I'm old

Another year another birthday I guess. Except this year I am was in Tokyo so that makes it a bit more exciting. I went to classes as usual, and in each one someone commented how it was my birthday so I was a bit of a celebrity for the day. Rachel made me signs and she put them outside my class but I didn't know about them so I missed them. Thanks anyway Rachel. Maybe if I was a bit more observant...

Yesterday's classes were Japanese 4 and Japanese 3b. Japanese 4 was pretty hard, but that is good. It will mean more learning. Japanese 3b was also good, I really like the teacher. She reminds me of my high school Japanese teachers. She also teaches the Japanese culture class.

After class I went to meet up with Rachel. So I was following Holly, a girl from the UK who lives in Rachel's place. Just to give you an example about how funny japanese people can be.. Holly and I were walking back and this girl just says "Elena" to Holly. and Holly says "no, holly". (elena is a russian girl also doing the exchange program) this girl then jsut asks Holly who she is and where she is from. Then she asks Holly for her phone number and email. And later that night Holly got an email from her new friend. We were laughing about it later because we were thinking that if you just randomly went up to someone in the US or UK and asked them for their phone number you would get a strange look if not a swift kick. But Japan is so friendly that it doesn't matter.

So later Rachel, Holly and I went to Denny's for dinner. It was quite memorable. I had wanted to go to denny's hoping to get some sort of greasy american food. The denny's here looked exactly liked a Denny's in Miami but all the food was very japanese. It was pretty funny to get chopsticks in a Denny's wrapper. I found a club sandwhich though and got that. But it definately was not a club sandwhich. Some sort of Japanese club creation. Good though. And they even had vinegar to put your fries in. So that was exciting.

After dinner I decided I should make some sort of liqour purchase since I was 21 and would do that in America. But since they don't card here it wasn't as much fun getting to show the employee your ID and proving you are 21. I'm also kind of bummed about being 21 now because next time we go to the clubs or pubs it will be completley legal in both countries. The Brits were making fun of me when I was talking about being 21 and how rediculous it is that the US age is 21. I just reminded them that the US is the illegitimate child of the UK, so all out messed up policies are somewhat to be blamed on King George and his taxes on tea.

We were going to have a roof party at the girl's flat. But all of the guys had work to do and then when it came time to go up to the roof, everyone was too tired to climb the stairs. So we sat around and talked for a while. It felt like a bad lifetime movie at times when I was the only guy and they were talking about girly things.

I took the last train back to the dorms and it was packed tight. It was the busiest I have ever seen the train. I basically couldn't move to even grab onto a handle. I'll be sure not to do that again.

This morning I didn't have class till 13:30. So i let myself sleep in quite a while. Then I went to the train station with Atilla. He's an exchange student from Italy. He's absolutely hilarious. He came here without knowing any Japanese at all. Pretty brave. Since we were hungry we stopped in at a cheap little place called "Matsuya". It's really good food for almost nothing. Something incredibly rare in Tokyo. When you get in what you are supposed to do is choose what you want out of a vending machine and it dispenses a ticket. You sit down at a table and the waitress picks up the ticket and brings you back your food later after they make it. Atilla looked like he knew what he was doing so I didn't offer to help. He had ordered Natto so I was kind of wondering if he knew what he was doing. Natto is fermanted soybeans that pretty much smells like trash. It doesn't taste all that bad but the smell is awful. Plus the beans are all stringy and chewy. It's a really healthy food though, but awful. Atilla said that Natto was ok becuase he "could wait". I assumed he meant he wasn't all that hungry anyway. So I was finished and when I asked him if he was ready to go, he said "i have to wait". He thought he had ordered something else and the natto was the appetizer. So he had ate the natto to be polite and was just waiting to get the real meal. For anyone that has ever had natto you can find the humor in this. The waitress at the resturaunt was so impressed that Atilla had ordered natto. Later on when I told him that is all he ordered he cursed the "nattos" and vowed revenge on them.

The class today was Families and Sexulalities in Japan. Today's class was about the conventional stereotpical japanese family. It was pretty interesting how things change over the course of time. The idea of marrying for love was a new idea introduced during world war II time. Just like after the love marriage became the typical in western society, family roles began to change in society. After the lecture, we divided into groups and figured out what presentations we would present in the class. Atilla and I were assigned "Sexual Minorities in Japan" and "Heterosexual marriages". Atilla said that he wanted to add homosexual marriage to be fair in "360 thinking". And then he had another idea that we could sing "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye on karaoke for our presentation. He is certainly a charachter. I feel that everytime I hang out with him I will have a story.

Then I had Japanese culture and headed back here and ate dinner and all that.

I should add that today when I went to get my jeans from the drying line, they were as stiff as a board. They seriously didn't even move when I shook them. Welcome to the world without a dryer.

Here are some pictures. I know the layout will be awful, but I just can't figure out how to make it better.

This is at the Christon Cafe. They had all these little windows with relics inside. Rachel and I posing by the priest's suit.
























This is still at the Christon Cafe. From the left, there is me, Yosuke (the guy whose birthday was the 25th), daniel (from reading university in the UK), and I'm not sure what that guys name is although he can speak spanish, and Pei. I'm not sure if that is how you spell it or if that is his actual name.(you see how observant I am) He is from Taiwan but is studying in Korea.


























This is Yosuke and I right before the cake came out. Almost all of the japanese students commented on my good times shirt. They really liked it and thought it was a good shirt for a party. All I could think was what Jerri Blank would do.
























I'm sure they would kill me if they knew I put this up. But this is (from the right) Erin and Harriet. Both from Sheffield Uni in the UK. This was at the Karaoke club last saturday. Just to give you an idea of what a Karaoke booth looks like. This was the only picture that really turned out.





























This is my bed. As you can see (since I folded it back) it is just a thin futon on wooden grating. It's quite the Japanese bed I have been told. Better than that dumb pillow though...
























This is the view outside my balcony. Not so pictureque. haha. Cars are always on this dumb street all hours of the night. The speed limit is supposed to be 40 kph but I'm pretty sure no one follows that.






















This is the main shrine entrance at Yasukuni Jinja. That shrine I was talking about before that has enshrined class A war criminals and is quite controversial.
























This is also at Yasukuni Jinja. (Jinja means shrine) This is a memorial to some type of ship blown up. I didn't get a chance to read it closer, but everyone who died has their name on the marble slab.























This was the weird man I talked about earlier at Akihabara. that is right, that is a man underneath that tight leather man-kini. I can go back and get his number if you want me to Mama Jade.





Someday I will figure out how to better put pictures on here. until then, it will take forever and it will be ugly I guess.