Oh, look: an update!

Last week the US culture course went to see a traditional Japanese theater called Bunraku (Wiki link here). It was an awesome experience. I was familiar with it before we went (I've taken a handful of Japanese/Asian history courses at KSU, so I've at least got a tiny bit of knowledge) but actually seeing it was a whole different thing. The easiest way to think of it for someone who's never seen it is to relate it to marionette puppets, but the manipulation of the puppets is different.

Here are a couple videos on youtube that might help you understand:

Bunraku 1

Bunraku 2

During the plays there are the "chanters" who voice the characters and narrate. Most shows only have a couple, but the first one we saw had 5 of the chanters and 3 shamisen players, which made it really dramatic. The puppets are typically operated by 3 people, and in most schools of bunraku only the lead puppeteer is allowed to reveal himself; the rest are hidden in black costumes. The lead puppeteer operates the head and right arm, the 2nd puppeteer operates the left arm, and the lowest level puppeteer operates the legs/bottom/body.

The downside to bunraku (even for many native Japanese speakers!) is that it developed in Osaka a LONG time ago. What this means is that the plays are performed in the Osaka dialect. This in and of itself is a problem, because the average person who isn't from Osasa/Kansai area doesn't particularly understand that dialect. Then top it off with the fact that it's an archaic version of this dialect from the 1600s, and it becomes nigh impossible for people speaking standard Japanese to understand. During the play it was subtitled in the standard Tokyo dialect along the sides of the stage, which I found to be pretty amusing :) It kinda sucked not being able to understand what was being said (though I derived a bit of comfort from the fact the Japanese people didn't understand the speaking either) but you can infer quite a bit from the tone of the chanter's voices, the music of the shamisen, and the puppets themselves.

More Pics and Videos, Too!

Here's some more stuff from the Kamakura trip; I forgot to upload the videos too. Also, there should be a post forthcoming about the culture course we had today. We went to see a bunraku play (traditional Japanese cultural thing), but I don't have time to write a pithy post as I've got to study for an exam Monday I forgot about...

久しぶり！

Sorry guys--I know it's been a while. I get easily distracted, and I'm sure you're all waiting anxiously for my update has has not been forthcoming :P There's not much of an excuse for my lack of updates other than that I simply forgot...

So! Have you all been wondering what I've been up to? Well, lots of studying my ass off but other things have been going on too :) Let's see if I can put this together sequentially.

On the weekend of the 20th/21st the Americans in the Japanese Culture class took an overnight trip to Kamakura to visit a shit-ton of temples, shrines, see the giant famous Buddha, go to Enoshima Island, and we all stayed at a traditional Japanese hotel (you know, the ones with paper walls and doors, tatami mat rooms and such). Being out of Tokyo and going towards the coast and a bit more out of the way was an amazing experience, and it was really gorgeous to take in the scenery. We also happened to be able to see part of a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony, and I thought it was gorgeous. Experiencing a bit of the traditional culture at the temples and shrines was a welcome break from the fast-paced life in Tokyo. The entirety of the weekend was jam-packed with stuff, and they had us tightly scheduled for the whole trip. We met at the school at 9 am Saturday, and arrived back at the school at about 7 pm Sunday night, so it definitely wasn't a slow weekend.

I pretty much immediately went to bed after returning from the trip out to Kamakura and Enoshima, but even though I was dead tired I had so much fun.

Monday I went out with my Korean, Thai, Chinese and one American to go drinking. We ending up being SO drunk. I'm told there are photos, but I don't particularly recall them... I

was that drunk. In fact, I slipped down the stairs on my way into the train station (in my defense: it was raining), slid down half the flight on my butt, and sat there giggling for a minute. I think I'm done with the drunk thing from now on :P At leas the whole over-doing it thing, anyway. That being said, it was great to let loose with friends again :D

After that the week started picking up again, and as per the norm I had lots of homework to keep me occupied. Honestly though, I don't really mind it. I can obviously notice my skill increasing, and that's really encouraging.

Friday there was an opportunity to hang out with some Japanese people in a curry cooking class held by the school. I took the opportunity to use my Japanese in "real life" and we all cooked yummy curry!

The Japanese girl we were with spoke really good English, but for the most part we tried to use Japanese and I got along better than I though I would :)

On Monday (11/29) I went over to the guest house of one my American friends for her dinner party thing she was holding with a bunch of her friends from the guest house. There were a variety of nationalities present in the guest house, including a fair amount of Japanese students/young people (the guest house is pretty cheap) which was an unexpected treat!

It feels so weird to think that it's already December. Soon this semester will be over, and I've got conversation exams and finals coming up soon already. The semester will be over in 3 weeks, and then I'll have a winter break. I'm not 100% sure what I want to do but I'll figure something out at some point. I still have some time.

Well, it's gotten late, so I'm gonna crash. I've got plans with a friend in the morning, so I need to get up early. Night!

Midterms Completed!

I haven't had time to write much of an update everybody, sorry. I had been cramming for midterms and blowing off stress with friends... but mostly cramming for midterms. Let's see... what have I done lately that's worth updating everybody on...

Last Thursday I went out to do an all-you-can-eat 焼肉 (yakiniku: grilled meat) thing which was ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS. You essentially go into the restaurant, sit at a table with one or two burners in front of you, order the meat (pre-marinated/seasoned and ready to cook) and then you cook it at your leisure. It's an all-you-can-eat that's at a set price for a certain amount of

time, and that kind of thing is incredibly popular in Japan. Such a thing would probably never work out well in the US: There's too many regulations/health code stuff and I doubt the average customer would ever be allowed to cook their own meat in a restaurant :P By the time we left the restaurant the place was packed with everybody getting off from work and going out drinking/eating with each other. Socialization with co-workers is a huge thing in Japan, and you're pretty much expected to socialize/drink/eat with each other. It's a networking things as much as anything, and pretty well embedded into Japanese culture :)

Last Friday I went out drinking at a Japanese bar with 12 other Americans. Yes, there were 13 of us total. When we walked in and said there would be 13 of us we got some crazy looks, and they kept asking us if we really meant 13 or if we just couldn't

count properly. But once we got settled in it was a hell of a good time. I got a chance to sample a wide variety of Japanese food, and some of it I'm still not quite sure what it was. It was all really good though. We were all a bit drunk by the end of hanging out at the bar, which of course meant that karaoke sounded like a good idea... So we wandered in a group to a nearby karaoke bar (trust me, they are freaking everywhere. You can hardly go a few blocks without seeing one :D). I have some hilarious videos of karaoke, but I'm pretty sure my friends would hit me if I put them on the internet, so just suffice to say it was a great experience, and that karaoke is always better when you're drunk.

After that, I spent Saturday and Sunday studying my ass off. Going to bed late and waking up early to get a jump on studying so that I'd be prepared enough. Meh.

Well, I survived midterms. I think. They were a bitch, though. This Monday was the conversation test, and then today was the written midterm. Oh, did I mention that the written midterm was 3 hours long? Yeah, that sucked. Since they pretty thoroughly covered all the stuff from since classes started, there was an awful lot to do. I just barely had enough time for each section, but at least I wasn't too rushed. I have no idea how I did, and probably won't for a little while. We have to wait to do a one-on-one conference thing to get our results and a personal consultation thingy. At least that'll be helpful to a degree; I know where I'm weak, but having the teacher help me out with what specifically I do wrong and how to fix it would be great. The teachers here at KCP really do know their stuff, and I haven't met one who isn't insanely nice :P The courses are intense, though. They really don't let you slack in the long run, and the midterm reflected that with its good coverage of the stuff taught so far. The way midterms are set up at KCP is pretty simple: There is a separate conversation/interview test, and then a written one. The written exam is broken down into multiple parts with a break in between each. There was 作文 (sakubun: essay/composition),　聴解 (choukai: listening comprehension), 文法 (bunpou: grammar), and finally 漢字 (kanji [the complicated written characters]). Each section is given a chunk of time ranging from 20 min to 50 min depending on the section, then you would turn in that section of the test and be given a 10 min break before the next section. Given that each of those individual sections will get a grade at the end of the semester based upon your skill, it's nice to have them broken up into sections. It allows you to kinda feel out where you are and instead of seeing that you get an overall "C" for the class or something, you will be able to see that "Oh, I got an A in grammar, but a C in kanji. Maybe I should study more Kanji" or something to that effect. It's a pretty good system, and forces you to have to be at least competent in all areas because you can't count on an overall grade to compensate for the crappy sections. Each is plain to see.

I just got home from going out with some of my favorite friends (surprisingly, it's some of the Koreans and Chinese kids from class rather than many of the Americans although I do have

plenty of friends among the US students) to hang out and get some dinner and lament the midterm exams (nobody is particularly thrilled with them... no surprise there). We had a great time

together, and in the spirit of cultural and international exchange started trying to teach each other bad words in each of our languages :D That was the most hilarious thing ever, and I've learned that even if someone doesn't speak any English, they can probably still swear in it, haha. Sadly, I've already forgotten the Korean swear words I learned. I'm sad; I wanted to use them in class tomorrow to amuse the Koreans.

Thankfully, the crazy exam week is over now, and it'll slow down a little bit (not that it's ever genuinely slow though). This weekend the American students in the culture class will be taking an overnight trip to Kamakura. Kamakura is a very historic location in Japan, and has a lot of rich culture in it. It was the center of power/the shogunate government early on in Japanese history. Eventually the Kamakura Period (time when the Kamakura Shogunate was in power) ended when that shogunate was overthrown and Japan moved back into civil war (not that it was terribly peaceful during the Kamakura Period). Kamakura is also the place where the giant bronze buddha statue is. I'm sure everybody is familiar with that statue/has seen a picture on the internet somewhere. I'm looking forward to the trip. We're going to be staying in a traditional Japanese hotel and tour around a bunch of local shrines and temples. What's even cooler is that all I'll be paying for is my lunchs for Saturday and Sunday and any souvenirs I buy; everything else is already included in my tuition. I'm sure I'll come back with lots of pictures!

KCP Fieldtrip

So the entirety of KCP Japanese School went to the Shouwa Memorial Park (Park commemorating the reign of the Shouwa Emperor Hirohito) and it was absolutely the most fun I've had in a while. Being a level 2 Japanese student, I was expected to be able to make my own way to the park this morning. It wasn't too difficult but it was quite a bit of a trip. My normal commute to school is about 1.5 hrs, but from my dorm to the park today took about 2.5 hours. That was kinda crazy. Anyway, when we all go there we separated into our specific classes and made our way into the park where we had a BBQ. My class had opted to make mostly Korean food (big surprise there, given that 99% of my class is Korean, hehehe) and it was really good if a bit spicy. It was a grilled meat (pork) that we dipped in sauce and wrapped in some sort of random vegetable leaf (no idea what vegetable). We all kind of screwed around, talked, and enjoyed the park atmosphere with each other. We also played a few generic games like tag, and because it was such a rare gorgeous day we had so much fun. It really was amazing just how many students currently enrolled in KCP were present though. There had to be hundreds, and that was just in the BBQ area. There was a spacious area where the classes who opted to make their own lunches ahead of time were. There were probably quite a few people gathered there, too.

Afterwards my Korean classmates again invited me to go out drinking with them to the same place we all went a few weeks ago. The proprietor recognized me which was pretty amusing. This time around I made an attempt to keep up with the Korean people drinking Soju/Sochu, which was dumb because even now I'm still a bit drunk. Soju is not weak stuff. I was feeling it after about 2 or 3 shots. I noticed that my Japanese kept becoming more and more casual as I drank more, and surprisingly I speak Japanese a bit better after I've imbibed a few shots of super-strong Soju. Everyone is always like "why do you speak so politely?" anyway, so it was good to be able to connect on a friendlier, more casual level with my classmates. I got hit on a fair amount tonight, though. The Koreans asked a few times if I had a boyfriend and then asked me to pass around my camera with pictures after I said I did have a boyfriend already :P. Turns out that the power ended up going out at the restaurant though, and the owner told us all not to pay and sent us on our way. I felt a bit bad about that, but he insisted. Also, I seem to be able to navigate better when bit drunk than when sober. That's just weird. Anyway, made my way home safely without any problems and didn't go into any trouble areas. See? I'm a good little girl. No problems finding my way back to the nearest train station or navigating the trains home. All in all, it was a really fun day. I didn't expect to have such a good time on the field trip or today in general :)

These pictures were all taken at the park today. The first one is of me and Yonfun-san (One of my classmates. the "-san" is an honorific in Japanese that more or less means "Mister/Miss/Mrs."). The second is a few of the Koreans, myself, and one of my teachers immediately to the right of me in the picture. The third is just a random pretty pic of the park scenery. The park was absolutely gorgeous, and it felt like we were way outside of Tokyo when we got to the trains station near the park. It was almost countryside like. The fourth is a pic of the Koreans cooking the BBQ stuff. Same with the fifth; he's grilling the pork for... whatever the hell it was called. I'll butcher the Korean word if I try to spell it out. I'll look it up later.

Pushing One Month Here!

So, in a few days I will have been here a full month (on the 7th). It really doesn't feel that much like I've been in an entirely different country for a whole month. I mean, Japan is just a country full of people doing their normal everyday things. Here in Tokyo the traditional Japanese culture really doesn't smack you in the face like it might were you in a smaller region/city of Japan. Tokyo is almost it's own special country inside of Japan. I'm really enjoying it though. I know enough Japanese to get by, so I haven't had a big issue with culture shock or anything. The issue for me will probably be reverse culture shock when I go back to Manhattan :P

Also, for those who were worried: I survived the typhoon just fine. And for those who didn't know: ... there was a typhoon that hit Japan over the weekend. Typhoon Chaba, I think it was called. It was a category 4 storm, but the part that went over Tokyo was just the very edge of it. Poor Okinawa though got smacked a bit hard. The coast of Honshu (the big main middle island of Japan) only saw a bunch of rain and wind from the edge of the storm. It really wasn't all the bad for me at least. Hell of an experience though, let me tell you. The wind ended up killing my umbrella and forcing me to walk home in the downpour from the station to my dorm (about 20 min if I'm walking quickly). I guess I could have taken the bus, but I would have had to backtrack a bit to get back to the bus stop... plus I'm a poor college student and didn't want to pay the 200 yen fare (about $2.50 ish). I looked like a drowned puppy when I got home, and the dorm manager was concerned. "What happened?! Why didn't you take an umbrella?! You're

going to get sick!" she seemed kinda pitying when I explained that the wind killed my poor umbrella.

I did a few nifty things this week with some friends. On Halloween me and my friend from my dorm went down to the area called Ikebukuro. It's sort of the the nerdy/geeky/anime area here, and it was lots of fun. We went to an 8 story anime/manga store with all sorts of outrageously awesome merchandise for so many animes. Some were familiar and are in the US, but many of them are only recently coming out in Japan or have never made it to the states, so it was pretty cool to be able to peruse the new things and see what I recognized. We also went to the Denny's (Yes, it's exactly the Denny's you're thinking of, with a Japanese twist) and here in Japan Denny's doesn't suck! It's sorta "meh" in the US, but the food was delicious here and was for the most part all Japanese food with a few standard exceptions like pancakes and stuff. I got a seasonal desert for the fall with caramel and a leaf on it that was pretty good. The amount of people in the area was a bit overwhelming though.

Last night I went on a spontaneous trip to Harajuku (the fashion and some shopping district) with a few Americans from school. The atmosphere there is just crazy, but super energizing and entertaining. We checked out some excellent clothes stores and I got myself some nifty earrings and a freaking awesome goth/J-Rock shirt from a used clothes store. Harajuku is also pretty much famous for its crepes, and they totally lived up to the hype. I ended up having a kiwi one with ice cream and whipped cream in it. The variety of them was insane, and there were like 4 crepe trucks right next to each other competing for business. It was a long day last night because we decided to go to Harajuku right after school was finished at about 4 pm which meant we were out most of the night. I got back to the dorm at about 11 pm, but it was worth it. We all did what's called "purikura" (short for "print club" in Japanese) which is the photo booths where you have strings of pictures taken and then the machine prints them out on sticker paper so you can stick them on things. I'm absolutely going back to Harajuku sometime, maybe next week :)

Pictures!

Alright, the first pic was taken in Ikebukuro when I was at Denny's overlooking the street below. The rest of the pics there were from Harajuku of my friends and me eating crepes, the crepe truck itself, and of the entrance to Takeshita-dori (the street we wandered down for shopping)

Videos!

Ikebukuro

Shinjuku

Ride on my train to school

Edo Tokyo Museum and Stuff

The week has been a flurry of activity with all my exams, homework, and hanging out with my new Korean friends. A couple of Koreans from my class invited me and one of the Chinese students last Friday to go to Korea town with them and have what's called "nomihodai" which is all you can drink for a reasonable price and limited time frame. There were 9 of us, and we has 10 bottles of sochu/soju between us. Damn! Those Korean boys can drink. I didn't even bother trying to keep up at all, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Turns out I'm the youngest student in my class (by quite a bit, actually. Some of the Koreans are nearly or more than 30) so everybody feels the need to be overly protective of me :P The think of me as their "little sister" more or less, which is cute and amusing :) We all sat at the Korean restaurant and talked, drank, and ate. It was actually really amazing to be sitting there, drinking soju, and talking about Japanese, Korean, and Chinese politics and stuff in Japanese with each other. If nothing else, it's insanely good Japanese practice. I'm definitely much more comfortable rambling on in Japanese with friends in a casual setting than I am in class, and I need the practice. I'm taking the extra co-curricular conversation class in the afternoon which is a start, but it's tough to really get into it because I don't yet know the people in there--They're not really friends yet, just acquaintances. Going out with my friends will be excellent practice. This Sunday, in fact, I'm going out with a new friend who's going to show me around the place called "Ikebukuro" which is sort of the nerdy/geeky area for people who like Japanese anime and manga. He's gonna give me a mini tour and show me around since he lives there. (For the record I totally think it's because he's hitting on me, but I'm not going to turn down a friendly tour of an area I already wanted to go to anyway, haha :P)

This Saturday the US culture class students took a trip to the Edo Tokyo Museum, which is one of the biggest in the area. It's at least 6 floors, and I may have overlooked one or two :P Most people know that I've taken a few Japanese history classes, so being able to go to Japan and visit a museum here was absolutely amazing. I'll probably end up going back on my own at some point. I took a slew of pictures (the album with them in it is: http://s1177.photobucket.com/albums/x346/TheJapanTraveler/ it has more than just the pictures from the museum, though) and posted them online. I've not tagged them with explanations yet; because there are so many it will take me a while to do, and I don't really have the time to sit down and do it all. If you have any questions just comment/email/call etc.

For anyone who gets the chance I would definitely recommend/insist you go to visit this museum. It really does help to understand the Japanese psyche by knowing a bit of the flow of history behind Japan in general.

That's a short update, I know, but I've got to get back to studying for my grammar test that's coming up. Now that the whirlwind of activity of the first few weeks is done, I will probably be only updating a couple of times a week as nifty things happen :)

Tea Ceremony

We got to be present for a short tea ceremony today before classes. It was really cool. The Japanese tea ceremony places emphasis on appreciating the simple beauty in things (the tea, the utensils used, the respective seasons when the ceremony is done play a role). After symbolically "purifying" ourselves We were taken to a traditional Japanese tatami room which was sparsely decorated. The alcove in the room showed something simple reflecting the fall season and some calligraphy along those lines. We sat and watched the woman make the tea, were given a traditional Japanese sweet in the shape of an autumn leaf, showed respect for the tea, and got to observe the simplicity inherent in it all. It was very calming--I may end up joining the tea ceremony co-curricular course because I think it's nifty.

In other news: photos!

The first is the much-loved, traditional Japanese "squatty potty" which always seems super weird to Westerners XD The second is... ICE CREAM. In a juice-box like container. HOW HAVE WE NOT THOUGHT OF THIS IN THE US?? You just twist off the top and suck the ice cream out of the package. It's so awesome. And delicious. I approve.

Culture Course and Foodz

The US culture course seems like it's going to be interesting overall if today is any indication. The man teaching it seemed very into it, and that always makes it more interesting to learn. The topic was about the Japanese mentality/psychology, and that influence on Japanese culture. He made us play a little game: 7 people stood in in a circle, and first one person would step into the center and step back. Then two people. Then three. All the way until everyone was moving to the middle of the circle. The catch was we weren't allowed to speak to communicate or set up a "system" and instead had to rely on nonverbal clues. The interesting and relevant part comes when he explained how the Japanese students he coaches performed this exercise. Whereas we US students were more aggressive, made explicit eye contact to try to figure out who was going in, and actively searched for nonverbal cues the Japanese students instead used their periphery and tried to "read" the atmosphere of what everyone else was doing. Both the Japanese students and us had an equally difficult time not screwing up, but our methods for figuring it out were different, and he used that to accentuate the cultural differences. The Japanese are fairly adept at judging the "feel" of the group, and often function in a group-orientated fashion. This leads to a larger focus on the group rather than the individual. This is a direct reversal of how the US functions in which the emphasis is always on individuality rather than group harmony. He went a bit deeper than that brief summary, but it's a complex topic upon which dissertations can be written (and I've written papers on it, so there's a lot to it) but that's a good touch at the surface of the topic :)

Also! Dinner:

A whole cooked fish; some sort of... fried rice I think, with fish, egg and delicious things in it; salad; and soup. The fish was yummy but complicated to eat. You've got to pull the bits of meat from the fillet areas on both sides with your chopsticks, pull out the pin bones, and eat the meat. He was gutted before cooking, so you don't have to worry about that. The fried rice stuff was excellent, but I ended up having to ask the dorm manager lady to show me how to best eat the fish XD She gave a bit of a pitying look, but helped. Turned out to be that I was the only one signed up for dinner tonight so I ended up eating dinner with the dorm manager, her husband, and a woman that I assume is either her daughter or daughter-in-law.

First Normal Saturday Here

I've decided that Kinokuniya is currently my favorite store. It's a damn 8 story bookstore. All I can do is love it XD there's like an entire floor devoted to study stuff, and shit-tons of Japanese study material like rare textbooks, JLPT (the Japanese Language Proficiency Test) material, and hard-to-find grammar books. This shit is nigh impossible to find in the US, and you've got to import most of it/buy it online if you can find it all. Even then it's typically crazy expensive. I'm prolly gonna go back there today; I'll take some pics if I get a chance and it's not raining too badly. Because in Japan it always freaking rains.

Culture class for the US students begins today. I believe the topic is Japanese Psychology and Religions (I think) and it should be interesting overall. I've always liked that stuff, and have taken Japanese survey courses and history courses back at K-State state because it's such an interesting subject due to being fairly different from America in a lot of regards. The format for the class is typically lecture and mini activity, so it ought to be an interesting day.

Weird Japanese Food

So, I just ate raw egg and what I think were little fish embryos... and you know what? I LIKED IT. At least, when I could disengage my brain from saying "You shouldn't eat that don't eat that OMG why are you eating that?!" it was good. It's a traditional Japanese breakfast, and pretty common from what I understand. You take the raw egg, beat it a bit with your chopsticks and then mix it into your hot bowl of rice. You can then pour a bit of soy sauce over it and it's pretty dang yummy. I thought the little fish things were like bean sprouts or something initially. I tried them and thought they were surprisingly delicious so I put a bunch in my bowl of rice with egg. I then brought the bowl up to my mouth to begin eating, looked at the bowl and stopped dead--They were little itty bitty fishies/fish embryos or something. And then I ate them anyway. Sadly, I didn't have my phone or camera on me to get a picture, but I can tell you while it's a bit disconcerting visually it's really good. If you can get over the pre-trained "Don't eat raw eggs" thing they push in the states, and shut your brain up you can enjoy it. Salmonella isn't common here, and they wouldn't serve it if it hugely unsafe (at least w/o some kind of warning lol). The dorm manager didn't seem to think I'd be able to eat the raw egg on rice, which of course meant I HAD to as a personal pride issue. She made me a softboiled egg just in case my American sensibilities got the better of me :P

Here's some other yummy stuff I've eaten over the past few days!

The first and second pictures are some delicious curry with chicken cutlet and meat tandoris, respectively. There's this really good--but tiny--curry shop near the school, and a group of us (6 in total) decided to try it out. It could barely fit all 6 of us, but the food was great. There was this little Indian guy speaking Japanese who made the food. It was made right in front of you, including the naan which was absolutely amazing. The curry isn't as spicy as I like though. That's just a Japan thing; things don't swing as far to the extremes as they do in the states. That is to say sweet things aren't a sweet as we're used to nor spicy things. The third picture is the other Japanese traditional breakfast I had a couple days ago. The typical Japanese breakfast nearly always consists of miso soup, rice, a meat, and some sort of salad/pseudo-salad thingy. This one happened to be a fish filet that morning. It was full of pin bones though, and I wasn't expecting that. I popped a big piece in my mouth and began to chew. Fun fun.

The last picture is my new favorite obsession drink-wise. It's called C.C. Lemon and I love it. It's more mild than lemonade, fizzy/carbonated, and has "The power of 70 lemons worth of vitamin C in every can!" (it says that on the other side of the can) which can only be good. I mean, who doesn't like vitamin C, right?

Sorry the pics are kinda fuzzy; I took them with my Japanese cell phone so the quality isn't as good as it could be.

Cultural Thingies!

So, time for an update on some Japanese customs!

In Japan, it's incredibly important to be polite. There is often a double standard sort of thing; one thing is said but another is thought. But overall the outward appearance of properness and politeness is most important. Emphasis is placed on not inconveniencing others as much as possible, and showing the correct deference to those in a higher position than you. It can be small things, like not eating/drinking when walking or on a train (which is considered rude and substandard), or something bigger like the very way you speak. The Japanese language changes vastly upon whom you're talking to and what their relative position to you is. For example, my teachers speak in a casual manner to me, but I must be as polite as possible and not use the casual forms and verbs and such. It's a similar situation with my dorm manager. She speaks in a very casual manner with the short/contracted forms of verbs to me because she is both my dorm manager and an elderly lady, while I am a young student she is in charge of. I have to be really careful to reply in a polite manner, although she overlooks my slips because I'm still learning and not fluent. You speak politely to people you don't know well, even if they're on the same "level" as you, such as fellow students. People you know pretty well and your family you can address in a more casual manner. It's sometimes tough to figure out the proper politeness levels needed, but it seems to really impress the locals when you can judge the needs of the situation well or at all for that matter.

Personal update!

So, the place I went to yesterday called "Don Quijote" to get my cell phone is a damn crazy place. Think the loudness and musical insanity of an arcade, the variety of walmart, and then stuff that into the cramped maze-like space they have. I don't know what I was really expecting--some sort of Best Buy like thing, I guess--but I wasn't prepared quite for what I found. Once I adjusted it was actually really cool and very "Japan-like." This store was fairly close to the school, so I'd expected it to be an easy enough trip. Turns out I actually turned a block too early and wandered into the red-light district called Kabuki-cho. Getting lost isn't that difficult to do. Most of the streets in Japan aren't named except for the huge highway/high traffic streets; the addresses are based upon block numbers rather than street names. So, I can't really be too surprised that I accidentally meandered into Kabuki-cho. It's a fairly small area in Shinjuku, but the atmosphere is instantly different. You can feel how different it is just by walking by the edge. There are some... interesting-looking things around that are borderline legal at best. There are some hostclubs and stuff on the immediate edge. There's some yakuza activity in the area, and some seedy/unsavory things that go on there. I turned my ass around and walked back to the large street that I had come from. Kabuki-cho is not a place an alone foreign woman really wants to be, and it's not really that much better if you're in a group. If you don't know what you're doing and where you're going then you'll likely end up somewhere it would be better not to be. Tanaka-san said they've had issues with students getting into trouble in Kabuki-cho in the past, and I can understand that :P As curious as I may be, I'll have to settle for that skirting of the area; I'm not particularly inclined to tempt fate.