Vol 23

この写真は私のKCPクラスです。
クラスA112は一番くらすです。

I'm in the midst of typing my follow-up report for the scholarship I received when I went to Japan, but I needed my class picture.
I emailed Utami-san some time last month, but because of Golden week in Japan, she wasn't able to send it until recently.

I'm in the final stages of this school semester, and couldn't be more excited about it ending.
I don't know why, but I was really out of it this semester.
I just didn't want to go to school at all this semester.
Hopefully, I'll be back in the game this fall semester.
I can't afford to let my GPA drop.

I'm considering changing my major once again.
Although my intentions are to enter medical school when I'm 26-27, I want to focus on my foreign language study right now instead of Biology.
If I don't transfer to UMBC this fall, then I can't go further in my Japanese studies, nor can I start Korean.
If that's the case then I'll either retake Spanish or learn French.
I studied Spanish in High school and was really good at it once upon a time.
Don't ask what happened, because now I suck completely.
I could retry Arabic, but that kicked my ass last time.
I have until August to decide what I want to do.
That is if UMBC doesn't receive my transcripts by the 30th.
I don't understand why they don't have them yet. They were mailed out in mid-April.
UMBC and CCBC are two minutes away from each other.
What the hell is the adminstration offices doing?!!!!
I have to study for Finals now.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year

明けましてお目妥当ございます。

今アメリカに住んでいます。

東京はとても楽しかった。

本当に楽しかった。

私のＫＣＰ友達が大好き。

今年は頑張って。

メールを書いてください。

ぜひ日本へ行きたい

ぜひ友達と遊びたい。

本当にありがとうございます。

私はアメリカで頑張れ。

Vol 15

It’s time for me to go back to America now, so I decided to update.
I haven’t posted anything for a long time now.
Within the past few weeks I’ve been busy going out and hanging with my friends.
Some things that have happened in the past 2 weeks:
*I went to dinner with “MY” class for the first time.
--We ate Korean food at the restaurant where my classmate works.
--I got to ride a bike to the restaurant. *This requires serious skill, because Tokyo as you know is very crowded. And my classmate got us lost, but that was fun as well.
*I went to Odaiba at night with some friends.
--We played on the beach and I fell in the sand.
*I was able to see traditional Japanese entertainment. It was a puppet play “Bunraku”. Actually, I didn’t get to see it. The night before my friends and I went out, so we weren’t able to make it back home in time. Therefore, we went to our friend JaeHoon’s house. We stayed up all night, and I had class at 9am the next morning, so at the puppet play I fell asleep. But!, the part that I did see way really entertaining.

*Eun Shil's birthday was a few weeks ago, and we went out for Dinner.

*I went ot Shibuya to go Karaoking with some friends.

--I'm shocked. Hwan Oong, who is a most child-like guy you'll ever meet, can sing really well.

*I chased Yong sik around the school for poking me in the side. It was very fun, but I was dizzy afterwards. In my opinion, he's not that much faster than me. He was about 20 feet away from me to start, and it remained that same distance the entire time we ran.

I have my final exam tomorrow, so I don’t have time to type a long entry like usual.
I have to wrap it up here for now.
I’ll finish talking about my trip to japan, in way more detail, when I get back to America.

Vol 14

先月の二十二日から二十三日まで山梨県へいきました。
とても楽しいです。
私はもう一度山梨県へいきたいです。
日の出もとてもきれいです。

先月に私はちょっといそがしかたですから、どこもいきませんでした。
今、勉強します。

I know I haven’t posted for a while, but I’m serious about having a short attention span.
I’ve been typing this one entry for over a week, and look how short it is.

On November 22nd -23rd the American students took a trip to Yamanashi Prefecture.
We got to see Mt. Fuji, and check out a lot of different places like Castles, Houses, and Museums.
Yamanashi Prefecture is very very pretty.
While there, I felt like I was in a bowl, because you’re surrounded by Mountains.

We left Saturday morning around 9am.
According to the schedule we should have arrived at our first location in about 2 hours, but the traffic was horrible.
Throughout the entire trip we were on the bus for about 7-10 hours each day.

Our first stop was the House of Kinjiro Ninomiya.
Kinjiro Ninomiya was the Japanese former who would work and study at the same time.
He was so determined to study, even though he uncle told him not to, that he made his own oil so he could study at not.
At least that’s why Tanaka said.
I think Kinjiro was also a samurai.

Next we visited the Odawara Castle.
The place has a really pretty view.
You can see the Ocean, the Mountains, the City, everything from this castle.
And it had a really small zoo right in front of the main entrance.

Our third stop was suppose to be the Owakudani mountain, but we didn’t get to go there because of the lack of time and setting sun.
This was the one place that we wanted to visit the most, because we could climb the mountain, and they had this black egg thing we could try.
But since we didn’t go to that stop, we went straight to the hotel, and that took hours.
We were on the bus from 2pm to 7pm.
Dinner was schedule from 6pm, but since we got to the hotel late, it was rescheduled for 7:30pm.
We had 6 rooms in total.
3 for girls and 3 for boys.
My roommates were everyone that I hang out with most.
Lena, Jo, Chole. Roxana, and Sarah.
Even though we had the “big room”, that’s about the size of my room in America, it was kind of small, but nice.
The hotel had a communal bath, but everyone in my room took a shower instead.
We stayed up until around 12am playing around, but everyone else went to sleep.
So while they were sleep I went out and sat in the hall, then down in the lobby with Justin and Owen, who were also up.
I think I went to sleep around 3am, and woke up at 6am.
It wasn’t until morning that we were able to see that our hotel had a water front view.
It was too dark when we arrived.

Breakfast was at 8am, and we left the hotel at 9am.
Our first stop was Saiko Iyashi no Sato.
This is a rare site that perserves Japanese traditional buildings.
This place had the best view of Mt. Fuji
We also got to try on Kimono’s and old Samurai outfits.
Kimono’s….大変ですね。
I never want to wear another traditional Kimono again.
It takes so long to put on.
But, the fabric is really nice.

Our second stop was Koufu city.
We ate lunch there.

Our third stop was Takeda Jinja.
I don’t remember what we did there.
Oh yeah!!!!
We got to visit a shrine.
At the shrine, they were going the 七五三祭り (7-5-3 Festival).
7-5-3 festival is a festival to celebrate 3 and 7 year old girls, and 5 year old boys.
Those kids were so cute in their traditional Kimono’s, but almost every little girl I saw tripped over their Kimono.
ちょっと危ないですね！
Chole and I had a field day here with out Jumping pictures and SM dances.

Our last stop was Erinji Temple, which is the nicest place I ever been.
If only that place could be my house.
Japanese Foliage is something you should take a trip to see.
I’ve never saw the Sakura Blossom festival in Japan, but I’m pretty sure that next to that, the Foliage is second best.

It took us about 4 hours to get back to Tokyo because the traffic was bumper to bumper, like always.
By time we returned to Tokyo, everyone had just about as much as they could take with sitting on a bus.
All in All the trip was really fun and nice.
I never did like the City.
Any city.
So coming out to the country was very refreshing.
I also made two new friends.
They are friends of my classmate.
Both Japanese.
One is learning English and asked if I could help him with it, Tomo-san.
And the other speaks English fluently, Hippo-san.
Hippo-san said that he would bring me and my friends out to his parents house one day.
His parents also live in the country and from the pictures I saw, they live close to a waterfall.
NICE~~!!!!!

This post is solely about the Yamanashi Trip.
I’ll post later about everything else that has been going on, but right now I should sleep.
Not to mention I have homework, and it’s already 11pm.
Oh yeah! And a test tomorrow!


I took over 500 pictures on the trip, and I post them all in my photo album
Again, the link can be found on the left hand side of the screen.

Vol 13

私はちょっと疲れました。
昨日の晩に友達にCLUBへ行きました。
それから、MCDONALDSでたべました。

Yeah! That might be grammatically incorrect, but who cares at this time
It’s 8am and I just got back in the house about an hour ago.
You would think that I would be really tired and would go to bed as soon as I get in.
NOPE!!!
Still full of energy.
Sometimes it pays to be 20.
Especially when you’re 20 and in Japan.
20 in Japan is like being 21 in America.

On Friday we had midterms, so for the entire week I was half studying.
Therefore nothing interesting happened, so there was no need for me to update my blog.
Everyone was really stressed because of the midterm, but I had a feeling it would be like the regular test we take.
And guess what?
It was!
Except it was 3 hours long.
There for I know I will pass.

After midterm my normal group of Americans and Koreans went out for dinner for celebration.
We went back to TGIF!
This time I got the Chicken and Shrimp pasta, which good and for a decent price.
One of the USA Program advisors, Tanaka-san, even joined us.
It’s amazing how much people change after one drink.
Tanaka-san, who is normally so serious and composed, was rather silly in a way.
I got into a silly argument with Lena over Michael Phelps.
She doesn’t like him, and of course I had to defend my fellow Baltimorian.
The argument ended with us arm wrestling, and I still remain the female champ.
I arm wrestled Yong Sik as well, and that little skinny thing beat me.
It’s only natural that a guy who is boney, but all muscle, will beat me.
But it’s okay.
I accepted my defeat was a smile.
And then laughed when Justin beat Yong Sik/
GO JUSTIN!
But that is also natural for a big (not fat) guy to beat a boney dude.

After dinner, we sat outside for about 30 minutes, and laughed at Yong Sik’s obesession with Beyonce, Lil Kim, and his “Black” Japanese impression, which had Lena, Tone and I cracking up.
And also at Lester’s said explanation of why he wants to learn Japanese.
*So he can talk to Japanese women*
Most people wanted to go out to drink, so we went to Gaspanic.
But the Gaspanic that is in Shibuya, not the one in Roppongi/
About 4 of us only stayed until 10:30, and the rest left some time after that.



Last night I went out to meet my friends at Shibuya 109.
They wanted to go to a club, and since I never go out to the club with them, I decided to go this time.
We went to so club called “Pure”.
It cost about $15 for ladies if you got there before Midnight.
And for males, it was about $35.
But you could drink as much as you want, because there was unlimited drinks for free.
All of my alcoholic friends loved this place.
It made no big difference to me since I do not drink.
But this club made me feel like I was back in America.
And in this case, that’s a bad thing.
I HATE AMERICAN CLUBS.
アメリカのCLUBがとてもきらいです。
ほん～～～～とにきらいです。
ぜんぜんいきません。
This club was about 40% white, 30% Asian, 10% Middle Eastern (they can count as asian as well, but they have their own branch at the moment), and 20% other.
And that “OTHER” can be broken down even further.
Therefore, I didn’t really like it at first, and some of us were thinking about only staying for 2 hours, and then go somewhere else.
But we stayed all night.
And if not for the people I was with, I would have had a really really boring time.

And there were so many weird moments.
For example, some random weird guy would be standing behind you and try to talk to you.
And I really mean WEIRD.
For moments like that I suddenly had a boyfriend or was gay.
It was actually really funny just grabbing one of my guy friends and saying “Oh I’m here with him”
Or grabbing one of my girl friends and saying “I’m gay” or “This is my girlfriend”
Stupid crazy weird people.
Now that I think about it…making up random excuses like that would classify me as weird in a way.
But hey! All girls do it.
So どもありがとう to Roxana, Chloe, Steve, GyuuNyuu, Jo, and any other person who suddenly became my partner.
Chloe got sick so Roxana and Tone took her to a hotel to sleep, and Tone and Roxana rejoined us.


We were at the club from 11:45pm to 5am.
Then we went to Mc Donalds afterwards for breakfast.
We stayed in there for about 2 hours, talking to some of the girls we met at the club who spoke English.
Now that I think about it…I finally realized why my stomach hurts so much.
I never eat McDonalds.


I have one month left.
The American’s have their overnight trip this coming weekend.
We will be going somewhere by Mt. Fuji!
Ureshii!!!!
Chloe and I were talking about coming back to this school in April, but I can’t afford it.
So sad right!
I guess I should end this now.

The picture above is from Friday night at GasPanic.

Vol 12

オバマーさん。
おめだとうございます。

In English:
GO BARACK

America just had their elections and the world is pretty much happy to get rid of Bush.
Even in Japan, Obama becoming president is a n exciting thing.
The Americans went out today to celebrate Obama winning.
We wanted to skip school, but we had a Kanji test today, so we went out after class.
Almost everyone American here at school voted for Obama with the exception of maybe 2.
But it’s okay, because voting for McCain is better than voting for no one.
Or is it??????

I feel that I should update you guys on what’s been going out lately.
Last week was rather busy.

Thursday was my friend Tone’s birthday so we went out to celebrate.
About 15 of us American and Koreans went to TGIF in Shibuya for dinner.
OH. MY. GOSH!
TGIF IS SO EXPENSIVE IN JAPAN.
TGIFはとてもたかいです。
Our waiter was dressed like a Cow.
And another guy was dressed as a frog.
They were nice, and the Cow guy spoke some English.
Apparently he is coming to America next year to study.
After dinner some of us went home, while the rest went to the bar.

Friday our school had an event,
We went to some park out in Shin-Kiba for a BBQ.
The down side to this whole BBQ was traveling.
I think I was the only person who found this as the downside, and I had a perfectly good reason too.
It took about 50 minutes to get from our school to Shin-kiba.
Shin-kiba is 10 minutes away from my house.
My school still made me come all the way up to the school first, just to ride back pass my house.
That was a completely waste of time.
Traveling from East to West just to come back to the East.
But since it was Halloween the Americans decided to dress up, and we even got one Korean guy to dress up as well.
On Ryun a.k.a GYUUNYUU
I went as a Hamster.
So we had Hamster, Bear, Panda, Pikachu, Police Officer, Silver Fox, Masked Guy, Crazy Colorful Hair Dude, and Cow.

The whole purpose of the BBQ was to get to know your classmates better, because we BBQ’ed as a class.
Team work.
Well, it was suppose to be team work but the Koreans pretty much took over.
Every time I tried to help the guys told me to go eat.
So I walked around with Bear or sat with Silver Fox and Police Officer.
What surprised me most was the amount of people who wanted to take a picture with me.
From Level 1 through 7 there were people who came to ask me for pictures.
They even asked the American in their class to come ask me.
If I would have charged $3 for every picture I would have easily made of $150.
There was a jump rope competition between classes as well.
My class sucks at jump rope.
They wouldn’t listen to me.
I was trying to tell them the right way to turn the rope.
They were making this drastic arm movements that were totally unnecessary.
Just spin the rope regularly.
It was do the rest on it’s on.
But they didn’t listen and they should have.
Jump rope is a ghetto thing.
Actually, Jump rope is an anyone thing, but jump rope and succeed is a ghetto thing.
I can double Dutch with a phone cord.
I’m still upset that they didn’t listen to me.

We left the park around 5pm.
Lena, Jo and I went to Harajuku to take Purikura.
Surprisingly, people didn’t stare at us there.
We blended in.
But the people on the train gave us the “WTF” look.

Jo and I went home after that, and Lena went to Roppongi to meet the other Americans.
I wanted to go but I had a concert the next day so I went home instead.

SATURDAY!!!!!!
BIG BANG!!!!

I went to me concert on Saturday.
If you don’t know who Big Bang is by now, then you need to scroll down to my music box and click on a Big Bang song if one isn’t already playing.
I met Lena around 2pm after class.
She came down to me side of town since I don’t like too far from the concert Arena.
Although it’s in a different area of Japan, just outside of Tokyo, it’s only 30 minutes by train from my house.
She says I live in the Rich neighborhood.
Whatever!

We decided to eat before we left Tokyo.
So, we got to Chiba, Japan around 4pm.
We were suppose to meet the girl Shannon around 5:30 at the station.
Too kill time we went to look for where the Arena was.
Apparently we arrived right after the first show had ended because we saw the sells people.
Lena bought a hoodie, and I got two bags and a mask.
As we walked back to the Arena was saw other stands that were selling Big Bang items.
They had pictures, calendars, water bottles…etc,
Both Lena and I bought a face towel.

The concert started at 7pm, but they let us in at 6pm.
We were in the stand arena section B seats 14 and 15.
The Arena was small so these were really good seats.
Although I’m not sure why it was called the Stand Arena when we had chairs.
The stand Arena should have been those girls who were on the floor by the stage.
Before the show started, they showed some of Big Bangs videos and maybe one Taebin video.
Taebin was the guest performer.
The concert started around 7:15-7:20pm.
Big Bang sings in Korean, Japanese, and English, and I knew every single song.
Since my Japanese is small and my Korean is none existent I could barely make out what they said during the MC.
But, I understand everything Daesung said.
Daesung is such a dork.
I will never understand Gdragon’s fashion sense, or why T.O.P was wearing a dinosaur hat.
IMO, Daesung had the best solo performance.
Again, he’s such a dork.
T.O.P could have had the best solo performance if he would have sung his other solo and not Big Boi.
There was only one song I didn’t like and that was How Gee, and I NEVER liked How Gee.
It has such a 1990 American Hip Hop beat, and not a good one.
For the Encore they performed the oh so famous “Baby Baby” and “Always”.
At the end of “Always” Taeyang pulled out a launcher gun thingy, and each member shot a shirt into the crowd.
I caught the shirt Taeyang shot out.
That’s how small the Arena was.
I was on the second floor, and still caught the shirt.
Actually, I made the security guard give it to me.
When Taeyang shot it up into the crowd no one saw it but me, but it landed on the steps.
My seat was at the wall next to the steps so I had to tell the security guard to throw it over to me.
LUCKY!!!!!
The concert ended around 10pm and we had to hurry up and get back into Tokyo before the trains stop.
Having to rush home was really disappointing.
EVERY SINGLE CONCERT I”VE BEEN TO I MET THE ARTIST.
But this is the first time I haven’t.
So depressing.
I’ll stop complaining about it, because at least I got to see Big Bang live.
A really good concert.

Sunday I went back to Harajuku to meet up with Roxana, Chloe, Jo, Lena, and one of Lena’s previous Korean classmates Adrian.
Chloe is also a Big Bang fan, although she didn’t go to the concert, so I had a good time picking on her about it.
But she’ll have a better chance to see them since she is Korean (American), and can probably go to Korea whenever she wants.
We met up with Tone as well, who happened to be in Harajuku shopping.
We didn’t stay there long so I got back home early.

Monday I stayed in the house pretty much all day.
It was my host sister Sachiko’s wedding Anniversary, so my host mom had to watch her grandson.
I went to dinner with Lena and Casey in Ikebukuro.
Japan had already decorated the city was Christmas lights, so I will take pictures of this soon.

I didn’t do anything but go to school on Tuesday, and I explained what I did on Wednesday already.
GO OBAMA!!!!!!

I’ll wrap this up now, because I should be studying.
I have a grammar test tomorrow and a conversation test.
Not to mention class on Saturday as well and mid terms next week.
My departure date is slowly arriving and there are still some things I want to do before I leave.
Like:
Disney Land
Ice Skating
Odaiba
Tokyo Amusement Park
GO Kart Riding
Stay out over night again
Pretty much things like that.

So…..I’ll try to post again soon.
Maybe.
My attention span isn’t long enough to sit here and type.
You Can’t even guess how many times I got up while typing this.
Just try to guess.

The picture above represents the real American Melting pot.

Vol 11

This pass week has been crazy with test.
And the next few weeks looks as if its only going to get worst.
That sucks.
I’ve actually been meaning to update for some time now, but I just don’t feel like it.
My attention span doesn’t last long enough for me to update regularly.
My school BBQ is on Friday.
Halloween Party is on…Friday….Saturday….Thursday?
One of those days.
But I’m not to sure if I’m going to go to that.
And my concert is on Saturday.
So I’ll be died tried again this weekend.

I went out to eat Thursday with some classmates.
We went to the burger place.
The food was okay but the conversation was better.
Talking about Halloween costumes has never been so funny.
From what we talked about:
Me=Hamster
Lena= Ganguro
Tone= Hard Gay…maybe?…Coming soon
Yong=Ballerina with the swam tutu
Jungeun unni= Not sure yet
Un Nyun= Cow (a.k.a GyuuNyuu)

미안합니다 Un Hyun if I’m spelling your name wrong.
That’s why it’s so much easier for me to call you GyuuNyuu

GyuuNyuu is Japanese for Milk.
I couldn’t think of the word for cow, so I end up calling him GyuuNyuu.

On Friday I went out with my classmates, again.
This time we went to eat at this really fast paced diner.
Then we went to Roppongi.
We should have waited before going to Roppongi.
When we got there it was around 7pm.
The place that Steve was going to take us to was having a private party, so we couldn’t go there until 12:30am.
Instead, we went to the restaurant to wait from Roxana and Chole.
We only ordered something to drink, but it was so expensive.
A soda was $5.
Coffee was $6, and the size of the coffee cup was like the size of my thumb.
SERIOUSLY!!!
Since sitting in there was costing to much, we decided to go wait for Roxana and Chole else where.
We went to this place called Gaspanic,
It’s this bar/club place.
Really small, but nothing in Tokyo is big.
It didn’t have a cover charge, but in order to stay in there you had to buy something to drink.
That’s kind of difficult to do when you don’t drink Alcohol.
The only thing I could drink was Soda, but water cost more than Soda.
And I don’t like soda either.
And it’s not like you can buy something once and that’s the end.
No!
They have guys walking around with a drink menu, and if these guys see that you haven’t had anything for a while, they come over to you and make you order something.
So I spent $20 in Roppongi in 2 hours on just Soda.
Alcohol was cheaper than Soda.
Makes me think that my wallet would be happier if I started drinking.

Another thing I don’t like is clubs.
So I didn’t really want to go but I did.
And I had fun.
Japanese clubs are better than American clubs.
They even play better music.
And I’ll tell you this, they didn’t play a single Japanese song.
Everything was English.
Rap/Hip Hop/R&B.
Everything we listen to in Baltimore, they were playing
I almost died when the entire club started to do the Soulja Boy dance when that song game on.
I mean died in a bad way.
I hate Soulja Boy.
Japanese DJ’s kick @$$.
But AJ…wow!!!!
This guy and his dancing…
WOW!!!I mean wow in a bad way.
Not that it was bad, but it wasn’t good.
Jessica was grateful that he was there, since he too dances like a white girl.
But the weird thing was that people were copying him.
Lester…WOW!!!I had no clue this boy could break dance.
He might be bad in Japanese but he’s shockingly good at dance.
Roxana…I’m not even going to talk about her.
She knows what I want to say.
What we all want to say.
Un Nyun (a.k.a GyuuNyuu a.k.a Soju Oppa) this guy has no rhythm but it was really fun trying to teach him how to dance.
But he suddenly burst out with the “Tell Me” dance.
That was one of the high lights of the night.

We left GasPanic around 2am, and went across to the Bar place that Steve originally wanted to take us too.
It’s a Mexican bar, ran by Japanese of course.
They have the best buffalo wings ever.
They can rival that of Hooters wings.
And the Nachos were okay.
No great, but okay.
I make better Nachos with cheese dorito’s and chili.
Just ask anyone from my previous job.

The bar had darts so I played that with Steve and Jungeun Unni.
Steve is good, but I sucked.
Jungeun wasn’t so bad either but still not good.
We left that bar around 3:30am.
But since the trains had stopped running at 12am, we were stuck in Roppongi until 5am.
So we went to McDonalds until then.
I’ve never sat in McDonalds overnight before.
And I don’t have intentions of doing that again.
Those stool things hurt.

I finally got home around 6am.
I took a shower and ate breakfast before going to bed.
But I woke up around 11am because I had to meet Jo in Harajuku at 2pm.
We had plans to go Idol shopping.
Japan has tons of stores that sell nothing but pictures and posters of famous young actors/singer.
Harajuku alone has about 8 shops.
It took about 3 hours to get through all 8.
And Lena, Jo, and I took Purikura.
Super cool Purikura.
I got to hang upside down like a monkey.

But, I went home early because I wanted dinner and my little idol buddy Miura Haruma’s drama was coming on.

I didn’t do anything on Sunday.
Still tired from Friday and Saturday.

But while I was talking to one of the Unni’s we found out that we have a lot of the same interest when it comes to music, actors, and shows.

That’s pretty much it.
I should be studying Kanji right now.
Actually…I should be sleep.

Happy Birthday Deja.
Happy Birthday Sakura.
And Thanks parents.

By the way, the picture above cracks me up.

Look at the bartender sneaking in.

And I stole this picture from Tone.

Vol 9

I figured it’s about time for me to update.

If you look on the left side of my blog, you'll see a link to my photo album.
<<<<<<<<<<<<

お元気ですか。
私は元気です・
いいてんきですね。
私はとでも忙しいです。

I bet only one person can read that.
No! I KNOW only one person can read that.

Since classes are in full swing now, I’ve been busy with homework and things like that.
I think I mentioned before that classes don’t let out until 4:45pm.
And by that time it’s dark.
Some of the students will go out to eat after that, but I normally go home.
So Mon-Thurs is pretty much the same routine.
Wake up-Breakfast-School-Home- Dinner-Homework-*repeat*
Although my other classes have started.
The American students are required to take an extra class as well as the culture class.
We have a choice in what extra class we wish to take.
I’m taking the Beginners Conversation class.
There’s probably about 50 students in there.
Americans, Chinese, and Koreans all can take this class.
In the first class we had to walk about an introduce ourselves, say our hobbies, goal, likes and dislikes, and ask someone these questions.
Simple!
But this class is only 45 minutes, once a week.

I went out with some Korean classmates on Friday after class.
Not my classmates but my friends’ classmates.
I went with Lena, Jo, and Tone.
We were the only Americans.
There was 2 Korean girls, and 5 Korean guys.
Mike joined as later, so that made 5 Americans.
They took us to little Korea town.
We ate at this place where you pay $30 and its all you can eat and drink for 2 hours.
And $15 for all you can eat, if you don’t drink alcohol, for 2 hours.
うまい～～～！！！！！！
The food was good, and the people I was with were entertaining.
Especially Yong-oppa.
That guy is just crazy, but in a good way.
He’s 27 but doesn’t look his age at all.
And Jun-oppa speaks really good English.
Overall, they were really nice.
Only Jun, Jo, and I didn’t drink.
Jo didn’t feel to well so she didn’t want to drink, and Jun and I never drink.
I did take a sip of whatever Lena was drinking.
Actually half a sip.
1/16 of a sip.
And I felt sick after I took that sip.
I don’t think my body can metabolize alcohol.
So…won’t be taking anymore 1/16 of a sip of anything else.
I really felt bad after that sip, so I left after we finished eating.
I planned on going home but I walked around for a while and ended up in Kabukicho.
The infamous place my advisor said not to go to.
I went home around 11pm, and Lena sent me a message saying they went karaoke-ing after I left.

Saturday was Culture Class.
Oh My Gosh!
That was so boring.
I think I slept the entire 3 hours of the class.
And if I wasn’t sleep, I was looking at Chole draw.
I don’t even want to think about that class.
After the class was over we had a 50 minute break before we had to go to the museum.
We caught the train to the Edo Tokyo Museum.
A little fact about me you should know:
I have absolutely no interest what so ever in Art.
*Don’t kill me Jime*
Unless you consider architecture art, I had no interest in that museum.
The only thing I found interesting were those little model villages.
And, that’s only because I study Carpentry and Architecture for 4 years in High school.
So I left out the museum and Meaghan and I went to go eat.

After the museum I went to Shibuya with some classmates.
We wanted to go karaoke-ing.
We went to some Karaoke place both Jo and Lena knew about.
That was an ordeal.
I will never go Karaoke-ing with Anthony again.
That guy is just too funny.
But we sang a variety of songs.
Most were English, but Lena and I tried our hand was Korean song Ice Cream by MC Mong.
Jo, Lena, and I sang some Japanese songs as well.
But Anthony and Tone can seriously make a living as professional Karaoke-ers.
We were there for about 3 hours and our bill came up to $300.
I tried some hard not to spend a lot of money this weekend but Tokyo is raping my wallet.
FAST!
When we divided the bill by who ordered what, I only had to pay $27.
I’m the smart one.
I didn’t order anything because the mandatory drink you have to buy.
And that was some orange juice thing that I didn’t even drink.
We took Purikura after that, and then went home around 10:30pm.

Today I didn’t do anything.
I set in my room and watching TV all day.
I did my homework on Friday and Saturday during that boring Culture class, so I had nothing to do today.
My other host sister, Machiko, and her husband, Ken, came over for lunch.
For some reason I can understand Machiko’s Japanese more than I can understand Sachiko’s.
Maybe because Machiko and I were mainly talking about people and shows, whereas Sachiko and I would talk about a lot of stuff.
Machiko is a Will Smith Fan, and she asked me to recommend some America movies to her….
So….someone should recommend some movies so I can tell her.
Ken was rather shy/quiet.
I guess his not knowing English kind of made him less talkative.
But it’s okay, because when he did talk it was mainly about how cool my hair is.
The Japanese and their Fascination with my braids.
They should go to Shibuya and check out the guys who are darker than me and have their hair like mine as well. *check my pictures*

On the other hand…
I was almost ran over by 4 bikes in 15 seconds on Friday.
Seriously, riding bikes on the side walk should be illegal.
And having toddlers on both the front and back should be illegal, but it’s not.
The bikes are actually made with seats on the front and back for toddlers.
Because of Japanese and it’s high prices, I’ve decided to put myself on a limit.
No more than $40 a week, and that includes when I go out on the weekend.

Big Bang is having a free performance on the 22nd, but I have class.
But my concert is only 12 days away, and I’m not going to class on that day.
I don’t even want to take a tour of Tokyo.
I’ve already been to the places I wanted to see.
We have our school event on the 31st, which is a BBQ and its at Odaiba.
So we can BBQ on the beach and play in the arcades with our costumes on.
And Odaiba is so close to me, about 7 minutes by car.
I’ve only been here for about 2 weeks, and yet I’ve already took over 1000 pictures.

I have nothing else to post about, so when something interesting happens I’ll post again.

じゃね

Vol 7

Okay….
Since I’m getting tons of emails with tons of questions, I think I better update this blog.
I’m going to skip some stuff, because I don’t feel like writing it and it’s not important.

Sunday I checked out of the hotel around 9am and made my way down to Shinjuku station.
I was suppose to meet my school there at 7:30pm so they can introduce me to my host family.
Since I got there early, I put my stuff inside of a coined locker, and Lena and I went to explore the city.
We ate a this Indian restaurant .
The food was okay.
I probably won’t go there again, but if I do I’ll try something else.
We pretty much walked the city after that, but we got bored so we went back to Harajuku.
Harajuku is very entertaining, if I haven’t mentioned that before.

So we walked around the shops in Harajuku, before we sat down and started taking pictures of any and everyone.
We also went to Yoyogi Park, which is about a block away from Harajuku.
That place is interesting.
Right at the entrance of Yoyogi Park was this group of men.
They were a few marbles short because they looked like they stepped right out of Grease….
Need I say more.
I love Grease, but that was just wrong on so many levels.
We met up with Casey around 5:30pm and at 6pm I left and went back to Shinjuku station.

I should mention that while on my way to Shinjuku station the first time, I got lost.
And not lost in the city.
I got lost in the station.
This station is HUGE!!!!
They weren’t lying when they said 2 million people walk through the station daily.
The entire Inner Harbor *including the Gallery* can fit inside this station.
TWICE~~!!!!!!
And still have room.
This station house about 6-8 different train lines.

Anyway, I met my host mom around 7:30pm.
Her name is Tomoko Sudo.
She is 52.
She likes to drink, study English, and play ping-pong with her English speaking friends.
Although she’s getting up there in age, she’s more lively than me.
She won’t even been home on the 12th and 13th because she’s going up north to the hot springs with her friends.

I also met my host dad, Ryoichi Sudo.
Ryo for short.
Ryo is 61 and more calm then Tomoko.
He’s retired so he’s home everyday, but he too likes to go out.
He goes to the library, shopping centers, and out to drink every once in a blue with his friends.
Ryo has traveled to over 20 different countries.
He and Tomoko also visited Baltimore one year….about 2-3 years ago.

They have 3 children who I haven’t met yet.
A 26 year old son, 28 year old daughter, and a 30 year old daughter.
They have 2 grandsons as well.
It’ll only be a matter of time before I meet these 5 as well.

On the first night with my host family we didn’t eat, because I already out when I was with Lena, and I ate at Shinjuku station as well.
The pretty much allow me to do as I please, and I also DO NOT have a curfew.
They just said that if I go out, at least try to make the last train home because taxi’s are expensive.
At first I was waking up around 6:30am for breakfast, but Tomoko said that I can get up whenever I please.

On the second night they cooked a lot.
I’m not sure if they cooked that much because I was there, or if the Japanese normally eat such large meals.
We ate meat loaf, fish, sushi, dumplings, fruit, veggies, pudding, yogurt, and something else.
Pretty much every meal has been large like that.
For breakfast we eat fruit, veggies, tomatoes, eggs, some times soup, and bread.
I should mention that Japanese bread is like twice the size of American bread.
Google it.
And the grapes are way better than American grapes.

This is too much food.
I would cry about getting fat, but as much walking as I do here, getting fat is not the problem.

School sort of kind of started on Monday.
I have to catch two trains to school, but I do more walking then sitting on the train.
We had a welcoming ceremony for all the new students. That included the Chinese, Korean, and American students.
That lasted for about 3 hours.
It was cool how they would translate what was said in Japanese to Korean, Chinese, and English.

After the ceremony had to take a placement test.
That didn’t go well at all.
Though I did fairly well on the listening part, when it came to the writing section, I got up and walked out.
It was all grammar, and if you haven’t realized yet from reading this blog…
I SUCK IN GRAMMAR!
English, Japanese, Spanish, Korean, etc….I suck in grammar.
So I am in level 1, which is okay because I lack basic conversation skills anyway.
My teachers in Baltimore never really taught conversation skills.
Just straight out of the textbook.

One Tuesday we had English orientation, which basically went over everything that us English speakers needed to know.
The school also gave us a luncheon, so we were able to mix and meet with the staff/teachers.
Our English advisor talked about the trains, and how there’s this thing called the priority seats.
He said these seats were to be offered to the elderly, pregnant, injured, and to people with implants………

The advisors and other teachers took us on a tour of Shinjuku.
So, we got to go the 百円 store. *Dollar store*
Japanese puts America to shame yet again.
This store has EVERYTHING.
And I mean EVERYTHING.
You name it, it has it.
Maybe not that store in particular, because it was only one floor, but I heard the one near me has 3-4 floors.
That reminds me of the 三百六十円 store. *$3.50 store*
That store had nothing but clothing and accessories on sell for $3.50
EVERYTHING was $3.50
Jeans, shirts, shoes, belts, bags, EVERYTHING!
But that store is so crowded you can barely move around.

Wednesday was the first day of actual class.
My class is class A112, which is located in the pink building *check my pictures*
There is only one other American in the class, but that’s not good because he’s a complete novice.
He never studied Japanese before, so he’s of no use to me.
Most of the time I have to tell him what’s going on.
There’s 6 Chinese studies as well, 2 of which fall into the same category as the other American, and 8 Koreans, of which one falls into that category.
I think one of the Korean guys speak English, because he was the only one who knew what Baltimore was, and can say English words without an accent, but I Don’t know since I haven’t talked to him yet.
I sit near 4 girls and one guy.
Although they all can speak Korean, they make an effort to talk to me.

I have 3 teachers. Keiko Kamisaka, Masami Saitou, and one other teacher who I will meet next week.
The 3 teachers rotate throughout the week.
It’s the schools way of exposing us to how Japanese can sound different depending on the speaker.

~~~~~~~~~~~

About the people:

Tokyo is a city with 12 million people, so it’s impossible to walk anywhere.
And these people love their bikes.
I can bet my life that I will get hit by a bike before I leave Japan.
I just know it.
And it’s not like America.
They can ride on the side walk.
And bikes are made for 3 people as well.
One person sits on the back, one on the seat, and in the front.
It’s me like that for parents with children.
I don’t understand how something that dangerous can be safe.

Japanese people are rather distant.
Some will come up to me and ask me about my hair.
My hair seems to be the topic of all conversation with Japanese people.
I even had 5 guys completely stop and stare at my hair.
But unless you ask them for help, the possibility of someone coming up to you at random can be slim to none, depending on what area you are in.
But when I talk to them, it’s rather interesting.

The Korean at my school are nice.
I was told before that Koreans are more open, and that’s true.
Although they can be distant as well, they will come up to you at random and just talk with their broken English.

The Americans….we’ll since we are the minority everywhere….
We only have ourselves. XD
I find some of them annoying at times, but I don’t talk to them much.
All in All the Americans are cool
We tend to hang out most of the time.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Where I live:

I live in Kouto-ku city. *Never heard of it*
It’s in between two other cities I never heard of.
The famous shopping district Ginza, is 3 train stations away.
I plan to go there with some of the Americans from school.
Odaiba is also close to me.
Disney land is located in Chiba Japan, which is outside of Tokyo, but its about 30 minutes away from me.
So in a way I live in a good area.
I’m the only one who can get to school in under 45 minutes, besides Lena, who arranged her own housing.

I live on the Tokyo Bay.
Yes. On!
My city is surrounded by water.
Not just my city, my apartment.
I have to cross two bridges to get to my train station.
I took a video of it, which I’ll upload later.

Well, it’s going on 11pm here, and I have a test in the morning, but I feel that I’ve caught you all up….
So~~!!!!!
Check out my photo album, which I will update daily, unlike this blog.