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.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, September 28, 2009
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...
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.
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.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
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 roo
ms. 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 may
be, 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 some
times. 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.
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 roo
ms. 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 may
be, 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 some
times. 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.
It's like that cause it is...
This post is going to be short cause I need to go to sleep cause I have to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow so we can get to Tokyo Game Show by 10.
No class today cause it's Friday. I didn't do much of anything till 4 when I had to meet the girl I'm tutoring. It went pretty well I think. I wasn't really sure what to expect. In the beginning she asked if I had any English learning textbooks (obviously not), so I hope she doesn't expect me to make lesson plans I guess. I can't really do that, for one cause I have no idea how much she's learned, and cause I don't really know how to teach English. I told her I didn't have experience teaching English and I probably wouldn't be able to explain grammar since it's my native language. How does one explain grammar of their native tongue? The grammar is like that uh... cause it is? I guess she was fine with that cause we're meeting again. Apparently she rejected a Mexican boy before me because he couldn't speak English very well. We ended up just reading a transcript from a movie and I corrected her on her accents, explained idioms, and attempted to explain certain grammar patterns (and failed for the most part). That's really all I can do to help her. I got $15 too :)
Tori and I went to Tsukuba Center afterwards. First to the bank to withdraw my scholarship money, then to The Loft to buy school stuff, and then to Jusco to buy uh... necessary stuff I guess? I got another face towel and a pillow case. Then we came home and ate dinner. Now I need to sleep.
No class today cause it's Friday. I didn't do much of anything till 4 when I had to meet the girl I'm tutoring. It went pretty well I think. I wasn't really sure what to expect. In the beginning she asked if I had any English learning textbooks (obviously not), so I hope she doesn't expect me to make lesson plans I guess. I can't really do that, for one cause I have no idea how much she's learned, and cause I don't really know how to teach English. I told her I didn't have experience teaching English and I probably wouldn't be able to explain grammar since it's my native language. How does one explain grammar of their native tongue? The grammar is like that uh... cause it is? I guess she was fine with that cause we're meeting again. Apparently she rejected a Mexican boy before me because he couldn't speak English very well. We ended up just reading a transcript from a movie and I corrected her on her accents, explained idioms, and attempted to explain certain grammar patterns (and failed for the most part). That's really all I can do to help her. I got $15 too :)
Tori and I went to Tsukuba Center afterwards. First to the bank to withdraw my scholarship money, then to The Loft to buy school stuff, and then to Jusco to buy uh... necessary stuff I guess? I got another face towel and a pillow case. Then we came home and ate dinner. Now I need to sleep.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Money Trees Do Exist
I had class today boo. 6hrs of it. Education class was interesting but a painful 2.5 long hours. Writing class was also fine. I understood most of what was going on. My culture class was interesting too. We talked about Japanese history today, which I've taken no less than 3 classes on already, so I knew most of it. I doodled when I wasn't taking notes.
After class some of the Cali people and Tori and I went to dinner at this restaurant that had pretty much whatever food you wanted. Pasta, noodles, steak, burgers, salads, soups, dessert, etc. I ended up earing curry udon (noodles) and rice. Some of us went out after dinner to this uh... I don't really know how to describe it. Like a recreational place? I guess. It was like this club that had stuff like billiards, computer rooms, karaoke, ping pong, an arcade, and lots more stuff that I'm not sure of. Oh, and all the ice cream you can eat yay. We ended up playing ping pong for 2hrs and then karaoke for 1hr. It cost $13 to do all that, which isn't too bad, just not something to do every night. I had to hurry home quickly on my bike after. I only had 30min to get to the bathhouse before it closed. Annoying shower curfew. I made it at least.
My scholarship gets deposited into my bank account tomorrow yay. $1600 for the first month and $800 every month after that.
This is a fairly short post. Not much else to say except... oh... um...
Tori and I are going to Tokyo Game Show on Saturday o_o Tokyo Game Show... like the world's biggest gaming convention ever. Words can not describe my excitement. I have always dreamed of going. I get to stand in line forever and play the new PSP Kingdom Hearts too :) Tori and I have actually been planning this for months. I realized we would be able to go during the summer. I can't wait.
After class some of the Cali people and Tori and I went to dinner at this restaurant that had pretty much whatever food you wanted. Pasta, noodles, steak, burgers, salads, soups, dessert, etc. I ended up earing curry udon (noodles) and rice. Some of us went out after dinner to this uh... I don't really know how to describe it. Like a recreational place? I guess. It was like this club that had stuff like billiards, computer rooms, karaoke, ping pong, an arcade, and lots more stuff that I'm not sure of. Oh, and all the ice cream you can eat yay. We ended up playing ping pong for 2hrs and then karaoke for 1hr. It cost $13 to do all that, which isn't too bad, just not something to do every night. I had to hurry home quickly on my bike after. I only had 30min to get to the bathhouse before it closed. Annoying shower curfew. I made it at least.
My scholarship gets deposited into my bank account tomorrow yay. $1600 for the first month and $800 every month after that.
This is a fairly short post. Not much else to say except... oh... um...
Tori and I are going to Tokyo Game Show on Saturday o_o Tokyo Game Show... like the world's biggest gaming convention ever. Words can not describe my excitement. I have always dreamed of going. I get to stand in line forever and play the new PSP Kingdom Hearts too :) Tori and I have actually been planning this for months. I realized we would be able to go during the summer. I can't wait.
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