Tennis and a little bit of work

I went to school today again. It was much better for me today because the club practice didn’t start until 3pm, so I wasn’t as rushed to get to school as I was yesterday. I still woke up early because I want to get back into the habit of getting up early since school is about to start and I’ll have to get up early for that anyways. I didn’t do a whole lot in the morning and just killing time on the computer. I had to get things ready for school like the paper that I needed to make for the Gotemba trip that’s coming up early next month. That wasn’t very difficult to do, but it did take a little while to get all the pictures that I needed to get for it.

I played tennis for 3 hours today. That’s the usual length of the tennis practice, but I didn’t feel like I got a good workout or even got any better. I have a problem with how they practice and I think it’s because I have a different philosophy than the coach. We grew up in different countries and he was a champion of the Kanto area when he was in high school, which to tell you is like being one of the best in the country. But I don’t feel as if his practices are working for the students. It’s one thing to play; it’s another thing to coach. So after the practice today, I talked to him, about how the practices are going. I convinced him to be able to change a few things around so that the students could get some other strokes in there, other than forehand and backhand. I see that the overheads aren’t good, the volleys aren’t good and their serves and returns are weak and aren’t focused.

I think that the students lack the effective strategy to win a tournament. I really couldn’t say that, since the top players in the Meguro area are actually the players from my school and on this team that I’m talking about. But I think that it’s only a few exceptional players and not the team as a whole. So since the timing was perfect, I was able to convince the coach to try it out my way this time, since I’m actually there to play with them and to guide them through it. I haven’t been doing that lately since I’m not the coach and I’m just there to hit the ball around. But I would like to see my high school sweep the trophies at the Meguro tournament this year so all the players have to improve their skills. I don’t really have much time since the tournament will be in a few days, but I think that once we get the ball going, I think they can improve for the better. I think the timing of it was perfect.

After school, on my way home, it was a bit weird because I was leaving with a bunch of teachers. I left with all the ones that I would consider my friends in the teachers’ office. So it was nice to go, but it would have been nice to not go with so many people. It’s a little suspicious when that happens, but I was able to give two of my many gifts away. I will have to continue to give as time goes by.

I stopped off at MOS burger to get dinner since I haven’t eaten there in a long time and while I was eating, there was a crazy ass guy who came into the shop and went directly to me to ask me for money to go home. He was going off on a long ass story about how he lost his wallet and that he had no money to go home because there was a train “accident” and he dropped his wallet at a train station. For one, the story was bull shit, two, he was lying and it was very obvious, three he was bothering the hell out of me. He wanted 2000 yen to get home, because he lived in Fujisawa. It’s a far place, but not that far at all really. 2000 yen is a bit steep to get home since I know where that place is and I know that it doesn’t cost 2000 yen to get there. So I was stuck at a difficult predicament. I mean this was in the middle of the MOS burger restaurant and I’m surprised that he went straight to me asking for money and no one else. I mean I look Japanese, so he’s not just hitting up foreigners. Although I pulled the, “I don’t understand Japanese,” shit on him. But he persisted and tried to explain his situation in English. I liked his effort even though I know he’s just lying through his teeth. He was very smelly and crazy-looking. I mean if it was just some ordinary looking guy that probably needed the money to get home, I probably would have been a prick and just said to fuck off, but since he was crazy-looking and my safety could have been compromised, I decided to give the guy 500 yen to get the fuck away from me. I thought that if he lived in Fujisawa, why would he be at Ishikawa cho station? Since that’s an upper class area and he was defiantly not upper class. And then he wasn’t even on the right train line to get there, but if he was and wanted to get there, 500 yen would be enough for him to get home. Or at least be a start, so he’d have to ask more suckers to get more money. Plus he would leave me alone so I could finish my dinner and go home. I mean I was tired and almost to the point where I was just going to punch his lights out, just for being in my presence and annoying the hell out of me. But he was probably trying to get the money together to get some alcohol or something because he smelled of it and gave a really long winded speech as he sat himself down in front of me at the restaurant. Everyone was watching to see what I would do, so I didn’t want to be a prick and just tell him to fuck off, although, that’s really what I wanted to do. But I was thinking that they would think I’m a sucker if I gave in, and there’s no way in hell I would actually give him that much money to begin with. I was just thinking how much it would take for him to go away. Ok I’m done venting.

I finally got home around 10:30pm and this was coming home straight from work, well aside from dinner which took about 20 minutes. That’s hella late for leaving work dude. At least I won’t go to school till around 2:30pm tomorrow, I mean arrive at school around that time. I will be able to get a good nights’ rest tonight since I’m pretty exhausted with the tennis and walking home and everything else. I have a crick in my neck and I’m not sure why. I wanted to get this entry in the computer first. There are other things that happened today too.

I was informed at school that the VP will have a birthday this Saturday and that I’m invited to go. Since it’s the VP and she’s the one that hired me and if I didn’t, I’d probably lose my head. So I decided that I will go. It will cost me 8000 yen, which is roughly around $80. How’s that for a birthday party? I don’t know where it is or actually even what time it starts, but I just know it’s Saturday and to be at the school around 5:30pmish.

I also have to do a survey for my department chair’s friend. It asks me about the Japanese Education for English. Since I’m going to e-mail to my department chair, I have to be very careful with the English that I use to explain my point. But I’d really like to be honest and to give my honest opinion, but I think it would be wise to be a little reserved with my comments. I’ll probably write the comments here on my journal since I never hide anything here. They are very good questions, and I could tell that the person who wrote it has had many problems with this in particular because of the way the questions are directed. It’s not set up for a positive response, but I think I’ll mix in both and try to make a very politically correct response to his questions. It’s time to get delicate with my English. But I’ll do that tomorrow as it is now 1am and I just typed a full 2 pages and a little on the 3rd page for just this entry. Good night.

Played Tennis and Work, lots of it

I finally got my ass in gear today and woke up in time to get to work on time. Actually I was a bit late because I was talking to some teachers and they held me up. I realized that I had more work waiting for me today too. That’s the thing with this school, once you take a day off; you somehow magically end up with more work the next day. So now I have to work on my summer vacation. Things that I finished planning didn’t get approved so I have to design a new program to do at the 11th grade trip to Gotemba which is coming up really soon. That’s not incredibly fun for me since I worked hard to get a good program together the first time, but the boss didn’t like it. So it was back to the drawing board. I’d like to keep it fun and simple, but it seems that I’ll have to get creative to be able to do that in a boring atmosphere.

I joined the tennis club about 30 minutes late. I joined right when they took their break, so I had to wait a few minutes more to play. I feel some resentment from some students. I don’t think they like me playing or maybe they just don’t like me. I’m not sure which is which, but I’ll have to find out the reason why. It’s only with the junior high school girls, another reason why I don’t like teaching junior high school. I get along with all of the high school girls fine, except for maybe one. She seems to always be out of it, so it might not be me. We played for a bit of time today. It was the first time this trip that I played tennis in the morning. It was a bit different and the sun was shining down on us with intense heat, so it was a bit warm, even though it wasn’t that hot of a day today. We ended around 12:30pm with clean up and everything. I gave them a gift that I bought for them from Thailand. I think that they appreciated that.

Then I went to the teacher’s office to do the same. I gave almost all the teachers a piece of chocolate that I had bought from Thailand. I think that they appreciated it, but it became a bit cumbersome after awhile since most of the teachers were coming in and out of the office. I had to ask different teachers at different times. I also gave a box to the office staff and to the principal. Needed to get everyone otherwise it wouldn’t be cool. I wanted to give them a good impression of me. I still have more gifts for some special teachers, but I could give them out today. Everyone was busy and always there, when I wanted them not to be there. I think that more teachers will be at school tomorrow, since that’s the time when teachers have to go back to school, although I don’t have to be there until September 5th. And it’s not really required that I go there that day either, but since everyone else is going, I should go and find out what everyone is up to.

I came back to my desk to work on some of the things that I needed to prepare for the Gotemba trip. I wanted to get all the details cleared up about everything. I think that it was important that everything get settled and finished. Since the trip is coming up very soon. I think that we all have to get on the same page, but I don’t think that is happening very well. I had to do a bunch of other things to get ready for the semester too and realized that there had been a schedule change, which means that some of the classes I designed won’t work well because I lost a day in one of them and gained some in others. It might work out fine, but I have to include another pop quiz type of activity to get the students to have a difference in grades otherwise the boss will get mad too. So I have to put a listening comprehension test on there with a concrete point system so everyone will have different scores.

I wanted to leave school early today since I didn’t have anything to eat, I was starving. I didn’t get around to leaving the school till around 5:30pm which meant I couldn’t get dinner till around 6-6:30pm. I went to Matsuya today and for some reason it tasted soooo good. I was really pleased because it filled me up and was delicious. On the way home, it was raining, so I had to walk home in the rain in a suit. That really wasn’t fun and I didn’t carry my spare umbrella because I took it out for Thailand and didn’t put it back in. I’m a bit tired today because of the tennis, so I’ll go to sleep early tonight. I actually got sun burned today; actually it’s not bad, but only a little red. So I’m going to have to protect myself tomorrow with more sun block.

A nice cool day

Today was actually pretty cool. It would have been a nice day to play some tennis, but too bad I woke up late and couldn’t make it. Actually I woke up on time, but since I slept so late, I didn’t have the energy to get up. I haven’t been eating that much lately so I’m very weak in the morning. So I just went back to sleep. I set the alarm for really early, like around 6:30am because practice starts at 9am, but I just couldn’t do it. I’ll have to try again tomorrow.

So what did I do for the rest of the day? I stayed at the computer, that’s what I did. Today I was being a bit more productive with my goals for the summer. I have restarted to blog the correct way and filing them in order since I’ve been in Japan. That way I have a good collection for when I want to refer back to something. I’m going to be using my Blogger accounts now, so I’ll be in the process of updating both at the same time. I’m about 3 months into the first year of my Japanese trip so far. I still have a few more months to go to get everything in order. I haven’t included the links to my pictures yet, but I will add those on tonight to make sure that everything is ready for release.

I did a bit more cleaning of my room, basically killing bugs and removing areas where they grow. But I didn’t make too much progress in that area. I was also talking to some of my friends today. There is one of my friends that continue talking about something that I really wouldn’t want to get myself involved with. But being a good friend that I am, I just listened. I know that she doesn’t want to talk about it either, but it just bothers her. We talked about it a lot when she came here and stayed with me last month, but things have gotten worse for her since she went back to the States. She informed me that my ex got back with her ex like a few days after they had told me that they had broken up. I guess that they are miserable without each other and they are miserable with each other so might as well be with each other. I’m a bit tired of them and their troubles and how it has affected me. But from now on, actually even from before, I’ve dropped all of them like a rock. They are out of my life and that’s that!

I was also talking to another friend of mine, whose birthday was yesterday. I usually only talk to her like once or twice a year, so I guess this year I’m making progress since I think it’s the third time this year. We talked for a little bit, but then she just left suddenly. I did a lot of e-mail shifting today too. I needed to get everything organized enough for me to not go insane. I think that I’ve managed to get a dent into all the work that I want.

I also started thinking about what I’m going to do for my special Saturday classes. I think I’ll begin to teach her things that she wants through a project that I’m going to design for her. I’ll teach the ideas, and she’s going to have to be able to use them practically. It’ll be an all semester project that she’s going to have to pass each step or we can’t move on. So the problem that I face is if she can’t pass a level. But I think she’ll be interested in it since I know what she wants to learn. I also gave myself a haircut tonight. I didn’t think I did a bad job either. I think that I’m getting better at it because in Japan it’s much different than when I was doing it in San Diego. I don’t have as many mirrors to help me and the lighting isn’t that great either.

Wat Arun in Bangkok, Thailand

This is Me in front of Wat Arun in Bangkok, Thailand

Cleaning up and unpacking

The number one thing on my agenda today was to get some things cleaned up. I did laundry today. It was very necessary, since I was running out of clothes and they stink. They have the great smell of Thailand traffic, which is something that I would like to stay away from. It’s very strong and really gets to me. I also did some vacuuming to get rid of the spider webs that developed while I was gone. I didn’t eat a whole hell of a lot today, but that’s usual.

I did a lot of research on Blogger and have decided to use that as my main blog from now on. Well at least I will get it prepared for it. I would like everything updated and posted from the times that they were supposed to so that it would make it easier for me to search for the post that I want to read in the future. They allow more than one blog on an account which is something that I like so I will be writing about different things and still only having one account. I think that Google is doing a good job meshing everything together and have found a way to be very convenient for me. I think that it will only get easier so I’m happy about that. I think I’m going to stay on the Google boat for just a little while longer to see what they are up to. I think that they have got everyone wondering. Here is the link that has everything in order since I’ve been in Japan and I think it’s a bit more updated than my Xanga since I update it according to day and not weekly. http://bryaninjapan.blogspot.com/ It supports RSS, so you could always know when I update during my random ass times and keep up to date. I think that I’ll continue to use xanga, but I’ll be posted the same thing on both. I think that I’ll add links to my pictures on Yahoo Photos to the Blogger one so you could actually see the people that I’m talking about. But that isn’t in place yet.

I fixed my CD/DVD ROM today. I was really happy about that, even though I hardly use it, at least I have a choice with it now. I also compressed my C drive and have more space. So I downloaded Hello by Picasa, which is also owned by Google. I think it will make it easier to add photos to my blog so you all could see what I’m talking about. I also did some other things around my computer to fix it up for a little bit. So it’s working much better now and I have a lot more space and things to do for it. I think that I’d still like to buy another computer, but maybe just a cheap one that I would just do some things on and try other things on.
I watched a movie that I haven’t seen before. It was Rudy, about the boy who isn’t athletic but wants to play for Notre Dame Football. It was just an average movie, but I still liked it. It’s about going after and getting your dream. I like those kinds of movies and they are really inspiring. I just need to get my ass in gear too and start going after my dream with a vengeance. It’s late now and I have to get up early so I could go play tennis with the team tomorrow morning at 9am. That’s really really early.

The update

Hey Everyone,

This will be my new center of operations online. So I will begin to use Blogger more and more and bring up the content from my Livejournals and Xangas to this one. I think this is a bit more easier to use and I'll be adding pictures in my blog of my adventures. I think it will take a long time, so please be patient. We'll see how this goes as I start getting into it. Meanwhile, you'll still be able to use my xanga and livejournals to keep up to date as what I'm up to here in Japan.

Bryan

A day of relaxation

I didn’t want to do much today. I talked to family early in the morning because they wanted to chat for a little bit. I also talked to some of my friends, ACk, ICn, YSki and all of them for only a little bit. I wanted to do some laundry today, but MTki’s friends all came over so I didn’t want to do that.

Later they invited me to go. It was perfect timing because I was just about to go out to get some food to eat, and they offered it to me for free. That was nice because I had no more money and the banks are all closed. I enjoyed it even though they smoke a lot and drink a lot. I had a nice meal and enjoyed some company.

We then went to Karaoke for a long 2 hours. They were getting on my nerves because drunk people just get on my nerves. The songs they sang were horrible and I couldn’t take it because the whole day I had to deal with all their dogs barking, and it was loud as hell. I couldn’t take it anymore. I managed to survive, but I’m not sure how or why.

The trip back to Japan

This took forever. The day started at 5:30am again. And it didn’t end until about 1am the next day. That was a long trip and journey back home. Not like anything that I would have imagined since it just takes a lot of time to get from place to place.

We made a pit stop in Hong Kong again. I had some red pork ramen, which was incredibly nice and I really enjoyed it. I was so happy to be in Hong Kong, but the time was very very short and we were rushed to get back to the plane and stuff like that.

The movie on the way back from Hong Kong to Tokyo was Kingdom of Heaven, but the problem that I had was that it was all in French. Definitely not good for me and I was looking forward to seeing it again, but I couldn’t really enjoy it. But the flight back was still very smooth and nothing bothered me really.

The second day in Thailand

We went to the Floating Market today. The ride on the mini-van was much better and the driver was going fast, which was good. It was about an hour and a half drive away from Bangkok. It didn’t have any tall buildings. And the most important thing for me was that the air was breathable. We were finally away from all the pollution that was damaging my lungs.

The boat ride was awesome, but I wasn’t feeling so awesome at this time. I think that I was making myself sick. I kept thinking about what I’ve eaten and what I want to eat so I was a little too careful with everything. Most of it was in my mind of course. I think that overall I wasn’t sick at all. Anyways, the boat ride getting to the floating market was pretty cool. I’m glad that we came even though it was short lived and we didn’t buy anything. It’s one of those things that you could say that you did though and it’s a once in a lifetime kind of thing. So I’m glad I was able to check that off my list of things to do before I die. It was unique and we took pictures, I think that I didn’t take enough pictures though.

Then we went into another gift shop, where I got some more things including some nice postcards. This place was pretty interesting. They had a lot of things carved from wood. It was very intricate and detailed. You could tell that they have spent months maybe even years making them. I think they are inexpensive for all the handiwork put into it. I mean there were cabinets and shelves all made from the trunks of trees. It was pretty cool and I got some things here that I’m happy I made the purchases. I didn’t think that I’d be able to get all the things that I wanted to buy during this trip and knowing that it might be my last opportunity, I decided to get a few things for myself and for other people.

After this, we went back to Bangkok and had the rest of the day as free time. We went back to Siam Square, and outside was incredibly hot and again we were lucky to have no rain. We just did a bunch of shopping around. We went into a few different shopping malls. We were walking around to find a good place to get a Thai massage. The girls wanted to get a Thai massage and since we have coupons for a regular foot massage at a place that we will go later tonight, we went walking around to look for another place to get a good massage. We asked around and kept on walking, but we didn’t find a good place to get one. There really wasn’t anything that really appealed to us for that purpose and it looked as if we wouldn’t be able to find a place either. So what we did was just go back to the place that we knew of and went to the foot massage place. We all thought that if they have foot massage that they would also have a regular Thai massage that we could get too on top of that. I mean it’s a massage store right, they should have more than one and since we were in Thailand I think that they could have accommodated us.

We went back to Central World Plaza, to get some dinner and other things that we needed. I ended up doing a lot of shopping for groceries too that I wanted to bring back to Japan. It was great, and a bit weird that I bought a lot of things that I miss from the states to Japan, that I bought in Thailand. I mean I bought things like cereal, and sauces for something that I could make. It was weird because we were shopping at a Japanese grocery chain store that was located in Bangkok. I mean it was like we weren’t even in Thailand because of all the things that we were doing there really had nothing to do with Thailand. I had bought some Thai curry though, and some Chinese Shark fin soup. I bought a lot more than I thought I would have wanted to spend in Thailand, especially for groceries. It was a pain to carry back to the hotel room and everywhere after that. I mean it was stuff that I wanted, but still it was a pain to carry.

Then we got KFC for dinner and then came back to the hotel room to eat it. Yeah, I know it isn’t something that is very Thai and probably something that I could get anywhere else in the world, but it was something that everyone could agree with and that was the biggest hurdle that we had to overcome. I would have liked to eat something that was of Thai origin, but it was fine since I haven’t eaten it in a long time. It was nice with the Thai beer, but last night’s beer was much better. The chicken had a different flavor to it and it was good. I had enough of the food after the dinner and then we started getting ready to leave Thailand. It seemed like a really quick trip, but it was a bit long because of the heat and smell. I have a sensitive body when it comes to things that smell and heat, so I wasn’t enjoying the physical aspects of it and neither was YHno. So we had to pack, it took me the longest since I had bought the most of our group.

The first day in Bangkok

We started off pretty early today. The tour guide was late to pick us up, which wasn’t very good since we didn’t get much sleep. The guide was a big fat woman with a limp and a really lazy eye. It wasn’t very appealing at all, and her Japanese wasn’t that great either. Not that I could really comment on her Japanese, but I will anyways. We boarded a bus and it took us to our first spot, which was the Grand Palace and Wat Phrakeo. It really was grand and something that I really wanted to see in person. It was wonderful, even though they don’t let people wearing shorts come in. It was like me and every other American having to rent long pants. That was about 30 baht, but not too bad. Inside is a very sacred Emerald Buddha, it was cool looking, but much smaller than I thought it would be. It of course, is the number one place that is recommended in my guide book that I bought at the airport yesterday…in Japanese.

Then we hit the bus again and the next stop was to Wat Arun. It was a nice templish thingy. It has a very unique architecture that makes it famous. It really was very nice to see, and it was hot today and there too. We were very lucky because the forecast for the whole week was thunderstorms and temperatures around 36-40 degrees Celsius, and if you don’t know what that means, it’s hot. We got to walk around for a little bit. This is the number 2 place that was recommended in my guide book.

Then we went to the number 4 place, it is Wat Pho, which has a really large golden Buddha that is lying down. It was so big that I couldn’t fit a good picture in one shot. You’d have to take at least two to get it all in. It was pretty cool there, but everyone was getting paranoid about getting picked pocketed since there was a sign there saying that those types of things happen.

We then went to lunch at a nice fancy buffet style restaurant. The food was actually pretty good and safe I think. So that was something that I enjoyed very much. But I didn’t eat that much since I wanted to stay on the safe side. If you didn’t know, you can’t drink the water in Thailand because it’s not safe. So I stayed away from all things that included water in the recipe, which was very difficult.

Then we went to a big jewelry shop that had many things that are unique for Thailand. The sales people were a little too pushy. So much in fact that it was a turn off and we just wanted to avoid them and just ignore them. I didn’t want to buy anything from them since they were just getting on my nerves, but the other girls had bought some stuff. They were reluctant, but decided to. Then we went to another place where we could get some duty free items. It was called King Power. It seemed like a big company since you would see them everywhere we went and they had advertisements on buses and everything. I bought a ton of stuff, not for me but for other people. I only brought $300 for the whole trip. I spent about $100 today and in this hour alone.

Then we went to the Central World Plaza, which is a new building center that’s got a nice shopping mall. The tour group would drop us off on the 7th floor where there was another opportunity to buy duty free things. It was fun that we were on our own after that, but the guides really had us paranoid when we were out and about and always warned us to be careful and told us how to get back to the hotel. I’m glad that we made it back ok too. I thought that there were people who were looking at us funny and seemed like they were going to do something bad to us, but I found a way to avoid that situation and we made it out pretty safely. It was good to finally get back home too. I was happy about that and it was good to finally relax.

Going to Thailand

I spent the morning getting the last things I thought I needed for the trip. Like how much things cost and the currency exchange prices and weather. I found out that it will be raining pretty hard there, which is something I’m not happy about. And it will be hot and humid, more than Japan. I talked to ACk for a little bit about things. I’ve got to go finish packing and get changed to go to Thailand.

The train ride was pretty smooth and I arrived at Narita at 2pm. I decided to get lunch at McDonalds since I know that I might get sick in Thailand because of the food.

It turns out that they were at the airport an hour before me. I met CFri friend Yuri Hoshino, and she was going to come on the trip with us. She’s a kindergarten teacher, so I take it she likes kids a lot. I think that this trip was going to be fun. We got checked in and all that good stuff. We got on the airplane using Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong. The trip was very nice and I was impressed with the plane and the functions of it. Everything was smooth getting to Hong Kong. I watched a movie, Madagascar, not as impressive as I thought it would be. I was really impressed with Hong Kong because of the high tech looking airport. It was really clean and it really felt good being there. I was really happy that I was there, even if it was only just a few hours.

Then from Hong Kong to Bangkok, I watched The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, also not as impressive as what people tell me. Actually I didn’t really like either of the movies, which was a bummer because I had heard so many good things about it. But it could have been that it was on a plane and not in a theater.

We arrived safe and sound, and as soon as you walked off the plane, you knew you were in Bangkok. There was a pungent smell to it and well, it smells like Thai. The airport tried to look new, but it wouldn’t pass the test after being in Hong Kong. Immigration and customs was pretty quick. They had some technologies that took a picture and video of you, which was weird for me, but good for the country I guess.

The guide waited for us at the departure gate. We were going to the Classic Place Hotel, while other people on our tour were going to another hotel. I think theirs was a little better than ours. Since it was really late at night we wanted to get to the hotel to get settled down and then rest because we had to start really early the next day. You know we didn’t get to our hotel till really late at night, around 2am, but the reason why we were so late was because of TRAFFIC. Why the hell is there traffic at 2am in the freaking morning? I just didn’t understand that. So I know that it was only the beginning. Tour guide grade was a B, not bad, but didn’t do anything that was particularly outstanding either. He was very helpful with the hotel check-in process, but because we had to wait for the other group to get checked in the hotel and we waited for like 30 minutes for that to be completed, that knocked down his grade.

We got to sleep around 3-4am, only to get up at 6:30am to get breakfast before the tour started at 7:30am.

Last day in Hakone - 7th grade seminar

We did the same thing as yesterday to begin with, meaning we had breakfast early in the morning and had the morning assembly outside, although I didn’t join today. I was busy doing other things to get ready for departure. After we finished breakfast, we cleaned up the Hakone residence. I had to clean the bathroom like I did yesterday with the Ume students. We didn’t do a very thorough job like the one we did yesterday, but that was in the interest of time and energy since we still have a packed day ahead of us. After we finished all the cleaning, we went back to our rooms and packed our stuff. We needed to get out in a hurry so that we could get to all the places that we wanted to go today on the school tour. My cut on my upper lip got worse today. I decided that it was the fault of my razor and now I’ll probably have a scar for a month or so that won’t go away and will be un-pretty for a long time. It created a blister with five- six pimple like bumps. It hurt a lot too. Once we got all of our stuff packed up, we changed our clothes back to formal gear and got ready to leave the school.

The first stop from the bus was to an area that overlooked a nice area of the lake. They had a material museum and the students had some handouts to fill out. It really wasn’t that interesting, just that there were figurines that were made to look like the olden days and how the customs was done back then. Then we went to a docking area so that we could go on a pirate ship ride. It was actually a pirate ship look-a-like ship that was actually pretty cool looking. I really enjoyed it since it was a unique experience to have in Japan and with the students. I’m not really their personal teacher since I don’t teach half of the girls there, but it was nice to have the experience with them.

I have met some of them in Okinawa and at least been exposed to them this year. The next thing that we did today was have lunch at a nice hotel. I’m not sure what hotel it was, but it was nice. We had a little fondue type of a lunch where we had to basically cook our own food. It was pretty good, but still I didn’t prefer to cook my own food. I would think that if you go to a nice place for lunch, they would at least cook it for you. But they didn’t and I had to do it for myself. I’m not really into fondue, so that was also the other reason why I wasn’t as impressed. We had to wait a little bit before we could even go in too. But we all left promptly when we finished. Some students were faster than others, and that’s usual, but when they are all in line to go to the restroom, it just takes a long time since it’s a girls school and everyone is basically a girl and the lines just become too long. I think some of them went into the men’s room too, when no one was in there just so we wouldn’t be late. Now that’s hard core right there.

We went to another spot in the Hakone area and we took a ride on a gondola to a famous Onsen at Owaradani. It wasn’t so bad at all really. It was nice and a bit high, but it was interesting when you’re in there with students. They tend to wave at everyone that goes by the other side. I’m not a big fan of onsens only because they smell like sulfur and if you’ve smelt sulfur before, you’d understand what I’m talking about. It happens to be a very famous one in Hakone too. They have some interesting stuff there and we looked around and took a little hike to the top to get a great view. I was having troubles breathing since it stunk like rotten eggs, but I managed to get some pictures of the area. Then we went back on the bus and were on our way home. I was a bit relieved that we were going home because I wasn’t feeling too well at this time. The problem was that we had a lot of traffic going home so we were about 30 minutes late to get home. Everyone at this point was very tired.

I left school around 5pm, but didn’t get home till around 8pm. I needed to unpack tonight so that I could pack for tomorrow and going to Thailand. I wanted to get all the final details of the trip, but CFri didn’t send me any information. So I’m a bit worried and I don’t know what to bring really. I’ve never been on a tour group so I’m not sure what to expect too. But I trust her and her judgment. So I’ll write more when I get back.

Second day at Hakone – 7th grade seminar

Everyone woke up at 6:30amish and other a bit earlier to get ready for breakfast. They had morning stretch at 7am and then came back to get breakfast at 7:30am. Then we had to do some cleaning. I had to help clean the bathroom, which is a big room with showers and a huge bath. The breakfast was simple; it was tonkatsu with salad and juice and miso soup.

Then we did a practice session for the students to learn their parts and the whole story of their plays which they have to perform next semester. This went on for 3 hours and I had to teach both classes. The first class which is Kiku, was surprisingly bad since they are at a high level in Math and Japanese and actually pretty high in English too. So during this time, I was teaching them now to read. They were doing a good job while we were there, but I’m not sure that they will continue to go with it and to learn how to read words outside of this training session. I was being recorded on video, so I was a bit worried since I was straying away from the purpose of me being there, but still I think it was good. It was just a basic lesson since it was only 30 minutes of teaching that we had to get them ready for their plays.

Ume class was surprisingly good since they could read all on their own and I didn’t have to help them much and since they are a no-reaction class. They are always so quiet and never give any response to any teacher. Normally everyone would think they don’t get it, but they do. This was one of things that surprised me most about this class that they are generally quiet but a bright group of girls. They were quite the opposite and I really didn’t have to go over too much. But I learned how they learned how to read. They just memorized the order of the words with something they had previously learned, so it wasn’t that they knew how to read per se, but they knew the words and the order and how to pronounce them. So what I did was broke up the vocabulary and did it individually so that they would be able to look at the word at any time and still be able to read it. I made them read things out of order so at least they would have a grasp of what they were saying as opposed just saying something that has no meaning to them, just to make me happy. Although I do appreciate them doing it, it does need to go much further for me to be happy.

Then we had lunch, but this was already prepared by the teachers that weren’t doing anything since the English teachers were teaching the students their lines for the school play. During the second group that I was with, I had run out of things to do with the students. They had finished their readings so fast compared to the other class that I just had to start playing games with them before they would get all bored. I think that was a good thing and since I had a good group to work with, they didn’t have any troubles. The lunch was something pretty simple. It was just a salad prepared and rice balls called onigiri. There were a few other things like a soup, but it was all simply prepared.

We then had recreation hour after that. They did many events that would be a prelude to the sports festival in the beginning of October. Since they are in the 7th grade, I don’t think they know how it goes at my school. It’s very popular to have a sports festival during the autumn season in Japan and all schools have one. Last year I had the chance to witness it. It’s quite a long ordeal that goes from 10am to 4pm so it’s a pretty big deal. But this time we only had an hour to do things that would get the girls moving and competing against each other by class. But within the class they would be broken up into smaller groups. They did a series of events ranging from jump roping, to four-legged race, and many many relays. It was very interesting how they played the games. It was very enjoyable to watch and to even participate a little. There was one event where the teachers would have to play paper, rocks, and scissors in order to go back to the start line and tag the next person to come. They had balloon popping and everything. It was a very fun hour for them and for me. We wanted them to build up an appetite because dinner would soon follow. I think that dinner tonight would be very early starting at 4pm. It felt like we just had lunch so I wasn’t very hungry.

The catering service came a bit early so we went to the other house, the one I’m staying at and had a garden party. The dinner itself was pretty impressive. It was catered by a hotel in the neighboring area. I think they did a good job, I mean it wasn’t the best food that I’ve ever had, but it was pretty good for buffet style food. I guess you could describe it as one of Italian food with a Japanese touch. They had a lot interesting combinations that I wouldn’t really consider dinner as much as I would just snacks. But there was a lot which made it enough for me.

The houses are named one and two. I usually stay at house number two, which is the main house that people use for when everyone gets together. The house number one is the one that Yakumo built and number two is the one Yakumo bought from another owner. The first house is symmetrical with both wings being a mirror of the other side.

After the students finished dinner we did fireworks. It’s not the one you would see at a festival, but something that EVERY Japanese person involves themselves with in summer time. It’s very addicting and I kind of wished that we could do it in America, but then again, I also appreciate the fact that it’s illegal in America. I mean, the ones we play with in America have a bigger bang and are generally dangerous compared to the ones you can get in Japan. We had a lot and some were bigger than the ones I’ve used in the past. So that was incredibly fun for me. I’m such a pyromaniac… it’s a good thing that the school and the students don’t know that. It was pretty fun though and I really enjoyed it.

Then we studied again. I did the Japanese handout for the students tonight and was surprised that I was able to do it. There was one part that was extremely difficult, but the Japanese teacher told me that it’s difficult for high school students. So I’m happy to say that my Japanese is higher than 7th grade level. I really thought that I was at elementary school level, but it seems that I’m higher. I’m very happy and proud to say that. I haven’t really put any effort into studying Japanese since I’ve been in Japan, which is a very big disappointment, but I’m still picking things up. That’s the good part about studying language in the country where you’re studying. You learn through osmosis. I spent the rest of the night doing this paper though, even longer than the students since they also had math to work on. I mean we started around 7pm and I didn’t finish till around 11pm because I was very addicted and wanted to figure it out. There was one that was incredibly hard and I just gave up after a little bit because I was just too tired to finish.

Going to Hakone 3 - 7th grade seminar

We went to the Kanagawa Prefecture Natural History museum today so the students could fill out a hand out. It was in Odawara, so I finally got a chance to go there. They had a lot of cool things there, but it was a bit small for me. I thought that it would have been bigger or something or that there were more things to do, but there wasn’t. I mean we finished going through the whole thing, quite quickly, which was something I didn’t really enjoy about the trip there. I mean they had some pretty cool dinosaurs there, well at least their fossils. Some of them were fake, but most of them were real bones that they found somewhere. You could actually touch everything too so; I was on a touching spree with the fossils and other fascinating artifacts.

Then we went to a very famous place in Hakone called Suzuhiro, which is a place where they make processed fish. It’s in almost every bento box that you could buy in Japan, so it’s pretty famous. I thought the lunch was just average though. We had oden, but that’s usually a winter food not a summer food. So that was a bit weird. They made a lot of things there that didn’t seem very good. They had a large anko display too where you could buy Jumbo Anko, which is red bean paste inside of a breaded bun. It wasn’t very big, well not as big as jumbo for American standards at least. But that’s just a bias opinion.

We then went to the Hakone School and unpacked our things to get ready to prepare for dinner. It was curry rice, but the students would have to prepare everything for it. The students would all get changed and then we played a game before all the cooking preparations began. I showed them a few games that we could play without using any English because I don’t normally teach this class, so I needed to warm up to them first. We did a paying attention game with patting our hands to the ground and the direction it would go to. I thought it was good for a starter’s game to get everyone used to me and the way I teach. But soon after that, the students needed to get ready to make dinner.

We set up all the tables in the big room and then the students started cutting the different vegetables and all the things for the salad and soup. They would have to make the whole meal and since they were only in the 7th grade, it wouldn’t be a task that is very difficult. I think that everyone in Japan should know how to make Japanese curry since I think they are all taught at school and at a young age. The home economics teacher was on the trip so she cooked it, while the students did the cutting and other things to learn how to cook it. I learned how to make some good curry too. I was paying attention as they did it, so that I could begin to make it for myself too. It doesn’t look very hard, but who knows until you try right?

Dinner followed soon thereafter. We always have a ceremony before we eat where the home room teacher says a few words about what’s next and what just happened and how they need to eat in a mannered way. Everyone needs to have everything set before anyone can eat. It’s just traditional that way so no one is left out. I like that about Japanese culture and how everyone is always included. Dinner turned out to be pretty good, and I enjoyed it. After the clean up time of dinner, the next item on the agenda was studying.

I studied Japanese from the Genki textbook. I was working on the vocabulary, and realized that I have forgotten a lot of them. I couldn’t write Kanji anymore, and I was having some difficulty with hiragana, which is something that I couldn’t really believe. It was so easy for me before, so I’m wondering how much more I could forget if I hadn’t asked another teacher to help me out. It was a real awakening for me to get my ass back into gear and to start studying some more otherwise I’ll lose my ability to read and write Japanese. I mean I was messing up things that were in Chapter One. That’s the foundation for all the Japanese that I know too.

During the study time, the students were taking their baths. After everyone finished it was time for bed. I went before the female teachers to take my bath in the bath room. It’s a bit big for just me to go alone, but at least I’m the only one with the most privacy since I’m the only male in the house. Then the female teachers went and I went to sleep.

Going to Omiya to meet my friend

I had a bit to do today. Unfortunately it’s 1:15am right now and I won’t have enough time to tell you all about it. I have to get up in 3 hours to get ready for work; I know that’s really really early. I highly doubt that I’ll even be able to get up since I’m not even tired right now.

I picked up dry clean today, so I have clothes to wear for work this coming semester. I’ve left it there at the place for a bit of time. Since I haven’t needed to wear a suit, I just didn’t go by to pick it up. But I’ll be going there more often since work will begin soon. I also did laundry, but no one was home so I had to go around to many places looking for a place to go in and out. I asked permission of course. I finally understand my landlord when she left a door open for me. I thought she had meant to leave the side door open, but she left the back door open. I’ve never gone through the back door and didn’t even know where to look to find it. The house is built a little weird, so I had to find it by just going around to the back to just see if I could find a door somewhere.

I packed for the Hakone trip today too. Since I’ll be leaving for Thailand soon after that trip, I’ll have to get ready to pack for that too. I mean it’s a bit of a tight schedule that I have so much traveling to do in such little time. I’m not sure that it would be good for me and my body to be on the move that much, since I’ve had many problems with constant travel before in the past. I thought I would need more clothes, but it turned out ok.

I talked to my sister for a little bit and shut down my computer, which is good for my computer. I haven’t talked to my sister for a long time, but I wanted to let her know that I’ll be away from my computer and that if something were to happen, that she could look at the news and know where I am. Hopefully there wouldn’t be anything that would cause anyone to worry, but you never know in Japan since natural disasters are very common here. But then there was the fact that I was going to fly in an airplane when there have been many crashes recently.

I left around 4:15pm to go to Omiya. I stopped at Yokohama station to get some lunch, I know it’s really late and it was around 5pm. I went to lotteria, the lady at the cash register seemed new because she didn’t know what she was doing and she got my order wrong too. I ordered a bacon lettuce cheese burger and only ended up with a cheese burger. Once again, I’m wondering if it was my Japanese or if people can’t hear me.

I ended up getting a faster train to get there on time. I was there even a bit early. We went to a place on the west side of the Omiya station. I saw one of the guys first, actually at first it seemed like it was all going to be guys. I mean there were 8 people on time and 7 of them were guys. And the one girl happens to be the one that most people in the class likes.

We got to the place and more people started to show up. That made me feel better. I wasn’t able to eat or drink much, and I think it’s because I just don’t eat and drink much anymore. I can’t stomach it, which will be bad for this weekend because on school trips they like to eat a lot. It was an expensive meal, about $50 or 5000 yen a person for about 2 hours of unlimited drinking and a nice meal. It was expensive because I didn’t eat much of it. I got lucky though because I was sitting next to two cute girls. One of which I like. I was able to give her a souvenir I bought for her from Okinawa, she seemed pretty happy to receive it, but I highly doubt that she would wear it. I hardly get a chance to see her and I didn’t make much eye contact all night. We barely even talked and I’m showing signs of my shyness towards her. I used to be more bolder, but its harder with the language barrier. I wanted to be discreet with the gift like only giving it to her privately, but I wasn’t able to and people caught on real quick. They were making comments if I was a gentleman or not, but I’m not sure what that means in Japanese English. I’ll have to ask my friends what that means. But I think other people will figure it out before she does. I just don’t want things to become awkward, but I’m really going to go for it. I have no choice. I think I did it only because I know I would regret if I didn’t.

I came home happy though. I was able to catch a fast train back too. I’m glad that I finally made a move and did something. I think that I’m showing signs that I like her, but I’m not sure if she’ll catch on, since she was drinking a lot. She doesn’t really talk to me that much, but we got to sit next to each other at least. It could be that she’s nervous too, but I wouldn’t know.

I was walking home pretty fast too. I made it home in 36 minutes, which is 4 minutes faster than usual. I saw a little spider and decided that I needed to kill it. Then I jumped in the shower. When I came out, I saw the largest spider I’ve ever seen in my ENTIRE life. Even bigger than the ones at the zoo. It was huge and took me about 5 minutes just to figure out a way to kill it. I couldn’t use the conventional methods since the spider would be too fast and they jump too. So I needed to use other things and get creative. I ended up trapping it behind my mirror and finding something to crush it with. It left a strange – bad smell. I needed to smash it a few times, just to make sure it was dead, but it wasn’t fun. I’m not sure how it made it all the way into my room, but I’m definitely going to have to clean up a lot better when I get back from Thailand. I need to eliminate all the dark spots in my place. It was a good thing I hadn’t started sleeping at that time because I would have hated to get bitten by that thing. I would have surely died. It was about the size of my palm. Well, actually now that I think about it, the largest spider I’ve ever seen was in Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King. But I would say it wasn’t too far off if it had lived a few more years. Ok, it’s late now, I need to hit the sack and only get 3 hours of much needed sleep.

Second day of tennis practice this summer

I must admit, I’m sore. Even though I walk hours upon hours and get enough exercise, my body is sore from yesterday’s tennis practice. I only went an hour and a half too. But today will be a full three hours of practice and I will most likely be the only teacher there since the teacher that is supposed to be there had the fever yesterday.

I had wanted to get up fairly early so I could get a lot of things done, but I couldn’t even get up. It was very difficult because my body was aching with pain. All my muscles were sore, which is weird, but I like it because it meant I had a good workout yesterday. I need to get a lot of things finished before this weekend because I will be incredibly too busy to be able to take care of it later.

But I didn’t really get a chance to get them finished because my body just couldn’t do it. So I gave my body a rest because I think it really needed it. I will do laundry tomorrow and hopefully by the time I come home, everything will be clean and ready for the next time I need it. I need my clothes cleaned because I won’t have time since I will be gone all weekend long at work and when I get back to Yokohama, I’ll be leaving for Thailand. So I have to pack for both trips since they are back to back. I have a lot of laundry to do too because I have my tennis clothes and a week’s worth. I might have to do two loads just to get everything cleaned up in time.

But what I really needed to do today was get my immigration papers out of the way. I needed to go to immigration to at least turn in my application for an extension of my period of stay. I applied for a 3 year visa, but I’m only expecting them to give me a 1 year visa. I think it’s just their way to make money every time I need to apply. The lady at the front counter was really nice and helped me because I had made a lot of mistakes on the form, as it turned out. The whole process at immigration took less time that it took me to get there from the station. It’s about a 15 minute walk from Ishikawacho station, and the information table, submitting my form, waiting for one person in front of me, having the lady at the other counter look at my paperwork and me filling out a postcard took about 5 minutes. That’s the fastest I’ve ever been in and out of the immigration office. I must have picked a good day to go because I was expecting it to last a few hours or so and I was late to get going too because my body was in pain and I was walking slow as hell. It was really hot today too, and having to wear a suit isn’t fun in this weather.

But I left immigration with enough time to actually get to school on time. The next thing I wanted to do today was play tennis with the tennis team. The other coach wasn’t able to make it today, like I thought, so I had to take over. But I really didn’t need to do anything today because the students know what to do and are self-regulating. I just joined in and played a few and hit the ball around. I think that there needs to be improvement in their practice though. I don’t think that they are actually practicing to get better. They are just practicing. I mean they at least stay fit and could go three hours straight, EVERYDAY, so they at least have stamina. Plus the heat is ridiculous and everyone has funny tans. Everyone is getting so dark too. I don’t think that they use any sun block, which could be very dangerous.

The other teachers had returned from Hakone today, so the head coach came back. I was too tired to explain what they really need to work on, but that will be for another time. I don’t think that he learned that way either, so he probably doesn’t know about it. So I will show him later about my plan that will start to improve their skills, not just hitting the ball. I think that some of the students have already developed some bad habits in tennis and it’s going to be very hard to get them to not do those anymore. But on a happy note, I won all my games today. I was paired up with a 9th grader, and we beat everyone we played. I think we played like 4 doubles team mixed with junior and senior high school. The 7th graders were just learning how to keep score as they were watching us play.

I left school around 7pm, so I didn’t get home till around 9pm. That’s pretty late and I grabbed dinner in Kikuna at Matsuya. It was good tonight, but it seemed like I didn’t have enough room in my stomach. It seemed like it was small and I was stuffing myself, but that’s only because I haven’t eaten much today. I jumped on myspace for about an hour to look for some old high school friends and hit a jackpot. I found a lot of them, so I sent them add messages, but it’s highly unlikely that they will add since we weren’t like the best of friends; just people that I know. I wanted to get some packing done today, but since all my clothes need to be washed tomorrow morning, I guess that won’t be able to happen tonight. I need to be able to get all this done tomorrow because there is not much more time. I think I also need to get some money exchanged into Thailand Baht. I’d like to try to get that done tomorrow as I’m going to visit some friends in Omiya. It’s going be an expensive drinking party as I received an e-mail from my “friend.”

First day of tennis practice this summer

I had only planned on doing two things today. But to be honest with you, I’m really exhausted. My legs can barely move right now and I’m tired. I don’t know why since I’ve been walking a lot and getting a lot of exercise, but I guess it wasn’t enough to keep up when I was playing tennis. I’m just really sore from it all and my dress shoes are eating into my heels again. That’s not fun either.

At first I woke up a bit later than I wanted to. I needed to go to school today to take care of the immigration papers that I needed to finish up. So I went to the school and picked up some of the forms that I need to submit to the immigration office. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would take. I thought that I would have to start the process after I got back from Thailand, but it looks like I could get a jump on it tomorrow. I just need to fill out all the paperwork and submit it to immigration tomorrow.

I then went into the teachers’ office, but to my surprise, not many teachers were there. It was only a few actually. I would say around 8 or so, and that’s because they had just finished taking care of their extra classes. I jumped on the computer and tried to show my English department colleague my plan for the February 11th grade classes, but I think some things will have to change because I give out very similar scores. Since English is a skills class, they should all have different scores based on their skills.

We then played tennis from 3pm. I jumped into rotation with the girls and just hit the ball back and forth with them. We did a bunch of drills that tired me out a bit. I’m not much a drills person as I am just a player in tennis. I even got a chance to play with the other teacher for a short little rally.

I had to leave early because of the next thing that I needed to do. I wanted to go meet up with a friend that I met in March this year. She had just come back to Japan and she will be leaving again soon too. She will go to San Francisco to work at a travel agency. It was a nice conversation that we had at a yakitori place. We enjoyed a lot of good food and a few drinks. We had stayed there for 6 hours from 6pm to midnight. Then I had to walk about 30 minutes home. It’s about 2am now; I think I’ll have to write more later about what we talked about and how the tennis was today. I also forgot to mention that one of my friends from Grossmont went back to my school and left a note on my desk. It was a bit cool.

It rained today

The rain this morning put a damper on my plans. I had wanted to go to school to play some tennis, but you can’t play tennis in the rain, so I decided that it would probably be a waste to go to school. So, I just stayed home and wasted another good day. At least it wasn’t hot today. Oh yeah, just so I don’t forget, I woke up this morning around noon time, which was because of the powerful earthquake that shook a good portion of Japan today. It wasn’t that strong here, but it was a tad bit long. I think I could guess it was at least 15 seconds of shaking. I was still in bed so too tired to be scared or anything. I figured that it wasn’t that strong since nothing was really shaking too bad and I have nothing to fall on me either, so I was ok. Unless my house would collapse, but then I wouldn’t be able to do much about that either.

So, I subsequently just got up and went on the computer. I decided not to talk to anyone today. I needed to send a message to tell my family that I’m still alive and well. I just needed some personal time today. I didn’t do much, but I had a lot on my mind today. I wanted to be able to clear up my mind so I could accomplish the tasks that are ahead of me. I know there are many things that need to be done and I know that I’ve got to get cracking on my learning and doing. The conversation that I had with SEK last night was pretty good and it made me realize what I expect from others and what I expect from myself. I realized that when I take walks, I keep my head down low again. I haven’t done that in a long while, but I guess that I’m not happy about the current situation that I’m in, but I don’t really know how to snap out of it. I’m not depressed, but just bored.

I wanted to get some things done today, but ended up getting nothing done today. I had to eat lunch from something I was given a little while back and that was only a snack. Before I knew it, it was already 7pm. I really didn’t know where 7 hours of my life went to. I just do the usual, like reading mail and checking the news, but I guess that really does take a lot of my time. I did some downloading of some commercials that I thought were hilarious. I like watching commercials and since I lack an effective TV now, I really feel like I only have my computer to rely on to get news and even Japanese to enter my life. I think that tomorrow, rain or shine, I’ll go to school. I need to get some forms and to get to immigration as soon as possible so I could get my health insurance before I go to Thailand, so I might be covered in case anything were to happen, which I doubt. I got an email from CFri last night that gave some more details about where we would stay and things like that. It looked like a really nice hotel and things like that. So we will have a stop over in Hong Kong, so I might not want to go there again, even though I’ll only be in the airport.

There was another plane crash today too. There was one in Venezuela, so I’m a bit tense about flying again. Not that I’m afraid to die or anything, but I still have so much ahead of me that I think it would be a waste. So, just in case I do, I need to make sure that I’m ahead of the game and make sure that if I do go, I could die happy. You know the saying, live like you’re going to die tomorrow; well that’s what I’d like to be doing. I took a little walk to Yoshinoya for dinner tonight. I wanted to save some cash and I needed something cooked fresh. I think that I’m getting tired of the food that I’m eating and I just need something a bit different. But on the way home I picked up some breakfast so that I wouldn’t be hungry again tomorrow. I’ll be going to school so I’ll get a lunch on the way there and then play some tennis tomorrow. Hopefully it won’t be too hot so I don’t die because of heat exhaustion. Then I will meet my friend tomorrow night too. The times conflict, just a little, but I won’t want to be practicing for too long since it’s the first day of summer practice for me and I don’t want to overdo it.

Shibuya with SEK

So today, the only plan is to meet up with SEK. At first we were going to go clubbing in Roppongi with her friend, but last night when we were talking on the phone, he hadn’t contacted her yet, so she had to cancel the clubbing. I didn’t mind since it’s not really my type of thing anyways. But I think she really wanted to go.

So during the day, I didn’t do very much. I was on the computer again, reading news and just checking e-mail. I bought lunch last night when I was walking home from the station, so I had food covered for today. It’s weird because I can’t really remember what I did today or at least this afternoon. Oh, wait, I remember now. After I finished eating lunch, I decided that I wanted to watch some TV. It was a tad hot today that it was almost unbearable, but not as bad as it was before. I just got used to it being cool that’s why. So I enjoyed my episodes of the West Wing. I think I saw three of them today. The first one was Bartlett’s third state of the union. The second one was Isaac and Ishmael, which isn’t part of the sequence, but as a reflection of what happened on September 11th. It was a big event that happened in America, so it was a good episode to check out. The last one is titled the drop in. I really like that one because I like the effort that Sam makes in his speeches, but it got blown off because of the drop in. I know how that is, and the pressure amounting when you make a speech. You want the audience to stand up because the energy and the speech was one that forced you to stand up and give applause.

I really like that show, so I had a good time checking them out. It’s been so long since I’ve seen it, so I was glad to get a chance to see it again today. I think that I might have neglected things that I needed to do, but I didn’t realize that I needed to do them either. Like laundry should be done soon because I will be gone all next week so I should be prepared for that. Then I need to pick up my dry clean from months ago because work will be starting soon and I need some suits. I think I will make a trip to school tomorrow that would be necessary to have a suit. I want to play some tennis, since tomorrow will be a cooler day than today. At least that’s what Yahoo weather says.

Before I knew it, it came time to leave. I was talking to my friend really quickly right before I left. It was time-sensitive since I was going to see the person that it pertained to in a matter of hours. So it was good. I realized something that I hadn’t realized before, but then I wanted to confirm things for my self to see what’s really going on. I left and got rid of some garbage today too. That was good since it was starting to smell a little.

I got there a little bit early and actually so did she, so we got going early today. We didn’t have much time to hang out today since she has to go home early because her father is a tad strict. I think that’s a good thing for her anyways since it shows her that he cares. Last time, we had wanted to go to Harajuku, but ended up in Daikanyama, so this time, we walked directly towards Harajuku. I took the shorter way, although I learned today that there were two ways to get there. We basically walked around in a big circle and decided to get food a long the way.

We stepped into a Chinese restaurant called Kenbi. There wasn’t much people there, maybe only 5 total since it’s a bit hard to find. We got several dishes like gyoza, fried rice, soup, salad, sweet and sour pork, and dessert. It was about 2000 yen a person, which was a tad bit expensive because it really wasn’t filling. It was small. I knew it was going to be small, but SEK didn’t think it would be. So I made a bet with her that it would be too small, and she accepted. She asked the waitress if it would be enough for two people, and she said yes, that’s why she took the bet. She thought that she would win, but I told her that it would be in Japanese portions and not American sized portions.

She inevitably lost. Hehehehe. So the bet was, whoever lost had to ask the waitress for her phone number. And I’m surprised that she actually did it. She only got the e-mail address and gave it to me. I had mentioned that I thought she was cute, only as a joke, but SEK believes that I need to have a girlfriend and said that I should contact her to start one. I thought she was and is crazy for saying that.

We were talking about her relationship for a long time. Up until 10pm actually, which was very late since she wanted to leave by 9pm. I didn’t want to bring it up, but I knew that I had to bring it up. It was important that things were to be addressed in order to insure progress for everyone. I don’t think she felt comfortable with it, but then she was very sure of what she said. She really believes in her reason for the break-up and I would agree with her. I actually understand both of them, but it’s hard for me to see them apart. But I think if she was asking me about my relationship, I wouldn’t be happy to discuss it with her. I really didn’t want to be pushy or to push her to talk about it. I wanted to give both of them a fair chance to say what they needed to say. I think it was a good conversation, but made me realize I’ve got to go back to talk to the guy and to help him out to get what he needs to get in order to get her back.

It would probably the last time I see her this year, and maybe even next year. It’s a bit sad that I probably won’t see her again, although I will probably visit her if she goes to Europe or Australia for school. I hope she goes to Europe because I’d like to visit Europe next year, so that would be perfect timing since I will be leaving Japan for good then. It wasn’t very tearful, but it was sad that I won’t be able to hang out or talk to her even that much.

American House

I woke up today because I had received a message on my cell phone. One of the teachers at my school sent me a message asking me what I was going to do today. I had told them that I would be going to visit a friend’s workplace to try some tacos. I heard they were very good, so I wanted to give them a shot since I haven’t really eaten good tacos in Japan yet. We sent messages back and forth, but I would have liked to have some company. But I wanted to be noble and go to visit my friend since she had suggested that I go last night. I would hate to be a bum and not follow through on my promise. So, I thought that was something like an opportunity cost. Or at least I made a decision to follow through on that. So I was happy about that. But that wasn’t until 4pm. I was talking to the teacher for maybe an hour or two just sending messages through the cell phone.

I didn’t do much besides that. I had to restart my computer because it was really lagging and I didn’t like it. Microsoft sent me something awhile ago that I needed to update, but since I haven’t restarted my computer, it hasn’t done that. So I guess that was the problem, since after I turned off my computer it’s been running much better. I think it might be overheating, since today was a bit warm. I’m starting to get really tired of being on the computer, which could be a good thing, and a bad thing.

So I decided to unplug a little early and head out to Sakuragicho station. My friend works at the American House in Queen’s square. I have never seen it, and realized that there are a lot of good foods in that area. So, I was happy about going there, since I never noticed there were so many places to eat and shop before. I found the place pretty easily, but I couldn’t find my friend. I think the people there thought I was a bit crazy because I spent like an hour and a half to eat 3 tacos and to drink a sprite. I was waiting and waiting for my friend to come, but I guess she didn’t. So I was wondering if I had heard the time correct. I’m not sure if she said come at 4pm, or that she worked till 4pm. But either way, I didn’t get to meet her. I ordered the Tacos Platter, which are two crunchy tacos and one soft taco. Actually you could choose, but I liked what was in the picture and went with that. I didn’t end up leaving till 5:30pm, but I was a bit annoyed. It was about $17 for the meal, but that wasn’t the reason why I was annoyed. I could have spent the day hanging out with one of my teacher-friends and talked about her trip to Boston. So it didn’t turn out the way that I had wanted it to be. So that sucked a little bit.

It was weird because today, as I was walking through queen’s square, I ran into a friend of mine from Grossmont. It was the strangest thing because I was walking and then something caught my eye, and caught her eye too, and we both turned around. Since we were walking in the opposite direction, but it was cool that we ran into each other and talked for a little bit. I was surprised that she recognized me and we both just stopped in our tracks. Her name is Tamie, so I don’t forget for future reference. She lives in Totsuka-ku, which makes her the 7th or 8th person I know that lives there. Actually it could be more, but a lot of my friends live there. It’s a bit interesting that we all live close to each other.

Then I decided that since I wasn’t feeling too good, I should go for a long walk. I walked all the way to Ishikawacho station, via Aka-renga soko, world porters, Yamashita Park, Chinatown then to the station. I mean I took the long way and went around buildings, pretty much the same route that I take my friends on the Yokohama tour. Today, it was just for exercise and because I have a lot of things on my mind. I wouldn’t say that I have bad thoughts or anything, but I wanted to clear my mind. I’m not sure if it worked, but at least I got a good workout out of it. I bought a drink in Chinatown and then dinner on the way home near Hongodai station. I’m not sure, but today has been a weird day. I do not like it so I’ll probably get to bed early to get my sleep schedule in line for this upcoming week.

When I got home, I showered then ate dinner. The feature tonight was Big Daddy. I felt like I needed to get a movie in there today. I needed a laugh, so I thought a comedy would be in good order. You could always rely on Adam Sandler on that. It’s funny, but not as funny as his other ones. It’s a bit cheesy too, but you know, it’s an Adam Sandler movie, so it’s always a bit cheesy. Then I came here and typed this. I think I might go into a chatroom just to talk to the outside world for a little bit. It was nice to do that yesterday. I think it would be better than actually talking to my friends. Things have been pretty messed up lately and well, its better if I just let things blow over. I think everyone’s emotions are running high and there’s burnout on the way.

Another thing that I noticed when I was reading the news today, there’s been a lot of plane crashes in the past week. I’m a bit worried now since I’m about to go to Thailand, and well I’ll be flying on a plane. Japan Airlines is commemorating a plane crash in 1991, which happened to be the worst in its history. And this week, they had to call back a plane because its engine caught fire. There’s the whole British Airways dispute and strike. Planes are flying now, but not so frequent and people are still left stranded. Then I read tonight that there was a plane crash in Greece with everyone on board dead. There was one last week in Canada, I think, where the plane slid off the runway, but everyone survived. But you know, as I’m about to fly, this is a bit scary. But I guess, if you go, you go right. There’s no controlling that, so whatever.

Drinking with the red shoes

I didn’t do very much for the beginning of the day. I’m finally glad that I was able to eat a healthier lunch today. It was actually a bento lunch, but much better than the crap that I’ve been eating lately. It’s actually very bad and I’m not feeling any better about it either. But it was very nice to actually have food in my stomach today, I mean before I went out and went to the drinking party with the members of the red shoes organization.

It wasn’t a really celebration, but more of a good bye party for APa who will be leaving Japan on Monday. That was really fast because I remember seeing him the first day that he arrived in Japan and that wasn’t too long ago even though it was last month. Time just flew by so quickly that it’s hard to even get a sense of how fast it went by. We went to wara wara for dinner and drinks. It started at 7pm and we needed to leave by around 9:15pm or so. We had our own room with a karaoke machine although it wasn’t used at all. We were trying to push APa to sing a song before he left Japan, since it’s the most Japanese thing you could do, but he didn’t go for it. The food there was pretty good, but the desserts weren’t very good at all. I was very disappointed because they looked like the egg tarts that I love in San Diego and miss them so much, and then when I ate it, it was so dry and tasted nasty. I was very disappointed. The price wasn’t so bad since everyone got free drinks and as much as we could drink for the two hour time limit.

There was an after party too. We were going to go play with fireworks. EK decided to chicken out and go home early so he could get rest. But I think it’s because he didn’t want to walk very far to the park we were going to play with the fireworks. We were playing with the fireworks till 11:30pm. It really didn’t seem like we were playing with it that long, but I guess we were. Then we naturally had to go back to Yokohama station to catch the train back home. It was raining really hard at one point when we were at the station, but then it stopped soon thereafter. It’s really weird the weather here, so one of the guys offered me a ride home. But when we got back to his station, I think he wasn’t planning on taking me home, but I wanted to get a ride from him because I wanted to see how he could drive. It was good to get a chance to talk to him some more and get at least some what of an exercise before he drove me home. He drives pretty well, which is good… even though we were all drinking tonight. He was very sober soon afterwards, and actually the alcohol only affected one person, the prez, KHma.

When I got home, I took a shower and started doing something I haven’t done in a long time. I went into a chat room. I go into one that I’m a group member of. It’s for people who are interested in Japan and is open to those that want to learn English / Japanese. So I go in there from time to time. Tonight was pretty good. I like talking to the hosts, they are very interesting people and it’s much better talking to them than to other people who are just acting stupid because we don’t know who they are. But the hosts tonight don’t tolerate that type of activity and they get the boot. That was funny to see actually. I stayed up till around 4am doing this. It was good and I had a chance to type my journal entry too. I wanted to drink more today, I felt like I didn’t get enough alcohol in the system. That’s a weird feeling to have especially since I don’t drink. I was even drinking beer tonight, and I hate beer. It probably could explain why I can’t sleep just yet, but I’m not sure.

Not much of a day

I didn’t do a whole lot today. But I would like to report that today was nice and cool. I didn’t get up until noon today, which is the latest I’ve slept in this summer. It was probably because I was up till 3am last night because I just couldn’t sleep.

Anyways, I was just stuck glued to the computer for most of the day. I was talking to some friends on mine on MSN messenger. The first time I’ve been online all week really since I’ve been using AIM recently. I don’t think that my computer could handle being on both actually.

At first, I was talking to one of my good friends, but it seemed like she was busy with something else. She was, so the conversation didn’t go very smoothly. She’s one of my best friends and I’ve known her since high school, but it seems that lately we have lost touch. Not that we don’t talk, but that it’s only surface talk nowadays. She had sent me a long e-mail and that prompted me to want to talk to her. But she didn’t want to talk about it really, and I really wasn’t much of a help either. So it was, just blah, really.

Then I was trying to talk to another friend of mine who I’m trying to help get back with his girlfriend that just broke up with him. I’m good friends with both of them, and well, I would hate to seem them broken up. I think that there’s something that I could do to help the situation, but I don’t want to do anything that would hurt in anyway, so I try to do things, that won’t get me too involved, since they didn’t get involved with any of my things. I’m just acting as a mediator between the both of them, so they at least get some form of communication to each other. It’s going to be difficult, but I wouldn’t want one of them stretching his arm out, only to have the other walking away. It wouldn’t be fair, so I’m trying to at least get an understanding between the both of them. If it wasn’t meant to be, then it wasn’t meant to be. I can accept that.

One of my friend’s birthday is today too. So I sent a little message to her. I’ve known her for a little while now, and she’s like one of the first Japanese people that I met and have grown close to in friendship.

Then after all the conversations, I left for a little walk to the station to get some groceries and something to eat. I just needed to get out of the house and get some exercise since I’ve been in doors and in this seat for about 3 days straight. I don’t like the feeling of being lazy, so I just needed to get out. Today was a nice day, so it wasn’t that hot, even though it was a bit humid. I felt good going out and at least getting that walk. It was a nice feeling to actually feel healthy again.

Then I came home and ate a sushi dinner. I had been watching sushi on TV all day and man it looked good. So I had to get some myself. I haven’t had it in a long while, so I thought it was good. I even ate it the old traditional way, with my hands. Since I haven’t had it in a long while, it tasted very good. I missed sushi.

When I finished that though, I started talking to my sister. She had just gotten up for a little while because she feels sick. But we were talking about her trip to Japan this winter. I’m starting to get worried that it’s going to be far more expensive than I could afford. I hope that I will be able to cover everything and that not all my money will be used up on this either. But I want them to have fun and enjoy it too. I’m not sure what I will be able to afford come that time since I’ll have many things to do during that time too. I forgot to mention when the teacher’s trip is too. And I’ll be going on the school ski trip, so that will cut their time in Japan to like 2 weeks. Their finals will finish on December 22nd, so I’m not sure when they will be able to come either. My sister was thinking about whether my dad would come to Japan or not. She’d like her friend to come with her here, and it would be fine with me, but I wouldn’t feel right treating him all the time since he’s not family or anything. But I will for certain things and stuff like that. My sister thinks I’m being a cheap ass, but I’m just looking out for my well being since I’m not sure if I’ll have enough money to live afterwards. Although I’m sure that I will be able to. I’ll just have to find the right budget for everything and find a way to get a good pass for them so travel won’t be so expensive. They’ll have to walk a lot, so that will help I think.

Quite an interesting day

The day started off very very interesting. I think that this post might be longer than some of my other ones and they are usually 1-3 pages long. Sorry folks, if you don’t want to read you don’t have to. It’s concerning the drama that’s been going on in San Diego that I’m somehow apart of, but since I’m not there, I’m not sure how I’m involved. But explanation below:

My ex-girlfriend called me today. Not long after I woke up this morning. We didn’t have much of a dialogue, but I was listening to a lot of what she had to say. I was only helping her out by asking her to clarify what she meant. Here’s the best part, she called me while she was at a temple in Taiwan. Who the hell calls their ex when they are in the middle of a praying ceremony to the ancestors in the middle of a freaking temple? The only thing she wanted to do at this time was to make an appointment to talk to me later, but I let her know that this might be the only chances she gets since I’m a very busy guy and she got lucky that I have time now. Of course, it wasn’t very convenient for her, but then again, she called me. Her bad!

She was trying to explain to me what’s been going on in the past 4 months. She kept telling me that she didn’t lie to me, but I think that all of you, intelligent people, could figure out that when I person says they aren’t lying, they probably are. And here’s the best part, she was trying to prove she wasn’t lying to me too. In fact she put the blame on me saying that it was because I wasn’t communicating with her that caused it. Well, as a matter of fact, she wasn’t communicating with me and I wanted to get back at her for that. In the first months of this year, I had sent her a bunch of e-mails that she never responded to, so I stopped responding to hers. I felt it was fair. She’s been hiding the fact that she’s had a boyfriend for a few months, and then she was misleading me about all the facts while I was in San Diego for spring break telling me about other guys that were pursuing her instead of her boyfriend. Yes they were already together before I went back for spring break.

She was explaining to me that if I wanted to know more, I should have asked her about her relationship. She didn’t want to show off that she had a boyfriend in front of me. Mind you, I only found out about them 2 weeks ago when one of my friends blew up on me, for what I thought was for no reason at all. I mean, what the hell could I do to make someone’s life a living hell, when I’m not in the same hemisphere. And I’ve only met that person once in my life. She has realized what she has done playing with everyone’s hearts. But everyone can see through her now, and my guess is that there will be no one left in San Diego in our group that will really be her friend. I think because our group is nice, they’ll talk to her sometimes, but I think everyone will keep their distance. We have a saying that goes; a person who tries to get two rabbits ends up getting none. She told me once before that she loves attention and because she thinks she’s cute and can get guys, but in the end, she’ll end up old and alone. No one would want her because of her flawed personality. That’s tragic. I thought about doing something bad to her, but I realized that she already did it to herself. She’s going to drowning in her own regret when she loses everything of value around her. I’m not mad or anything, but I’m just watching karma kick her ass. If you don’t believe in it, trust me, it’s not pretty. She cheated on her ex-boyfriend before, and she cheated on me too, so it’s all coming back to haunt her now. I learned from my mentor that it never pays to lie, and now I can clearly see why.

People in life don’t get what they want, they get what they deserve. If you’re poor and starving, it’s your own damn fault. You’re so arrogant that you can’t go ask your family or friends for help to get yourself back on your feet just to eat and live. People who are selfish and greedy are easily recognized by people and when they see it, they fight it off with a stick. I’ve seen the worst in people now, and can clearly understand that I don’t want to go down that path. Shit, she lost everything… She’s still madly in love with me, and that’s the cause of her problems in her current relationship. Her boyfriend can’t handle it, but really can’t blame me either since I’m really not involved than being the guy she likes. So it’s wrong if they are together and she’s still in love with me. But for me that’s unacceptable behavior and completely inexcusable.

Anyways, on to more important things that happened today. I finally started making the postcards that I’m going to send to my friends. I don’t have many addresses so I can’t really send that many out. I’d like to, but I just don’t have people’s mailing addresses, so if you want one, you’re going to have to let me know soon. I won’t be here forever, that’s for sure.

I’ve been using AIM recently. I enjoy it better nowadays since there really isn’t much drama found with those friends. I don’t have many people I talk to though, since most of them sleep earlier or aren’t online. I’ve been talking to one of my friends that I call my soulmate for the past tow nights now. It’s really interesting since we’ve met long ago and still talk now. She’s been having her difficulties too. She had recently broken up with her boyfriend, and now he’s being a dick about it. She just graduated so now she’s looking for a job. But that’s pretty hard since she has to look for a job in San Francisco when she’s in Davis. She’s got to move out this month too and she’s normally from So Cal. So this will be a difficult transition for her. I feel bad because I really can’t do anything to help her out of the situation.

I let my sister know about the situation today too. She thought it was pretty interesting. I don’t think she really liked my ex-girlfriend either, so she was a bit happy that she’s out of my life now. We always thought of her as a psycho person, but she’s really gone over the top now. Bad news today too, my sister informed me that someone broke the mirror on my baby. Some kids were walking down my street in San Diego and went around breaking people’s car windows and mirrors and my car was parked on the street and was a victim. It’s going to cost $400 to replace. I’m not really mad about it, but if I was there, I would have gotten my gun and blew their knee caps out and ripped out the fingernails one by one till they bled to death. Damn assholes broke the mirror on my benz dude. I’m hella pissed now.

Then my ex-girlfriend’s now ex-boyfriend sent me an e-mail about his ex-girlfriend saying that he decided to break up with her. He thought it was understandable that I don’t get involved with it, and that he has no beef with me. But he’s lost his respect for her and warned me about her. But it should have been me warning him about her. I really feel sorry for him because he was just used the whole time. I’m not sure if he enjoyed it or not, but I had the feeling that he was intending to marry her and I think that’s why there was so much trouble. I think that she still has in her mind to marry me, but there’s no way in hell that I’m up for that shit. She’s a dirty little person and I have no respect for her. So I think that she’s done a good job to get everyone to lose respect for her. Its sad how all this breaks down though.

But after all this that happened today, I really do generally feel happy. Today’s weather wasn’t very hot at all. I didn’t get a chance to go out though, although I really wanted to. It even rained a little bit today, which I thought was very weird. So I probably got really fat today because I didn’t do much but sit in the same spot for the entire day. I was playing a lot of computer games that I downloaded off the internet and the traditional games like MS hearts and Solitaire too. I’ve gotten so good at those games. It’s really ridiculous. I’m sorry, but I think I’m going to make this post hidden, which would be the first, but it’s been a little too personal to have open and exposed online.

A day of not much again

I didn’t go to bed till a bit late last night. It was cool, but still hot enough that it was hard to sleep. Every night has been hard to sleep for a little while, but today, as I woke up, it wasn’t so bad. I had wanted to go to school and play tennis. That was the originally plan, but since it’s nearing obon week, I think that most of the teachers and students won’t be going. So I’ll have to make my trips to school after the obon week, which is actually in two weeks. So I don’t really have any plans for the next two weeks. Everything in Japan will pretty much be closed and all my friends are leaving Japan soon too.

So, as you probably guessed, I spent a lot of time online. I played a few online games and computer games today. I went 4 for 4 today playing online Chess. I was quite shocked that I won all the games. I was playing the computer, but the level probably wasn’t hard. I’m not sure of the settings though. Although I know I would have gotten my ass whooped if I was playing someone good. I played a lot of MS hearts today and solitaire too. Then I decided to do some laundry. I think that today would be a good day to do it because I had the time to and it wasn’t so hot so the dryer wouldn’t really make the room super hot.

Then I was talking online with a few of my friends that I haven’t talked to in a long while. I was on AIM today and completely avoiding MSN messenger. I think it’s best not to talk to those friends for a little while till things settle down for a little bit. I received an e-mail from my ex-girlfriend telling me that she wants to explain things to me if I would give her the time to explain them to me online using skype or something like that. I’m not sure that I will fulfill her request even though I told people that I will talk to her about it. To be honest, I don’t want anything to do with her. I want to forget the fact that I even met her. She was bad for me then, and she’s bad for me now. I was glad to get rid of that poison in my life and it seems as if it spread to other things that I cared for in San Diego. Now everything that I had value in doesn’t exist anymore, so there’s no real reason to go back there. But on a happier note, I also got some e-mails from friends that I haven’t heard from in a long time too.

I was talking to my soulmate and we were chatting it up for a few hours. It was so nice, and I really do miss talking to her. We know each other very well and I’m glad that we are still friends. Most of my friends that I met during the same time I’ve lost touch with, and it was weird how we even met to begin with. We met during a school trip that we took in the 11th grade to Washington D.C. She’s from Pasadena, and I’m from San Diego and the program was only a week long and there were thousands of people at the conference from all over the country and around the world. So it’s real precious that we’ve remained friends for 7 years. We used to chat everyday till really early in the morning and then go to school the next day. I’ve visited her a few times when she was in Davis, which is where she is now.

After she left, I was just checking e-mails and stuff. Nothing really exciting, although I do find something very interesting while reading e-mail. I am subscribed to an online vendor which sells Japanese things in America. They have a little distribution center in San Diego and the people are American and we also teachers in Japan too. So I could really relate to them, but its spam. I never signed up for it, but it keeps on coming. I haven’t blocked it because the stuff they teach you is really interesting. They also give a little tid-bit of information about Japanese culture and customs. It’s very interesting and I learn a lot from them. They also sell a bunch of stuff, but I don’t really know what they sell because I never read that part of the e-mail. But I like it and I’m learning about Japanese culture through other American eyes, who are really Japanized.

Going to Shinjuku and Kamakura

I only had two plans today, but it would take up the whole day. I didn’t feel that today was extremely hot, and I think that a cooling off period is on its way to Yokohama. That’s something I’m really glad to think about. My first order of business was to get up to go to Shinjuku. My appointment time was noon, and it usually takes me about 2 hours to get there which means I needed to leave my house at 10am. But that was about the time that I woke up today. So I needed to haul ass to get ready and get out the door. I was walking incredibly fast today too and arrived at the station about 10 minutes late. But since I over calculate the times of the train, I ended up making up the time since I took a bit faster train to Shibuya and then the Yamanote line to Shinjuku. I arrived exactly there at noon, and then I got an e-mail from CNto saying she would be 10 minutes late. She actually wasn’t 10 minutes late. She was at the spot where we were going to meet. I wasn’t. I was watching the big screen of the Studio Alta… my bad. But I found her and we started walking down the street towards Tokyo Mitsubishi.

We were looking for a place to have lunch. I mean we were walking all over the place. We walked back to the South exit, and then back to where we were again. Then after we walked around the block, we went through the buildings. It was raining a little at this time. I thought that was weird since there wasn’t even a cloud in the sky in Yokohama when I left and now it was raining in Shinjuku. We decided to go underground. She knew a little pathway that she used to take when she went to school at N.I.C. It was near the Seibu line and the JR Shinjuku line. They had a little area where there was food. We decided to go to Tonkatsu Wako. It is pretty famous for pork cutlets. We saw it in Odaiba when we went there last month, so we thought it would be good to have our last meal together there.

We had a lunch set. It was pretty good, I don’t really know what we ordered, but it was good and had all the things that we needed to be full. I was full very fast for some reason. It could be because I don’t eat regularly, which is really not good. We talked there for a few hours. We talked about many things. I didn’t want to talk about my ex-girlfriend, but the topic came up and I talked about it a little. It’s weird how I got involved in something that I never should have gotten involved with to begin with. Someone or something dragged me in and since I didn’t know about it for 4 months, I was at a handicap. I mentioned before that “he” had e-mailed me, so it was weird. We didn’t talk about that too much. She was more interested in what’s in my future. She knows that I have feelings for one of her friends, and she’s working on finding out more details. She’s very confident in me for some reason. She really believes that I should give it a try. I’m a bit cautious because my Japanese level really isn’t what it could be or even should be. I know that communication is extremely important in a relationship, so I’m holding back on that. But then I know if I wait too long that I will have the pain of regret, which will even be worse. So I told her that I’m willing to try it and started making a plan of how I’m going to do it.

We also talked about things that happened in the past year while I was gone. Many of my friends have been going through many issues. Some problems were within themselves and others involving other people. It’s been very troublesome for them and it’s sad that I wasn’t there for them when they needed it. But it’s good that it all has passed now. I think everyone learned something from their experiences. I was worried about my friend’s experience this past year too with her psycho stalker. He’s psycho and what makes it worse is that he’s sexually repressed and hormonally imbalanced too. So he’s a raging pervert with no shame. He feels better by degrading others, so as you could imagine, he’s not a nice guy. And he’s been bugging my friend, who really is one of the sweetest people I know. We were also talking about her future and how she’s doomed to live alone or find someone horrible because her options aren’t very flattering. I would like to introduce some guys to her, but I don’t know any really good guys that would make a good match. I know some good guys, but then I find out that they really aren’t as great as they make themselves to be. I’m a bit disappointed in the pool of guys that are around me…

Anyways, we had to split around 3:30pm because she was going to meet her best friend at Shinjuku station, and pretty much gave me the boot. I kindly excused myself so she wouldn’t seem rude, but I think she wanted me to leave when her best friend got there. I think she had important things to talk about with her and I didn’t want to interfere with that. I was planning to go back home, but I decided that since I was already out, that I would just go straight to Kamakura for the fireworks.

The station isn’t very far from my house so I exited the train using my commuter pass and then entered again using my suica card. It was only 160 yen opposed to 330 yen from Yokohama, so I did save a bit of money. When I arrived at Ofuna station, it was already really packed. I mean we were all crammed into there waiting on the platform for the train. I mean when the platform was already cramped that the train ride itself was worse. I’m sure that it was only half of the people on the platform got onto the train and we were pushed in there too. So it was worse than a can of sardines because people were hot and sweaty already. The ride was short though. Only two stops and then everyone got off.

I didn’t know where the fireworks were, so I just followed people to the beach. I had been here last month with YSki, so I was already familiar with the area. I decided to get a little area next to the beach on the sidewalk. I did have to deal with a bush at my back, but it was ok because I actually had a seat. Not that I would use it when the fireworks began because people would stand in front of me. The thing that made it worse was that there wasn’t a wind. That meant, when the fireworks exploded, the clouds that were left behind covered the next explosion. And as the night went on, more and more clouds would be built up so people couldn’t see the fireworks at all. It was so bad in fact that a lot of people were leaving less than half way into it. I stayed to the end, but there wasn’t much to see, so it was a bit of a disappointment. I didn’t get the best spot either since there was a street light in my way. It didn’t take too long to get back to the station, since everyone pretty much started leaving half way into it. I think it only took me about 20 minutes to get back onto the train to go back home. I only went to Ofuna and then walked home from there. I stopped by KFC to get some chicken for some dinner. I didn’t get any yakitori or yakiniku at the festival because the lines were long so I wanted to get something similar. Plus, I haven’t had chicken in a long time too.

I also had a little conversation tonight with the girl that I like. I’m not sure if she likes me or not, but we were sending e-mails to each other back on forth for a little while. She was asking when my friend would be leaving to go back to America. I told her in two days because she was planning to invite her to our little drinking pow-wow on the 19th. I found it odd that she would ask me about her friend from high school that will be leaving Japan for America. And not asking her friend, CNto, about me and when I would have time to go and meet them. CNto said that was a good sign for me, which I think so too. It’s a major step for someone in Japan because they naturally build a barrier with people not from their culture, plus she doesn’t speak English, AT ALL. Another frustrating point that I have to admit. Her level is actually worse than my students because my students have English classes, but her school didn’t offer it when she was in High School, so it’s all a foreign language to her. She has no basis for English, so perhaps I could help with that. Since, you know, I’m an English teacher and that’s what I get paid to do. But we’ll see.