August 16th

Wow guys today was such an awesome day.
It was, as you may have guessed, Saturday the 16th. Of course. Since my last post was the 15th, and I’ve had the tendency to write every day.

But first, a quick note. It’s almost 2 AM here and I’m dead tired, so I realize it’s likely I write things twice write things twice (okay, that was a joke, but get my point. I’m kind of out of it. So if something I say doesn’t make sense or I’m repeating myself over and over, I apologize.)

Anyhow, as we had remotely planned for today, Alex and I hung out. Actually, I had no idea what we could, but offered to go see a movie and I was game and my parents let me go, so why not?
So the first “adventure” was meeting up in the first place. Because although we live like 10-15 minutes away from each other, we didn’t know how to get to each other’s houses. I mean, even in Bloomington, at least for me, if I’ve got an address, it means nothing till I put it into MapQuest/ Google Maps/ etc. Even more so here.
So yeah, Alex’s original idea was “I’ll bike around and try to find your house and I’ll keep calling you from my cell phone if I need to.”
Oh yeah.
Brilliant idea.
I mean, I suppose if he would have found me like that, I would have considered it a decent plan. But don’t things always work that way? We judge plans based on the result, not on the plans themselves. Ah, that’s my miniature epiphany.
Needless to say though, it didn’t work. So he called me again, and we figured out that we could meet half way at Hotto Motto. Hotto Motto is some food place or something, and I love that name, so if I do repeat that, it’s not by accident. XD I just love saying that. Hotto Motto. Great name.

Anyhow, it worked, because Hotto Motto is probably one of two places I know how to get to from my house (the other one being the park that’s across the street.)

So yeah, we had decided on movies. And we were there, ready to go by bike. When Alex casually mentions that this could be a long ride….like an hour something.
Hmm. We considered getting my parents to drive us there, but in the end, I decided I don’t know my parents well enough to judge how they would react to me asking them to do something like that, because it was pretty far, and they’d have to come get us too. We went by bike.
I’m glad we did.
Seriously, it was a lot of fun. I got to see a lot of the city that I hadn’t really had chances to see before, and Alex and I talked along the way about anything, from Bush to Nintendo, and everything you could see fit to go in between.
We eventually got to the theater. Mind you, this is a whole entertainment complex though, so first couple floors were arcade games. Pretty cool looking, but we just went straight up to the theater (cinema, as Alex says in Australian English XD). We originally wanted to see The Hulk, and maybe Iron Man, or Kung Fu Panda, but in the end we decided on….nothing.
Or rather, the theater decided for us. The times for each movie were pretty bad, and there wasn’t anything that really stuck out as a good time or anything.
So Alex decided we could go to the other cinema that was “just 10 minutes away.”

But first of course, the arcade. The coolest thing we played there was….Mario Kart Arcade, of course. It was so awesome, minus the fact this voice kept yelling at me from the speakers behind my head: “Yoshi, sdhbsfkbskbvndncsvc.” Or at least, that’s about as much as I understood of it. Sheesh. Too fast, too loud, too in-my-freaking-head.
Now I’m making it sound awful, but that really was the only…unfortunate part. Because it was a ton of fun. And the funniest thing is that they had other random characters like Pac-Man. It was great.
Besides Mario Kart, Alex and I played the classic Whack A Mole, in which we succeeded in setting the second highest score on the machine. Pretty impressive.
Oh wait that’s right…it was in the little kid’s zone.
Haha. Still. It was awesome.
We also tried this game that had some motion sensing stuff, and it looked really cool; like you throw this ball onto the screen and the motion detector would sense it and the point was “knocking over” bottles on the screen and stuff.
Looked cool. We saw these other people playing. Only thing is, when we did it, the sensors just wouldn’t acknowledge when we threw the ball. Whyyy?!?!
We don’t know, but we tied at 0 points each. Whooo! Stupid machine.

One last thing we played was an air hockey game. Half the time, it was normal…you know, two sides, one puck, etc. Except then every once in a while, the game decided to go schizophrenic and put out three pucks at once. Every time it would do that, Alex would screw me over. I could beat him with one puck, but when it came down to it, he shot like 10 in during the game’s psychopathic moments.
Anyhow, it was a lot of fun, but we had spent enough money, and we wanted to check out the other theater already.

Yeah, it was further than 10 minutes (way to go, Alex). But it was fun too.
And yeah, of course, when we got there….there was nothing good there either.
So no, in the entire day, I did not watch a single movie.
Go figure.
But there was a Toys’ R Us nearby, actually, and Alex and I went inside to look around.
Man, first and foremost, there was so much stuff about Pokemon.
Pokemon anything, really. I can just imagine the success that would have made maybe 5 or 6 years ago in the US.
Then we played some of the DS games they had on display; pretty cool, but nothing special.

Later on, we went to a gigantic electronics store. Once we stepped inside, Alex went immediately on the search for the PS3s and 360s. But of course, he had to stop and admire the iPhone. Geeze he kept talking about how he wanted one really badly. I had to remind him, lucky him, he HAS a phone. Plus, he’s got one that does everything. Internet? Email? TV?
Yeahh, and he wants the iPhone. I have absolutely no sympathy for him. =]

But anyways, it was pretty great, because when we got the video games, Alex seriously ran up to them and said something like “YESS! The 360s.”
Don’t get me wrong; I felt the same. I just laughed at his way of expressing it.

Ohhh yeahhh. And at some point relatively early on, we were just riding along on the sidewalk when a car pulls over and window rolls down and we see…Ida! You know…the Norwegian girl?
So that was really cool. I tried racing the car, but I have no shame in admitting it won. =]

So yeah. I can’t even remember everything we did, but we went so many places; rode that bike so freaking much.
Seriously. Like more than I have in the past couple years combined, just today.
But it was really awesome, actually being able to get somewhere by bike, and actually having a place to “park” your bike when we got there. That was really cool.

We ended being gone for a total of five and a half hours. So much fun though, even if my legs are brutally sore at the moment. I wish we could do that all the time, but now with school starting up soon, that’s not quite possible.

Oh, and I liked how when I got home, my parents didn’t even say anything to us being out so long.
I can only imagine in the US…if I had been gone for over five hours to see a movie, my parents probably would have called the cops.
I do feel a slight twinge of guilt for being out so long to “see a movie,” but they knew Alex’s cell phone number, and they never once called, so I guess it was just fine with them that I was out for a while.
That’s cool.
Anyhow, it was one heck of a cool day.
I really like Alex. He’s a great guy, and I’m kinda sad already that he leaves by the end of the year. And Australia isn’t exactly near Bloomington.
But I don’t even know why I’m feeling sad about this now; I’m sure I’ll have plenty of sappy posts of the AFS guys leaving Japan to go home. XD
These guys are great, though.

Alex, I know you’ll read this sooner or later, so thanks for getting me out of the house today.
I really appreciate it. Probably one of the cooler days I’ve had in Asahikawa so far, despite the fact that you kept hitting me with your poster. XD
You should have left it behind; it’s what "nature" wanted. Ahahaha. You’re crazy.


So yeah. That was the bulk of my day.
But one more cool thing that happened today is that the younger of my two older sisters here came over for a few hours at the end of the day. By now, I know her name to be Chizuru, and today I asked her to write it in kanji. Apparently it means “a thousand cranes”. You know, like the bird, the crane?
So yeah. That was pretty cool. I’ve now gotten into the habit of always asking the Japanese I meet to write their name in kanji. It’s pretty interesting to see what some of these names mean. Plus names just look cool written in kanji.

But besides learning her name today, we also stayed up for a while just talking about life. (Which is why I’m up so late.)
She’s in her very early 20’s, so she’s not too old so that we can’t relate.
She’s pretty nice though. It was fun. I showed her the video for our Heartbeat marching band show, and we listened to some random music I had; some English, some Japanese. She knew most of my Japanese songs.
That was pretty cool.

But anyhow, I’m really, really tired now, and I think you guys get the idea.
I’m going to bed.
Night, guys.

August 15th

Yeah, that last post was pretty deep, I know. Or at least it was to me. I’m not sure I conveyed it to the whole extent that it was, but in any case, I’ve got lighter stories now.

We didn’t stay at the cemetery long: we soon left to meet more family (well, at least I was meeting them. You know what I mean.)

I’m still kind of confused about who’s related to who and how, but I suppose that’s natural when you’re meeting like 10 new people at once.
But from what I got out of it, one of the guys there is my mom’s older brother, and then his sons/daughters/cousins/grandchildren/etc.

But yeah, it was pretty fun. They would ask me all these questions, and I could answer about half, and then my parents would help me out when they knew what I was trying to say.

In particular then, this one married couple and their eight year old appeared out of nowhere (or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention when they came in) and I probably liked them the best. The couple was probably in their mid thirties, and they were probably more in sync with stuff like Internet and Harry Potter and such. And the kid was pretty clingy, but I liked him too. His name’s Takumi (not to be confused with Takuya, my thirteen year old family/friend guy).
So yeah, it was cool. And Takumi had his DS with him too (I told you everyone here has one.) And he showed me some games he was very proud of, one of which I recognized to be Naruto, the rest were some different Japan-only games I’ve never heard of. But he let me play too, so that was cool.

Oh, and they all loved it when I read the English that was written on the can of Asahi Beer. It was really funny then, because Takumi started showing off reading something in Japanese really fast when I was struggling through it, and then I just blazed through the English on the can. It was pretty great. Everybody laughed.

Oh, and I mentioned Harry Potter, there was a story with that too. See, in Japanese they don’t have as many sounds as we do in English, and pronunciation is incredibly simple (I may have talked about this before, but bear with me.) Like something written “ta” is always read….”ta”. Not like English where practically the same word (spelling-wise) can have a completely different pronunciations.
I think you get my point, so I’ll move on.
Because of this, when they’re adopting English words, the Japanese often have to change it slightly.
For example, McDonalds becomes Makudonarudo (it looks silly, but read it out loud; it’s pretty close.)
And Harry Potter becomes…Harii Pottaa
ONLY SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT.
And yet when I say “Harry Potter” the American way, they don’t understand. Same for when I say McDonald’s or Caterpillar (they say Kyatapiira).
Go figure.

But all in all, it was fun, and explained some things to them, such as www standing for “world wide web.”
To get them to understand web was difficult though. I went off on some tangent about Spider-Man (Supaida Man) and explained how that mushi (bug) was the one that made a web. See where I went with that? Hey, whatever works.

Oh and then the food. Kind of like the last time I ate with a bunch of family, we had soooo much food. It was almost too much. I kinda had the same as always, though. A bunch of rice, with some sashimi (or raw fish, for those who aren’t in the know), as well as sushi. The one interesting thing I had was a shrimp. Well yeah, that doesn’t sound interesting, but that’s because I haven’t mentioned it was the whole thing. You know, head to tail, or whatever you want to call it. I hate it when they serve seafood like that. It would be like putting a snout and cow udder with your ham and cheese sandwich (sorry if I just ruined your appetite).
Seriously though, whyyy?
But what the heck, I figured I’d try it. And yeah, I took the hard outer shell or whatever you want to call it out. And then I went for the head. And when I did, its brains, or whatever they were, sprayed all over my hand. It was kind of the most unappeasing food experience I remember thus far.
I didn’t eat after that, but I was okay, I had eaten enough.

Anyway. Isn’t that a great place to leave you guys off at? Ahahaha.
Well, I don’t have much more to share, but we did stay there like all day.
It was a lot of fun. I hope we go back sometime soon.

Anyhow, it’s really late, and I’m psyched for tomorrow because Alex and I are going to hang out. Maybe the others too.
I’ll probably have something to write tomorrow anyways.
Actually I hope at least one of you hasn’t given up on checking my blog every now and then, because then at least that person can tell everyone else to check. Haha, oh well.

Take care guys.

August 15th

So turns out the whole “thing” this morning wasn’t as big as I thought it would be.
But I’ve heard it’s the small things in life that matter.
Today is August 15.

It was raining.
Not like thunderstorm raining. Just that light drizzle that you can feel, but practically stay dry.

After driving for almost an hour, arrived. At the cemetery.
Japanese cemeteries are so much prettier than American ones, really. I would have taken a picture, but I didn’t have the heart to.
But instead of just a plaque or tombstone, there’s a whole shrine. And it’s so beautiful, and so sad.

We walked past rows and rows of them until we stopped and my mom turned to me and said Watashi no okaasan to otoosan. My mom and dad.

She took out some food we had bought at the market before leaving, and carefully set it in front of the shrine. She kneeled down and looked forward in a lost gaze.

She started crying softly.
I didn’t know what to do.

Death can be so complicated.

August 14th

Sorry again about that last post.
I’m in a much better mood now, although I’m still doubtful my whole Internet/ cell phone thing will work.
Well, I guess my phone will work, it’s just worst case scenario that I have to wait till mid-November (which sucks, badly, but whatever).
Today (Thursday, the 14th) Takasugi-san and I went to City Hall again to try to get my gaijin ID card. I guess we have to wait two weeks now. Maybe with that, I can prove I’ll be here for over 90 days so I can get my phone? Whatever, we’ll see.

I also went out to try to get my school uniform figured out. Of course, the company that makes it is now on vacation, so I won’t have it for a few weeks either. But it should work out.
In the meantime, I’m going to try on Yota’s uniform. [Correction: Never did this, I just wore slacks and a white shirt and it was fine. I got it pretty quick too.]
Yeah, Yota….you know…the guy from Asahikawa that’s currently in Bloomington? Maybe some of you guys have even met him. Although it is doubtful, because he’s gonna go to Bloomington High School. Be nice to him if you do meet him though; he’s likely as lost as I am. I wish I could have met him, but he left pretty much the same time I did, so we must have crossed paths over the Pacific.
Anyhow, I seriously doubt his uniform will fit me. I mean, I don’t even know him, and I hate to be stereotypical, but I tend to imagine a Japanese guy as smaller than an American.
Which reminds me of how funny I thought it was when they were trying shoe sizes for me and thought I had huge feet. Hah. I’m shoe size 10. I’m sure there will be at least a few of you there reading this that are at least size 13. Actually, I’d love to see Brooks or Nathan Liston here. Both tall, with gigantic feet.
Oh especially Brooks, because on top of everything, he’s blond and got blue eyes. Try to imagine a Japanese person who is (naturally) blond. =]
Oh yeah, Brooks.
You’d fit right in. XD

Now, the TV report.
This morning I saw Tom and Jerry on TV. It was really awesome, because for those of you who are from another planet and are unfamiliar with the show, there’s virtually no speaking, so there was no language barrier. It was very cool. That show always lifts my mood.
Also, besides the Olympics today, we flipped through the channels after dinner, and I saw Pokemon on TV. It was so awesome. I haven’t watched that show in years, but face it, I think everyone’s still got a special place in their hearts for Pokemon.
Pikachu’s probably the second most well known rodent in the world, after Mickey Mouse, if he’s not first himself. And like Tom and Jerry, you can’t really translate “Pikachuuuuuuuu,” so at least the Pokemon communication was pretty easy to pick up XD.
And then I watched the new Naruto, without understanding very much. But hey, at least it’s not impossible to interpret what’s going on. It’s pretty straightforward. Get a show like Death Note, though, where the story throws all sorts of craziness at you, and that’s more complicated.

Oh, on a cool note, I ate at KFC today. I had a sandwich….or rather, two, because the serving size here is incredibly small. But hey, it was delicious, and only a few hundred yen, so not to bad on any account.

Another food related story.
Today I had ika for dinner.
Yeah, ika is squid.
It was…different. But once you get over the fact you’re eating a freaking squid, it’s really not so bad. I enjoyed it, actually.

Anyhow, at the moment, I’m excited for Saturday. I called Alex, the Australian AFSer and we’re planning out something for then. I’ll probably go play some Wii at his house, and then meet up with some of the other AFS guys later. Maybe even a movie. I’m looking forward to it.

In any case, I’m gonna get ready to go to bed. Tomorrow morning we’ve got…well…something going on, and it has to do with honoring the dead in our family and stuff, so that sounds pretty important.
I’ll write you guys when I know more about that.

Good morning to you guys; but as for me, it’s off to bed.
Way to be a day behind. XD

Miss you guys.

August 13th

I’m starting to doubt I’ll ever be able to post this.
So needless to say, I’m pretty discouraged right now. And I’m sick and tired of Word trying to authenticate itself over the Internet only to report back that a “connection could not be established.” And Norton complaining to me that its virus definitions are out of date.
Yeah, if I could let it connect, I would. Gah. Stupid computer.

But see, here’s why I’m pissed.
Today, the 13th, I went out with Takasugi-san to try to get my ketai, or cell phone, figured out. And guess what? It looks like they’re going to have to confirm that I’m staying here for an extended period of time, so it’s quite likely I can’t get my phone until November, or three months from now. Moreover, they know nothing about an air card, so the chance of me getting Internet here at the Yamamoto’s is pretty close to none.
And it doesn’t help that the cell phone contract thing here is incredibly complicated so even having Takasugi-san, who speaks English, it’s just difficult. I don’t know what plan I want, or this or that, just give me the phone.
Erg. I know I’m being more brash than usual, but I’m just in a tired/ pissed mood. I just want something here to work. Is that too much to ask.

I miss talking to you guys, and I want to at least post these 12 or so pages of Word document I have saved up so far, but I can’t. I just can’t.

By the time you read this, I’ll have gotten Internet somehow, so I don’t even know why I’m practically yelling at my laptop here, but I need to get out some frustration somehow.

I’ll write again tomorrow, or sometime.
I apologize for how ridiculous this post is going to be.

August 11th

So I managed to get a post even out of the day that I was sure I’d have nothing to write about.
Why’s that?
Because I watched the video you guys all made and Rachel gave me.
And now I want my Internet more than ever so I can talk to you guys, let you know what I’m up to, and hear about you.

I miss you guys a lot, but I hope you guys are all doing alright there.
You guys rock.

Oh, and sure.
I’m up for teaching any of you guys Japanese. =]

August 10th Part 2

Sorry about that last post; it was one of the longest I’ve written so far. This one will be much shorter. But I was, and still am, very excited about the camp. But that was last posts’ topic. This time I’m here to talk about family.
Yeah, it’s the night of August 10th.

Anyhow, today, for some special reason, a bunch of my host family came. I figured out that I have two older sisters, one of whom is the mother of Takuya, who I’ve mentioned before. But yeah, I got to meet them both today, although their names didn’t stick, and I forgot to write it down. I’ll ask my parents again later. So yeah, besides them, Takuya also came, which was awesome, as well as his 16 year old sister, although she’s probably the most antisocial person of the lot. I think her name’s Saki, but I’m not even sure. That’s how little she talks.

I was glad to see Takuya again, and it was cool to talk to him a lot more this time than I did last time. We actually used pen and paper a lot too: it was easier for both of us to understand. So it was very neat, and I felt accomplished in knowing Hiragana and a decent amount of kanji. He liked being able to write in Romaji. He says I’m going to be his English teacher, which I think would actually be pretty cool, although I’m pretty sure he was kidding.

Oh, and he wrote his name down in kanji, which I later looked up. I learned his name means “arrow or precision” or “arrow of excellence.” Something along those lines. Kinda cool, eh?

But anyhow, the food was the crazy part. There was sooooo much. Moreover, today was make-your-own-sushi day, which, if you ask me, is a terrible idea for a gaijin (foreigner) such as myself. Eating sushi is different enough already. Now I’m making it?
Actually, I won’t lie, it turned out alright, most likely because Takuya was sitting by me guiding through everything to do, which was incredibly helpful. And it actually tasted good, with the exception of the raw shrimp. I’m a fan of shrimp, but today I learned that, at least for me, it’s gotta be cooked. The rest of the fish I was fine with eating, though, which is a plus. I had a lot of sushi, because, alright, making it yourself is cool, and it appeals more to your own taste.

After we ate, I brought Takuya up to this floor and showed him all my stuff, from the Rubik’s Cube to my iPod, to American books and my laptop. He seems to have liked it. And then I showed him pictures of Bloomington, and all of you guys, which was fun.
And then we listened to some music, and he noted that I had Death Note on my laptop. He asked me if I liked it, because he’d heard a lot about it, and when I told him I really did, we watched three episodes in a row. He’s hooked now. We’ll watch more later.
But what was really cool was the fact that he was listening to the Japanese, and I was reading the subtitles. Two people of different places and backgrounds understand a single source. That struck me as cool.

Then, we went back downstairs, and I was talking to my family, and explaining stuff about myself, and my family, and Bloomington, and I was really happy how I was able to communicate. It’s already getting better, and I’ve only been here for like 4 or 5 days.
Man it feels like longer though. I’ve done so much already, and seen so many things.

But today was a day of family, and I was cool with that.
I like these people a lot.

August 10th

Heyy guys! Wow I’m so excited to write now, having come back from the AFS camp not too long ago. Today is August 10^th, but anyways, enough of that. Let’s get started.

Alright first of all, let me explain what this camp was, since I’m pretty sure I haven’t done that yet and I’m too lazy to look back and check. So AFS is a program much like what Jan came to the US with. They send tons of students every year, from anywhere to everywhere, simply put. If you’ve got the money and the will to go and your parents sign for you, you can pretty go wherever you would like. So this camp was a “meeting” of the current exchange students here in Asahikawa, Japan, under the AFS program (which, mind you, is much different than the one I’m here under, the Sister Cities Committee). Now the reason I’m even involved in this camp is because Mrs. Hirama, a lady that’s on the Sister Cities Committee, is also part of the AFS staff. And she thought it’d be nice to invite me to camp out with them to get to know other exchange students, or as I may say, ryuugakusei. Anyhow, there were four of them, and they’ve been here since April, I believe, so they do know their way around. Oh, and yeah, they all speak English pretty awesomely, which made life so easy for me.

Oh, Amanda, if you’re reading this, they’re all glad to hear you’re doing well, and they ALL remarked several times how incredible your Japanese is. So kudos to you.

Anyhow, onto the exchange students.

First, of all, we have Alex. He’s Australian, which is pretty awesome because I don’t think I’ve ever met an Australian before. And of course his English sounds cool with his Australian accent. Alex is an interesting story. He’s 15, the youngest of our group, and yet he has this aura of confidence that draws you in. He makes you believe he’s got it all down, even if he has no idea. He’s got a humorous side to him, and he shares just about everything in common with me. We got along really well. And he’s got a Wii here in Japan and lives really close by. Enough said. He’s a cool guy. I could say more about him here, but I know he’ll just pop up in everyone else’s paragraphs too because that’s just how he is.

Ron, the Indian. Well, not really. His name’s actually Shishir, but apparently everyone calls him Ron in India (?) Whatever. Ron’s got a couple quirks of his own: namely, recording everything on video on his camera. I think he’s going to make a 20 hour documentary on Japan.

Oh sorry. Did I say 20?

I meant 200. :-P

Nahh, but Ron’s cool, and he’s probably the most knowledgeable person on the show “Friends” that I have ever met. Don’t worry Ron, it’s not a judgment, it’s an observation.

Oh, but here’s our judgment. So Ron’s other great cinematic passion lies with “A Walk to Remember,” which I give credit to for the sole reason of having many Switchfoot songs. Anyhow, Alex and I spent all of camp trying to convince him that “A Walk to Remember” is in fact, a chick flick. He denies it on every account saying, “but it’s a good movie.” To which we would answer, “yes, it is a good chick flick. But it is a chick flick nonetheless.”

He refused to budge on that. But I suppose he’s got enough reason not to trust Alex: I heard the story of how Ron once forgot his boxers in the public bath and his teacher was the one who found it and gave it back to him. If that wasn’t bad enough, Alex went around telling everyone. I reckon Ron’d kill me if he knew this was going online. Well, he will sooner or later. XD

Third. Ida: The German/ Norwegian. I say German/ Norwegian because by birth and by family, she’s German, but she’s lived in Norway most her life. But she speaks German! Which was awesome, because then we SHE spoke some German, which was impossibly difficult for me to remember. But yeah, Ida was really cool, and she probably had the best Japanese out of all of the exchange students. She could communicate pretty effectively without a dictionary. Good for her. She even managed to tell horror stories in Japanese, which is quite impressive.

And last, but certainly not least is Chia Min, the Malaysian girl. But here’s the good part. For some reason or other that I may never understand, she earned the nickname of “Bitch” somewhere along the line. So that was really funny. We all called her that. She’s really patient about it too and everything. By the end of the camp I stopped calling her that, although I won’t deny that the temptation definitely existed. She’s really cool, and moreover, I learned that Malay is written in Romaji (our alphabet). Which is pretty awesome, since I never knew that.

So these four were awesome undoubtedly, but then what was really cool was that, to make it more fun, the AFS people got a bunch of Japanese students to come camp out with us too, and it was cool getting to meet some actual teenage Japanese (at least for me, since I haven’t met too many, considering school still hasn’t started.) They spoke very little to no English, but my Japanese is improving slowly; been reading some more in my book, and just being immersed in it has brought out the language that I do know. And of course, on top of all that, the other exchange students have been here for about 4 months, so they do know their way around.

And just a quick note here. I don’t know if you guys realized, but we really were camping here, with tents and sleeping bags. The worst part is that we were going up the mountain, so it was freezing cold at night. But we lived. Anyhow, onward.

Actually, it was really cool though. We got a lot of time to do stuff.

First I taught Alex and Ron the card game BS, and then Ida and Chia Min joined in too. Eventually, the adults asked me to teach all of the Japanese kids there too, and with the help of the other exchange students (mainly Ida), we all got together and played. Altogether, there were about 20 of us, which makes for a pretty interesting game of BS. And all crammed into one tent, it certainly kept us all warm. The best part though was how the guys would all just lay it down however and just play and the Japanese girls were all delicate in laying down the card, like it was tea ceremony, or something. They did it in a way that made us not have the heart to challenge their card and call BS. By the end of the game we figured out they were a bunch of dirty liars. XD

It was pretty hilarious.

I taught the AFS guys how to play Egyptian Rat Slap, or Rat Screw, or whatever you call it, but we decided not to go through the trouble of teaching all the Japanese too. I mean, can you imagine playing a game where you have to slap the pile in the middle before anyone else….in a circle of twenty people? It wouldn’t work. We stuck with BS.

Oh, and of course some of the Japanese guys there brought their PSPs and it was really funny. But they were nice enough to let us play the games. Alex and I were playing through some random games (I think his was Silent Hill, and mine was some Monster Quest something). But yeah. They were in good moods, and it was kind of contagious. Haha. They’d yell out MONSTER!

It was pretty great.

Besides that, we also played these ridiculous “ice breaking” games. Like this one where we got in a line of four people, with a balloon between each person. The point of the game is to move together so the balloon doesn’t fall without putting your hands on it and race around the fire pit.

Sound hard?

It’s not: it’s brutal. Like impossible. But also very fun. (Yay contradicting sentences!)

And then the game where our teams of four split into two groups of two. One group would chuck these waterballoons across the field; the other group would try to catch them without popping them.

Guess which side I was on?

I’ll give you a hint: I got soaked.

So brutally unfair. I would catch the thing only to have it explode in my hands and all over me.

Luckily, we still won though.

Losers….had to inhale a bunch of helium from a spray can to make their voice high and funny. It was amazing to see, and I actually got to try it too. Coolest thing ever. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in the US.

Good to be in Japan.

And then later on that night we played this random game of “blindfold a person, give him a bat, and have the rest of the people tell him which way to go to get to a watermelon so he can smash it.” Alex got to do it once, and a Japanese girl too. It was hilarious, and we got to eat the watermelon after too.

We also made keychains, which were semi-lame, but fun at the same time. I tried to be all artistic and draw a mountain scenery and now it looks like nothing. Alex, on the other hand, just put whatever on, and in the end it looks like one of those famous paintings of just “nothing.” You know what I mean. Alex says I just don’t see the true message of the artwork, but I told him he didn’t either.

Oh and Alex and I played mini golf with Shouhe, and we made a bet that whoever lost was buying the ot

her two drinks. I’m glad I knew how to say “go get it; we’re waiting” in Japanese, because we beat him pretty badly. Or rather, Alex and I just played par, and he….didn’t. Haha. So I got a free sports drink; that was cool.

And of course, at night we got to light the fireworks. Hanabi. Which was veryyy, very awesome. We just had a bunch of those hand ones and it was a lot of fun. Well besides the fact people were running around trying to burn each other alive.

Eh, whatever. =]

Of course, the thing I really want now is a CELL PHONE, aka Ketai. Because so many people wanted my number, and I didn’t have one. Moreover, I saw Alex’s and Ron’s and they do everything Amanda had told me about and so much more. Japanese cell phones are incredible.

But anyhow, those are the main stories that I remember, but there were a lot more, “got to be here moments.” Over all it was incredibly cool, and I really hope to see them all again real soon, even though I know I will have the chance at upcoming events. And I mean, Alex and I already planned out seeing like 5 movies here and have Smash Bros. tournaments, so that should last me a good while. And of course, Ron and I are planning on studying kanji together.

Looking back, I really like all the friendships I formed this past weekend. But mostly, I appreciate how quickly the four AFS guys took me in. I mean, they’ve been together for a few months now, and I’m the new guy. But they still took me as one of their own.

I can’t describe how cool that was.

August 8th Part 2

Mann, I am tired.
You guys better appreciate it, because it’s midnight, and I’ve been getting up pretty early.
Anyhow, it’s still the 8th. I just have a few things to write about.

First. Pretty soon after I last left you guys off, I finally met someone in the family. He’s a thirteen year old guy named Takuya. He’s my host parent’s grandson, so yes, if you want to be technical about it, he’s my nephew. But I’m not going that way, he’s almost my age anyways, so he’s just a friend. Thinking of him as a nephew just creeps me out.
Anyhow, it was kind of cool, he came over for no apparent reason (although he does live close enough to come by bike, which is cool). But yeah. I like him. We had some trouble communicating (of course), but in the end, he pulled out a DS and I did likewise and we had fun. I hope I see him again soon.

Oh, and today was the first time I found something I really just couldn’t eat. Some pumpkin pastry. Man, I’ve never taken fondly to pumpkin. To me, that’s nasty stuff that should only be used for carving. Blech. But there was plenty of rice with sashimi and avocado in it that I found to be pretty good. Not only that but it looked amazing. So I managed.
But now thinking about this makes me wonder how I’m going to deal with nattou and anko, some weird kinds of fermented beans famed for being unpalatable to foreigners. Whatever. We’ll see.

Next order of business…the festival! Matsuri. I’m still not exactly sure what was special about today, but I don’t really care. It was awesome. Basically, it involved a bunch of people dancing around this central “stage” where a bunch of guys were playing drums pretty wildly. Looking back on what I wrote, that doesn’t sound all the great, but trust me, it was cool. I’m hoping to host my 12 second video somewhere on the web. I’ll let you guys know.
Mmm, and at the festival, I also had yakitori, which I’m pretty sure I’ve had before, but whatever. It’s basically grilled chicken with some teriyaki sauce or something. It was really good. They sold them on sticks, 50 yen each. Not too bad. I had a few.

And then of course, tonight at 9 o’clock, I got to watch the Olympics Opening Ceremony…live. It was really, really awesome. I mean the opening always is, but still…If you didn’t see it, do yourself a favor and head on over to youtube. It’s gotta be there.
But yeah, incredible synchronized stuff and dance and art. Awesome stuff.
And then I waited for like an hour and half while the teams were coming out to see some, like US, Brazil, Japan, etc. Cool show, in all =]

Anyhow, this is it. It’s about 12:20 and I need to get up kinda early tomorrow to get ready for my AFS camp. Hope it’s fun!

P.S. Lucky you guys. This isn’t even a full page on Word. XD

August 8th

Hey guys. Just a note to the lazy bums out there: this one will be pretty short in comparison to the one I wrote yesterday, so stick with me. Anyhow, it’s currently almost 1 PM Standard Japan Time on August 8th. Which means 11 PM on the 7th, for you guys in Bloomington. (Jan, that’d be, what…6 AM on the 8th?) Anyhow, I’ve got some time because my mom went to the supermarket and my dad’s asleep downstairs.

I don’t have much to report, but I finally gave my parents the presents. I ended up giving them….an Illinois coffee table book, a can of Beer Nuts’ peanuts, three placemats that look like the US flag (except the “blue” is made up of blueberries and the “red” is a bunch of strawberries. It’s pretty neat), and a pen from Caterpillar for my dad. Phew. It was pretty cool. They were so thankful. Then I walked my dad through the Illinois book (he, of course, had his magnifying glass =)), which is harder than it sounds because of the whole English/ Japanese barrier. I looked up like every other word in the dictionary XD. At least I’m pretty fast at it. He can’t really do it because he doesn’t know the order of the alphabet well….you know…A B C D E….so on. Which makes it very difficult to use an English dictionary. Anyhow one word in particular I kept needing and kept forgetting: famous. Yuumeina. I wrote it on my hand. I’ll have it by tomorrow XP
Oh, and my dad is really intent on learning English, or at least how to read it. I’m proud of him. Japanese isn’t exactly an easy language, but to their credit, the sounds are incredibly easy. In English we have freaky pronunciations, but none of that in Japanese. Always the same. So it’s hard for him, and I applaud him for trying so hard.
Actually, here, I’ve noticed a lotttt of crazy English quirks. Like his English-Japanese dictionary has a bunch of side notes on expressions and stuff.
For example, have you ever noticed how you can…
…accuse someone OF something.
…blame someone FOR something.
…charge someone WITH something.
And they all mean close to the same thing. Confusingggg. But undoubtedly the best one I’ve heard was from Mrs. Takasugi. She mixed up housework and homework. And if you think about it, house and home mean the same thing. And yet housework and homework are completely different. That’s so cruel.
English is a brutal language.
So yeah, that’s my “two cents.”

Oh, and then one more thing about TV that I thought was really cool. You know when you watch a commercial and think “Wow, that’s a cool song. I wish I knew what it was called.”? Yeah, I hope you think that too, because I think that alllllll the time. Well, in Japan, they put the name of the song and the artist on the bottom corner of the screen. That makes so much sense. Credit the person who made the song, and advertise all at once.
Oh, and I’m gonna admit, watching anime with commercials in between is so weird. I’m used to them cutting those parts out to put them online. Creepy. :-P

So I mentioned how my mom went out to go shopping. I thought it was interesting how she got all dressed up to go. Like she put on some vest like thing, and gloves, and a hat, and got an umbrella (even though there is absolutely no chance of rain), and everything. It was kind of cool.

One more thing. Tomorrow at 9 AM (at least that’s what I got from my mom) I’ll be going to some camp thing with AFS. AFS is another exchange program, except they send a lot of people, everywhere. Not just Bloomington and Asahikawa. But turns out there’s a lady on the Asahikawa Sister Cities Committee that’s also on the AFS committee, and that’s how I’m involved in this. I’m excited though, get to meet some people. I’ll let you guys know how it goes.

But as for tonight, I can’t wait to see the Olympics. I really love watching the games. They’re so intense. Actually one I’ve taken special notice recently is Ping Pong (or Table Tennis, as the professionals would probably want me to call it.) I’ve never really paid attention to professional Ping Pong, but mannnn, it’s intense. Like it just zooms back and forth and they manage to [accurately] hit back onto the table even when it’s like 6 or 7 feet away. Amazing.

I love writing these, because it lets me reflect, and think some in English to myself. And I open iTunes and listen to music, which is cool too. =]
But for now, I’m going to go enjoy what this house has to offer.