….as long as I’m indoors. I’m sitting here at my desk, again, trying to pretend like I’m working on something. I figure as long as I’m typing away on my laptop in English no one will be the wiser. I came into work at 9am again today and was finished preparing my game for this weekend English Shower by 10:30. (An English Shower is like a 2-day English summer camp that they do once a year at a recreational center on top of some mountain near Takayama). Since then I’ve been doing a combination of checking Olympic results, practicing kanji, and reading CNN.com. It was actually quite nice because I was able to catch up on tons of news from back home. I feel like I’ve completely lost track of Obama-McCain and other things that were relevant at the time of my departure.
Rain. It’s been pretty hot lately but today I woke up to a nice cool morning with light rain. It stopped around lunch time, but for the past 30 minutes it has started up again and only seems to be falling heavier and heavier. The sky has also become quite dark and has given this nice rainy day atmosphere to the office; especially since there are large windows both in front of me and behind. It sounds odd, but I had almost written this day off to boredom when it started to rain again and I feel like it has inspired me to write again. I know it has been a couple weeks since I updated my blog and I apologize. (As if there are so many readers out there, right?)

“My grandmother used to tell me that god was in the rain…” - V for Vendetta

A lot has happened since I last posted. After my first day, I only came to school twice until this Monday. For a week and a half we had nothing but meetings, orientations, and English workshops. The English workshop was like a 2-day camp-like event at one of the local middle schools. It involved students from all of the local middle and elementary schools who were especially interested in English. We planned out games, learning activities, and even English skits. It was a little bit tiring but fun. The biggest complaint amongst the ALTs was the intense heat inside the gymnasium where many of the activities took place. I wrote a condensed version of Finding Nemo for my group that basically shrunk down the entire movie into less than 7 minutes. I was worried that my students wouldn’t be able to perform it in the short amount of time we had to prepare, but I ended up being able to teach them all their lines and stage directions in less than an hour! I was quite proud.
The end of the English workshop ushered in a period of 6 days straight of drinking. This isn’t to say that I was absolutely hammered every night or anything, but just that we went out every night. Tuesday was spent watching the Olympics at BOLS over a few beers. Wednesday was the night of the Hida Region orientation so all the local JETs went out together. Thursday was Karaoke with K-Bob and his friend from Gifu-city. Chika, my friend who studied abroad at OSU 3 years ago, visited Takayama for 2 days and we went out to an izakaya and BOLS that night. This brings me to the beginning of a great weekend that I like to think of as “We Owned The Night/Magic Sunday.”

Post-Gifu Orientation Night Out


Kyle & Davey


Around 9pm on Saturday we all went to K-Bob’s place and pre-gamed it for a couple of hours before heading to karaoke. After singing until 1am, we all walked/drove/biked to the river where we enjoyed a few more drinks while we took our shoes off and began to wade around in the river and sing random lines from “Always where I need to be” by The Kooks. Gaku, owner of the amazing Center4 Hamburgers in Takayama, managed to slip off a rock and submerge himself completely in the ‘rapids’ of Miya River.


After leaving the river all but 4 of us went home. The remaining crew included K-Bob, Greg , Minako, and I. We walked back to K-Bob’s place and went up to his roof and watched the sunrise while listening to the Garden State soundtrack. I know it might sound lame, but I don’t care, it was amazing. Definitely one of the best nights of my life. We left the roof at around 5:30am and I made my way home.




At the time, I thought the weekend was over and was looking forward to a nice easy Sunday of naps and perhaps some studying. That all changed when I get a call from K-Bob at around 2pm. Him and Greg were at McDonalds waiting for Davey and they asked me if I wanted to drink with them. I laughed and told him that I thought day #5 was the end of the week and that I had promised to help Jenn w/ 2 N’s out with her internet woes. He called me again about 45 minutes later to ask if I was on board and since I hadn’t heard back from Jenn w/ 2 N’s yet I stopped over at McDonald’s do see what exactly it was that they were up to. I arrived at McDonald’s only to find Kyle and Greg wearing the same clothes as the night before. They kept talking about it being Magic Sunday and what an amazing day it would be. Here was the plan:
• Grab some Tall Boys (500ml beers) and head to the park
• Kick the soccer ball around while drinking
• Eat
• Return to K-Bob’s for Winning 11 on PS2

I told them immediately that I was in.

After talking to the internet company for about 30 minutes for Jenn w/ 2 N’s, I headed over to K-Bob’s where they had already started drinking and listening to music. We departed shortly after for the park. We found a PERFECT park just north of the center of town right on the bank of the river. It had nice, short grass that was perfect for soccer. We drank, played soccer, and sat around talking in the park for about 2 hours. After getting food at the grocery store we went back to Kyle’s where we ate, drank, played Winning 11, and smoked hookah until midnight. It truly was a magical Sunday and I’m sure there will be many more Magic Sundays to come.






Great weekend.

So, I’m sitting in the teacher’s office at my base middle school and I am already 2.5 hours into my first day of “work” at the school. I took the bus from Takayama station at 8:40am and arrived just outside of my school at 8:55. Not too bad, except for the slightly steep walk up to the school which I could see posing a problem in the winter. The only thing I had to do today was look through the next few chapters in the English textbooks for each grade level. This took about 15 minutes max and since then I’ve been doing a combination of rereading the textbooks and pretending to look busy.
I wore slacks, dress shirt, and a tie, but all the other teachers are wearing polos or just t-shirts. I know this is only because it’s hot and it’s summer vacation, but I’m interested to see what they’ll wear once school starts. I’ll probably lose the tie tomorrow, and if it contines to be this warm in the office, I’m just gonna start wearing polos and khakis for the rest of August. I’m not too worried about the heat though because I know once fall rolls around it should cool down a lot. I hope.
After opening a bank account and finagling a temporary foreigner registration card from the city hall I was able to go get my cell phone. Everyone here kept telling me that SoftBank is the way to go so I decided to trust them and went to SoftBank. I tried the cell phone shop at the nearest electronics store, but they didn’t have the phone I wanted. So, I headed to this shopping center that I had found earlier that day to see if they had cell phones and they did. However, the girl there was extremely unhelpful. I asked her repeatedly in Japanese to help me and I said to her slowly, “I just moved to Takayama and I’d like to buy a phone. Could you help me?” and she just kept saying “What do you mean?” over and over. I’m pretty positive she was just being a bitch because there’s no way she didn’t understand me considering I got by just fine at the 3 other shops that I went to. Shop #3 didn’t have the phone either so I finally had to go to the official SoftBank Shop in Takayama.
The phone I originally wanted to buy was too expensive so I went with a cheaper phone, which is fine. I really like the phone itself, but I’m disappointed with the style and design of the menus, input method, etc. Hopefully I can download a new one and improve on it somehow. If not, I’ll probably just buy a new phone in a few months when I have more money. The system of contracts and phones seems to have a changed a little bit since I was at Tsukuba, but whatever. I have my phone now so I’m happy.
I finally saw where Krystal and Denae live yesterday. They’re 2 other new ALTs who came to Takayama with me last week. Krystal lives on the edge of the more urban parts of Takayama, but Denae lives on the other side of the mountain so she’s going to have to buy her predecessors car. She actually doesn’t live that far away from the center of Takayama, but there’s nothing around her within walking/casual biking distance. But, I was able to make it from her apartment to the center of Takayama in 11 minutes on my bike. This brings me to my next topic.
The Bat-Bike. My predecessor left me this bike and it is absolutely amazing. It’s entirely black, in pretty good condition, and instead of having regular metal spokes it has 8 thick black bars. It’s amazing. I was going down one of the main touristy roads the other night to meet some friends when I kicked it into 3rd gear (only 3 gears on the bike). Man was I FLYING! I was going faster than all of the cars and had to pass them or wait behind them. I can’t believe how fast this bike is. Ok, sorry. Enough about the Bat-Bike for now.
Those people on the JET forums were right. It is super boring just sitting here trying to find things to do. The English teacher isn’t here today so I can’t even talk to her about lesson planning or anything. I haven’t really spent much time with the teacher here at my base school, but I think working with her is going to be really fun. She’s only about 27 or 28 and she seems really nice. It’ll be nice to work with someone so young. I was kind of afraid I’d be working with some Japanese guy in his 50’s who didn’t want to hear what I had to say. I’ll only be working with her for 3 days a week as I’ll be going to 2 elementary schools the other two days of the week. I visited both of those elementary schools last week, but the English teachers were away at both schools. I think one of them is a woman at least but I don’t even really know that for sure.
I was just invited by the school nurse to go out to lunch with her and two other teachers so I’ll probably be ending this entry pretty soon. I’m having trouble downloading a client for my pictures on LiveJournal, so it makes it difficult to upload pix to the blog because I have to do it one by one and it takes time.
Although today has been boring, I’m sure things will pick up a lot once school starts. Also, I won’t be spending everyday here in August because we have lots of other orientations and teacher workshops between now and September including this English summer camp kind of thing that apparently takes place on top of a mountain. Can’t wait!

So, I meant to post a few days ago when I first got here, but I've just been a little too busy/tired to do anything.

The Gifu JET group had to assemble in the lobby of the hotel at around 8am on Wednesday morning in order to head out together to Tokyo station. We then took the Shinkansen 2 hours to Gifu-hashima where we were all met by our supervisors. In order to make the process of finding our supervisors more efficient, they lined us all up along this wall with our supervisors standing opposite us. Then 1-by-1 they asked us which city we were going to and then pointed us towards our supervisors. I've never felt more like a piece of meat in my life, lol. We were all kind of laughing about how ridiculous the whole thing looked, especially if you weren't even a part of JET and you just happened to be walking by. "Oh, are they auctioning off foreigners again?"



After a long awaited kaiten-zushi lunch in Gifu-shi, we headed off for Takayama. The drive to Takayama was about 2 hours long but the scenery was amazing. This will be the first time I've ever lived in the mountains so I'm really excited about my placement. When we finally arrived in Gifu, none of us were disappointed with the city. It sits in a valley completely surrounded by tree-covered mountains and there's a really nice river that runs through the eastern side of the city.



My apartment is pretty nice as well. It's rather old, but my predecessor did a really good job of cleaning it up and getting it ready for me. Thanks, Dan. I have a fairly nice sized kitchen with 2 rooms. It's much larger than I expected so I'm perfectly content with it. Plus, I have the best location in Takayama. I'm about a 5 minute walk from the station and everything is within biking distance. I've spent a lot of mornings exploring Takayama by bike due to my inability to sleep past 5:30am. So, I've pretty much already become familiar with the layout of the city.

I don't have a lot of time right now to write, so I'll just add a few more pictures and then continue this tonight or tomorrow. Until next time!

I’ve wanted to post an entry since I arrived here in Tokyo, but I’ve been so busy since landing that I just haven’t had the time. It’s now 4am on Wednesday and we’ll be leaving our hotel in Shinjuku in about 4 hours to depart for Gifu-ken (Gifu-prefecture). I originally thought that we’d be going by bus all the way to Gifu, but it turns out that they’re paying for us to take the bullet train to Gifu-city and then our supervisor from Takayama will come and pick us up by mini-bus and drive us the rest of the way. Plus for free Shinkansen! This entry is going to be kind of long, so be patient. Or don’t read it. Either one.
Now, time to digress. The flight over on Japan Airlines was less than what I expected. Although it’s not the airlines fault, I was in the second to last row in the back of the plane which sucked because they never had the food or free alcohol that I wanted by the time the cart made its way to my row. However, we were right next to the bathrooms and there was a lot of standing room by the emergency doors which facilitated many hours of JET-gathering in the back of the plane to avoid the monotony of just sitting in your seat and talking to the not-so-remarkable person sitting next to you. I don’t think I can say my flight on JAL was any better than most flights I’ve taken on American carriers. Not to say that I think American carriers are better, but JAL didn’t live up to its expectations. The one benefit that being on the JAL flight, as opposed to the American Airlines flight taken by most of the JETs coming from Chicago, was that we arrived about an hour earlier than they did and were able to make it to the hotel and get checked in by 5:15pm on Sunday night. This was perfect because I was planning to meet up with Yosuke and Kaho at 7pm in the lobby and was able to take a shower and get ready.

Shabu-shabu!


View from my room

Since shabu-shabu (look it up) was one of the only Japanese foods that I hadn’t eaten at all since leaving Japan, I suggested to them that we go to this amazing all-you-can-eat shabu-shabu restaurant in Shinjuku. It’s $15 for all you can eat shabu-shabu, which may sound expensive but is actually incredibly cheap considering we’re in Tokyo. It was really nice to see Kaho and Yosuke so soon after arriving in Japan and it felt as if I had never left. I suppose because I’m already so familiar with Tokyo it doesn’t feel like I left at all, but I’m sure when I get to Takayama today it’ll be a new adventure like arriving in Tsukuba for the first time. But anyway, Kaho was taking the shinkansen back to Shizuoka so she had to leave earlier than Yosuke, who hung out the rest of the night until he had to go home as well. They both seem to be really busy with their jobs. I hope Yosuke gets into this work abroad program that he’s trying to do through Mitsubishi. Otherwise, I feel working in the accounting section of Mitsubishi in Tokyo could take its toll after not too long.

Opening Ceremony


Gotta look beast for Tokyo


The Tokyo Orientation for JET officially started on Monday morning with a long and convoluted opening ceremony full of mostly useless information and predictable remarks from the Japanese heads of the program. The keynote speaker did a 1-hour presentation about culture shock which was really funny, but again pretty useless for me. I suppose 99% of the orientation is geared towards the people who have very little experience with Japan and Japanese which is great, but rather boring for people who have lived here before or have done research on their own before coming. I’m not trying to be elitist about Japan or anything, but I can’t help but feel bored when I’m told tons of information that I already know and don’t need. It doesn’t matter anyway, because as soon as we were dismissed for lunch I headed back up to my room, changed, and high-tailed it to Tsukuba with Cameron. Cameron went to Tsukuba a year before me but was in the same basketball club so we met when he came back again to visit last summer. The orientation was going on until 5pm or so that day, but I looked at the schedule and it was all seminars on things like Making Your Yen Go Far In Japan, Life As A Rural JET, Cooking and Eating Japanese Food, and my person favorite JETs of African Descent, with one amazing line from the description being “Why does everyone ask if I like hip-hop? I’m not even American!”. I really wanted to go to the last one for obvious reasons, the upkeep of my Jew-fro being one of them.
If only I had a Jew-fro…. 
Being back in Tsukuba was much nicer than being back in Tokyo. I really missed Tsukuba a lot and it was great to go back, see some friends, and visit the campus again. One of the girls from my circle, Midori, came to meet us at the station and we walked to campus from there. I ran into this one guy Dennis on the way to campus. I only knew him for about a week back in September just before I went back to America. A bunch of other people from my club were either working or out of town that day, so I was only able to meet up with Midori, Satomi, and Shun. It’s fine though, I plan on going back in October for the school festival for a nice 3-day weekend. It was enough to just be back and see a few friends. I didn’t get back to Shinjuku until 10 or so and was dead tired so I didn’t do much the rest of the night.

Midori and Satomi


I actually went to about half of the orientations today, but after going to the COMPLETELY USELESS workshop on teaching in middle schools, I went back to my room after the mandatory prefectural meeting. On Tuesday night all of the individual prefectures went out for food and drinks and even though I wasn’t planning on going in order to meet up with my friend Toshi or my other friend Mikoto, it ended up sounding kind of fun so I asked if I could bring Mikoto and they said it was fine. I really wish I could’ve gone back to visit Toshi’s parents in Ikegami, but I think it’ll be better to do it another day when I have more time. We had unlimited food and drinks for 2 hours and then the group went to karaoke. Mikoto and I were way too tired to go so we just grabbed some Starbucks and went to the observation deck in the Tokyo city hall building (free!) and looked at some cool night views of Tokyo. Afterwards we parted ways and I went back to my room to collapse in exhaustion on my bed.



Ok, I’m sorry this entry was so long but it’s 5am right now and I can’t sleep so I figured I’d catch up on some blogging so that I don’t get too behind like last year. I’ll try to keep the entries shorter next time.
Bye!

So, I flew from Columbus to Chicago yesterday morning for our pre-departure orientation. My flight was canceled but they put me non the next one to Chicago and still arrived 4 hours too early. After spending 2 hours waiting to check into my room, I found otu that there'd be no checking in until 3pm, thus not allowing me to take a shower and change (in a location that's not a bathroom) before the orientation began. However, my other friend doing JET came to Chicago the day before with his parents and they let me use their shower. Thanks again Brian's parents!

After a predictably boring orientation, they served this super-American dinner which consisted of fried chicken, pasta, tons of bread, salad, and sausage. It was good, but by the end of it I was eager to grab my bags from the lobby and finally check into my room so I could sleep. I didn't do much last night besides sleep and watch TV. As far as I'm concerned, my last night in America was my last night in Columbus, so I wasn't in any hurry to go out and hang out in Chicago.

Right now I'm waiting in the disappointing Terminal 5 of Chicago O'Hare. I decided to go through security early, only to find that this terminal is one of those bullshit no-frills terminals with nothing but candy, snacks, and a few drinks. Ahhhh! I was really looking forward to using up the rest of my Starbucks gift cards on some coffee and pastries. Oh well, hopefully I can use them in Tokyo. I've met a lot of people this morning since breakfast at the hotel, but I can't keep any of their names/placements in Japan/hometowns/schools straight. So I keep confusing people with other people and I've since given up and resigned myself to blogging about my JET experiences for the past 24 hours. I suppose there's not much to be lost since I'll probably never see these people again after the next 2 or 3 days. There's no one else from Chicago going to my town anyway.

We're only 45 minutes away from departure but they still haven't started boarding, which is a bit surprising. Perhaps, Japan Airlines has some speedy, Japanese, efficient system for boarding passengers that I've never seen before. At any rate, my seat is on the aisle which makes me happy. I don't really plan to use my laptop on the plane due to my 2.5hr battery life, but the movies they're showing and the books I've brought should be enough to keep me entertained for the 13 hour flight.

Well, boarding is about to start so I should get going. Until next time, good night and good luck!

So, instead of creating an entirely new blog for my adventures as a JET I decided to just continue with my old blog from my days at Tsukuba. I would've liked to start a new one, but I spent so much time on the design of this one that I didn't really want to give it up. So, here we are again. I probably won't write a whole lot in here until I actually arrive in Japan, but I want to write an introduction entry to my new set of entires. It has been almost a year since my last post after all.

Anyway, I feel like I'm getting ahead of myself here. Even though I'm sure there isn't some underground cult following of my blog or anything, I'll just make a short list of some major happenings since my last entry.

- I returned to America on September 10, 2007 to finish up my last year at OSU
- I went to France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Germany during winter break with some friends for 2. 5 weeks.
- I applied for the JET Programme in December, 2007
- I got so much transfer credit from Japan that I was able to finish my French minor and started taking classes for that again in the winter.
- I was an officer in Japanese Student Organization this past year and helped support the backbone of the central Ohio Japanese community (or not)
- I had an interview in Chicago for JET in February, 2008
- I received confirmation of my acceptance into JET in April, 2008
- I found out in May that I'll be teaching in Takayama, Gifu.
- I graduated this past spring quarter with a B.A. in Japanese and a B.A. in International Studies


Well, that pretty much sums it up. Nowadays I'm just hanging out and enjoying my last month in America. I'll be leaving Columbus on July 25th for a pre-departure orientation in Chicago and then arriving in Tokyo on July 27th. I'll be in Takayama by the 30th and from there I'll be starting my new life back in Japan.

Until next time!

I'm in the airport right now waiting for Wi-fi. There's a huge line at the Northwest Airlines counter so I hope she comes soon. Like I said earlier Livejournal's blocked in China so no blogging until September. Also, I just cancelled my cellphone here in the airport. So sad! Now I really feel like I'm leaving Japan.

Don't e-mail me on my cell phone anymore! Please send all emails to kaeruda@gmail.com

Thanks!

Off to China now! Bye!

So I'm leaving Japan in less than 48 hours now. I'll be coming back for a lil bit in September so it's not like I'm LEAVING leaving, but it still feels that way since I've been doning nothing but pack up my things and try to clear out of my dorm room for the past 3 days. Moving out of my dorm has been a much longer process than I thought it would be but it's not that bad. I've given a lot of stuff to my friends and neighbors and gave away some clothes that I didn't anymore to a 2nd-hand clothes shop near my dorm. I also sent home a package of mostly stuff I'm accumulated over the past year from traveling and the such. It was under 13 kilos so it only cost me about $60 which is really not that bad, and even though I sent it by surface mail (which takes at least 6 weeks usually) I won't be home until mid-September anyway. Hopefully it arrives after I get back.

In other news, I'm leaving or China in 2 days!!! First up on our grand adventure: HONG KONG! I know I keep repeating it, but I really can't believe that I'm finally going there. It's been, as they say in Japanese, a long (time, not distance) dream. I was looking at the weather forcast and it looks like it's going to be pretty damn hot in China. It's supposed to be 95 degrees or more and HUMID everyday that we're in Hong Kong. This should be like a flashback to Bangkok. Fun! ><

I was supposed to go to Tokyo today to meet a friend that I haven't seen in a while but I ended up being too busy to go and we decided to meet in September. I'm kinda glad though because I really need to get stuff done right now and I don't feel like spending the money to get to Tokyo. I went last night anyway to Friday's in Ueno. Maybe it was to acclamate myself back into American cuisine before I'm surrounded by it again. Actually it was to show my hamburger-loving Sloevene friend what a non-fast food hamburger tastes like. Twas Fun.

Anyway, I found out from Wi-fi that Livejournal is blocked in China so it's not looking like I'll be able to update for the next month. Sorry guys/the 1 or 2 people who maybe still check this. I can still update notes on Facebook so I think I'll try to do that instead. If not, I'll try to write down my adventures the old fashioned way and then just update once I return to Japan.

Until then, goodnight and good luck.

So, it's been over a month since I last updated this thing. Seems like the time periods inbetween each update are just getting longer and longer and I do apologize for that. I guess it's just that the longer I wait to update the more things happen that I would like to write about and thus the more of a pain-in-the-ass updating seems.

Anywho, I finally finished school about a week ago, which was a week later than anyone else. I had only 2 final exams but 5 papers! They weren't due until a bit later so of course I procrastinated until the due date. They were really easy papers anyway. Even though 3 of them had to be in Japanese, they were for classes that were geared for foreign students and the papers didn't have to be perfect or long. Other than that, I had my 21st birthday about 2 weeks ago and we had a nice little party at this cheap izakaya (japanese-style bar) and a lot of my friends came and many even brought presents. I guess the Japanese people couldn't resist bring presents, which was totally not necessary, but I got a pair of those big headphone, a CD rack, tatami coasters, a folder with a monet painting on it, a book about the history of Western paintings in Japanese, and a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. Pretty awesome. The very next night there was a drinking party with the 2nd year students in my basketball circle. We went to this bar that's relatively cheap but has surprisingly nice atmosphere. After which we went to this place called Cybex where we played pool and ping-pong until 7 in the morning. All in all a pretty good night.

In other news, Wi-fi has been here since the beginning of June so we've been BB-ing it up every now and then. This past Friday we went to a Giants game at the Tokyo Dome because she got free tickets from one of her host families. Since the bus that takes her from her station to her house stops running at 9:20pm, we decided before hand that we would just spend the night in Tokyo having fun until the trains started running at 5am Saturday morning. So, after the game we walked around the stadium before heading off to Shinjuku for some drinks and snacks. When we arrived in Shinjuku I realized it was about the time that my friends Yosuke and Eri (who both know Wi-fi and have been looking forward to seeing her in Japan) would be getting off work, so I e-mailed both of them and invited them to come out with us. Eri immediately called me and told me that she couldn't come but was trying to get everyone together the following weekend since Wi-fi and I would be leaving soon, but Yosuke said he was on his way and that he'd be bring a friend from work. Yay! So the 4 of us drank for a couple of hours and then Yosuke's friend went home. Me, Yosuke, and Wi-fi decided to so some impromptu purikura but after we finished it was already 12:15am so Yosuke decided to hang out with us for the rest of the night since he probably wouldn't be able to get home on the trains. After some ice cream at McDonalds we found this awesome Mankitsu that was super comfortable and cheap! So we crashed there for the night and I left the gang at around 5am because I had to work at 9am the same morning. ><

Oh, I can't forget the HORRIBLENESS of Mt. Fuji. Yes, this past Tuesday and Wednesday Mark and I decided it'd be an awesome idea to climb Mt. Fuji, the talled mountain in Japan. Since it was the only day we were both able to do it, the weather wasn't really a factor in our decision. We both knew it was going to rain so we bought rainsuits before leaving Tokyo, but those would turn out to be pretty useless in the end. We arrived on Fuji at about 10:30pm and immediately started climbing in the dark. It was going good for about the first hour and then things really started to get tough. As we went up the rain and wind became only stronger and stronger. We were both completely soaked and freezing. After about 4 hours of climbing we reached the 9th station, out of 10, and decided to see if we could go inside. All the employees were sleeping so a couple of the Japanese guests told us to come and be quiet, so we took off some of our wet clothes and rested by the first for about an hour and a half or so. After the sun had rised at 4:30 we left the 9th station and headed for the summit which we reached at about 5am. We didn't stay long at the top before heading back down and making it back at about 10:15am. I was completely wet and all the clothes I brought were wet too, so I ended up buying a complete set of new clothes at the bottom. In the end, I'm glad I did it because I can always say I climbed Mt. Fuji during a typhoon, but I'll never do it again.

Only about 2 more weeks until China!!! So excited! Until then, I'll try to update as much as possible because I'm not sure if i'll be able to update my blog from that country that I'm going to because of THAT country's way of dealing with...... ok, basicly I'm trying not to say much because I don't want my blog to be blocked.

There's a typhoon over Japan right now. So much rain...

Some pix from the past month...

Mt. Fuji







Giants Game



My birthday




Circle party

Ok, yeah. I know. It's been 4 weeks since I last updated. I'm sorry. I've just been kinda busy lately and everytime I thought about updating I just couldn't seem to muster up enough motivation to actually do it.

So......
I bought my ticket for China a few weeks ago! I ended up settling on August 1-31 after much thought. I figured there was no reason why I shouldn't stay the extra few days and make it 1 whole month in China. I wish I could say I'm really looking forward to it, but I guess I'm really not. Not to say I don't think it will be fun, I just have a whole lot of other stuff to worry about befor then like school, work, and making the most out of my last 2 months in Japan.

It's been getting really warm in Tsukuba lately and some of the other international students here have been throwing BBQ parties every Friday. I live in 1 of a cluster of 4 smaller than normal dormitory buildings in Oikoshi, one of which has a accessible roof with railings and everything. But, until a few months ago it was closed for renovation. So the first party we had was on the roof and it turned out to be an amazing place for a party. I was there from 4:30pm to 1:00am, but I heard that people stayed until 6:00am and watched the sunrise. Unfortunatly, during the week some people who live on the 5th floor apparently ratted them out and the dorm administration people put up signs forbidding access to the roof. So the next week they threw a party on this kind of mini-dock/boat launching place by one of the small ponds on Tsukuba's campus. Even though there was no electricty, which meant no fridge and softer music, it still turned out to be pretty fun. My friend Genya from basketball came to the pond party and it seemed like he had a pretty good time. It's nice to expose some of my Japanese friends to non-izakaya/nomikai style parties.

Something crazy happened in mu Political Philosophy class yesterday. In the middle of one of Covell's lectures, he all of a sudden stopped and said to these 2 Japanese girls in the back of the glass, "Is she alright?" I looked back and one of the girls had her head down and then started shaking. Then her body went limp and she just fainted. Apparently, she's anemic and was having an attack, but they're supposed to not be that harmful. It stopped class for a good 40 minutes though. It was really scary for a couple minutes because no one knew what to do. Some people tried to ask her but before she could answer she was already unconscious. About 10 minutes later she woke up and told everyone she was fine but the professor still made her go to the student health center just to be careful.

I got paid today. Bonus. ￥43,400 for 18.5 hours of work. I'm really going to miss making money this easily. I've started to think about what to do about a job when I get back to Columbus. I am absolutely not returning to K-mart, so I'm either gonna have to see if I can get my old Honda students back or maybe even find some new ones. I was thinking about maybe even trying to get a job somewhere at OSU. Maybe DEALL or JASSO. I think that's what it's called....... At any rate, I definitely to not want to return to some labor job. There's nothing wrong with that kind of job, but I feel I could definitely be of use doing something that requires a little bit more brain power.

Who knows.....

School ends on July 2nd for me and after that I have about 4 weeks until I leave for China. Inbetween I'm gonna work because Liberty's classed don't end until mid to late July, and Mark and I are probably gonna go climb Mount Fuji before he leaves in mid-July. Besides that I don't really think I'm gonna travel around Japan in July because I've pretty much already seen everything that I need to see in Japan and it's just too expensive.

My good friend Mitja and I both share the glorious July 2nd as our birthday and we'll most likely be throwing a joint birthday bash at Bloom Bar on Monday, July 2nd. So if you're in Japan and you'd like to come just e-mail me and I'll provide you with details as things become more certain. Fun!

So, I think I've written enough for tonight and I'm really gonna try from now on to right more but I can't mak any promises.




Pic from the roof party

For those of you who don't know, it's Golden Week here in Japan. Golden Week is this period of 6 days or so where there's a string of 4 holidays. It's kind of like a national week off. Technicly I'm supposed to have classes on Tuesday and Wednesday, but most profs cancelled their classes because they don't want to have to stay in Tsukuba either. So I've just kind been relaxing the past couple days and catching up on some Japanese studying. It was a really nice day today and I was planning to go outside and read a lil bit, but in about 30 minutes the weather turned from nice to a thunder storm. Which gave me enough motiavation to write on livejournal.

I had to get a new credit card this week because Huntington has changed their banking network and I had to get a new one anyway because mine expires in July. So as soon as I receive the new number I'm planning to buy my return ticket back to America and also my plane ticket to China. Wi-fi will be staying in China for a few days longer than me, but as of now the plan for me will be August 1st to the 31st. One full month. YES! Then I'll come back to Japan for about a week or so, say goodbye to my friends, and head home. I'm keeping the exact date a secret, so don't ask.

Wow, it's really raining hard right now...I hate Japanese rain....

I bought football tickets again and joined a group with Mark and some of his friends. I was really disappointed with how weak the home games are this year, but it's not like I'm going to enjoy them any less. I bought the Ohio State-Michigan game from this past year on iTunes and I've been watching that the past 2 days. It really made me wish I could've been there, but oh well.

I register for Fall classes tomorrow and I've been trying to figure out which classes to register for, but until I have all my credit from Tsukuba transfered it's really hard to know what exactly I need to take. At any rate, I'm pretty sure I'll be in good shape and should have no problem at all graduating in the spring. It's kinda sad to only have 1 year left at OSU. Definitely need to jump in Mirror Lake this year!

Well, as I promised, I'll throw up some pix on here from Malaysia and Singapore since I'm on my computer now. Doozo!

One of the last pix from Thailand.....



Penang, Malaysia




Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia








Singapore




This awesome bookstore we found in Singapore

So here's the thing. I didn't want to update until I had uploaded all of my pictures from SE Asia onto Livejournal, but because of problems with my connection I was never able to do that. So that combined with pure laziness prevented me from updating until now. I still haven't uploaded all of my pix, but I'm still gonna try to put a few directly into this blog entry.

So...let's start with Thailand.



Here's a pic of me from inside the Royal Palace/Temple of the Emerald Buddha and some otheres..







More Bangkok pics....




Thai Boxing match



From inside our Tuk-Tuk




Ok, now for some Koh Samui pics....




Our hotel pool




Moutain trek with Jeeps












Well, I just realized that on my other memory card I don't have the rest of my pix from the SE Asia trip because I deleted them (after I put them on my computer) to make room for my trip around Japan after I came back from Singapore. I'm using my friends computer right now so I guess I'll have to update the rest later.

I might as well talk about my travels around Japan. About 4 days after I got back from SE Asia I traveled around Japan for about 9 days or so, mostly by myself. After 2.5 weeks of non-stop traveling with 6 people it felt like it was time for a little Me-time. I admit, it did get kinda lonely at times but for the most part it was really nice.

Osaka Castle


Philosopher's Path in Kyoto


Gion at night



Kobe



Atombic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima


Miyajima





Wow, that took a long time. Besides all the traveling, school just started about 2 weeks ago. I flew to Shikoku on the 9th for an interview for the internship that I applied for, but I found out last week that I didn't get it. I was depressed at first but I quickly moved on and looked at the bright side. I'll probably be coming home around mid-September or so.

Plans for China are in full swing and it's looking like I'll be there for 4 weeks from August 1st to the 29th. Just have to wait about a week until I can buy the plane tickets. So excited! I hope I'm not captured like Jack Bauer and tortured for 2 years. I'm not sure if I can pull through like Jack, but I shall try. You know, in case I accidently murder any Chinese Consules. (Which we all know well was NOT Jack's fault!)

Anyway, my 3rd trimester schedule is looking a lil something like this:

Classes taught in Japanese -

Japanese History
Japanese Culture
Environment of Japan
Japanese Art
Flag football

Other classes -

Japanese Grammar
Special Topics in Modern History
Political Philosophy
Statistical Science

Yeah, it's kind of a lot, but I'm hoping to get a lot of transfer credit when I get home.

Ok, I need to go to sleep now. I promise to update a lot more! Sorry peoples.

So sorry I haven't updated at all lately. I promise when I get back to Tsukuba I'm gonna make a long blog about everything and include lots of pictures. Until then!

So, I'm finally back in Japan after 2 and a half weeks of amazingness. I still have about 3 weeks of spring break so I really need to decide what I'm going to do. I've narrowed it down to 2 options.

#1: I take a bullet-train to Hiroshima, spend a few days there, go to Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto and then take a night bus back to Tsukuba.

#2: I fly to Taiwan and spend about 5 or 6 days there.

I REALLY want to go to Taiwan, but I haven't been to Hiroshima or Osaka and I really need to go there. I walked into this travel agency today and was quoted a price of roughly $300 for a roundtrip flight to Taipei. I have my friend Margaret there so I may be able to stay with her. This may be my only/cheapest chance to go to Taiwan while I'm here but I'm not sure if I'm up to planning another international trip on 4 days notice. Although it would be pretty sweet to do just that. Another thing, I would miss hanami here in Japan, and it's something I've kind of been looking forward to and it would suck to just all of a suddenly miss it.

What should I do?

Advice people!!!!

Man, we have done SOOOO much in the past week. It's hard to believe that this trip is only half way done. We left Koh Samui last night and took a night train to Butterworth, Malaysia. We crossed the Malaysian/Thai border this morning and arrived on Penang island (right next to the mainland) around 2pm. Penang doesn't seem to be an extremely exciting place, but we had to change trains here on our way to Kuala Lumpur anyway so I figured it'd be worth it to take a day break and not try to do back-to-back night trains.

Anywho, Koh Samui was absolutely incredible. We did so many things in 5 days that it became one of the few places I would actually consider going back to in the near future instead of going somewhere new. I don't have time to fully go into everything, so I'll just make a quick list of the things I did.

- laid out on amazing beaches
- shot a gun for the first time
- played with monkeys
- rode elephants
- Jeep trekking through the mountain jungle
- swam under a waterfall
- snorkling and kayaking on this chain of islands that are a national park
- rode jetskis

I'll be able to post pix as soon as I get back to Japan.

Until next time!

Sooo..... our plane was delayed almost 2 hours out of Tokyo, but somehow we only arrived 45 minutes late. 5 of the 6 of us were on the same flight, so I felt bad for Ashley since she had to wait about an hour for us. We were able to avoid the scam taxis into Bangkok and got a 20 minute taxi ride to our hostel for only $3.50. I love Thailand cheapness. But! It's sooooooooooooooooooooo hot. I've gone to annoying cold to unbearable heat. Kind of a tough transition on such short notice.

Today we did a lot and I'm going to collapse as soon as I'm done with this entry. We took the skytrain to the river and then took a boat up the river to the royal palace, which was nothing short of amazing. After which we walked to this other temple that houses a GIANT reclining statue of Buddha and then took a ferry across the river to see another famous temple. We headed back to our hostel to rest for a little bit and we met back up with the other half of our group. We had been planning all along to go to a Thai kickboxing fight so we thought tonight would be the best option. Before we went we went to this huge night market in that's right next to the boxing "arena". I say "arena" because this place was anything but. It's kind of hard to explain so I'll just post pictures later. Other than that......I'm tired.

Time for shower and bed!

Bangkok is HOT! No seriously, it's really hot.

Wow, I really need to update more. Sorry guys.

So, right now it's 12:30pm and our bus will be departing Tsukuba Center at 1:25pm for Narita Airport. After which we'll all be bording 6:35pm flights for Bangkok, Thailand. FINALLY HERE!
I just needed to update one more time before I left. Hopefully I get some sporadic internet access while away and maybe I'll be able to write some trip updates.

If not, see everyone on March 25th when I return to the home islands of the great Japanese Empire!

行ってきまーす！

Saturday night was the long awaited Tokyo Ohio Party. It ended up being pretty awesome and something like 52 people showed up. They weren't all from Ohio State, but who cares? It was still fun. After the party was over about 9 of us went to a club in Shibuya where we continued the party until 5am when we caught the first trains home. I got back to Tsukuba a little before 7am to find it FREEZING. My bike was in this mall security bike parking kinda place that didn't open back up until 9:30am. So I ended up taking the bus back to my dorm. It was like only the 2nd time I've used the bus in Tsukuba since I got here so I wasn't really sure where it was going to drop me off but everything worked out fine.

I've been kinda tired and busy lately so I haven't updated until now. Sorry. Besides the Ohio Party, I've just been working on some studying and papers because this is finals week. The only real think I have left though is the final kanji test which I'm sure is going to be horrible. Just too many combinations! Ahhhhhh!

Oh, it appears that there may yet be hope for my squandered French abilities. I rented Amelie from the rental shop on Friday because I decided it was finally time for me to see it since it's probably the most famous French movie in the last 10 years. Anywho, I kinda thought it may be a problem when I rented and my worries were confirmed when I got home. No English subtitles. Only Japanese or French. So, I chose French, and much to my amazement I watched the whole thing with almost no problem. That combined with the fact the movie is set in Paris is really making me want to revisit French and perhaps studying/living there someday in the near future.

Here are some pictures from the Ohio Party:

View of the whole party



Margaret, Misa, and Asako (I think)



Aoi and Taka: Taka studied at OSU last year and Aoi lived in Cinci for 5 years. She'll also probably be studying abroad at OSU in 2 years.



Me, Nobuko, and Ryan



Masao and Aya



Taka and Natsuki



Kei, Kei's friend, and Masao



I think someone doesn't want to go home....awww



Mark



Ryan and I



Nobuko, Ryan, and Kara. Hadn't seen Kara in like 2 years. Good times.



Shibuya Club Crew




You can find all the pix that I took at the party if you click on the "My Pictures" link over on the right side of the screen. Sigh, bed time.

Goodnight.

I just finished taking a Japanese grammar test and I have to say it was not enjoyable. Mostly all of the grammar I learned during this class wasn't new to me, but it focused on working out all the kinks and perfecting it. So, there were lots of like "well, this isn't really wrong, but this way is more correct." Which is really frustrating when you get things "wrong" because they're not perfect, even though they may be grammaticly acceptable. The other thing that had me worried is that this final is our ONLY grade for the entire class.

In other news, I had my Japanese written self-introduction checked by one of my Japanese teachers and now I am officialy finished with my Ichimya application. All I have to do is send it to my mom and have her turn it in for me. A task at which she better not fail! Or else....

I had never really written a semi-extensive self-intro in Japanese before, so I was really worrying for a long time about what exactly I should write. What subjects should I touch on beside the obvious name,hometown, major stuff? What would be considered too much detail? Anyway, I just decided to but as much basic information about me as I could in one page and then edit out the things that were too detailed. It worked out ok I guess but I feel like it sounds kind of watered down and dumb. Kind of like something I would've written 18 months ago or something, since I couldn't really get into too much detail about anything. Well, I guess I can just post it on here. This is really hazukashii.......


初めまして。私はオハイオ州立大学の三年生のバーグマン・カイルと申します。出身はアメリカのオハイオ州のコロンバス市です。趣味はスポーツをしたり、写真を撮ったり、旅行したりするのが好きです。専門は大学に入った時は社会学とフランス語でしたが、一年生の時に自分で日本語の勉強を始めたので、日本語や日本文化に興味を持つようになりました。ですから、一年生の間に専門を日本語と国際学に変えました。日本語が出来るようになりたかったし、素晴らしい経験だと思ったので二年生の間に日本に留学することにし、筑波大学の交換留学プログラムに申請しました。
　去年の八月から交換留学生として筑波大学で勉強しています。筑波大学に来てからもう半年になりました。毎日、日本語と日本と関係ある授業を取っていますが、日本文化に詳しくなったり、生活に慣れたりするために他にしなければならないことはまだまだ沢山あると思います。筑波大学生の生活に慣れるために早目に同好会に入る必要があると聞きました。ですから、去年の九月にスポーツのサークルに入ることにしました。今入っているサークルは筑波大学バスケットボール同好会と言うサークルです。私は異国の生活や文化に慣れるのが得意だと思うので、本当にそんな必要はあるかどうか分かりません。
　オハイオ州立大学を卒業してから、日本のジェットプログラムに参加するつもりです。または日本語の大学院か法科大学院に入ろうと思っています。ジェットプログラムに入ることが出来れば、英語の先生として日本に戻り、プログラムが終わってからも日本かアメリカで日本語と英語を活かした仕事を見付けられたらいいと思います。普通の就職を見付けることの代わりに外交の分野に入りたいと思います。国際連合みたいな機関に就職するのは私の長い夢です。

eh....I already see my chances of getting this internship slipping away.

I crashed my bike last night going to 7-11 for a latenight study snack. I was attempting to go up onto the curb from the street by way of a plastic ramp that someone has in front of their driveway for their car and my bike slipped on it since it was wet and totally went out from under me. I was able to land on my left foot but my right was caught in the bike and it took me down with it and I rolled over it onto the ground and into a vending maching. DAMN YOU bike for completely owning me. I hurt my knee a little and the plastic chain protector thing on the bike was completely shattered, but besides that the bike and I are both fine. I'm just glad some Japanese person wasn't there to ride by and offer no help at all, like the last time. Or else I probably would've chased/hobbled after them and gone off on them.

So there's only 19 days left until I leave for Southeast Asia. As of now there are 5 of us going in total. Mariko, Ashley, Alex, Gary, and me. I was finally able to solve the problem with my debit card so I was able to finish up all the hotel and train reservations for our trip. I'm so glad all that is over.

Only 2 weeks left of classes, but I feel so behind.　I'm not really behind, but when you have 8 different classes your mind can't help but get a little scattered. It's really annoying. Just when I think I have everything done, something from another class that I forgot about pops up.

Anyway, I need to finish my personal statement today and my self-introduction in Japanese. I wish the instructions were more specific as to what exactly I need to write, but I'm sure it'll be fine.



TO MATT: You're coming to Japan? Awesome. Send me an email at bergman.86@osu.edu and tell me more about your plans. I will be in Tsukuba at that time and I'd like to show you guys around Tokyo. Neither of you have been, right?