Shashinjutsu 2

batch number two consists of: the stairs to the wooded area behind the school, a giant anpan man in the mall, akari-chan on the left with her friend whose name has drifted from me, the view from the hill close to the mall on a misty day, and in the last picture from left to right - dude, chiaki-chan, kashi-chan, and another dude.

Shashinjutsu 1

heres the first batch of pics from my first week in japan. apparently, i have to do them in little chunks. from top to bottom: a corner in the ginza neighborhood in tokyo, a picture on the side of a passing shinkansen on the way to akita, the trees outside my hotel room in akita, people practicing for the kanto festival on the aiu campus, and the woods next to the sporting complex across the street from school. now another batch.

Gabunomi Vitamin C!

dudes. hermm... yesterday... took the shuttle to the damn mall again to pick up sundry whatnot. got a massive ammount of help from akari-chan with cashing travellers checks, but the proccess took so long, we missed our bus back to the school and had to wait three hours for the next one, so i felt very shiddy, made plans to meet up later, and wandered around the akita suburb. i climbed a tower on top of a hill and could see a wide rice paddy and a group of houses off in the distance. came back to the mall and ate an "ebi baga" or shrimp burger at the macdonalds in the mall. a friggin shrimp burger. at school, helped akari with the composition of a speech she has to give in front of everyone at the matriculation ceremony, kind of the official opening of the school year.

last night, there was a big group of people in the res hall lobby for a super double birthday big time explosion, and i got the nails on the ends of the fingers of my right hand painted a shimmering salmon pink. bounced around trying dilligently to get involved in conversations and it worked maybe 45% of the time. offering vending machine chocolate covered almonds helped the cause a little. i feel a little weird, is this entry weird? it seems weird to me. do i have anything stuck in my teeth? hows my hair, parted correctly? yeah... gonna go walk in the woods for a while, i think. today, matriculation ceremony, and maybe a train into akita city tonight. hope i can find a big bottle of vending machine shochu.

Honto?

i believe i have yet to mention that half the schools population is painfully cute japanese girls. met two tonight, chiaki-chan and kashi-chan, and we watched mean girls with japanese subtitles in the res hall lounge with a bunch of folks. then we sat around for a few hours jibbering with some drunk jackasses from norway. so far, i've met people from canada, chile, mongolia, taiwan, china, norway, cuba, malasia, england, germany, france, a few places in the u.s., and from all over japan. it's almost two a.m. here, but i have absolutely nothing to do tomorrow, so i needn't worry about time constraints. i'm gonna climb up to the bunk anyway.

xo0oxo0oxo0ox

after registering and lunch and such like, i decided to check a bike out from the residence hall office. i filled out a form, and a little old japanese fellow with giant black eyebrows took me out to the bike rack in the back and gestured at a few things before relenquishing the bike. the bike was designed to be ridden by japanese people, who are all a foot and a half shorter than me, and there wasnt much air in the tires, but i wobbled down the street anyway, weaving into traffic and shooting off into the woods. i wove around the giant sporting complex across the street, then turned around and went past the school down a rural road alongside a golf course. i saw a big site marker in a wide open field for the former location of tsubakigawa castle with a long green mountain range in the background, and a strip of tiny houses with their tiny japanese cars in front. i chugged back to the school, had some dinner, and tonight, maybe some lounging about and more vending machine useage. here's the next entry from the journal...

from tues 8-28-07...

got here monday morning and was rushed through a series of tables with schedules, room keys and more forms. finally unpacked and organized things in my room. talked to the suite mate, (the person we share a bathroom with) wataru, and then my roommate charles showed up. charles is from quebec, a little neurotic and goofy, but easy enough to get along with. he says "what de 'ell is dis?" a lot, and when we have separate schedules, he says "see you in the next future!" over this first week, they're going to pile on a ton of procedural stuff, where's and how's. i have to keep reminding myself to calm down and let the whole introductory process go through before i whip out all my questions. today we set up a bank account and alien registration at the yuwa branch of akita city hall. i hope tomorrow i can use a phone and the internet. i'm sure things will fall into place and there will be a way to find support if i need it. i already miss everybody, though. can't wait to take a shuttle into akita city and wander around. gotta make sure it's the right shuttle, though, or i'll be stuck in the city or wada station again. time to go fill out more forms.

.........

thus ends the reading. almost caught up with journal entries. then i won't have to bounce back and forth like this. googity.

Ii Desu Yo

ay, suckaz! just registered for my classes. i'm taking six hours of japanese language classes a week, and my other classes are japanese art history in the world context, introduction to tohoku culture one, and introduction to japanese society. yesterday we went in groups to a giant mall in an akita city suburb. about ninety of us climbed onto a little shuttle bus and wound around on narrow tilted roads until we got to this monstrous complex. it's got a "geimu senta" or arcade, a movie theatre, a bunch of giant department stores, and shops with names like "three minutes happiness" and "purple heaven forever". i bought a little sign that combines two of my favorite things, japanese and references to poop. then we came back here and had an ice cream social for new international students. we were introduced in groups by continent, and each said hullo and some sentence or other about what have you. i kind of bummed around the campus for the rest of the night and chatted to some folks and then went nitey nite. today we had more orientation and opened japanese bank accounts using our japanese personal seals. mine says "ku i su to" in katakana. tonight, i dunno, maybe go back to the woods or check out a bike from the res hall office, which i just found out i could do, or maybe i could go back to the mall and watch a japanese moobee? on one of my first long weekends, i want to take the train up to a town called kakunodate, an old preserved samurai town about 15-20 miles to the north. i'll put up the next day from the journal in a few hours, but right now my damn hands hurt from all the typing. see yez.

I Read the Financial Times

guess the eff what? i was wandering around today and found a bike rental place and national park right across the friggin street from the school! there's a japanese version of croquet, i can't remember what it's called, but some oba-sans were playing it in a field next to the park. the park is densely forested, and has gravel paths that lead back to a clearing on one path, and a pond on another. i havent really gone back in there too far, because i used all my damn energy to go look at a giant sports complex acroos the street on the other side of the school. it's got tennis courts, a track, a baseball field and a gymnasium. there's a national sports meet there next month, i hope i can go.

last night i met the res hall assistant, sakiko-chan, and we walked to the sports complex parking lot last night to watch a lunar eclipse. she's going to go to winona state next year. i told her some whatnot about minnesota, and she told me about really wanting to get out of japan for a year. good stuff.

here's the next day in my journal...
from sun 8-26-07...

thank ever crapping cripes jeebus for takahashi-san. took the shinkansen up to akita station, found the tourist info booth, and they helped me buy a local train ticket at the "midori no madoguchi" or green ticket window. i sat around in the station sweating, rifling through my stuff, deciphering katakana, being stared at, and eating some more of the giant convenience store rice balls ive been subsisting on since i got here. just barely made the local train to wada station because i was standing at the wrong end of the platform, then at wada, where i was supposed to catch a connecting bus to the school and hotel, there was only an empty parking lot. while i was standing next to a rice paddy wondering what to do, a man pulled up to the station to drop off someone who was probably his mom. he saw me walking in circles and waved me over to his car. i put my luggage in the back and then walked over to what i'm accustomed to being the passenger side, which is the drivers side here, so i had to amble back to the other side of the car looking like a dolt. in the car, i spit out all the japanese i could think of, which ammounts to comments about the weather and inviting him to my room for a drink, and he spit out all the english he could think of. he pointed out his house on the way to the school, and i asked him if the music he was listening to was enka, just so i could drop that word in there. we pulled up to the school, which looked more like a summer camp, and he told my story to some administrators. they asked takahashisan if he could drop me off at the hotel, and we rode over. i thanked him 18 or 19 times, and he drove off.

i'm finally here, and if it werent for takahashi-san, i'd still be sitting next to a rice paddy in the dark. now i'm sitting in my room at hotel #2 with some vending machine beer, watching some local tv. it's all working out so far in a broke ass haphazard way. i've been covered in sweat and sore from pulling my bags around all weekend, but now i get to rest.

my room here has a balcony. the mascot for akita city is a sporty cartoon pine tree, so the trees outside my room have big plastic faces hanging in them.

Ku i Su To Pi Ta

allo. i am een my rooms an i am talking to sharles, my roommate from kebek. here's my first day's journal from japan...

from sat. 8-25-07...

i'm in my hotel in tokyo, watching a television show hosted by a podiatrist. everyone is barefoot and dancing. some of the people in the audience had some sort of toe race. whoever could move the fastest using only thier toes was the winner. the commercials advertise horse saddle excercise machines and reminders to help your elders. the plane ride and train into tokyo weren't so bad, it was hauling the three pieces of luggage around tokyo station and down the street to the hotel that did me in. i dripped sweat all over the check in counter and all the forms i had to fill out. i dropped my luggage in the lobby and the bellboys had to run to pick it up, and then they couldn't fit it all in the elevator. finally got to rinse off and change, and i don't have to pick up the damn luggage till tomorrow. i wont get to see too much of tokyo, so i want to wander around a few blocks before it gets too late. there's a framed painting in my room that says:

a dictionary

I

waight the world

in my hand

.....

the

whole

stupid human

race

compacted

......

i don't think there's any way for me to be inconspicuous here - i'll be stared at everywhere i go - but sweating on everyone and dropping my luggage and mumbling half assed japanese is not the vision i had for my first night in japan. if i can't be inconspicuous, i at least want to manage not to be grotesque. i wish the surface differences weren't so glaring and unchangeable. i want everyone i see to know why i'm here, and what i love so much about this place that made me work to get here.

............

bought some onigiri type stuff at the 7-11 attached to the hotel and wandered down the street. got completely lost in ginza for a while and eventually found my way back to buy beer and tea. i can't seem to convince myself that i'm really in japan. a lot of things are turning out less than stellar so far, but i know that i'm extremely tired and nervous and disoriented right now. i think when i finally settle in up in akita, i can start to relax and soak things up better.

.....

so, that was my first night in tokyo. as of the second half of today, things are getting better. i'm talking to more people and feeling more comfortable. tomorrow we get to shuttle into town and dally. i'll put it into the journal, and eventually the blog will catch up. time to go sweepy byes. matane.

Tatemo Nemui

dammit. what day is it? i don't understand how i've handled the last few days. i wrote it all down in a journal, so i'll transcribe it later. all the commands or headings or whatever are all in kanji on this computer, and i haven't been able to get my laptop to recieve a signal yet. i'm just dropping in to let everyone know that somehow i made it here and i'm mostly alive. no way to get money or make phone calls without a bunch of screwing around yet. i think i'm gonna be alright, though. a lot of people seem to be acclimating faster than i am. a french hip hop dude i've talked to a few times said i seemed lonely. i'll feel better soon, i think, as things get sorted out, classes start, and i know my way around. i think we're going as a group by bus into akita city tomorrow to buy crap at a shopping center with a "jusco" in it, kind of like a japanese wall mart. i got to create a "hanko", or personal seal, for my bank accound whatnottery today, and visited the yuwa branch of akita city hall to get my resident alien status. ok, yeah, i'm going to go eat dinner and wander into the woods. i'll transcribe the first few days' journal entries maybe when i can get my stinking laptop to work. i miss everybody a lot. send me crap as soon as i e-mail my address. please. kudasai. onagaishimas. dozo.

Spanky, What's Yer 20?

i am a fidgety fellow, and my head don't work right. moving most of my junk was a big bastard, but it's over with. had some times with bloody marys, rain, a grilled brick of cheese, some honey weiss, some more rain, and olden times card game, some more honey weiss, a cheeseball movie, a sleepover, running hither and yon across the city taking photos at personal and universal landmarks, and hanging about on a sunken couch. it all seems to have occured simultaneously, and the last few days are making about as much sense to me as this explaination of them probbably does to you. i'm glad i'm bouncing everywhere, though, because the few minutes alone here in the empty apartment were spent pacing from room to room opening drawers and leafing through the leftover piles of detrius on the floor. i feel like i've really got to shut my head off for a while until i'm on the plane and i'm forced to go through with this. sheesh.

Macudonurodo

well, that's it, sexies! the last dish in the last box, all sealed up with a giant "PQ" scrawled on top. tomorrow i have to get up earlier than anyone's ever gotten up in the history of humanity, even earlier than they did in the olden days to kill a sleeping mastodon, and shove everything i own into a storage bin. next week it'll just be me, a chair, the laptop, and granny's inflatable bed. pretty soon i won't get to hear einar's old lady come up from the basement and call everyone in the building a son of a bitch at three a.m. time to put jammies on and brush the teefiz.

This End Up

this packing is a stinky sumbitch. my teeth taste like tape glue. that's it, i'm never buying anything ever again. i'm tellin' you: stinky. yeah, well i'd better get back to it, i'm in the middle of book box #9. i guess not having a job kind of tempers the ridiculousness of wading through the last few years of my life, though, so it's not so bad. ok, on to box number ten, just as son as elvis costello gets done watching the detectives.

Hullo

posty posty postidy postidy post...
havent screwed around with this blog stuff for a while. i am pecking this out on a new-smelling laptop which i will carry with me to japan and use in my tiny dorm or out in a park somewhere in akita city while i chew on noodles and neglect my studying. i'm gonna post this to se if i actually got it to work, and then re-learn how to add links and comments and whatnot later. lots of effing damn crap to do before i leave.