I am has Internet!

I never imagined that in a country as technologically advanced as Japan that I would have trouble getting online. I sincerely apologize for taking so long to get back in contact. here's what I've written in the meantime.

6-21-08

At the time I’m writing this, it is 5:14 AM on Saturday in Tokyo. According the my laptop, it is 1:14 PM on Friday back on the Pacific coast of America. The flight was very long, but not too bad. It was cramped, but the food was pretty good and there were several movies to watch.

Travel even after we got to Narita took a long time. We waited for a bus for about half an hour, and were on it for over two hours. We then met up with some students from out host school and took a train most of the rest of the way. After stopping at a convenience store (more on that later), we walked the rest of the way to pour guest house, which was about twenty minutes away. We had orientation, and then tried to go to sleep.

The bus trip was actually reasonably fun. We saw graffiti mysteriously in English, lawns sculpted to have Kanji in them, and noticed little differences between American and Japanese cities. We started out in the more industrial area, and it seemed strange that there weren’t any food places, even just for workers to get snacks at. Of course, the moment after I pointed that out to Derek (who was sitting next to me), we saw a steakhouse. We knew it was a steakhouse because it had the kanji for cow, 牛 (gyuu) and fire, 火 (hi). I guessed it, and the Kazuko (the Japanese teacher) confirmed it.

Everybody was pretty hungry by the time we got off the train, so we went to a convenience store to buy some food. I bought a grape-flavored drink, since I figured grape was usually safe. I also bought what I thought was a peach drink with chunks in it, just to try something weird. Turned out the peach was mango (figured that out before I drank it, it wasn’t very good). When I tried the grape, I remembered “Oh yeah, grape soda burns. Still worth drinking, though, as it had been a very dehydrating day.

It is very hot here. It is also very muggy. All of us were sweating a great deal last night. In addition to being generally unpleasant, it made it very hard to sleep even after being awake for 24 hours, which is why I’ve already been up for over an hour.

I messed up when I was packing my bags. I’m pretty sure that I forgot my cell phone, and did forget the shirt I wanted to sleep in, as well as the case for my glasses. It is also possible that I don’t have my flash drive with my. I haven’t found my umbrella yet, but I haven’t looked very hard for it.

There are a few things they should have told us before we came. The first was that they should have mentioned the immigrations and customs forms we had to fill out on the flight, which at least a few of us had trouble figuring out. The second was that appliances that have three-pronged power cords don’t work here, as Japan uses two-pronged outlets. My laptop uses a three-prong connection, so I probably won’t be able to communicate as often as I’d like. I have to conserve power. Scratch that, Denise just found three-pronged outlets in the kitchen. Hooray! The guest house doesn’t have an internet connection, however. So even though I’m typing this now, I have to save it to send later.

It was too dark to take pictures of it by the time we got to the guest house. Currently, it feels like a sauna outside, and I don’t feel like going out into that quite yet.

6-21-08, Cont.

Its is now 8:42 PM here, 4:42 AM back home, and well over twelve hours since I last wrote. It feels like a lot longer than that to me. After I finished writing, we found an unedited episode of Yu-Gi-Oh, and were all laughing at how ridiculous it was. Zork grew a dragon’s head from down there, and used it to fight Kaiba’s dragons.

The orientation meeting was fine, and being held in our well-air conditioned sitting room made it all the easier.

Then I went out to look for wireless hotspots, even though I could have just waited for the student guides to tell us where they were. When I realized that, I turned back, and ran into a fellow student named Bill. He was looking for the library for the same reason I was looking for any place with internet access. I agreed to help him, and we found many places, but not the library. We gave up and headed back for the guest house. After we got there, we decided to find a place to get lunch. Instead of going the way we came in last night, Bill suggested that we take a back route.

Bad idea. Bill and I disagreed on the direction to head to find the convenience store, and went in the direction he suggested. He felt more strongly about it than I did (in retrospect, I think he had the right direction, but severely underestimated the distance involved). We eventually ran into a store called George’s that was having its reopening sale. They gave us helium-filled balloons, but were lacking in the something to eat department. We found a Top supermarket, and got food there. I managed to mark off an object on my “Must Eat While In Japan” list before I even had a chance to write it down. The list now stands at: ice cream, taiyaki, a meat bun, a beef bowl, and something with strawberries in it.

We had a very difficult time getting back, however. The back path we took led us through a maze of a residential area that we just had to follow down to reach town. We took the wrong entrance back up, and ran into dead end after dead end. I had been certain that we wouldn’t make it back in time for the tour, but just barely made it. There was no time to cool down beforehand.

Oh, I found my umbrella and my flash drive. I still don’t think I have my cell phone, and I know I don’t have my intended sleep shirt. Oh well.

The tour itself was anti-climactic, as I’d accidentally seen a lot of it what had already at that point felt like a long time ago. After the tour, some of us returned to the guest house to gather supplies for a festival we were going to later in the day. I saw a snake near the guest house. I don’t know enough about the snakes of Japan for me to have wanted to touch it. As we were heading to the train station to go to the festival, we stopped to get drinks from some vending machines. I saw a cat there, a Japanese bobtail, I believe. It wasn’t very friendly. Too bad.

Transit to the festival took about an hour. Standing almost the entire way. The festival was a disappointment, I had expected something along the lines of the O-Bon festival, which usually has lots of stalls to get snacks at or play games in. Instead, it consisted of a some drummers, a lot of people dancing (it was raining, and my hands were full, so I did not), and a square you could walk around as people tried to sell you stuff. I had four pieces of cheese too small to taste. The only upside was that I got a free hand-powered fan. That helped a lot.

Commuting back to the campus felt like it took forever. We switched from train to train to train… Standing so long. All of our feet hurt badly. After I finish writing, I plan on taking a very cold shower and going to bed early.

Oh, I found a drink I enjoy. Natchan Orange Juice tastes so good in comparison to what I have been having over here that I can’t even describe it.

Tomorrow, we have to go on even more tours, including a baseball game. Kazuko seems excited about it, but I don’t feel the least bit of excitement about it. Teresa (my group leader), is planning on bringing study materials. Not sure what I‘ll do. I should be enjoying this, I know, but it is incredibly hot and humid, and the travel itself is rather unpleasant. We’re also going to see the Diet building and the imperial palace, but from what Kazuko says we probably won’t have much access to them. The best part of tomorrow will probably be our visit to the Tokyo Tower. At the very least I should be able to take some good pictures there. Hopefully I’ll also be able to start on getting souvenirs. That’s something to look forward to.

Hopefully, by the time I can get this posted, I’ll be more optimistic. The earliest I expect that could be is Monday for me, very late Sunday back home. I look forward to when we’re just having classes. You’ll know the answers to these issues by the time I finally get a connection to the internet.

Nighty-night.

6-22-08

About 10:17 PM on Sunday Japan time. That makes it 6:17 AM back home. I couldn’t write earlier today, since I got up an hour later and e had to meet the professors an hour earlier than yesterday. Still saw part of an episode of Super Sentai Rangers (or something along those lines) before we had to leave.

Today we went to the Tokyo Tower, where my camera’s batteries began running out of power. Good thing that I typed that; I would have forgotten to recharge them. I still managed to take pictures of most of the important things that followed. The Tokyo Tower was probably one of the two high points of the day for me. There were some souvenir shops to browse (I was tempted, but wound up not buying anything). Took some good photographs, of the Tower, of myself with the tower’s mascot, and of myself standing on a spot with no visible floor.

Problem was, it started raining while we were inside, and I’d forgotten my umbrella at the guest house. I knew I might need it, and I realized that I didn’t have it with me as we were leaving it, but I practically challenged the irony gods to make me pay for that. During the walk back from the tower, one of our Japanese student guides shared her umbrella with me, I offered to carry her umbrella for her, but she declined. Later, as we were walking around the old imperial palace, Chian-ning (I’m not sure if that is the right way to spell her name) shared her umbrella with me. She accepted my offer to carry the umbrella. I got soaked anyways, mostly on my left side.

We were all too soaked to want to go to the Diet building, so we instead skipped to a popular shopping area that I forgot to mention yesterday. We did not actually skip there, we took a train. There were a lot of food stands and clothing stores, but to my shock, not a single gaming store. To make matters worse, it was a street lined with stores, not a proper mall. It had no roof in the central area. I couldn’t accept the idea of buying an umbrella when I had a perfectly good one already, so I decided that I needed a hat. I had hoped to get a really big, cool hat, but I couldn’t find big ones that had a weave small enough to stop the rain. The hat I got is regular-sized, but it serves the job well enough.

Strange thing was, that after I got my hat, some black guys (This is Japan, African-American is not politically correct here) who had been ignoring me started trying to get me to buy stuff from their shops. Teresa says that the hat makes me look richer, and everybody I told the price to thought it was surprisingly cheap. At 1,995 yen (about $20), it was the cheapest hat I could find. Irony.

The second high point of the day came when I walked into a store looking for batteries, since I wasn’t carrying my spares. I didn’t find any batteries there, but I did find out that they sold meat buns. Scratch the second object from my “Must Eat” list. It wasn’t bad, but nowhere near as good as I had expected. Still, finding one was a wonderful feeling, considering that I’d spent most of my time in the Tower looking for taiyaki. Have to log off now, my wrist is objecting to continued use. Finish explaining in the morning.

6-23-08

Upon getting out of bed, my first thought was ‘Ow! That hurts!’ My legs and shoulders are both in significant pain when moved thanks to the activities of the past two days. The time is 5:23 AM local, 1:23 Pacific. Now, continuing from yesterday…

I finished my shopping well before the two hours we were given were up. I walked to our meeting place at the station and back to the shopping street a few times out of boredom. Standing under an air conditioning vent in the station managed to both cool me off and dry me off a little. Eventually we all met back up and headed for a baseball game.

I did not think I would enjoy the baseball game, and I was mostly right. The game was between the Yomiura Giants (home team) and I honestly don’t know what the visitors were called. It started with an “H.” I brought my physical journal to write in, but it was too wet to be of use. My fellow classmates were far more entertaining than the game itself. Bonne and Ashlegh bought light robes in the Giants’ team colors, and acted very into the game with all of their cheering. Ashlegh even tried to introduce The Wave to Japan. Only two people who weren’t part of our class participated in it. I cheered a little bit for the visiting team, partly because when I started I thought they were the Giants and we should, and partlky because I enjoy cheering for the little guy. We had to leave an hour and a half into the game in order to get back before our campus closed its gates. At that point, the Giants were ahead.

The beer vendors at the game didn’t look old enough to drink the stuff, nor did they card anyone. I didn’t have any, but Bill got incredibly drunk. A lot of the others had fun at his expense after we got back to the guest house. I hear that he has a rather nasty hangover right now.

The position I was typing in last night was not a good position. I had gone to bed so that writing down my blog would be the last thing I did before sleeping, and so I wound up leaning on my left arm and typing with my right. That started to get uncomfortable pretty soon.

One more thing about yesterday: Some Taiwanese students moved into the guest house next to ours. I hear that they have been studying Japanese for some time and are quite fluent in it. We haven’t met any of them yet, though. They came in while we were away and were probably experiencing jet lag. A couple of people tried to convince drunken Bill to go over and hit on the new Taiwanese students (he had spent most of the day hitting on one of our guides), and it looked like he would for a moment. Then everyone who was there, including the ones who had been egging him on, stopped him.

Today, there are two things to which many of us have been looking forward: Likely access to the internet, and a day of class. After so much walking and standing in trains, simple class will be a huge relief. All the traveling has been hard on all of our feet. We’ll also probably meet the students from Taiwan today, but I have no strong feelings about that. Really, really hoping that I’ll be able to post this later on today.

6-23-08 Cont.

Still no internet connection at about 3:20 here. Still Sunday back home, I think. Teresa, Derek, and Chian-ning have been sent to the computer lab to find out how to properly connect our laptops to the wireless networks in the school buildings. I volunteered to go as well, but Kazuko only wanted to send three people, and they were the ones she picked. There’s a chance that I’ll be able to post this after they get back, but I don’t think that time is on my side here. We have to go to a welcoming party later, and it will last until after the school buildings close. I’m not optimistic about my chances, however.

Class was a refreshing change of pace, even though a lot of it was also tedious. My self-taught Japanese is more advanced in most areas than the introductory course we’re taking now, but Kazuko says that we can write in hiragana and katakana if we know how, which I do. So I think I’ll try that next time around. Mary (history teacher) was in her usual top shape (this is my fifth class with her), but I knew a lot of the material already.

Kazuko was upset that Bill got drunk. She talked about how we aren’t supposed to have alcohol on campus grounds and how anyone caught drinking on campus from here on would get sent back to the States immediately. I think there might have been a mention of that at the last orientation before we left, but that was more than a month ago. To be fair to Bill and the rest of us, he started getting drunk at the baseball game that Kazuko sent us to and then didn’t accompany us to. He kept drinking after we got back, though, so it isn’t entirely excused.

I finally got to eat lunch in the cafeteria today. I had a big bowl of ramen for lunch. The only things in it that I could recognize were noodles and seaweed (maybe a little bit of pork). It wasn’t all that good, but it did fill me up for the first time since I set foot in Japan. I’d like to eat there again tomorrow, but our schedules say that we’ll be having koto lessons (I think that is a kind of Japanese harp, sounds fun) during that time, and the going to a bakery. We probably won’t be back before the cafeteria closes. I might be able to find some taiyaki at the bakery, and that would be pleasant. If you want to understand my fixation on my “Must Eat” list, you’ll have to find out more about Kanon.

I’m about to try a type of green tea called “Blue People” that Jennifer offered to me. I have never found a tea that I like, but I’m here to have new experiences. Bottoms up. … Well, it isn’t the worst drink I have ever had, but it isn’t exactly my cup of tea, if you’ll forgive the phrase. And here comes my reused Natchan ice-water bottle to save the day!

On the topic of water, the water in Japan (as long as it is cold) is some of the best I have ever had. Here’s a shout-out to the water fountain at Hibiya Station! Go you! You were awesome! It is a bit hard to get cold water under normal circumstances here. That Hibiya Station water fountain was the only one I’ve been able to get to since I came here. I might have seen one at a different station, across the train tracks, but then again I wasn’t paying attention to that station, and it may have been the same one. Odd that in a country as hot and humid as Japan that there aren’t a lot more water fountains. There aren’t any on campus as far as I can find, though the cafeteria (when it can be accessed) has good water.

Another odd thing about Japan is that it I haven’t found as many weird things as I expected. I thought I’d see all sorts of weird vending machines, but the strangest ones I’ve found just have cigarette packages in them. What a disappointment! I want my pizza vending machines!

That basically catches you up to this point. I’ll write more later.

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And now I have to get ready for that party. Next contact will probably be on Wednesday for me, Tuesday back home. I'll upload pictures then.