Takai yasai.

It rhymes. It means "expensive vegetables." It doesn't rhyme in English. In an attempt to vary my diet and boost my immune system, I decided to buy some fruits and veggies today. I spent about the equivalent of $20 for the following: a 250 g bag of frozen strawberries, a 250 g bag of frozen blueberries, 4 apples, 3 carrots, 5 bananas, and 5 oranges. Takai, ne? (Expensive, huh?)

I'll stop bitching, because in actuality, most food in Japan is nearly the same price as its American counterpart.

Anyways, today I taught an elementary school, as opposed to the usual yon-chu junior high. It was a lot of fun! My first two classes were 5th grade students (probably 11 or 12, a year younger than the youngest at my junior high). These classes were alright. We played "Verb Bingo" and I used some flashcards I made to teach them "run, walk, eat, drink" etc. The other 3 classes were 3rd graders (8-9). These kids were all totally awesome. Cute and funny, and actually, I think if I taught these kids regularly, my Japanese would be improving much more rapidly. See, these kids know little to no english, so no matter how many "wakaranai"s (i don't understand) that I gave them, theye kept talking to in Japanese. For the most part, I communicated with them pretty alright. It was fun. These kids learned the body parts and we did "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" and played a game where you pass a ball around with the body parts I yelled out. It was a good time. The last class even gave me tsuru (cranes, like the birds) oragami and one girl gave me a sunflower seed with red ink on it neatly wrapped in a little piece of paper. Cute but random! Also, after every class all the kids wanted my autograph. It was hilarious. I mean every kid in 5 classes of 30 kids each. I felt like a freakin' celebrity, and I really wowed them when I showed them I could write my name in katakana (the alphabet used for foreign words, company names, etc).

I ate lunch with the last class I taught, the third graders. What's great about Japanese schools is they always play music during lunch time. It's just cool. Today, they played this song that is a super hit in Japan (hell, I even have it on my computer and most anyone outside of Japan would probably make fun of me if I showed it to them). It's called "Daite Seniorita" which translates to something like "Make love to me, seniorita." In other words, perfectly okay for 8 and 9 year olds to be listening to during lunch.

Might I add that the school randomly had two live goats at the entrance of the school grounds. I have absolutely no idea why. They had massively sagging bladder areas, too. Weird.

Now I'm just sitting around, probably gonna go find some dinner soon. I'm almost done with "Flowers for Algernon," making it the fastest 300 pages I've actually been interested in reading.

Finally, thanks to everyone leaving comments. I love them as much as (apparently) you all love reading this blog. I must give delayed birthday props to my brother Wade and the wonderful Lucy. Happy belated birthday you crazy bitches. To the IES kids, hurry up and graduate and get your asses back to Japan. Gerry- hilarious as usual. Nicky and Amy, I'm working on making sure I have the right address before I give it to you for the cereal. But some American cereal would be totally epic. Thanks and much love to everyone!! Just to make it apparent- anyone can leave comments on here, you don't have to register. Okay.

Sorry about no pictures yet again. I really wanted to take a picture of the goats, but forgot my camera today.

Random shots.

Today, I woke up and got lunch at Skylark Gusto, a family restaurant. Family restaurants are pretty much the same as family restaurants in America, but the food is weird and random, but cheap. Skylark just started serving a kind of sukiyaki dish so I tried it and it was really good!

It was a beautiful day today. I've learned that after typhoons pass, you can expect great weather. Today was no exception. So, I headed to Tsukuba on my bike. Good exercise. I took some pictures.

There was a big science expo in Tsukuba in 1986 or something, and they have a really nice expo center in the middle of the park. In the center there's a life-size rocket. Random, but cool.


On the street between Tsuchiura and Tsukuba, there's a gas station. Here's the sign. Also random and oddly disturbing (and might i add...mildly arousing!)


And finally, a classic "Engrish" sign.


The librarian at yon-chu was excited to show me their selection of english books, and had me check out a book called "Flowers for Avergnon." While the title seemed vaguely familiar, I had no idea what it was about. I did brief internet research and it sounded cool, so tonight I started reading it. Anyone out there read this book? It's really cool so far. I'm about 65 pages in. I reccomend it so far.

Lates.

Yopparatta!

It might be early in the morning your time, but it's well into the AM over here, and "Yopparatta" means "I am drunk!" YES! Weekend 4 is in the books. I have pictures! I have bad news too. As I took my camera out to take the following picture, I dropped it, and now my camera is pretty much fucked up and broken. I can still manage...but Christmas wishes are just around the corner. Get it? Ehhhh??

Jonathan. I took this picture just for you, and as I just mentioned, broke my camera because of it. So check these badass kicks out.

Badass, right? While we're on it, I went to a Nike Outlet store today...Unlike that one we went to in Florida, they had Dunks all over the place on outlet prices. I didn't get any, but plan on returning soon.

Anyhoo, Friday night, Manami came to Tsuchiura and we took the bus to Tsukuba (where I took the above picture). We found a delicious restaurant on the top floor of the mall. Our dinner looked as such:
Yum, dude!

Today, we went to the Tokyo Game Show. The biggest video game convention IN THE WORLD!! YEAAAH! There were lots of foreigners (yuck), and lots of games to play, and it was way too crowded. Pictures!



After said events, we went to Subway to get a snack. Subways here kick ass! They havea avocado shrimp sandwiches and wasabi dressing and oh my god it's good. Next, we got on a train for about 30 minutes then hit an izakaya in Kashiwa (for the new readers here, an izakaya is a traditional bar/restaurant where you go and eat food. These places are laid out like mazes and just finding the bathroom takes patience and perseverence. It's like eating where a samurai might have eaten in the 1600s). Luckily, Manami's friend worked there, so we got drinks for free and tons of good food at a good price. Food included yakitori (chicken bone and god knows what else on a stick), raw octopus and wasabi which was delicious, blood orange sherbert, crepes, shrimp salad, other stuff that alcohol won't let me remember. It was good.

Then I got on a train by my lonesome back to Tsuchiura, hit the bike, and now i'm here. Might I mention that Sally Struthers has nothing with her buns of steel, because after all my bike riding, I have buns of platinum and they are absolutely divine!

Oh yeah, cute story. When I was on the train from the game show back to Kashiwa, there was this mom and her two girls on the train. They were probably 4 and 6. The 6 year old made eye contact with me and I smiled at her, then she said "Hello." It was adorable, then as they were getting off she said "Goodbye!" She must be a pretty smart little girl.

I think I got my pop culture references right. And I'm OUT!

I came all the way from America...I had a blind date with destiny.

Another night of eating too much goddamned food.

Today I taught first graders, who are quickly becoming my favorite over the second graders. It's amazing how much more talkative these kids are than the third graders. I don't get it, really. I taught a new first grade class today and they were hilarious. For some reason, a few of them like to yell to me "PEANUTS HONEY!!" And if I say it back, they laugh. So, I said in my self-introduction that I love eating peanuts and honey, and the class liked it. (On a side note, I've heard some other crazy English phrases and I have no reason why the kids are saying them. One that comes to mind is "Fire baby! Fire baby!") The lesson plan today was acting like you were ordering from a hamburger restaurant. It was fun and cute.

Lunch was good and I got okawari, a word that Okechan taught me and means "second helping," because Nagazawa-sensei was gone again. It sucks because he's the cool 24 year-old teacher, and apparently he quit, and some people about the teacher's office are upset about it, myself included.

Anyhoo, I got off of work, came home, dicked around a little bit, then headed to the almight Genkotsu Ramen. It was great. Then I was riding my bike home, and I had noticed that a restaurant that has been under construction looked like it might be open. I was taking a picture of the sign with my phone (more on that in a second), when the owner or manager or something came out and said a bunch of japanese shite. I understood "sushi o tabetai" (do you want to eat sushi) and he was doing the japanese hand motion for "come here," so I went in. So I had dinner number 2, and the sushi was absolutely delicious. It wasn't until I was leaving that I realized it was FREE!! I guess they were doing training and stuff. Seriously, I will be returning. It's a nice restaurant too, good atmosphere.

So about this taking a picture with my phone, eh? I found this badass feature on my cellphone where you can take a picture of any kanji or series of kanji, then the phone reads the kanji, and you can look up the meaning in the dictionary. So badass. This whole country is now my textbook! Kanji are the symbols that actually have a meaning (day, sun, water, up, etc), they're not just a phonetic library. Needless to say, this is very helpful. Phones here are so cool. If you travel around or eat at restaurants, you'll often see these kinda weird looking barcodes. What you do is take a picture of the barcode with your phone, your phone reads it, and then you can get special coupons or promotions based on the bar code you photographed. It is so cool.

This weekend is one of the biggest video game shows in the world- Tokyo Game Show 2006. It's cheap for the public, and I am very excited. Also, I just found out that Mars Volta will be here in November. NICE NICE NICE.

Later.

Seriously, I am the working man.

Today, I had a long fucking day.

Woke up at 7:15, cashed what was probably my 10th box of frosted flakes (it's the only decent cereal they have here), and headed to school. I taught the 3rd graders (14-15) today for the first time. Good, because I met the rest of the kids, bad because I was co-teaching with my boss, who for some reason just is not nice to me. Or she just doesn't seem to like me. It's weird, too, because the 3rd graders were far more reluctant to speak english than the 2nd graders (or even the 1st graders), which kinda made me wonder. But I guess that's just a shy age to be, or something like that.

Anyhoo, I made 4 or so self-introductions, which gets old fast, but it's okay. Got done with work and then headed to my part-time job. Much more relaxed setting. I was a little nervous, but it was really easy. I taught a class of 4 students and then another one of 6. Their english is much better than the yon-chu kids. At the end of class, i distributed lyrics for "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and we listened to it. Some people remembered it, some chuckled, some bobbed their heads. It was fun. One lady said it reminded her of the 80s and "Video Killed The Radio Star." I said "Does it bring back memories" and she said "Yes!" and everyone laughed. Anyways, I got paid 8000 yen in cold cold hard cash. NICE.

Anyways, after that I headed home. It's 10:30, the latest i've been awake on a weekday so far (i think). I just ate 2 onigiri from sunkus (pronounced 'Sunks,' it's a conbini or "convenience store). Onigiri is rice shaped in a triangle, wrapped in seaweed, and stuffed with a variety of things. I had diced chicken and mayonnaise. It's really good.

Lately I've been jamming "True Faith" by New Order so hard. I don't know why. In fact, I - guess - there's - just - no - way - of - knowing.

Long weekend.

Tsukareta! (I'm tired). Today I had a 3 day weekend, which was great. Friday night, I met up with Hoko and Manami in one of my favorite areas of Tokyo- Ikebukuro. It's kind of a small area, but there are a ton of things going on there. Our mission was to eat at Mo Mo Paradise, my favorite restaurant in Japan. If you come visit me, I will guarantee you that we will eat here ;) Bascially, it's all-you-can-eat for 90 minutes of shabu shabu or sukiyaki. We chose shabu shabu. Here's what the spread looks like.


Here's how it works. They bring you all the meat and vegetables your stomach can handle. So the thin red meat is beef, and the pink meet is pork. Then you throw it in the boiling water/broth that's in the middle, and dip into either of the two sauces you see near the center of the picture. These aren't yummy-yummy, yucky-yucky sauces though, they're ponzu and a sesame-based dressing. Both are delicious. I gained weight. Also, Manami found a coupon on her cell-phone (yes, that's Japan for you) so we all got a free drink. I had whiskey and water. Yum. Okay, enough about momo. Oh one more thing, momo is supposedly the sound a cow makes in Japan (not moo-moo), thus the fairly cruel name, Mo Mo Paradise.

Ikebukuro at night-



Anyhoo, after that, we headed to an izakaya, but had to catch the last train fairly early (like 1130) so i'd be able to make it home. Came home, slept, woke up, had a fairly uneventful Saturday. Ate some good food at the train station though. Can't really remember much else.

Fun at the Izakaya- A very candid Hoko and Manami + a seductive me.



Sunday, I headed to Kashiwa to meet up again with manami. Kashiwa is a cool kind of "mini-tokyo" about 35 minutes away by train. Tons of badass used clothing stores, restaurants, etc. I found this amazing yello jethro tull 1978 tour t-shirt that i'm still considering buying, but it's a fairly hefty price. But it's SOOO badass. We went into this one store where there was this techno song playing and the lyrics were "Sit on my face. Sit sit sit on my face." It was hilarious, especially becasue I dont think any of the employees or customers had any idea what they were saying. In case you're wondering- in Japanese it's "Watashi no kao no ue ni suwatte kudasai."

Then I went to Manami's house for sukiyaki dinner. Nice. It was pretty funny, because i could barely communicate with her relatives. Her cousin, aunt, and uncle came over just to see my face. Right when the uncle walked in and saw me, he said nothing, he just started cracking up. It was funny. As the night went on, we discovered our mutual love for classic rock. His favorite band was fucking Toto, for christ's sake. Totally awesome.

Here's a picture of her house.

Quaint, eh? (I dont know why this picture won't rotate. Deal, I guess.)

So, we left her house and went back to Kashiwa. Looked around and some different shops, ate some delicious ramen (her choice, not mine, i swear), and then I headed home. Upon returning to Tsuchiura, the sky looked crazy, so I decided to take some pictures. These are from downtown Tsuchiura near the train station.



COOL! That's all for now. Love you all.

Hello, girls!!

Because today was another great day, I figured i'd let everyone see more of my world and post some pictures ;)

First, stories of today. Okay, so I woke up and put on my nice polo dress shirt that's 80% linen and 20% silk. I got it at Marshall Field's. It was marked down from $85 to $22. Not bad right?

Well, that's all. Later.




Okay, just kidding. Anyhoo, I headed to school and thought I had to teach 5 classes today, as that's what my schedule said. Of course, nothing's ever right on my schedule, and I only had to teach 4 classes, for one of which Nakazawa-sensei had a meeting. So there's my foreign ass standing in front of 33 Japanese kids who barely understand any English and I'm trying to run a class. We were supposed to play bingo, and we kinda did, but mostly the kids just asked me if I knew about various manga, j-pop singers, video games, and stuff like that. One kid asked me if I knew Michael Jackson, and i said "okashii" (weird, strange, etc) and everyone laughed. For some reason, if I don't understand the kids, and i say "huh??" everyone cracks up for a long time. Maybe my facial expression or my furry eyebrows or something. I don't know. Might I add that school lunch was delicious today. I ate with the 2-1 class (13-14 year olds) and it consisted of a mashed potato croquette, tomato-based veggie soup, a little salad, and some bread w/strawberry jam (again, for some reason i dont understand, the kids thought it was funny to give me their jam...whatever, i used that shit!), and then a pudding custard thing. Pretty good stuff.

Uh, lets see, so after lunch, I sat on the computer waiting for 4 o clock to come around, because I didn't have anymore classes. I looked at things like urbanoutfitters.com, cnn.com, and maybe some other stuff. Then I got done with work and headed home, put a suit on, then went to an interview for some extra part-time money. I got hired to teach Tuesday for 2 hours and 40 minutes, and they will pay me the equivalent of $80. NICE! If I do well, they'll give me more hours, too. The demand for english teachers here is so ridiculous and awesome.

On my way home, I had Genkotsu ramen in mind, but then passed Ringer Hut, a restaurant I was interested in. I rode passed it, but then turned around to check it out. To my delight it was yasukute oishii (cheap and delicious). Picture time, bitches!!

Here's what I ate tonight...it looks like ramen, but it's called "Champion set" (with a Japanese accent of course). It was great, and according to the menu, only has 800 kCal (they're not calories in japan...they're kCal- more specific i guess).


After I got home, I was on the computer, then wanted to get in the bath. As i turned around to go to the bathroom, I saw this crawling on my dress shirt (that I wasn't wearing at the time)

Yeah, then I killed that sumabitch,

The following are some pictures I took at the sports festival last weekend.


This is "Esasa," which i described somewhere below, and is also the charade that I did in front of all the colleagues.


This is just a general shot of the crowd, students, etc at the sports festival


And here's another event. It's like capture-the-flag-that's-on-top-of-the-bamboo. The kids climbed them, knocked em down, and grabbed the flag. It was fun to watch.

These are the three colleagues that i'm the best friends with, Maatsura, Nagasawa, and Okesha. They rule. This was before I was on stage with them. Note Nagasawa (in black) is chugging the entire beer. I love Japanese people and their love of alcohol.


Finally, because I know some of you may be wondering how i'm doing, and because i haven't put a picture of my sweet-ass self on this blog. Here's how I'm looking these days. That's Manami, too.


Alright, I'm off to Tokyo after work tomorrow. Updates and pictures to ensue. (Also, Courtney- you'd be surprised. I actually like the milk here more than American milk. It's sweeter or something. Their cheese is not bad either, but most Japanese people hate cheese anyways. For a vast amount of other food-related things, though, American's do it better.)

My bowels are well-lubed for your pleasure.

Sorry about that. It's just my way of saying I ate way too much greasy food tonight.

Today, I woke up at 7:15, ate Japanese-brand Frosted Flakes, then headed to school. Today was my first day of actually teaching at yon-chu, finally. I taught three 2nd grade class (2nd grade of junior high, so about 13-14 year olds) with Nakazawa-sensei. She's a cute little lady of about 25 or 26 and she's very nice. Today, she had some kickin' BO though. I didn't tell her.

The classes were great, though. Basically, I did a self-introduction and let kids ask questions about me. They all seemed interested in if I had a girlfriend. The last class spent about 15 minutes asking if I knew the video games they liked. Anytime I did, they all cracked up. One kid asked me to be his valentine, so I said "Okay! Ai shitteru yo." This means "I love you," but Japanese people really don't say it to each other. Needless to say, the class geeked out for literally 3 minutes. So after the self-introductions, the kids played bingo (i read words in english) and then they talked about TV they watched. It was fucking easy work. But it was fun!

After work, I came home and talked to some people online, lied down to watch some Japanese MTV, and then went to eat Ramen at my favorite joint- ninniku genkotsu ramen. That place rules. Then I got some more gyunyu (milk) at the grocery and came home. It was then that Nagasawa (not to be confused with Nakazawa, which believe me, I am) called me for yakiniku. So I met up with him, Matsuura, Okechan, and the other young male teacher Nakahata or something. We ate yakiniku and I had a massive beer. It was great and i'm, as mom might say, a little tipsy. Now I'm home and getting ready for bed.

My sincerest apologies about not posting many pictures here. To be honest, I haven't been taking as many pictures as I should be. Like last night, in Tsukuba, I saw a gas station sign of a cartoon little boy peeing, and a hotel called "Hotel California." I should be carrying my camera around more, I know.

That's all for now. Lates.

Woo Nelly.

Today, I must have ridden at least 20 miles on my bike. Call my knees a gang-banger in the ghetto, cuz they are shot!

I woke up and went to the city hall to get my gaijin card- a necessary identification card for any foreigner staying in Japan for more than 90 days. Actually, I registered for it and will get it in about 2 weeks. After that, I tried the ramen at the 180 yen ramen shop. 180 yen is like $1.50, otherwise known as ridiculously cheap for a bowl of ramen. The quality reflected the price, but it was still alright, and now I'll know where to go in the event that i'm feeling a crunch between paychecks.

After that I hit up the supa (supermarket) for some cereal and what i thought was laundry soap. I was talking to Manami online, sent her a picture of it to make sure it was soap, and sure enough it turned out to be fabric softener. Goddamit. My clothes are still relatively clean. Then I studied for a bit, then went to kaiten sushi. The highlight was a avocado-shrimp topped with onion and mayonnaise sushi. Not maki (rolls) but sushi (meat over rice). It was awesome.

Then, it was about 4 PM an dI had nothing to do, so I decided to ride my bike to Tsukuba. It was a good idea, because Tsukuba is a damn cool city. It was a bad idea, because Tsukuba is way cooler than Tsuchiura. There's lots of shopping, a TON of restuarants, and gaijin bars for foreigners feeling homesick. It's about a 20 minute bike ride away, but still it'd probably be cooler if I actually lived there. Not a big deal though.

That was my day. Now i'm listening to a podcast I found of Japanese vocabulary set to beats. The idea is to listen to it on repeat and let it sink into your brain. We'll see if it works.

I'm tired.

Hi. This weekend has been pretty righteous. Friday morning, I taught two kindergarten classes. The kids were so effin' adorable, and the work was easy, though I was a little nervous at first. I just said my name and where i'm from, then we went over fruits and colors, then sang "Heads, shoulders, knees, and toes." The kids loved when the song got really fast and they had to keep up. It was cute.

Then I went back to yon-chuu for more sports festival practice. We had a pretty good lunch consisiting of tuna and some other stuff. I helped Nagazawa and Matsuura cut down bamboo, which was kind of a cool experience. We went to these woods where tons and tons of bamboo trees were growing, then we chopped em down with huge knives. There were lots of mosquitos, which sucked, but it was fun.

After school, I headed to the station because Manami came into town. We walked back and ate at Takara Jime (Treasure Island) which is a yakiniku place. It was fucking good. Yakiniku means "thin meat" and you go to these restaurants and grill the meat on open-flame grills that are in the middle of your table. There's sauces and garlic and all that, and it is so good. It was my first time eating cow tongue, and it was actually really really good.

Saturday was the sports festival (finally), and it was pretty long and pretty boring to watch again. That's okay, though, because I'm getting paid. After the festival, I took a shower, then went to a nice hotel convention room for a pretty good dinner and lots of beer. I was pretty wasted. The three cool teachers all put on power rangers costumes and performed a little bit for all of us. Then they did a tumbling routine, based off of what the boys had to do at the sports festival (see below). They called a bunch of teachers up, including myself, and we did some tumbling things, like made a human pyramid and stuff. Of course the Japanese people got a kick out of seeing me up there. Then we all did "Esasa," which is where you take off your shirt and strike this pose then kinda run in place, sort of. Hard to explain, but it's a respected "sports" event that the boys at the school also did. So there was my drunk ass, shirt off, in front of all my colleagues and other PTA members I had never even seen before, doing some old Japanese traditional sport/dance thing. It was fun.

After that, we headed to an izakaya and got drunker and ate sashimi and edeamame. I sat by Okechan and talked to him most of the time, then we made the long walk back to yon-chuu, and I headed home. It was a good night, but a little too expensive. I woke up hungover, then went back to sleep, then headed out on my bike. I went on a route I had never been on, then ended up reaching the train station, so I ate at the Indian buffet again. It was delicious. I'm still full and i'm still tired. I should study Japanese now. That's all!

Good day.

It's about 9 PM, I'm jamming some Crowded House/Finn Brothers on shuffle on my computer, and I just got back from my 3rd night in a row of having ramen for dinner. That shit is just too good. Today, I had miso ramen at the chinese restaurant near my apartment/school. I met up with three teachers there- Nagazawa-sensei, Matsuura-sensei, and Oke-chan (can't remember his full last name, but he told me to call him 'oke-chan' because we are 'mabudachi' or best friends, cute right?). They're 24, 24, and 26 respectively and our mutual abilities (or lack thereof) of each other's native languages are enough to get by and have a good time. Before that, I rode my back all around Tsuchiura, just to see what I could find, and I THINK I found a sukiyaki joint. Not sure, but they had pictures of thinly-sliced meat and an area in the center of the tables for a hot-pot. I will have to investigate furthur, for shizzle.

Tomorrow, I teach two kindergarten classes. It sould be fun and really cute. Then I head back to yon-chu for more sports festival practice. After the festival, Saturday night, the plan is to go out with all the colleagues, eat really good food, and get totally wasted, so i'm looking forward to that.

My only complaint right now is that I wish my japanese was better. A lot better. Imma study hard. Ooh, "Fall at your Feet" just came on- nice.

-ryan

Phone number and address

If anyone wants to know, here's my phone number- 09058281849 ...i cant remember what japans country code is...maybe 81
my address is:

ryan marks
352-1 leopalace soreu 106
Ibaraki-ken, Tsuchiura-shi, Nagakuni
300-0817

i give you this information just in case you feel like sending me an ipod (mine broke on the plane), mario hoops for the nintendo ds, or dragon quest heroes, also for the ds....thanks in advance :-P

today i had my first class...not really, though...i distributed a math test (dont ask me, i just do what i'm told) and sat there until the kids were done...then it was back to sports festival practice! whatever, though, i'm gettin' paid! I also ate lunch with the kids today for the second time (as opposed to eating in the teacher's office). It's a good time, they just basically yell whatever english they know at me, and i respond, and they all giggle. Interesting little culture thing though- at the schools here (at least the public ones), the kids all eat lunch in their own homerooms and the food is served by their classmates (who wear face masks and white cafeteria coat things). Everyone waits until everyone has their food, and then they say "Itadakimasu!" and then everyone starts eating ("Itadakimasu" is a phrase everyone says before they start eating anywhere, and roughly means "I will receive"). It's kinda nice. Japanese kids are so freakin' patient.

last night i ate dinner at an awesome ramen shop, that i guess is a pretty well-known chain in japan...it's called ninniku kagetsu ramen, which means "garlic ___ ramen" ...don't know what kagetsu means, but they load up on the ninniku, i love it, and it's literally like 3 minutes away...i might go there for dinner, or i might try a new place...we'll just have to see!!

this weekend should be fun...the sports festival is saturday (i have to "work," but that means i get monday off) and after the festival, the colleagues and teachers invited me to get wasted with them in downtown tsuchiura...manami might come with to help with hongaku (translating) for me...should be a good time!

oh and if you feel like sending me the new strike anywhere and mars volta cds, i'll listen to them ;)

and i'm out.

Picture time.

I now have internet at my apartment, so without furthur ado, here are some pictures i've taken thus far.

These first two are just a couple of pictures I took during a sunset. It's my city, Tsuchiura, as seen from one of its many bridges.



These are some of the boys from my school, yon-chu junior high school, practicing for the 'sports festival.' By sports, though, they don't mean tennis or soccer or something. They're these kind of weird, or different, exercise routines and marches and stuff like that. This is called "tumbling" and requires a lot of strength and patience. I learned a new phrase, "gaban suru" while watching these kids. It basically means "endure without saying anything about pain" or something like that. Might I add that it's hot as shit over here. The sun is relentless, and I have a tan that would make any porn star jealous. Just to add to the endurance these kids have- pretty impressive shit.



The rest of these are from my apartment. This is my main room. Where I sleep (on the floor), watch tv, listen to music from my computer, eat cereal, get dressed, etc.


Here's the kitchen/washing machine which leads to....

the shower/bath room



this is the toilet room...separate from the shower and bathing room, because that would be unclean.

view from the front door

my apartment from the outside looks like a meat locker

and finally...the epic view from my backyard.


So there you have it...my home for the next 7 months...hope you like the tour...on a side note, i love getting comments, so please leave theme...i just changed my blog settings so anyone can leave comments, just let me know who you are in the post...word...later
-ryan

RIP Jordy...you'll be missed.

My parents called me at about 130 AM Japan Time and informed me that my first dog, Jordy, had passed away. Apparently, it was a peaceful death in the comfort of our house, so that's relieving. Still, it's a sad day for me. I'll always love you Jordy, you were a good dog.

Shitsurei Shimasu!

This, I am finding out, is a phrase im really going to have to get used to hearing. The kids say it everytime they enter the teachers office, and it translates to 'excuse me' but really is something like 'I am being rude.' Then, when the kids leave, they say 'shitsurei shimashita,' which is the same thing but in past tense. It's kind of kind and cute, but annoying at the same time.

Anyways, its my first real day of work, but not really. This week, the kids are practicing for the sports festival on saturday. The 'sports' they are practicing for are really different, though. The 3rd grade (15 year old) boys are outside doing these exercises where they pick each other up on their shoulders, then the kid on top stands on the bottom kids thighs and leans forward, hands spread apart. The thing is, a lot of them arent strong enough and keep dropping the kids. It's pretty amusing.

I made my first two worksheets today. First, my boss was like 'no, this isnt creative enough.' Then I put some thought into it and i think i impressed her. Nice. I spent all day yesterday with Manami. She came by train to Tsuchiura, and helped me get a cell phone (ill put the number on here later), we ate indian food all-you-can-eat, walked back to my apartment (my apartment is a long walk to the train station), hung out, went to the super market, all that good shit. It was fun. Today, after work, im not really sure what i'll do. Maybe hit an arcade or something. Ill probably eat some ramen or kaiten-sushi (sushi on a conveyor belt that you grab and pay for by the plate), but for now its lunch time.

Shitsurei shimashita.

The weekend.

Last night was pretty sweet. See, because yesterday marked the beginning of second semester of the japanese school year, all my colleagues threw in 3500 yen each for a big after-work party. This meant that I went with a bunch of Japanese people that I barely knew and showed them how we Americans get fucked up. Yeah, apparently its a totally normal thing to get wasted in front of your boss, because hes getting fucked up too. It was great watching a principal of a public junior high school get wasted. So yeah, we were all at an izakaya drinking nomihoudai style (all you can drink) and eating a ton of awesome food (great sashimi, salmon carpaccio, yakitori, some thing ive never seen before but had like fried rice, etc). A bunch of my colleagues would come sit over by me and we all got to know each other better, and it was a lot of fun. The thing that sucks is I cannot remember these peoples names at all. I feel bad, because they all know my name, but goddamn, thirty or so japanese names to remember is no easy feat.

Today has been kinda boring. I woke up at about 815, watched some japanese tv, then went and checked out downtown Tsuchiura, or the area around the train station. It was alright, a couple department stores and I found the route to Tokyo and stuff like that. Then I went back home, watched tv and cooled off a little because its hot today, got some ramen, and rode my bike around some more until I found an Internet cafe, where I am now. Not very exciting, but thats okay.

There you have it. Dont know what Im going to do tonight, but i found some gaijin-friendly looking bars downtown, so maybe ill hit that up. Word. Lates.

Thats why they call me the workin' man.

Today was my first day of work. Actually, i'm still there. Today the students didnt really have school though, really more like a half-day thing. I have been pretty clueless the whole day, but my colleagues (all Japanese, im the only foreigner in the school) are pretty nice and one english teacher is 24, lieks drinking, and plays bass...so i think im going out with him tonight. Ill have pictures of my tiiiny apartment as soon as I can get internet access at home. My backyard is, you might say, quite a trip.

So basically, I came to work by bike (yes, i ride a bike around my town) at like 730. Then I sat in the office for a while, met the principal and other faculty, then there was an opening ceremony thing where some of the kids made speeches about their summers and others accepted awards. Here, I walked up on stage in front of 680 12-15 year old Japanese kids, and introduced myself in Japanese. I said my name, age, hobbies, how i liked japanese food and movies, said my teachers were nice, i was happy. All this kind of crap. I threw some slang in too to make them laugh. I was a little nervous, but I guess i pulled it off. The principal was like `Nice-a speechu` so i guess it was okay Japanese.

We just got done with a really boring, 2-hour meeting that i had no idea what anyone was talking about. All i know is next week is sports week, so I just watch kids play sports all day. Nice. I wanna get drunk tonight. Bye.