Bonsai Blog

So yesterday, Sunday, I helped out at a Kawachi-Nagano City Festival, held at the Junior High.  It was long and very tiring, and in the end we just broke even for renting the machine and buying supplies.  HOWEVER it was a lot of fun and tasty.

Today I went to Karaoke with my friends for four hours, then got a snack and stuff.  Very fun.  It was kind of weird to see them all in their regular clothes, besides Yudai, who I’ve spent time with outside of school in Den Den Town!

Yudai and I are officially best friends now too, which is really awesome.  I’m really glad to have such good friends in Japan.  Next weekend we might watch Scary Movie.  Tomorrow we’re watching the third one in ESS club to celebrate Halloween.  It should be very fun, I’m looking forward to it.

This week is only three days, since today (Monday) was off, and then Friday is also off because of a Holiday.  Saturday I’ll be going to Nara for sightseeing with my host mother and younger brother if the weather is good.  I’m pretty excited about that too.

Ok, so today was really…really long.  We only had 3 hours of classes, but then ESS Club went on for another 7 hours.  It was really awesome, but overall it wore me out.  Today was pretty much us being hyper and working for stuff tomorrow, and we’re going to sell popcorn at a Junior High festival thing…or something.

Yeah, today was definitely a hyper day.  Shioli started doing a list of the Pokemon 1-151 in Japanese (I have no idea why) and so Brandon and I got all the english ones on the other whiteboard.  So two giant lists, which was one of the numerous random things we did to fill out the time.  Yudai did my hair…which turned out sort of looking Japanese, but I definitely need a hair straightener and longer hair.

Yudai and Tsutomu kept singing and dancing to Rent songs.  They’ve watched that movie toooooo many times!

So tomorrow, instead of enjoying my day off, I have to wake up at quarter to six just to be on the earlier train on time to get to the Junior High.  Ugh.  I’m really worn out, and after six hours of sleep last night coupled with such a long day today *yawn*.  What’s weird is that my friends think I sleep a long time at  six hours, when they’re getting around like 3.  I’m not sure how Japanese students survive honestly, but it explains the sleeping in class.

Basically Monday is going to be my day off.  And I’m going to sleep in.  Very late.  Then hopefully *finally* get to do a video blog with my webcam.  I did make Yoshimitsu do an introduction on the webcam I could tack to my first blog, ’cause it’d be cool.  Turned out pretty well.

Today was another school day (obviously), but I have school tomorrow too.

In English, we had a webcam conference with a man from Iraq about different types of discrimination.  We had already done one with a woman from Hawaii, and they work out pretty nicely.  It’s to practice their English, and learn more about different cultures.  However, today’s man knew almost no English.  In fact, he knew Swedish and resides in Sweden because he fled Iraq.

Now, out of the 6 billion people alive right now, could we have picked someone who didn’t require a translator?  Especially when they’re practicing ENGLISH?!  I’m just wondering here.  Part of the practice is actually trying to understand the answer the person gives on discrimination in their culture to the questions we ask.  Things really are lost in translation.  Not to mention the guy really didn’t seem to be interested in what was going on, but it was midnight in Sweden.  I’m just really wondering why the teachers purposely chose someone who didn’t speak English.  It seemed counterproductive and didn’t work out well.

Mmm, besides that, fun day overall.  I had Japanese lesson, where I started ‘Classical Japanese Recitation’.  Many Japanese students find it boring, but the words are difficult to pronounce, so it’s actually a challenge for me.  End result; it keeps my interest.

Instead of going home though, I decided to go back to school, because my MP3 player was out of batteries and I had nothing to do on the train.  ESS club was still in session, for y’know, 5 more minutes by the time I got there.  It was worth the 15 walk.  I just love hanging out with my friends.

Tomorrow after school Yudai is going to try to do my hair like a Japanese guy.  I’m honestly not sure what he’s going to do, but it will prove funny at the very least.  Guys doing each others hair here really isn’t out of the ordinary.  Neither is shaping your eyebrows, but I’m definitely not going that far.

I’m going to be tired tomorrow.  Good news is that I have art though, and through inspiration, I actually fairly like my piece of work.  Right now it’s tentatively called ‘Heaven Got Nuked’.  Somehow that seems sacrilegious (it’s NOT, seriously…figurative heaven, not God’s heaven), but it alludes to the world’s lack of morals and turn from religion, so, it fits in a creative sense, and if you see the painting, it does make sense.  I was in a bad mood, so I almost completely repainted it in a day to fit what I wanted to show, and I’m satisfied.  I had been having an art block.

The original painting was a feather in the center, with a sun in the bottom right-hand corner, but I didn’t know what else to do.  It was an ode to that old Greek story about the boy who flew too close to the sun or something.  The feather and the sun stayed, but now everything else is gone.  Also, first time I’ve painted on canvas, it’s fun.

Otherwise art class is just talking for two hours with friends.  Definitely can’t complain.

Yeah, two months, it’s going so fast!  (Too fast!)

Today the entire school walked down to a building called ‘Lovely Hall’ to watch an old, but famous, movie on racism between Japanese and the Koreans during the WWII era.  It was extremely violent, and had nudity.  Not really what I was expecting from a school trip if you know what I mean.

Otherwise nothing special.  ESS club ran pretty late because we’re getting all set up to do Robin Hood.

And no pictures yet, I had too much stuff to do today, sorry!

Sorry for not updating, I’ve been very busy!

Sunday was my trip to Kyoto with Rotary, which turned out very well. In the end, I was very tired, but overall good time. Saw the Suntory Whiskey (or Whisky as they insisted on spelling it) Factory, which was actually…interesting. I, of course, got the alternate Water and Juice combo while Rotary tried the whiskey. How disappointing. Then we road a scenic train to a famous bridge in Kyoto, then had dinner in traditional Japanese style. Long meal, with lots of Rotary members drinking. We took a bus th —

I’m going to scream. I just deleted half of this post, now I have to retype it. KUSO! (Japanese swearing, hahaha)

—e way there and back.

Monday was boring, I fell asleep first hour while reading my PHP book. It is kind of boring…at this part…so it was understandable coupled with me coming home late Sunday from Kyoto. Overall though, nothing exciting to note on Monday.

Tuesday was evidently a down day, because everyone was really down. Yudai especially. There was some big problem (tied in with last week’s tests I think) that was too difficult to be translated into English, or too sensitive (latter probably) so he was really depressed, which got me worried.

So of course today (Wednesday), when he wasn’t in school, I was worrying about him. A lot. After James committed suicide, I can’t help but having really really horrible stuff come to mind when I think about people getting really down. So I was very very happy when I found out he had come to school during 4th hour! Today was actually really fun, as everyone was in a good mood and we were just crazy in ESS club.  Umi said something *really raunchy* to me when trying to say something completely innocent.  It’s really funny when Japanese people say the wrong words and it comes out…very wrong.

Yeah, that was a short update on stuff.  TONS OF NEW PICTURES [tomorrow]!

Well, I didn’t really inform you all, but I was going to Osaka with Yudai!  Specifically DenDen Town/Nippon Bashi- which is tons of electronic shops and anime/manga stuff.

The day ended up being a LOT longer than I thought it would.  We spent like 7 hours out.  First was Den Den Town, which was really fun.  I FINALLY bought the webcam I had wanted to do this month, which makes me very happy.  I will also be starting up my video blog soon that means.  New way for me to express myself, I think it’ll be a fun project.  Otherwise, it was still fun just walking around and checking out different shops in there.  Always a cool place to hang out at.

After that, I wanted to go clothes shopping, so Yudai took me to ‘American Village’, which is a lot of clothes stores grouped together basically.  It has an extremely high number of foriegners in it, and also is a very young place, with most people there being 16-29.  Did some looking around and stuff, but a very expensive place- too much to be plausible for buying stuff.  Jeans were about $70 new, and $40 used.  Of course, there was some MUCH cheaper stuff used, but it wasn’t that great of … quality.

Yudai and I found an ice cream place, which looked really good and wasn’t too much, so that was our snack.  The sucky thing was that it took about 15 minutes after ordering just to get it.  That was definitely boring.  Before that at lunch time, we had gone to McDonald’s.  Cheaper because of coupons, which was nice.  It was also nice that I got to eat American food, which I  now value.  (Even with the health-destroying amount of fat in it.)

Also, little interesting thing, I was walking in the road (oops) and a car honked at me, and after I moved out of the way, Yudai said it looked like a car that the Japanese Mafia use.  And honestly, it did.  It was a bit creepy.  The car was a fancy black Crown, and all the windows were heavily tinted.  This was also in the darker side of Namba, so it was plausible.  Scary.

After we finished in Osaka, which was actually a really long time because of all the walking, and also a lot of sight seeing, we headed back to Fujidera, which is where we met in the morning.  Since the clothes are super expensive in Osaka, we went to ‘Right On’ and I found a great pair of jeans for really cheap ($30).  I’ll take a moment to describe them, as it’s my first actual piece of Japanese clothing.  It is also part of the male style here.

Basically they’re tighter than my jeans from America, which is a given, and they’re also very very low rise.  And yes, they do fit me, I didn’t just go with a small size.  Length is perfect for me, so I was happy.  They look lik enormal jeans, except they have a “worn” effect down the front of them, and the front of each thigh has an extra pocket on it.  And a decorational zipper down the side of said pocket.  The crotch area reminds me more of a girls jean back home, and like I said, it’s tighter than what I’d wear in the US…definitely.  Not skin-tight though, so don’t think too tight.  I dunno if you can picture it, so I uploaded a bunch of pictures to my Gallery!

Along with a picture of Yudai.  And that’s pretty much all the pictures I took through the day.  One of a busy street was completely ruined by a guy who walked in front of the camera.  Darn.

Then we went to Tsutaya, and Yudai bought a CD.  After that, we headed our separate ways.

At home, pretty normal day, but I got home and the whole house was dark.  I knew my family was going to be gone during the day too, so I was like “Oh…darn it…”, but luckily Yoshinori was home so he opened the door.  I don’t have a key.

After dinner we watched Poiseden, which was pretty good.  No one is going on cruises now.

So today I worked on Kendo with Ben-sensei and Brandon was also there.  It was pretty fun, and we learned a lot.  In total, we worked on the basics for about 2 and a half hours, so we actually stayed ‘after school’ for half an hour.  I guess I really can’t go into how it was much, because it’d be too difficult for me to explain exactly what we learned, but the general beginning footwork and sword swinging motions.

We also had a very interesting conversation about the realistic lightsabers that are available, and apparently Ben has two.  You wouldn’t really guess that he’s kind of…Star Wars geekish by looking at him.  It’s kinda funny, but the lightsabers are really cool.  In the dark they look pretty real.  (He had a video of him and his friend using them on his cellphone.)

Today was also fun because I spent some time talking with my host mother and host brother and just generally having fun.  Still had a lot of time left over, but at least I found something more to do today than yesterday.

Got a couple of new photos up in the Gallery for people who reminded that I could do that in my spare time.  Yay.

>> Please read below.

I was preparing a rant for today about a religous group, but I’ve had to remove before posting this.  It’s not fair to use my Japan blog as a political one to, as today’s dealt with stuff that wasn’t as kid-friendly as a blog about Japan should be.

Tomorrow my political blog will be up, and if you’re interested in hearing my thoughts, you can go there.  Only disclaimer is that it is NOT for kids and will deal with mature content and issues.

So that’s where all my ranting will go.

So, apparently there’s only 2 hours each day now for the testing, continuing through Friday.  In some ways, it’s great, but in some ways I want my friends back.  They’re all busy studying- meaning nothing fun after school, plus I’ve got too much spare time on my hands.  Ended up doing a second layout thingy because I was bored today.  I’m honestly not sure what I’m supposed to do at my host house.  The TV really can’t capture my attention (I tried watching it for 20 minutes…) and my host siblings are out because it’s so early, so I’ve fallen back into my ‘geek’ mode and finished stuff on the internet.  Guess I’ll consider it a break from the norm of my new Japanese life.

Basically I got to school today and then they just told me to hang out in the computer room, so I was extremely bored for two hours on YouTube.  As were the two other foriegn exchange students and Ben sensei.  Tomorrow he’ll be teaching Brandon and I some Kendo basics, so I’m hopeful that it will be less boring and I can stay awake.

On Friday there’s a meeting thing to talk about Singapore and I have to fill out a health sheet with my Rotary helper here, to make sure everything’s ok to go and stuff.  Bad part is I have to stick around after school 2 hours (most likely alone) before the meeting starts.

This week is kind of lacking interesting stuff to do.  However, Saturday there’s school because the Junior High will be getting their orientation of High School.  Because Japan is fair, they give us Monday off, so I’m not really bugged by it.  Sunday is a Kyoto trip with Rotary, which should prove interesting.  Ironically, I got into a discussion with a Japanese person on YouTube who lives in Kyoto.

And in non-Japan news, I’m pretty politically mad at the moment, specifically with our government.  Ignoring the North Korean issues (who has time to keep up with that?) but going more at how the US government has been taking our rights away under the guise of “protecting us from terrorists”.  But, I’d have to say the real problem is sitting in the Oval Office.  Yeah, I read about the 14 year old girl from CA got interrogated by the Secret Service because of posting a threatening message about Bush on her MySpace.  Wrong? Yes.  Overreaction? YES.  Of course, per MySpace, you can never really tell if it’s a 14 year old girl or a 60 year old man.  They still could’ve realized that once they tracked her down to her high school (middle school?) that they were dealing with a young teen.

I’m up for debate whether I’ll continue my MySpace-esque blogging in a new political site.  Toning down the language, but still keeping it as a complete rant blog, as I’m really really fed up with US politics.  Althogh I found some humour in the fact Mark Foley is apparently a gay Republican.  Irony.

If I weren’t in Japan right now, the ‘Student Activist League’ would be burning with a fire.  Ah, that’s one of my biggest goals for when I get back.  A student watchdog organization could be effective in bringing about local change, but also garner attention on a bigger basis for political views.  At least if you play your cards right.

Tomorrow I’m going to make a list of the things I miss most in from the US.  Like black licorice.

So, my friend from class 2-8 came over for an hour and a half today.  His name is Yuta [see blog title] and that was pretty cool.  First person that I’ve actually had over to the Maki’s house.  This weekend was a bad time to schedule any sort of meeting, as I was surprised he could actually come.  All students are studying hard this weekend for the testing starting Tuesday.  All of my friends are busy, which ruled out most of the cool stuff I could do.

Today was mostly boring, besides that 1 and a half hours.  This morning I woke up, checked my email, had breakfast, and talked to some people on MSN/AIM [Amma] which was fun.  My host mother made ramen for breakfast, which was really good.  I like ramen.  Then, unexpectedly, my host mother decided that we should go to Jusco and get McDonald’s and pick up some snacks for Yuta, which fine with me…if only for the McD’s.  Turns out Yuta didn’t eat any snacks, but now we have more potatoe chips, pocky, and Kit-Kats!  I’m not complaining.

So…the rest of the day, which was 3PM on, I did absolutely nothing.  Found two episodes of ‘Supernatural’ [can be watched on The CW] on YouTube, which took up another hour and a half.  That’s kind of sad, but my host-siblings were gone, and my host mother was cleaning and making dinner.  When I say there’s not much to do at home, I mean it.   I wanted to start a new writing project…but…a plot hasn’t hit me yet.  Right now I’m just going to be poking around at ideas for awhile, and hopefully come up with something to write about.  I miss writing fiction.  Plus I want a good excuse to give Word a good workout.

Ironically though, I came up with some really good video game plotlines.  I can’t wait to go to Digipen.  If I wanted to, I could pursue C++ and computer game programming now, but that’s a bit too much to aspire for when I’m midway through my PHP book and don’t have that much time.  Disappointing, but video games are much harder then writing web scripts.  Or writing blogs.

A nice suprise this month was the fact that I got to save 2,000 yen because some extra costs were covered when I thought I’d have to pay, so that was extremely nice.  I might be able to still get that webcam…which would own.  Messing around with Video Blogging would give me something new to do.  Long blogs are usually a result of me having nothing to do, so I write to fill time.  Thursday however, when I wrote that huge blog, I did not have time.  I was up too late and was really tired the next day.   I’m good now though, all rested.

How big of news is the North Korean thing in the US?  Personally it’s a bit scary in a removed sort of way to know that their are nuclear weapons close by, and ones that are being tested.

After being lazy and things getting in the way of updating, I’ll finally fill you in on some stuff that’s been going on.  To be fair, I’ll start with last Sunday…the Wakayama trip.

Sunday- So this was the start of the Wakayama trip.  My host mother went through the confusing train route with me for most of it, so I was really grateful!  Believe me…it was confusing.  Then one of my Rotary members was at the tracks for the rest of the ride, and he bought me upgraded tickets to “first class” which was nice.  In trains, it means actual padded seats, and the car is largely sound-proofed.  It was nice.  Of course, I was going to write my presentation on the train, that plan got cancelled.  We got to the station, met all the other exchange students in Wakayama, and headed to our Hotel.  We each got single rooms [I appreciated it, but isn't there something better to spend money on?  I hate to complain over a favor, but...it just seems overly expensive.  This is a fancy hotel.] which added up to about 22 of ‘em with Rotex and other Rotary members.  They were nice.  We ate lunch and then went to Wakayama Castle for awhile, which was fun.  After that we got some talk time, then it was off to present.  I still hadn’t done anything, and ended up just talking about Minnesota from my infinite supply of quirky Minnesota facts.  (Ok, so I brought one of the fact-sheetish things I have for all the host families and did my presentation by explaining different pictures on it, but it was nice.  Content was good…talking could’ve been to fast though, I dunno.)  Most of the other students hadn’t done it either, and most of them are also worse students then me, just for the record.  We ate dinner, talked more, and went to sleep.  Late.

Monday- I only had told 3 girls that it was my birthday, but they remembered and said Happy Birthday to me in the morning, of course drawing everyone’s attention and everyone’s like “Wow, it’s your birthday?!”.  I really don’t like attention like that unfortunately though.  We had a small meeting, which was about the year’s schedule, cellphones, and some rules.  Then we talked while next year’s Japanese foriegn exchange students filled out forms, it was fun to get to know some of the students better that were from around the world.  They’re all pretty nice.  Then we went out for lunch and I had a BURGER!  Not like some McDonald’s kind, but like an honest American-like burger.  That was a pretty good thing on my birthday on its own right.  Then when I got my ice cream, everyone started singing Happy Birthday to me.  I’m not sure if they planned it while I was in the bathroom or something, but it was coordinated.  I’ll reiterate that I don’t like that kind of attention, but it was appreciated in the end.  Then the loooooong train ride back, this time a little bit shorter and cheaper route with some friends and the same Rotary member.

My birthday at home gets its own paragraph!  So, like I mentioned, we had spaghetti, fries, and pizza!  It was all really good, probably ate too much in the end, but usually I don’t really look forward to dinner (sashimi ends up being a Godsend sadly.  Sashimi = raw fish.  Yes, that’s now a “safe food” that I’m glad I get because it’s not something *worse*.) but it was really great.  Then they gave me cake which had a little chocolate thing that had “Happy Birthday Paul” written on, of course it was in Japanese besides “Paul” though.  Yay!  Then my host parents, my host siblings, and my host grandfather had cards for me.  I think those will be tucked into my “keep forever” place, as I want to show my children, grandchildren, etc.  Then they gave me New Super Mario Bros for my DS! I was *really really* happy because I wanted that game.  It’s in Japanese, but it’s Mario…you don’t need to know Japanese to play really.  So, I did get pretty homesick, but overall a very happy birthday!

Tuesday- I was sick, and stayed home.  Completely wiped out from Wakayama and stuff.  Not *really* sick per se, but I felt like crap from lack of sleep and no break from busy-ness as my weekend was packed.  Luckily I felt a lot better by the end of the day, and it really helped me.  It was a completely boring day, not much to mention at all.

Wednesday- So yesterday was pretty fun.  I came back to school, got to see my friends and everything!  School is pretty much my life here.  I love it.  It’s not the academic part, but the social part.  Here at home I have the internet…and that’s pretty much it.  It’s rather boring frankly.  Hanging out with friends at school is awesome though, so I like to stay late for ESS club and stuff.  Anyways…it was great to be back.  Japanese class got cancelled, but I still got out of two hours worth of classes with Brandon to just ’study’ on the computers.  Ha. Hahaha.  Art class, one of my favorite classes, was great.  I was taught a crash course in perverted words (yeah, the joys of being foriegn exchange) and met a new friend, who’s coming over on Saturday.  After school was me hanging out in class 2-8 (I’m 2-7, but both are International- meaning good english) which was hilarious.  My friends (different group then Tatsuya/Fumiya/Masiuki) were talking really perverted in English, but probably had no idea the implications of what they meant.  I have no idea where they pick up these words, but the electronic dictionaries here are very…all-inclusive.  This can be recorded as one of the times I’ve laughed the most.  You’d have to have been there.

Today- Basically just school and talking with friends ‘n stuff.  I had to give a speech during 6th hour to all 320 second graders (11th grade for US, my grade) so of course I wrote that during 5th hour.  Shame on me being a typical American.  I wanted to start early…but…you know how things go.  I don’t think it went too badly, the feedback seemed positive, but apparently I stood too far away from the mic.  I was deathly afraid of being too loud though, so overcompensated apparently.  I ended, well, before saying thank you to the audience, with “Nagano Koukouwa ichibanya!” which basically means “Nagano High School is number 1!” which got a nice response out of the crowd.  It made up for my inadequote Japanese I think.

Tsutomu, one of my better friends from ESS, won the speech competition (it was an english one) so that was good.  Haruka, the Japanese girl I love here, did not win and therefore had to cry.  Unfortunately, I got kind of emotional about it and was like “ok…I didn’t just not get first place, she did” but, y’know, she’s so cute and I couldn’t bear watching her cry and stuff.  I’ve got to get a picture of her up on my Gallery.  She is so cute.

And for the win, Tatsuya posted a comment on the last post:

“hi! paul
I was happy to spend good time.
bye-bye” - Tatsuya

I think Tatsuya and Fumiya translate my blog to Japanese and read it.  I think.