Sweet Home Chicago

It's like I never even left. Like I'e been gone for a week maybe... but I guess it never really felt like I was gone for a couple weeks when we went on vacation either.

THe airplane ride was uneventful. THey fed us three times - the first time I had this beef thing with some sort of tomato based sauce (but not spaghetti sauce) and linguini, the second time was cup ramen that they came around and poured hot water in and the third time I had pasta with marinara sauce and sausage pieces, but the bottom of it was too crunchy to eat - I was sitting pretty far back in the airplane so mine was probably at the bottom of the heating thing. I slept for two or three hours, after the first meal and before the second, so from about 9 to midnight in Japan time or 6 to 9 am in Chicago, which seemed to work well. I watched Little Miss Sunshine on the plane. It was kind of dumb, we didn't have our own tv screens but I think that as because we were supposed to sleep most of the time. it was projected on the wall, though, and the headphones could play the sound or some radio stations. THe mountains look so much smaller from the air, but the Badlands looked really interesting. Then when we got here another plane must have also just arrived before us, because there was a pretty long line at the immigration desk, but it moved fast and the guy just stamped it. Then I had to wait forever for my backpakc to end up on the luggage carousel. THere were so many people waiting for bags that had not appeared and many bags waiting for people who had not appeared yet. THere was a really long line at the customs exit that was for people transferring to other United flights or leaving, so they were telling people to go to the side for people transferring to American if they were just leaving the airport. Then my mom and dad and Aaron weren't there and I asked some guy what time it was because I was worried that I was done too early but then I found them. By the wrong door. I guess it was actually the correct door, since that was where all the people had been lining up to go out, but I didn't come out of it. Then we took the train back to the main terminal and then got on the train and went to the car and then we went and picked up James from Northside.

I went inside and got distracted talking to Mr. Tylinski and Dr. Lalley. Eventually I went upstairs and got James. Then we went home and ate pasta and red sauce. Then I went to Aaron's... Now we are going to go out to eat for breakfast.

The pride is growing

so I'm at the airport... and I just got two more hello kitties for my phone. One is a mermaid and is iridescent. The other is hello kitty and her friend mimi in what I think is an airplane but it mightbe a rocket, orperhaps even a pontoon boat upon further contemplation. I am not sure.

I got to the airport in under an hour. I think the longest I had to wait was 5 minutes for the lady to come to my checkin kiosk to take my extra bag to check. I didnt even have to take off my shoes going through security. So now I have 3 more hours till my flight leaves- I could have taken the one that leaves at 3:40 with no trouble.

Im really tired which hopefully means I will be able to fall asleep easily. Maybe I will go get something to snack on.

so tired

I woke up at 4 am and decided to go back to sleep, even though I wasn't tired then... which was a mistake. I got up at 7 and have felt exhausted all day. I guess this means I won't have a hard time falling asleep tonight (I hope). I'm really excited about going home though. I need to be able to sleep on the airplane for a while.

In 24 hours I will be at the airport being bored waiting for it to be time to get on my flight...

done shopping!

And I have all my stuff (that I am bringing back) packed up. Except for my computer. And I have exactly the right amount of food to eat, so I won't have to give any away to people or buy any more. Hopefully my laundry will get dry by tomorrow afternoon.

It's hard for me to believe its mid-December, the weather here is incredibly unseasonal (to me, at least). The stores have had Christmas decorations up since before Halloween, and they play Christmas music, which is just as bad as the Christmas music they play in stores in America.

Mandarin oranges are yummy.

four days

Four more days (Saturday, Sunday, Monday,Tuesday) until I leave on Wednesday. I'm excited. I think my enthusiasm for going home may be starting to aggravate/make other people wish they were also leaving.

I had lunch with my tutor and then Scott and Emily and I went out for yakiniku. It was yummy as usual.

Tomorrow I'm going to costco and finishing packing and doing laundry. I need to buy a couple more things. But I have, for the most part completed my shopping. With 9 days to spare until Christmas.

I asked my economics teacher a question yesterday about the founder of the Japanese Communist Party and he didn't know who he was and actually emailed me two links about him. Sadly, they were to the English (which I had read and where I got the question from) and the Japanese wikipedia pages. Something about this is slightly ironic.

hmm

Today we had homeroom after our last class. We learned that we should wash both sides of our hands with soap, not just our palms. The teacher said that because Japanese people wash their hands so thoroughly, the Spanish flu did not kill as many people in Japan as elsewhere (proportionately). Also, they told us to make sure we had the passport stamp if we were leaving Japan. Which I knew and already have.

I am not sure why she was talking about using soap, she did not explain that part in english. And it's good she explained about the Spanish Flu having happened a long time ago, because I thought that perhaps there was some new disease, like SARS, going around. But apparently she just likes to use odd examples.

Almost packed. I think I might end up getting a $10 suitcase because I have slightly more stuff that I want to bring back than fit in two backpacks and the suitcase.

It's (practically) the weekend!

Wednesday night means the week is pretty much winding down... I have Japanese tomorrow and Friday, econ tomorrow and psych and law on Friday... then must do a lot of laundry and get everything all clean and ready to leave next week. Sunday we are going to costco. I still need to buy two presents. And finish packing my backpack. I think I'm only bringing one pair of pants back (the ones I will be wearing). So hopefully I did not put away my pants too well at home.

Everyone is getting sick, I hope I do not succumb to the cold du jour. That's definately one good thing about not hanging out with people a lot, less germ contact. But Scott is getting sick and that could be a bad omen, since I sit next to him in every class. Ami was a little sick and one of her friends (not someone I talk to a lot, but Ami hangs out with her all the time) has missed two days of school being sick. Emily I think is maybe a little bit of a hypochondriac, but she's been sick pretty much every week (too much running around and not enough going to bed by 8:30 is my diagnosis).

The Thursday econ guy was giving some presentation to some conference thing here at Chiba and was talking about e-learning or video conferencing, so he was looking for volunteers last class.. but only 4 people showed up to class, and Scott and I ended up being the only ones to actually go. We were supposed to do it three ways with some Japanese students in his office, but the internet was broken or something in the international building so we went to hisoffice and talked to the two Japanese kids and had some odd Japanese shrimp potato puffs (like those oddly colored chips at whole foods made with carrot puree or something) that had a salad dressing flavor to them. Then we "watched" them present, but it was hard to understand the guy who was talking, partly due to his British accent and the fact that he was not talking into the computer microphone. Also, the slides were not readable. Then we had to come up with a question about the presentation, which was hard because we didn't know what was going on entirely. And then we had to pretend like the answer, which we totally could not hear, entirely answered our question. I think we will tell the teacher tomorrow that it was hard to hear/see. I was surprised that his office had comfortableish couches and that there wasnt anything overtly religious around the room, since he mentions the fact that he is a christian in class about every other week. I think that his parents must have been because the first day he was telling us about his name. He's very nice and all, but I wonder if he just talks about Christianity a lot with us because we are Westerners.

I was bad and did not write anything at all for my papers today. Tomorrow I must.

no pizza :(

We had been planning a voyage to Costco today for pizza and a few other things. But it was raining and neither Emily nor I relished a 10 miles bicycle journey in an icy (okay, it was 45 but the rain was cold) drizzle. I was not going to get more bagels, there's not enough time for me to eat them all. Tomorrow is a week before I come home!

I made onion risotto with a lot of fennel and oregano for dinner... it was quite nice. I hadn't had risotto in over a month, so it was a nice change of pace from bagels. I'm trying to finish off all my food and hopefully I will be done with it all by the weekend. Right now I have four bagels, the last third of a pouch of premade spaghetti sauce (for pizza bagels), 9 frozen shrimp shu mai, about ten onions (I've been working on them for months, literally), about a half a cup of shredded cheese that I put on my bagels or risotto or egg (for some reason, the preshredded stuff is cheaper. After break I want to get a chunk of cheese at Costco though), 3 eggs, one package of ramen, raisins, some chocolate from my huge chocolate bar, the end of both a package of butter and cream cheese and some packets of powdered corn soup (which will keep indefinately). And a bunch of rice that I am not going to finish before break. That's at least three days worth of food, I think. Only two days of breakfast, though, unless I eat some raisin risotto. Which I might.

I have not seen any bugs in my room in the last week or so, except for one this morning right near the door (which I killed). Hopefully they have all moved out or died.

I've been working on my law paper, but I am having some difficulties coming up with examples of how civil law and common law both are in effect in Quebec and Louisiana... It's hard to explain and I'm not even sure I entirely understand it. So I started working on my econ one, and the biggest question I have is why are all Japanese 1900-era socialists also Christian? I understand that socialism is more about helping the poor and stuff which is also a "christian" ideal, but it's just odd.

hmm

Why are they STILL investigating the death of Princess Diana? It was 10 years ago. It's sad and all, but if it has been a normal person who crashed going too fast with a drunk driver in a tunnel in France no one would have thought about it a year later, much less a decade later. ahh!

I got some prepackaged pizza sauce and I'm going to make a pizza bagel for supper momentarily. Hopefully the sauce is not too gross. I will probably also eat a pizza bagel tomorrow and perhaps the day after that depending on how much sauce I have left.

Today I packed my suitcase. It's pretty much full, but I have a little extra space for some more clothes. I'm also essentially done with my shopping (I still have three things to get, but I know where I am buying them and they will fit in my suitcase or backpack without any difficulty). The only thing I am worried about is packing my backpack, as everything in my suitcase is staying in America and the backpack has to hold a couple sets of clothes plus textbooks and the computer and power cords and stuff. Obviously I can't pack it yet, since I am not leaving for another 10 days. Next weekend I'll have to finish up and do laundry so that I have all clean stuff when I get back in January.

Home Visit

Ami and I went to visit a Japanese family today. They were very nice. We took the train to Makuhari, which is two stations closer to Tokyo than Inage is. The mom picked us up in a minivan and it was about five minutes back to their house. It is really scary being on the wrong side of the road in a car. I was unnerved. Ami was fine, because apparently in Indonesia they drive on the wrong side of the street too. The car had a GPS thing which was actually really cool because it had a map of where we were driving and you could see all the streets around. Then when she was backing into the parking spot, the GPS turned into a video camera showing the rear of the car. Which was cool. It was in color, too.

We had cookie-cracker things (one was Americanish and was cake with marshmellow filling covered in chocolate but flat and round, otherwise it would have been a hoho, and the other two were rice crackers and one had a soy sauce like coating and the other had frosting drizzled on one side and salt on the other) and talked to the two girls (12 and 15) and the mom. The dad was in Kyoto on a business trip. The older girl is going on a homestay program in Conneticut next year, but she didnt really speak English to us, but whatlittle she did say was pronounced much better than Japanese people usually pronounce English. Apparently we are the fourth set of foreign exchange students from Chiba University they have had visit them and they also are a host family when foreign kids come to visit the school the girls go to. For lunch we had this rice thing that had carrot shreds and mushrooms and some sort of seafood mixed in and egg strips, nori pieces (the dry seaweed that is on the outside of sushi) and this bright pink stuff that was really sugary on top. It was yummy. There was also "potato salad" which looked kind of like potato salad, in that it was that yellowish color you get when you mush up hard boiled egg with mayonaisse, but it also had cucumber and apple pieces in it and no potatoes. I was skeptical but it was good. And there was a lot of food. I was sort of expecting to not be fed enough to not be hungry, but it was definately a good size of food.

It's the 9th, so Silke and I went to Saty for discount crepes - the new seasonal one is Strawberry in "Rich Chocolate" with a piece of a brownie like thing, and we both got the gelato version. So good! We went up to the toy department and walked around and there were many things I wanted to play with myself. Then we looked at the pet department and it was kind of sad because the dogs were obviously barely old enough to be alone and looked so tiny. But they were all dogs that when fully grown are cat sized, so maybe it was not as cruel as it looked. The few cats looked unhappy being around so many dogs, but they were all closer to being full size. And they are expensive! All of them cost more than a THOUSAND us dollars. Animals are supposed to only cost how much the shots cost. And there were dog treats that were packaged to look like sushi. Now I really want to come home and play with Aaron's kitties.

I got this personal heater thing so I can put it in my lap or on my feet when I get cold without wasting electricity warming where I am not sitting. I was going to get a hot water bottle, but the electric heater cost less and would not require making hot water (which takes forever!). The guy at the store said you can use it to warm your bed but not while you are sleeping. I am looking forward to testing it out tomorrow morning.

Tonight I am going to either finish my law paper or start my econ one...

yakiniku comes from cows

It's just beef that is sliced the thickness of bacon and marinated in a soy sauce mixture.

And yes, there is a cow in this picture, if you zoom in all the way near the building. I believe I took it in either Minnesota or North Dakota this summer at the beginning of vacation.

poor japanese people

So tomorrow Ami (Indonesian girl from Bali, she is the one I am with in the vertical picture from Asakusa) and I are going on a home visit to some hapless Japanese people that volunteered to have a pair of foreign exchange students visit them. Ami called them and we are meeting them at the train station near their house (I guess it must be near their house, anyways) at 10. Finally I can give away some of the things I brought from home.

I have been writing my law paper, it is nearly done. I just need to write a conclusion. Tomorrow night I am going to try to write my economics paper - I think I am going to write about Japanese communism. Communism is definately related to the economy, and the teacher only said that it had to be about something relating to Japan and preferably to the economy if possible.

I might learn how to salsa. Emily hangs out with the hispanic guys, and is trying to get this Mexican kid who taught salsa at home to teach people. His name is Angel, which I always say with a j sound, like the same way you would say angel if you were talking about someone who is in heaven, but Emily says it "Ahnhel" which I suppose is how you are actually supposed to say it in Spanish. I know this guy at UIC whose name is Angel and everyone says it the English way, so I will have to be careful to call this kid "Ahnhel" and not Angel. But at least my heels will get some use besides decorating the floor, and I might as well learn how to do something usefulish here.

Only 11 bagels left! That's five and a half days' worth. I guess the last five days I am in Japan I will have to eat a variety of foods and not just have bagles two times a day and something else for the third meal. The possibilities are endless.

anthropology

I have started working on my anthropology project. Originally I was intending to write about my interactions with Japanese people, but as the vast majority of people I interact with are foreign, and I have experience being foreign in Japan, I have decided to research that instead. So I am working on a short survey to give out to people - I have five questions that I am working on translating into Japanese, and I need to find someone in Chicago to write them in Spanish, Chinese, and Korean for me, as I have decided those are those the most common languages. The only problem being is that I will also have to get people to translate the responses out of those languages for me. I'm hoping I can fit the questions in all five languages (like, have the same question in all the languages right next to each other) on one piece of paper. I translated them into very bad Japanese so tomorrow at lunch I will show it to my tutor and hopefully she will make them sound less odd, or at thevery least understand what they are asking.

Anyways, I am going to go to bed, as it is almost 9:30 here.

My first sushi in Japan

I finally had sushi in Japan. After two months. It was really good. Much better than sushi at home for $3.50 would have been, and way more fish. Not quite good enough to make me abandon bagels, but almost.

bagels

I have only one unrefridgerated bagel left!!! This means I still have... 15 bagels in my fridge. I am not sure what I will do when I run out - I will have 6 more days of being in Japan, whichI guess is enough to get another dozen bagels, but maybe I will just subsist on ramen and frozen shumai. I made a frittata last night, and I made pasta for in it. The first time I used the pasta, I thought that the noodles ended up kind of gummy tasting because I put them in before the water was boiling (I was not being patient) but yesterday I waited until it was boiling and they still were weird. Then when I went to dump the water out (I finally got a colander that I can put in the water, so I had the pot of hot water under my desk warming my feet for a long time) the whole bottom of the pot had a starchy film across it. I am not sure what to do, other than perhaps buy higher quality pasta.

meat

Scott and I went to the grocery store and bought a tray of yakiniku meat and cooked it. It was tasty although it tasted more like meat and less like the soy sauce garlic marinade the restaurant used. But it was nice to eat a whole bunch of meat. Scott made rice in his rice cooker, which was nice - I haven't really had much rice.

so tired. It's 6 am in Chicago and 9 pm here... obviously time for bed.

Asakusa

Today I went to Asakusa with Emily, Lufi and Ami. It was a lot of fun. Asakusa has a big shrine and a lot of touristy shopping, but surprisingly it wasn't very crowded. I'd been there before, with Ms. Park, but it was much nicer to see it while not jetlagged and or in a hurry. We had to take trains on both train systems, so that was excitingish. The tourist information center had some useful information and I got a couple booklets in English. We got mochis on sticks right when we got there - I got one that had three on the stick and were covered with a caramelized soy sauce. It tastes really good, even if it sounds a bit odd. We shopped and looked at stuff along the bazaar. I got new Hello Kittys for my phone. I'll have to put up a photo of them soon. Then we saw some women who may have been geishas - they were dressed like it, with the white faces and everything. I took a few pictures of them (but I am having trouble getting the photos to go in the order I want them to be, so I will put them up later if I remember).

We did this purifing thing with water - there's a big round water fountain thing with ladles and you sort of wash your hands with the ladle by pouring water on them and then you put some water in your hands and rinse your mouth out and spit the water into this trough on the floor. Supposedly it does the same thing as going to Confession and was much less stressful than telling a priest about all the bad things you have done. We went to the main shrine place, and there were a lot of people praying or looking around or getting fortunes . I didn't get a fortune because the last time I didn't get a good one. But we did take some photos under a big red latern thing - the first one is me, Lufi and Emily and the second one is me and Ami.

We wanted to go to the plastic food district, Kappabashi, so we walked in the general direction of it and saw some teenagers dressed very oddly... I took a picture and then one of them yelled at us to not take photos of them. Ami was like, are you going to erase the picture you took of them and both Emily and I were like, no way. They shouldn't dress weirdly if they don't want people looking at them. The path we were walking down had a lot of food booths and I got a crepe with chocolate sauce and almond slivers and sprinkles. It was extremely good - the crepe dough part was really good tasting . Ami got tacoyaki (octopus in dough in a ball) but they were too hot for her to eat right away. Lufi got a chocolate covered banana on a stick and Emily got karage, which is fried chicken with some sort of sauce.

After all that eating, we finally got to Kappabashi but only two stores were open. It was really quiet walking there, almost no people were walking and all the stores had their metal gates down. The plastic food we saw looked very real.

We went back to the main gate and Ami decided to get a present for her tutor, so we split up for about 15 minutes - I had seen a good present right near the beginning of the shopping so I went back for it and Emily went to a Starbucks to go to the bathroom. Three groups of young people came up to me and asked me if I spoke English when I was walking around by myself. The first one I said no, but the second two I just sort of looked at and shook my head. Emily was back to the meeting spot and we were sitting on this fence intended to keep the people onthe sidewalk and I had beentelling her about all these people asking me that, and two guys came up to us and asked if they could ask us some questions about Japan... and we couldn't say that we didn't speak English because we had been talking when they came up to us. It was kind of weird because they were asking us like what we like about Japan and really lame questions and then when Ami and Lufi got there they started talking too and eventually (okay, about ten minutes later) the sunwent behind the building and it got cold so we were able to leave. I guess Japanese people seem to think it is okay to come up to foreigners and talk to them. And Emily says it never happens to her unless she's with me. So maybe Japanese people think it's okay to come up to blatantly caucasian people. I have started saying nein instead of no (or answering in Japanese) when I don't want to talk to people because german is far less common a language. I mean, it's not like I have a sign around my neck inviting people to talk to me. As we were walking to the train Ami said that people are always so interested to talk to her (she is from Bali) because many Japanese people go there on vacation. It's just weird. And it's never like they do it in a threatening manner, it's just that they want to talk to white people.

After we got back to Inage we went to a photo booth across from the station and took some of those little pictures, which was pretty entertaining. I came home and buttered and toasted an onion bagel. The butter made it get a little darker than I was expecting, but it was really good. I'm still getting the hang of my toaster oven after three toastings.

windyyyyyyyyyyyy

Today I went to Lalaport again. I didn't buy any Hello Kitty things, but I did get a sweater at the Gap - it's a turquoise color. I bought one Christmas present too (which I really want to play with but I will wait until christmas morning when the person I got it for opens it). Scott and I went to Costco on the way back to the dorm and I got a lot of bagels - but I will not have to buy food for two weeks. And I got cranberry-raspberry juice that I had looked at last time but didn't get... it was so good. I have no idea why I restrained myself before. I also finally got a toaster oven - it was less than twenty dollars and I made a pizza bagel with the end of my spaghetti sauce and that alone was worth buying the toaster. I could have never done that in a pan. I'm eagerly awaiting eating a toasted bagel tomorrow for breakfast.

Tomorrow I am going to go to Asakusa with Emily and the Indonesian girls. I went to Asakusa with Ms. Park, but I am sure it will be interesting a second time. It's in an old part of Tokyo that didn't get bombed and the touristy part is essentially a street full of shopping with a temple at one end of it. It should be nice. Especially since the high is supposed to be in the low 50s and sunny. Nice and autumnal...

Riding bikes home was kind of a struggle as it was getting windy - and now my clotheslines are swinging wildly and every now and then the doors at the ends of the hallway rattle so loud that I hear them inside my room.

bagels!!!

(curry rice)²

I met my tutor today for lunch and for some reason I thought it was a good idea to get curry rice at the cafeteria - it was really yummy and sweet and I had a breaded pork chop with it. The only problem being I had forgotten that my dinner tonight was to be the leftover curry rice from last night. Luckily they tasted very different so it wasn't *too* repetitive. Emily's tasted much more Indian today than it did yesterday - maybe the flavors needed time to mature.

Sometimes I start talking about the weirdest things with my tutor - today I asked her about the leaves (many of which are still attached to the trees). Some of them are turning colors, but some are still green - apparently not all the trees lose their leaves here. I wanted to ask her about pine trees, but I couldn't remember the word (it's matsu) and there was no way I have ever learned the word 'coniferous' in Japanese. Or 'deciduous'.

Today before law, this girl from Indonesia, Sari, asked me if Scott had a girlfriend. It was a very odd exchange. Especially since Sari is the quietest and most studious of them. I wonder if she was just being curious or if someone asked her to find out. Things could get interesting. Although, this place kind of is socially very much like high school. I enjoyed high school when I was there and I enjoy reminiscing about it, but I don't think I like being in that kind of environment anymore. I guess that's what happens when your social circle is fairly small and everyone knows everyone else's friends.

Scott and I are going to Lalaport (the big mall with the Gap) again tomorrow and to Costco on the way home... I think I am going to start an all-bagel diet. That sounds feasible, doesn't it? I can have cinnamon-raisin for breakfast and plain or onion for lunch/dinner. I'm going to buy a toaster (maybe a toaster oven, it is only $20 and the toaster is $10) because it will greatly enhance my bagel eating and open up a whole new realm of food. I could toast bread with spaghetti sauce and cheese and have pseudo pizza. The possibilities are endless.

I am jealous of the snow!!! I am listening to the radio and Lin Brehmer just said that six inches are expected by the afternoon... I'm sure it's awful to be there and I would be bitching about having to shovel pretty much all day, but as I am quite removed from it, I can bemoan my missing out. And public school is not canceled... even though it is a blizzard and it is just about freezing so I guess it is very slushy and miserable.