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.

Video Post 3

I made this video sometime last week.
It's just the scenery photos from the Yamanashi trip.
The song that's playing is Epik High's Pieces of You.
I think that's the translation of it.

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.

Video Post 2

Verb!!!
What's a Verb?
I hate verbs!!!!
And Japan has hundreds of verbs.
And you can change each of those verbs about 5-6 times.
I really hate verbs.
I also hate money.
Japan is too expensive.

私はたくさんお金がぜんぜんありまん。

お金がありませんですから、どこも行きません。

ざんねんですね～～！！！！

Monday I went to Akasaka with Steve, Yongsik, and GyuuNyuu.

We went to the festival that was close to the temple.

Guys really have no scene of direction.

In order to get to Akasaka you either had to take the Ginza line or the Akasaka line.

To get to the Ginza line you just have to catch the Maronuchi line 3 stops, and walk across the platform to the Ginza line.

These guys took me the completely long and wrong way.

But since I was out numbered, and I'm in this MEN first country, my words fell upon deaf ears.

Sucks!

But the festival was fun.

The only thing that I'm puzzled about was how did GyuuNyuu get free food just because he was with me?

It's kind of backwards.

Even though GyunnNyuu is Korean, I'm the real foreigner.

You would think I would get the special treatment.

Yesterday I went out with one of my classmates. *for the first time ever*

She asked me last week if I didn't mind doing a language exchange with her friend.

Her friend is studying English, so I said I would since I would have someone to help me with my Japanese.

His name was Tomo.

This guy is funny.

We have the same birthday as well, but he's 9 years older than me.

I also met their other friend, Hippo.

Hippo speaks fluent English, and although I asked, I never got an answer as in why his name is Hippo.

But Tomo and Hippo said they will take my classmate, some of my friends, and I to the bowling alley next time.

I look forward to that.

I haven't went bowling for a long time.

Since I hate verbs and I'm too poor to even take the train to Roppongi with my friends, I decided to play on the computer.

I recorded this video a long time ago.
It's a video of me walking home from the train station.

It was orginally 12 minutes long, but I was cut down to 3 minutes.

No one wants to see me walk for 12 minutes.

And this video is a photoslide my friends.
The pictures are from a lot of different evenings but all happened between October 17th and Today.

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.