Merry Christmas!

Me at hardrock cafe in Nagoya, Japan. I thought it was cute so you all and indulge this picture with me :P

So the pictures are far to countless to upload one by one, so I have decided to assign them to packets and post the link to download them here. Enjoy:

http://www.mediafire.com/?dzmlzotavns
Those are from Miyajima Shrine

http://www.mediafire.com/?9yzfzfj5i3u
Here is Himeji Castle, most famous in japan i think...

http://www.mediafire.com/?2s2x1e1ksfn
This is my random snowboarding sessions. Once at Gifu-ken (gifu prefecture) and the other was at Nagano, where the 1998 winter olympics were held.

phew...this took a while, hope you enjoy the pictures! heres a few videos as well that might keep you occupied:



And especially for all of you, a ride down the mountain with yours truely ^___^



I love you all, and wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

With love from Japan,

Matt

Tiny Update

This is what i look like now. kind of spur of the moment, im tired of my hair being so long...wasnt really thinking that it was winter and kind of cold. It looks good though right?







They look good, right? its not curly hair but its not bad ya? heh i bet most of you are saying somthing like *AHHHHH* or some something along those lines.

enjoy it~

Its been a while--

....and, to my surprise, my last blog didnt show up. Thats odd, but...I expected as much.

Anyway! becuase it has been soooooo long I will put up some pictures as well!! hahah sounds good right?

Yep this is me...I've only been here for about 2 months and I'm already trying to kill them. I know that it seems like im being a little sexist so...

Yep. The men and the women have to go. Hey, don't look at me like that, those are the rules.

Yeash...just trying to be a politically correct killer here, besides, they're always speaking in this weird langauge that I havent quite caught onto...Well, I suppose the world wont miss two of em right?

<---this is a good friend of mine named Yuhei. Hes a great guy and a friggin genious at the guitar. I just watched one of his concerts at our School Festival. Which by the way was completely awesome because all of the food, and yes, there was a lot, was under 200yen (~$1.75).

That kind of brings me to a rant: the Japanese have a passion for mayonaise that exceeds life's reasonable bounds. Seriously. They have a corn and mayonaise pizza. I mean, can "Pizza" be "Pizza" if it doesnt have a ton of meet and/or the greasiest cheeze known to man? I'll kill anyone who makes the argument that this "Corn and Mayonaise Pizza" is good.

...hahah its funny that i said "I'll kill anyone who..." because as you have seen in the previous photos, I've already struck twice.

<>

Moving along: Life here has settled into life as usual. I can hold a steady conversation with a Japanese person, give or take a few major grammatical errors, and one massive miscommunication per conversation.

There was one in particular that caused me quite a bit of greif. You see, we have this thing called japanese language lounge, which is basically a place were you can go once a week to talk nothing but Japanese for about an hour or two. After a while of me being there, comming every week, talking as much as possible etc, of course I made a few friends. Of which there were two girls, and as the situation would be (thank the Good Lord for his humor), they were best friends. And if you have ever been formaly introduced to me, that means that i have probably forgotten your name at LEAST 4 times and re-introduced myself, save Hannah because shes stunningly gorgeous and family because i have to see them often enough that if i forgot it would make things entirely too awkward. (haha i love you brian :P) Anyway, so these girls name's were Kana and Chisato. If you have read any of my earlier blogs you know exactly and percisely how i feel about japanese names. So about a week ago, i walked in and started this conversation in japanese very casually:

Me: "Heyyy everyone, oh Kana! how are you?!"

Person who i thought was Kana: "KANA?! DID YOU SAY KANA!"

i would like to note at this point in tim that my eyes finally decieded to wake up from their mid-day nap and get their lazy carcasses working! unfortunatly in the fray of catching up on work, they seemed to have sent the picture and a chicken scratch of a name up to my brain, which has a hard time reading japanese names in the first place. Befuddled and confused my brain decieded to trust its first instincts and give it another go with its first choice.

Me: "Yeah, your names Kana isnt it?"

Person who I thought was Kana: "YOU! YOU THINK MY NAME IS KANA!? HOW RUDE!"

At this point I would like to point out that this was Chisato I was talking to, and Kana as a matter of fact, had yet to show up. Seeing that the Good Lord has quite the sense of humor, he chose this point to place that woman, in the room right as Chisato said her last sentence.

Me: " oh no..."

Chisato: "Oi, Kana, He just called me Kana! He completely..."

Kana: "AH YOUR TERRIBLE!!"

Me: " ahh I was mistaken, sorry sorry. Sorry, your not Kana your..."

Note: I'm thinking of trading in my brain seeing as this one is either retarded or keeps puting itself in dangerous situations like this. Isnt it like some kind of biological law that your body organs are supposed to enhance the body when in danger? fight or flight reflex? Alright...alright, needless to say, i blanked. 3 weeks of seeing these women for an hour each, and i remember one name, call it to the wrong girl, forget that girls name then set myself up to speak out the name and boom, i come up blank....

do you think....

na....

my body isnt trying to kill me is it?

ughh anyway thats how alot of conversations start off. I'm getting to be come a dangerously good name avoider mostly because i never remember. On the flip side, if i do remember your name then its all that more exciting for me to use it ^_^

Well sorry to say it but one of the only reasons i wrote this blog is because i was avoiding homework that must be done. See ya soon gents~

Kabuki Play's and Busy Kick-Ball Day's

Tests, Denny's, & Japanese Pennies.

Ok, so I'm going to whine again about the fact that we have tests everyday. Its a little aggravating but I guess its good in a way. At least if they test us everyday here, that means that every night we will all actually open our books instead of trying to start a top-eachother-on-how-long-it-has-been-since-I-opened-My-book contest. In that regard I am much more focused on my studies which is really nice. This is the kind of motivation that alot of people need in my personal oppinion. When I went to school in bellingham I think my record stands at like 3 months before I opened a textbook for a class, and that was before the final. (of course, not for my Japanese class, some other random class that wasn't any good for anything. Some English course or some such like that). I think the longest I go here without opening my book is like, half hour or so...you'd think that when you go to sleep you wouldnt be reading it but that is very ちがう、or very wrong. This book binds itself to your mind and forces you to open its pages every half and hour, concious or not. I had a dream the other night about being home with all my friends and we were all going to a sweet swimming hole near my old house, guess who decided to come along? My text book. No joking here, Minna no Nihongo decided to pop in and have a swim for about a half hour or so before it tried to drown me in vocabulary.
This weekend wasnt so bad though, I got to go and do alot of different things: of which included going to a Denny's. For some reason unknown to me, Denny's gradually becomes a better restaraunt as you go further east of Washington. At least thats my theory because by the time you go all the way around the world to Japan, Denny's becomes a severely nice place to eat. I had the best chef salad I think I've ever had (appologies to Jason "Hem-dog", the best chef beknownst to man, he has yet to make me one) in my whole life, and along with it some freshly, and I mean freashly, baked frenchfries. Now I know you're probably thinking "thats a barrel-o-lies, frenchfries never get made fresh" Oh no. They do. And its gooooood. My friends to the left and right all had nice lasangna's and quite a zesty bowl of ramen. It fills you up perfectly here too. You pay alot for the food and dont get very much but its almost worth it because you dont leave like...how do you say... ill from the ammount of food you have just consumed.
Along with that note, anything you buy here makes sure to be some odd type of number to make sure that you get at least 1円 (yen) penny back, with a max of 4円 pennies back. These are essentially useless, like the American penny, except that even if you take a giant jar full of them to the bank, they wont exchange them into money. So since I've been here about a month I have already amassed quite a few of these seemingly plastic pennies, and I pland to get some hot glue and make a tower, and then ironically sell this masterpeice of mine for about the number of pennies it takes to build it....

Hahaha--I know, I know "how devilishly tricky, Matt"..."your so smart Matt"..."That is the greatest plan that has ever existed ever!" Right? Right?

...Shut up, I know your not laughing. Well you might be but its not real laughing. Oh, dont try to say its for real, I know the truth. Oh yeah...I know. Watch yourself.

...yeah...moving on...

So theres an update for ya, sorry that I havent been on top of it lately. Hopefully people still stop by and check up every now and then. I'll resend and email just in case. Might need to cut my updates to the begining of the week and the end. w/e I'll figure it out. Soon there will be pictures too since I'm going to get a cell phone/5megapixel camera....Ahhh I love Japan. Cheers~

Short and Sweet

Ok, today's blog is going to be short on accout that I'm about to go to the zoo for the rest of the day (I'm really excited about it...they have live kangaroos~.

As I was walking around on my new school campus I fell upon one of those hole-in-the-wall kind of places. Actually, to be fair, it wasnt really a hole-in-the-wall more as it was a fairly large structure in the center of the centermost building on campus. Lets not stop to marvel at the severe lack of my perceptive abilities and get to the punch line: Its called "Ju:" Being the natural born American I am, I pronounced it just like it is spelled with a "J" sound combined with an "ew". Yep, thats right, the restaraunt/cafateria name is "Jew". This restaraunt has many classic options and selections of cafeteria food. Anything from Ju Burgers to Ju Fries and you can top it off with a big, unsweetened Ju Tea. Theres also a tasty Jew Ramen (whoops I ment Ju ::wink::).

After my eyes met with this place I couldn't help but laugh and make all the Ju comments that I had in store. "Hey guys want to go hit the Ju?" "Sorry, I'm German, probably shouldn't" "Man...that Ju is so RICH with flavor" "Maseltav to the Ju, the best restaraunt on campus!"

Apperently my fellow Japanese classmates were none the wiser. They started comming up with all kinds of stuff like "No no its pronounced "yuu", thats how everyone says it". Hahaha, yeah right. Man that was a good laugh.

Anyway, I hope your all doing well. Take care!

Aquariums, Karaoke, and the Names-I-Forget

Last Weekend I ventured out into the world that is Japan on a school field trip. Well not really a school field trip but it was free and a bunch of volunteers came to our door to pick us up and take us to the aquarium. There were 2 choices, Nagoya Castle or Nagoya Port Aquarium. I figure that a giant structure is much easier to find if I decide to visit it on my own than say, well for lack of better words, a small and very far away sea-level building. Turns out I was wrong. The aquarium happened to be at the end of a train line, which was probably about as difficult as it got to find. Past that you can just follow the children. It seemed that on any given day every child in Nagoya travels to this very fun little hole in the wall. On the way there you follow all the little wide eyed Japanese children who are so excited to see all the animals. Once you get there it really is amazing. I saw for the first time ever a dolphin performance AND a killer whale performance. It was so amazing. The turtles are exactly like in Finding Nemo too. They're giant and kind of float around with no real schedule. Its like they are sooooo cool and finally they figure out how cool they are so life looses its meaning. Instead of spending all their time keeping up on their Cool, like the dolphins, they take up floating/drifting to pass time until death. MAKING THEM THAT MUCH COOLER! Its mind blowing. Seriously. My ears are leaking...

Anyway the aquarium was fantastic and I'll never forget it because it was very very fun (and mind blowing, reference to the overly cool turtles). The other horribly awesome thing that I did last weekend was, for the first time ever, I went to Karaoke. There are no words that come to mind when I think about it. All I can say is that the Japanese perfected Karaoke. Not so much the singing as the whole act of going to go sing. Their singing is good, don't get me wrong, but there is work to b--you know I'm gonna stop there...

::Ahem:: moving along then. So when you get there your greeted by a very kind fellow who shows you directly to your room. You don't pay first so you don't have to think about money right away. Rather, they show you to your room straight away and then ask what you would like to drink. Did I mention that drinks are cheap and unlimited? Did I mention that ALL the drinks fall under one price that happens to be unlimited and cheap? Did I also mention never to get the coffee float? Yeah beware that coffee float, its not too sweet. Everything else is good though. If you drink alcohol as well, it saves quite a bit of money. On top of all the amazing beverage opportunities, you also have a large screen TV and comfortable seating, 2 microphones for duets and hand held song finder and a ton of American songs that I knew that I sang (like Weezer, and Incubus) and impressed a few people.

Hrm...I'm still searching for the correct analogy for all of you to truly grasp its convenience. I think I have one. Its like this: Convenient became a noun, then had love children with Comfortable, who also was a noun, coincidentally being the daughter of Relaxation and Happiness. The grand children were as follows: Vending Machine, Karaoke, and All-The-Name's-Less-Than-5-Letters-Long. The Oldest became famous throughout the world as the son of Convenient, Karaoke made herself popular and renowned in the local region of Japan, possibly the best hangout event in the world. Aaaand the last child happened to be a mistake that occured at a time when the Convenient's were down on their luck and Mr. Convenient had just lost his job. They're glad they had him (supposedly).

And I'm glad they had him too except that all those names that fit in that category are SERIOUSLY HARD TO REMEMBER. I meat so many Japanese people with names that are really long so they decide to shorten them to about 4ish letters long. These are too small for my brain to hold on too so I have to say "Sumimasen, namae o wasureta, namae wa?" (Sorry, I forgot your name, your name is...?) like a machine gun to catch on to it. Their convenient but still difficult. I hope I start remembering them soon, school starts tomorrow ^_^.

PS: Sorry, forgot to do Mondays blog, too bad for y'all (>_<)!!

Cooks, Fans, and Placement Exams.

I've taken quite well to cooking here. Mostly I cook cheap things: onions, eggs, and toast. Sometimes I'll get a potato and fry it on up for breakfast. The funny thing about it is that everybody in I-House (International House) never cooks. I never see anybody cook but when I start cooking people come over and say hello, have a bite, and tell me how good it is in Japanese.

Beyond that, there is still quite a lot of awkward glances that people give me when I walk around. Its nice though, because every time I speak Japanese to a Japanese person, they always laugh. Seriously...like every time. I know they understand me because the sentences I'm saying aren't very difficult. I feel like some sort of phenomenon to men and women alike.

I am the giggle godzilla. Prepare yourselves o ye Japan inhabitants.

Heh, I actually laughed at that last bit. Pretty funny to think about. ::ponders::

Anyway! today especially was fun. You know those placement tests people freak out about in all those story's you hear about Japan's school system? guess what? I just took mine yesterday, and then, another one today. I was in that friggin chair from 9:20am till 2:00pm. o....m...great goodness....it was absolute pure and refined insanity. At first I was like "WHAT NOW TEST!?!" and after like a half hour it was a roller coaster between "Should I just burn my test and accept failure?" and "Forget burning the test, should I just die? like right here and now?". Needless to say it was one of those experiences that my dad would infamously say "it builds character", or something along those lines. Heres a good depiction of it:



Ah! This is a good comparison; it was comparable to the number of quotation marks in that last (or this) paragraph...in lifetimes of doldrums. That's 8 lifetimes of doldrums. One less than a cat, but lets be realistic cats have the good sit-in-the-cool-of-the-sun-and-lick-your-hands-then-go-eat-some-more kind of lives. Hardly comparable to doldrums.

This has been my life to date. I miss you all.

Oh! One more thing: I've decided to write on Monday Wednesday Friday. You guys can just check up then to read the latest. Cheers~

Fast Trains and Arcade Buildings

I recently (yesterday) went into downtown Nagoya, named something like Ossu, or at least that's what everybody here calls it. Apparently, Nagoya Daikokugo Daigaku (my university) is way the heck out in the country. It takes about 10 minutes to walk to the bus stop, in which everybody around is not-so-indiscreetly starring at you. Especially the elderly, they just don't even try and save face. They just look at you with a surprised look and just keep looking until you make eye contact with them. Super eerie but I'm totally into all the attention. As a matter of fact, if you know me, that's one of my favorite things. Moving on, on the weekends an all day bus/train pass is only 600 yen which is kind of like $5.50 and you get this traveling card that slips in and out of tiny machines that allow you to travel everywhere. The bus ride to the train station takes about another 20 minutes. From there you get ON A FREAKING TRAIN THAT IS SOOOO COOL!!!! Not even kidding it seems like you go a million miles an hour. Its like being on an amusement park ride. This isn't even the bullet train either, this is just a regular.
I have to stop and pause the trip here. So I met a British guy in my group named Raz, and me and him were really weirded out how whenever we looked in one direction everybody seemed to fall asleep. It was like if we looked around at people then they would immediately look down and pretend, to what we assumed, was the sleeping cycle. Finally we see all of these Jr. High looking kids with soccer uniforms on. I decide to ask them where their game was. After much giggling and laughing at me and my friends attempt to ask the very simple question, they respond with a "its already finished". Then we made significant effort to ask if they had won or not, which resulted in much laughter and a "No we didn't". This was followed by about 20 minutes or actually the remainder of the train ride of awkward silence. I'm not talking like you just brushed up against a strangers backside and decide not to say sorry kind of awkward. I'm talking like you just asked somebody what they did for Fathers Day to find out that their father has been dead for a very long time kind of awkward. Neither party, us nor the Japanese soccer players, knew what to say, but both parties wanted to speak. Finally, a minor eternity later, we arrived at our stop and were able to get off the Train-o-pain.
There we were, emerging out of the underground train station and were instantly met with an elaborate visual of how a real city should be. Shops every step, Japanese fashion everywhere, the unfamiliar smell of a new culture, the whole shabang. The most notable of things to mention about the rest of the trip, besides the price of everything being like 4 times anywhere in the states, was the very elaborate arcade system. It was as close to seizure and visual pleasure as humanly possible. Contained chaos inside of the eyelid. On the bottom floor you had all the grapple games, all the racing games and kiddy games. If you dared venture upstairs, you were met by virtual horse races (seriously gambling...not kidding) and all of the super mech and fighter games. There were actually these games that you would put trading cards down on, and then play the game. Imagine your Pokemon cards coming to life on a video screen as soon as you put them down on the screen. It really was phenomenal. With the super mech games you could actually place bets on who you think would win too. It was really something else.
I need to build up some courage to maybe actually play a game against a Japanese person. I know I will get owned but I just need to...perhaps another day...

Small shoes...

Today I decided to go on my travels alone. There is a castle about 10-15min away called Iwasaki Castle. Sounded good at the time so I got my map and left...

yes...not quite a gripping story yet but it gets a little better. Being from the States there is a certain attitude that goes along with obtaining and using a map. If you need to use a map to find where your going then it is obviously a very long long way away. Not only is it a long way away but it should very well be difficult and confusing to get too so that the reward of getting there is much more satisfying. Even in video games maps help but it still confuses everybody and the compass has to come and save the day.

All of this is to say that it is not this way in Japan. Rather, its quite the opposite. There are tons of signs and buses to get you to where you need to go. So I hop on a bus that is headed toward the long and far off destination, a whole 3 inches on a map scale. Not only am I from the states but also from Washington, where every inch on a map includes some mountain pass or long stretch of dessert or some forrest.

It is at this very moment that I conclude that I should pass the time practicing my Japanese with one of my fellow temporary companions on this bus, a slightly older Japanese woman that just happened to be sitting there at the time that I boarded the bus. Probably the worst person to talk to on the bus seeing as her voice was incapable of speaking louder than tiny tiny ninja mice walking ever so carefully. Regardless, I scramble my brain thinking for something to ask or say, and arrive at the conclusion to ask her where the Iwasaki Castle is and if this bus takes me there. The conversation goes as follows (translated for your viewing pleasure)

Me: "Good afternoon, Does this bus go to Iwasaki Castle?"
Lady: "Iwasaki Castle?"
Me: "Yes, does it go there?"
Lady: "Yes it does."
Me: "How long a trip is it?"
Lady: "Not long at all"
Me: "Oh grea--"
Lady: "There it is." ::points at the passing castle::

...I had been on the bus maybe 2 minutes and with this newly acquired information, realized that my "grand" expedition was probably a faster walk than bus ride. As a matter of fact the next bus stop was a fair way away from the castle, and being 93 degrees and 80% humidity, that was quite a long venture.

As I walk up to my very first castle that I have ever seen (post cards not included) I am in awe of how beautiful and big it is. Its really impressive it is. Theres just one problem. On the outside its big, but the inside is in fact quite small. Not just spatially but it seems like everything shrunk down inside. Even the nifty little shoes you have to where when your inside. (for those of you who didn't know you do have to change your shoes out for slippers when entering a museum or household). They wern't really slippers for me more as they were toe covers. And there is all of these old artifacts that are really cool and its nice to see some objects that were used in Japanese history and all that. Climbed up to the top and there was an overhang that I imagined archers and that sort of thing being on, fighting battles and whatnot. Truly it was fun. I couldn't read any of the explanations at all, my reading skills are all shot when it comes to kanji so I did my best to pretend. Everything looked cool though, despite their tiny features.

All things aside it was a very fantastic trip and everything was very beautiful and the bamboo around the castle was fascinating to see and the garden etc etc. Still felt silly about using a map to get there though. Turns out I might be able to see it from the second story of my dorm.

Yeah...lesson learned though, still don't think I'll ever get used to these maps...