next class anyway.

First class was the Japanese education class. More ranting today. Remember the homework I mentioned yesterday? We had to research theories on the relationship between education and national development. Well first of all, those are very vague instructions. Did she mean theories about why education is important to national development and how it affects it? Theories on specific past examples of a developing country and how education helped it along? Perhaps some crazy theory that has nothing to do with reality? Or something else? I wasn't very sure, so I did a lot of research and read a few articles on different evidence pertaining to the relationship and cases and the subject in general. So we get to class and of course I'm called on to go first. How brilliant. Well turns out I'd taken notes on quite a few theories (more like facts, but whatever), but since the teacher seems incapable of understanding my English, I decided to say something very simple and general. I said more or less that education teaches the populace a variety of skills necessary to become an adaptive and creative people that can keep up with the ever changing world and the advancements in technology and such. Except I said it in much simpler English than that. She just sort of stared at me as if she didn't get it, and then asked me to speak up and say it again. Which I did. Then she said again "you need to speak up and speak much slower so everyone can understand." Or so she could understand. And I wasn't speaking fast at all, nor was I talking quietly. It was a small classroom and my friends said they could hear me and understand me just fine. So I spoke louder and very slowly. She still didn't understand the point I was trying to make. She picked up on 'skills' and 'adaptive' at least. Then she was like, "that is much too vague and generic, does this theory have a name?", to which I replied, "no, I just read articles and researched the relationship." She says "well it was supposed to be a theory." I don't know why on earth I have to research theories on something that has factual evidence and proven cases. This isn't $#@!*%) psychology class. She gave up at that point and moved on.

Oh, and it turns out she has very little trouble understanding everyone's English except mine. She had no trouble understanding anyone else, even the non-native speakers. She continued to go around the room, and it was clear I wasn't the only one who "misunderstood" her vague instructions. Those people got the same horrible looks as I did. She apparently wanted actual theory names and authors. One poor Japanese girl in the class who doesn't speak English too well got sort of grilled. She tried to explain her point, which wasn't a theory, and the teacher just sort of stared her down and kept asking her to explain in more detail. The girl was clearly having issues with expressing such complicated stuff in English and eventually the teacher was like, "but that's not a theory, didn't I ask you all to research theories?" Poor girl. We wasted a whole hour going over that nonsense. Then the next hour was a lecture on crazy outdated theories of national development, that really didn't have a whole lot to do with education, and nothing at all to do with Japanese education. It was a horrible class. I just don't get it. Why study theories of something that has been proven? Something that has numerous historical and present cases of success, and plenty of factual evidence to back it. It's like studying theories on why the Earth revolves around the Sun. We have another evil vague research assignment next week, hopefully it won't be hell again. I've decided not to speak at all in this class unless forced to. It's just so pointless. I can't wait to write my research paper and fill it with complex English for her to decipher. It will be sweet revenge.

I was in a rather foul mood by this point, as I headed to my next class, Japanese writing. Class went fairly well actually. I understood the teacher well enough, and did the in class activities with little issue. At one point we had to do this little question and answer writing thing, which I was very confused on at first, but I figured it out in time. I got called to read my answer on one of the questions, which I was very nervous about, because my teacher's intimidating and cause it's so easy for me to mess up Japanese. But my answer was just fine (minus a small particle mistake), and for once I didn't get that "you're dead wrong" look. That cheered me up considerably. Our next writing assignment is due Wednesday, so I have to write it tomorrow, but it's a rather fun topic. Our views on internet shopping basically. I'm kind of looking forward to writing it.

Next class was with the education teacher again. She's not as evil in this class at least. It's a much easier and more straightforward class. Just basic info about Japan's history and culture. I've had many such classes before so it's not new information. We talked about modern history today, 13th century to the present, which is a subject I'm fascinated by, so it wasn't too boring. We don't have to speak in this class either thankfully. After class Tori had to leave to meet the Japanese person she's being an English tutor for, so I went to dinner with some of the Cali people, one of the Lithuanian girls, one of the British guys, and one of the Japanese students who hangs out with us sometimes. Quite the motley crew we were. We went to some restaurant and the waiter commented on how strange (in a good way) our group filled with foreigners was. I wasn't hungry so I just ordered rice. $1.50 for dinner yay. Dinner was fun, I geeked out with the British kid about Tokyo Game Show for a while (he went too). We stopped by the 100 yen store afterward (Japanese dollar store), and I bought a few groceries. Came home afterwards.

My Dad sent me an email with a picture from China (business trip) that's quite awesome and funny. So I shall post it. Apparently he was in a McDonald's in Yichang and some girl wanted to take a picture with an American. The older lady is the interpreter. He said some other woman asked him to take a picture with her baby son as well. He was quite popular in that McDonald's it seems. I've never seen my Dad do the Asian peace sign photo thing before either. And I find it hilarious. Two years ago, when we were at the Great Wall, some random Chinese girl asked to take a picture with me too, just cause I was American. The Chinese seem to be more excitable about foreigners than the Japanese. I wish they would get excited when they see me here instead of staring, being terrified, and doing everything possible to completely avoid me. I think it's just this city though, maybe they're different elsewhere. In Tokyo at least I know they barely even care cause there's so many foreigners there. It's nice to not stand out once in a while.

More class tomorrow boo. But not till noon. I need to study some more tonight, so this is all for now. This actually turned out pretty long...

A Considerably Less Epic Post Than Yesterday

Well today was rather dull compared to yesterday. I woke up around 11am feeling quite horribly exhausted and crappy. Tori and I mutually decided not to go to the arts festival thing today. I'm rather sad about that, because I saw photos of it, and it looked quite fun, but I really felt too crappy today to do anything. On the plus side I did get all my homework done. It was mostly just some worksheets, although I still need to study some kanji tonight.

For my Japanese education class tomorrow our homework was to research theories behind why education is important to national development of a country. The teacher seems to like giving us these little research assignments. We had to research and prepare some notes on it, and then in class she goes around the room and asks us to explain what we learned. Which is fine really, but the main problem is that, while the teacher speaks English very well, she isn't a native speaker, so explaining complex ideas to her about theories and stuff is rather difficult. Last time I tried to communicate a complex opinion to her about a theory we were discussing in class she didn't understand what I was saying at all. The question was why Japan looked to the West as a model when they were trying to modernize their country back in the late 1800s. I've studied this before in great detail during my Japanese history class at OSU. When she didn't understand what I was trying to say, I tried to tone it down and just said something completely different and obvious that I hoped was simple enough to understand. The fact that the West had superior technology back then. Yet somehow she took my "superior technology" and got "spirit and heart" from it. As in, they admired the spirit and heart of westerners I guess. Which she then went on a tangent about how this was very true and one of the most important reasons... yeah, not even close to what I was getting at, but whatever. I guess it's just a little annoying that they expect us to have complicated thought discussions in these classes, when they can't even understand such complex English. Which means they just want us to dumb it down and say something simple. Which makes it feel like a middle school class instead of college. Whatever. I hope she'll be able to understand the research paper I write at the end of class.

Anyway, I have to wake up early tomorrow cause I have to turn my homework into my teacher's mailbox by 10am for some stupid reason, so time to go to bed.

Tokyo Game Show

How do I even begin to describe the awesomeness that was today? I shall try of course, but fair warning, this will be a very long post. And when I say very long, I mean if you can finish reading this, then I commend you because this is a post of epic proportions.

I woke up at 6:30am ugh. Tokyo Game Show (TGS) started at 10 so we had to leave early. We got to the bus by 8:10, which we took to Tsukuba Center where we transferred to the Tsukuba Express. Once we reached Akihabara by around 9:30 we had to transfer to the main JR line to go to Tokyo station where we again had to transfer to the Keio line. Tokyo Station is a massive expanse of massiveness by the way. It took us about 10+ minutes of walking to get to the platform we needed. The train ride from Tokyo Station to our destination took a long time. Unfortunately we caught the local train (which is the slowest: rapid, semi-rapid, local) and it took almost an hour. By the time we got to our intended station it was somehow 11 already. There were mass amounts of people there, all going to the same place of course, so we just followed the very very large crowd. Just so you all know how large of a crowd, I shall explain. Tokyo Game Show takes place from Thursday through Sunday. Thursday and Friday are invitation only (so gaming companies/sites/news people and the like), and Saturday and Sunday are open to the public. Attendance last year was 200,000 people.

It was 11:20 when we finally got our ticket and stood in line. We had to wait in line 20min for everyone to be shuffled inside. I was very excited walking in. Like squealing and jumping up and down excited. Except I didn't do that cause I was in public lol. TGS takes place in a giant convention center, which basically consists of 3 very large warehouse like rooms. The gaming companies had their booths set up in the first two rooms. The booths had mini-theaters with trailers of upcoming games, displays for upcoming games and merchandise, and stations where you could demo upcoming games. The third room had shopping and food.

I may start going into geek speak here as my inner video game nerd starts to fully take over, so if you don't understand I'm sorry. We stopped by Capcom's booth first and waited for all the other lame (snore. don't care.) trailers to finish so we could watch the trailer of the new Okami game for DS. I drooled. We were kind of hoping to see Judd-san there to be honest. He's a graduate of OSU that now works for Capcom as a producer I believe. He was the producer for that new Bionic Commando game that already came out I think? He was also the voice of Phoenix Wright in English. It was a slim glimmer of hope however, as we didn't see him. Though he must've been there at some point.

After Capcom we went into the 2nd big area and were stopped by some Japanese guy who works for Fuji TV. He asked if we wanted to do an interview (in Japanese). He came up to us because we're foreigners of course. I haven't decided whether I like the fact that we stand out from the crowd or not. I would've run away if Tori wasn't there, cause she really wanted to do it. It would've been really awesome, except I should add that I hate cameras and fear them. Not quite as much as spiders, but still quite a lot. So we walked over and started talking to the very nice interview lady in Japanese while waiting for the camera man to come back. Once he started filming it was much worse. I wasn't really sure whether to look at the camera or the lady, and when she would ask me a question and shove the microphone in my face I would just sort of freeze up (along with my brain's understanding of Japanese) and look to Tori for help. Tori is fine in front of a camera so she saved me most of the time. I did manage to add a few lines here and there I suppose, but for the most part I only succeeded in making a fool of myself. They asked us like where we're from and what games we liked and stuff. In the end they made us yell some stupid thing about our feelings of excitement at being at TGS into the camera and I just said something really stupid. I don't ever want to see that video ever. I would die of shame...

After the horrible, but still awesome(?) interview we continued to search through the booths. At which point I spotted a giant Square Enix sign and literally dragged Tori across the massive crowds while uttering squeals of joy. First we got to stand and watch the new Final Fantasy XIII trailer. In all its beautiful high definition glory. My face must've looked like that of a 6 year old let loose in a candy store. I drooled a lot here. A lot a lot. It was pure awesomeness and win and anti-fail and I can't wait to freaking play it. It comes out in December here, so it'll for sure be out in America by the time I go home next summer. I can't wait o_O

After the trailer we continued along through some other less significant games until I at last spotted what I was looking for. The game I was most excited to see today. Even more so than FFXIII if you can imagine. Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep for PSP. Unfortunately it seems they handed out passes to get into the booth very early this morning on a first come first serve basis (as far as I could tell), so only those people could get in. These are the people who most likely camped out in front of the convention center last night. Should've done that damn it. Oh well. So I couldn't get in to play the demo (oh cruel fate D:), nor could I get into the private viewing room for the new trailer... however, the wall of the trailer was (purposely?) this sort of netting that you could see through pretty well if you stuck your face right up to it. Which I did of course, along with lots of other poor souls who didn't have passes. Then I drowned in a pit of my drool for the 2-4min or however long the trailer was. Must. Play. Now. I was trying to wait till I got back to America to buy a PSP and play this game... but uh, it comes out in January here and I'm afraid I may not be able to resist (well I'm pretty certain that's going to happen actually). PSP just dropped price here too. Damn it.

I managed to drag myself away from the Kingdom Hearts booth (while internally crying over my lack of pass-holding-ness) and we wandered past the Xbox360 booth (boring snore) to the Namco booth where they were showing an awesome new trailer for the new Tales game for Wii. Wen I was done drooling over that, we walked over to the demo booth where they had the new Wii Tales and the new (evil) PS3 port for Vesperia, that has all these awesome new features that I wished for in the 360 version, but didn't get. And now I can't play the new version unless it gets localized and I get a PS3. Damn it. Anyway, I really wanted to play the Wii Tales, so I briefly got in line (I think it was 90min or so long... didn't care), but Tori dragged me away and told me I could come back (big mistake).

We went to the 3rd and final giant room area where they had shopping and food. We waited in line to get into the Square Enix shop for about 20+ min. They had this big display area of all their new figurines and merchandise which was fun to look at. I ended up buying an FFXIII poster and a Kingdom Hearts cell phone strap thingy. Tori bought stuff too. We waited in line for the Capcom store next, only to find out they were sold out of all the Okami merchandise (the only stuff we cared about), so that kind of sucked. I didn't get anything else. We didn't buy any food either, even though I hadn't eaten in a while. I was on an over-stimulated excitement high from being at TGS and wasn't hungry at all.

We went back to the Kingdom Hearts booth after shopping. Just to be sure we couldn't get in (cry, tear), and I drooled over the trailer one more time. Then I wanted to go and play Wii Tales finally. It was around 3 now, and the show closed at 5, so unfortunately (more tears) they already had too many people in line and I could no longer enter (I hate you Tori D:), so instead I decided to just wait in line to play PS3 Vesperia, even though I've technically played the game already on Xbox. I felt I couldn't leave a gaming convention without playing a game. Tori left me at this point, cause she didn't want to wait in line for 90min (yes it was 90min... no, I didn't mind at all). I just played DS while waiting. Entertaining myself while waiting in line to be entertained lol. Finally I got my turn. The guy before me had been defeated by the boss mid session (everyone got 10min unless you get game over), so I thought I'd try to fight him myself. I was doing really well actually, and was really close to beating him (I suppose it helps that I've played the game before), but then my time was up and I had to stop :( I'd spent a good 8min trying to beat him too, darn.

I still had 30min after the game demo, so I walked over to where people were playing the demo of FFXIII. Which of course, you also needed a pass to play, or I would've been in line long before to play it. All the awesome games require a pass, it's not fair D: I just watched (and drooled of course) while the other people played it. Which of course only made me realize even more how very awesome the game is. After their session ended, the screens started playing the trailer again, and some of the crowd and myself waited and stared assuming someone else would come to play next. Little did we realize there was only 15min left before 5 and the demos were done. So we just stood there for a good 8min or so staring at the same trailer 3 times. The staff were just letting us sit there lol, but when we came to, everyone started parting, realizing it was over, and I saw they had already roped the area off, and were ushering people out a small exit in the rope. Whoops. Well I wasn't the only one standing there, nor was I the last, so whatever :P

Apparently Nintendo doesn't attend Tokyo Game Show, which I didn't know until today, and was rather surprised at. We realized something was missing in the middle of the show. I dunno the reason.

I went to meet Tori at 5 so we could leave (if you were hoping this post is done now that I've reached the end of the show, then I laugh in your face haha). I realized as we were walking out, when my excitement levels began dropping, that my feet and back hurt like hell and I was starving. I'd been standing without sitting at all from 10am-5pm ugh. Including the packed train rides where we didn't get seats. We stopped at a nearby mall and ate at Subway (5 times now). And sat down of course. We bought bread from a bakery in the station too. The trains were packed, of course, with all the thousands of people leaving. We were only going two stops though, because we'd heard about a retro game store nearby (and the geek out continues).

We got kind of lost on the way to the store. The map we had wasn't the best. It was in this shopping center and we missed it the first time we passed it. We ended up walking in a big 30min or so circle back to where we started (that really sucked), then we doubled back and finally found it. Turns out it wasn't the exact store we were looking for. We'd seen the retro game store in a tv show that we watch, and we think it's a sort of chain of stores maybe, but the one we went to wasn't the same. Not that it wasn't cool though. It had lots of games, new and old, and was fun to look through. They had all these aisles of trading cards and I found Pokemon cards there. I looked through those for a while. Brings back memories. They had tons of the special shiny cards too for $1 each (ooh shiny), and I bought a few for old times sake. The lady at the register miscounted too, and I got half of them for free. I was about to say something, but uh... yeah... free :) her fault, not mine.

We left after an hour or so and finally started to make our way back. It was around 8 by now. On the train, we passed right by Tokyo Disneyland and got to see the castle in the distance. It was also the end of the day show where they shoot off fireworks so we and everyone else in the train was staring out the window watching. We didn't arrive back home till 11 (we caught the last bus of the day phew). I missed my shower curfew, but oh well. It was worth it. Today was such an awesome day.

Oh, I do apologize for the massive game geek out in this post (Also, if you managed to read this far, congratulations). I don't think anyone will understand most of what I said unless you're into games. This blog is a way for me to remember the day to day life though, so I suppose that's the way I write it sometimes. Sorry. I had so much fun today though, but now I'm exhausted. Tomorrow there's some festival on campus we're going too. Although, I don't know how many more trips we'll be going on in the near future. My long break is almost over, and school's about to pick back up again (and we need to stop spending money), so we may put Tokyo and other such trips on hold for a while.

Lots of pictures for the super long post! The rest of the photos of the past few weeks are on facebook now as well. Unfortunately pictures and video weren't permitted anywhere near the game trailers and demos so I have nothing of that. The staff members were hunting down and tackling anyone fool enough to try. I really didn't want to be that person, so I followed the rules.