One more pic... Fuji-san!

I just wanted to post this pic of a view of Mt. Fuji from my neighborhood. I thought ya'll would appreciate it. You may have to look hard because the camera didn't pick it up so well because of the lighting at the time. This pic is in the gallery I posted below, but I wanted to make sure everyone saw this. Just click the picture to enlarge it and get a good look. I see this every morning going to the train station.

Eureka! I'm back on the blog, peeps!!

Wooooohooooooooo it's been a long time and I'm very sorry.... Japan is just so cool and I'm so busy all the time that I've neglected this blog. Well, it's been that and my sometimes spotty internet connection at night. I just uploaded a TON of pics. I've been all over the place. There are night pics of Shinjuku, pics of my snow-covered part of Tokyo, pics all over Tokyo such as Ginza, Tsukiji, Kokkaigijido(governmental area), Imperial Palace, etc.. I'll have some Yokohama Chuukagai(Chinatown) pics as soon as my friend sends them to me, since my camera batteries died that night and I forgot to bring more with me. I can't believe I didn't run into my friends at japanyears.blogspot.com because I saw in one of their pictures that I was at that very same spot. Oh well...

Things are going great here in Japan right now. I've become accustomed to it now and will probably be in a bad mood when I get home, lol. There are so many things that are really nice here such as the cleanliness, niceness of people, customer service, convenience, safety, cheap restaurants, and HEATED TOILET SEATS! Even a lot of public toilets have heated toilet seats, it's crazy! I've got friends I only speak Japanese with here('cause they're not American, of course, DUH) which is great fun and practice. Class is going well at the moment I think. I'm taking extra conversational concentration classes as well. I'll definitely be practicing Japanese with my Japanese friends back home when I get there so that I continue to get better now that I've gotten into it hardcore. I'd hate to lose the progress I'm making here. I'm learning like at least 6 new kanji(Chinese characters) every day on top of all this. I'm up to like 500 or 600 or so. These are the MOST useful ones of course, so I'm getting around pretty well on them at the moment. There are still times when I want to order something that has a lot of kanji in it and no pictures, and I just have to ask them what it is sometimes. The goal now is to become fluent at Japanese. I'm definitely coming back here and at least doing something like teaching English for a while just to keep studying the language and experiencing Japan until I'm excellent at it and get a bilingual job. This will be even more motivation to work to finally get out of that hellhole, I mean LSU. By hellhole, I just mean 'cause I'm sick of college and well, there are cool people there but I hate the classes at LSU.

Enough ranting about that.... I've been to Akihabara now a few times, 'cause it's cool and everyone wants to go there. I got this laptop there in fact. I'm going there again Sunday with a friend because she wants to get a better camera and well... that's the place to get anything that runs on any electricity, in the whole world. I'll get some pics this time of the girls dressed up in the skimpy anime costumes and the street bands and such to show ya'll. Saturday, I'll meet some people at the theme park I went to last time and then go where ever... I don't know yet. Friday(I'm going backwards...) I have class at a shrine in Ochanomizu and have to write a stinkin' paper on it, but it should be fun. Next week, I plan to go to Kamakura and check out all the feudal stuff there, like the Daibutsu(even though the biggest one is in Nara). I also need to get down to Harajuku and hit up the XBox cafe. I just have too many things to do here!! They're great though! The Americans in the school have an overnight bus trip to Aizu, in the more northern Touhoku Region, up in the mountains in March. My class itself will be going to some "Japan's Hawaii" thing with an indoor waterpark and an onsen sometime in February or March as well.

The pic you see above isn't on my friend's pic server 'cause it doesn't fit into any of the categories I've got on there at the moment, but it's a pic from going out with someone else's class in Shin-Okubo, or what is really known as Korean Town. All of the people in the picture besides us obvious Americans, are Korean except for the two sensei there. On either side of the American on the left, the one close to the camera is Tanaka-san, who is the English-speaking guy that gets things done for us, like translating in business transactions, or paper-work, or anything else we need. The lady on the other side of the American is Kagesawa-sensei, who is one of the teachers for the beginner classes, and also is my teacher in my morning conversation session. The American guy there is Liam, who lives across the hall from me and is well... actually Canadian, so I don't know why I was saying American. The American girl on the right near the back, is Kasi from Maine. I think she is staying in Yokohama. All of those students are in the beginning class, so speaking with them was well... painful, since they're all Korean. One guy spoke English, but he was taking this pic, so he's not in the picture. This is from like 2 weeks ago I think. I need to get a pic of my class soon. I'm sure I will as we do lots of stuff together in the future.

Here is a rundown of pics and the corresponding links....
Here are some pics from my building and out of my window here in Nishi-Kokubunji.

More pics of my place, but with SNOW!

The area my school is in, Shinjuku, at night.

This is Kokkaigijido, or the area where the Imperial Palace and Governmental Buildings are.

Here's some of Ginza, where the old downtown of Tokyo used to be before the place expanded.
You'll see the GHQ building in there that I took several pics of, where MacArthur had his American occupation office after World War II. It was the ONLY building like that left standing after the bombardment, except for the Emperor's castle.

Tsukiji area, where the fish market supplies the world's largest city with fish every day.

I made a few videos during the snow, but dangit if I still am having video upload problems... Hopefully that will get fixed in due time. Anywho, have fun with that and it's late, so I'll head to bed and start putting info and new pics as I get them from now on. PEACE OUT!

Currently Updating!

Just in case someone happens to check the site right now, I'm uploading pics to my computer and getting things straight and posting at the moment. I'm sorry for the delay, but I'm very busy here in Japan right now. There will be some things I don't have a pic of at the moment, 'cause my batteries died in my camera the other day and I didn't bring the batteries with me, so I'm waiting on them to be e-mailed to me from a friend.

Just a few more days...

Hey guys, quick post from friend's computer. I'll have internet access on my new laptop in a few days and will start posting like a madman the pics and experiences. I'm sorry but I've had techinical difficulties since I got here, but it will all be good soon and such. Until then, peace out, maybe 'till like Friday or Saturday if I'm fortunate :p

Pictures!

Hey everybody! I finally got pictures hosted. I have a good video clip, but I have failed many times this morning to get them up. Anyway, I've had an eventful two days. On Saturday, I spent the afternoon at Naritasan, checking out Omotesando Street, Naritasan Park, and Shinshoji Temple. It was crazy there, with people all over the place. It may have been some sort of special holiday there or something, but there were monks at the temple, seeming to offer blessings to people, and there was food EVERYWHERE. It smelled sooo good. The water in a lot of the areas there was still frozen and this was late afternoon, so it was quite cold.
Pics of Shinshoji: http://www.hova.org/gallery/Shinshoji-Temple-at-Naritasan,-Japan
Pics of Naritasan Park: http://www.hova.org/gallery/Shinshoji-Park
Pics of Mark's town, Yachiyo: http://www.hova.org/gallery/Yachiyo

Last night, we were out pretty late in Tokyo. Mark wanted to meet his girlfriend Yuki near the Tokyo Dome at the amusement park, but didn't want me to be left out, so he had her bring her friend Michiko with her. We had a lot of fun riding rides, getting some good food, and being silly. We went in a haunted house, rode roller-coasters, and made fun of Japanese comedians. It was really nice meeting them, so now I have a friend in Japan that I can probably exchange language with and hang out with sometime. Mark sort of treated it like a date, so I let him and Yuki talk and I talked in half-Japanese half-English back and forth with Michiko the whole time. We stayed at some Japanese restaurant 'till closing that was off on some side street, before having to catch the trains back home. It was a shame the night had to end, but it was late, we were tired, and it was cold. In the pics, Yuki has the hat on. The video I'm still trying to upload is from when they had the Japanese music and dancers, and of course I put the camera on us too. Hopefully I'll get it on here eventually, but if not, it's still on my camera, so all's not lost yet.
Pics from Suidobashi: http://www.hova.org/gallery/suidobashi

Live from Yachiyo

Hello folks! I'm sitting in my friend's apartment here in the Kayada neighborhood of Yachiyo. He's still at work and I just got back from walking about 3 miles for the heck of it. The scenery didn't change much, but I did find a couple cheap-looking places to grab some yakitori, ramen, and udon later when he gets in. This is definitely a suburban place... nothing interesting unless you like LOTS of houses. I'm mainly sparing everyone the big introductory post, or at least the major details, as I've e-mailed everyone already like crazy pretty much. Anyone who doesn't know though, here's a few things:

My trip here was extremely long and began with a 6.5 hour ride with Aaron from Baton Rouge to Houston. We were up kinda late at his grandma's house and ate at Applebee's before sleeping for a few hours and getting up at 4am to get to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in time. I had to fly from Houston to save a ton of money since flights have sky-rocketed in Baton Rouge and New Orleans since the hurricane. Anywho, the airport in Houston was eeeeeaaasy, even though it's freakin' massive. I just push a few buttons on a touch screen, hand over my bags, toss my backpack and shoes on a conveyer, and wa-la... done. I get a biscuit at McDonald's and get on the plane. It takes off, and into Detroit in just over 2 hours. Now the fun shall begin....

Welcome to Detroit, I say! The airport there is like the Great Wall of China in that it's long beyond imagination. I've never seen such a long hallway in my life. There's a freakin' monorail indoors there to get you across it from gate 1 to like gate 100 or whatever... and this is just one terminal for THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND DECENT! Hehe, anyway, I get something to drink, walk around a bit to stretch the legs and onto the next plane I go. I had noticed also that there was like a Japanese part of the place where the announcements were in the language as well as the signs, so that's where my flight was of course. I'm sitting there watching the Chinese tourists cram as many bags of crap as they can get on that plane in the compartments. One Chinese lady was yelling out Mandarin at me for 5 minutes before I calculated that she wanted to sit by her kids and needed me to switch seats, so I did. We get taxied out to the runway and the pilot comes on and says the engine's eff'd up, and we gotta go back for a few minutes to check something. TWO hours later, we're sweating our brains out on the plane and they say it's not going to Tokyo or Shanghai, so we go stand in the airport again. There just HAPPENED to be a spare 747 just hangin' out there for some reason, so 3 hours after that, we got to board again, with the Chinese complaining they will NOT stay the night in Japan, but giving up eventually since it's free and they can shut up about the World War II crap for a night. So I was delayed 5 hours, fun stuff. My legs were hurting like heck when I got ON the flight, nevermind how they felt later. I took some Ibuprofen about 4 or 5 hours into the flight though and that helped. I had cool people sitting by me though, a Japanese dude about my age and a guy from California on his way to Bangkok. I had a US Soldier behind me that I chatted with during the delay and he's got my e-mail address. That stuff made the 12.5 hour flight more bearable. Anyway, I got to Tokyo 7 hours after Mark got back here and he was still waiting for me at the airport, freakin' AWESOME! We took the trains home and yeah, here we are. That was a long day and I've had a couple days to recuperate. We've done some neato stuffs and I have a few pics. I'd like to show them, but I'm waiting on a reply from Aaron to see if he's going to have me some hosting space, and if not, I've got a place to use, I just gotta see what he's got first.

The pictures I do have are some random ones from the streets in Yachiyo. They're just pics of houses and a few neato buildings really. The terrain here is pretty too. Right now, I'm listening to System of a Down's new CD set, drinking some cold green tea I got at a vending machine on the way back here, and snacking on some peanut M&Ms that I'll miss once I'm done with them, since I haven't seen them here yet. I just walked about 3 miles, checking out the blocks and blocks and blocks of houses and houses... I will say that something interesting here is that people act like you're just another Japanese, even though I'm obviously a W.A.S.P. Hehe.. at least they know about the "W" in that acronym, but still... They talk to you in Japanese the same way they talk to each other, and don't stare at all. I kinda figured it'd be a bit different, but they act like there's nothing out of place at all. It's kind of annoying sometimes because I may not know what in the blue %#&% they're talking about, but a sales clerk is going to explain the usage of some random item to me anyway though I just want to complete the transaction and get the heck outta there. You probably can't buy a toothbrush here without them making a brushing motion with it over their mouth and explaining it. I'm just kidding there, just sayin' I've had them kinda go on about something and I'm just like, "hai, wakarimashita, arigatou gozaimashita," or "yeah, I getcha, thanks a lot." I'm of course thinking "urusei" or "shut up." LOL, but they're just being nice, so that's actually a good thing compared to a bastard clerk back home. This area may lack massively in neato things to do, but I will say it is very pretty. The houses are great, I want one. They're VERY nice, yet not very big. They just look comfy. Everything is new here because Mark says they just started building here, as it was recently very rural. The contrast is sometimes visible, as in my pictures, where you've got a cool house with olde skool Chinese architecture and a nice little field of vegetables surrounded by interesting-looking trees... and then BAM, a skyscraper or something. It also seems they don't have the concept of zoning here, so things are kinda mixed up. I of course HAD to get a pic of a string of vending machines right before bagging some green tea from one.

Tomorrow, I might go to the town of Narita and/or maybe the city of Chiba just to walk around some more and take in whatever sights I can while Mark works. I *MIGHT* go to Akihabara myself and look at laptops or something, or else wait because he plans on taking some girl out to a park next to Tokyo Stadium, so we could go then, but I think the electronics places in Akihabara aren't so lively then. I want to check out Makuhari as my aunt Satomi recommended, but it's a pain in the rear end from here, even though as the crow flies, I'm not that far. I'll wait 'till I move and then just take one of the JR lines there instead of changing trains like 3 or 4 times from this silly place. It'd be more fun to go there with someone anyway, walking around alone is kinda boring right now. Monday, I get to move into West Tokyo, YAY!!!!! That place looks much more lively to me, plus it's not too hard to get places from it. I'll be near Nishi Kokubunji-eki(station), which is supposed to have a huge mall on it with 9 floors, and then there's Tachikawa station a stop away. I'll be passing through Ogikubo and Shinjuku a lot, so that's got LOTS of stuff to do and see. I may have already posted all of this.... Anyway, I'm getting long-winded, 'cause I hadn't posted since a while before I even left, so yeah. I'll be working on getting those pics up on here within the next day or so, so just sit tight for a liiiitle bit longer. It's 6pm on the 6th here, so that means it's like 3am on the 6th back home... Well, I'm out. 'Till next time, Jaa ne!