1st Ski Trip

So yesterday I had my first opportunity to ski here in Sapporo, and let's just say I am little bit sore today.

So me and Alex left our dorm at around 9:50, and headed for Sapporo Eki. From there, you can actually purchase ski packages, that include everything from transportation to your actual lift ticket. So for 5800 yen, around 65 dollars, I was able to get a round trip train and bus ticket, ski rental, and 4 hour lift pass. I'd say it was a pretty good deal considering the train ride was 20 minutes, and the bus ride was another 20 minutes.

Once we got to the place I started getting super excited because I actually haven't had a chance to ski in 2 years. I was thinking that it would be like riding a bike you know, just grab some skis and head for the nearest black diamond. Well I wasn't right, but I wasn't wrong either. I was also super worried they would not have boots big enough, but they did.

So boots on, gear equipped, we went up several floors and out onto the snow to the familiar sight of a line at the bottom of a ski lift. Their express lift was nice because it had a full cover so the wind wouldn't tear at your face when you got near the top, but I think they were lying about the express part...

When we finally got to the top, you couldn't see anything more than 15 feet in front of you and the wind was screaming. We chose a red to go down first, a dark blue in America, and we set off.

As a quick side note, I love my ski boots and my skis, they are reasonably short and are made for doing tricks and going off jumps and things. The boots that I was given...were too big and the skis were suuper long.

So about halfway down I sort of fell...like a moron. It wouldn't be the last time. The conditions were terrible, and my goggles were fogging up, so I was actually having a hard time doing anything. There were huge snow drifts, but you couldn't see them at all, and moguls on parts of the hill where one would REALLY not expect them to be. So the first run had already turned into a disaster...fudge.

On the way up the lift then, I did something that I've actually never done before. I dropped one of my poles. I've honestly never been as embarrassed as I was at that moment. I've never done that before, never even come close to doing that before, but I was trying to wife off my goggles and I slipped my glove off, along with my ski pole. Moron.

So the 2nd run down we got to try to go down in between the snow lift towers. Normally this isn't so bad, except that the ski lift was above a FOREST, not part of the ski slope.

So we went halfway down the slope to a point where we could...easily...enter the forest to try to get my ski pole back. Little did we know that the snow was at least 2 meters deep, and not packed at all. So 15 feet down, I just sunk into the snow and fell down. And literally, I felt like the kid in Christmas Story, waddling around on the ground trying to get up. But the snow was honestly so deep, that I would put me hand down through it to try and push off the ground, but I would have to submerge my head in the snow before my hand would touch the ground. I felt like saying "Damn, were in a tight spot!"

So I finally used a small bush/tree thingy to pull myself out of the hole I had managed to fall into, and started off again, only to fall down again 15 feet later. It was honestly terrible. I was starting to get super tired fighting against the snow, and I was starting to think that it was impossible to find my ski pole. The other guy I was with had made it down a bit farther than me, but by then I couldn't even see him.

I managed to sort of roll/ski down to where I had dropped my ski pole, but I couldn't find it anywhere. After 15 minutes of futile searching I finally gave up and started down towards the bottom of the ski lift. I thought I was in the clear towards the bottom, but didn't see a 10 foot drop, so I went flying out of control into a wall of snow. On one hand it was kind of fun, but at the same time I was really tired and upset. I dug myself out and went around to the entry of the ski lift area, but I didn't see the guy I was with anywhere. I waited there for 20 minutes, and he finally showed up. Apparently he had had tons of problems as well, but had found my ski pole. Then rather than going straight down, he tried to cut through 30 yards of forest back to the ski slope. He said the snow was so deep it was up to his shoulders almost, and he is probably around 6'1" tall. He said he had to use his skis to push down through the snow to make his way out. Man this was not going so well.

After that he wanted to go down a black hill, so we got off at the top, and went down a path that was red, then turned into either a green or a black. So we stopped at the top of the black, and it looked pretty bad...snow drifts, moguls, large bumps that would turn into an unwanted jump if you hit them incorrectly...not exactly what I wanted to go down at this point. So we headed down, and sure enough after a few seconds I ate snow...lots of it. And the worse part was that it was steep enough that I just slid...another 20 yards down the hill before I finally managed to stop myself. Then I had to crawl like a strange animal back UP the slope I had just fallen down. Not fun.

When I reached the bottom my friend was already waiting for me and I told him that I had to switch these skis in before they killed me. So I got some smaller boots, and shorter skis, which fit me a LOT better. From then on it exactly smooth sailing, but I also wasn't eating snow for breakfast, lunch, and dinner...

Overall it was a pretty good day. The weather was super bad and they actually shut down half of the part, but there were still enough runs to keep us occupied. By the end of the day I was tired, cold, and starving. Hopefully next time I go it will be a little bit better :)

More photos on my facebook.

Eat This!

So I know I talked about how much I like the video blogs and such, but today I am going to write this one, because I feel like it provides a better means to get my point across.

So this week we started learning how to classify things into categories in my writing Japanese class. The professor started the class by giving us a list of objects and he told us to classify them into 3 groups, with each groups being able to have any number of objects. The objects were: a book, a comic book, a backpack, magnifying glass, wine, a dog, robot, cell phone, clock, laptop, and a high class handbag.

So the professor split us up into groups of 3, and I was paired with the 2 Americans next to me. We said that the robot, cell phone, clock, and laptop were in a group that used electricity, we made up a story about a boy going out with his dog, comic book, backpack, and magnifying glass for an adventure, and we said the wine, book, and handbag were things an adult would have. Pretty simple.

After about 5 minutes the professor went around to each group, and wrote their classifications on the board. The last group was a group of 5 students from China, and so the professor asks, "Ok, last group. What did you guys do?" (In Japanese btw.) So they answered that they put the things that use electricity into one group (robot cell phone clock laptop), the things that you might carry around (book comic book magnifying glass backpack handbag), and for the final group, which leaves the wine and the dog, they classified them as...things you eat.

Like 'oh my gosh'

So...I am not going to lie. I am pretty excited that I am able to make video blogs. So excited in fact, that I already made on for you guys. Enjoy:

Double Take

So thanks to my brother and my web camera, I found out I can take webcam videos!! Yay!!

So I will try a couple of things here. I will give the links to the videos on my super cool youtube channel (yeah right...) and I will also try to embed them here, so you don't have to go to youtube. Yay!!

So here's the first video. I shot it this morning, isn't it great?



And next, my first experiment at...video blogging? Maybe the next best thing since sliced bread...



That's all for now folks ;)

Russians

So I know that I am supposed to be learning about Japan and stuff, speaking Japanese and strictly hanging out with Japanese people, but there are actually Russians everywhere. The two I know best are my neighbor 2 doors down who I think I have mentioned before, he is a pretty cool guy, and the other is a Russian girl from the far eastern side of Russia, and is only about 3 inches shorter than me. There are many more, but I don't really interact with them because they aren't in any of my classes etc.

Over the course of the program so far, I have learned quite a few things about Russia. Some of their traditions, parts of their education system, and a couple of things that I found rather disturbing.

Let's start with some of their traditions. The simplest one that I have learned is that Russians love drinking tea at around 8-9:00 at night. I'm not sure what kind of tea they prefer, I have drank tea with Alex several times, and each time he has a rather large assortment of flavors and such. It's a pretty nice tradition I would say, a bit like decaf after dinner.

It was actually Alex's birthday a couple days ago (Friday) and so he had a Russian party, which was pretty fun. There, I learned a couple more traditions and such concerning drinking (obviously super duper important in Russian culture) and the new years celebration, which is actually the largest Holiday in Russia. Russia has so many religions and ethnic groups, that there really isn't a dominant holiday compared to Christmas in America. So they all celebrate new years, in the most patriotic fashion possible, listening to a speech made by their president.

Alex said that everyone gathers with their families and sits down around the table to eat and drink together on new years eve. Then, at 11:50 they all stand up and grab a glass of their preferred drink, and wait for the president to come on tv. Alex showed us a clip of this actually, and it was rather interesting. He said that at 11:55, all television shows, everything on Russian tv stops, and the president comes on to do his stuff.

They show a couple pictures of Moscow, while playing epic presidential worthy music, and then the president appears to do his stuff. This clip doesn't have the music (soorrry) but it was Putin's last address:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYtAoqtf-XU

Once the President has said his words, the camera switches to a clock that is in Moscow (sort of like the Big Ben), and everyone waits for it to 'go bong' 12 times, and on the 12th time everyone drinks to Russia!! The Russians at the party on Friday night were also celebrating new years (or so Alex said) so they all drank actually, as we watched the clip that Alex had prepared.

And so, on to Russians and drinking! Back in the states, before I came to Japan (dur) I lucky enough to meet a professor at OSU from the Slavic and eastern Europeans department. His major back in college was Russian language and culture studies etc, and he was actually all set to become a spy during the cold war. One month before his departure however, the cold war ended, the USSR fell, and he never got the chance to be a spy. Anyway, ever since then, he has worked for various Russian and American companies, working his way up the ladder until in the company he was in, he was in charge of all Russian and eastern European operations for the company. The most interesting thing he told us though, was that at every single Russian business meeting he had ever been to, there had been vodka. Lots of it.

So Alex was teaching us about drinking vodka. He said that all Russians grab their drink in one hand, and some food in the other. He stated that "if you do not eat after you drink, you will get drunk!" So whenever we did a toast or anything, we had to eat something right after. Makes sense.

There was plenty of food around, as most of the Russians in attendance had actually prepared some dish to be served at the party, so I got to sample some authentic Russian foods. Potato salad. Yum. They had lots of it, it was green though, and a bit more chunky that I would have preferred, but still pretty good. They had something that I would call the grandfather of Potiza (probably just butchered that word...) which was small bundles of bread with tasty stuff on the inside. There were other kinds of bread and such, and then some small chocolate that were tasty, but they have nothing on Malley's.

Alex's major is education technologies, and he plans to become a politician in Russia to improve their education system. This is actually the reason he came to Japan, to try and research their education system (which I hate btw) and see what he might be able to implement back in Russia. Alex himself got his education at Moscow State University (Russia's Top university) where he got a full ride based on his entrance exam results. He is a pretty smart dude. Actually whenever he refers to any of his relatives, they all seem to have rather high positions. Both of his parents are doctors, he mentioned that his uncle was a surgeon, his grandfather was in charge of a region of production during the USSR, and his great grandfather was in charge of all production in Azerbaijan in the 30's.

Tangent: Some kid keeps yelling at the top of his lungs every once in awhile here, and I have no idea why. It's really annoying.

So Alex has big plans both for himself, and for Russia's education system. However, one policy I would like him to change is that of Moscow's weather controlling aircraft fleet. Here's the article that Popular Science ran on the system that they use:

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-10/moscow-mayor-pays-russian-air-force-wage-war-winter

Alex said that it is more cost effective to stop the snow outside of Moscow than to clean it up in Moscow after it falls. Logically that makes sense, cleaning up snow in large cities is a complete pain, however I am not sure making the snow (or rain in the summer) fall prematurely is the best answer. Not only is it creating problems for the people that are now getting extra snowed on (snow days are awesome btw) but I think that whenever humans interfere with natural cycles within the weather or other aspects of nature, the outcome will most certainly be...bad.

At the bottom of that popsci article, it has a link to another article describing how Bill Gates want's to stop hurricanes by messing with the ocean...Also a bad idea.

Sorry for now entry over the last 13 days, these last 2 weeks have been my midterm weeks, and I have been extra busy. I hope I can make it up to you by providing this funny commercial, do enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZMZdQzoQgo

You have to watch it all the way to the end...

Japanese Immigration

So last friday, we had a guest speaker in our class, his name was aruduo debito. Originally American, he has since then given up his American citizenship and has become a Japanese citizen. Japan does not allow you to hold dual citizenships (not sure how this works tbh) so I guess that's why he had to give up his American one. Anyway, I am slightly happy he's not an American any more.

Now Japanese people hate foreigners. It's not really a secret, and it's not really the young people, just the old ones, with power, that sit around thinking of ways to scare the rest of the population into disliking foreigners. I asked my friend Kenji what he thinks about this and he said that most likely it's because A. They hate communicating with foreigners because of the language barrier etc, and B. That they might not understand the culture and such yadda yadda yadda. So really they don't have any kind of sound reason.

But it's totally true. The students at Hokudai are all pretty cool and stuff, and I've never had a problem with any of them. However whenever I go into the grocery store, or any other people where old people congregate, I always seem to get loads of dirty looks. I mean come on, I'm not that horrible looking am I? One of my American friends said that I am rather scary because I am so tall, but I prefer to think of myself as more of a gentle giant.

Sorry, tangent, back to his wierdo guy. So he came to Japan 20 some odd years ago and has since then pretty much raised hell over the fact that the Japanese government and some laws that may or may not exist have made living in Japan a real pain in the ass. So lets stop right here, he's been here for 20 years, all the while complaining about the fact that Japanese people hate foreigners etc, he even naturalized himself, this doesn't really add up does it? Well he never really said why he stayed in Japan or why he has really done any of this, so who knows. Maybe Japanese people think he is scary too?

A quick current events update: So recently Japanese international law has created this super cool system to document all the foreign people that come into Japan. Right when you get off the plain, they take your fingerprints, and a mug shot. At the time when I did this I really didn't think all that much about it, but looking back I guess that was rather extreme when compared with other nation's policies when entering the country. But can you really blame them? I don't really have any problems with it, considering it's their country and they can do whatever they want...well...sort of.

Anyhoo he is actually rather famous now for being all up in arms about immigration policy and such into Japan, which on one hand is good, but on the other is really annoying. So let's talk a little bit about the good first:

Japan actually does do some pretty ridiculous things when it comes to immigration. The tokyo governor in 2000 during a speech announced a plan that if a natural disaster were to occur, the SDF (Self Defense Force) would 'round up' all of the foreigners in Tokyo, just to make sure they are all right. Certain districts of Tokyo and other parts of the country have made posters that the police sent to every house and posted around the town, warning people of what foreigners 'may do' such as bag snatching, and summoning godzilla. I couldn't find any of them online after 3 google image searches, but some of them depicted 6-8 cops all tackling 1 poor guy. Slightly disturbing, sort of funny.

Human Trafficking. Now this is actually a lot worse, and actual government policy encourages this. In 2007, the department of state actually moved Japan up to a tier 2 human trafficking country. After 5 minutes of searching I can't find the exact scale, or what this means, but basically the government has a program right now called the "foreign trainee" program. It's pretty terrible. The "3k" jobs in Japan are considered "dirty, dangerous, and something else that starts with K in Japanese" and basically Japanese people A. don't want to do them, and B. there aren't any more Japanese people TO do them. What's the solution? Instead of outsourcing, the Japanese government has made sure that the factories can stay in Japan, and then they just bring the labor here. Yay. Pretty nice right?

Maybe not so much. Under this program, participants are entered into a 3 year contract to work for whatever company they are brought in for. Since they are "trainee's" they are not part of the regular work force, but aren't really foreigners just hanging out either, they are...trainees. The Japanese law goes on to further state that BECAUSE of this, they do not fall under ANY of the current labor laws within Japan, including minimum wage, basic rights, and anything else that normal human beings are entitled to. In 2006, 2, yes two, people were convicted for human trafficking in the entire country of Japan for the entire year. In 2007, 15 people were convicted of human trafficking...What an improvement! But not so much.

After the trainees finish their 3 years of hell, if they have proved themselves worthy the company's then have to either hire them back as full interns (then they receive human rights) or just send them back to their country. You can imagine which of those options is chosen more frequently.

So in that respect, some of the work this guy is doing really is good. The Japanese government obviously thinks this is a GOOD policy considering they enacted it, and they have some other policies that are pretty shady, but my fingers are starting to get tired. If you really want to sink your teeth into it, this guy has a site:

http://www.debito.org/

On the other hand, he...probably brings some of this down upon himself. His presentation was the most unprofessional presentation I have ever seen in my entire life. To the point where I was feeling embarrassed at the things he was doing and saying. He's currently an associate professor at Hokkaido Information University, trying to get his doctorate, but at this rate I'm not sure how long that will take...But if you are going for your doctorate degree, and you are coughing and saying bullshit at the same time during a presentation? Come on. Get a life. He also has 2 books out which he NEVER failed to mention once during the class, and whenever he did he would say "wink wink nudge nudge buy them" which is maybe funny, the first time, for 15 year olds...but not in a college presentation.

Other part's about his presentation style and manner and way of speaking were pretty terrible, and considering all of these things are super important in everyday Japanese life, I have no idea how he is still in this country to be honest. He is actually most known for a case in which he and his family (married a Japanese women and had 2 kids in Japan) were not allowed into a hot spring because they were foreigners. Some people may think that that is super extreme and terrible and the entire country deserves to burn because of that, but I really don't mind. There are actually tons of places in Japan that foreigners can't go to alone, or really couldn't get in to without a Japanese person such as bars and clubs and things like that, but I guess hot springs are really in a different category.

He never told us the results of the case, or anything about the case at all to be honest, he just kept saying the was the plaintiff and that there are no laws against racial discrimination in Japan, so it happens all the time. Well buddy, I hate to say I told you so, but you have to remember this is a different country. Coming from the land of the free and the home of the brave and expecting to be able to waltz in wherever you like in a foreign country is a pretty childish in my opinion. People are different, countries are different, deal with it. The owners of the store, based on the laws which govern their country, can do whatever they want. Now obviously in some cases that maybe be pretty annoying, or even a pain in the neck, but it still just boils down to the fact that it's a different country, and the people are different.

If you want to find out more, I've heard his book are pretty good, but don't take my word for it...wink wink, nudge nudge

oh yeah, and a picture, because I think it pretty much sums this guy up, and HE made it lol:

Pro Wrastling!

PSA: Some content in this entry may be too extreme for young audiences.
So I've been in Japan for about 2 months now (almost typed 2 weeks lol) so you might think that I have a pretty good idea about what Japanese people do for fun. Well turns out they do some pretty funky stuff. And I don't mean weird funky, I mean, EXTREME PRO WRESTLING!! RAWR!!

But really, last weekend I went back to the ever dirty men's dorm (keiteki) where they were hosting a pro wrestling match. It was pretty cool. They had constructed their own ring, rigged up a sound system, and had a projector on, showing clips of from videos and such. It was pretty well done.

The leader of this whole shabang is a senior who has lived in the men's dorm all 4 years, and I guess he created THE OFFICIAL Hokkaido U. Pro Wrestling Club last year. Everyone that was in the club was running around wearing purple sweatshirts and such, so it seems like they were pretty organized, AND pretty serious. After a pre-game talk, everyone was set to go, and the killed the lights, and cued the first video. I say first video because there were 5 fights, and each one had a video ranging from 5 minutes to 10 minutes, with some pretty spiffy special effects. It was super cool.

The first video showed the results of the last session, where this one guy won, and this other guy lost. But the guy that won gets assassinated, but in the process of burying his body, it suddenly...DISAPPEARS!!! That video was about 10 minutes long, and was actually really well done. I was so surprised.

That video ended, and then a new one began. This one depicted 2 guys camping out in a tent, and then a giant gorilla starts chasing them and messing with them. It was pretty funny. The video ended and the Mario and Luigi came running into the room and jumped into the ring. The gorilla followed shortly.

The match began with mario and luigi back slapping the gorilla whilst making all the mario and luigi (wha-haaa) sounds, which was really funny. Then the gorilla picked one of them up and threw him, which ended up actually killing luigi. But mario ran over to a bag, grabbed a mushroom, and fed it to luigi, thereby reviving him, just like in the games. win! lol. After a couple more minutes of fighting luigi whipped out a 100 ton hammer and smacked the gorilla, and then mario and luigi grabbed a gun and kanata (???) and went to work, chopping and shooting the gorilla, only to have him get up in the middle of all of this and once again throw each of the mario brothers, and win the match lol. pretty epic

The next battle was a 2v2 tag team match. The video and characters were all from some Japanese show, and the fight itself was pretty terrible. That's enough of that lol.

The third fight's intro video was pretty crazy. They showed some nazi videos and such, and yeah pretty crazy things in that nature. And then cut to a scene with 2 kids sitting on the ground in the middle of a forest and several nazis standing around them. They were saying things and I could only pick up a little bit of the Japanese (I think the 2 on the ground were brothers), but after 2 minutes, one of the guys on the ground got up and walked a couple of yards away, where he was given a gun and then he shot himself in the head (insert crazy special effects). The other brother then goes crazy and the video ends, leading to the match. Pretty..um...ridiculous to be honest.

The 4th fight was a 1v1v1 between 3 girls, and the intro vid was pretty epic. I couldn't understand too much of what was going on, but it seemed like a Lord of the rings parody, where 2 of the chicks represented each of the 2 towers (sauron and saruman) and then the third chick was like...some random chick yeah I didn't catch that part. But they had crazy shots of like this one chick standing on a roof looking into the distance with the 2 towers actually in the distance and the sky looked like the sky in the real world of the matrix, it was actually a really well done. Their fight was super boring though.

The final fight would have another video that extended on the first one, showing the guy who disappeared training in a rocky sort of manner which was pretty funny. Then the fight began. These 2 guys were really the founders of club, so the things they did were way more extreme than anyone else. They flipped each other, kicked each other, threw each other into the corners of the ring, picked each other up, jumped OUT of the ring onto each other, and the one guy threw the other guy off a staircase lol. Pretty intense.

I've got a bunch of pictures up on facebook, but I will add some here, the first is the ring itself that they made. And the second is the best picture of the night, from the final fight.

I will also be uploading videos onto a youtube channel so that I don't have to worry about how much room I have left here on the blog, the channel is:
http://www.youtube.com/user/escaflenix36#p/u

Grocery Shopping

So the nearest grocery store to me is called Jusco, and it has a decent selection of goods. All of the basics, for the Japanese that is, but really it has a pretty good selection of goods. So this morning I watched a cool little video online about grocery baggers, and so I will describe how the system works in Japan.

In Jusco, you walk up to the register, where you have a little basket of what you plan to purchase, shopping carts and the like are of course available as well, but mostly everyone just uses the little baskets. Once at the register, the clerk scans all of the items, while placing them into another basket.

Once she is done, she asks if you would like to purchase any bags (5 yen a pop). And while this is totally an option, everyone just brings their own bags to use so they don't have to pay, I like to use my backpack. So now that you've payed and you have your basket full of groceries, what happens next? There are large table at the end of the each of the check out lines that everyone just huddles around, while they pack their own bags. Pretty different from the system depicted in this video:

http://campbellbrown.blogs.cnn.com/2009/11/20/best-grocery-baggers-compete/

I must admit that I prefer this system to the American one. It is nice having someone do the work for you, but at the same time that requires the time and space for that person to work there, while they could be doing something else. Thus the number of check out lines in Jusco is around 25 or so I think, and sometimes the 1-10 lines will have 2 clerks per line to make things go even faster.

Now I think that if you were in an American grocery store and you asked someone to pack their own bags, they would probably be appalled at the idea. But I also think that Americans tend to purchase much much more when they go to the grocery store. If you have more space to store things (2 fridges + 2 freezers etc) then you can 'stock up' which means less trips to the grocery store. This is definitely a necessity if the nearest grocery store is 20-30 minutes. However I think it's safe to assume that most Japanese do not have 2 freezers and 2 fridges, and thus they must go grocery shopping much more frequently, however during each trip they only purchase a small amount of goods.

This is definitely a result of the density of Japan. You have 20-30 thousand people living within 5-10 square blocks of the same grocery store, and they obviously won't have the same storage space as Americans so stocking up really isn't an option.

I would also like to ad courtesy of my girlfriend, that in Germany, the only way to get a shopping cart is to pay for one. So you drop a euro into the machine and it releases a cart for you. The catch is, if you put the cart back into the machine when you are done, it gives you your euro back. This really needs to be implemented into American grocery stores. Seeing some poor chap going around the parking lot wrangling in the shopping carts is pretty useless in my opinion.

You get what you pay for

So there is one thing (usually) that accompanies age, and that is wisdom. When the time to choose a dorm came up, there were 3 options. The most expensive, was a building built in 2008, that was close to campus, and had individual bathrooms and cooking areas. The 2nd was a dorm 30 minutes from the international student center, that was renovated in 2008, and had common baths and such.

The final option was the Keiteki-ryo, which means men's dorm in Japanese. Now the rent for the most expensive dorm was listed around 200 dollars per month (already 1/3 of what I pay at OSU), however the cheapest dorm (keiteki) was only 70 dollars per month!! That is crazy cheap.

So I was thinking, save 200 dollars, live in the cheap dorm okay! But, the old man knew better. And now I know why.

This past weekend I had the privilege to visit the keiteki-ryo, and man, that place is out of control. I didn't have my camera so I will be sure to get pictures next time, but what an absolute dump. Just the smell of the place when you enter hits you in the face like a brick. I'm pretty sure it hasn't been cleaned since the 1700's, and hasn't been renovated since it was built. It is in fact so dirty and disgusting, that when I googled it I found that some grad students had written songs about how dirty it was awhile ago, and now the dorm itself is infamous for being a dirtball.

there are 6 wings and then the main lobby, which is actually pretty big. Big enough, to hold a...PRO WRESTLING MATCH YEAAH WCW!!!1 ok but really, when we go there, there were several guys practicing their wcw moves on each other. This involved throwing each other (they were using old dirty mattresses as padding), hitting the other guy's head on lockers, and jumping off the stairs onto each other. They are having an epic match this friday night, I will be sure to get some great pictures.

So like I said there are 6 wings, and the F wing is for the FOREIGNERS. lol. But I've heard that the things the Japanese guys do in this dorm are ridiculous. One of the Americans said that he saw the song book for the dorm, and it was almost 2 inches thick! Pretty cool that your own dorm has a song book. We heard a lot of the songs, because people would randomly sing them from a hallway, and later in the night there was actually a Japanese drinking part in the lobby next to ours.

As for the rooms themselves, I never actually got to see one, but I heard that the Japanese guys use a sort of common share system when it comes to the rooms. They designate one room for sleeping, and hang hammocks and whatever else you can sleep on in that one room for all 10-16 of them. Then they have 1 room for studying, one room for clothing and such. Pretty different from the normal system eh?

Once again words cannot describe this so hopefully on Friday I will get some great pictures.

As for the picture above, that is Kenji's family, and their 2 dogs. They are pretty funny dogs. And they are a super nice family.

YAY!!

So today I found out I got accepted to this cool program where I am going to go to a small Japanese town about 2 hours away, meet a bunch of the faculty of the school district, spend the night in a ryokan, and then the next day I get to hang out with Japanese children all day yay!!

In case anyone didn't know, I am not the biggest fan of children, but Japanese children, are hilarious.

For some reason writing this reminded me of this video I saw a long time ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlHHsjQ7D9Q&feature=PlayList&p=CE8DB19B4EA94589&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=11

Pretty lame actually I know, sorry for wasting your time.

Anyway, the best thing about this trip is that it's all free!! Totally cool right? And I get to stay in a ryokan, which is a really traditional style Japanese inn. So all the rooms have tatami mats on the ground, and you have to kneel down and stuff, and I think they make you wear traditional Japanese clothing...sweet!

I will be sure to take my camera and get some cool pictures and stuff. It happens in about a week and a half. yay!!

Also, just a little bit of random information:

Currently the largest problem within Japan is the fact that it's society is aging very rapidly. This is actually happening all over the world, however in Japan the speed is much more rapid. Japan is losing between 500,000-1,000,000 people every year from its total population, and the birth rate is currently below 2.1 (the minimum required to sustain a civilization).

The government is also in really big financial trouble. They are nearly 9 trillion dollars in debt. This is less than America's 10 trillion, but when you combine this information with the fact that Japan only has 130 million people, as opposed to America's 300 million +, the problem is obviously much more extreme.

Japan's welfare system is also being put under severe pressure. Their pension plans fall under 2 categories, public and private. I'm not exactly sure how the system works, just that I am under the public health insurance plan, and it's 18 dollars a month roughly. If something were to happen, the government would cover 70% of the cost, and the last 30% would be left for me. This actually changed some time in the 90's, it used to be 80% was covered, but since Japan has been in recession since the 90's (also called the lost decade in Japan), the government has had to relocate money etc.


Also the brand name Logitech, in Japan, is Logicool

I would also like to point out that classroom etiquette is obviously different for people of different countries, and people from the same country. It's very actually extremely surprising to hear what some people will say or do in class.

I also saw a pigeon today rock on!

Honey Bunches of Info

Walk This Way

So...when you are walking down the sidewalk and someone is walking towards you, you automatically move to the right side of the sidewalk right? And when you are walking up stairs and someone is walking down, you move to the right side right? And when you are riding a bicycle and someone else is, and they are coming towards you you move to the right right?

Why do we do these things? Because you drive on the right side of the road. Thus the instinct to break right becomes very natural.

...yeah this doesn't exist in JApan, and it's REALLY annoying. I'll quote my friend on this: Japanese people are the worst decision makers in the world.

Watch this video, it's super awsome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN5BubxKtOI&feature=related

Now I swear, that if you tried that in Japan, you would have a crash within 10 seconds. I can't tell you how many times I have broken left (the way they drive on the street), only to have the person coming in the opposite direction break right aka we almost crash. So annoying.

Like today, this ancient Japanese would is coming towards me. There is a tree on the right side of the sidewalk. And the way the timing works out is that i will pass the tree before her, by about 10 seconds. So I go, pass the tree, and at this point she is on the left side of the sidewalk, (my left her right), which is the same side I am on. So I switch to the right side of the sidewalk, but so does she.

This ends up in us both having to put on our breaks, me dodging her to the right, and her getting so close to the tree that she now has to back up in order to go around it. Absolutely pathetic. I know that explanation wasn't the best, but trust me, it wasn't pretty.

My friend said that he was on his bicycle, on a path that was only wide enough for two bikes. He said that two Japanese guys were coming towards him on their bikes, side by side. So he went to the right side, and he expected them to drop into a single file formation so that they could each pass freely. Well that wasn't to be. He said that they the two Japanese guys crammed together when they past and that my friend almost got knocked over...

The soccer team had its last game on this past saturday, and we won 4-0. It was really important for the seniors and the team because that win determined which league the team would be placed in for the following year. Because we won though, the team remains in the highest (premier) league for college clubs. Pretty cool eh?

Great Day

So today was awesome.

One of the Japanese emperors was born today so I didn't have school. SWEEEETTTT!!!

So I spend the morning vegetating, which in Japanese I found out is goro goro btw, and in the afternoon I met my friend at macdonalds to spend the afternoon talking about Japanese.

So we met at macd's and it was super crowded so we didn't stay for long, but before I left for Japanese I bought this book called "dirty Japanese" which is actually the best book ever. Like any language Japanese is filled with dialects and slang so i've committed myself to really getting into the grit and dirty japanese slang.

The book itself has all kinds of sayings, from moron, slacker, idiot, to well some things that aren't really appropriate for this blog, but we went through most of the book and Kenji (my japanese friend) told me which phrases and such people actually use vs. the ones they don't. It was a lot of fun. At the same time he was writing down all the english sayings and such as it was as much of an education experience for him as it was for me.

After we were done we were on our way out of Sapporo station when he asked if I wanted to go to his place for dinner, so naturally I said yes. I've never been to a Japanese house before and it was really awesome. I'm not going to lie, my first thoughts of Japanese houses are these super traditional buildings where the insides are made of pure bamboo and everything is from the 1600's yadda yadda yadda, when in reality his house was pretty much the same as any American's house. It has a nice entrance, kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom etc. and 2 dogs. They were pekingese dogs, and they were pretty funny/cute.

His mother and father were also super nice and it was a lot of fun. So we ate Kimuti Nabe (one of my favs), rice and pot stickers. This is actually really funny because kimuti nabe is a korean dish, and pot stickers is chinese, so we didn't really eat any Japanese food at all.

After dinner we checked out some photos and stuff on facebook and it was a lot of fun. Kenji is actually a really good skier. His main picture is him, upside down on a mountain lol.

Anyway, it was a super awesome day.

We also talked a lot about college too. He said that in Japan, companies don't care about your GPA at all, only what school you attended and your experience. He also said there is no system to evaluate professors. He said that almost all of the professors he has had in college (he graduates in spring) have been really crappy.

I found this so surprising because I had always thought the Japanese education system is top notch, but I guess that ends at high school, which is what he said as well. I found this all pretty shocking.

Oh yeah. Another thing. Almost every single car in Japan, has the ability for its side mirrors to swing in and make the car more narrow. Japanese cars have been doing this for awhile i guess...

Snow

So today, it snowed all day long. It wasn't really a hard snow, just a steady flow of soft flakes even if you could see blue sky. It was really pretty actually. The downside to this however was, the fact that it's cold outside!! To be expected in November, but it still always feels extra cold until you get used to it.

So let's talk a little bit about my zemi, the Japanese class that I attend from 2:45-well, apparently I am the only one who cares when this class gets out (supposed to be 6) because we got out at 6:45 tonight YAYY..

I missed a soccer meeting because of that actually, so I'm rather upset atm. Anyway, let's read a passage from a book, and then sit around and discuss it. Sounds good right? Maybe? Ok not really? I don't think so. The class is structured so that every week there are 2 passages and thus 2 students reside over the zemi, each one leading the discussion over their assigned passage.

So they have to write this report, which they read to the class at the beginning (all in Japanese again I might add), including quotes from the passage that they also choose to talk about. Boorringg. So after they are done we just sit there and they talk, and talk, and talk. Any every once in awhile the professor will pipe and and mention some important fact or enlighten them on a question they aren't able to answer themselves (meanwhile i am going crazy), but other then that he doesn't do anything.

If I was a senior in college taking a class taught by students I would be rather angry, and would start to wonder where my money really goes. I mean come on, half the time the students are discussing terms and things of that nature, it's soo frustrating. There is absolutely not reason for this class to be scheduled from 2:45-6:00, when we don't even get out at 6. What a waste of time in my opinion.

ON TOP of that. Some have voiced their opinions that it is good to immerse myself in a class and be surrounded by the speech and such. Imagine, reading the journal of someone from the 1600's on economic theory, while wearing glasses that make everything out of focus, and then make sure that it is written in another language, that will be a little bit closer to the text that we are using.

We also start a new book next week, and the professor wants me to read it. Yay. Now I have to spend 30 dollars and a Japanese textbook, that will take me probably 2 years to read. I am so stoked!...

I also just had to turn on my heater :(

Also, Japanese students love this stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q7s4E94-No&feature=related

You have to watch that video, it really is sweet. Most students I have talked to have a half decent ability at that, I can barely hold a pencil without dropping it once in awhile...

MEDIA TIME!! Ok the picture is of Ginkou Avenue, its sooo pretty isn't it? The camera/picture do not do the colors justice. It's really famous street at the University, people from all over Hokkaido come here just to see it yay!

Also, the video. It's 50mb so it is a large video, but I swear it is totally worth the load wait...Please watch it!!

Also sorry for the negative post, today was just a bad day because of that zemi...

crazy crazy

So last night I was pretty bored, so I tried to get a group of people together to go to the 300yen place (300 yen for 30 minutes of all you can eat all you can drink fun) but of course everyone had other plans, or were too lazy, or had already eaten. fail. So me and my other buddy Ethan went to Sapporo station and we just ate at this curry place that was pretty good.

Japanese curry is strange. The more I eat it, the more I like it. Which is really funny because the first time I had it I really didn't like it very much. But now I can't stop eating it!!! On a side note, I was at Jusco today, and I found these cake thingers about the size of my fist for 60 yen!! That's so cheap for a ball of chocolate cake that actually tastes soo good. Needless to say I am addicted.

So while we were eating we got onto the topic of DDR. Now not many people know what DDR is, it stands for dance dance revolution, a game that you use your feet to play. It originally came out a long time ago, so it's been around for awhile, and like most fads has really lost its shine, but its still really fun every once in awhile. So we finished eating and we headed out to find this arcade my friend said that he had found before and ...we got lost.

Well not really, we just couldn't find the place. We knew 2 things, it was close to Sapporo station, on the 9th floor of the building, and it was above an electronics shop. yay. After 30 minutes of roaming around looking like foreign morons we finally found the place and played a few games of DDR. This was fun and bad. I say bad because A. I am not in the greatest shape, and B. because I haven't played DDR in a long time hehe, so after only a couple of songs my body was attempting to inhale 6x as much air as it could and I was dead tired. But it was still a lot of fun.

Today, I had soccer practice in the morning (so much for sleeping in zzz) and in the afternoon my friend was picking me up so that we could go buy a rice steamer YAY WIN!!! Now I love rice. A lot! So not having ample amounts of rice in my diet has really been crushing my style, but that's going to change now. Anyway, the actual trip of going to get the rice steamer was pretty fun, so I'll share it with you.

My friend Kenji has a car, so he picked me up around 1:15, and the place we were going was about 45 minutes away, or 30 if you drive like Kenji. I'm usually pretty calm inside a car, even if the driver pulls some iffy moves, but this was on a whole new level. We were weaving through cars, switching lanes in intersections, and passing cars through double center lines like it was nothing. It was slightly alarming, but Kenji said he was a good driver and had only been in one accident...lol.

So we finally get to the place, and kanji backs the car up into the spot. We get out, and look at the back, and notice that it is...directly up against the concrete barrier that he was backing up towards. He said don't worry about it, so we just went inside the store.

The place was called 2nd street and it dealt with used goods. The cheapest new rice steamer i could find was 5700 yen (60 USD) so I was willing to find something cheaper, even if it was used. Kenji also said the place was really clean, which it was. So we looked around there and the cheapest we could find was 3900 yen, which wasn't too bad.

He said there was another place close that was the same, so we decided to check there as well, so we hopped back into the car and headed on over.

On the way however I learned probably the most shocking thing about Japan that I have ever learned. You can actually run away from the cops. And I don't mean leave the country run or anything like that, Kenji said that the law states that Police really aren't allowed to chase you in a car unless they are sure they can catch you, and they aren't allowed to chase you for any more than 5 minutes.

The reason this conversation came up is because we went barreling through an intersection. We were probably 50-100 meters from the intersection when the light turned RED, and kenji decides to floor it and try to make the right turn. (Japanese streets are opposite americans, so think of a right turn as being a left turn (aka you have to cross lanes)). So, we speed up into the intersection to attempt to make a right hand turn. Now this is a really huge intersection, each direction has 3 lanes, so it is pretty large.

We zoom into the intersection and kenji starts to make the right turn as he taps the breaks a bit as well, calmly mentioning the fact that Hokkaido drivers are the craziest in Japan...yay. The tires start screaming as the car begins to slide to the right as we get into the middle of the turn. The car is shaking like mad and I have to admit I was rather alarmed at this point but kenji seemed to be pretty calm. We finally get all the way around and into our lane and I was happy to have made it through safely. In the ensuing conversation i found that out cops aren't allowed to chase cars etc, so you can tell where the conversation started hehe.

I ended up buying the 3900yen rice steamer, and am happily eating rice and curry right now. yum

Observations

College college college. That's what I am doing right now, and that's what a lot of Japanese college students are doing right now as well. However, there is a distinct market for college students in the states I think, one that is totally non-existent here.

Using Ohio State as an example, the surrounding campus and part of the city is purely devoted to students. From bars, cheap food joints, to other places that sell dorm/college specific items. The campus is a microcosm of a larger market, which is the college students.

Now here in Sapporo, around the campus area there are most certainly cafeteria, places to buy school stuff and what not, but there really aren't any stores that are focused on the college student as a market.

In America you might have the stereotypical case where you stuff the car full of your things, drive a couple of hours, and pick which corner to shove it all into in a dorm room. I really don't think Japanese people have this type of experience whatsoever.

Now obviously I may be totally wrong, but so far I have only seen 4 dorms here on campus, 1 of which I am living in. There is another that is only for girls but only has 16 rooms, another one for international students, and then the all boys dorm, which has a designated wing for foreigners. Compare this to Ohio State, which has around 8-10 thousand beds in the dorms, pretty big difference.

So where do Japanese students live? I think its a decent combination of things. Anyone that is originally from the area still lives with their parents. It's really common for Japanese students and people in general to live with their parents for extended periods of time, however there isn't a negative connotation associated with it like there is in America.

The students that aren't from around here simply live in apartments. Some live 30-45 minutes away from the campus itself to save money. This is so different from America, because in America if you lived 45 minutes from school, 9 times out of 10 you would have to drive to school. Where as in Japan, most students bike to school, and when the weather is bad, they take the bus or the subway. Both of which just aren't possible in Columbus.

So during the daytime the campus is full of people and pretty active, but the surrounding area is not focused on students or that age group at all. There is Sapporo station which has food, shopping, and many other things you might need, but it's just not the same.

So when I go to a store, looking for a 10 dollar coffee maker, and 15 dollar rice steamer, they simple do not exist. There isn't a market for these super cheap goods that last maybe 1-2 years at most. It's really strange and interesting and annoying at the same time. There are of course used goods stores, and the 100 yen store, but these are pretty common everywhere.

Pretty cool/weird eh?

class

Well this week my Japanese language courses began. 2 weeks ago I took a placement exam that would determine which levels of classes I would be placed in and this past Tuesday was judgment day.

Quick background, there are 3 levels of classes, basic, intermediate, and advanced. The Japanese interpretations of intermediate and advanced are very skewed though, if you are advanced, you are basically fluent. Needless to say I was registered for the intermediate classes, 5 of them.

but man what an absolute cluster bomb of stupidity it was. Instead of emailing everyone their respective classes and such, they simply posted all of the classes and their class lists on the wall in the international student center. They told all the students they would post this on Tuesday morning.

So 8:30, I'm walking into the student center and there is just an absolute crowd of people. Everyone is trying to get closer to 1 wall, that has all the information, and write down their classes. Because not only is your name written there, the time, days of the week, and location of the class is written there as well. So you have to write down all of that, for each class. BUT WAIT, lets say you wanted to switch classes, then you would have to go back and try to find the class you wanted to switch in to, and then once again fight your way to the front to do it all again. What a mess.
A week later I am actually still in the process of switching one of my classes, so needless to say it has been a bit frustrating. From their point of view they have students from all different countries of all different skills levels coming here, and they need to figure out where to put everyone. From out point of view, we take a test, and get thrown into classes not really knowing what they are all about. So I feel kind of sorry for the teachers that have to go through these first 2 weeks of re-arranging class rooms and schedules and the like, but they could also have simply emailed the information to everyone and saved some time and paper.
I also met my advisor last week, he is an economic history professor here, and he has a “zemi” every Monday from 2:45…to….6!! yay. So he says that he wants me to come to his zemi (btw zemi is derived from some german word, but it’s not seminar. Anywho, he tells me that he wants me to come and attend his class. Yay. I get to sit in a classroom with 20 other students, while I can’t understand anything, and listen to them talk to Meiji Era railroads and media for more than 3 hours.
There is an upside, I get to sit around and listen to the language and make a couple of new friends and the like. I’ve been assigned a tutor as well that is supposed to help me get through some of the material and such, but needless to say my Mondays have been utterly destroyed.
My total class load is 19.5 hours. Is that a lot? I was talking to one of my friends at OSU and he is taking 20 credit hours at OSU and he said it is only 14 hours of classes per week, and I looked at the schedule that I would have had this quarter, and I would have only been in class around 12 hours per week. Argh. So I am in class a lot, have a lot of homework, and then soccer club. Yay.
Also the textbook that I used to study with at Ohio State. Really not that great.

Purin pt. 2

Ok. So we had 2 soccer games. The first was the A-team (lulz) against their A-team, or what we from the states would call varsity. That was full 45 minutes halves, and the Hokudai team ended up winning 4-1. Yayy. It was super cold during the whole game though, and rained periodically. It was still a really good game, and the A-team got the job done.

The second game for the B-team (junior varsity) was only 30 minutes halves, but it seemed to get colder as the minutes ticked on. I didn't get to go in in the first half, but that's OK. We were up 1-0 at half, and it was a pretty close game. about 15 minutes into the second half though, I got the OK to go in, at left center back. The team runs a formation of a 4-4-2, with the back 4 (defenders) running a flat back 4. Now thanks to my coaches in high school, I have a pretty good idea of how to run the flat back 4, however the biggest part of maintaining a good defense is communication, which normally isn't a problem, but when everyone is yelling things in Japanese it tends to get a little tough.

I've become familiar with the most basic soccer terms in Japanese, such as time, turn, man-on, left right forward backwards, but the flat back 4 really requires the two guys in the center to really maintain close communications. I would like to think I did pretty well. We didn't let them get any shots on goal, and they only had a few chances past midfield against us.

Then it started to hail. Yay. I asked another guy was hail was in Japanese but I totally forget what he said. According to Google, the word is Hyou, pronouned he-yoo. It was still really fun though, I haven't played soccer in inclement weather in quite some time and it brought back a lot of fond memories.

So the game went on, and we were still up 1-0, when disaster struck. We had just moved up the left side of the field but lost possession of the ball, and their team was on the counter. The far left back had been part of the attack before we had lost the ball, so he was too far up to defend and I had 2 guys coming in full speed towards me. It is pretty much impossible to guard 2 guys, so I tried to steal the ball from the first guy, he passed it to the second, who passed it to another guy, who scored. Darn.

We ended up tying 1-1 in the end, but it was still a lot of fun.

The first picture is just an action shot. We are in green and their are in red. This was before it had started to pour.

The second picture if of some of the other first years during the varsity game. We were all pretty cold, so we had been jogging around and doing whatever we could to stay warm.

After the game I asked the captain if it was OK to take a team picture, so he made everyone get together and we got a really good picture.

And now I will explain Purin.

After the game, some of the second years took me and some of the other first years out to eat. Gotusandesu! We went to this super cool bbq place where you payed at the door, then went up to a buffet of raw meat. Grabbed whatever you wanted, and then returned to your table which was extra large because it had a grill in the middle. So you sit around usually 6 people to one table with this cool grill in the middle and you grill out, inside! I really loved it. They had different kinds of beef, some sausage, pork, and rice and some other fried stuff. It tasted amazing.

The dessert counter was just as packed. They had cake, ice cream, slushys! Even a cotton candy machine. So I helped myself to a couple pieces of cake, some ice cream, and a coffee for dessert. It was truly stuffed at this point.

However my Japanese friends had other plans. One of them came back with a tray full of Purin, or pudding. Now Japanese Pudding is a lot more like jello than it is pudding, but its pretty runny jello, not very stable. And my friend demonstrated that with these particular cups, there was a small tab on the bottom that you popped, which released the pudding from the cup, which then allowed you to squeeze the sides of the cup and shoot the pudding into your mouth. Well of course this all takes some skill, which means....YOU CAN RACE!!!

So I was already stuffed full of grilled meat, rice and dessert, but I couldn't pass up the chance to get in on an eating contest. So after watching 2 of the other guys race a couple of times, I decided to give a try. I totally botched my first try, but it was OK, because I would have many more. I finally got the hang of it on the 3rd cup of purin, and was able to beat my opponent! However my stomach was beginning to get upset with what I was doing to it hehe. After a couple more races, everyone was pretty stuffed, but not before we had gone through 46 of these small cups of pudding. The following picture is us in front of place after we finally decided to leave.

Oodalolly oodalolly golly what a day.

Purin

If you look out your window, and you see that it is raining in Sapporo, don't worry about grabbing your umbrella because by the time you get downstairs, get your shoes on and walk out the door, it will have stopped. Likewise, if you look out your window and see blue sky and sunlight, grab all the rain gear you've got because it will be pouring by the time you walk of your front door. This has happened to me twice now. :(

So today I woke up for the second time in a row at 6:45. The Japanese word for 'sleepy' is nemui, pronounced: ne (like eh) moo - i (as in e like me). Needless to say I was feeling pretty nemui when I woke up, but today we had 2 soccer games!!

The team members that didn't have a car gathered in the designated spot and we waited around as some of the older students with cars showed up. Then we all packed in (Japanese cars are small btw) and set off for Hokkai Daigaku. It was about an hour away, pretty much on the other side of Sapporo, if we were even in Sapporo anymore. The first picture is after about 15 minutes of driving, it's of the mountains that you can see from the Hokudai campus.

The second picture is of a tower that I could see right before we arrived at the other college, but was unable to see it from that college. In the second picture, you can barely see the tip of it behind the nets. Its shape was very irregular and I asked my friend in the car about it and I think he said it has something to do with Hokkaido's History.

In the next picture, you can barely see the mountains that are on the other side of the city, that are visible from this campus. Its pretty cool to be able to see mountains in the background of where you live. You can also see that the soccer field is made up of a kind of hard green dirt stuff? I really don't know how to describe it. It seemed similar to the material that tracks are made out of, but has seen some wear n tear. And for some reason I can't post any more pictures into this entry...on to the next!

Funderstorm

So its around 6:00 in the evening on Saturday night here, and it is currently thundering. I love thunderstorms, or as my neighbor just called them, funderstorms. Japanese thunder does sound a bit strange, it doesn't really roll and tumble like it does in Ohio, it just all falls over in a giant heap, to put it strangely.

The other night, I was sitting in my room dead tired after a day of classes and soccer practice, just watching a tv show, when my door burst open and a guy rushes into my room. He was Asian, but we had never met and I had no idea who he was. He stops, looks around, and says "whoa this isn't my room," to which I replied "umm yeah its mine." He started to laugh and I was still relatively shocked and he started jabbering on in Chinese or something and then he said his name was Lin. So we did the whole introduction thing, which country are you from? Hows your Japanese? Do you play any sports?

Well turns out he is from China (duh) and he has never studied Japanese, and he plays Baminton. Today he made me a chicken wing (???) which I just ate. It was spicy.

So far though I have really enjoyed Japanese society. One of the things that I enjoy the most is how the Japanese eat. If you have food in front of you, it is proper to eat it. Obviously manner with chopsticks (hasi) is important, and it is always polite to refill the drink of your neighbor. (p.s. doing this will make Japanese people go nuts. It is a tradition that really only occurs in formal or special circumstances, and so for instance you and your 3 other friends are out eating out and you refill their drinks, it will really show some class. I guarantee it.)

In other news, I have a soccer game that I have to go to tomorrow. We have to meet at 7:30 which is a bit early in the morning but supposedly it is far away and I think it will be a lot of fun.
I will definitely take my camera, so I can put up a couple pictures from the game.

As for my classes, so far I have Japanese society (Canadian prof, good class), Japanese Economics (Japanese prof, pretty bad so far), WW2 present day problems and issues in Japan (English professor, not exactly the class I thought it would be) and Soviet Russia in the 20th century (American Prof, great class). 2/4 right now, maybe things will improve.

Time to go eat some cheese that NASA blasted off the moon!!

Soccerbu

Soccerbu translates as Soccer Club, but really, the soccerbu at Hokkaido University is the soccer team. I am now in the Soccerbu.

So I've been trying to figure out ways to meet more japanese people, because quite frankly it's been rather tough. Walking up to a japanese guy when you tower over him and asking him to be your friend isn't exactly the best way to go about it. So there is a website for all the clubs and things at Hokudai (Hokk. U.) but of course it was written in Japanese. After some home made translation, asking around a bit, and getting some info, I found myself at the soccer grounds today at 4:30, ready for soccer practice.

Japanese people are fast. Like really fast. I mean like...man these guys are fast.

Anyway, so I get there and put my soccer gear on as about 20 dudes stand around and stare at me. They started doing a drill about halfway through me getting ready so I figured I would watch a bit. Man I thought my foot skills were bad but holy cow, these guys can play. So after I get my stuff on, I stand up and just kind of stand awkwardly on the sideline, wondering what was going to happen next. Luckily one of the japanese players walked over to me, and we started to have a little conversation.

Turns out they dont really have a coach, they just have sempai and koohai, which roughly translate at senior and junior. So there are the upper class man who play on the team and such and they basically help the younger kids get better etc. And I was currently talking to one of the upper class man. The current drill was kind of a keep away, but me and the guy couldn't really get the meaning across the languages.

But he said it was cool for me to play, we have practice every weekday at 4:30, 3:30 in the fall because the sun sets at 5. We also have practices sometimes on saturday, and sometimes we have games on sundays. Pretty busy eh?

So I am definitely going to try and play on the team for awhile, obviously studies come first and such, but it seems really fun and I think I will be able to balance it will school work and such.

So we talk a bit more, turns out I am going to need some shin guards, or regattu. I think I know where to buy them, so maybe I will pick them up tomorrow. Hopefully they will be ok.

So next they started doing a shooting drill, and the guy told me to hop in line. It was a simple drill where you passed the ball to a guy who laid it off for you and then you shot. Well...out of 6 tries I only made 1, pretty pathetic.

After that we just had a half field scrimmage with 3 teams where one switched off. It was pretty intense, I got put in at right full back and had my hands full with a couple of guys who would switch positions a lot, and I never really received orders from the center back which made it worse, so after my first day I ended up doing fairly bad.

After practice ended, I stood around and talked with a bunch of the guys for awhile, it was pretty fun. Finally getting to use some more Japanese feels great, and makes it not feel like I am wasting my time here. We pretty much figured that I was a first year here, which kinda sucks because in Japanese society, being the rookie, or first year usually means extra stupid responsibilities, like shagging balls and picking up after everyone else. Joy.

The other first years asked me to go to dinner w them so I agreed and they also offered to pay which was very nice indeed. In that situation you say a special little phrase that literally translates as "I will take advantage of your kind words." So I took advantage of their kind words. They asked me what I wanted to eat, and I said meat...MEAT. So we went to this place, sat down japanese style (insert pain here, and a charlie horse) and had meat. I order the LL (2xl) cheeze burger steak, with rice, and soup. Yum.

We sat around and got to know a little bit more about each other, and it was a lot of fun. Not having to pay was a bonus as well. It was overall a lot of fun, and I am really glad I decided to get involved. Hopefully I will be able to make some new friends, be a 20 year old ball boy, and get better at soccer too. We'll see.

Past couple of days

So I have been lazy and apologize for not having updated this in a couple of days.

Anyway, my first couple of classes were ok, not really much work, just going over the syllabus so it was a pretty big waste of my time. But the classes appear to be promising so we'll see how it goes.

The weather here is pretty funny. You can look out the window and it will be cloudy, drizzling, and look crappy. So you put your shoes on and grab a rain jacket, go down stairs, and go outside, and the sun will have come out and its become hot. And no matter which direction I jog in, the wind will always blow against me. Today I ran to the gym, and the wind blew against me the whole time. On the way back, the sun was out and there were several clouds, but halfway home it started raining from apparently a microscopic cloud above me and the wind changed direction against me again.

Also on the way home from the gym today, I was 30 yards away from a stop light and it had just turned red. I began to hear strange yelling and had no idea where it was coming from. Suddenly a minivan passed me on the right with 2 tiny heads sticking out of the windows yelling "hooww aarre uuuu...howw areee uuuuuuuu...." and then one started singing the ABC's. It was pretty funny, and I thought about yelling back that I was German and didn't understand English but decided against it. It was still pretty funny and cute.

Today I also had the privilege of going to a Sapporo Ham Fighters baseball game. Like the true bird brain that I am I forgot to take my camera so unfortunately I have no pictures. Sorry.

But the game was held in the Sapporo dome, which was the center piece of the '72 winter Olympics here in Sapporo, and is still a very important landmark to the people. The dome itself is enormous. Emerging from the subway station (which was packed shoulder to shoulder) and laying eyes on this metal behemoth was quite breathtaking. Once again sorry for not having a picture.

The inside of the dome is equally amazing. The shape is more ovular, so it doesn't quite fit a baseball field very well, but the seats we had were still pretty good. It has one giant screen that has all the player information and such on it, and plenty of stands and drink stalls to satisfy any need. Once we sat down, the real fun started (duh).

The away team fans were 2 sections away from us, and were quite rowdy whereas the home team fans were rather subdued for the moment. The away team fans had brought flags, trumpets, drums, megaphones, and anything else you could think of to wave in the air. It was quite a spectacle. They cheered endlessly while their team was at bat, but the ham fighters were pretty good, so they didn't get a single hit in the first inning.

However, as soon as the fighters got the 3rd out, all of the ham fighters fans stood up and began to sing, dance, and wave around their flags. And they continued to do this until they got 3 outs and it went to the top of the second, but not before the fighters got 3 runs in.

Then it was the away fan's turn again to cheer and chant all of their player specific songs and things, it was pretty funny. But they didn't get any runs and were struck out quickly.

Bottom of the second, the fighters scored 5 runs, so it was then 8-0. Pretty good game eh?

The marines managed to get a run in the top of the third, but that was the last point they scored. the final scored ended up being 11-1, and the Ham fighters clinched their division. Not bad for a 20 dollar ticket i think.

Mission Accomplished

So I got my slippers back. I saw them sitting in the lobby yesterday and swiped them as soon as I could. I am pretty happy to have them back. I get a little sick to my stomach when I think that someone else used them but a Japanese person would say "sikata ga nai" which means literally "it cannot be helped."

A lot of things have also happened the past few days, I hope that I can get them all down here.

So yesterday morning started with orientation. The director of my program is Dr. Peter Firkola, originally from Canada, has been in charge of the program since its creation 11 years ago. He is a short chap but is rather funny and speaks VERY fast. But things went pretty smoothly, he outlined the program, the expectations and such so it was ok.

After he was done speaking we had another professor give us an orientation on the Japanese language classes that we would be taking. Now this guy was a character. Apparently he is fluent in 5 languages, japanese (duh), spanish, portuguese, Chinese, and English. But whats even better than being fluent in 5 languages? Being a Sapporo Ham Fighters fan. That is Sapporo's baseball team btw, and apparently they had a game today, and they have a game on saturday that if they win they will be very close to winning the championship.

So before he even speaks, he takes a pair of thunder sticks out of his bag and starts banging them and yelling about how amazing the ham fighters are and if anyone wants to go with him to the game on saturday. So for 2k yen, he got me and a couple other friends really good seats for the game with him, and I think it will be quite an experience. I will be sure to take my camera and write about it on sunday.

After that we had lunch and then took a japanese proficiency test. It was rather difficult at times, and also easy at times, so I am not sure exactly how I did, but I would guess that I got around 70-80% of the questions correct.

After the test we were supposed to meet our supervisors, however apparently mine was busy so I have still yet to meet with them. sigh.....

This orientation was also the first time I was able to see all the gaijins (slightly derogatory term for foreigners) in one place at once. There are 3 french men, 2 russians, and a partridge in a pair tree. Well no, but really, there are 3 guys from finland, a guy from hungary, sweden and probably 8-10 Chinese students, 3 korean students, one from Singapore, then probably 15 Americans. So it's a pretty diverse set of students, 36 in total.

After the orientation was all over, we decided to meet up and see about going out somewhere to eat and drink a little, so we ended up at a bar that was in the basement of a hotel, but it was still pretty nice. We had to all sit Japanese style, so on our knees (that lasted about 10 seconds) in front of the tables that are only about 1 foot off the ground. It was really cheap and good though, for 30 minutes, you could drink and eat all you could for only 300 yen. So we stayed for 2 hours eating drinking and sharing stories from different parts of the world for about 2 hours, and it only cost 1400 yen (roughly 15 USD).

All in all it was a very good night. Not much japanese spoken, but still a lot of fun.

So today was the first day of classes. It was also the first day I had to sort my garbage...yay. So in Japan, there are 9 categories of garbage, and it is up to you to sort your own garbage into the correctly colored bag. Luckily I have a guide (in english) which explains how to do this, but it was still rather annoying. Im glad its done...for now.

More on the rest of my past couple of days soon. I need to sleep. Oyasumi!

Stolen Slippers and Rice Cookers

So today I was all excited when I woke up at 06:00 for the third day in a row. Today, I was going to buy a bike and a cell phone. Oh yeah, and I would have had this up 2 hours earlier, but someone decided to steal my big foot sized slippers, more on that later.

So at 11:00 I met my friend Suguru and went to where they were selling bikes specifically for students. Lone and behold, they didn't have any that really fit me. Soo...I bought one anyway. It is a nice granny bike, complete with luggage rack in the back, and basket up front, so I look absolutely ridiculous when riding it. As soon as I get a picture I will upload it. For now, you can feast on this, the co-op I was talking about in my previous entry. Neat-o ne?

Anyway, so I look absolutely ridiculous while riding my bike but its ok, because now I can actually get around. So me and my friend rode up to the district ward office because I had to pick up my ALIEN registration card. Well dummy me, Japanese dates are written [year, month, day] soo....I showed up a MONTH early to pick up my card, but it was a fun bike ride nonetheless.

After that we went into Yodobasi (yo-do-ba-shi) Camera which is a hugee electronics store at Sapporo station which is a 2 minute bike ride from my apartment. There are a million other stores there too, which is pretty cool. But inside this galactic collision of transistors are many micro stores, some of which are cell phone stores.

So one of the Japanese cell phone companies is called docomo (=anywhere) and they had this sick phone for a good deal and it looked cool. Well, after further investigation and a bit of translation, I found out that I could only get the sick (which means good By The Way) phone if I paid...55 dollars a month for the plan...sigh.

So I went over to Softbank, another Japanese cell phone company and got a crappy phone, but it was super cheap...free actually with the plan I got. So overall it was still ok. The phone btw is still super sweet. Its pretty thin, about 3/5 inches long, 1.5 inches wide, and about 1/2 inch thick. The phone I wanted was only 1/4 inches thick, but just as big in the other dimensions.

But it has an infrared sensor that Japanese phones use to communicate info, so now going around and adding people's names and numbers, you just hold your phone up to your buddies phone and they transmit each other's contact information automatically. It can also read bar codes and do some other cool stuff. I was in McDonalds again (haha) and my friend downloaded a coupon the their site, waved his cell phone in front of this small screen when he was ordering and the screen scanned the coupon off his phone.

Also Japanese phones strictly use email for text based communication, so if anyone is in japan, my email is too_tall_for_japan@softbank.ne.jp.

After that we walked around Sapporo station a little bit. Suguru said it wasn't crowded at all, but it was almost shoulder to shoulder people. Small stores, restaurants, the hyakin (100 yen store hehe) and so much other stuff that would take more than 1 day to see.

Japanese styles are also pretty cool/funny. I saw a guy today wearing what looked like a dead animal he dragged off the road and then stapled to his legs. Oh yeah, and in the electronics store, we took a quick look at rice steamers, their max price goes up to not 500$, not 700, not 1000, but 1500 dollars for a rice steamer. That is dedication ladies and gentlemen.

So my slippers also got stolen. They way Japanese entries work, you walk in, take your shoes off, step up (always a step no matter what) and put on your slippers. So there are usually pairs of slippers and shoes everywhere. well someone decided to take mine, so I am once again slipperless. Also this is the international dorm, so it must have been another foreigner. How ironic, to have a foreigner steal something from me in JAPAN.

I like this picture, well the picture of the river is supposed to go here...that is at least what I told my blog to do.

And for the video, I am standing on the bridge the river runs under. Notice the sound of the karas crowing in the background. I will also state that so far, they have been the only birds that I have seen or heard. Maybe they eat all the other birds, but I havent seen any other kind of bird yet. The video is large so give it time to load, its worth it :). and when I say big i mean 55 megabytes, so like..give it like...5 minutes ish...

Bibbling Babbling Brook

So today I decided to follow the path that goes along with this famous river that runs through campus. It has a cool name and some special history which I dont remember at all, but it was a lot of fun!

The river itself starts out in the Southwest corner of the university, and runs all the way up to the northeast corner. It has a small path that runs alongside of it, and in general is pretty nice. I would put up a picture here but quite frankly i dont know how. The river itself is very clean and shallow, starting from a spring and running quite quickly through some twists and bends around a park, then passes under a bridge.

The weather was pretty cold, with high winds and overcast, but it was still rather beautiful outside. The karas were loud and obnoxious as usual, but I am getting a little bit more accustomed to them.

Continuing on, it runs past some tennis courts where several people were getting there game on, and through some secluded corners and paths. I would like to note here that I have seen several ominous webs, spanning large distances. They were pretty cool, however I would NOT like to meet their makers.

Then on the left, I came upon a large wooded building that looked very old and had a dry funny smell to it. Upon further examination, it was the Kyudo (archery building) for the University. I crept around one side and found an entrance where I could see inside and was surprised to see a
rack of bows, all about as tall as I am. A dude was also in the middle of shooting an arrow, and he was doing everything very deliberately and slowly. It was pretty cool to watch.

Following the brook a bit further I found that it actually continues into the pond that I talked about in my earlier post. Who knew?


And 2 quick funny stories.

1. my friend and I are walking through JUSCO (see the movie kamikaze girls and you will know why I think that alone is funny) which is basically an American Walmart, and there is an older women standing next to a coffee machine. My friend quickly asks me something, however I didn't fully understand, and seeing as how I just got here I didn't really want to purchase a 115 dollar coffee machine yet. He mumbles something to the women and she promptly makes him a coffee drink. A small light turns on in my head, realizing that he wasn't asking me if I would like to buy it, but if I would like to try it. He too realized that that was what I had thought, and said that out loud, in earshot of 2 other old ladies who started laughing at the big tall moronic foreigner.

2. There is a co-op at the university, and I was trying to find it. I had been given directions from a friend and was pretty sure I had the right place, however after asking 2 of the employees there if I could sign up for it, neither of them had any idea what I was talking about. So I concluded that I must have been in the wrong place, and gave up. (insert picture here if I could) The building I was in was 4 stories tall, and on the outside in GIANT GREEN BOLD LETTERS WAS "CO-OP". Shame on those employees for not knowing they WORKED in the co-op, and shame on me for giving up because I have walked past that building about 10 times now.