12 out of 10 on my weird japanese crapo meter

Yeah,

This youtube vid is just weird . . . even my Japanese friends thinks its odd!

What are you listening to????

I am just curious what music people are listening to. I am listening to a couple different groups lately. Except country . . . I know Liz got's my back on that! I listen to my ipod a lot more then I did back in the states cause I have that 40 minute commute by train every morning and it keeps me entertained while I am in my room. Well here are some youtube vids of what I am listening to some were a little hard to find good ones of but hey . . . I tried

Motion City Soundtrack (yea that's the bands name)

The Hush Sound (I really like them they have a cool sound)

The Hush Sound (I really like this song)

Rise Against

Bigwig

Flogging Molly (yeah these guys are pimp

日本語話して下さい! (Please speak Japanese!)

Well this week was midterms and it was crazy. Three days of test and let me tell you I am so glad that it is over. I got very little if any sleep, but today, Friday, was a holiday here and Japan so I pretty much slept all day then I wrote this the rough draft for a review on this movie for an academic journal.

Japan is slowly starting to grow on me. I really like it and there are more things that people do here that I wished we did back in the states. On the average even though a lot of Japanese look at me weird and treat non-Japanese as second rate most of them are really nice and are perhaps the least confrontation people I have ever met.

With that said, the one aspect I wish I could change is finding a good language exchange partner that actually wants to speak Japanese with me. I technically have two but both of them are really shy and I have to maintain the dialogue and they are pretty useless in letting me practice Japanese. It is actually driving me nuts, because so many Japanese people here want to just speak English with me and I want to just speak Japanese. It’s frustrating sometimes.

I need some hot pink sweat pants!!!!!

One of the big things at Japanese universities is being part of a club or circle. Well I finally broke down and joined one that I had several of my friends in and it's a “walking club.” Know I know what you are thinking . . . old women in hot yellow or turquoise sweat pants swing there arm furiously, while hold there 1 or 2 lbs weights in their hands. This is nothing like that! Last Saturday, the 11/17, I went on my first walk. The theme for this walk was to visit most of the official government buildings in Japan as well as some other important landmarks. We broke down into about 3 groups of 10 people and walked a total of about 14km. It started at 9am and finished at about 6pm that night. I got to see a lot of cool places and was pretty mad my camera was broken. This weekend they went on an overnight stay at Mt. Fuji and were planning on walking about 14 km for both days. I really wanted to go but it was a little expensive because of hotel cost. That and its starting to get butt cold here.

I don’t think the next walk is till mid-march but they have some really cool walks schedule and there are a lot of gaijin in the club and the Japanese students are really cool. Actually I got to practice my Japanese a lot that day and everyone was really cool. If I can when my friends get back I will see if I can get some pictures from them for the website.

Also its been hard to really get a scale of how big Tokyo is because I go everywhere by train. Walking allowed me to but things in a little more perspective!

No More Pictures

Yes I am alive. I was not kidnapped by the yakuza and made into a sex slave in Kabuki-cho for all of you that were worried. Well nothing really has been happening. I broke my digital camera and I am pretty mad about it. I sent it today to Erin to take it into Best Buy because we paid for that extended warranty thing. I probably won’t get it back till I see Erin again for Christmas, which sucks.

Last Monday I went to go see Noh and Kyogen. It was really cool and the tickets were free. I was really excited to see it. Also went to Mori Tower, which has the Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum on the 52nd floor. Yeah . . . 52nd floor. They have a viewing area where you can walk around and you can see all of Tokyo. You can see Tokyo tower and a lot of the city . . . I would show you pictures but my camera is broken. I will say how amazed I am that no matter how many times Gojira (that's Godzilla for you gaijin) tears down Tokyo Tower they just keep rebuilding it.

Okay well that is about it!

An example of Noh

What part of Noh do you not understand!

Old Skool!!!

Some of us spent most of the night looking for videos to songs we knew back in the late 80's early 90's . . . most of the guys I was looking at videos with are only 20-22 and were like 7 when they happened. Here is some of the cool vids!! Some of the guys never heard this song either . . . can you blame them!!!

I cannot believe I had this tape!

The pardoy which is funny as heck!!!!