Death of my watch

The watch that my uncle gave me years ago finally died today. I’ve had it for many many years, I think from junior high school. I’m not wearing it anymore, but it serves as my watch that I look at when I’m on the computer and to tell the time since my computer clock is set to San Diego time. It’s a bit sad since it’s now just useless and it’s a pretty good idea that I already had it replaced or I’d be screwed. I guess I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, I’m glad I planned for that when I moved to Japan.

I woke up at 10am today, and was really shocked at how hot it has become in the morning. The afternoon is cooler than the morning which is really ridiculous. I think that I’m about to die. I didn’t do much today but just sit in front of my computer downloading a bunch of songs. It was pretty much from one musical group, which I love to death. I have all of their CD’s but that’s actually pretty useless for me because I don’t listen to CD’s in Japan. I have an mp3 player so I needed to find those songs on that format. I think that I have been able to get all the ones that I want, which have totaled to a lot of songs and I’m thinking about transferring them to the player soon. I’m not sure when though since I think it’s pretty good to keep all of my other songs on the player still too. I think that I might do it tonight, but I’m also thinking about doing it later this week too. I guess I’ll just have to go with the flow and do it when it feels right to change. I changed the songs on my playlist for winamp to include all those new songs.

But in the afternoon it really cooled off. It was the strangest thing. It was very windy too, which was nice because the breeze was cool, but it messed up everything in my room. Today was the first day that I went a majority of the day without the fan being on. It was that cool today, which my guess would be somewhere around 27 degrees Celsius or maybe a little bit lower than that.

Today I have to pay my rent, and that’s all I have planned for today. I think that getting some food will be involved in the day’s plan, even though some days I can go without. My landlord told me that I should be careful this week. As someone predicted that there might be a big Earthquake this week. They assume that it will occur on August 5th which is a Friday. I don’t have any plans for that day other than to stay home, but MTki told me that it’s dangerous staying inside the house. She suggested that I go out somewhere. But I would think that’s silly because I wouldn’t want to be stranded somewhere without all my emergency materials since that would be the only time I would actually get to be able to use it. She has all her Earthquake readiness equipment ready, so I’m sure that this is the real deal. I mean there has been a series of Earthquakes this week and last week, so I’m pretty sure that all of this has been built up over a long time. I mean there was supposed to be a really big Earthquake two years ago when I came to Japan too, but since there has been a string of them and they have been pretty strong, I’m guessing this one might be true.

After I paid rent, I took a short walk to Hongodai station and ended up at Ishikawacho station. I was hungry for some dinner, but I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to eat. It was already getting kind of late and I didn’t want to stay out too late since I’ll have to get up really early tomorrow. I want to be able to get enough rest and to be able to get to Ibaraki early too so I could hang out a lot since I’d have to come back early. I ended up going to Yoshinoya since it would be fast and easy. I wanted to go to a Denny’s like restaurant because I could just sit back and take my time and study. I brought my Japanese textbook, which I made a copy for easy carrying. I was hoping to get some of that done today since I really haven’t been studying lately, but instead I was reading the Alchemist. It’s getting pretty good now since the boy has just met the Alchemist. I think I’m going to try to finish it tonight so I could start on a new book tomorrow. I want to get as much reading out of the way this summer since I have the time and I should be using it to build my future on and learning all the things that I need to learn in that time so when I leave Japan, I’ll be able to put them into good use.

A day at home

I spent too much time at home on my computer today. That seems to be usual for my days off. I didn’t really enjoy it because it was freaking hot today. It wasn’t as hot as it was last week, but it’s still very hot that when you sit down, you’re still sweating and feel like you want to die. I woke up late even though it was very hot in the morning. I mean late is around 9am.

I did a lot of reading on the internet today. There were a lot of things that I needed to check up on like reviewing how to learn Japanese from some interesting websites. I also did an extensive cleaning up project on my computer. I had uninstalled a lot of programs that I don’t use to try to free up space on my C drive, which was unsuccessful. All those programs were installed and stored on my D drive, so it didn’t have any effect at all. That was a bit disappointing, since my computer will be going slow forever now. Its stupid windows that’s taking up so much room and all of their updates. What I found out today, was that my computer is missing my F drive too. That means I don’t have a CD-ROM drive…again. I’ve had this problem many times before with this laptop and each time Best Buy had to reformat my computer to load up all the software and hardware from the beginning. They claimed to have backed up my information, but lost everything in the process. I was…pissed off at them. But I’m not on warranty anymore, and I’m in a different country, so I don’t think that I’ll be able to fix the problem by next year. That’s when I’m planning to get a new laptop for my computing needs. I sure hope that this one lasts me till then, but that’s highly unlikely. I would like to upgrade my windows software to the new Windows Vista and get all the cool fixings like the dual processors from AMD and a large hard drive from Seagate.

I wanted to play a game that I had on CD, but that didn’t work, and that’s when I learned that I don’t have a CD-ROM drive to begin with. I had to reboot many times, and even downloaded drivers from the Sony website, but nothing had changed the status quo. I was not happy about that. I like vaios because they look cool and have pretty good functions, but my CD-ROM drive has NEVER worked from the day that I bought the damn laptop. So for my next laptop, I’m thinking about jumping the Sony ship and getting something else that’s a bit cheaper, but has the power I need for all my cool projects.

I decided to finally pay my bills today at 7-11. That cost me about $150 which is a lot. I haven’t noticed how much my bills have increased and how much money I’ve spent in the past month. It wasn’t the highest that I’ve spent, that was back in January when I sent money back to my family, but that was the only other time that I withdrew that much money. I’m finally a millionaire… only in yen though. But that’s a nice milestone to achieve; I just need to put that to good use to make more and to be able to turn that into dollars.

I watched the end of the American President during dinner, since I only watched the beginning of it the other day when YSki was on the computer. I was disappointed in myself that I didn’t do any reading for Japanese, or the book The Alchemist. I almost finished the book, but somehow, when I’m at home, I can’t get any studying done. I need to go out and find a good place to study at. I’m not sure where that could be since there really isn’t that much around here. But I’ll have to look around to see a place I feel comfortable and can get things done. That’s my plan for the month of August, but I’d also like to get some traveling done too. I need a good destination to go to and hopefully someone there to show me around, although I could go by myself too. I’ve had to do that this whole year anyways.

I updated all my xanga entries for the first year I’ve been in Japan. I was finally able to do it. I was finally able to write a journal entry for every day that I’ve been in Japan. I didn’t think that I would be able to keep up, but I’m glad that I was able to follow through on it. At times it’s been a nuisance, but I think that in the future, when I want to look back at what I’ve done, I’ll have a record of it.

Day in Musashi-Urawa

I went to visit my friend CNto and her former teacher. I’ve met both of them on numerous times this past year. I’m glad to have her as a friend and feel closer to her in Japan than we were in America. We went to Jonathons, the one that we usually go to, and we each had a lunch set. I got the Onion Hamburg set, which was much smaller than I thought it would be. It turned out to be enough; since I ate it slower hoping it would just fill me up somehow. We were set to meet at 11am, but I didn’t show up till around 11:30am. That’s really really late and the latest I’ve been ever in Japan. I missed a bunch of trains that was supposed to get me there on time and I just don’t know where the time went. I left under the impression that I would be early too. That was weird and it seemed like I was caught up on a time and space continuum or something.

At around 4pm, one of CNto’s junior came to join us and we were just there to pump up her spirit as she heads towards an entrance exam for next week. I think that the math teacher wanted to give some inspiration from one top student to another. She wants to go to Tokyo something something university about agriculture… I think. But it’s pretty much a vocational school, but more than just that. Her major is microbiology, so she’s a pretty smart person.

It was pretty much the entire day. I was reading the Alchemist on the train. It’s been really good so far and only today I finished more than half the book. It’s not a big book like the Harry Potters or even the Dan Brown books, but it’s just as gripping. It’s a great book about adventure of the self and it would be good for anyone who seems they are lost on a journey or is about to give up on a dream. I think that someone gave it to me at the right time and I decided to read it; although I’ve been pretty much dumping everything else that I have received from her.

I mean I was on the train today for the other majority of the day. I was hooked listening to the MP3 player and reading the book. I should have taken a slower train, so I could have finished the book on the train.

When I got to Yokohama station, I needed to get some money from the ATM because bills need to be paid soon and I needed to find something to eat. I found this little Chinese food restaurant near the subway entrance on the B1 floor. It was reasonably priced and offered enough food, so I thought I’d try it out. It wasn’t anything spectacular and about average. So, I didn’t feel like I wasted money or anything.

When I walked out and towards Bic Camera, I found a friend that I know. She’s from the Yokohama ambassador association, or the Red Shoes Association. She just got off of work, and since that’s also at Yokohama station, we talked for a little bit. I seem to be running into her a lot lately and it’s been pretty weird that I only see her from the group.

I then went to Bic Camera to see if there were any good deals for DVD’s. I think that a majority of them were reasonably priced, but for some reason, I just didn’t buy them. I don’t know what it is, but when it gets to that point where I’m about to buy, I just don’t and turn away and leave. It’s weird, but I don’t want to be spending all my money on DVD’s. I want to be able to spend my summer time traveling somewhere. I’m not sure where, and I think that tomorrow I’ll have to find out what good places are there to visit. I think that if I have enough time and enough money, I’d like to make a trip to a few places and different countries, although I’m sure my visa won’t be good in everywhere I go. Then I came home and took a nice relaxing shower. I’m pretty sleepy since I haven’t slept well in a long time. I think I’d like to get to bed early tonight and then get cracking on some Japanese language study and paying bills and things of that sort, but it’s already 11pm, and I’m still awake doing the usual, checking e-mail and writing this blog.

YSki leaves me :(

So today is the day that my friend YSki leaves my apartment. I had to get up early, but that didn’t work so well because I slept so late last night, or should I say this morning. Since I was talking till 6am, I didn’t get much of a chance to enjoy the coolness of the evening temperature, so I had to sleep when it was freaking hot and with a lot of daylight.

I got up just in time to get ready and to go out. That was around 10:30am when I finished getting ready and we were out the door. She needed to catch the Tokaido line at 11:49am headed for Atami, and we only had an hour left to get to the station, have brunch and for us to say good bye. We tried to get on the 10:46am bus to Ofuna station, but it didn’t show up till around 10:50am, which is really odd since things are never late in Japan. However the case last night was very unusual too. As I hopped on the bus, I noticed that there was a friend of my landlord on the bus too. I saw her the other day when I was walking, but today it was weird because I was on the bus. I saw her when we were walking to Ofuna to go to Kamakura. The bus today arrived very late at Ofuna station. I think the trip should take less than 15 minutes, but it ended up taking about 30 minutes, so we only had about 20 minutes to get something to eat and to eat it and then go to the station for the train.

We needed to pick up something fast, so we went to First Kitchen, even though we ate there another time. I wasn’t really going for it since it was junk food and we’ve been eating a lot of junk food lately, but since we were pressed for time, it was the only choice. Last time I got an Ebi katsu burger, but today I got a shrimp burger. I think they are essentially the same, but I’m not sure. We were able to finish our food in time, but it seemed too rushed and then we had to go to the station and said our good byes. It was weird because I won’t see her for a long time that is if I ever get to see her again. She’s not from the Tokyo area, so there isn’t a chance that I’ll see her here, but I probably won’t see her in San Diego either since I don’t plan to go back.

She’s a good friend and I’m grateful for everything she’s told me and done for me this week. It was pretty shocking and she was very honest with me. But she was also there to support me, which was the nice thing about it. We’ve been out and about all week and it felt weird to finally be finished traveling and being a tour guide. To a certain degree, it was nice to be finished, but it’s sad because I’m done for the plans of my summer vacation. I’d like to travel elsewhere, but I highly doubt that would be possible just because I haven’t planned anything yet and I don’t have many friends anymore.

After she left for the train, I stuck around since I haven’t really explored that area before. So I went inside Lumine at Ofuna station. I just went around each floor and got stuck on the 5th floor, I believe it was. That’s where there is a bookstore and a CD shop. I took a look inside the CD shop first since I wanted to buy some DVD’s today. I was determined to buy some DVD’s today and I wanted to see, which ones would be good for me to buy. I would only get them if they were at the price I wanted them to be. I found some good movies that I wanted to buy, but I wanted to check out Yamada denki before I make a purchase.

Then I walked over to the bookstore. I spent a good chunk of time at the CD shop, but I spent even more time at the bookstore. I found a little area, and I mean very little area where they were selling foreign books in English. I wanted to buy the older Dan Brown books like Digital Fortress and Deception Point, but I felt like I couldn’t buy it yet. I have other books that I think I need to read before I get back into the Dan Brown addictions. But since they let you read books at the bookstore, I decided to get into something. So I picked up a little book about the unauthorized guide to the Da Vinci Code. I read it pretty much cover to cover, but it was just a rough skim of it. But I was able to finish it standing there at the bookstore. It wasn’t like the thicker books or the guides to the Da Vinci Code that I’ve seen before, but pretty much the same information. It was really interesting how they come up with what they come up. Of course Dan Brown’s version of things is fictional, but how he ties things up and to kind of make them sound true is really a gift that he has. I enjoyed it, and then was a bit tired and thirsty so I left to go to Yamada Denki to look at DVD’s. But after all this, I spent about 3 hours in the bookstore and the CD shop. It was already around 2:30pm.

When I left Lumine to go to Yamada Denki across the street, the weather was extremely hot, it added to the thirst factor. I spent another good chunk of time in the DVD section. They had a special deal that if you buy 3 DVD’s it would be around 3,125 Yen. That’s around $30 for 3 DVD’s, but since they were all for foreign movies, I was fortunate for that. I decided on Big Daddy, Rudy, and Spiderman.

I came home and then stuck to the computer for a good chunk of time when there was still daylight. But when night fell and things became darker, I decided to get some dinner. I still had some food left over, but it went bad already. So I needed to go to 7-11 to get dinner. I chose the same meal, since I thought that would be the easiest. While I was eating dinner, I was watching Spiderman. It really is good movie, but when I first saw it, it was only ok. But after watching it again, I really like it. It’s very moving and describes a bit of how my life is right now. I mean, no matter how hard I do things to make it right, things never work out the way I want. My friends are important to me, but they are practically destroying their own friendships by themselves. They hit the self-destruction button on themselves, and I really can’t help them for that.

There was a minor earthquake in the Yokohama area today too. I think there has been a string of medium sized Earthquakes this week, and it could mean that a big on is on the way. It happened around 7:30pm tonight. After that, I clipped my nails and then listened to an old CD from the stack that I have. I chose Green Day – Kerplunk. That was and still is an awesome album. I really enjoy it, even though it sounds very amateurish. I like the music and the way that it was put together. It’s one of my favorite albums from them, so I enjoyed it before I took a shower and started writing this entry. It’s weird because I’m here all by myself now. It’s calm, but it’s an uneasy calm. I don’t believe I could live with a roommate, it just wouldn’t work, but then being alone now isn’t that fun either. I really found myself with nothing to do and that I didn’t feel like I wanted to do anything either. It’s 12:30am right now, and I have to get up in 6 hours to go meet up with my friend tomorrow, or rather today. It’s a long trip up north to see them, but I’m sure it will be well worth it.

A whale of a day

I woke up late today. We needed to do some laundry this morning around 10am, and that’s when I woke up. So I had to take care of that this morning. That didn’t take too much time and while it was washing, I came back and got ready to go meet up with another friend of ours and have lunch. I heard from YSki that after a typhoon the weather is crazy hot, and today it was crazy hot. The top temperature for today would be 34 degrees Celsius and humid. That’s not a lovely combination at all.

While we were waiting for the laundry to finish, we played a little game where I would just play a song from the list that I have and she had to guess what movie it came from. It was a bit difficult because I’m not sure what movies she’s familiar with.

After wards we went to Totsuka station. It was such a hard walk because it was incredibly hot. We finally made it, and arrived a bit late because we were moving slow.

We decided to eat at Bamiyan with TIma. It was a bit comical because all of us ordered the same thing. I ordered my favorite thing at Bamiyan, which is Fried Rice. YSki also ordered Fried Rice because of all the good things I say about the Fried Rice that she wanted to try it out. And TIma ate the Fried Rice because she likes it a lot too. That was interesting and cool in a way. We stayed there for a few hours, about 4 hours just talking and joking around. I haven’t had the opportunity to talk to TIma so it was nice to finally to be able to talk to her.

Then we headed to Shibuya, we jumped on the Shonan-Shinjuku line to get there. It was pretty quick because it only took around 40 minutes to get there. I’m not used to getting there that fast either.

We were going to eat whale tonight and I was a bit excited about it. I know that I’m not much of a humanitarian for doing that, but I really wanted to try it out. Before we did that, we went shopping around. YSki bought herself a brand new bag and sandals and I was able to get some candy and snacks that I’ve been craving for. We went to the Loft and Tokyu Hands and into a bookstore called Libro Books.

We went to a restaurant called Kujira-ya, which translates to Whale restaurant. We first started with the 4,000 yen course for each of us and then we ordered three a la carte dishes about 1,500 yen each. The total for the meal was about 18,800 yen.

It was nice because afterwards we went to get some ice cream at Hagen-daez.

The ride home was horrible. I can’t believe that it took forever. It took an extra hour longer than it normally takes. There was a problem with the signals, so each train had to stop at every station and go one by one and had to wait for the green light by phone to go. A trip that normally takes one hour ended up taking two hours. That was a nightmare.

I came home and was about to sleep, but then I was talking to ICn. I haven’t talked to this sweet girl in a long time. I wanted to know if she was affected by what’s been going on this past week. I think she has and I wanted to see how involved this became. I didn’t end up sleeping till 6am talking and discussing with her what I was planning to do. She really wasn’t happy with my decision, but she could understand. She knows that I wouldn’t make it, if I didn’t have any other choice, but I have to do what must be done.

Typhoon # 7 day

We decided that since I was pissed last night and couldn’t sleep till around 8am and waking up at 11am today, that we’d have a day of rest and relaxation.

It rained a little last night, but today it was much harder and more frequent. The cause of this as we learned today was because of the 7th typhoon of the season. It was going to cover the central part of Japan or mainly the Kanto area, which is the area which I live in.

I was talking to my family and an old family friend that I haven’t seen for at least 3 years. So it was good to catch up and to let them know about the situation that happened recently. I think that they bring me balance and are able to get me to think clearly about what I should do and can do.

The shit hit the fan today. I learned about what has been going on in San Diego and how messed up some people are. I heard it from a few friends that all enlightened me about the situation and what’s been going on. I’m very disappointed and appalled at what has happened in these past 4 months. I know that I will never forgive her and that she accomplished her goal of me never forgetting her. I’ll never forget the fact that she’s a two-timing slut, whose selfish ambitions ruined all my efforts in San Diego. She’s done a pretty good job with destroying all that I’ve made and is taking the role of an innocent victim blinded by a love she will never have. She doesn’t deserve my love, or my friendship. I’m glad I had friends brave enough to break the silence to fill me in on what’s going on.

And on top of that, one of my good friends broke up with her boyfriend, who is also one of my good friends too. I would have thought they would get married and was shocked to hear that they had broken up a week ago. That was something that was solid when I left San Diego in March. It was something that if they broke up the end of the world would be near. And I was talking to YSki about it before saying that it would and could never happen, but it did. I’m so sad to report that, and it seems that everyone has hit a stage of misery this summer. No one is happy and everyone has problems to endure greater than they could imagine. It was all the doing of the actions of others too. That’s what makes it more confusing and painful.

That was a good chunk of the day. I was uncovering what seemed to be a mystery about the strange behavior that I’ve had around me. There will be more questions that need to be answered and different perspectives that I need to see from. But I’ve got a clear idea about what has happened.

I didn’t eat anything till around 6pm, and only had Curry bread. Then in the next few minutes we decided to go to Saizeriya to get dinner. The typhoon was expected to arrive at 6pm this evening so that was right around the time we went to dinner. We had other plans today, but everyone cancelled on fears of the typhoon. It must have been strong otherwise people wouldn’t have bailed out.

But as we were eating dinner, I noticed that it wasn’t even raining. So the typhoon had passed us and didn’t even affect anything but ruining our plans for the day. We stayed there for a little longer to talk more about what has been going on, and then we left to go back home around 11pm. It’s about 1am right now, and I’m tired as hell, but I wanted to write this entry or at least get a bit of what I wanted to write first. I’ll have to come back to it because I’m tired as hell.

I felt it was a waste of a day for YSki because she’s only here for two more days and everyone cancelled on her and we could have met them because there wasn’t any typhoon that affected us.

Shinjuku for Italian food

Today, I was a bit slow to get up. But we got ready and left on time. The plan was to go to Kannai station to exchange some clothes that I bought the other day. It turns out that we weren’t paying attention to the size and I just bought it on the design only and when I brought it home, it turned out to be too big.

So YSki went to the store to exchange the shirt for me and I just waited at the station. Then we parted ways at Yokohama station. I took the Shonan-Shinjuku line and she took the Tokyu Toyoko line. It turns out that both the trains and the ways are about the same because we met at Studio Alta at the same time. Then we went around looking for something to drink.

Then we went back to Studio Alta, but our friend ATya was a bit late. About 13 minutes late, but that’s pretty good for our friends. That actually is still a bit early. Then we went to an Italian Buffet with pasta, pizza, and salad with drink. It was ok food. Nothing I’d go crazy over. It was enough and filling, which is the most important thing for me, being it was a buffet.

Then we went to a coffee shop in Shinjuku near the west exit. We chilled there for a long time. About 4 hours just drinking tea and their fruit drinks until ATya had to leave to go back to Takasaki.

Then YSki and I went around Shinjuku for a little bit. We went to the NS building to look at a big clock Another thing I noticed about Shinjuku was that there are a lot of clocks. We went to the 30th floor to get a good view of the city. But then we went to the next building, the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, South tower to get an even better view of the city. We didn’t stay very long before we walked back to the station and then back to Totsuka station.

At Totsuka station, we had dinner at Jonathon’s and talked all night. We didn’t leave the place till 11pm, even though we arrived at 8:30pmish. We had a more in depth conversation.

Then at home, we had another long in depth conversation. One of my friends had left me a message on my MSN that completely shocked the hell out of me. I was surprised that this had happened, but it seems as if my friends have all turned on me. They have sided with a person who cheated on me. I don’t blame them quite yet because they are ignorant of my side of the story. But you soon won’t be. I haven’t said much to anyone, pretty much because no one has informed me of what’s going on. I believe that I was put in an unfair position and now I have to suffer the consequences of others, who don’t regard others in the same way I do. That’s the typical characteristic of selfishness. But it’s all in the name of love right? Love makes people do stupid things and I was a great witness to that recently.

Anyways, I haven’t slept a wink yet, and it’s 6am now. I just watched half of the American President, and am reminded that if there is a lack of true leadership, people will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. All I’ve been hearing are lies and words of deceit, and I’m about to step in and correct the errors in judgment. Not that I want to, but now that I’m the only person who could. For some reason, my college friends have put me in this position.

Yoke meeting

Today I had a good meeting with the Yokohama association. YSki and I woke up a bit early to get some laundry done in the morning before we left to the meeting. It was weird because we had done everything a bit early in the day.

Then we left to go to Sakuragicho station and ate at Bamiyan. I had a vegetable dish, with a lunch set. It wasn’t that great. YSki got mabo tofu, and it looked good.

Then we went to the meeting that seemed to last for a long time. We didn’t leave till around 4:30pmish or around 5pm. They had a long lecture and then took an extended break from talking. We took a break and I passed out some candies I bought from Okinawa, and TUda made everyone crepes. It was a fun meeting because some of the bad, annoying people weren’t there, so it was free and fun.

They actually got a lot of work finished and done too.

We went to go to get some tea and coffee, but the usual place we go to was closed right after one of us walked in. So the rest of us had to wait for the one person to finish and then we left to go to Café de Crie at the crossgate tower.

It was good, but seemed very short because everyone had to go home after that.

Then AS and YSki and I went around the area shopping for a new bag for YSki. She wasn’t able to find one today and we went from the Landmark tower to World porters. We went shopping again but found nothing. Then we ate some Takoyaki which was pretty good, but a bit hot. It was good and we left for home around 8:30pm. We took a train and got back in a time to go to the Supermarket to get some breakfast for tomorrow and some drinks.

Then we left to go home. That was the night.

A day of Ramen and Curry

The plan today was to take some trips to museums, but it’s not the sort of stuff that you’d imagine. It’s about our trip to eat Ramen in Shin-Yokohama and dinner at the Curry Museum at the Kannai area.

In the Shin-Yokohama area, there were surprisingly a lot of people there. I mean there was a short line going in when I went inside the place. The lines were pretty long to get something to eat though. I mean we had to wait 30 minutes just to get ramen that we’re probably going to finish in less than half the wait time. YSki picked the place to eat. She picked the Okayama styled ramen, which I could tell you wasn’t the best ramen that I’ve had before. It was a bit expensive because you had to pay to go in and then you had to pay for them ramen itself too. So everyone who goes in gets hit with a double whammy of charges. Going to the station at Shin-Yokohama was the first time that I missed my exit. I mean it was weird because both of us didn’t realize that we missed the station. We missed it by 3 stations and it’s not my fault since I was talking on the phone on the train… when I wasn’t supposed to and that caused me to not pay attention to where we were so we missed it. It was weird though because we didn’t even realize it too. She was very hungry at this point and was about to pass out. I think it was because I was working her too much and all the walking that we did was a bit over the top for her.

As we were leaving, there was a line all the way down the block. I mean it was extremely shocking. I didn’t know it was that famous or even that popular, but I was totally wrong. We had Okayama styled ramen. I didn’t like it one bit. It wasn’t the best tasting ramen that I’ve had in Japan or at all.

There were a ton of people who had KTM shirts. I wasn’t able to figure out where they had gotten them, but everyone was decked out in them. And the other thing that I noticed was the yellow Yuzu bag. I mean like everyone had it.

We sat and had come tea at Caffe Veloce. It was nice and peaceful. I had melonpan for the first time.

We took a walk today, a rather long one too to get from place to place.

The curry museum was completely the opposite with having no one inside. I mean the wait for a table was non-existent. I mean we were able to sit down right away and order and even get our food right away too. We went to an awesome tasting place. It was Yaki Curry, and it was some of the best curry I’ve had in my life.

There was a huge earthquake today around 4:30pm today. I mean it was quite big. I’m checking the news now and it says it’s about a 6 on the Richter scale. There wasn’t any damage to my place, fortunately, but I did lose of lot of shampoo because my roomie forgot to shut the cap and it had spilt all over the bath tub during the rumble. I was able to finish shopping and all, so it was all good. I bought a lot of stuff today too, about $63 worth of stuff.

On the way home, there was a little matsuri near Hongodai central park. It was nice even though we came when it was just completed.

A mini trip to Kamakura and Enoshima

Today, the plan was to wake up late, since we slept late last night. YSki went to bed around 2:30am, but I stayed up till around 3am to type the last entry. I also woke up around 8am this morning, which doesn’t give me a lot of sleep. I mean it’s enough, but I wanted to be ready to leave whenever YSki woke up and finished getting ready.

We walked to Ofuna station to catch the Yokosuka line to Kamakura station. I saw someone on the bus that I knew too. It was weird because I don’t know the person personally, but I had dinner with her one time on New Years. She is my host family’s friend and they play mahjongg and drink and smoke all at the same time. But anyways, I saw her on the bus, while we were walking in the heat of the sun, burning and boiling at the same time. We got to the station really quick since it was only like 3 stations away and we took a faster express train like train.

When we got to the station, we walked a little bit to the beach, and found out that we weren’t going the exact right way. We had to stop and ask directions on how to get there since we pretty much just followed the signs and the map that was near the station, but I guess we missed a turn somewhere or something. After asking a police in the koban, we quickly found our way. It was a tad hot so on the way, we stopped to get some ice cream. I bought Hokkaido vanilla soft serve ice cream and it was damn good. The part I didn’t like though was the dripping. It was so hot that within the minute of us buying our ice cream, it started to melt and drip. That was very annoying. The store was just outside of the Big Buddha, so we didn’t have to go far after that and just walked there to the big Buddha that is there in its special park. Then we sat down there and talked for a little bit on a bench behind the Buddha.

Then we started walking back to Hase station on the Enoshima line. Before we went into the station though, we stopped at a 100 yen store so she could get new sandals because her sandals were already falling apart, so she needed a quick substitute or she’ll go around with no shoes. The train line seems very old, but it’s a nice traditional rail line that doesn’t seem like its being used a lot since there were only two cars. It has a very antique feel to it and not very modern, but not like steam engine old either. I guess we didn’t stay in Kamakura very long, but there aren’t really that many things for us to do there.

We stopped off at Enoshima station and then walked to the island. It was really cool and we got a wonderful view of the city from there. We went quite high and I was able to get some awesome pictures. We did a hell of a lot of walking today. I was getting a bit fatigued too.

We were able talk more about yesterday’s topic too. Not that it was overly exciting, but I was worked up about it because I don’t like liars. So the foundation of friendship was broken, and well if that happens, then I guess there’s nothing else is there? So we were just talking a lot about what went on while I was in Japan and gone away from all the drama. It was seriously like a TV drama that you watch week in and week out because there are so many twists and turns and most of it never makes sense and you’d think that would be impossible. But nothing is impossible right? So we talked a lot about it, and it was getting tiring because that’s all that we have seemed to be talking about as of late.

We came home after getting dinner. We were hungry from walking all day and plus we saw a bunch of great restaurants on the island. They all looked delicious and I was getting to the point where I was starving because they looked so good. It was the first time that I took the monorail in Japan too so that was exciting coming back. It was from a station near Enoshima Island, not sure what the name was or even how to get there, but somehow we got there. It was pretty cool and much busier than I originally thought since it was out in the boon docks, but I guess a lot of people use it to get to work and commute. We got back to Ofuna station and decided to get dinner around there. We walked around for a little bit so we could get more choices for dinner that night.

We decided on getting Shabu Shabu at a restaurant near the station. It was for a reasonable priced place right in front of the monorail station. I was a bit surprised at how that place works. We ordered a meal for about 2 hour service. Since I’ve only gone to shabu shabu with my school I never knew how to order, just eat. So today, we ordered a meal that gave us a couple of choices of meat and vegetables that we could use for the hot pot and make ourselves. At first I thought it was small and kinda pricey. But then the amazing thing happened, we could order more meat. It was part of the package, so you could eat all the meat you wanted within 2 hours. So it was a good price for two people since we could eat a lot of meat and vegetables.

I took a shower after YSki did, so I was on the computer updating my xanga entries. But when I went into the shower, she changed to use the computer for whatever she was doing and started on a website that had a lot of jokes on them. So we spent the next few hours reading up on the jokes that she found. We got tired very late at night and that’s when we went to sleep.

YSki comes over

Today, I woke up a bit late. I had wanted to get up earlier so I could take care of some things before YSki came over. I badly needed to get some laundry done. And I needed to finish unpacking all of my things from Okinawa. There was a lot of unpacking to be done too. Most of it was all just souvenirs for people that have helped me out this year at work. I thought that it would be nice to get them something from Okinawa. Since I wasted a lot of time in the morning, doing nothing and just trying to relax, I was a bit late to go to Totsuka station and pick up YSki. I was only 10 minutes late, which isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was really quick to find her at the station. She wasn’t carrying that much things either, I was shocked to see how little she had carried with her to stay at my place for a week. She has been traveling for a little bit too, so I was shocked to see so little.

Since YSki will be staying in my other room, I needed to get her room ready too. After I picked her up at the station, we walked over to Mos burger to get me something to eat. She had eaten Yakiniku for lunch before she hopped on the train, but I didn’t eat anything yet. So I ordered the shrimp burger, which was pretty good, and the regular Mos Burger with cheese. It was pretty good and filling enough for me. It hit the spot just nicely because I hadn’t eaten anything all day, and now it was already about 4:30pm.

Then we decided to walk to my house instead of taking the bus there. She wanted to see how far I lived from the station and since that was the farthest station of the three that I’m nearest to so it took a bit of time. It was good to get a conversation going though. I had asked about my friends that I haven’t seen in a long time, and she was giving me an update of what she knows about them. It was getting pretty bad because I was forgetting who some of my friends were, that’s not good at all. But it’s always nice to be reminded of what’s going on in other people’s lives from time to time.

Then when we got to my place, we spent the time just to relax. She had the opportunity to pick out her souvenir that she wanted that I had bought from Okinawa. I finished “cleaning” my room. I just moved all the souvenirs back to her room so she could choose and then put them all in a bag and brought them back to my room. It really wasn’t much, but I figured that my room was pretty clean already, given that I have a lot of junk so I probably wasn’t going to change much anyways.

We played on the computer for a little bit and did some research things until she got hungry. I offered to her to go to many other places, but finally we decided to go to Saizeriya. Not the best place in the world, but you could get as many drinks as you want if you wanted to stay there a long time. That’s what happened to us. We had dinner, which wasn’t incredibly too bad, but wasn’t incredibly great either.

I live near a saizeriya, so we decided to go there. This was around 8pm ish, and we didn’t leave until 12am. It was good because we got a much needed and awaited for conversation to commence. I’ve been waiting months to have this conversation with her, and she has been waiting to tell me the details too. Much of it, I’ve already known about, but I heard some things that I wasn’t expecting so much either. It was nice to finally get everything out in the open, and now the picture that I have is complete and I’m sticking with my decision to not remain friends. I think that the person I once knew in her does not exist anymore and actually I feel sorry for her because she lost herself in the process of going after what she wanted. I haven’t seen any improvement in her and I think that it’s time to call it quits. Good luck, because you’ll need it. You’ve made me a sacrifice as well as all of your friends. I hope you have a happy life.

Then after we came back, she took a shower as I uploaded the pictures of Okinawa to my computer. It took a little bit of time to do that because I needed to find all the pictures first, then I needed to transfer them. That took forever since my computer has been going slow lately. I’m not sure what the problem is. I do have less than a gigabyte left on my C drive, but that’s only because windows is taking up so much space. I’m thinking about reformatting my stuff, but that would be a hassle if I fucked something up. But after that, when I showered, she took the chance to research what we could do tomorrow. We decided to go to kamakura and enoshima. I’ve never been to enoshima, but it looks good like there are things to do there. I’m excited about it, but not too excited since it’s early in the morning right now.

The last day in Okinawa

We had to get ready to leave today. Everything seemed to go by so quickly that I couldn’t even grasp that I was even in Okinawa. Our schedule is jam packed and over the past few days the driving has been a lot too. We all had to get up a bit earlier today because we had breakfast earlier. Breakfast was at 7:30am, which meant that I had to get there earlier than the students so that would be around 7:15am. It was pretty much the same as it was the day before, which wasn’t very appealing, but at least I knew what to go for today and what to stay away from. I had a mixed Japanese style and western style that got some remarks from my teacher colleagues. The next thing on the agenda was to go to the beach and pool.

Today, since the beach didn’t open till 9am and neither did the pool, the students had to wait. But the teachers decided to go in first to see if there were any fishes that we could see so the students could come in and see them immediately. By this time, I had already purchased new swimming trunks, so it was much better than what I had to worry about yesterday. Today seemed a bit longer and not as interesting. There weren’t that many fishes in the sea, and it seemed cloudier than it was yesterday. I mean it was good that there wasn’t a typhoon there, since there was supposed to be. But the clouds made it much darker and it seemed very gloomy. It was just a bit weird today, and I really couldn’t put my finger on why either. The water level was much higher than it was yesterday, so we couldn’t get out as far as we were before to see the fishes because the currents were a bit stronger too. There were only a few people there and it wasn’t so exciting.

We finished about an hour later and then all got cleaned up and ready to go back to Tokyo. It was more humid than it was yesterday too, so it was really hot and sticky hot too. So when we went back into the rooms, I had the AC on full blast and just walking around without a shirt… well until some students saw me. Then I thought it would be better to put a shirt on, not that it would matter, but it’s just better. We all had to be packed up and ready to board the bus at 10:40am, so everyone was busy scrambling to pack and to get their things ready for that. We promptly left the hotel at that time and I was given a gift from the hotel, that’s a t-shirt that says Big Time resort on it.

We took about 2 hours again to get to Naha, which is the capital city of Okinawa and that’s where the airport is. It’s a very famous place and has a main downtown area called Kokusai dori, which means International Street. The bus company wasn’t too far away from there and actually is based right on the street, so the bus parked there in the company’s parking lot and the students had to get out and exit onto the street. We pretty much let them go out and play and to remember to get back in time before the bus leaves for the airport. On the way there, everyone slept, and I think I dosed in and out, but since we’ve all seen these things on the first day, I didn’t think I would have missed much today. Since no one had eaten lunch yet, they students would be on their own to get lunch and to go around shopping with their group of friends. The teachers on the other hand had lunch together.

We ate at a very nice restaurant called Heki. Website www.heki.co.jp. It was a really nice meal that I really enjoyed. KSra chose what we were going to eat since he’s the boss type on the trip. He made a really good choice too. We had a steak and shrimp kind of meal. It came with a bunch of things and the chef cooked it right in front of us too. At first when it came out raw, it didn’t look good, but when they cooked it, it looked and smelled soooooooooo goooooood. My mouth was watering at how good it looked. The taste was absolutely wonderful too. You could not even imagine, it was damn good. The shrimp was very good, and the strips of steak were perfect. The goya champulu was very good too. The shrimp osembe, was just ok though since I don’t usually like to eat the skin of shrimps. Oh and another thing, the shrimps were huge too. It wasn’t this small little prawn, it was a big one. Damn, I can’t write anymore about it because I’m just getting hungry thinking about it. But it was just damn good, remember that and when you go there someday, go there.

So after that, we all jumped onto Kokusai dori. I wasn’t really happy with the time I had left to shop because I still had a long list of people that I wanted to shop for, but couldn’t because we didn’t have much time. There was about 30 minutes before I thought I should start heading back to the bus. So I went on a mad shopping spree. I was looking for a shirt that my friend had asked for and bought a few of them so she could choose and there would be extras too. I think I could give them away to other people who were on my list too. Because I couldn’t really spend too much time, I just went ballistic and just bought a bunch of stuff and would plan who to give it to later. I was really rushed and I didn’t like that, but lunch was excellent, so I was torn at that. I had gotten a lot of snacks because Japanese people like snacks like that. The expiration dates on them seem pretty long so I could wait till I go back to school next to give it to people too. I’m not sure that I would get a chance to, but I think that it would be good gesture to give something to people who have helped me out over the past year since I’ve been in Japan. I really didn’t buy that many things for me, but I had wanted to get a bunch of stuff.

Then we went back to the bus and off to the airport. I didn’t notice it before, but some of the students were picking on a girl because of me. I’m not sure what it might be, but it could be something dangerous and I’ve got to put an end to it quickly. This was going on as we arrived back to Naha airport early and we had some time to go shopping around in the airport for some last minute gifts. I got lucky because there was a bad there that I really liked so I decided to buy it. It was for a good price and I think that in America it would have been more money and it was the exact one that I had envisioned when I came to Okinawa to buy. I couldn’t find a good one on Kokusai dori, so I was happy that I walked a little bit further at the airport to find it. IT was in another section of the airport that I wasn’t planning on going to, but since there were students on the other side; I wanted to avoid them and ran into a shop that had the bag. So that was good timing and I’m glad that I happened to stumble upon it too. It was too bad that it came at the end of the trip, but still I got what I wanted, so I’m happy about that.

The flight back was ok. Nothing special, but I had wanted to sit next to the window so I could get some awesome pictures of the sea from above. I couldn’t get that done though, which I’m pretty bummed about. I would have liked those pictures, but I’ll just have to remember them in my mind forever.

After we arrived there were 3 teachers and a couple of tour guides waiting at the gate for us. Our flight was a tad bit delayed, not sure why though. We went to a Chinese restaurant to have dinner with all the teachers and the tour guides. Then we all had to run to catch the last trains back home. I wanted to get back in time to ride the bus because I didn’t want to carry all my crap walking 40 minutes home. That really wouldn’t have been fun. I was just able to get the last train for the last bus, so I was happy about that. I came home and immediately took a shower before I started the overwhelming job of unpacking and cleaning up for YSki to come tomorrow.

The second day in Okinawa

Today we had to get ready at 7am and have breakfast at 7:50am. They had a little breakfast buffet kind of thing. It wasn’t the best food in the world, but since its hotel food and its buffet style, you could have figured that out. I didn’t get much to eat since I thought that we’d be swimming soon, and I wouldn’t want to have a cramp or stomach ache in the middle of the ocean. That wouldn’t be a good idea. Then it was off to the beach. It was nice the weather was cloudy, but good because if it were sunny, we’d all be barbequed alive. It was a bit humid and plenty warm. The water was very warm too, and I’m not used to that since in San Diego the water is always freezing. We swam for a few hours. My bathing suit was a little too big for me, so most of the time when I was swimming I had to hold onto my swimming trunks to make sure they didn’t disappear while I was swimming. That would be a tad bit embarrassing since I’m swimming with my 7th grade students and my co-workers too. That means that I lost weight though, so that’s good. I’m not sure how that came to be since last summer they fit me pretty well, but this year, they were about a few inches too big. So I’m glad that I’m losing inches and some weight, but it was the wrong time to learn about that.

I thought that after I went swimming today and realized that there was a little problem, I would go out and buy a new swim suit. That was definitely on my list of things that I wanted to buy in Okinawa. I wanted to get it before we’d have to get back into the water since I noticed on the schedule that we’d be doing that for a few times. But we wouldn’t be stopping by any places to buy a bathing suit, so I think that I’d have to go to the hotel gift store and see if there’s one that’s good for me. Some students were going to the pool, while the rest of us were in the ocean part. It was a small beach where the lifeguard could keep watch. After swimming, everyone had to get cleaned up to go to another venture and other places, so we all cleaned up and then boarded the bus. This was around 1pm now. We headed to Kariyushi Beach, where there was a glass boat.

You know at first, when I saw that there was a glass boat on the schedule, I thought we’d be looking at a boat made of glass. But I was wrong, it was a boat that went out into the sea and there was glass on the bottom so you could see fishes underneath the boat. That’s what they call a glass boat. How confusing. It wasn’t that long of a boat trip, but I had great seats. I had my own little chair at the back of the boat right next to the glass, so I could get a great view of the fishes and of everyone on the boat. I took several pictures of students and me and the water and the fish, and the students feeding the fishes. It was pretty interesting, but didn’t last very long since we ran out of food for the fishes really quick. I gave my food to some students since they just ran out of fish food really fast. They appreciated it and learned to feed them slower.

After that quick little boat ride, we went to a glass museum. It’s not like a museum made of glass, but one that you could actually make glass figurines and cups and things like that. During the bus ride there though, everyone on the bus was sleeping except for me because I was listening to the bus guide. She was going off on many things and at a time, when everyone woke up because we were almost there, she asked if anyone has gone to A&W burger restaurant. I was the only one on the bus who raised their hand, and she asked me why. Then I told her that I was American, and she was really shocked. She thought that I could understand very well and everything, but I didn’t want to let her know that I knew a lot of what she was saying because the students believe that I don’t know Japanese, so that would have blown my cover. She was asking because of the root beer that they serve there. I let everyone know that they should try it out because it’s the best tasting soda in the world. MUAHAHAHA… even though I know that Japanese people hate it.

So when we got to the glass museum, everyone was given a number and the first group got to go make a glass cup while the second group went to the museum to go shopping. I didn’t want to buy anything even though some of the things there were pretty cool. I thought that I would end up breaking it on the way home since I’m a bit clumsy. I was thinking about a friend that I’d like to have bought something for her, but decided that since I would be going to Kokusai dori tomorrow that I would have a chance to check out better things to buy. So I just looked around until it was our turn to make glass. When we switched groups, I noticed that a student actually went to go buy a can of root beer and was trying it out. She hated it, and it was funny. She kept offering it to other students and they all hated it too. I kept on laughing, which really isn’t nice of me. At the end they gave me the rest of it because I was the only one who liked it. There was another student who didn’t think it was bad, but preferred not to drink it. I was the last person in line to make a glass. At first I wasn’t doing very good, but at the end I was able to fix it and I think it turned out ok. The company would send the cups that we made to the school, so when I go back to school next month, I’d have it on my desk.

Since I was last, I had to run to get on the bus since everyone was already on the bus. We then went back to the hotel because it would take about 2 hours to get there from where we were. That’s a bit of a distance to travel everyday and I think we don’t get a chance to see that much because we are always on the road. All the students do while we are driving is sleep, so it’s a good break for them, but I don’t sleep and try to listen to the bus guide tell interesting stories about what we are passing. You know it’s my one and only time I’ll be in Okinawa, so I don’t want to miss anything. We played a game on the way home this time. It was a like telephone, but with an Okinawan song, I had to play because most of the other teachers didn’t want to play. It was hard because it was in Japanese, but the hardest part about it was that it was in Okinawa dialect. So it was difficult for the students because they didn’t understand it, but I couldn’t even have a clue about what was going on. I only had about a minute to memorize it, but that was close to impossible. The student I had to tell, couldn’t understand what I was saying, I didn’t understand what I was saying most of the time. But our group didn’t lose, so I was happy about that. We had more chances than the other groups though, but we were in a handicap because of me and my lack of Japanese speaking abilities. The punishment for the students would be they had to sing a song in front of everyone and the other would have to be a bus guide for 3 minutes. It was pretty amusing. The girl sang the grade song that she performed at the chorus competition but she wasn’t very enthusiastic about it.

Then we got back to the hotel just in time for dinner. We had been behind for about 30 minutes throughout the day, which really isn’t usual, but it didn’t affect anything too much. We ate at the BBQ house, where every table has a hot plate and we’d have to grill things ourselves. It was extremely hot inside the building since it was already humid and hot, and then the heat from all the cooking made it worse. The food was pretty good though since it was like yakiniku and we had our portions of vegetables and things like that. It wasn’t bad at all, but I was getting stuffed because it was too much food. Teachers usually finish all the food, but the students never.

After that, everyone had a chance to go back to the rooms for a little bit and rest. The next thing on the agenda was to watch the students play in the pool at 7pm. So I had about an hour to rest, but I just spent it watching TV in my room. I like that they have a channel all in English dedicated to all the service people in the military in Okinawa. They have pretty good programming since they only pick the best shows on the networks in America and show it on this channel. So I was watching that for a little bit and then went to the poolside to make sure that no students were going to drown. We did that for about an hour until the pool closed at 9pm. So it was only about an hour and a half of babysitting. At 10:00pm, after a shower and getting cleaned up again, the teachers would go to the hotel bar and have some snacks and drinks for the end of the day get together.

I met up with the teacher next door, KSra, and we went to the place first. Then we met with the tour guide in the hotel. Today was a bit later than last time because he wanted to take a bath and relax a little bit more. The food today wasn’t as good as it was yesterday. I got the same drink that I had yesterday, but today it affected me more because the female teachers said that my face was red, but I guess they just didn’t notice it yesterday since I had the same yesterday. I didn’t eat the much since I didn’t think anything was that interesting. We left around 11pm to go to bed, which I did soon there after.

Going to Okinawa

I had to get up at 4:30am to get ready and go to Okinawa today for the 7th grade school trip. It’s not all 7th graders since there are two 8th graders going too, but 99% of them are 7th graders. I realized that I didn’t need to get up that early too. The rendezvous time was at 8am at a place at the airport. I figured that since I haven’t been to this airport by train before, I should go early in case something were to happen and I’d get lost or something. But everything went smoothly and since I left my house around 6am, I arrived at Haneda airport at 7am. That’s a bit early to be honest with you. I arrived there wearing a full on suit with jacket and all, and saw some students in t-shirts and shorts instead of their school uniform. Then I saw another teacher, kind of the leader of the pack, dressed in a casual buttoned up shirt with jeans. I realized quickly that I was overdressed. I guess I had heard the instructions incorrectly at the orientation meeting, but it was ok since I had a chance to get changed in the bathroom into a more casual shirt and casual pants.

I was the first teacher to arrive at the location, but the leader of the group arrived soon thereafter and we had something to drink in the morning before the trip, like coffee and tea. The students were all at the waiting spot already, by the time I went back to the meeting place. It was weird to see my students in casual clothing and not in their uniforms. I didn’t know how they dressed outside of school, which was fascinating for me. It’s a completely different attitude than that of the United States. Everyone’s style is important and even more so in Japan than in the U.S., because they don’t get a chance to wear casual clothes usually. Anyways, that’s a whole other topic. Then we got ready and making lines before we entered the gate for the plane. All the parents were there taking pictures and everything. It was weird and I really didn’t understand why parents would do that, but it’s interesting and nice that so many parents came out to see their little girls go off to a new place. Soon after that, we all boarded the plane. It was about a 2 hour flight to Naha airport, which is on the main island of Okinawa. I got stuck in the bitch seat next to the leader of the pack, KSra, and the tour guide, Mr. Yamaguchi. So I couldn’t get any pictures of the sea when we were in the plane over the ocean and over the island; which really sucks because it was awesome. During the plane ride, most of the people were sleeping since they all had to get up early to get to the meeting point.

The plane trip was pretty quick and seemed to go by pretty fast. There weren’t any problems and we arrived as planned. That was a good way to start my first time touching the sands of the tropical paradise of Okinawa. When we arrived, we were quickly herded to the baggage pickup and then to the bus. The baggage place was interesting because they had little figurines, actually big figurines of people on boats and other tropical things as the baggage was being unloaded. I was assuming that we’d be dropping our stuff off, but we were actually no where near the hotel we were staying at. We drove about 2 hours to a place called Nago Pineapple Park, which the name implies, its all things pineapple. And if you know me well, I love pineapples. So I certainly enjoyed my time there. At first we just had lunch. It was a nice Okinawan meal with rice and soba noodles and a few side dishes. Wasn’t incredibly stellar, but it was good enough.

Then we took some time to walk around the park. The teachers and students took a little tram ride around the place and saw the different varieties of pineapple. Then we went to the gift shop to buy souvenirs. I bought a ton of stuff and had it shipped back to my house. I didn’t want to be carrying it the whole time I was in Okinawa even though it was only a few days. It didn’t cost as much as I thought it would have cost, so I should have bought more. I spent around $50 in total for shipping and the products and got about 7 things to give away and eat. After I made the purchase, I thought that I should have bought more since it was cheap and it was delicious. It looked very good too. They had a table where they were giving away free samples of freshly cut pineapple and you could find me there with other teachers and students chowing down on that. It was nice because the tour guide gave everyone discounted coupons for things that we wanted to buy, so it made everything even a little bit more cheaper.

Then we jumped back on the bus and went to Churami Ocean View Park on the northern side of the island. It’s a big aquarium that has some fishes and things that you can touch and other things. To me Sea World is a tad bit better and there are more things to see and do in Sea World in San Diego. But then again, I’m just spoiled like that coming from San Diego. But one thing that this aquarium had that Sea World doesn’t is the HUGE SHARKS and OTHER SEA LIFE CREATURES. I swear they were the biggest things I’ve seen in my life. I think that’s their claim as the world’s largest. They were fucking huge. The size of one shark had to have been double my size, at least. And that was just one of them; there were a few of those huge sharks in the tank. And there were huge sting rays there too. It was just absolutely amazing. Right after that, we went to see the oki chan show. I think it was a dolphin show that lasted about 15 minutes. Really wasn’t worth the time to see. Not impressive at all. It’s something that is unique that animals can do, but still, nothing I would spend 15 minutes to watch. But other people were impressed. But once again, I was spoiled by living next to Sea World for about 99% of my life. After that, we needed to round up the students to go back to the hotel.

The ride to the hotel took forever. I think it was about 2 hours to get there. It was at the tip of a remote island attached by a bridge to the main Okinawa Island. I think it was called Ikejima. We were at the very top tip at a place called Big Time Resort. I was surprised that the school would pick a place like this, not meaning it’s bad or anything, but just that’s it’s so far from everything, which was a bit nice since we pretty much had the hotel all to ourselves the whole time we were there. I mean there had to have been only about 15 other people at the hotel. I mean it was very remote. As soon as we jumped off the bus, we took our stuff and dropped it off in the lobby and went straight to the hotel restaurant to get ourselves dinner. It was chicken and rice, and a rather large chicken too. It wasn’t the best, but it was good. It was enough to fill me up too, so that’s important since Japanese food isn’t always enough.

When we finished with dinner, we went back to the lobby of the hotel to round up all our stuff and go to our rooms. Some students wanted to go swimming in the pool, but I think tonight, not many people did. I took a shower and got ready for the teachers’ meeting at the end of each day. I was watching a lot of TV too. The Japanese girls’ volleyball team was getting beat by China’s team. I was also watching a bit of the Air Force Network, that brings entertainment to my room via English. It was interesting to watch American TV again. I almost couldn’t get adjusted to it, and it was something strange to me. I was watching a bit of a drama called Las Vegas. Interesting show, I guess.

Then the male chaperones for the trip met at 9:30pm to go to the bar. It was only the guys at first because the guys wanted to drink a lot before the female teachers came. The female teachers didn’t come till 10:30pm and that’s when all the food arrived. I didn’t know that the other guys liked to drink Beer that much. I mean they drank a lot. The food that the bar served was pretty good. It reminded me a lot of Chinese food that I would eat when I was in San Diego during wedding ceremonies. So I ate that all up and really stuffed myself. I tend to do that quite a bit. We left around 11:30pm to go to bed and get some rest for the next day.

A day of fireworks

I woke up around 10am. I packed for Okinawa all day until I left my house at 3pm to meet YSki at 4pm at Chinatown. The packing wasn’t so bad since I didn’t have many things to bring, but I’m not sure what I will need. That made things a little bit harder. I also discovered that I need to buy a new day bag to carry things around. It’s too much of a pain to stick things in my pocket, that’s not acceptable anymore and I’m not too happy with carrying around my backpack all the time. I think that it gets to the point of being tacky sometimes, so now I’m on the lookout for a new carrying bag for my usual stuff that I need. Putting things in my pocket always weigh down my shorts, so I will need to buy one today or when I go to Okinawa tomorrow.

It took a little time to locate YSki in Chinatown since it was packed and a half. There were already a lot of people by the time I had arrived there. I learned quickly that I should have brought some duct tape to mark the spot that I wanted because that’s what many people did and no one took their spot. I thought that was amazing because no one took it. In America, I think that if you put duct tape on a spot on the grass that in a matter of minutes, you’d lose your spot. But then again, I’m not in America, now am I? Since we were just here yesterday, I could have done that and we would have had a great place to stay and look at the fireworks. I’ll definitely have to remember this so I can get a good spot next year, right before I leave Japan. I think that will be a good time to leave, sometime in August next year, so I can enjoy another horrible summer, but maybe I might leave earlier to travel a little bit more. Anyways, we found a place at Yamashita Park. We didn’t get a wonderful place, but it was good enough to get a good view. We were sitting on the bars next to the sidewalk near the Hotel New Grand. It was the barrier of the sidewalk to the grassy area. We didn’t get a chance to sit at the grassy area, but rather on the bars.

We were looking for another spot and I got hungry and ate at a Hot Dog stand. I was under the impression that we were all going to have dinner together, but they had all finished their dinner before I had arrived, so I was the only one left hungry at this point in time. I finished two of them, which were quite expensive. 300 yen each and they weren’t that big either. I had a cheese dog and a chili dog. We went back to the original place and sat there for a few hours talking before the fireworks started, we weren’t able to find a better spot, so this had to do.

It started promptly at 7:30pm and lasted to 8:40pm, just like it was advertised. The ones in San Diego on the Fourth of July suck compared to the ones in Japan. They really know how to set off a fireworks display. I have to give it to them. I mean it’s impossible to assemble a crowd of 490,000 people in one area to watch fireworks. And the one in Yokohama isn’t even near the largest either. From what I saw last year, I was just amazed and flabbergasted because there were so much people, but I realized that it wasn’t the largest in Japan, so I wasn’t impressed anymore. But still, that’s a lot of people.

I’m planning to go to the largest display next month, actually August 6th near the Edogawa River. The attendance at that display is approximately 1,390,000 roughly the total population of the 7th largest city in America, which would be San Diego. Could you imagine all the people in San Diego crowded up in Balboa Park to watch fireworks? I can’t but I will see it next month. I didn’t know that there was enough space to accommodate such a display since that’s just a lot of people. I can’t even imagine it. I really have to go see it in person, because that’s just freaking crazy.

I didn’t arrive home till around 10:30pm and then took a shower and finished packing. I decided to use EK’s bag again and probably for the last time because I’m going to buy a new one when I get back. I’m not happy with using his. It’s not easy to carry and it looks old and it smells funny. And I’ll have a new day bag too, so I’ll be happy about that, if I could find one in time. I will need another bag for when I go to Hakone next month with the 7th grade. I don’t really need a big one, but something that will be easy to carry around and enough for suits and casual clothes.

I need to sleep because tomorrow I need to get up at 4:30am to get to the airport by 7:30am. So I’ll do my best to update while I’m in Okinawa, I hope the hotel has a computer in the lobby, but I highly believe that they won’t and I won’t have the time to use it even if they did. It looks like I will have a nice, relaxing time while I’m there so I’m excited about it. I’ll post more when I’m back from Okinawa, even though I’ll be extremely busy when I get back.

Yokohama tour for friends

Today we met up at Sakuragicho station and went around that area. It was only a little group of us, about 4 people. It was YSki, CNto, MSto, and me. I arrived there first and then it was MSto. It was weird because I haven’t seen her in a long time so it was a tad awkward at first to talk to her since I don’t know what’s going on with her and what’s been happening in her life. The other two came, late of course, and we were being bothered to give money to something. I really don’t trust people who take other people’s donations because they could just go spend it on booze and other things like that. I wouldn’t want to help someone destroy their life, since it was their fault to get to that point in the first place, but I would really want to help out because one day I would need the assistance of others and I know it might be bad karma that I’m spreading by not giving, that is if it’s a credible organization, which it didn’t seem like. We then took a trip through the Landmark tower and I showed them around to some places. I showed them the newest store that happens to be very popular, it was the Pokemon center. We were in there for about 5 minutes before we needed to get out. It was my first time in the place since usually there are lines out the door and onto other floors even.

After we left the Landmark Tower, we stopped at Queen’s Square to go to the Disney and Snoopy store. MSto really wanted to go since she’s a big fan of Snoopy. In the main stage area of the Queen’s Square, they were having a concert of some sort at the square stage and we watched and waited for a bit. They were some Korean band that seems to be famous among young girls in Japan. But we were waiting for Suzuki Ami. She’s pretty famous before, but now she’s not as famous as before. I think she’s trying to bust back onto the scene though. We couldn’t wait and left for lunch. They should have opened with her, that would have been cool and I would have saw someone that I’ve finally heard of.

We went to La Pausa in the Crossgate building, so we had to go back from where we started. We took a little trip through a faster way so we could get there faster. We were a bit hungry at this point since it was about 3pm and none of us had eaten lunch, and I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. I had shrimp pasta with tomato sauce. It was pretty good, and pretty filling. But CNto couldn’t finish hers, so I had the honor of helping her out. She had only finished half, but I finished both of the dishes faster than the other two girls I was with, YSki and MSto. I wasn’t trying to eat fast, but for some reason I seem to finish spaghetti faster than usual.

Then we went for a walk around Aka Renga Soko, and then around to Yamashita Park. I gave the grand tour for the day. The temperature around this time must have been pretty high because we were dying out there. The walk, plus the sun, and the humidity was taking a toll on us. At Yamashita Park, they were getting ready for the fireworks tomorrow, which I will be going to with YSki. We took a walk around the place and looked at all the nice things. Then we entered Chinatown. We didn’t stay as long as we thought we were and actually finished the grand tour a bit early.

I then took a little walk down to Motomachi, even though MSto didn’t really want to go. We were actually just passing by because we wanted to go to the Foreign Cemetery in Yamate. That’s something that I just checked off my list of things to do in Japan. Then I took some pictures, the angle going up was at least 45 degrees so it was quite a climb. At the top, was the nice Harbor View Park. It’s quite famous and in a lot of dramas on TV. We stayed there for a long time. We were just killing time till EK and AP could catch up with us. We were actually just stalking a couple that we found to be quite interesting. They were fascinating because they kept taking pictures of each other and of the weirdest things, like each other’s hair, and hands, and necks. They would get really really close in to take the picture and they were wearing the traditional summer clothing, yukatas. So we took pictures of them taking pictures. It was weird because that spark something in our little group that we started taking pictures of ourselves taking pictures of them.

When they left, we followed them. We trailed them all the way back to Yamashita Park, and then they took a taxi and left. So we just stayed and relaxed at the park till EK and AP came from Narita Airport. It took awhile for them to get there because I believe EK got lost. That seems to be common these days and well for a long time too. Since they ate up so much time, the girls had to leave soon after they arrived. We had wanted EK to spend more time with YSki, but that wasn’t going to be possible today. As soon as they arrived though, we had to walk to Ishikawacho station to let the girls go back home.

After the girls left, the guys wanted to get some dinner and get AP a hotel to stay at. He’s staying at the Toyoko Inn, where the room is INCREDIBLY small. I could barely walk in, it was that small. The luggage was ridiculous and almost didn’t fit in the room. After we got him checked in and all that good stuff, we went walking around Kannai area for a yakiniku place. We walked around and decided to go back to the first place we saw near the hotel. It was pretty good, but not as filling as I thought it would be. Since we would be eating a lot of meat. But it was good and enough for me to not be starving. We went back to the hotel and then EK and I took off for our houses around Midnight. I’m typing this entry now at 3am, so I should probably go get some sleep.

Gone to Ikebukuro

Since I slept late today, I had to bare the wrath of the scorching heat trying to get some rest. I only got about 4 hours of sleep before I couldn’t handle the heat anymore. It was much hotter today that it’s been all week. It was supposed to rain today according to the forecast of Monday, but I guess it was wrong. Today, of course, they changed the forecast. Those punks at Yahoo weather, the nerve they have to post the wrong weather. But that’s ok, since that’s usual and Japan’s weather is unusual anyways.

I received the package my family sent me and the weather turned out to be much cooler around 2-3pm. That’s a nice change since I’ll have to walk outside in the hot scorching weather and get some food later too. It’s more pleasant to go out of the house when the sun isn’t going to kill me with the heat. I actually don’t like staying indoors too much since I’m in a new country, I should go out and explore.

I’m going to Ikebukuro to meet my friend and have tea and possibly dinner. It should be fun since I haven’t been to Ikebukuro for a long time and since that’s where she lives, it should be good. She was worried about the safety of being out late, which is something that she should be concerned about, but since she works till late, that’s another issue we have to deal with.

It didn’t take me too long to get there and I arrived at Ikebukuro station a bit early. I was waiting for my friend, but I wasn’t in the right area. Her e-mail made the area we were supposed to meet, something of a code that I had to crack in order for me to be in the right place. It turns out that I was able to find the right place and waited for her for about 30 minutes. I got lucky that I spotted her when she passed by since there is an incredibly lot of people there. We were right out front of the Seibu Ikebukuro station across the street from Matsumoto Kiyoshi. We started to head in that direction to get something to drink like tea or something. I should have known that it would only be a drink that we’d buy and no food.

I think that since she had just moved here and only started work for about a week, she hadn’t been paid yet, so she didn’t seem to have the cash to get something to eat. But I’m not sure if it was that since she’s always worried about her weight, which is something that she really doesn’t need to worry about. I think that she’s actually lost some weight since I’ve seen her in San Diego, but girls always worry about that and they really shouldn’t because it leads them to do things that aren’t healthy.

We sat at the Doutor for a few hours just talking about how her work has been going and a little about what I’ve been up to since I’m now on vacation. She thought that I had already gone to Okinawa, but I haven’t yet. She seems like she preoccupied with something and it could be that she’s been thinking about her boyfriend a lot. She was at a point considering marrying him, but now she’s considering to break up with him because he seems to be flirting around with other girls. I never understand those people like that. They will never be happy because they can’t be happy with things or people that they already have and are with. Anyways, I don’t know the details about their relationship, although I haven’t heard many good things about the guy from anyone. But I’m just here for support and give a perspective from the outside. I think that she appreciates it and since we are sort of in the same boat about what we want to do and what we want to achieve.

After that, we took a walk around the block to find Sunshine city, but by the time we arrived, everything was already closed. I’m not sure what’s really in the place since I haven’t been there in a long time. I know that I’ve been there before, so it probably wasn’t anything important that I missed. I enjoyed tonight even though it seemed a bit short. I think that I was only there for about 2 hours even though it would take 4 to go there and to get back. It’s still nice to meet with friends that I don’t get a chance to meet with so often.

a day of rest

I was fortunate enough to sleep in late today. I didn’t get up till around 11am and that’s really sleeping in late for me. I actually had breakfast today too, since I haven’t done that in a long while and it really wasn’t even a breakfast for me because it was already around noon time. I guess that would be more of a brunch than anything.

I didn’t do much today than stay in front of the computer updating my xanga to catch up and to write e-mails. I wrote a lot more today than I did before, but I’m not even near finishing writing all the e-mails that I want to write. My goal for this summer is to write an e-mail to all my friends, just to let them know I’m alive and for them to let me know that they are alive and well. I think that’s how people lose friends, when they just simply lose touch. So I’ve got to make that extra effort to get them to talk a little bit.

I managed to take care of my laundry and dry clean today. I mean it wasn’t so bad that I needed to do it, but it’s just something that needed to be done sooner or later. Since I’ll be busy for the rest of the next two weeks, I took care of some of those things today. I didn’t get a chance to vacuum the place, but that’s on tomorrow’s list. I also need to go to the bank tomorrow so I can get some dinero, which seems to be disappearing faster than it did before. I have to take out more than I really need to be, and I’m not sure where it all goes. I know that this month I’ll be traveling so that’s why I need to get some cash, but then I don’t have any left other than that.

I also gave myself a haircut today too. I really didn’t need to since my hair was already short, but since it’ll be another two weeks before I get the opportunity and I’ll be in Okinawa, I wanted to give my head some natural air conditioning. I’ve heard that Okinawa at this time of the year is really hot and humid, which doesn’t sound the least bit fun. But then it’s a tropical island, so I’ll be swimming a lot and near the beaches. Oh yeah, if you want me to send you a post card or something, let me know your address so I can do that. I’ll probably be sending the next round of those soon, but don’t really know how soon.

I’m having space problems on my C drive of my computer. It seems that Microsoft had loaded a hell of a lot of stuff on my hard drives in patches and Windows itself. I practically don’t have any more space for anything else. But in my D and E drives I’ve got gigabytes of space, it’s just on the main drive that has run out. I’m thinking about emptying everything on my computer to start brand new, but then I’d be missing some things and probably those would be the things that I needed the most. I’ve been trying to resolve that problem all day, but everything that’s on my C drive is necessary for the machine to function. I didn’t like the way that my drives were partitioned since it wasn’t even at all.

I didn’t sleep well again because of a mosquito. It was very annoying because I couldn’t get any sleep tonight. I didn’t get a wink of sleep, although I tried. I got bit one time and it was on, I was going to kill that mofo. I’m not sure that I ended up killing that mofo, but I’m sure I scared the living daylights out of it. I whacked that sucker a few times with my daily planner and I couldn’t see the remains, but I’m pretty sure it’s dead. I ended up going to sleep around 8am in the morning after talking to my sister for a little bit.

A day in Odaiba, a day of love

The plan today is to go to odaiba to explore the island. We were planning to go to the Museum of Emerging Science and possibly a few other places too. The meeting time was at 2pm, but today I was a little late for only about 5 minutes. I told the girls that I was meeting that since they were late before, I thought that they would show up late again today. So next time they won’t be late.

We stayed at one exhibit for most of the time. It was about Love Story, and how science proved love and its purpose and how it works. It was a very interesting exhibition on it and well presented. It was a pretty neat exhibition. I think that most guys, if they went in with an open-mind, would actually learn something about how to impress a woman. I think that most guys don’t pay attention to the little things that girls like, not to say that I’m one of them who does, or who doesn’t. But there were many things that you can see and experiment with. There was a love seat, where there would be sound emitted by two people sitting on a love seat sofa. There were love sounds as you were walking around the exhibit, and I don’t mean the huffing and puffing sounds. It was more just ambient sounds.

There was a history about love too and how the genes form and how humans are reproduced and everything. There was a little section where you could talk to a person at a Love Bar and they would talk to you about something. I’m not sure what was going on since it was all in Japanese. There was an experiment on communication in love with the teddy bears that used a robotic system to be controlled from a remote location. That was pretty cool and I spent a lot of time there, pretty much scaring other people as they walked by. CNto read me a little book, actually I read her a little book and she translated it for me. It was about a cat that lived forever and had 1000 lives or something like that. But it was how that cat loved one cat and how when she died suddenly he cried for the first time and died and was never re-born. It’s a sad story, but CNto really liked it. We also go caught up in the PSP station and we were playing a game that was designed for love situations and me trying to get a cat to ask another cat on a date. That was pretty interesting, but I couldn’t do it because it was all in Japanese and I can’t read all the Kanji characters.

After that exhibit, we went around the rest of the museum. They had a real life representation of the internet. You could type a message and watch as it transformed into a code and then sent to your friend. We didn’t get a chance to try it out because it was nearing the time the place was going to close. There were many things that you could see there. There was a live action model of a linear motor train going around a experimental track. It looked pretty cool. Then we went upstairs and saw a life-sized model of the International Space Station. You could actually go in and see the world through the window and everything. I’ll tell you it’s a pretty small place and I can’t imagine being stuck there for 6 months at a time. It would suck to be there in my opinion. But it was pretty cool seeing the model of it. There were many signatures from the people who’ve been in space too. It was quite impressive. They had many other things about the human body and surgery too. We tried it out and I was successful in my attempt to being a doctor. I didn’t kill the patient, which was cool, even though I only had 20 seconds to do it. The museum closed soon thereafter.

Then we ate at Wendy’s. I was starving at this time since I haven’t been eating regularly and not getting enough sleep. I got a little “snack” because I thought that dinner would be further away. It was around 5pm around the time we were at the Wendy’s place. I had pretty much gotten a meal, like a burger, frosty shake, and chili cheese fries because the girls wanted to try them out. And I just wanted to inhale them. From there, we walked back to the train station, but it was a different one form the one that we walked in from. We would be going backwards, and we went to daiba station to go to Aqua city. It’s pretty famous since its right across the street from Fuji TV. They are getting ready for their summer program that starts really soon. So we walked around there for a little bit of time till EK got out of work. We wanted to go look around to see where we could go to dinner. I thought that we would be gong to somewhere really fancy or something, but it didn’t look as if we were. I wouldn’t mind paying a lot of money for dinner, since it’s pretty rare that my friends visit me. Then we went to get dinner soon thereafter at Ootoya. It was actually pretty good, and it wasn’t like the usual ones I’ve been to either, where you pay first and then eat. It was eat then pay and EK paid for all of us. It was about time that he did that. It wasn’t too much money, but something that he owed to YSki for being such a punkass boyfriend. It was the least that he could do for her since she was in town and he could barely see her. He’s let her down so much that I can’t even count how many times he’s done it.

Then we took a little stroll around Aqua city in Odaiba. I was talking to CNto for a little bit and we let the couple talk with each other and gave them some private time. Our conversation was about what was next in our lives. It was pretty interesting because she’s got someone in mind and so do I. I think that she’s very encouraging, and I’m not sure why. I think she’s been a good friend to me, but I just don’t have the courage with my lack of ability to speak Japanese very well. I think that communication is extremely important in a relationship, and I just don’t think I’m ready to do that with a Japanese woman…yet. Her side is very different. She’s been waiting for him for years, and he’s not in Tokyo, so it’s not like she could see him. He’s far away physically and mentally. I’m not sure he even likes her and it would be scandalous if he did. It’s a tough situation that I can’t get into, but it’s something that if I were in that situation, I wouldn’t be dancing around like he is. I would quickly put an end to it. It’s something that I don’t think I’ll get myself into, although there’s a possibility for anything.

We gave the couple about 30 minutes as we were looking at the miniature statue of liberty and watching the filming of something. I think it might have been a show or something. It wasn’t important and I didn’t see anyone famous, so it couldn’t have been that big or anything. We met up with them again, only to say goodbye. Everyone would have to start heading home, since we all do live very far away from each other and from the location. I think it would be a great place to go for a date since the scenery is fairly romantic. But I think that it’s many things that makes a place romantic, first you’ve got to have chemistry between the people involved and then it can go from there. We said our goodbyes and I left alone to go home… sad isn’t it? Since all day we were talking about love.

Going to Shinjuku

I woke up fairly early even though I didn’t have to. It seemed like it wasn’t going to be a very hot day today. I got started writing my e-mails again and did a little bit of studying of Kanji. I’m at the second grade level now… sounds kind of pathetic, but that’s already around 150 different characters. Most of which I already learned, but some I haven’t, so I think it’s a good pace to learn 1000 by the end of the year. And that’s only with reading, not writing yet. I haven’t taken the time to do that yet. I need to get the reading done first since it’s easier for me to recognize it, and I believe the writing would be easier if I could visualize it first.

I left a little bit early today to go to Shinjuku station. It usually just takes me about 2 hours to get there, but I wanted to make sure that I got there early, even though I think that they won’t show up early or even on time. I think that I’ve learned how to walk faster now, I was making pretty good time getting to the station by walking and the train ride was nice because I got to sit down the whole way from Hongodai to Yokohama and from Yokohama to Shibuya. From Shibuya since I was there fairly early, about an hour, I decided that Shinjuku wasn’t that far away and I wanted to walk there. It’s about 3 stations away on the Yamanote line. I had an hour to do it, so I figured that I might as well try it out.

I just followed the train tracks up until Harajuku station. I usually take this walk since it isn’t too far away. Then when I got to this point, it wasn’t that easy anymore. Since there is an older platform, the path stopped and I had to find a new route, but still try to be parallel to the tracks. It took a little bit of walking, but I was able to do it. I passed Yoyogi station without ever getting a chance to see it, since I wasn’t near it at all walking the direction that I was walking in. It was very interesting to walk this way because I hadn’t done it before and saw things that I haven’t seen before. It was actually pretty cool and since it wasn’t that hot, it made the walk very pleasant. When I got near Shinjuku station, I saw an interesting building name; it was the Japanese Communist Party’s headquarters. I wanted to take a picture of it, but I didn’t want anyone storming out of the building trying to kill me, so I decided that for my safety I wouldn’t take the picture. But I could always walk there again and get a snapshot of it and run as fast as I can.

I arrived at Shinjuku station in about 30 minutes, which makes it about a mile walk from Shibuya to Shinjuku. That’s a rough estimate of the distance from those two stations. I wasn’t really tired either, only hungry since I skipped breakfast and lunch to take this extended exercise walk. I was at the meeting spot a bit early so I just walked around a little, and I figured that they wouldn’t be there on time and that they were already there in the first place and shopping without me. It turns out that I was right about both things. And they had already eaten lunch so I was the left starving. We took another little walk to an area of Shinjuku that I haven’t seen before, but they showed me where their English Language school was, NIC. We saw some students outside and in the lounges studying and we saw some teachers going in and out of the buildings. I wanted to make a conversation with them, but I didn’t want to embarrass both of my friends, so I didn’t do it. But I think it might have been helpful for the students learning English, since they would have to use English to talk to me.

After this short little excursion, we went to Café Veloce to have something to drink. I also bought a little snack to eat since I was starving. We stayed there for a little bit of time just talking. It was pretty fun and I’m glad to see both my friends again. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of them, but the other one, I just saw two days ago. But I really enjoy her company, that’s CNto that I’m talking about. We had discussed many things while we were in the café. It was very enjoyable actually, since it was a good atmosphere and the drinks were pretty good too. It’s probably the best milk tea that I’ve had in Japan.

Then we went to meet up with CNto’s friend from Kindergarten. We met him at Shinjuku station, east exit in front of the police box, but it turns out that half the world was waiting there too. It took a little bit of time to locate him, but YSki and I saw him before CNto did and we’ve never seen the guy before. We had a feeling which person it would be, kinda amazing huh?

We went to eat dinner at a place where you could fry your own food. It was an interesting set up that we had at the table and we could fry a lot of things. You really couldn’t get full fast, which wasn’t a good thing, but it was buffet style so you could go back as many times as you wanted. We had eaten a lot of food there, and then EK came to meet up with us. He was a rude pompous jackass like usual acting like a little kid. I swear he’s never learned manners because he’s just so stupid when it comes to behaving in public. It was embarrassing having him eat dinner at our table, but what was worse was how he was eating. He said that he wasn’t going to eat, but he ended up eating things off of my plate and making a huge mess. It was very disgusting how he was eating that I was getting nauseous watching him eat. It’s just something that I’m glad I had eaten before he did. I don’t think I could have stomached it if I were still eating. The place was a bit more expensive than I would have imagined. It was about $26 split 5 ways, but if EK hadn’t come, it would have been more money. It wasn’t that good that it was worth that much money. But you know, it’s the time you pay for that hang out with friends and I’m sure they make a killing in the bank for what they charge.

After that, EK left to go home because it was getting late. It was only around 8pm, and he said that he had work the next day too, but we all know that it wasn’t that. He didn’t want to hang out with his girlfriend, what an asshole huh? So he took off and the 4 of us went to Starbucks at the Seibu Shinjuku station. We sat there, drinking coffee and talking for another 2 hours before we decided to go home. We wanted to make a plan of what we were going to do tomorrow. We are going to meet again and make an attempt to meet up with EK again in Odaiba, which is where he works. We are going to spend the whole day there so we wanted to know what’s there to do there and other places to eat too. I think that my Japanese is getting much better, I was able to communicate better today than before. It’s more fluent than usual too, so I’m happy to report that.

Around 10pm, they walked me back to JR Shinjuku station and I left by myself to go on the Yamanote line to Shibuya, and then to Yokohama. I was lucky that I had a seat on the Toyoko line since it was a bit late and it was a limited express train. I didn’t get home till around midnight, which is a bit late. I noticed that it’s really dark and a bit creepy walking home at that time, although I’ve walked home later. I kept my eye over my shoulder looking out for cops in both directions. I took a short cut walking home today, which is extremely dark in the forest area near my house. There was a HUGE ass spider right above me too; it was nice that it was above me and that I didn’t walk into it in the dark. The spider was probably as big as my palm. After that I took a shower and talked to YSki online for a little bit. I wanted to punch up this journal entry and look at some of my friends entries too. It’s been a long day and it’s about 2am now, so I should be getting to sleep since I will probably need the energy tomorrow too. So good night.