Well, I’ve been sick all week basically.

It was hard enough keeping up with my journal when I was healthy! I’m going to have to do a lot of summaries, either due to time constraints or since I just didn’t write stuff down.

All the way back on June 13th, we received our Japanese Windows Vista laptops—immensely helpful. The lack of wi-fi kinda sucks, but it’s not such a huge deal. Wi-fi hasn’t hit here nearly as much, yet. It’s funny because Japan is so advanced in many other respects technology-wise. That day was also the day I was placed in class 3, the higher of the two here at KIT-IJST. (Kanazawa Institute of Technology-Intensive Program for Japanese in Science and Technology—I think.) They actually eliminated class 1 and sort of combined class 1 and 2—which is funny cuz the main complaint I heard was that class 3 was too hard. Anyway, most of that class has had 2 years of Japanese, so we’re definitely behind already. It’s been tougher because there’s stuff most of the class knows that only a small handful including me doesn’t.

Random awkward pic from this gyouza place. (dumplings, sort of)

Right, so, June 14th was our field trip with the SGE kids. We went to Kenrokuen—one of the three famous gardens of Japan.

On the way there we got to try some azuki (sweet red bean) popsicles—weird but surprisingly not bad. It was really pretty, I recommend checking out the pictures on Facebook that I will post. Afterward, we went to the 21st Century Art Museum, which was small but interesting.

Salt! The whole maze-room was made with salt!

After that, we went to Kanazawa-jo, or Kanazawa Castle. However, unfortunately we couldn’t go inside because it was closed. We looked around the grounds quite a bit though. It’s an impressive white castle, and the surrounding area is pretty. We saw three of the top sights in the Kanazawa area all in one day, which was pretty impressive too. That night, we went to TonTon Ramen, a place that specializes in spicy ramen. Gen (Not Jen), one of the SGE guys, got a 6 on the 10 scale and was sweating. Deven got a 10 and had Gen try it and the poor guy freaked out and gagged and had to down his water pretty quickly. A few other ryuugakusei tried it and said—yeah, it’s spicy, but not horrible. Totally opposite reaction, haha.

So jump to the 16th. We had the science and tech class, which is basically learning technical language through action—like folding origami. Words like reverse, fold, return, unfold, etc etc. Also this is our big project class. Then culture class with Scott Clark-sensei. He’s a Rose-Hulmann teacher who’s accumulated many years in Japan from his many off and on stays since several decades ago. I think he said the longest he lived here at once was 2 years? His class is pretty interesting. I’ll post more on some of those classes because in themselves they are really interesting and informative (sorry, boring word! Useful maybe?).

On the 18th, we met our host families—or part of them at least. I’m going to skim over that cuz I’ll talk about my actual home visit (which was today!) later on. Oh right, that night we also went to karaoke! It was really fun, I’m sure we’ll go soon again. Gen works there and was nice enough to get everybody a several hundred yen discount. It’s pretty much pay a flat rate, get unlimited drinks and songs (or at least till when they close if the do?). We stayed till midnight…

Um... it was Ricky's birthday? ;P

Friday, the 19th, we got up a little early in order to start our ‘journey’ to Anamizu, where KiT’s Anamizu Bay Seminary House is. I’m still not exactly clear on what the purpose of the place is…but they had a boat. That was cool. Oh right, on the way we stopped at the Karakuri…Kenkan? Er… I don’t know what the word is… Basically, Wikipedia can tell you what karakuri is—I’ll simplify a lot and say it was the precursor to modern robotics. Sort of. Nearby, we picked up some shouyu ice cream (soy sauce). Yes. And no, it actually tasted like salty caramel! Pretty weird. It was a specialty place, I’m pretty sure. Hm…Not much to say about Nanao Fisherman’s Wharf…we weren’t there very long. Then, Anamizu. Right, the boat.

Not bad but....(The awkwardness level of several of these pics was pretty high haha.)

Ricky's puffing as usual, haha. That's Uotate-sensei on the right.

After the boat, we played some in the gym. Then after that, barbeque—I had something called saizai, which I am suspecting is actually snail and only Joy seemed to like it. But they had lots of other good meat and veggies. I’ll throw in a partial group photo from the next morning, but I think I’m going to leave last Saturday to this Saturday’s happenings to another post (trust me, there will be less cuz I was SICK, but that didn’t stop me from going on Tuesday’s field trip (yes another one) for our JST class). Of course, the next day I missed class, but that’s another matter… Daijoubu yo!

All pictures pertaining to this post:]

June 12th, Nishikawa Heights, Friday 12:01 AM

So today at 10 we had our living orientation. An hour to an hour and a half later the meeting ended. We decided to meet for lunch at the cafeteria, which strangely is called Vulcan. We met Joy, Deven, Tyler, and John. (When I say ‘we’, it generally means me, Matt, Max, and Xin Cai). After a minor upset (aka not knowing what we were supposed to do) we got meal tickets (しょっけん)　from vending machines at the ‘entrance’ to the cafeteria. I got Curry Ramen for 280円…so $2.90 or so. It was REALLY good, especially for that price.

It was interesting eating in the cafeteria. I saw a few girls outside, relatively, but inside it seemed like ALL engineering guys. I wish I could have snapped pictures, but I didn’t want to be rude. But yeah, good food seems to be a standard. It has shown me just what crap American food is—it’s just that everyone’s grown up eating it, and they don’t realize how much better it could be. Anyway, afterward, we picked up our luggage from Building 1 (一号館). Finally! Clean clothes. After that, it was early afternoon. We had the rest of the day off, so we decided to walk around.

First we went to Ohgigaoka’s Post Office (yuubinkyoku or ゆうびんきょく). I took out some money… can’t wait to see what that is in dollars. Hopefully no more than $165. Next, we wandered through part of the north campus. It was pretty impressive actually. On the east edge, we found a parking lot. A parking lot full of LOTS and LOTS of bikes. We couldn’t believe it. There was a section to the left with numerous motor bikes, but the regular bike section was INSANE. We walked a while till we found a 100 Yen Shop (百円), but really it felt more like a supermarket. We aimed for the other 100 yen shop on our map, which proved to be MUCH farther away than we expected. On the way, we visited a neat electronics store, but nothing too fancy. Then the next shop proved to be more fruitful. It was amazing to see all of the things they had. I got a small bag which has a bunch of uplifting English (mostly) sayings for groceries, a small notepad with pen, a souvenir pad, a pair of scissors, and wrapping paper, all for 525 yen. After we looked around for quite a while, we tried to walk back.

We somewhat accidentally found GEO, a used game, music, and DVD store. I couldn’t find any Super Famicon games I’d wanted, but I did see Mega Man Soccer. Finally, we got back to Nishikawa Heights. Soon after, we met again for dinner. We ran into a Caucasian, 30 or so woman who must work here, on the corner not far away. We tried one of her suggestions—DON, down a few blocks and towards campus. We spent half an hour trying to figure out the menu, and I’m pretty sure we annoyed the 2 guys that worked there, not that we meant to. We had 2 intermediate students Xin Cai and Joy, but it was still hard. I ended up with soy sauce ramen, sort of by accident, but it worked. 400 yen for a giant bowl. We went back near 8 and decided to study in one of the lounges. We mostly reviewed kanji on matt’s Ipod Touch, and the group grew pretty big. Almost half the group was there I’d say. We also just hung out till a bit after 10. Xin Cai had these cool speakers that look like a small canister. You set one end on a flat surface, and that’s how the sound is spread—through whatever you place it on. It sounded like a radio on some surfaces. Really cool. She bought it in Singapore before the trip, or maybe Hong Kong for around $90 or something like that. Anyway, time to sleep, じゃあまた！--12:35 ＡＭ

June 11th Thursday, 1:00 AM

Kanazawa is MUCH more urbanized than I expected. (Don’t be confused however, we will attend Kanazawa Kougyou Daigaku, or Kanazawa Institute of Technology, but it is actually in the neighboring suburb of Ohgigaoka—technically Oogigaoka, I think.) Kanazawa station itself was pretty amazing.

We mainly walked around, and eventually decided to eat—but we couldn’t decide where. It was nearing 8 o’clock, and many restaurants were closing, so we made a somewhat obvious, safe, and relatively cheap choice—McDonald’s. I just got a cheeseburger and fries and a drink because I wanted to see if a regular oldcheeseburger was different in Japan. Verdict? Not much of a difference. I thought I could taste a big more pepper, but that was it. Coke (Coca-cola however, is slightly less sweet here, but it was good. The fries were salty—actually a little TOO salty. The others tried the teriyaki burger, but I couldn’t really tell if they liked it. Max said it might have been a sausage patty with a special sauce, and not a hamburger per se. I’m not big on teriyaki, so I left that for next time. Afterwards, we sat outside the front of the station. Gradually, we met up with people also taking the free shuttle at 10 pm. Finally, the bus came and we were on our way. We briefly (and awkward) met a few SGE (Students for Global Exchange) students, and one showed us how to lay a futon. SGE kids are basically here to help us out, and maybe make friends. We settled in a bit, but then my roommate, Naomi from Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, asked if I wanted to go to the conbini (コンビニ) which is short for convenience store. I only bought a big bottle of water—we still need soap and a rag for dishes. Well, I’m tired, and we have orientation tomorrow (ashita or 明日) at 10. Time to brush my teeth and sleep! – 1:14 AM

June 10, Wednesday 1:28 pm, Shin-Osaka Station

We found J-Hoppers after about an hour last night. There were a lot of people on bikes, and still plenty of people in suits walking around, although the city was definitely quiet.



We went to sleep around 1：30. I woke up a few times through the night, but it was pretty comfortable.

I got up around 8:15 and showered. Looking out the window in our room, I could see many people walking by with umbrellas. I really like the clear ones.

We checked out around 10:30 after everyone had showered. We wandered outside looking for breakfast. A lot of people seemed to look at me first, probably because my hair’s not dark brown or black. We eventually decided on heading under Fukushima Station. Most places were closed still, but at an intersection, we found a breakfast joint. Outside were the famous fake displays of food.


It’s really amazing how realistic they look—it’s only the texture that looks a little off sometimes. After about 10 minutes of staring at the food outside, we finally went in. The whole place was run by one older Japanese man, and there were quite a few people for such a small place. I got the ‘ham-egg-toast’, or in katakana, the ‘alphabet’ for foreign words,　ハムエッグチイズ　[ha-mu-e-ggu-chi-i-zu].　Double letters means you sort of hold that syllable. It turned out to be a kind of sandwich.

It was absolutely delicious—it even had a little kick to it due to some sort of sauce. It was a really well spent 500 yen (円).　　The nice old man even gave us lemonade, which was probably the best lemonade I'd ever had, and it was on the house. The whole thing completely exceeded my expectations.

Afterward, we wandered around, eventually resting in a big hotel/department store lobby. After maybe 20 minutes, we went to nearby Osaka station and bought 160 yen tickets to Shin-Osaka station. The train was very smooth. We crossed a bridge over water to get there, which I hadn’t expected.. We arrived, hung around a bit, and then bought drinks from a vending machine (jidouhanbaiki or じどうはんばいき).

I got a water from 110 yen, and it was icy and as tasteless as anything can get, which was good. Finally we decided to go sit in the waiting area near a bunch of shops and cafes. We’re probably grabbing a train, the Raicho, to Kanazawa at 4:15 or so. Right now it’s about 1:45—we might go into the gift shop/food area soon. That’s it for now.


All photos can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=266917&id=736370424&l=37441abaf1

June 9th 11:26 pm Japan Time

NOTE: We just received our laptops today. I've been here for...almost 4 days. I'm　going to try to post as much as possible, and I've already got a backlog of around 5 more entries. Please stay tuned! Also, feel free to request information--like if you want me to add more about certain parts of our trips, or add more Japanese words and specific content, etc. I'll be happy to do what I can!

We're now　on　a　'limousine　bus'　which　goes　from　Kansai　International　Airport　near　Osaka　train　station.　 Originally, we　were　supposed　to　arrive　at　3:20　at　Kansai...　　Our　first　flight　was　delayed　a　half　hour　in　total,　thanks to　the　fuel　pump　being　full　of　rain　from　the　night's　thunderstorm, and heavy traffic and a low ceiling in　San Francisco. We arrived at our next gate in SF after literally crossing the entirety of the airport. Our next flight left relatively on time. However, 45 minutes in, we were notified that we were turning around. Supposedly the fuel filter wasn’t working right. For a good part of the flight back, we were dropping fuel in order to be light enough to land. When we arrived (again, they checked the fuel filter, but nothing was wrong with it. They ran the engine, and finally decided that the plane was unsafe to fly. We were told to get off and wait for instructions a few gates down. 3 o’clock we were told, but that changed soon after to 6 o’clock, which was when the crew and captain would be ready to go. So, we had 3 hours to sit around the airport. At 6ish western time, we finally took off, 6 and a half hours after we were originally scheduled. We arrived in Japan at approximately 9:15 pm Japan time on June 9th, which was this past Tuesday.

Kansai International Airport

I got stopped at Quarantine (pretty scary) due to my stuffy nose as well as the fact that I’d had a fever in the last week. Thankfully, my temperature was normal when they took it. I didn’t have the other symptoms of swine flu, but I was starting to doubt it was just allergies. I’m better now, so I think whatever I had passed and now it really IS just allergies. They sent me over to a little side room where a doctor very brokenly talked to me. I told him it was allergies, and they took my temperature with a thermometer where it just shines a red light and calculates the surface temperature of whatever it touches. That was pretty nerve-wracking, but I’m here!

We met the other member of our group, Xin Cai, around 9:45 since she had arrived over 12 hours earlier from Singapore. We used takyuubin, which is the Japanese parcel forwarding system, to deliver our big suitcases to the apartments in Kanazawa. It wouldn’t arrive until Thursday since we had arrived so late, which at the time was the day after tomorrow, so we had to rely on what we had packed in our carry-ons. It cost about 3400 yen to send both my bags, which is probably around 36 dollars or so. It was cheaper than I expected.

Insert from Right Now—We had reservations to stay at a hostel called J-Hoppers Osaka Central. From the airport, we ended up taking a ‘limousine’ bus instead of the train because the one we would have taken didn’t seem to be running anymore. The ride was 1500 yen for about an hour ride. For those unfamiliar, the optimal exchange rate is 100 yen to a dollar. Basically a yen to a penny. However, last I checked the dollar was pretty weak. Before we left, it was 94 or 95 yen to the dollar.

Back to Journal—We probably have a out a half hour till we get to Osaka station, from which we’ll walk 15 to 20 minutes to J-Hoppers. Guess we’ll shower in the morning?... We’ll leave tomorrow around 5 to get to Kanazawa…Finally. –From a bus in Osaka

Final Note : Doing this took an insane amount of time... I'm going to have to either switch sites, or just link you guys to the photos. Blogger is surprisingly picture unfriendly.