Tokyo Birthday Weekend Extravaganza 06

The Birthday Weekend by Jhenn.
Starring: Guitar Wolf, Steven, Ed, Marissa,& Ryan
Appearances by: The bullet train, Tokyo Game Show, the Big Amida Buddha

Day 1- Sept 22
Friday I dashed off from school, jumped a train or 4 and made my way to Kawasaki.
I saw that bullet train coming and I got giddy. Good things were starting to happen.
The hotel I stayed at and its location were a bit dingy, but nothing terrible by far. The club I was going to was just a couple blocks away.

I went to Kawasaki that night to see the band Guitar Wolf. I saw them last year in Cleveland, and it was probably the best show I’ve ever seen. I had to relive it for my birthday. It was an all night show (until 5:30am) and they didn’t play until 1:20 so I went around 12:30 not knowing how exactly this club was going to be and if I was just going to stand in a corner all night. I paid 3500 at the door, I thought this included a drink (most cover prices like that do), but I had to pay an EXTRA 500 yen for a FREE DRINK ticket. Yea, that makes sense. It was actually like a 100 yen off coupon as most drinks were 600.

I get in there, its big and dark, so I can blend. I scoped the scene out, thought about finding the tallest Japanese boys and standing by them, but they were all unattractive, and the 3 foreigners whom I waved to could also be lumped in that category. I tried to look as cool as possibly with my one of two shirts, and I couldn’t get my hair in a bouffant, but I managed something as I heard different words for “cool” as I walked by (only a few times, it was dark!). Haha. So I watch a band that wasn’t too great, check out the merch booth that no one was at, and get my “free drink” and head to the front to assure a good spot.

Ug, the new bassist comes out with this cocky attitude walk, then drum wolf, then guitar wolf. Guitar Wolf just stares at everyone. He turns around, guitar slung around his back, and chugs a beer while Ug and Drum Wolf comb their greaser-hair. Insert more giddiness. I really couldn’t contain myself.

They play, and everyone’s rockin’ out. Ug kicks over his mic stand, sends the mic flying into the floor and dents it. “Tech Wolf”, as I call him, puts the stand back up, which Ug kicks over again for a second time. Guitar Wolf accidentally knocks over his stand, it gets fixed, Ug sees this decides to kick his over again. As his was getting fixed, he walked over to Guitar Wolfs and kicked his over. I laughed and laughed at this wonderful stage attitude.

I had a camera, but a bouncer was right in front of me. I wasn’t sure if I were allowed or not. There were 3 people filming GW (with nice cameras) for what I assume will be a on video one day. Then, Guitar Wolf starts grabbing people out of the audience, the bouncer leaves to assist them, and I see other people with cameras. Ok! I whip mine out. Guitar Wolf then makes these people a human pyramid, on whom he stands upon and sings.




I take some more pictures and even a video, and finally the bouncer saw me and told me NO. Then Guitar Wolf puts his guitar on top of two full stacks and begins to climb them. He stands on top of them and plays guitar (probably 12 ft up?) and then jumps off at a crucial moment in the song! Of course I had to sneak my camera out for that! Awesome!




(Guitar Wolf pulling a random dude form the audience to play guitar)

They end, and I stick around for the other bands because, hey, I paid 3500 yen for this. People were already passed out in the back. They were not ready to be power rockers! I bought an I <3 Guitar Wolf tote bag that’s nice and big and has pockets, and a pin for my traveling book bag. The guy also gave me a free poster as a “present”. It’s now displayed above my bed, as it should be. The other bands were crowd favorites, the played a tight set, but it was nothing special. As I began my stroll to the hotel at 5am (when it finished) , I pass the back of the club and I see Drum Wolf. He was with someone and I didn’t want to bother him so I said “sugokatta!” (that was cool!) as I passed by and clapped at him. Stunned for a half second, he replies “Thaaaaaannnnkkss” in almost a Jersey accent. It was great. I went to bed and got up 2.5 hours later.


I'm mad that this is sideways.. but look at that sweat!!!!


Day 2- Sept 23
Running late because of a shower, and forgetting my poster, I began my journey to Tokyo Game Show, a very large video game convention where I would eventually meet up with other JETs, Marissa, Ed, and Ryan (all from Mie) and Steven, whom I met in America before we left. But before that, I was in a mass of people, it was about 10 minutes after the show had opened and I honestly walked 50 minutes non stop (def over a mile, maybe 2), to reach the back of the line and then turn the corner and start my way back. It was really really crazy. People who came around 11 though, had no line problem. I guess this is what I remembered from 4 years ago. I also remembered getting a lot more free things, and cool free things at that. TGS gets bigger every year, probably cant afford it.
So, lots of demo-playing, getting flyers, and dvd-roms, seeing previews for new games and systems, etc. Nerdom ensued. Here are some pictures.


(160 min wait for XBOX 360 theater)


(some game)


(hahaha, sounds like thats gonna be a funny game)


(my uncontainable love of mascots coupled with liking cats and loving cute things.. it was a match in heaven)


(lots people like to dress up)


(lots of people in between the exhibition halls)


(that cat! so cute! those girls are honestly wearing about 80% more clothes than most of the hired models there. it was a perv paradise)


After the show, we battled the insane train station where everyone was leaving, and made our way to a nice little hostel in Asakusa (famous for the temple). We dropped our bags of crap off, and went out for food and a nice little Chinese restaurant and had wonderful little conversations with no meaning. Then we went to all-you-can-drink karaoke. Much singing and dancing and jumping ensued. Then came midnight and they sang me The Beatles birthday song, and a random Japanese woman in the next room sang me the regular birthday song while we all clapped along. We were there for probably 4 hours, and ended it with Guns N Roses and all was right in the world that night. We went to bed around 3:30am.


In the midst of singing me the Birthday song


this is probably the funniest face i've ever made. I have no idea what I could have been singing to do that.

I proclaimed, "This is the best brithday in Tokyo doing nomihoudai karaoke with a bunch of people I just met that I've ever had!" (nomihoudai= all you can drink)


Day 3- Sept 24. Birthday Sunday.
We left the hostel at 11 and at breakfast from a convenience store, and went to Kamakura, home of a very large bronze statue of Amida Buddha. I went inside it for 20 yen. When you touched it, it was very hot from absorbing the sun! I bought some nerdy Buddhism books and gifts. Amida is one of my two favorite Buddhas (the other being Kannon). In the western Zodiac you are ruled by planets and in the Chinese zodiac you are an animal. It's not common knowledge, but there is also ones for Buddhas. Amida-sama happens to be my ruler, so I think thats pretty neat.


the Entrance










One of the leaves behind the statue


Inside


His slippers


I then saw SOYMILK SOFT SERVE ICE CREAM. I knew this day would come! I even had a dream that my friend invented it four years ago while I was in Japan! Not wanting to risk it, I ask if it had any real milk in it. It did. Of course. Only a flavor I guess. One day my day will come! (A lot of the soy milk here has some sort of milk product in it. Weird/stupid).
Not wanting Marissa to miss her train home, we went to Yokohama where Ryan also left and Team DrinkDrankDrunk bid our farwells to eachother. Ed and I walked around a bit, found an anime store, then had a bite to eat (our only real food of the day) before catching our bullet train to Nagoya. I got home, and still, I was not tired!


A neat statue outside of Yokohama station

What a great great birthday weekend!!!

(there are more pictures fromt he weekend in the photo account on the right)

Random things

Not much to report. Just packing and double -checking everything for my trip to Tokyo tomorrow.

I was hanging laundry out to dry and got this picture:



Here is a shot of my desk mid-day at the Junior high



And here is a video of the printing press copier. Because copy paper as we know it is very expensive there, newspaper-type paper is used. Most teachers use really big sheets. There are like 5 different sizes or more to choose from, its a headache.
So somehow, the machine thinks about it, copies it, and in printing-press style, shoots out copies way fast.

Heres the neat part. Say I had a work sheet I wanted to hand out. If I had 4 classes, each with 20 students, I would type in 4 x 20. "Great," you say. "Why the heck wouldn't you just type in 80?" WELL! This handy little machine now knows you have 4 classes. So instead of you counting & sorting out your pile of papers, it shoots a tab of paper in between your copies every 20 papers to seperate them, so you dont have to! Wow!

I know the resolution isnt perfect, I will fix it next time.

A Day in Nagoya

Today on my monday off, I went to Osu Kannon Temple for their monthly flea market. I didnt buy anything and I didnt see the worlds largest wooden Kannon statue with 11 heads either, much to my shagrin. Kannon is the bodhisattva of compassion.

After lunch, I set out to Atsuta Shrine. This shrine is one of the top 3 most important shrines in Japan. It houses one of the three royal artifacts, the sword (the other two are a mirror and necklace). No one is ever allowed to see them, and you cant even get close to where it is. In fact, you cant even see the building its in! Its blocked by like, two other buildings.









i then ate a giant bowl of shaved ice to cool down. So with numb mouth and ice headache abound, I went to the Nagoya's TV Tower.







It was a very tiring day!

New camera

I'll spare you the details of my camera epic. All that matters is I have a new one and the little camera store down the street has my business 100%.

Upon hearing of the demise of my fish, my supervisor told me we were going to get fish yesterday. lots of pretty goldfish there, some kinds I have never seen (ever heard of a Ping Pong Pearl fish?!)



So while I was mulling over which fish I wanted, what would be the easiest to care for, if I even wanted any.. I wandered over for the small animal section. I now have a hamster.

(new camera + new hamster= hamster pictures!)





He is a Winter White Russian dwarf hamster. This means his fur will change white in the winter! cool! The pet store obviously did not know this ( I guess they are often confused with a more common breed), otherwise he would not have been $4.
ps- the hamster, cage, food, accessories, etc, TOGETHER were about the same price as ONE of the easiest to care for fish.

I also saw pink Hello Kitty kitty litter there.

Wait, you want some culture? He is some chestnut trees across the street.



I went with Matsunaga (my supervisor) tonight to a recreation of an old Japanese street performance. I was under the impression that there woud be people cutting fruit with swords (maybe because he told me this?). no such luck. Still was entertaining though.




Here are two papers put ut by the 3rd and 4th grade about me.







(I may be changing my photo account, as I can only have 3 free sets. grr)

I am "High Tension"

A lot has happened since this protagonist has last left her faithful readers!

I am now working at the Junior High. Junior Highs here are grades 7-9 (although they are called 1-3... first years, second years, etc). So far I have only had the 3rd years... get the toughest ones out of the way! They are generally quiet, shy, and have adapted to the group mentality and they must check with others before giving an answer.

Action photos:





Unlike elementary however, they are less than enthused to raise their hands. So I have taken the idea of handing out “dollars” for volunteers and such and then later I will have an auction for cool things. I have decided to make them “Akron Dollars” and have various things Akron is known for on them, such as the blimp, tires, soap box derby, etc. They are all worth 1 Akron Dollar. But for harder things, I have created a 5 Akron Dollars bill… with none other than an image of LeBron James on it. I am awesome.

Because I have no shame, I am doing basically an identical presentation for my introduction. The teachers appreciate me because of my loud voice and big expressions, so even the slower learners can understand. Because, in fact, I am acting like an idiot, there is generally a pause when I do something ridiculous, then they laugh with an “are you serious?!” tone. I ask them “What does a cat say?” They understand the question, but may be in disbelief as to exactly WHY I am asking it (why, to demonstrate the slight nuances between Japanese and American animal sounds of course!).

Some other teachers talk about me, right in front of me, without acknowledging me. Maybe they think I don’t know Japanese (as most Japanese people think about foreigners). But I digress, he was saying how down the hall, his class could hear a weird noise (it was me meowing). So now those students are looking forward to my class. With a compliment like that, why wouldn’t he have at least looked at me and gave me a thumbs up or something?

Students have to fill out this paper after class. In English or Japanese they can put down what they understood, or a question for me or anything really, and I read them. I can just circle it giving it an “ok” but I usually draw things on there and make a comment. A couple of girls have written how cute I am… ok? Someone wrote “GHOSTBUSTUR” because I told them about ghosts in Ohio, haha. Another student said I was “High Tension”... I didn’t know what to make of this, so I asked one of the English teachers if that was a good thing. She said yes. I think it may mean “very energetic”.

In other news, fish died, I got more fish, they died. I now have 0 fish. I went on a bus trip with some people from the Town Hall to a festival about 2 hours away. In Japan, as long as the driver isn’t drinking (and maybe the passenger) open container is ok. So, when Chris and I got on the bus, they handed her a beer. “Oh… here we go again,” I think. They never let you not drink. Then they hand me a tallboy…the obvious choice for giant girl (this just led to more being spill by the bumps in the road). And when that was finished? Oh… have a Chu-hai! A Chu-hai is a fruit flavored, I’m assuming, malt liquor (as it is clear), that has 0 alcohol taste and the lemon tastes like 7up. There may have been other chu-hai involved, I can’t remember, this was last week. Needless to say, I was doing pretty well.

Some pictures of (somewhere in) Gifu prefecture:













Later that night I saw the best shot for a picture. I was on a bridge and there were some rapids under it, some houses on the bank, a lit-up castle in the distance, and another bridge, colorful with people with umbrellas. It reminded me of France. So as I was taking my camera out, my supervisor came to help me, and I fumbled it. Screen broke, it will turn on, but it won’t take pictures. F.

So now has begun the hunt for the next better camera. I have a few in mind. The logical choice is when I am in Tokyo next weekend, go to the electronics district (Akihabara) and an insane camera for cheap because of the competition. However, I am going to a lot of places before I can get to there that I would really like a camera for.

This weekend is a 3 day weekend, so on Monday I will go to Nagoya to “Top Camera” (I hear good things) to hopefully buy a bad mama of a camera. I will continue to put a giant dent in my bank account by buying my bullet train tickets to and from Tokyo. I actually chose to go to Nagoya on Monday rather than Saturday or Sunday because there is a flea market at a temple there (FYI- because of the l/r thing, Japanese people think it is called a FREE Market- which actually makes more sense than “flea”…). When I went to Kansai Gaidai, Andy and I would skip class to take a trip to the largest flea market in Japan that happens once a month. I just want to fleetingly relive those good times.

Hopefully, nothing too awesome will be there because once I get to Tokyo in a few days after that, I need to pay for my hotels, concert tickets, and a ticket into Tokyo Game Show (a video game expo). Did I mention my “Tokyo Weekend” is also my BIRTHDAY weekend? Hopefully 24 will start out on a great foot by being there, or so great that in fact, I won’t remember a lot of it. Sunday (my birthday) will be my free day. I plan to go to Kamakura (to see the world’s largest Buddha statue) and Yokohama (Chinatown) before catching my train home.

Other than that, its been cooling down a bit here, had some rainy days. Some incredible mountain pictures I missed (GRR!) Things are well for the most part. Looking forward to sleeping in and taking it easy this weekend. I WILL clean up and do laundry.. at least that’s what I tell myself!

Here is a picture of one of the frogs that hangs out by my door, and a japanese toilet (most home toilets are Western style, and a lot of public bathrooms usually have one or more. but in general, these are just standard public toilets).





More pics in my photo account (link to the side).

Please watch this disturbing commercial of cartoon koalas taking off their noses and using them as cell phones and a mouse... (I believe its for car insurance)

Mostly about food

The internet was giving me trouble, hopefully I've fixed it!

Theres a show on right now, where these 2 guys are eating the top 100 desserts in Japan. Thats all they eat, all day. They are now on dessert #15, day 7. The faces they make when they are already full and they are brought out a huge dessert, are so pitiful. You can see how tired they are getting. They sleep in the cake shop as well as eat there. The desserts are sooooo delicious looking, and actually priced really well.

The 3rd graders went well today. Tomorrow I wrangle 4th grade! I need to get to bed early! did I mention a 3rd grader today also came up and started rubbing my shoulders for a few seconds? It was kind of awkward, but it actually felt really good. his parents must have trained him.

I actually had a decent conversation with one of the 6th grade teachers, with minimal English. Things we studied in college, languages we studied, my future plans, my diet (of course- Japan is a nation in love with food). After a month, I am starting to talk again with a little bit more fluency.. well, less stuttering. And since Chris is not around, I am forced to pay attention and rely on myself. That, maybe people are using simpler terms with me, and I may understand the context better. I will say "it's alright/no problem" in Japanese, and people are dumbfounded. Even the simiplest sentences I am praised for, that I am so "skilled" at Japanese. They may just be saying that to be nice, sometimes its annoying, sometimes it really is a confidence booster.
I am also complimented on my chopstick use. They are once again floored that, yes, I do use them in America. But the number ONE thing I hear is "DID YOU MAKE THAT?" and its variations (Did you make that this morning? By yourself? Who made that? Really? Wow!) Yes, I cook. Yes, i made that by myself this morning. I cook every morning. They know I have diet restrictions, so maybe they are more interested in what I actually eat.
Or as Chris brought up, we're "so young" that they may just be impressed. It is very normal for people our age to be living with their parents until they are married (so it would be normal for Mom to make their lunch). This means disposable income.. which fuels Japan's incredible consumerism machine. I have no doubt in my mind that these are connected.

So the #1 dessert is some yummy-looking parfait from Tokyo. #2 was a pudding from Nagoya. This is very interesting, as most of the top ones were from Tokyo. Nagoya is maybe less than an hour from me. Japan placed 2nd this year behind France in the world Pastry championships, but has won top awards in the Chocolate and Sugar categories. I swore they won an actual Championship. but I can't seem to find any decent records anywhere. Anways, my point is, Japan is force at the top of progressive pastry/chocolate/sugar art to be reckoned with. With my love of these things, it makes living here really great. (Boy, if you ever want to drool all over your keyboard, type in "World Pastry Championships" in Google.. and all those links contain amazing pictures. Wow!)

Well Im still connected to the internet after all this! So I must be good! knock on wood!

One month anniversary

I have been in Japan for one month exactly. Tonight, I finally got the internet. I also stabbed my finger pretty deep with a knife. Everything equals out.
As of last week, it felt like I had only been here a week.. but also been here months because of everything I've done. Now that I actually started teaaching, the days go by fast, but the dates crawl. Its only wedneday?! I'm so tired! It feels like I've been teaching for one and half weeks straight!
After class, I have an entourage of various students holding my hand, escorting me back to the teachers room, as I yell “Hello!” and “See ya!” to all the other students yelling at me in the hallway. Here are two groups of them:

Here are some pictures of me giving my speech and me in class.





The beach!
I’m ready!


Defeat!


The beach and into the mountains



3 videos!
1. Looking over Komono-cho with a cameo by Mr. Sasaki talking about how cool my sunglasses are.


2. The things I see on TV


3. 360 degrees on the beach! Look at that mist down the way! and it's the Pacific Ocean.. from the other side!