Edo-Tokyo Museum

Today marks the start of our lovely five day weekend. The weather is gorgeous today (mid 70's and sunny), but tomorrow it's supposed to rain... a typhoon again, I think. Or not, I can't tell.

Scott and Emily and I went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. It looked gargantuan, but once we were inside, there wasn't nearly as much to look at as the size of the building would have made you think. They had a sign in English for pretty much everything, but there was definately far more information in the Japanese versions. It had a bridge that was a replica of an important bridge from a long time ago, and miniature versions of some important buildings and stuff and some artifacts, but it was definately a museum aimed at school groups - and it was crawling with middleschoolers. A lot of whom thought it was amusing to say hello to me in English. I answered a couple times, and then even more of them would say hello. It was kind of weird. The museum only took about an hour and a half to see everything - it was laid out chronologically, starting from Edo and working towards modern Tokyo, with the 1923 Kanto earthquake, World War II and a brief display on the 1964 Olympics. I took many pictures of both the signs and some of the artifacts.

The museum building itself was very futuristic - there was this crazy "plateauing escalator" (Scott called it that) in a plastic tunnel to get from the ticket booth to the actual entranceof the museum, kind of like at some movie theaters in that regard.

Afterwards, we took the train back to Nishi-Chiba to the school for the festival. Near where we came in it was fine, we saw a guy riding a bicycle pulling a Thomas the Tank Engine float and a big thing we thought was a light blue penguin, but it had a very small green umbrella with shell lines on it, so it may have been some sort of freakish turtle. The rest of it was kind of weird... there was a big stage with someguy twirling a flaming stick around, but then some girl dressed like Alice in Wonderland came out and we kept walking and looking at food... it was uncomfortable because the kids were yelling a lot and it felt like they were yelling especially loudly at us... some people tried to talk english to us and Emily told them we didn't speak english.

I ended up getting a taco type thing, whichwas more like a burrito but was on a real tortilla and everything. And I got a red bean crepe, which had red bean paste in it and whip cream and some green tea flavored powder sprinkled around. It was really good.

Then we walked back to the dorm and Emily got her papers and we walked to the Ward Office to pick up our foreign resident cards, which was really easy, we just handed in a form and the lady gave us our cards. It's holography. We were leaving and decided to walk through this little park that looked like it parallelled the main road... but after the park, we ended up on a street and kept walking, thinking there would be a cross street,but there never was. So prettymuch we ended up going in a triangle (I really need to figure out how to make a map on here) to get back. Tonight is half price day at Pizza Hut so we are goingto go and get pizza... except I think they will be smaller than we hope. Oh well. At least the crust looks thicker than a pita.

halloween

me in costume.

Emily and I are going go to the grocery store and buy some candy and eat it while playing scrabble in honor of Halloween. No one here seems to care at all about it, but I want to eat candy. I sort of had a costume - I wore cargo pants and a long sleeve teal shirt with a shirt sleeve purple one and a hat... I had binoculars in my bag to be a hiker. Sadly, I did not need my costume, as no one else was dressed oddly. I wore my halloween socks, though.

Hopefully my internet will not get turned off for a day at the beginning of the month... it was very confusing, saying that you had to pay by the 25th or they had to get your payment by the 28th or else it would be turned off from the first until three days after you paid, and I paid on the 28th... which was Saturday... so that would mean that three days after I paid would be today, which means my internet should not go anywhere. But if it does, I'll check my email at school.

I cleanedup my room a bit this afternoon, my pile of pants and sweaters was slowly expanding to take over the floor, but now they're all back on the shelf. I also swept the floor again today.

Hooray for two day weeks! We had class yesterday and today but Wednesday and Thursday (and maybe Friday and Saturday) is a holiday because Chiba University was founded on November 1st. Friday, the 3rd, is "National Culture Day", so that's a holiday for everyone. Supposedly at the university festival they have lots of inexpensive food and things to watch. I'm looking forward to having a nice break from class... I already did my homework that I got this week.

Scott and Emily and I are going to Edo-Tokyo Museum tomorrow as part of our assignmentfor history class - we are supposed to write a paper comparing an aspect of Edo (1600's to mid 1800's Tokyo) with our home town during the same era... I guess I will have to be on the lookout for exhibits about French Jesuits, fur trading and fires... since that's about all I can think of that was around Chicago between 1600 and the 1870's... and wikipedia confirms it, adding only a few military treaties and forts. There also was a beer riot. I might actually be able to compare the Haymarket Riot to the riots that happened in Edo as a result of rampany inflation after the opening of Japan to foreign trade in the 1850's. Except they didn't have the same cause at all and nothing in common (that I can disern,anyways) besides the fact that they were both riots.

I need to buy some more onions.

field trip!!!

Yesterday my architecture class went on a field trip. Sadly, we did not take a magic school bus, but met at the train station at 10 am and took two trains. We walked from the station up a big hill past many bamboo trees to the samurai houses. There was an old man who gaveus a tour, sort of, but our teacher ahd to keep repeating everything he said in english. We walked around the outside of one and got to go inside of two other ones. They had extremely short ceilings and doorways. I took a lot of pictures, but the internet is being kind of slow right now, so I will post them later.

We also went to a museum - they had a lot of very interesting things ranging from prehistoric Japan to the 1920's, but the Edo period exhibit was being remodeled, so we didn't get to look at that. I took many many many photos there, and hopefully not all of them are goingto be blurry (they didn't allow flash photography, and it was kind of dim, which usually results in half my pictures being blurred). There were many miniature streetscapes of what Japan looked like over the centuries, which were very cute. The museum was interesting, but I think it would have been more interesting if I had actually been able to read any of the writing.

Afterwards, we took a bus back to the train station. I ended up going with some people to Chiba station and we went to Tower Records (because Scott wanted to) and then looking for a yaki niku place (Japanese style Korean barbeque), but we couldn't find one and ended up going back to Inage, where we knew there was one but didn't know how good it would be. It turned out to be really good. We had to sit at two tables because there were six of us and I ended up with Scott and Gene, who was having kind of an attitude about it, saying that he hoped it wouldn't be too bad (since he is Korean, I guess he has higher expectations). The meat came to us raw with this garlicy oniony sauce with sesame seeds on it, and the table had a little grill in the middle. It was really good. I also had a bowl of rice. We went to baskin robbins afterwards and I got this weird flavor of the month called "magical mint night", which was dark chocolate ice cream with a swirl of blue mint flavored ice cream and it had little pieces of pop rocks candy in it... so it tasted good, but I think I will avoid the pop rocks ice cream, I didn't really like the sensation of the fizzing.

I will put up pictures of the field trip later, I am lazy and the internet is slow.

This is getting ridiculous

Every time I can think of something to write, I can't get to the login page to actually write in my blog. The server must be extremely overloaded. I'm glad I set up an email address to send posts to, so hopefully this will work.

This morning I ate some of the yogurt I bought. Adding vanilla extract to the yogurt did not,in fact, make it taste like vanilla. Adding some sugar to it made it slightly sweeter in spots, but overall also did not have a noticable effect on the flavor of the yogurt. I guess I will learn to like plain yogurt, since that's the only kind they sell in the "big" containers (which are only 500 ml, which is a little more than two cups). I did eat a lot of granola with it, and the granola is pretty good, I had gotten some brand that I think is German.

I went to the shop 99 near school, which is bigger than the one right near here, and got a glue stick and a pair of tongs... I really should have bought tongs a long time ago, like the first day I was buying kitchen stuff, but for some reason I didn't, and when I saw them as I was aimlessly wandering around, I decided I needed them.

Not really related to Japan, I've been listening to XRT streaming over the internet, and I really like the new Death Cab For Cutie song. I like the streaming radio because not only does it show you who the artist is and the title, it also shows the album cover and everything is spelled right (not like on the radio , where everything scrolls and never seems to fit quite right).

I just had some more shu mai and a steamed bun for lunch, maybe for dinner I will have pasta. Or maybe rice. I think I want to eat pasta, though. I don't have any cheese to eat with it, though, so I guess I should go spend 500 more yen on a bag of preshredded "pizza" cheese (It's probably the cheapest option, everything else is presliced and seems really small)... I also wanted to get something else, but I forget what right now... A hole puncher, I think.

I have not really done anything interesting.

Let's see... yesterday I had Japanese class and then I met my tutor for a very fast lunch (of tempura udon in the cafeteria) and then we met my "supervisor" (who is the faculty member who agreed to sponsor our admission into the university, but doesn't actually do anything), and talked to him for a while... he knew English really well and is actually in the Anthropology department, so I'm lucky in that regard - some people have advisors in really random departments, because they have a hard time getting enough of them - and he said that he would email me when the anthropology department has activities, because he thinks the Japanese students should meet me (apparentally there are only 20 kids majoring in anthro here).

I also went to the grocery store and bought a lot of food on the way home because I was really hungry. I got chinese buns (but I have not yet managed to pick a flavor that is barbeque, they are always some sort of mushroomy oniony flavored sauce with ground meat), shu mai that were really good, gyoza to pan fry, a box of soup packets (it was on sale, ten for 250), some bananas, two buns, a carton of yogurt and a little vial of vanilla to flavor my yogurt with. And some green tea ice cream that really tasted like green tea. The checkout lady was telling me something abuot dry ice to put the ice cream in, but I was just planning to eat it as soon as I got home, and it didn't get too melty in the 5 minutes it took to go back.

I played a lot of katamari yesterday, at the end of the final normal level, there's this weird old fashioned katamari that's two dimensional, like video games from the 80's, and I finally completed the really hard level on that.... but I doubt I could do it again.

Also, all my laundry is dry now, I brought in the second batch of stuff yesterday morning. And it stopped raining and looking inclement.

walking to school

The weather has become pleasantly autumnal- it is damp, gray, and the clouds look like snow. Unfortunately, its still in the 50s, so snow is highly unlikely. I am on my way to one of my economics classes - the one consisting of me, Scott, Emily, two American grad students and about 8 Japanese kids. Only one ofthem seems to know English, which is bad since the class is in English...

We are going to go eat afterwards to commiserate - because there are only three of us, we are going to end up doing a lot of presentations:(

I actually brought in some of my laundry,so hopefully it will get dry.

yarg

So yesterday morning it was bright and sunny and I was like, ooh, I should do laundry. I used the washing machine, which was a lot easier (and faster) than my escapades doing it in the sink, since I had two weeks' worth of clothes. I hung it all outside on the balcony. About six hours later, I look out the window and it's gray and misty... so my clothes, which had been almost, but not quite dry when I checked them about three hours after I washed them, were damp again. Stupid weather. It hasn't been anything but sunny and clear for the last two weeks. At least I did not wash my jeans, so I have plenty of pants to wear (and actually, I have enough shirts too) until it gets sunny and hot again.

I need to figure out how to caption pictures

We ended up going to this Japanese bar type restaurant called Warawara (which is really hard to pronounce). They had little snacky type food and drinks. It was fun, we played some games and sat around and talked. I had a drink that was blue. I also had something that was called a Beckham... I was excited because it had a cherry in it, but it was like a sweet pickled cherry, not a fake sweet maraschino cherry (which I guess are real cherries technically anyways). We got there around 8:15 and got back to the dorms around 12:15 - so I stayed up kind of late. Beforehand, Scott and Silke and I had gone to this welcome party organized by a group of older looking ladies in some mothers' group, and there was a lot of food there, so I wasn't that hungry by the time we went out to eat. I got two presents - a pink and red and white gel candle that sort of matches my room from the other JPAC kids and the candy from my tutor.

they say it's your birthday, it's my birthday too, yeah

Now I am 21.

Today's been rather hectic, this morning I went and paid my rent and got a package from Aaron's mom with yarn for my birthday and then had my first vocab quiz in Japanese class (I knew all the words, but I think I spelled one of them wrong). I met my tutor for lunch, she got me a present (a little tin of candy). Some lady accosted us while we were walking to the cafeteria wanting to know if I could teach her French. Chisaki told her I was American, I didn't know French. For lunch I had a breaded pork chop (tonkatsu) and french fries... we were almost done eating and the lady who wanted to learn French sat at the table next to us and then ran back and bought us mochi (they were really good) and talked at us about (well, I'm not sure, but I think) how she learned French when she was young and wanted to relearn it, but she did not want a guy to teach her. (It turns out she'd asked all of us white people and the Canadian guy didn't know enough French to suit her immediately). Law and Society was so boring, I was supposed to summarize and come up with discussion questions based on the reading, but I started giving my summary and he interrupted me and talked for like 45 minutes about something and then was like what's your next point... I was kind of mad at him, but I got some lists made. Psych was fine, we got the book (it had already come from amazon) and we got to go early. Silke and I came back and went to the store and then remembered we had forgotten to go pick up the photocopies of the next set of reading for the law class, so we ran (while riding our bikes) back and he was still there, drinking wine with a couple of other people, and offered us some... I said we were riding bicycles and therefore could not join him for a glass of wine. It was kind of weird. I just took a shower and now I'm waiting for my hair to dry and then we are going to some pub type place near the school that Gene (one of the kids from maryland) has been to and said was nice.

And that is all for now.

my further culinary adventures

So apparently the only thing I am capable of writing about is food. Today I went to Saty (the grocery store with the biggest selection and is also the bottom of a department store) and bought ground beef and a can of what I thought might be tomato puree but ended up being about 6 whole plum tomatoes, fennel, oregano and some bread.

I made a sort of red sauce, but I used a whole big onion and so therefore it was rather heavy on the onion aspect... I sauteed the onion and the ground beef at the same time, each in half of the pan, and then added the tomatoes and had to cut them up with my spatula. Then garlic (fresh, since I have so much of it, I used two cloves), fennel and the oregano... I had cooked the pasta first. Stupid spaghettis, though, so it was not quite how I like it. I intentionally made enough for lunch or dinner tomorrow, so I hope the spices have a bit more of a chance to saturate the sauce overnight.

All in all, though, it tasted really good and had a nice texture, even if the texture was mostly supplied by onions. Luckily, I only have one onion left, so soon I can start over using a different vegetable.

Also, today I bought my ticket to come home at Christmas, so I am excited!!!

Since my birthday is Friday, I am trying to decide what to do, but I am kind of lacking in ideas. I was talking to Scott before Japanese class and we had vaguely discussed going to a bar or something (since I'm turning 21, it would only be appropriate, although kind of redundant since in Japan you only have to be 20), but there don't really seem to be any interesting looking bars around the dorm. An american graduate student named Daniel had told Scott about someplace that was going to have a band of some sort playing on Friday, so maybe we will do that. I don't know that it's what I want to do, but I also don't really know what I want to do. Maybe get pizza or something. Or thai food... I have seen a thai restaurant a couple blocks away... There is a british sounding bar type place called something like "the lions head pub", which I thought might have potential, if only for the fact that they might serve fish and chips... but since it is British and not Wisconsinian, it would likely not be all you can eat. And really, what's the point if you can't eat french fries and deep fried cod until you are going to explode?

risotto

So today after my history class (which was fairly interesting) I walked back with Scott and Emily and then I went to the grocery store and bought rice. I ended up making a risotto with the other half of the onion I ate with my steak on Sunday and some garlic I also purchased - it was 198 yen (two dollars) for I think 18 cloves of garlic. I'm not sure exactly how many are in the bag(it's one of those stretchy bags that is mesh), but I think I will have to eat an awful lot of garlic (especially for one person) to use it all up. They had about six cloves for a dollar, but I figured buying a pound (maybe more) of garlic was cheaper...

I neglected to photograph my risotto, but since we all know that risotto, as a rule, is not particularly photogenic, you can just imagine a slightly gloppy whiteish blob with some bits of light yellow onion in it. I think I actually like risotto better than rice rice, and since I have plenty of free time, it's not a big deal that you have to stand there stirring it for half an hour. I do have enough left over for tomorrow's lunch and it's kind of something that would be best microwaved, but I am unsure where there is a microwave. I know there are some at school, but they are outside the convienence store and seem to be always in use. Maybe at the end of lunchtime they would be more accessible. Or else I can just reheat it in the frying pan I used to make it.

yeah, I have no idea what I will do with all that garlic. Keep vampires away?

my weekend

so this weekend I was kind of bored. On Friday night I went to a "party" that the spanish speakingkids were having in their building's meeting room, but I was really tired and it was not that interesting, so I left pretty early. Silke and I had made pancakes that evening. Saturday I was supposed to go lacrosse shopping with my friend but she had to do something with her mother, I'm not sure what. So I just sat around and talked on skype a lot and knitted and read and ate bread. On Sunday I did more of the same - I also went to the grocery store and bought some food, including a steak. It was kind of expensive, but on par with the cost of beef at home. It was really good, and was Australian beef. I cooked it a little longer than I intended, but it was still only mediumly done. It also occured to me that if I can't even keep myself occupied without spending the whole time eating for two days I would get really fat over christmas break and that I might as well go home and overeat... so I researched ticket prices and I have decided to come home to visit for Christmas. I'll actually be in Chicago longer than Ann will be home from conneticut, which is kind of weird. I'm going to get the ticket on Wednesday, because supposedly fares are cheapest just after midnight on Tuesday-Wednesday because the airlines open up new blocks of seats, and so therefore the computer is computing the price based onthe greatest number of open seats. Or something. I'm not sure I understand entirely, but I believe Ann, she flies a lot.

I also got a new bike lock and took the old one that was hard to turn the key off and put the new one on... but now I think I should have gotten the same style lock,but I guess it is only a dollar, so I can always get another one.

The economics class today was sooooo boring, and there are just three of us jpac people in it - there are about 8 Japanese students who are all in economics and tehre are two grad students from America, who are also both economists, and apparentally they meet twice, once with us to talk in English and then again a different day and discuss the same things in Japanese. ahhhhhhh.

Oh well.

I want to eat meat!

I know at home I rarely go out of my way to eat meat, but after two weeks eating carbs (mostly) and veggies (occasionally) I was very tempted by the meat at the grocery store. I apparentally cannot become a vegetarian. I have had two breaded and deep fried pork chops since I got here. Oh, and about half a cup of tiny pieces of beef that may or may not have dbeen cooked.

:/

my bathroom

So I have been asked about my bathroom repeatedly, so here are pictures. It measures 47" by 31" and I tried to take pictures of the sink in both positions. Basically, the faucet part swings like a kitchen one and the sink "drain" just roughly lines up with the shower drain... which might explain why the floor never gets completely dry.

class

So yesterday I had my first class. It was Introduction to Architectural Design and there is no actual work. We go on two field trips, one to a samurai house and one to Harajuku, (to look at old and new architecture) and to a party.

Today I had my first Japanese class, and there were about twenty people in it, which is surprising, since only 5 people took the test for that level and the one below it. There are about five or six people who were in the first one last semester, but there are as many people who took the intermediate test and apparentally did really badly and got put into 121. I think it will actually be better in the long run to be in a class that starts out a bit below my level than to be in a class that might be starting right at my level.

Also, I went to "Modern Japanese Economy and its world role I" and the teacher was pretty funny and knew english really well. He said that he knew that these classes were just an excuse to be in Japan, and we just have to show up to class and write an essay, no tests or anything.

I think that I will try to write essays for these classes that I can combine to one big paper when I write my ethnographic project for anthro next year.

I bought some halloween pocky, some are pumpkin flavored. and they have halloweeny things on the package, little pumpkins and ghosts.

Scott and I tried to find the secondhand store but we failed in using the map Yohei had drawn. We managed to find the station that was on the map, and what we thought was the correct intersection, but there was no 7-11 there, so we had no idea what to do.

I think it might be cheaper (actually, I know it would be) to have someone mail me a rice cooker from America. The cheapest one I have found is about 80 dollars american... and at target, they cost 10 dollars. There's one more store I want to go to, and Ican certainly survive not eating rice in Japan, though, so maybe I would be better off not bothering with one.

I'm excited to go to Akihabara and get lacrosse stuff on Saturday with Masako, my friend from lacrosse. I need new goggles, but I hope they have different ones here besides the ones we used at Northside, because EVERYONE has the same goggles, just in different colors.

I wish it did not get dark so early here.

the beach.

so this morning I decided to try to find the beach. It hadn't looked far, so I set off. It was a lot further than it looked on the map, but I eventually got there.

and it looked just like being in Indiana.

Opening Ceremony

So today we had an "opening ceremony"... it turned out to be kind of lame. They put all the new foreign kids in a big meeting room and gave a couple speeches and then read off our names and made us stand up. Then the professors went around and said their names and departments and things like that.

Lacrosse was more fun today, since I kind of know what is going on now. They gave me a stick to take home with me. It's the same as the stick I have at home, except it is white instead of yellow. I have borrowed an eyeguard, but I think I need to get one if I am actually going to keep playing. I want my mom to mail me mine, but since it is kind of breaking, I think it might be easier to buy a new one.


I met Silke and Emily and we rode our bikes to the ceremony together - Emily is kind of not so good at riding a bicycle. She ran into a pole, but was going really slow so it didn't matter. Afterwards, some people just randomly took the train to Chiba, one more station past the school towards the airport, but Silke and I rode our bikes back and went to Saty to the italian place and I got potatoes au gratin, I think (at least, it was potato chunks with cheese and bacon bits) and then we wandered around the department store again. all the clothes are wayyyyyyyyyyyy too small.

I'm kind of sleepy, but it is only 3 in the afternoon here, I can't go to bed yet. I have to wait until it gets dark out, at least.

Tomorrow morning I think I will do some laundry.

my bicycle has round wheels again

I went to the bike shop where some kid had taken me before and a older lady helped me and I got my tired inflated and bought a pump to do it with. So now I can roll around.

I also bought pancake mix and butter. I got whatis about the same size as two sticks of american butter and it cost 248 - but that was the cheap, generic brand. sigh.

someone was cooking sausages and they smelled really good... I am so hungry. I think I will try to make my pancakes now.

lacrosse!

On Sunday there was this "sports festival" which I went to... It was different fromwhat I had been expecting, instead of tables from different organizations, it was one group and they made us do team building stuff and play games. It was actually a lot of fun. Silke, one of the germans, also went and they kept asking us if we understood the rules of the games...

I met a bunch of girls who play lacrosse here at Chiba and they invited me to come to play with them, so this morning I went to practice. I had sort of forgotten how to play because I haven't for so long, and I had no idea how to do any of the drills but eventually I was understanding it a little bit more. I plan to go tomorrow again.

I went to look for a rice cooker with Silke yesterday night - the cheapest one was almost 80 dollars!!! so I guess no rice cooker for me, at least not from that store. I have to keep looking for a cheaper place to buy one,but they did not have them at the cheaper store...

We got these crepes which were not really like french ones like in america, she and I both got the dessert ones, with fruit and whip cream, but her tutor, who is also on lacrosse, got one that was like tuna salad... it had lettuce and tuna and then was folded and rolled so it was like an ice cream cone. We were both still hungry after that so we bought some bread and lettuce and cucumbers and sat in my room and ate salad and bread and talked... I think I need an english german dictionary. Or more like she needs one...

Today my goal is to get air in my bicycle tires.

Some pictures of my room

Finally I have the internet!!!

So apparentally in Japan having the internet is not high on anyone's priorities. Neither is having a computer that works with any speed. This is because they spend all their time sending emails on their phones, which you can send as much email and text messages as you want for about 30 dollars a month, but you can only talk for 25 minutes. Last night we (the americans) went and got phones with one of our "tutors" (a Japanese student who is supposed to help you with stuff). Mine is white and I like it. Luckily, it has English menus on it (which admittedly was a high priority even though everyone was saying that I should not worry and that I would learn how to use it fast anyways), but I still can't understand the menus very well.


So.


We got to Ohare very early on Monday. My big bag ended up being .2 lb over, so I moved some lotion to a different bag and it was okay. I actually ended up taking a backpack with books and stuff and checking it, which was good - I had some extra space to put stuff. I found my gate right away, it wasnot hard at all. After a while I wandered around and got a bottle of pink lemonade because I was really bored. It was something like $2.50. Which is outrageous. I still have about a tablespoon of it, I've been conserving it.


I got on the airplane and put my suitcase in the overhead bin and stuff. There was one girl next to me on the aisle and the guy in the middle was not very old, maybe my age. he was going to thailand. I watched The Devil Wears Prada again adn the disney channel station. I slept for a couple hours, which was good. The food on the airplane:
Chicken teriyaki
ramen with tofu (the guy came around with a kettle of hot water and poured it into the bowl of dried noodles)
this pseudo italian thing with ricotta cheese wrapped in lasagne noodles with tomato sauce

After I got off the airplane, there was a corridor about half a mile long with moving sidewalks that was empty except for the people who just got off my airplane. we were eventually funneled into immigration, where there was a planeful of koreans, but I only waited in line for about ten minutes. the girl just took my papers and stamped my passport and put this piece of paper in it. Then I got to the baggage place, where my stuff was already off the carousel. It hadbeen about twenty minutes since we got off the airplane. There was another lady there too, she was japanese but was american and she walked with me to customs (where the guy just looked at my passport and didn't even touch my luggage) and then she found me a cart for my stuff and told me how to get to the train. I had to wait in line to get money changed and they had to count my wad of canadian twenties repeatedly.

so finally I got to the train ticket place and got my ticket (it was easy, a girl asked me where I was going in english and just used the ticket machine, I didn't need to wait in line and then I went to the platform and waited for about twenty five minutes for the train to get there. It was about 40 minutes from the airport to Inage station. some old guy helped me get my suitcase off the train, he lifted it out and I rolled the big one. so I found the escalator and as I was going down, Scott was going up. I guess he had gotten kind of lost. We went out the wrong side of the station first, but figured it out pretty fast and then walked to the dorm. It wasn't very far. We were the second to last people - Dave still wasn't there (later we foundout that his flight had been delayed at Ohare because they forgot where they parked the airplane or something like that and then there was a big storm). Some people carried my stuff to my room, which is really small.

I went and took a shower and then went and called home. That was an expensive phone card, it was almost a dollar a minute.

I had a hard time falling asleep.

Wednesday:

Orientation. We filled out some forms and walked to the ward office, which is a pretty big building with munincipal functions and waited to turn in some forms to get an id card. I went out to eat with some people and we went to a ramen shop and I had a bowl of rice. I wasn't hungry enough to eat a gigantic bowl of ramen. We went to this store called Maruetsu.

Maruestu was interesting - the top floor is a 100 yen (about a dollar) store. I got a lot of things like a broom and a rug (I will explain later) and a knife which is actually really nice and I thought it was going to be more than a dollar and a miniature (10") wok and a lid and a strainer and some plastic boxes and a glass jar to store food in. I got some other stuff too but I forget what right now.

The middle floor was kind of a low end department store, they had clothes and shoes and bedding and other things. I got light pink flannel sheets that were about 9 dollars apiece and are extremely fuzzy. I got a pillow with a strawberry on it and a pillow thing with three strawberries on it. It is very huggable.

The first floor is a grocery store where I got a decent frying pan and some food.

The other americans went to IKEA on wednesday night but I was really tired so I just walked with them to the station and then went to a vegetable store and bought some carrots and bananas.

Also, I found the bike that the guy from last year had given me the key to. it was teh second one I tried. It's a shame the tires are flat, I asked some middle eastern looking dude who was riding around on a bike where to get air and he took me to a bike shop and showed me the pump and I said I could do it on my own and then I couldnt attach it to the air thingy and I asked the guy who was wokring there and he said "abunai!!!" (dangerous!!!) and walked away. so I rode back to the dorm.

I fell asleep at about 8:30 on Wednesday.

Thursday: I woke up at 4 in the morning.

We were supposed to go to a information thing at the university, and since it was so humid (weather report later) and we didn't know how to walk there yet we took the train. We got there fine, a whole one stop away and then couldnt find the building in time and ended up late. luckily, we were half the group so it didn't look quite as bad. We took a placement test and met our "tutor". Mine is really nice, her name is Chisaki. The only problem being is that she doesn't really speak english at all. But her job is teaching english grammar... which is a mystery to me how that works. We had lunch togetherin the cafeteria (we both had tempura udon which was really good) and talked a bit. She went to class and made me go with another tutor to walk around the campus. later we went to this other building and I met her again and we filled otu forms and I got my school id. it's not very high tech. I glued my picture onto a card someone had written my name on and then it got laminated. It was raining a lot by the time we were leaving and we got pretty wet. The Australian girl was with us and we went to this pseudo italian restaurant in the basement of a department store called Saty. It was actually pretty good and exceeded my expectations for Japanese pizza, in that it had both tomato and cheese on a bread like crust.

Friday: I woke up at three in the morning. I was very bored and it was pouring out.

I ate and stuff and went to see if Kim wanted to go to Maruetsu and get galoushes that we had seen Wednesday, but they were not open yet (it wasabout 8:30). We had asked Emily (australian)to come with but she was sitll in her pajamas. we went back rather defeated. Kim had to go to the school because she had her oral test at 10 (mine was at 2:10) and Iwasted some time and tehn was walking back to maruetsu at 9 and Emily had just gone there and found out they opened at 10. So we walked to Maruetsu and I got galoushes andshe got boots. Apparentally in Australia they call them gum shoes or something because I had a hard time explaining what they were a previous day and eventually resorted to calling them wellingtons, like in paddington the bear and then she understood.

my feet were nice and dry.

Went to library orientation, the german girls were walking from the train at the same time and I shared my umbrella with Silke who doesnt speak english or have an umbrella. I'm not sure why, since I spent a whopping 100 yen on mine. So I talk to her in english and then I try to say it in german and then I try to say it in Japanese, by which point I think she has figured out what I am trying to say or is unnerved by my horrible german.

The library was very library-y. It was kind of boring for me when she was showing us how to search for books. Since that was sort of my job and all.

I met Chisaki for lunch again, I got something that was miniscule bits of beef which I hope was cooked but was cold on rice with soy sauce and seaweed. It was very yummy. Her friend came and ate with us.

I took my oral test, it was not too bad, the lady just asked me some questions and stuff.

We went with Kim's tutor whose name is mizuo to get phones. Mine is AU, which is teh cheapest one, and my phone cost a whole 1995 yen (less than twenty dollars). it's white and has a lot of functions I don't know how to use. But I have sent a lot of messages with it already. The only bad thing is that it doesnt have t9word, the function on american phones where you just hit the key with the letter and it guesses the word instead of having to hit the 7 four times to get an s. I think I am going to get carpal tunnel syndrome in my thumb. it actually kind of hurts now...

Last night it was pouring still and we went to karaoke. I had a chinese style bun that was pizza flavored and was really good. I think I fell asleep there for a while, we got back around 1 in the morning.

Saturday (today): I didn't wake up until 8:15!!!

I woke up and it was light out. which was nice, since it was the first time I stayed asleep all night long. It was sunny and I went to the french ish bakery near the station that always smells really good and bought a bun and a coffeecake bread thing with pecans on the top. I already ate the bun, it was extremely good bread. and not just because it was the first bread I had eaten in almost a week, excluding the bagels I had brought from home. I also went to maruetsu and bought a honeydew (which was kind of expensive but it tastes really good, I have eaten almost all of it already) and a huge bun with chocolate chips and a jar of jam and another thing of orange juice (this one is more juicey, I had gotten a box somewhere but it was a "noncarbonated friut drink" and was slightly better than koolaid. It was pretty yummy, but not orange juice like I wanted. ).

I read almost half of this book about tracing human movement with mitchondrial dna. it's very interesting.

I will take a lot of pictures to post, I havent really taken any yet and I'm not sure why.

The weather.

It was disgustingly humid when I got here and it rained a little bit the first morning and then was dry but muggy for the next two days, (I bought an umbrella one morning, it was a dollar and was blue purple and black in a sort of fake burberry plaid) but on thursday, it let loose around 4:30 in the afternoon. it was about 60 degrees and rained continuously for the next 36 hours or so. In Chicago it can rain for days on end too, but its usually more of a drizzle. this was a steady downpour and it was very windy. also, the wind kept changing directions. Scott managed to look at a weather report online and apparentally that was a tropical storm remnant. Today it's nice and sunny and there aren't any clouds to speak of and its not humid and is overall a nice autumnal day. very septembery.

There are not as many people as I thought there would be. There are the six Americans, three german girls, one australian, one canadian, one hungarian, one russian and a lot of various asian people.

There is me, Scott (from uic), Dave (from uic and is taiwanese), Kim (from Maryland) Erika (who is from Maryland but also has a Japanese passport and speaks Japanese) and Gene (Maryland and Korean-american). The Germans are Anne (speaks english pretty good), Mandy (I asked Many her name and she was like Mondy and I was really confused until she was like, you know, Mandy Moore and then they all looked kind of amused by my american accent when I said Mandy.) The third girl is Silke (Zika) and she does not speak english very much at all. The Australian girl, Emily, is actually half Japanese and hasfamily about an hour from here, so she already had a phoine that they bought her. She has a very cute accent and speaks japanese pretty well. The Canadian guy is from Edmonton and is really tall. I dont think the russian girl or the hungarian guy speak english at all. There are a lot of asian people, I met some of them the first day but then they changed clothes and now I don't know who is who. I remember the chinese guy, he has glasses, and one of the indonesian girls I think I remember her name....

I am so happy the internet is working, the lady in the office said it might take three days and that the weekend wouldnt count, but it is working now and it is saturday!!! I was really worried at first. I had to enter my ip address and I couldnt find where to put it but then I did it and it still didn't work but then I realized I had entered the numbers wrong. so now it works!!! yay!!!

Later I will post some pictures.

ahhhhhhhh

So I leave tomorrow.

My flight is at one. Which means we want to be to the airport by, like, 10, so we need to leave here at 9...

I was trying to be smart and get more stuff in my bags and I thought it would be more efficient to put all the clothes from my carryon into my backpack and all the books and electrical cords in the suitcase. But now it looks like I have more than will fit back in...

Actually, I've gotten most of it back in by mixing clothes and power cords and books in the two bags. This is ridiculous, I have so much stuff but I really have like nothing. I mean, I could be taking nearly twice as much as I am. But I don't think I could pull three suitcases at the same time. I am not that talented, I would have to tie them together and I would probably crash into something/someone.

I need to figure out how to get my frequent flier miles from the ticket, I just created an account, but I can't figure out how to add the flight that I am already taking... someone at the airport better be able to show me how to do it, otherwise I will call their customer service from a pay phone while I am sitting around waiting.