Typhooooon! Just kidding.

As the title indicates, i almost got to see a raging typhoon last weekend, but.... didnt. My little sister in okinawa got to see one up close and personal though. After boning Okinawa, that same typhoon went for Japan proper, and did some typhooning in southwest Japan. It was SUPPOSED to come up to where i was as well.... but it decided to turn away. This is good news for everyone... but i wanted to see a badass typhoon, so i was sad. It did make for an easy day at work though, because the bulk of the students cancelled that sunday. An earthquake also hit recently as many of you may have seen on the news. I felt it, but it wasnt so strong where i am. It was an odd feeling. I was teaching a lesson and all of the students are like " Earthquake!" and i say "what? who? where?..... i dont feel any - ah, yep, sure enough". The building sorta started to sway back and forth, it was dizzying. Azu's hotel is like 30 or so floors up in a building, so she felt the swaying pretty strongly i guess, and the elevators stopped and all the guests paniced. Anyway, it did alot of damage in Niigata where it originated, mostly to old buildings.

Well, enough about Japan's many natural disasters. Last night Azu and i partied in Shinjuku with some of her old friends. All of them went to college in the U.S., so they could speak english really well... but they mostly all spoke japanese the whole night, haha. Only if they wanted to say something important to me in particular did they speak english. We ended up doing some cosmic bowling and then setting up some teams and betting for drinks at the end of the night. You may not know this, but i am a TERRIBLE bowler. It is not uncommon for me to gutterball numerous times in a row. However... for the first time in my life, i managed to pull my dismal score up from the depts with a few lucky spares and a strike, and get over 100 to save my team and win the game! For the first time ever i scored over 100... so i was happy. All the girls outbowled me and Azu's other male friend Yu, so we couldnt do girls vs. boys. It was a sad night for us.

In about a week and a half Ronn, Azu, Tawnya, and I are going to climb Mt. Fuji. We'v already reserved the cottage, so its happening! We are planning to start on the 29th, then sleep for a few hours in a cottage near the top, then wake up at 2 am, and finish the climb to see the sunrise from the top. Im told climbing Mt. Fuji is nothing short of miserable, so... hopefully the view will pay off.

Happy Birthday to AdriAnne!

Festivalicious

So, alot happened last week. To start, there was the whole television extra job. I worked as an extra on a Japanese television movie. It turns out, the story is actually pretty famous. They are doing a remake of some old japanese World War 2 story, its going to be a 2 hour television movie. The title translates into something like "I want to be a shell" or shellfish. All of my older students know of the original movie. The younger students just look at me puzzled when i tell them the name. One class, haha... there was one old dude with 3 other younger students. He was the only one who knew of the story, and was very surprised and sad that the other people had never seen or heard of it. I guess it involved some kind of Japanese officer that was wrongly accused of some war crimes, and the title has something to do with wanting to clam up, like a shellfish or something... i dunno. Its going to be on TV here on August 24th i heard. Interestingly, i also heard that Hollywood is currently working on a version of the story. Anyway, i got to work with a couple famous people. For anyone who has seen Jet Li's newest movie, Fearless, you will know one of them. The final japanese fighter that Jet Li fights at the end was the main character in this movie. His name is Shido Nakamura. The other guy is an american dude, who is famous only in Japan. I'v seen him on TV a few times, his name is Patrick, or Patkun as they say here. Anyway, as far as my part went, i was in about 3 scenes. One scene where an officer comes into our prison and demands to see one of the american prisoners. Another scene where the main guy is talking to all the prisoners and telling us we'll be working in a coal mine, and later at the end, when the war is over, and all of us prisoners get to happily leave the prison. I'll let you guys know if i see myself on TV, haha. It was an interesting experience... involved alot of waiting, and doing the same thing over and over again until the director was satisfied. But, i was paid pretty well for my time, and it was more like an adventure than work. I got to stay in a pretty nice traditional japanese Hotel for a night, talk to alot of other random foreigners who were also prisoners, and I also got to travel to a rural town in the mountains, and see a new place. The other foreigners were from all over, some from brazil, sweden, australia, argentina, canada, africa. Basically it was anyone who appeared to be american with the exclusion of anyone asian looking. One of the brazilian guys only knew japanese and portuguese, so i had to speak to him in japanese when i spoke with him, haha. I was actually supposed to do another scene today, but they called back and told me that the scene was removed. Also, i was asked to do another event.... like some kind of staff job at a justin timberlake concert? i dunno, but i was working that day, so i told them i couldnt. I guess they'll be calling me for anything these different companies get asked to find people for.

Anyway, this week was also Tanabata, which is a star festival of sorts. Has something to do with some prince and princess of the stars, who were too happy together, and only wanted to lay around and be in eachothers company when together, so the gods separated them, and said they can only meet one day a year. That day is the Tanabata festival! It just so happened, that the biggest, or second biggest Tanabata festival location is Hiratsuka, where i work now. The festival lasted for 4 days, and for the 2 days that i participated, involved me being wasted until last train, and having a hang over the next day. It also involved about 5 zillion people walking all over Hiratsuka, and alot of awesome, artery clogging festival food, like battered deep fried potatoes covered in butter, and meat on a stick. It was pretty fun, until the next morning, when i wanted to hurl on a student.

Azu and i also went to Odaiba. We saw some cool movies in the Sony science center, but didnt have enough time to see as much as we wanted, because i had to catch a bus to Ibaraki for the extra thing.

Well, thats about all for now. Me, Ronn, Azu, and Tawnya were going to meet for another 21 dollar burger this week... but Ronn and Tawnya forgot to save enough money to ride the train to the restaurant, so plans were cancelled. Jon also had to call off the Kawagoe festival gathering planned tomorrow. He gave a long, thorough list of reasons, and i couldnt really dispute any of them, so that was that! I got a hold of my sister Brittany in okinawa, and was informed that she's getting..... married! Yeah, planned for next summer i guess. Crazy. Anyway, i am going to try to visit her this fall sometime if i can, so that should be fun. Thats all for now. If you find yourself hating summer, just think of me sitting in 80% humidity right now, it may cheer you up!

Talk to my agent

Kidding, i dont really have an agent. However, i AM going to be an extra in a japanese TV drama! So, a few days ago a got an email from a coworker at my old school that was about some company looking for models or extras or some such. The days they needed people just happened to be on my days off, so i decided to give it a whirl. It said they needed white dudes with short hair, that were in their 20s, and looked like it. I seemed to fit the bill, so i took a picture of myself, and emailed it to them from my phone. they got back to me, and said they wanted me to do whatever it was they were doing, haha. So, today they gave me the details. Tomorrow i will be meeting one of their people in Shinjuku at 6:30 pm. From there we're going to Ibaraki, which is in another prefecture to the north or some such. They are going to put me in a hotel for the night at their expense, and the next day we will be "shooting" haha. They are making a japanese WW2 TV drama, and i am going to be a captured american soldier, lol. Azu said it was perfect since she thinks i look like a skinny prisoner of war anyway, hah. So... thats the news for this week! I'll let you all know how it goes on my next post.

So, last week Ronn and i went with a coworker to a restaurant in Harajuku that serves Kobe beef burgers. I was told they were fantastical, so we decided to go, despite the steep price. For those unfamiliar with kobe beef, its a very delicious, high quality kind of japanese beef that is really expensive. The burger started at about $21, and for anything extra, it was $2 (cheese, bacon, avacado, etc). It came with tomato, lettuce, onion, and what not. Anyway, i got some cheese and avacado on mine, so the burger ran me 25 bones. Combine that with a $9 beer (one that dwarfed Ronn's meager $5 beer and made him feel like less of a man i might add), and you have yourself a $34 meal, and you dont even get fries! Now, i dont want to hype anything up, so i wont go into details. I will say, however, that Ronn and i will both be returning to get another in the future, and i feel the burger price was pretty fair. I dunno if i will go for another $9 beer... but the burger is a definite yes. On a side note, you dont really need fries, because it was a very large burger, and i was full and happy after just eating that.

After that the 3 of us (me, Ronn and my coworker Raphael from Florida) went and got some bubble tea in Shinjuku, and stumbled into a really expensive furniture store. Ronn was scared of the bubble tea, so it was just me and Raph with the tea. Anyway, it was pretty hilarious, because me and Raph walk into this swank store sipping bubble tea and Ronn is in flip flops, haha. So at first a rather snooty looking store lady told us to get the F out with our tea, hah. After chugging some tea at the entrance, we go back in, and were about to sit down when we realized that the couch we were about to sit on was a third of our annual salary. So from there, we started a sort of scavenger hunt through this large, 8 story furniture store to find the most expensive thing in the store. Well, there were some pretty sweet couches, tables and chairs and what not. At first we thought we werent going to get higher than the 22 thousand dollar pimp couch on the 4th floor. However, we found the floor with traditional japanese furniture, and found a table that ran 40 grand, and a cabinet that was about 53 grand. We also saw a really crappy looking shelf of some sort, that i swear to you, i could have fuggin made in wood shop, for 58 THOUSAND dollars. It must have been made from wood that was stained in the blood of virgins or something. Anyway.... on the top floor, way in the back, in a room you had to remove your shoes in, we found an armoir (sp? you know, that crappy french word) that won the competition. Yep... a 68 thousand dollar armoir (see above pic). I couldnt even tell why either, was the stupid thing. It was lame. There were some tables made of really rare and intersting wood that seemed to deserve a price that high... but alas, who knows. Maybe all the metal is platinum.

Well, Azu and i are going to Odaiba tomorrow, for real this time. I'll write about my acting adventure, and maybe a soccer game i am planning to go to in the future. If i can get eric to leave his hermitage in Saitama.

Peace!

Rockin and rollin

Hello again from Japan everyone. Well, atleast to the people that read this. i have no idea how many people do really... only mike and lark ever comment, but anyway! So its been a pretty long time since i posted. Laziness is the reason, sadly. Work has been going pretty well. Recently my company has been in the news a bit for some mishaps with promising students things they couldnt fulfill... which landed them with some restrictions on student contract durations. Anyway, last week was payday, and i was planning to buy a new TV... a 32' flat panel LCD to be exact. At the same time this contract restriction business was in the news, that payday there was some kind of holdups with banks, and our paycheck deposits were late everywhere. So that morning, the TV guys called to confirm the delivery (i was paying upon delivery). i confirmed it, and went to the ATM to get my cash..... only there was no cash. So.... long story short, the delivery guys came with my TV, and i couldnt buy it.... so they took it back, and i got no TV because their lateness boned me! I was also a little worried... comapany in the news... no pay... started to wonder if i still had a job. But anyway, it wasnt a big deal, and i got payed, not soon enough to save my TV, alas, but everything was fine.

I was also informed that my little sister brittany is in Okinawa now! I havent heard from her yet, but i hope to soon, so i can go visit her down there. Maybe she can visit me too, who knows. The marines decided to send her to paradise instead of hell, so that worked out well for her. I havent done much new lately. Eric, Jon, and Emily are all back in America right now on vacations, and Ronn is working overtime like a sucker, so iv had my days off to myself. Last week Azu and i went to the DaVinci museum exhibit thing they have had in Ueno, and we got to see an original piece of his work there, being borrowed from Italy i guess. Its the one with the arcangel Gabriel and the pregnant virgin mary and stuff.... i forget the name and i am too lazy to go look it up. I also read a book! You should all be proud, it doesnt happen often. I read Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. It was good. He is a pretty popular japanese novelist, and many, if not all of his books get translated into english. if any of you are readers you have undoubtedly heard of him. Next month, azu and i are hopefully going to climb mount Fuji, if we can get the days off coordinated and all that. Ronn and Tawnya might do it with us as well. Eric and Emily expressed interest also. I'll let you guys know! I am told its a hellish experience, but worth doing.

So, a few days ago i left my cellphone on a train. It couldnt have been worse timing. i was going to meet Azu and Tawnya in Yokohama, we were gonna go have some fun.... anyway, it fell outta my stupid dress pants pocket, and the train sped away before i realized it. So... i didnt know azus number, or ANYONEs number for that matter... so i had no way of getting a hold of them. And despite azu saying we would meet at the train station, without my confirmation neither her or Tawnya ever came to check. So... i ended up waiting 2 hours in a train station, sweating, instead of going and having fun. 2 hours later, i talked to a guy at the station, who told me it had been found, and was in lost and found in Hachioji....... which was about an hour in some random direction i'v never been. SO, i went there, and got it... killed another 2 hours, and then met azu back in yokohama around 7:30 for dinner, instead of 3:00.... then went home. Moral of the story: dress pants are fin lame.

Oh, if you havent already, go look at the sick origami video on mikes blog.

Peace! Daniel

Yo

Well, its time again for a new update! So last week i went to Disney Sea with Azu, Ronn, and Tawnya. It was alot of fun. Somehow, the weather was almost perfect (it got kinda windy at night) and there were no lines! It wasnt even all that crowded, so we lucked out i guess. I was told the lines can be heinous, but we didnt wait more than 15 minutes for anything the whole day, it was pretty nice, especially for anything Disney related. Disney Sea is alot like Disney Land, only it sorta has a waterish theme, and is more geared towards adults, or atleast young adults. You can buy beer at just about all the restaurants there, so you can get ripped if ya feel like it! The show was pretty impressive. It was this big illuminated water show in the big lake/bay thing in the middle of the park. There was this fire dragon that rose outta the water to spew fire also, and the volcano erupted! So i thought it was pretty sweet. Ronn missed the first part of it because he was getting another churro. I didnt blame him though, we looked for damn churros ALL DAY. We kept getting false leads from people. One girl we asked didnt know, but decided that telling us a place where there were in fact NO churros would be better than admitting that she didnt know. By the end of the day we were hell bent on eating some churros, and by god we did. I was double fisting churros when we found them finally. We were gonna eat at the swank disney restaurant there, but when our jaws dropped as we saw the price, we decided to hold off. I spent more on food than my ticket... but i did eat alot, and i enjoyed myself so i have no regrets. The tower of terror and Indiana Jones rides were pretty cool.

This week, i went up to Kawagoe and hung out with eric, emily, jon, ayumi, and ayumi's parents. It was a good time, we got some dinner and had a merry time. Azu was slaving away in the coal mines, so she didnt get to come, alas. It was sorta funny in the horrible sort of way, recently. So, i went to work at about... 7:30 last saturday. That day, Azu left for work before me... i got home around 7:00.... and she got home about 4.5 hours after me, haha. I was telling her how i had a glorious lunch of rice and Shabu Shabu, (this big delicious pot of boiled meat and vegetables and what not), as she was getting ready for bed after her 15 hour work day (that doesnt include travel time). And she goes "wow.... sounds great! i had a 30 minute lunch, and i ate a can of tuna, like a cat!" It was pretty funny... atleast for me, haha. Thats pretty much been par for Azus course the last couple of weeks with her hotel opening. She doesnt really get days off regularly... crazy. But, apparently its not that out of the ordinary here. Azu said atleast she doesnt work in the restaurant, i guess they've been so busy, that the staff has been working basically the entire day, and sleeping at the restaurant, only to wake up and work some more.

Anway, i had a 3 day weekend this week because i was moving to my new branch, and i enjoyed the majority of it at Jon's house, playing xbox and reading his comic books. I was reading Y, The Last Man. Its a sweet comic series about how every creature on the planet with a Y chromosome basically dies of some kind of plague instantly. So yeah, men everywhere all die simultaneously almost. Only one man is unaffected, him and his pet monkey, who is also a male monkey (making the pair doubly amazing). Anyway, its interesting to think about. The world is in a pretty messed up state at the moment, as would be expected i suppose if half the earth's population suddenly died. Also theres the whole fact that the current generation is more or less the last one as well. There is a crazy group of fanatical chicks that have been going around and burning down sperm banks and what not also, because they dont want there to ever be men on the planet again. They are also trying to kill the main character, as you might expect. I think the comics have taught me that being the last man alive would basically suck.

Anyway, we also went shopping, and i bought some japanese comic books that i am going to try and read. They are supposed to be a little easier to read, and have furigana (that says what the kanji are), so maybe i can hack it.

Living at Azu's has been good, a few cultural differences aside, everything has been going well. Tomorrow i start at my new branch, so i will have all new students and coworkers. Anyway, bye for now! My internet is still not reliable, so i will do more once it is.

Been a few

So, its been a busy couple weeks, and i apologize for the lateness. I will attempt to pin some of the blame on Azu and her lack of internet, however. I am currently pirating a very weak signal from her neighbors. As you may have guessed from my previous sentence, i moved in with Azu this week. Its been nice, except for carrying 2 really heavy suitcases, my laptop, and an extra bag through train ticket takers, smashing into keikyu during rush hour, and carrying my suitcases 50 miles to the end of azu's station train platform. I am pretty sure i killed a few people getting onto the train to Yokohama during rush hour... ah well. Moving sucks. I am going to see if i can get a video going of her house and what not to show you guys. For the next couple weeks i have a much longer commute. It hasnt been so bad, except the time i almost fell asleep and missed my connection in Ofuna, that coulda been bad. I also took a video from the train that i would like to show you folks.

So this week it was mostly moving and unpacking. I managed to meet up with Ronn, Tawnya, and her friend on wednesday, and we hung out in Harajuku and Shibuya. It took all day, but i managed to find a man bag that was only 1380!, thats about 12 bucks or so for those of you not familiar with Yen. Considering i saw a T-shirt that day that was over $200, yes a T-shirt (not even that cool), i think i did pretty well for a bag. It was hidden between a couple bags that ran bout $60. I know what most of you are thinking. "A man bag?! its not acceptable for men to carry a purse-like object on their shoulder!" WRONG. In Japan, its perfectly acceptable, and there is an entire man bag industry, so there. Also, its just handy when you need to carry a few extra things, BACK OFF.

The week before Ash was here. Eric covered most of their trip, so click on his link cause i am feeling lazy. We had fun, we did the Kawagoe Area the first day, Tokyo the next, and had some mexican later that week. When i stop being lazy and post some pics, i will include the few pictures i took from the top of the sunshine 60 building. Its pretty weird being that high up. Buildings you thought were high before dont seem so high when you are at 60 stories. The Tokyo metropolis, which is the largest in the world it turns out, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area), is pretty amazing from above.

Well, i am going to post this before my internet cuts out again and i get angry. I am going to Disney Sea next wednesday with Azu, Ronn, and Tawnya, so that will be fun, i will write again after that. Oh, i also got my first real paycheck, and lemme tell ya... payday is sweet!

Big News!

Well, not so much time has passed, but some new stuff has come to light, man. So last week, on wednesday, my boss so to speak, calls me up and informs me that something has come up, and that I can transfer to Hiratsuka effective at the beginning of June, if i want it. I only had about 3 hours to think it over though, and it involved my schedule changing to all early shifts, and my days off changing to thurs/fri. The place is however, about 15 minutes by train from Azu's, towards tokyo, saving some time if i meet up with R&T or E&E after work. Well, I accepted, so starting in June, i'll be at a new location! Early Shifts also make it easier to meet up with eric and emily, so i may actually see them more than once a year. Early shifts are.... well, early. Its not really that early, i'll probably have to wake up at 8 am, which I am not a big fan of, but other people would say that's late, so I guess I can't complain. Wait, yes I can, and I probably will.

Well, aside from that, on my day off wednesday, I went to the beach. This past week was "Golden Week". Golden Week is a series of unrelated Japanese national holidays that happened to be right next to eachother. I think they are unrelated... my students were terrible at explaining golden week, and I forgot to ask Azu, so thats my story. Anyway, since there were already like 3 or 4 national holidays, companies are usually nice, and just say "what the hell, take the whole week off". Golden Week is business as usual if you work at Nova, so the only thing golden I enjoyed was the Golden increased business on the trains, and the Golden fact that all my shifts started early that week because thats what my Nova does on holidays, or the Golden closed banks, atms, etc. Well, that aside, the weather was fantastic this week where I live. Not too hot, not cold, no rain, perfect days really... so I guess that was golden. I'm rambling now... anyway, I went to the beach, it was sweet, and we went to a shrine near here, and climbed a billion steps to the top of a little foresty hill, and got to enjoy a rather nice view of the area. The landscape is really beautiful here, and you'll get to see that some day when I stop being lazy and put up some pictures. From the beach, we could see Hakkejima sea paradise, which is an amusement park on an island or something.

In other news, yesterday I went to Azus again, and we saw Spiderman 3. Aside from being alot more expensive, and getting specific reserved seats, Japanese movie theaters are pretty much the same as ours. Atleast the one in Azus town is, it was equally large, and had seats like most new cinemark/regal theaters. One odd little quirk: their discount times are at night, and are expensive during the day, unlike ours. I am told this is because japanese people typically do other stuff at night, and most people use trains to get around. If a movie lets out late, after trains have stopped for the day, people are boned and cant go home, so i guess thats why fewer people go at night (btw Lark, trains do stop here around 12:30ish, so you either go home, take a cab later, or sleep on the cold hard floor of the train station, which involves spooning with hobos if its in Shinjuku) . Our "discount" price was 1200 yen... maybe 11 bucks or so. Usually its 1500 yen or up to 2000 at times i guess. On the first of every month though, all movies are 1000 yen, its some sort of special premier day. Also, wednesday is ladies day, and they get in for 1000 yen, horseshit! Azu told me this is good, so when I get to pay for her tickets in the future I will be paying less! I failed to see how it was a win situation for me.

Thats all for now! Ashley is arriving in Japan soon, and I am heading up to erics tuesday night after work for some good times, so i'll blog about that next. Peace!

Happy Birthday Mike!

P.S. that is the main sign for a hair salon near my apartment.. i encourage you to click on the pic and read it. Later i will post a pic of the main label.