The End

Captain's log,

I'm sitting in the airport with 2 hours left in my stay here in Japan. I cannot believe a year has gone by.

I still feel like I just got here, I remember arriving and everything that's happened so vividly (minus alcohol-induced blurriness).

But we're done. I'm going home and I have trouble accepting reality for what it is.

My parents came and helped me get all my crap home, which was nice.

We'll be flying to Seattle, then to Atlanta. I'm not wild about this, but I guess I gotta do whatever to get home. We shall see.

Yoko and I are going to try the long distance thing. I'm not sure how I feel about how well we'll be able to do this. Downside is I told my ex (and best friend here) this, and she now hates me. To the point of cutting off contact. It hurts, but I guess she just has to hate me for a while. Hopefully things will be ok again someday.

I can't wait to see my friends again. I look forward to Warped Tour and my coming home party. I look forward to cheap things, meat, proper cheesecake, and good beer. I'm looking forward to having the freedom of a car again, but I'm not wild about driving again. I haven't done it in a year, and I will be terrified of Georgia traffic. I guess we'll just see how that goes.

Well, it was fun, went by too quick, and the damage has been done. The curtain has fallen, and the actors have taken their bows. Goodbye, Japan, I love you and I'll miss you. You can guarantee I'll be back someday. But when is a question of speculation.

I thank you and apologize at the same time. In the meantime, sayonara.

End Captain's log.

Worst Post Ever.

Captain's log:

Two days ago was my 300th day in Japan. I find it weird that I've been here for so long, I've gotten used to it.

I've been freaking out that I'm going home in less than two weeks. And even more so about finals. Tomorrow is my listening final and I have a 10 page geography paper due that I'm barely into, and should be working on instead of typing this. Next week I have 2 small papers due and 3 tests. Yippee.

Tomorrow is also the final mountain party. Should be the biggest one ever. I'm going to miss those.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting. I've had the best year of my life. I had thousands of new experiences, new friends, new places, I found love, and new frustrations. It's been great. I don't want to go, but I'm ready to come home. I'm ready to see my friends again.

I made a new girlfriend, dumb thing to do this late in the game, but we're going to try the long-distance thing, and I think we can make it. My ex, and best friend here now hates me. Which hurts, but maybe things will be ok one day.

I have graduation looming over my head. I'm terrified of it. I don't want to grow up, and I don't want to go out into the world like this. I guess I don't have a choice, really.

My parents are coming, they'll be here the 17th-21st. And we're all going home together. What's kind of the monkey-wrench in the plans is that my girlfriend got pulled into this bridal modeling thing on the 18th, and the guy bailed. Now they need a new dude, and they're asking me. It'll take up 3 hours on the 18th, and I'm not sure what to do. Any ideas?

Generic, Meaningful Title

Captain's log,

So there is exactly a month left in my time here. And I am freaking out. What's funny is before I left America, it never once hit me with "holy crap, you're going to Japan!" or anything like that. Even as I was getting on the plane, nothing. But now it's "HOLYSHITYOU'REGOINGBACKTOAMERICADOSOMETHING!!!"

So I'm going to Hiroshima finally this coming weekend. Which should rock. Almost everything's been taken care of. Meeting Lindsay there to show us around, and I look forward to trying hormone-yaki (grilled organs) cause I've never had anything like tripe.

Pretty much all parties have been scheduled until the end, my schedule is almost completely full. Meaning I'm going to be completely broke by the end of this.

I don't want to go. I've had the best year of my life, which I know sounds cliche and cheesy, but it really has been. I have almost no bad memories. That said, I would kill to see my friends back home again.

I love this country, though I could never live here permanently. This country will never fully accept me into society, and my job opportunities are pretty much teacher. I could never raise a kid here because I don't like the education and social systems. There is a phrase that goes "the nail that stands up is hammered down," which basically means all creativity and individuality is crushed. In elementary school, it's all math and kanji, and if the kid does something different than the teacher, they are wrong. They aren't taught to reach for the sky or that you can be whatever you want to be. The best the kids look for is to do well in highschool to get into a university with decent standing to get a job at a decent company. Imagination and individuality are discouraged if not downright punished, and I find that terrifying. Kids don't even raise their hands to answer, or even ask questions in class.

The social system is still moderately sexist, and really focuses on the date crowd and date-y activities. Girls develop this dependence on boyfriends to be happy. One of the ryuugakusei here said she would always get mad at the Japanese girls doing exchange at her school because half of them moped around because they couldn't see their boyfriend, the other moped around because they didn't have a boyfriend. They don't teach people independence or to stand up for themselves, which is equally terrifying.

I am mortified of when I graduate. I'm going to shoot for Cartoon Network, or someone that makes cartoons, but I'm not banking on it. I will probably come back to Japan, teach English, get fluent, go to Taiwan, teach English, learn Chinese, then go back to America or move to Australia and work for the airlines or something. I don't know. There's a lot of conversations I need to have.

I feel my future is bleak.

Crunch Time

Captain's Log:

I have never forgotten about this thing, I'm just lazy/haven't had anything too eventful going on.

It's go time. There's a month and a half left and I'm really feeling the time strain. Went to Shikoku and Naoshima last weekend with Mayo, which was fun, but I missed out on this big Sannomiya trip and my friend's birthday shindig.

Other than that, I go to Ayabe on a field trip next weekend, and finally getting to Hiroshima the weekend after that. My traveling will pretty much be done then, there's a couple of places I plan to go when my parents get here. They arrive the 17th, I move out of my dorm the 18th, I come home the 21st.

I'm in a weird place right now. I keep meeting new people and want to hang out with them, I hardly see a lot of the friends I made first semester, which is kinda sad. I want to stay and hang out and improve my language, but I'm dying to get home and see my friends. It really feels like like forever ago and just yesterday that I arrived, bright eyed and confused. Now I'm used to everything and my confusion is aimed elsewhere. I'm mostly getting heavy doses of anxiety as friendships are strained and my future comes crashing in.

I look forward to coming back.

Changes

Captain's log,

The past couple of weeks have been fun. Nothing too note worthy. Finally got a mountain party to happen. Then after that went to another pretty awesome party. This past week involved a couple of karaoke ventures.

On wednesday I went to Karaoke for the first time with nothing but Japanese people. Which was rather interesting. I sang only two songs, and it was funny how quiet everyone got when I was up, cause none of them spoke English (I'm not good enough to sing in Japanese). Not only does pretty much everyone sing, but they even did the freaking dance moves, which was humorous and terrifying at the same time.

Yesterday was a full day. Moved out of my homestay and into my shiny, new dorm. It's really cool cause I have so much space. It's pretty much an apartment and I love it. That said, I have more rules here than I ever did in my homestay. I still have to call when I'll be out late and whatnot, I have a "curfew" that I am never going to abide by, I'm not allowed to have girls over, and a number of other things that's basically a slap in the face to my past 3 years of living on my own/being an adult. Oh well. Whatever.

After I established myself, I noticed my dorm is missing quite a number of essentials, such as toilet paper. So I had to go grab a few things. Eventually went to Sannomiya and finished off everything.

In Sannomiya, my girlfriend and I decided to break up. We're still friends, and maybe even some day might get back together, but right now we're done. I'm just glad everything's on good terms.

No, I didn't forget about this thing

Captain's log:

Until school got going, not much had really happened. Intensive period finally ended, then solace faded to boredom.

I finally tried whale, which was delicious. I want to try horse soon.

Sakura kicked in, which was really pretty. Japan has these trees EVERYWHERE, that are barren and ugly for 11 months out of the year, then BAM! April hits and they're exploding with pretty. Because of this, I went on a lot of picnics.

Mayo went off to Tokyo for job training around the 1st. She comes back this coming friday.

Met a lot of the new kids. I like most of them. A couple of the Oxford kids are a little stuck up, but with any luck they'll grow out of it. One dude thinks he's punk, does his hair like Cloud Strife, and basically doesn't interact with us. I talked to him once and found out he suffers from being a dick.

I tried to organize a mountain party, cause we hadn't had one since my birthday, but God goes "no," and it rained. So we all went to an izakaya instead, which was still a lot of fun. I rescheduled the event for this coming friday.

Now for classes, my schedule is:
Mon - Japanese Poetry and Korean Studies
Tues - Japanese Grammar and Japanese Speaking/Listening
Wed - Either Grammar or S/L and Kanji
Thurs - Nothing. It's awesome.
Fri - Japanese Grammar, Japanese Speaking/Listening, and Japanese Human Geography

Poetry seems like it'll be good, LOVE Geog, wish I could have switched out of Korean to Japanese Psychology.

Grammar and Kanji are same old same old, but speaking and listening is atrocious. I've had this teacher before, but never for speaking and listening, and she was already a bad teacher. Now she's abysmal. Terrible examples, I don't even know what we're going over, and quizzes and tests are poorly conducted. /whine

Moving on, I've been trying to schedule my classes at UGA, I've got Intro to New Media, Intro to Korean, and Creative Writing. Not sure what to fill up my last slot with, possibly philosophy, but I can't decide whether to take intro or logic.

And finally, I have to move out of my homestay. My host mother's daughter lives in Holland with her husband, and they're going to have a baby. Since she can't make it back to Japan in time, they're going to her, which means I've got to go. I'll be moving to the dorms in Imazu, and I"m actually really excited about it because I'm tired of living with people.

Anywho, I felt rushed before, now more than ever. I don't have much time left, I need more practice and I have more things to see. These next couple of months will be interesting.

Nagano

Captain's log,

I got back from Nagano at about 6:30 this morning, got home just before 8:00.

The trip was amazing. We met up at about 8:30 on wednesday, and took a night bus to Nagano. This night bus was kinda cramped, and I'm glad no one sat next to me so I had more room. At one of the stops, I ran into a friend of mine, I didn't realize it was her until she screamed in surprise. At the second stop, some random broad told me I was handsome, which I thought was funny for a Japanese person to be brave enough to say.

We finally arrive around 6:40ish in the morning. We take our crap down to this big room, change, and prepare for the day of boarding - sans shower :'(

My snowboarding outfit is all black, and because of this, my tennis circle dubbed me "kokujin," which is the word for black people, much to my amusement.

The weather was perfect, snowing with grey skies. Sadly the sun came out a little bit, but it disappeared again, the weather was even better the second day. Not to mention the mountain scenery was beautiful on an epic scale.

Out of the entire group, I think I explored the mountain the most. I doubt most of them even realized there was a back side of it, which took me a while to figure out how to get to. For all of the first day, and most of the second, the majority of the group was content to stick to one or two runs. Since I have the attention span of a gnat, I quickly moved on to greener (more dangerous/fun) pastures.

The first and second days, as I mentioned, had pretty much perfect weather, there was a good supply of powder, and I only needed to get my board waxed a couple times. The third day was the worst. The sun was out, and it didn't really snow overnight, so everything was icy i.e. dangerous. Not the fun kind of dangerous either, the actual concern dangerous. I ran into a lot of issues of going to fast and not being able to make turns properly, and the irony of (moderately) gracefully coming down a black diamond run (with mouguls), only to bust ass on the bunny slopes near the lifts. Even worse was some of the snow would get kind of slushy. And if your board isn't properly waxed, it will grab and drag a bit. I foolishly ignored this twice, and fell on my head both times, hurting my neck a good deal. Thankfully, I'm indestructible.

On the evening of the second night, we had our nomikai (drinking party). This further emphasized the fact that I need to learn Japanese drinking songs, cause they were fun. I started to learn the words of some of them, but that's only because they were repeated over and over. Lots of beer and umeshu (plum wine, it's retardedly sweet, but thankfully is 10%), and some whiskey. The circle kids would basically pick someone at random and hand them drinks, giving them more if they drank it too fast, too slow, if they were cute, or really they would make up reasons just to make them drink more. They only victimized me once, which kinda sucked because the drink I had just made myself was 50% terrible whiskey. Once all the alcohol was gone, I went to a vending machine and bought some sake to finish the night. Everyone (but me of course) was red faced, which is a funny side effect when you combine Asians with alcohol. Many of them didn't remember much of the evening. But it was cute, cause they all told me how much they loved me :3

We just all wish we could communicate better :/

Other than that, the Motion City Soundtrack show was great, sadly the crowd didn't move that much this time. Oreskaband was fun, and Riddim Saunter was amazing. I really wanted to talk to MCS after the show, since I was one of two gaijin in the crowd, but Mayo had to catch her bus. Oh well. I caught one of Tony's drumsticks! So that made me happy, and you can see me in the crowd on this video (around 0:55), which also makes me feel special. I'm pretty easy to find, I'm near the front, and I'm the redhead with the red shirt.

Tomorrow is White Day, if you remember how I explained Valentine's Day a few entries back, this is the reciprocal day for dudes to give stuff back to the ladies. Since I planned v-day, Mayo gets to plan tomorrow. We're going to Kyoto! We'll see Nijo-jo, some other stuff, and buy my kimono. Sadly, I don't think sakuras are blooming yet, so it looks like I'll be going to Kyoto at least one more time after this.

I'm also really glad the intensive period is over. It was an epic pain. I look forward to meeting the new kids. I also look forward to hanging out with Taiki on tuesday, apparently some UGA kids are coming out. Party funtime.

Reflection and Plans

Captain's Log:

We had our "orientation" for the coming Spring semester today after our morning Japanese classes. They're not offering one of the classes I need to do to get my credit transfer. Damn.

It was in room G202.

The first and the only time I've ever been in that room, were the three days followed after the placement test in mid-September last year.

We talked a lot today, about what seemed like just a few weeks ago that we, excited and lost, were having our first orientation about the 10 and half months ahead of us. Today, I sat here... 5 months down, 5 and half more to go.

Remember I wrote about the placement test back then? I felt especially stupid while doing it because the girl in front of me, was practically going through the whole thing effortlessly, which gave me a slight shock. But she turned out to be one of the two people who could take normal university courses with normal Japanese students straight away.

Time really flies. At first, things seemed like a bit of a drag, but once they're over, and you make friends the days go by faster than you can count them. And it goes without saying how much my Japanese have really improved in these few months. Despite that it still sucks...

The amount of people that filled the room, practically halved than it was just 5 short months ago. From what I've heard, there's at least double the amount of people that's coming in the next semester for just one semester, and even the university said themselves that they'd be expecting a lot of people to be in levels 3 and 4 Japanese classes during the next semester, and so they'll be splitting one of these levels into 2 classes. I'll be level 3, so this could be interesting.

First semester, we had 15 or 16 kids in our class, now we number at 7. I'm looking to welcome the new kids.

We're about to have another break. I'm gonna go see Motion City Soundtrack the day before exams. Sadly I'll miss out on my tennis circle's going away party for the 4th years, but I was going to miss that anyway. Sad day.

However, immediately after that, I'm going snowboarding with them in Nagano, which I'm pretty stoked about. And we found out there's a ferry from Kobe to Shanghai that's only, like, $30. But visas to get into China are about $100, which is unfortunate, I was looking forward to a week of cheap, opposed to the life of expensive in Japan. I guess I'll go to Hiroshima instead.

I normally hate when people do things like this, but I have to brag about my girlfriend. We've been together for 2 months now (which have flown by), and it's been awesome. She's cute, silly, open about everything, gets and laughs at (most of) my jokes, and most importantly, not crazy (such a nice change). She's pretty much a westerner with Japanese quirks, and I love it. This may not end well, but I'm going to enjoy it while I can. My only criticism is that I wish she spoke less English with me. So yea, happiness.

Been Busy, My Bad.

Captain's Log:

A lot has happened in recent days. Pretty much as soon as I got back from Tokyo, the intensive period started. The intensive period is basically a semester crammed into a month, it's 15 hours of solid Japanese classes a week. I was dreading it, but it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. What will kill me is waking up at 6:40 every morning so I can catch my 9 am class.

My biggest gripe about the intensive period, is that it's basically a chapter a day, meaning we pretty much have no time to make sure everyone has an understanding of the material. I've been kinda floundering for the past couple chapters.

Other than that, Valentine's Day was last sunday, it was the first one I've actually had a girlfriend on. It was fun. We went to this awesome Spanish tapas restaurant, then to the sky building. Valentine's Day is very different in Japan than in America. In America, it's usually the chicks getting showered with materialistic objects, demonstrating that they really are loved if their man will empty a paycheck on them in a day. Here, pretty much the only tradition is the chicks give the dudes chocolate. Which is awesome. Then a month later, they have White Day, where the dudes reciprocate with candy for the chicks. I have 3 girls I have to reciprocate to.

Last night, my lady and I had a date in Sannomiya, we went to a place called Lock-Up, which I heard was an izakaya where they put you in cages, and guys dressed as monsters randomly come up and scare you or something. The place was interesting. It was kind of jail/halloween themed. We went in and the hostess, dressed as a sexy police officer (the rest of the staff wore striped prison uniforms), asks if we had been bad. She handcuffs us and leads us to our table. We get our food and drinks and enjoy the cool atmosphere. A lot of the food was spicy (like, habanero stuff, which is pretty tough to find here), sadly, my girlfriend is Japanese, and therefore can't handle spicy. At all. At 7:20, they had their event, where dudes dressed as monsters came around and hassled customers, then the sexy police officer comes and kills them. Afterwards, the music was the Brian Setzer Orchestra for at least 20 minutes. If it weren't so expensive, I would have been in love with the place.

Other than that, there's not much to report, other than gripes about my classes, the culture (I've been saving that for an entry - I'm just lazy), and I desperately need a haircut. It's almost down to my chin again.

Tokyo!

Captain's Log,

Not much has happened between the last entry and going to Tokyo, mostly been hanging out with the girlfriend.

Anywho, we took a night bus to Tokyo (just Mayo and I), and arrived in downtown Shinjuku. Upon getting off the bus, I was greeted by a building that resembled a giant phallus. I laughed and took it as an omen that I would love this trip.

We get to our hotel around 9:00 am and are told we can't check into our room until 3:00. Since we were just on a bus all night with no shower, I am not pleased with this news.

We make the best of it and just move on. We first went to Akhabara, which was cool. Mostly shopping, particularly electronics and porn. We went into a 6-floor sex shop, which I akin to Dante's Inferno, in that each floor was like a circle of Hell.

We walked from Akihabara to Ueno, which was also cool. We spent most of our time in the Museum of Natural History. I love dinosaurs.
By the time we left, it was 2:00, and we were starving, so we go and get lunch, then head to Asakusa.

Asakusa was cool, bought some omiyage there, and it was starting to get dark so we went back to the hotel to shower, eat dinner, and whatnot.

Next day involved getting up at 6:00 to go to Tsukiji, which has this awesome giant fish market. We went there and looked at the shops, I had some of the best tuna and crab I've ever had in my life, and the best part is that it was caught that morning, so it's also the freshest I will ever have as well.

After all of this, we went to Shibuya, Harajuku, Shinjuku, and others to go shopping. I really liked Harajuku. I was just irked because there's a certain style of jacket I'm looking for, but when I manage to find one I actually like, it's either too expensive or doesn't fit. Woe is me.

After shopping and having dinner in Shinjuku (including hot-light Krispy Kreme!), we go to Tokyo Tower, which was cool, but a bit of a rip-off. Afterwards, we were exhausted, but kept getting delayed. One of the most notable delays was the train, because somewhere on the Tokyo loop, someone has thrown their-self into the train. Yummy.

We got to sleep in the next day. So we head out around 10:30-11ish. We mostly revisited areas, shopping and looking at things we missed. Then at night we went to Odaiba for dinner, more shopping, and to be date-y.

We got steak for dinner. It was amazing. After that we wandered around the island and rode a giant (overpriced) ferris wheel. It was fun.

The next day involved us checking out and going to Yokohama, we stashed our suitcases in lockers, and did some more shopping, and went to Kamakura to see the Daibutsu (giant Buddha statue).

We took a shinkansen back to Osaka, which was cool, and it SNOWED!! Yay! Didn't stick, but oh well.

The intensive period starts up tomorrow, it will be 15 hours a week of nothing but Japanese classes. I am going to die. Wish me luck.

I get so lazy when it comes to writing these

Captain's log:

Haven't updated in a while because of exams and papers. I think I did ok. Anywho, much of the past few days have been parties and hanging out with my girlfriend.

The parties were fun, they were typically tabehodai and nomihodais, so nothing new to report on. A lot of the ryuugakusei have left, which is depressing.

The day before yesterday was a good day. My girlfriend and I went to the Osaka aquarium! It was fun, and had a lot of cool stuff. A little smaller than the GA aquarium, but I felt it had a bigger variety. Afterwards we got lunch and rode this gigantic ferris wheel, and then we went to Shinsaibashi to explore and kill time before dinner. All in all, it was a good, full day.

Found out we won't really have time to go in March, so my girlfriend and I are going to Tokyo in about a week or so, should be good. We're hitting up Harajuku, Shibuya, Ueno, Ginza, Akihabara, Shinjuku, Yokohama, Kamakura, and a few other places. Night bus there and shinkansen back. Good times will ensue.

Need to start on my linguistics paper, my topic is effective methods of teaching articles to Japanese learners of English.

New Years

Captain's log,

A lot has happened in the past few days.

One of the girls from Christmas Eve is now my girlfriend, if you want the full story, ask me on facebook or skype or something.

On the 26th or 27th, she and I went to Osaka Castle, which was a fun little date. The castle was cool, it was prettier than Himeji, but not as big.

On the 28th I went to Kyoto to hang out with my Nihongo partner's family, we made mochi, takoyaki, and some other foods that were pretty good, but Moe's dad started feeding me alcohol at 10:30 in the morning. This continued until 5:00, when I left. I met up with Mayo (my lady) and her friends at Ikeda station, waited a while on Drew and Aaron, they didn't show, so we ate without them. Afterwards, Mayo and I went to Nishinomiya to hang out with Aaron, we drank a bit and spent the night at Bertrand's place.

The next day, I went to meet some friends from my tennis circle for this fancy dinner party. It was a several course meal, and was absolutely delicious.

New Years went waaaaay better than I thought it would. Some kids wanted to go to a club, but because I'm kinda burned out on clubs, and I have a girlfriend now, I was a tad hesitant. Thankfully, however, a lot more people than I thought were coming came, including my girlfriend. So we all went and had a blast. The club did the countdown about 2 minutes late, but it was still fun nonetheless.

Yesterday and today has involved my extended host-family staying over, and lots of food. Tonight I have a date with Mayo for Nepalese food. I'm pretty stoked.

This year so far looks promising. My resolutions are to keep up with working out, be able to have a full conversation in Japanese, and actually get some music recorded. We'll see how that goes.