I'm watching you bitches

I just put a counter on my site. It's on the left-hand side below the Archive section. I messed up because I told it to indicate page reloads instead of unique visitors, so I'll fix that later when I get a chance. When I go to the site that provides it though, I can see all of these statistics about the site. Pretty neat. I got the counter from Skobac's site since I consider him an authority figure on all things internet-related. Plus it was really easy to just steal what he did on his site instead of looking for my own.

I work at 5 today, so I have some time to write emails. I hope everyone back in the states (capital S?) is having fun and thinking about me constantly.

And Kevin, it's awkward that you legally changed your name to Kevin Egan since mine is now Benn Skobac. We should have talked first.

Sorry everyone

I love getting emails so please dont stop writing. I've run out of time at this internet cafe so I'm not going to have a chance to respond to anyone. I spent so much time uploading all of my photos and updating the blog that 3 hours just wasn't enough time. I'll come back here in a few days and write back to everyone from the past week or so. Sorry again. I love the shit out of you guys.

I'm too black for BET, Pt. 2 of 2

I wish I came up with the title of this post. Its all Ghostface Killah. But it applies if by black I mean white and by BET I mean Japan.

On a related/unrelated note. I posted a mock conversation that I had with this Canadian girl a few days ago and I only noticed today that what I wrote didn't show up. Because what I type for this blog gets rewritten in HTML anytime I use the less than or greater than bracket things, the text doesn't make it to the site. So I fixed that, but I don't know if there were other times in this blog that I used those keys. I'm not about to reread everything either.

Yeah, so, I'm done looking up to these people that I wouldn't let babysit my pet rock back in the states. Which randomly reminds me of a trip I took a few days earlier. I've been having these cravings for shitty fast-food and snacks lately. I went into a Mister Donut on Tuesday, which is the Japanese answer to Dunkin' Donuts. They make the slightly boastful claim: 'world's best donuts and freshest coffee.' Fair enough, here comes the taste test. I bought an almond frosted donut and stood on the train platform, salivating, waiting for it to get less busy so I could eat it (its considered rude to eat or drink in public I've been told). In my humble opinion, Mister Donut isn't fit to sniff the dick of Krispy Kreme. World's best? Where do you get off?

So after I walked down to Sakae I made my way up this long, narrow park towards Nagoya Castle. All of Nagoya's sister cities have pavilions there, and I took a bunch of pictures. Los Angeles, Mexico City, Sydney, and some city in China were the ones I saw, but there may have been more in the opposite direction. I got hungry near the TV Tower and stopped in a McDonald's (that fast-food craving again). I made what Skobac would call a 'rookie mistake' though, and ordered the Italian sandiwch thing that they're hocking for the Olympics in Torino. Two big macs would have been so much better. Oh man, that would be so good right now.

I had an Aussie take a picture of my in front of the stupid tower and then walked all the way to the castle. Admission for museums here is really cheap and I'm into that. It was less than $5 to get in and I spent an hour taking the tour. They really play up the whole 'those fucking Americans destroyed our priceless castle' thing too much though. They had black and white photos of the original castle burning and I feel like they just overdid it. I also felt slightly out of place as the only white person there. I'm sure I was being judged quietly by everyone there: 'thanks for destroying our cultural heritage you American scum.' Well, next time you want to kill 20 million+ people in East Asia and thousands of Americans you'd just better think again, huh?

It was probably all in my head though, as everyone I met there was really nice. You're not allowed to take photos of any kind in the museum, but I turned my flash off and just avoided the guards on every floor. The photos all look a little blurry in my opinion but without a flash and leaving my camera in daylight mode can explain that away.

After I left the castle I was sick of walking and it was after 5pm, so I made my way for the towers. I accidentally walked into some old shrine and got a few more pictures though. It was on my walk away from the shrine that a bus-full of high school girls flirted with me. I got back home after 6pm and today I'm just chilling out. I want to hit this internet cafe at least once a week with some pictures to upload, but we'll see how that holds up over time.

Trip downtown, Pt. 1 of 2?

So yesterday I was determined to use my inertia to go downtown and see some things. I had no real destination other than the international center, but I wound up spending over 6 hours walking around. I took a semi-rapid to the Nagoya towers (320 yen one-way) and stopped at the tourist information center there. A guy gave me a map and told me how to get to the international center. The Nagoya Int'l Center has a foreign language library and this message board that I've mentioned in another post. I only knew about these things through chatting with my co-workers. Anyway, the library is alright. It has some stuff that I would like to read and its fairly easy to get there. I didn't bring my alien registration card (which I haven't received yet from the Obu immigration office) or the certificate that proves I've applied for one, so I couldn't take out any books. I took a look at this 'fluids exchange' board and it seemed innocent enough. A lot of 'looking for an Australian teacher to help me learn English, willing to teach Japanese in exchange!' type of things. I can see how that turns into fucking though. Maybe if I'm feeling lonely or horny or something I'll fuck around with it, but not yet.

So after I was turned away from the library I asked the staff where I could get my watch fixed. It looked like the battery died, but how could I possibly know what's wrong with it? They pointed me towards a shop and using my map I was off again. Maybe a 15 minute walk got me there and it was 1000 yen to replace the battery. Really nice people in the shop. Some older woman tried to chat with me, but she spoke absolutely no English. I was able to say that my Japanese is shit, I'm from America, and thank you for your help to them, but that was my limit. Learning Japanese should be my first priority I think. The Japanese people who seem put off by me are ususally calmed right the fuck down when I bow a little, smile, and try to say something to them in Japanese. It makes me feel good too.

I'm still a freak of nature most places that I go, but what hurts me helps me out in other places. While I was walking around Nagoya a whole bus full of high-school girls got my attention by yelling and waved to me. I waved back and the giggled their little under-aged asses off. Also a nice touch.

After the watch shop, I walked for about 20 or 30 minutes down some major road to the Sakae region of the city. My friends here have told me repeatedly that they live in Sakae and how awesome it is to be so central to the city. Yes, Sakae is central, but no, you don't live anywhere near it. I walked there yesterday and I knew at all times where I was in relation to Free Bell and it would have taken over 25 minutes to walk there. Unless Sakae is as big as all of Boston (which it's not) than you don't live there.

After my training was done, I got a beer with the guy who trained me, Ben from Manchester. He told me, among other things, that I should try and not look up to my co-workers (I hope I'm not corrupting his message). He said its natural since they've been here for months and know a lot more about the area than I do. He was right too. I have been looking up to them and letting them tell me where to go and where to shop. I think I'm done with that. Its funny too, because talking with them I find most of them very unimpressive. But when it came to talking about Nagoya and Japan and local things, I took all of their advice as the truth. Well, it turns out they don't really know shit about anything and I think, like I said in an earlier post, I'm going to put some distance between us. I still haven't bought a cell phone here because I'm afraid that after I do they're going to be able to call me whenever they do anything and I'm going to get roped into their tight little group. They're fine people but I doubt that any single one of them has anything in common with me and they're not who I would call friends. They're acquaintances at best and after I leave here, they'll be gone forever. I do like Rachel from Australia, that British guy Tim who went back to San Diego, and Ben, the British guy from Manchester who trained me. They're the coolest people I've met so far, but Ben is older and far away and at a different point in his life. Tim was cool, but he was only visiting, and Rachel is someone I'd like to hang out with, but she's dating my roommate and is that weird? Anyway. Let me check on those Flickr photos. I'll finish this thought...

Work and Miscellany

So I had my first kid at work. I was under the impression I wasn't going to have kids until March 6, but things change. It was a one-on-one session, and he belongs to the youngest group of kids taught at Nova. I think he was 3 or 4, but the Kinder group covers ages between 3 and 6. Anyway, he was pretty cute and it was almost fun. He kept losing interest in what we were doing (I don't blame him, its boring and repetitive) and would either wander to the window or just kind of slump down on the floor and stare at the wall. At one point I tried to get him to make a 'f' sound, but this devolved into him spitting a lot. He did that thing where you flap your tongue and spit all over the damned place. Well, he wandered around to my side of the table and did that all over my sleeve and tie and I almost lost it. I felt his spit land on my cheek and I stopped smiling and said in a tone that translates easily to Japanese 'sit down and don't do that again.' He caught on that I wasn't joking and the rest of the lesson went pretty smooth. Work moves forward like clockwork but I got my first compliment the other day. One of the Japanese staff told me the name of some student (didn't catch it) and said that she/he said I was the best. It felt pretty good, but I think some of my girl students have crushes on me, so it might not have been genuine.

First Full Weekend and Presents for Everyone!

I'm downloading the pictures that I took over the past couple days onto this computer right now. I went to the grocery store and took a few shots on... maybe Tuesday. Yeah, I think it was three days ago. Almost all of the other shots came from yesterday. I hopped on a train bound for downtown and with nowhere specific in mind I wandered all over the fucking place. I went to the Nagoya International Center, the American Consulate, Sakae, some little store to get my watch fixed, the Nagoya Castle, and a modest little green space they call Central Park. Someone should call our PR people and get them to change that. Come up with your own names Japan. Unless of course we named it that before we left. In which case, nice job on the name MacArthur.

I came here for the culture and the food

I AM A ROBOT. Whenever any of my students ask me why I came to Japan, I fall back on the textbook answer. Food and culture. 'Oh, Japanese culture is very popular in America, Dragonball-Z, Sushi, etc;' blah blah blah. It seems to make them happy that America knows who they are. In addition to my regular classes I'll do something called 'Voice' soon. Its where I get a bunch of Japanese people and we all just pick a topic and chat. The regular classes are very rigidly structured, so to just chat with Japanese people is exciting for me. I've been warned however about hot-button topics. No religion or politics (although politics isn't always off limits - its more for our benefit than theirs [or so I'm told]), and definitely avoid everything that happened between say, 1932 and 1945. But seriously, nothing over here is older than the 1950s. There are tons of old temples and great sites and shit, but they all say 'rebuilt in 1953' or whatever. This country got housed.

Bruce, I was actually offended that you hadn't been posting random comments earlier. Rock on my naked and peanut-butter covered friend.

So, I wrote some postcards today, but I don't have mailing addresses for most of you. Where do I send the cards for Kevin, Jon, Mark, Luke, Santosh, Jarod, Dave, Jeff, Ari, Jeremy, Conor, Bruce and everyone else? If you send me your mailing address I'll get right on sending something to you.　

Let's see... So I've gotten positive feedback about the blog, but I don'ｔ know what you all like reading about. Any questions?

I'm going to pick up my UFJ ATM card in Obu today. It was sent to me but I wasn't home in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, so now I need to take a train to the post office to get it. Weird that it would have missed me on a fucking Monday at 3pm. Idiots.

I don't think I'm going to let anyone in Japan know about this blog so I can use it to badmouth some of them and be honest with all of you back home. I made plans last Thursday to meet this socially-awkward Canadian girl at a bar tonight. Ｉ think I'm gonna blow her off though. I don't have a cell phone to call her but I don't think I care anyway. I got stuck riding a train with her for over half an hour and the conversation went something like this:

Weirdo: (blah blah blah)
Captain Awesome: (blah blah blah)...yeah, so I eat the shit out of bananas because you need to get on a waiting list for a melon.
Weirdo: haha, yeah, me too.
(silence while she takes in how cool I am)
Weirdo: I ate an apple the other day too.
Captain Awesome: Sure.
Weirdo: Yeah, there's this place right by me that sells them.
Captain Awesome: ...ok.
Weirdo: It was red, but I don't know what kind it was.
Captain Awesome: (oh no, is she actually talking about a fucking apple?)
Weirdo: I like Granny Smith ones.
Captain Awesome: (well, I just freed up some time on Tuesday)

ROAR!

Kids Training and Osu Kannon

When Red Rock closed on Wednesday night, everyone who was still in the bar formed an ad-hoc group bound for Karaoke (Jeff can let me know if I used 'ad-hoc' properly). It occurred to Tim, Rachel, and I that our group had picked up a few undesirables, so we left to get some food. We went to a diner around the corner from where Rachel lives and got some curry and rice. There was a coin machine that you ordered from (everything had a picture) and then you gave a food ticket to the people at the counter. It was different but perfect for what we are: unable to say anything in Japanese. Tim and I crashed at Rachel's for the night and I ate a bunch of her candy. Apparently there's something called a Crunchie Bar that Australians and the British love. I've never seen one before, but then again I still get lost in Greenfield every now and then. So its a piece of honeycomb-like candy, covered in Cadbury chocolate. They're quite awesome. Its funny that I dont remember anyone's name from that night but can perfectly recreate that candy.

The next day I had to get up early, hungover, and go to Kids Training in Toyohashi. Now I can teach kids in three age groups, 4 to 6, 6 to 9, and 9 to 12. Thats quite scary as Im unfit to teach anyone anything in my opinion. Today is my second day off (the first was after my initial training) so I went to Osu Kannon in Nagoya and bought a rice cooker. Osu Kannon is an old temple, but theres a shopping area adjacent to it. Its not nice like Newbury Street, and its not particularly cheap. I think its like Washington Street in Boston. Tourists go there and you can find some stuff you need, but after a while you realize that its nothing special. I bought a rice cooker for 4300 Yen and then spent an hour trying to translate the instructions. No such luck. I've started asking random people I meet in the day to tell me what certain Kanji mean. I'll see a character over and over again, so I'll ask any person who I have an excuse to talk to to explain it to me. I drew the Kanji for 'between' and demanded one of my students tell me what it means. I just drew another one for the girl who works at the front desk of this internet cafe. She pronounced it for me, so now I can use my dictionary to look it up. Its not a perfect system, but I'm making some progress. Sunshine has a bunch of Japanese textbooks, so I'm going to borrow a few and start learning again soon. Theres also something called the International Center in Nagoya where you can go to take books out and post want-ads on the Student Exchange. Rachel said this is known as the 'fluids exchange' since its where Japanese people post when they want to meet Westerners and vice versa for 'cultural' and 'lingustic' education. And by 'cultural' and 'lingustic' I mean face-sitting and a finger in the butt. It just occurred to me that my entire family has this blog's address. Here's hoping none of them are checking it.

I put up some of the pictures from Osu Kannon, but my camera died so there arent many. I forgot to charge it after Red Rock. Ill probably go back there a few times though, so Ill fill in the gaps later.

Red Rock and New Pics

So, I posted just 4 days ago, but it seems like much longer. My days are packed and I feel like I've already been here for a month. Lets see... the last time I posted was after my first two days of work, so since then... shit. What did I do? I should start bringing my journal to this internet cafe so I dont forget to write about anything. On Valentine's Day I was invited to watch an episode of Lost at my friend Mike's house in Free Bell. Free Bell is an apartment complex in the Sakae region of Nagoya. Sakae is like saying 'downtown' I think. Its a great location since you're in the heart of Nagoya and its not any more expensive to live there than where I am in Kyowa in Nova housing. It seems like most of my friends from work have moved there, but I'm not convinced that it's where I belong yet. Anyway, so a bunch of us went over to Mike's place and watched Lost, which, by the way, is beyond crap. I met a few more people including this British guy who's just visiting Japan. He has lived in San Diego for the past 5 years and he's great. Best sense of humor of anyone I've met so far. I had to catch the last train to Kyowa at 12:15 so that was that.

Two days ago, after work, my friend Sunshine (She's from Melbourne and got here at the beginning of last month) invited me to this Aussie bar in Nagoya. There's an 'all you can drink' deal from 10 to 12 that everyone shows up for. I was told about 60% of everyone in the bar worked for Nova, but it was still nice to meet new people (I posted a bunch of pictures from that night: click on the Flickr bar to see them). I met Jeremy from central Vermont who invited me to a pick-up Basketball game. James, his friend from New York state, was working in the Hancock tower in Boston while I was. I worked on the fifth floor for IBT and he was on the 39th for some ad firm. This older wannabe writer guy was talking to me for a while about books and about his career. I made an extra effort to forget everything he said to me, so no details. Actually, here's a detail: he was completely lame. This white guy with an American accent was telling me that Ben means shit in japanese. His Jamaican (he might have been an Indian though because I was too drunk to distinguish) friend repeated this fact to me over and over again until I wanted to smash them both in the face with my glass. I asked a Japanese girl later what Ben means in Japanese and she gave me a blank stare. When I said 'daiben' she cracked up though. Daiben would be like, big shit, or very shit or something. So she definitely picked up on that one. So Ben means shit I guess. Fair enough.

And there was some little fuck of a guy (who actually cracked me up later when I started to fuck with him and he was too drunk to pick up on any of it) who pissed off everyone in the bar. He had an accent but insisted he was from Weston, outside of Boston (and I'm unsure whether to believe him or not since who knows Weston but people from the area?). He walked up to me and rubbed my Boston hat with his hand (announcing right away he was a douche bag) and told me he liked it. When I asked him where he was from he said Boston in a thick Australian or British accent (he was already slurring his words at that point). Then he gave me that familiar glazed-over drunken stare where you can't tell what someone's about to say or do. Then I asked him if he was fucking with me and he said 'yeah, so what if I am?' Good point. I told him that he was the shortest person I'd ever met from Boston and thats when the guy from central Vermont stood in front of him and introduced himself (it was quite slick). Everyone in the bar was so friendly and I met most of the people there by the end of the night. Oh yeah, and that short guy ran his mouth to someone bigger and drunker than I was and he got pushed to the floor. I took some pictures of him arguing with a bunch of people right before he got tossed. Later, he told me that I was a really good looking guy and probably was getting laid all the time. Well, he was half right.

First few days

WEll, I have finished my first two days of work. This job is easy, but I can see how it might get really boring. The lessons are all taught in more or less the same way. The kids are great (I get a lot of older guys who work at a R&D facility for Pfizer). I was already late once though. My second day on the job I got there about 10 minutes late. The penalty for showing up late is that you dont get paid for the session you miss and you get fined four additional sessions. Im not sure if the Japanese staff will cut me some slack as it was only my second day, so Ill just have to wait and see. My co-workers are ok, but theyre not necessarily the people I would be friends with back in Boston. At my branch, theres a girl from New Zealand, two British guys, and a girl from Australia. The branch is small, so there are English-speakers from nearby Higashiura who come over sometimes to teach on busy days. My roommate and a guy I already met from Camden, NJ are there maybe once a week. Everything is great still but I need to go open a bank account today. Oh yeah, so my schedule is as follows:

Monday - 5pm to 9pm
Tuesday - 1:20pm to 9pm
Wednesday - 5pm to 9pm
Thursday - DAY OFF
Friday - DAY OFF
Saturday - 10am to 5:40pm
Sunday - 11;40am to 7pm

Panty-sniffers unite!

I was talking to Rachel (my roommate's Australian girlfriend) and she told me that they used to have vending machines in Tokyo that sold used women's panties. They were pulled after (I guess) they got enough complaints. You know, they FINALLY make something that we all use and love cheap and convenient, and someone has to go and ruin it. First smoking in restaurants and now this!? That really grinds my gears.

CNN article

If this article is true, does anyone else feel like they owe George W. Bush an apology? I can't believe that I just read a few paragraphs on CNN and now doubt everything I know about the Bush administration. And if this is true, why aren't we hearing more about it? Isn't it exactly the type of evidence that those of us who hate Bush need? I don't know. It would provide the rationale behind everything that he's done over the past few years (wire-tapping, the Patriot Act, and maybe even torturing suspected terrorists abroad). Those are all things that I don't think we should be doing, but if it can be proven that those were all necessary steps to avoid 10 9/11 style attacks, then shouldn't we all get behind those decisions? I think it's easy to hate Bush if you don't take additional attacks seriously, but what if they're more likely than anyone thinks? I don't know. I was going to talk about Japan some more, but that article fucked my head up...

I need a lice cooker

So this is my first day off since I started training. I teach eight classes tomorrow between 10am and 5:30pm (I think) in Handa. Saturday is the busiest day of the week and I'm nervous all over again about it. On the positive side, this internet cafe rocks. There's free soda, coffee, tea, and hot chocolate for customers, so Im hella taking advantage of this hot chocolate. Also, I just made my first trip to a bathroom in a public place and thankfully there were urinals and western toilets. I dont know what I'm going to do when I encounter one of these Japanese squat-toilets, but Ill keep you informed.

For my Google Earth users, enter the following coordinates --- 35 02'05.44" N 136 57'15.80" E --- to see my train station. That's the Kyowa stop, and the specific location I chose was from where I took some photos last night (see Flickr).

If you type in --- 35 02'00.00" N 136 56'59.71" E --- you can see my apartment, and if anyone wants the coordinates of anything else, let me know and Ill look them up.

Pillow Incident

Well, here is my evidence. I took three shots and you find them on Flickr by clicking on the sidebar.

Busy busy busy. I'll upload my pics on Friday

So Ive been training in Toyohashi for the past two days. Toyohashi is a pretty big city, an hour away on the local trains and 38 minutes away on an express. I have my third and final session tomorrow, Thursday, from 1:20pm to 9pm. I have already taught three classes all the way through and one half class. Its actually pretty daunting. Everyone I spoke too told me it was the easiest thing in the world and I'd be bored out of my mind. Not true during training. The classes are 40 minutes long and you can have between 1 and 4 students at a time. For a single student, theres not enough to do and for four (which I havent had yet) its way too much. On my very first class, because the student didnt show up, one of the Japanese staff sat in and I practiced with her. It was garbage. Pure garbage. I flew through everything I had to do and then just -- very awkwardly -- killed the last 12 minutes. The second student I had was a girl in high school and it went better, but I still finished way too quickly and was forced to sit and repeat the same role-playing scenario over and over with her. I dont think I can accurately explain how those last 10 to 15 minutes drag on when you dont have anything left to do. The last student I had was an older guy (he might have been 40) and his English was pretty awesome. He had been to over 30 countries and with the more advanced students you get to just kind of chat with them and avoid the boring reading exercises associated with the lower level students. So I just asked him about his friendships and crap like that. Much better though. So tomorrow I have four classes to teach and they're all groups of students. Im pretty stressed out over it. It may seem like the easiest job in the world, but when someone is sitting in front of you and you're trying to keep them interested and busy at the same time -- its kind of nerve-wracking. Especially when you have no idea what the fuck youre doing and its only your second day of training.

Im gonna go into Toyohashi tomorrow with this British guy, Paul, and get a few drinks. I have Friday off so Ill come back to this internet cafe and post the rest of my pictures and hopefully think of something more interesting to write. My roommate Brian is leaving for Thailand in the next two days and he'll be gone for two weeks. I suppose I'll need to find something to do...

More pics to come

I just upgraded my Flickr account so I can post all the pictures I want. Kevin - you have so many photos on your account, are you paying for this too? Howd you get around it?

Red, White, and Buuruu

So I went in for my first and last day of orientation yesterday. Out of the 8 of us there I was the only American. A Canadian girl tried to slip past me, but gave herself away with a reference to the CN Tower. So as the only American, I have to tell you: not so impressed with the other English speakers of the world. Except for the one British guy, a bunch of idiots in my opinion. Then again, I believe our arrogance is how foreigners identify us. Not much happened other than that. I have my schedule too - I work five days a week and get Thursday and Friday off. I work for 7 hours and 40 minutes on three of those days and only 4 hours on Monday and Wednesday. Thats a full schedule if youre confused. I know, it rocks. Im going to have as much disposable income here as I did in Boston too. The reason is that I was paying somewhere between 28 and 35% in state and federal taxes, and here Im paying less than 7%. How can they afford quasi-socialism with those numbers? Thats not like, the foreigner tax-rate either. Everyone pays that. Ummm... oh yeah. My address. If anyone feels the need to send me money, cookies, or a bookshelf, send it to the following address:

474-0061 Aichi-Ken
Obu-shi
6-63-2 Kyouwachou
#602 Sun City Wendy Court
JAPAN

Post cards and letters are welcome. Please dont send me drugs. They told us yesterday at orientation that they search all international packages at the border, and theres a no-tolerance policy with controlled substances. I get 2 years mandatory for both hard and soft drugs. Also, apparently I can be detained by the police for as long as they feel like and without what we might call a `reason.` I have three days of training in Toyohashi starting today at 1:20pm, so wish me luck and Ill be thinking of each one of you guys. Especially you, right there.

Im still alive, barely actually

Ok, so first off, I appreciate it when people post comments to this blog, so feel free. It was nice to see at least my dad and Conor are reading this thing. I will keep updating this thing if people are interested in reading it.

Last night I almost killed myself and burned the entire apartment building down. Im not even exaggerating (sp?). I fell asleep in my chilly room with my space heater on (you can already see where this is going) and I had my head pointed at it when I dozed off at 6 or 7. So what eventually woke me up was the combination of thick smoke in my room and the fire near my ear. I reacted quick as fuck though, and put out my flaming pillow on the balcony of our apartment. I was completely shaken up, since I lost about 10% of my pillow and almost some of my hair (I took pictures, which Ill upload at some point). After it stopped smoldering though, I got really depressed and lonely. It has come and gone like that since I arrived to be honest. Except for today. Today I woke up feeling great and my day has been continuously dope. As part of my little fire mishap I missed my train into the city and I missed my luggage being delivered. Those helped to bum me out by the way. But today I was able to reschedule a drop-off and managed to see Nagoya for the first time as well. My roommates girlfriend (the asian Australian girl from the bar a couple nights back) slept over and woke up around 2pm. Her and I hung out for an hour or so and talked in the apartment. She was going into the city (she lives in the Sakae part of town) and invited me to tag along, so I went. It was the first time I had to navigate the subways here too. Crazy. Honestly. Ill take a picture of what Im dealing with and see if any of you can figure it out faster than I did. In Nagoya I felt like a freak more than I do in Obu-shi. People dont really make eye-contact with you when youre a white westerner, but they do glance at you and sneak peeks and shit. its a very alienating feeling. we walked into a few stores so she could shop for a gift for my roommate and they sell some weird shit over here. I dont know what the preoccupation with rape and jail-bait is all about, but its there my friend, its there. Ummm... I know there was some things I wanted to tell you guys about... Oh yeah, so jaywalking. No Japanese person jaywalks (its illegal here too) but all westerners do. A japanese person will wait at a crosswalk for the signal on a street that hasnt seen traffic in a decade. Also, things here arent as cheap or as scarce as I was led to believe. Now, this is Obu, so its different, but milk is cheap and refridgerated. Who knew? I think my half an hour is close to up, so I hope your porn in the USA is still guilt-free and the liberty still flows like wine.

First post from Obu-shi

Ok, I added some pictures to my Flickr thing but I reached my limit for the month pretty quickly. I really dont want to pay for Flickr but unless someone can tell me how to finish uploading my pictures, I suppose Ill be forced to. Ok, so Obu-shi is alright. Its a town right outside of Nagoya and I can reach the Sakae area of the city in about 15 minutes. My luggage is going to arrive tonight at 9 from the airport and not a second too soon. Ive been wearing the same tshirt and jeans for 4 days now. I ate breakfast at a 7-11 this morning and I realize how pathetic that sounds, but I have good reasons. First of all getting food from a 7-11 isnt the same in Japan as it is in the USA. The quality of the food is a lot better and... well, thats about it. Im still too intimidated to go to a restaurant alone (you should have just seen the ridiculous exchange I had at this internet cafe). My Japanese is non-existant. I thought I would be in decent shape but I might as well have learned Russian. My apartment is alright. The rooms are small and the one Im in doesnt have a window. Its bigger than the third room and warmer right now though. Since we will get a one week warning if another person moves in with us I can make the decision to switch rooms again. Brian Cochran, my roommate, says the room that Im currently in is horrible in the summer, so I may switch when it gets warmer out. Brian is, which is hillarious by the way, from Sudbury, Mass. Honestly. What the fuck? Seems like a really nice guy though. I crashed last night at 7pm but he woke me up around 9 and a bunch of our coworkers went out with us to kind of celebrate my arrival. We just had a few beers and ate some fried chicken stuff. They all seem really cool. An asian girl from Australia, a kid from Camden, NJ, another American from Florida named Mike, and one of their students came out. Im heading into Nagoya for the first time tonight to play Halo. Apparently theyre gamers and since I have nothing better to do, I guess I can school their asses. Since this cafe is across the street from my building, Ill be able to update frequently.