11 days already?? my bad.

After a busy effing week going to Tokyo for interviews, including one day with two freaking interviews in one night, I had a relaxing and totally kick ass weekend. Here we go.

Friday, I was thinking about going clubbing in Tokyo but then started getting a little sick and the weather sucked, so I decided to take it easy with Manami. Met up with her in Kashiwa, where we ate at the always-delicious 500 yen pasta place. Then we went to her house in Umesato.

Woke up early and headed to Yokohama, the second biggest city in Japan. I went to Yokohama last summer but only during the night when it was really crowded for fireworks. It was cool spending the day there. First, we hit up Chugakugai or "China Town." It's famous for being Japan's biggest China Town as well as one of the biggest CTs in the world. Here's a picture of Manami in front of one of the gates, that I guess was built in the early 1800s.



Here's a picture of the building we ate in. It's called a "Food Amusement Park," but really is just a food court specializing in Chinese food. You could eat things like scorpions and drink lizard alcohol, but we decided to stick with fairly normal food.



Lunch.



While it was a cool change eating something different and being touristy with Japanese tourists, i'm gonna say I like japanese food way more than chinese.

While we were in China Town, we had a little plastic surgery done. Here's what Manami and I look like now.



It was a cold and really windy day in Yokohama, but we made the trek to Minato Mirai, which means "port of the future." Yokohama was one of the first ports open to foreign trade, which is one of the reasons the city is so big. Minato Mirai has the country's largest building, a massive ferris wheel, and lots of shopping. Here's a city scape.


We shopped pretty hard. Here's the Modern Amusement shirt I bought.



Isn't that a nice shirt????

Next, we rode the huge ferris wheel, which apparently doubles as the largest clock in the world. That is to say, there's 60 cars on the ferris wheel, each one representing the second hand on a clock, so, it's a huge clock.



Here's the largest building in Japan as seen from the ferris wheel. I can't say I wasn't kiiinda scared on the wheel. It was windy as fuck.



Aren't we cute?



Next, we found another huge shopping mall and got dinner. We found a kick-ass restaurant called "American House" and proceeded to pig out like Americans. Here's the pizza we ordered. BBQ Chicken and hands down the best pizza I've had in Japan.



Besides that, we had calimari (any help spelling that), gumbo appetizer, and chicken fajitas. Seriously kick ass food.

With that, we called it a night and went back to Manami's house. Sunday night, we relaxed, walked the dogs (Manami got a new chihuahua, and though i've never found these dogs that cute, hers is very nice and cute), and then went to the renowned "White Gyoza." It was fun. This place is like an In N Out Burger in Japan. That is to say, the only food menu on the item is white gyoza. Shit's good though, and was delicious with beer. Here's a picture.


Yeah, I ate a shitload this weekend, and my gut proves it. But that's okay. I hope you all still love me. And with that, I'm out.

Oh yeah- Courtney, good to hear you'll be home. Let's party!

Rx Bandits at Bonaroo...Makes me wonder what I'm doing in Japan.

The other day I had dinner at Manami's aunt and uncle's place in Tokyo. We ate delicious yakiniku and nikujaga. I love that Japanese people love feeding foreigners till they're about to burst. Score one for being foreign. Anyways, her uncle and I once shared a connection over classic rock, so he had 80s pop playing on iTunes radio. We're sitting there enjoying our dinner when what comes on? "Turning Japanese." The irony was thick and I savored the moment, but no one at the table had ever heard the song. Weird, right? The night finished as many nights in Japan end- with the family all busting out their Nintendo DS Lites and challenging each other.

On a related note, "Mr. Roboto," which in case you don't know, prominently features the lyric "domo arigato," is as unknown to Japanese as enka is to Americans.

Enka sucks, by the way. I've met a couple Japapnese people not too much older than me at bars who tell me they are into enka. It's at this point I either a) make fun of them or b) walk away. Enka is kinda like older-people pop music. Heavily influenced from Japanese traditional folk music, it was the country's pop music before the mid 80s or so, when J-Pop started taking over. Anytime there's an instrumental break in enka songs, everyone claps. It's ridiculous I TELLZ YA!

Today, I worked elementary school. It was easy. The first period the kids asked me questions for literall 35 of the 45 minutes. Some funnier questions that I've never been asked before like "what's your favorite dinosaur" (but dammit, I forget how to say dinosaur now) and "why is your favorite color green." It was also the first time someone guessed my age correctly on the first try. It's not unusual for the kids to guess i'm in my late 30s or early 40s.

I will be home in Rockford from March 23 until March 30th. Manami's coming with me. We bought the tickets today. Arrange your flights to Rockford now.

Ketchup.

Okay so there's not that much to report but a funny thing happened today at school. A little warning- this post is about to get dirty.

6th period I had extra-curricular English, which is when the good kids study and ask me questions about English, and the bad kids slack off, talk, and ask me questions about...well English. Except a different kind of English.

So today, there's this South Park loving group of about 4 or 5 3rd grade kids that i'm talking to...whatever. Then somehow the conversation turns into them asking me how to say "manko" in English. "Manko" is basically like the worst word you can say for "vagina," so even though I can think of worse, I tell them "pussy." Flash forward about 10 minutes later, and there are literally around 10 kids running up to me saying "OPEN THE PUSSY!!! OPEN THE PUSSY!!"

That's my story. One day I might get in trouble. But fear not, anyone who's worried about me keeping my job. Japanese people are much more open to that kind of talk in a public school than their American counterpart.

Other than that, this weekend I raged in Tsukuba with Nam and Mike, two JETs in the area. And man did we rage. I got some good drunken Japanese practice in there, and that was fun. Saturday I was exhausted, but managed to make the poker game, and WIN IT! Boo-yah!

Now it's Thursday, pretty standard week. Manami gets back from America tomorrow so that kicks ass. Had an interview in Tokyo that I think went fairly well. A couple more interviews coming up.

That's all for now. And i'm out. Sorry about slacking on the pictures front, as usual.