Third Week In Japan

Okay, with this post, I'm done catching up, and now I'll just post normal updates here, instead of everything in one batch. There's also no pictures here either, unfortunately, still stuck on my phone. I even tried to take my camera to Asakusa on Saturday only to find that it wouldn't turn on!! Howww annoyinggg. Maybe it's finally bit the dust; it's been acting up for a while. Well, there's no place better to purchase new electronics than Japan. Whenever I finally get into Akihabara I'll look for a good deal.

Week Three: September 11-18, 2006



Monday, September 11, 2006

In keeping with the tragedy theme of the day, I fell off my bike. wah!!

I don't really know what happened. I rode Casey's bike all the time last year and never fell off or anything, and then suddenly today I'm just riding along, no one else on the sidewalk but me, and all of a sudden I start to lose my balance and just topple over. I think it's the kickstand, there's something wrong with it so it comes down all the time while I'm riding and I have to kick it back up again. When this bike was my host dad's he fell off it too. I got pretty scraped up. My toe is the worst, then I have some assorted scrapes all over. I hit my teeth a little bit too so they feel weird, but I don't think they're going to fall out or anything.

And do you know what Endo-san said about me falling off the bike? "You weren't being careful." THANKS. I'M SURE YOU WERE RIGHT THERE TO WITNESS IT. AND SINCE YOU KNOW MY PERSONALITY SO WELL, THANKS FOR THE ACCURATE PREDICTION OF MY BEHAVIOR. !! You know, she adores Aly because Aly eats all her food, but I'm pretty sure I'm her least favorite, just cause I refuse to put up with her rambling on and sometimes don't eat everything she gives us (in my defense, I didn't choose such a personal dining experience. I thought I'd be in a big dorm, and whether or not I didn't eat everything would be up to me alone, and no one would feel insulted or WHATEVER if I didn't. Sorry, but this wasn't my plan!).

AND do you know what she also said about me? She called me wagamama (selfish)!!!! Just because I have no patience to sit through her talking on and on to us in Japanese. Complain, complain, complain!! And because I didn't notify her properly that I was going to my old host family for part of the weekend. BOO HOO! I didn't have time, and I knew if I went over and talked to her she'd ramble on to me forever, and I didn't want that, so I didn't! Brette told her, so what's the problem?!

Otherwise, the day was fine, whatever. We went to Meikai to take our Japanese placement test, which was kind of hard! Lots of kanji. But I just figured, well, I'll get put in the level I get put in, and that will suit me. There was also an oral interview, but since that's pretty much my strong point, I was fine there. After that we were done, and I got lunch with Brette and Taryn at Wendy's. Yay Wendy's!! It was goood. Plus they serve melon cream sodas there!

And then the tragic accident happened, et cetera.

Random Engrish:


Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Today was our "opening ceremonies" at Meikai, so we all dressed up nice and listened to some speeches and such, and then we were told what level we placed into. I got into the middle level, level 2, "Upper Intermediate," which is I think exactly where I want to be, so I was very content with that. We have three teachers, which is different from the other two levels that only have one teacher, naturally. One teaches Mondays and Tuesdays, one teaches Thursdays, and the last teaches Fridays (Wednesday is off for people with internships/field placements). So that'll be interesting. My class is pretty small too, only 7 people, but I think the other classes are even smaller.

After that was announced, we went over to this fancy restaurant on-campus (that's open to the general public as well), where they had prepared a little luncheon for us with sandwiches and fruit and such. It was really good. They had melon slices there (the same melon they make the melon flavoring with) so I ate one to compare the tastes. It tasted sort of similar, but not really the same. I think the actual equivalent of a melon is a honeydew, but they call it "melon" here. (Watermelon is something else, and though the real 'melon' looks like a cantaloupe, it's not.)

After that was over we could go home, so we did and I had another nap. Mmm, naps.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

My first day of work at TOKYOPOP's Tokyo office! It was really interesting and pretty cool. The office is in Aoyama, the "nice" part of town, close to Shibuya, etc. It was easy for me to get to from Gyotoku Station, I only had to transfer once and it was about 45 minutes away total. Then the office is just like 20 seconds from the station exit. It's very small, two floors of this building, only 10 people work there. Nevertheless, it's the company headquarters (the office in LA isn't!). Most people there, from so much contact with the other offices, speak fairly good English. One of them, Kiyomi, has been with the company from the very beginning. In fact, she was part of the CEO Stu's host family when he first came to Japan (wow!).

Already I've been given lots of things to do. In fact, they had made a list of projects I could help out on!! First was "Manga de Eego," where they use scenes from Princess Ai to teach English, and you can buy it and look at it on your cellphone (manga [comics] on cellphones is getting fairly big in Japan, apparently). They wanted the English to be authentic so they had me go through and correct their sentences. Then I did some work that would be more suited to a production intern than an editorial intern such as myself, but it was still very fun, and I've dabbled in that sort of thing myself and had enough copyediting experience to know what mistakes NOT to make. They had made a little (what else?) full-color 12-page manga about working with Tokyopop (I suppose for prospective artists/etc), and I went and added the Japanese text to the pages. I'm still not done, I have to come back in on Friday to finish it.
(Eventually there will be an English version, and I am going to try and be the one to translate it. :D)

Then over the weekend I'm going to translate part of this script for an original Japanese manga we're planning to make, for the LA office to look at and talk about. yaaayyy translation, I hope I can handle it!

They're also going to buy me a Passnet card for the Metro (yesss) to cover the cost of transportation. I was planning to get a Passnet anyway so that works out perfectly. I already have a Suica card for the JR lines, and it is so convenient and fun :D

I had to stay reallly late working on that stupid manga (because of irritating computer problems and because they wanted it done very soon), their hours go until 7 pm, so I missed hanging out with my friends in Kaihin Makuhari. Oh welllll. :/

Everyone there knows most of the people in LA. It made me miss them!

Thursday, September 14, 2006

First day of real Japanese classes!! So we had our Thursday teacher, Maruyama-sensei, this young-looking girl who seems nice but also firm. I think for the first time in a while, a Japanese class is actually going to challenge me. Like, at times I felt like I needed to actually struggle to continue to understand what was going on. We went over quite a few kanji I didn't know (even though I wasn't alone in that), and I think it's just going to be a whole new style of Japanese class for me. AC Japanese classes always went so slow for me, because so many people were so below my level and because our book wasn't the greatest, but I think this is going to be different in a really, really good way, and I think I'm going to learn a lot and improve my level a lot too. So even though I still hate being separated from Kanda people like this, I'm so glad I chose the Language Program, because I think I would have been really bored with the Kanda Japanese classes.

After that 3-hour behemoth of a class (yeaah, it's extremely long, 9 to 12, four days a week, but it goes by faster than you'd think) I went straight to Kaihin-Makuhari, since I had a class at Kanda in the afternoon, where unfortunately almost everyone else, whose Japanese class got out at 11, had already eaten, but Lisa went with me for her "second lunch" (hahaha, it was like she was a hobbit!), and we went to Saizeriya's, the Italian place on the first floor of the building IES is in. It was soooo gooood. :D Plus, melon soda at the soda fountain, yaaay.

After that I had my first History of Tokyo class, with Lisa, Anna, Casey, and quite a few other people I know. Our teacher is British and she's been living in Japan for 8 years now, since her college graduation, and she seems really nice and cool. I think it's going to be a really good, interesting class, and I'm excited. Plus we have like three field trips, which is awesome. I don't know much at all about Japan or Tokyo's history, so I'm excited to find out about it.

After that I went to the IES Center to have my visa photocopied, and stood around there chatting with Hyung-Hye for a while, and then I went home.

Friday, September 15, 2006

After Japanese class in the morning (with our next teacher, whose name I've forgotten, who I thought would be this really nervous guy but who was actually really funny and his class is going to be lots of fun. Casey has also moved up from level 1 to be in our class and he's very happy about it. This other girl, Deborah, also wants [and needs] to move up to our class but is having a hard time doing so and it's upsetting her a lot, which sucks) I went back to the Tokyopop office to try and finish that stupid comic. I got as much of it done as I could but some of the pages have errors and it's really frustrating, plus the computer I'm on is really slow sometimes, so it's still not done even though they wanted it done by that point, which is so annoying! I still have to finish it when I go in next week.

But after work, around 5:30, the Tokyo director Sho-san and I went to this anime press event or something, which was really cool to experience. It was this anime called Jigoku Shoujo (which I haven't seen or heard of at all, which isn't surprising as I don't really bother to keep up with what's new), and the second season has started recently, so they had this press event to commemorate that. The girl who sings the opening song, SnoW, had a mini-concert where she sang two songs, and that was cool, and then they had some staff members come out and say a few words, and then they had the voice actors come out and answer some questions. All in all, very cool to experience (especially being the only gaijin in that room!!), but it would have been better if it was a series I cared about. Apparently Tokyopop gets lots of these invitations, so I'm going to keep an eye out for things about series I like and be sure to try and go to those. Oh, and they gave us little gift bags with posters and promo CDs and such, which was very cool too.

After that I went to Kaihin Makuhari and FINALLY got to meet up with my friends. So much fun. yay!!

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Asakusa tour day! In January, we did pretty much the exact same thing, only with some slight differences, but since I lived in Asakusa during our extra days, I'd gotten pretty familiar with it, and so I was happy to get to return. It's still such a really cool area (kind of like the traditional old part of Tokyo, as compared to Shinjuku and Shibuya which are completely modern). This time it was different because we had more free time and less scheduled activities. We met up at the Kaminari-mon (Thunder Gate), and then we had an hour to wander around.


A big group of us outside the Thunder Gate.

We went down Nakamise-doori and looked at all the stuff for sale (I resisted and didn't buy anything), then we decided we were hungry and wanted crepes so I led Lisa, Anna, and Audrey to the crepe place by the Rox department store we'd discovered in January (it's pretty much the only crepe place in that whole vicinity, I suspect). So we got delicious crepes and walked back. We had time to go inside Sensoji (the famous temple in the area) and then meet back up with everyone. There was a guy with a trained chimpanzee doing tricks, which was entertaining, but the poor animal was being jerked around by a leash and that part was so awful!

Anyway, from there we walked over to the river and caught a RIVER TAXI to take us over to the sumo "stadium" area. The river taxi was awesome!! So much fun, I think Bekah would have really enjoyed it.


Before getting on the river taxi: we passed a sign with the names of marine animals and I learned a new fun fact. A seagull is an UMINEKO. Literally: sea cat. HILARIOUS!!!


Anna, Yoko (she was super nice), and me on the river taxi. Excitinggg!

From there we went to have lunch at this chanko nabe restaurant. Chanko nabe is the food of sumo players, it supposedly beefs you up. It's pretty much just a stew of various things. It was really, really good. We also had udon noodles in it, so now I know it's not the udon noodles I dislike, but the often-fishy broth the udon comes in. Which is a shame, but oh well. It was delicious. I was sitting across from this guy Joe, who was here last spring too with IES and spent the summer break in Okinawa (one of Japan's southern islands, apparently a lot like Hawaii), and we talked all about how Meikai is so much better than Kanda (and he knows, since he's experienced both) and that just really reaffirmed my decision to do Meikai a lot and made me feel a lot better that I'd chosen the option that will actually increase my Japanese. The thing is, Kanda is pretty much an English school. Those are its two majors: English, and Thai. So all the students there are only interested in talking to you, for the most part, to increase their English. Whereas, you're there to increase your Japanese! It's kind of a counter-productive environment.

After lunch we went to the sumo place and settled in for some sumo watching. It was, of course, fairly boring, but I was able to appreciate it a little better as my second time watching. For some reason, even though we got up and moved around a lot, we stayed until the very last fight, which was kind of cool to experience. There were about 16 or 17 of us IES people left that we gathered together, and then went in search of dinner. I went with about 6 other people to this tempura place, but unfortunately nothing really looked appetizing to me, so I didn't get anything. I got some McDonald's after everyone finished eating, though :) yumm

After that Lisa, Anna, Audrey, Patrick and I decided to hit up a purikura place!! yeaaahh! It was my first time doing purikura, and it was so fun and we got a lot of good pictures out of it!









Then we went to Tsudanuma to meet up with some other IES people who had gone on ahead there, and we hung out there for a little bit waiting, and then met up with them to do some karaoke. Sarah and Milin, the AC graduates now working in Japan, came along since they wanted to meet some Kanda people. Unfortunately, after they arrived, our karaoke time was over not 30 minutes later, and everyone separated to go home, so it was really terrible they came all that way just to go home, but, oh well. I think they had fun at karaoke and meeting everyone, in any case.

Then at the station I got on the same train with them, since we all needed to transfer at Nishi Funabashi, and I get to Nishi Funabashi and start looking for my platform, and I find it, only to look at the schedule and discover that I missed the last train headed where I needed to go!! Which is RIDICULOUS, since it was only 11 pm and they're not supposed to stop until midnight, but I guess on the weekends it's a bit different and the last train had been 10:50. I had some options there, I could have tried to take a train headed in a different direction and turn around, but I didn't know when the last train there was, either, and I might just end up stranded. I could have also probably gotten on the Tozai Line and gotten off at my other station, Gyotoku, even though my bike was at the JR station so I wanted to go back to that one. And I could have taken a taxi but since I had just used up the last of my cash that I had with me to charge my Suica card, that was out. In the end, I ran over to Sarah and Milin on the opposite platform and told them I missed my last train, and they immediately offered to let me stay with them at one of their apartments. It was incredibly nice of them and since I didn't have any other good options, I accepted, and went back with them to where they live, and Sarah let me sleep on her spare futon on the floor. I was really fortunate in this case, and I'll definitely be more careful in the future.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

I got up, said goodbye to Sarah and Milin, and made my way home at last. My bike, which had now been parked outside the station for 24 hours, was completely untouched and fine (yess) and I rode that back safely. After a couple hours of just chilling and not doing anything, I got ready to be picked up by my old host family to go back to their house for a party they had invited me to last weekend. They got there at 3 and this time my host mom knocked on Endo-san’s door and told her I was spending the night there (so she wouldn’t complain about not knowing I was spending the night somewhere else like last time, even though Brette told her what I was doing so I really don’t see what the problem was). Of course, while she had someone’s ear, she complained on and on to her about this and that, mainly things we do wrong, blah blah. That REALLY makes me mad. It feels like she’s poisoning my host mom against me or whatever--“I don’t see why you want to do things with this one, she does all this wrong, I can’t catch a break, it’s so troublesome, oh poor me!” UGH. STOP. Even if this was in America I would be equally fed up with this kind of behavior. It is selfish (who is selfish now, Endo-san!!) and one of the personality traits I hate the most in people.

And, you know, we actually needed to get back and start getting ready for the party, so eventually my host mom was all “Okay, we have to go” and we were able to escape. So we got to their house and my host mom started cooking food and I played with Na-chan in the meantime. I actually didn’t realize this until after the guests arrived, but this party was for me! When it was first explained to me last weekend, Kanako-san made it sound like she was inviting her family over (her younger sister and younger brother) and she wanted me to come and meet them. But it turns out, it was sort of an arrival party for me!! ahhh! How crazy!

The guests that came were one of my host mom’s friends from her gospel choir, Mariko-san, and her husband and three kids; their next-door neighbor, whose name I’ve forgotten, and her husband and daughter; and my host mom’s younger brother, Shun-chan (ha! Childhood nicknames last to this day, even though he is now 31. Hilarious). I guess her sister didn’t come, or I heard wrong...? I dunno! Originally it was supposed to be a barbecue party and we were gonna have yakiniku (grilled meat, yummm) but then it was raining so we had it indoors. We brought up another table to the living room and sat on cushions on the floor and had lots of various dishes (quiche! It was good. And yakisoba with corn. Someone had brought Mister Donut doughnut holes, too! Mmm, Mister Donut). The kids ran around and played and the adults drank beer (which I was offered, but refused). Lots of beer! I think some of them got a little drunk, which was pretty entertaining.

At one point my host mom’s middle school yearbook was busted out, which was hilarious. Its partytime appeal transcends cultures!! But wow, in my host mom’s picture she looked JUST like Nanase! It was crazy! But yeah. It was a lot of fun. Sometimes I tuned out the conversation since it would go too fast for me, and sometimes they asked me questions and I was able to respond (with a minimum of asking the question to be repeated/dictionary assistance, which was very nice). I felt like I was on my way to being able to actually hold up my end of a Japanese conversation. I have the accent part down, and I’ve picked up lots of colloquialisms to add authenticity to my speech, but now I mostly need to increase my vocabulary and remember the things I come across. But everyone was really interested to know about America (the next-door neighbor woman had studied abroad in Spokane, Washington for a year or so, so she had that knowledge) and what was popular there. So we talked about Power Rangers and Pokemon, hahah. Apparently there’s a big Pokemon store somewhere. I said I wanted to go and take a picture to make Bekah jealous. :D

Oh! And while I was at Ryogoku, I had gotten them a present of these chrysanthemum sweet things, because I know at a Japanese party you are supposed to bring a gift for the host (and really, with all the things they’ve done for me so far, I feel like I can’t give them enough things in return), and I was already in a traditional Japanese area so it made sense to get a souvenir type thing from there. I didn’t really know what they were, the display box just looked like it might have good tasting things inside, so I got it. I think they were sweets made to celebrate the birth of the new prince, since they were chrysanthemum shaped (the symbol of the emperor’s family) and they were sprinkled with this gold dust stuff. Inside was this yellow bean paste or something. So towards the end of the party, they opened the box and passed them around. They were good! Whatever they were...

The party broke up around 9 or so, and everyone except me and my host mom’s brother went home, since we were both staying the night. He slept in the living room loft and I stayed in the guest room as usual. yay, soft futon!

Monday, September 18, 2006

Today was a holiday in Japan (Old People Day... or whatever) so no one had school or work. After I got up around 9 and had breakfast, my host mom, Nanase and I went to Ikspiari, the Disney shopping area. We also went there in January so it was cool to go again. We just walked around window-shopping and looking at all the cool shops. It was all decorated for Halloween so that was fun to see. For lunch we had curry and naan bread which was delicious. Then they drove me home, but I’ll see them again next month when we go to Disneyland (Halloween still, that’ll be interesting!).


Hahaha!! Probably the best thing I saw was GOTHIC LOLITA MINNIE MOUSE. AHAHAHAHAAAAAA NOT EVEN JOKING HERE. Minnie Mouse’s Halloween costume... is Gothic Lolita!! There was a plushie, a purse, a hand towel, all sorts of GothLoli Minnie paraphernalia... HILARIOUS.

For the rest of the day I finished my translation project for Tokyopop and my Japanese homework and just enjoyed being at home, ahh.