Time slips by

It's looking like the end of week 2. Wow, how did that happen?

This week was spent traveling with my class. We met everyday for something or another.

On Monday we went to the publishing company of Shonen Magazine, the second most popular manga weekly in Japan. We all learned as to how intense the process of making a weekly manga magazine is. Sometimes the artist and editors go back and forth for 30 hours straight just during the planning stages.

Tuesday we went to the Edo period museum and Asakusa. The museum was nice, but I still hate Asakusa. Tourist traps left and right.

Wednesday was just class. Way to go Wednesday!

Thursday we went on a tour of the imperial palace. I was happy to do this because it was something I failed to do last time. It turned out to be a mistake. It was extremely hot that day and standing around exposed to the sun was not really a priority. The palace itself was pretty awesome, but the tour was way too long for the extremely small distance we covered. I chilled out afterward by going to the Sony Building.

Highlight of the week was the concert at Club Quattro on Thursday. I saw Ogre You Asshole and Eastern Youth. They were both pretty fantastic. I didn't really know how big a deal Eastern Youth was before the concert, but the crowd was flipping out. They seemed really Fugazi influenced (even had a bell above the ride cymbal). I am definitely missing out by not knowing the lyrics. OYA was great live. Their drummer is unbelievable. He was consistently using rudiments and one handed rolls, and was just so fluid overall.

Friday was spent at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. The museum there depicted WWII as a defensive war for Japan, brought on by America pressuring Japan with cutting off our exports to them. Not once was the alliance with the Axis mentioned, nor Nanking, nor anything else one would think would be a slightly important historical detail that might portray Japan in any sort of negative light. Yeah.

Later in Akihabara, I discovered a shop completely devoted to selling sd cards to hack a Nintendo DS so you can put music and however many games you want on it at the same time....

Such a wide range of emotions

So for homework I had to watch Grave of the Fireflies. It is the most depressing movie I have ever seen. It was like Life is Beautiful, except instead of a Father and Son its a Preteen and his 3 year old sister. Also, there are no Nazis as evil figures, only the circumstances of war. I was devastated.

So how do I turn that sorrow around? THE TAIKO GAME FOR WII! It suddenly appeared at my home stay house (along with a wii). Here's a video for anyone not familiar with what I am talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KATvgGfJ2f8

To top it off, before class today we watched the Chinpokomon episode of South Park. Awesome.

A week gone already?!

Right about now marks a week from when my plane touched down.

It's been great so far. All in all pretty much the same place it was last year. I have put my knowledge to good use and have managed to hit up most of my favorite spots in a week. I have been met with some great success.

1. Super Smash Brothers (Japanese N64 version)
Picked this up in Akihabara. I swore I couldn't find it last year, but this time they had like 5 all lined up in a row. The 12-pack is psyched (especially Jamar who will get to play Purin).

2. New CDs
I got these in the Shinjuku Tower Records. The new Shugo Tokumaru and the other Mass of the Fermenting Dregs E.P. They are both quite excellent, but the new Shugo really got me. He focused a little more on his intricacies that I love, and spent a little less time on the bubbly folk tunes. Also, he kicks ass on a banjo too.

3. Nintendo DS with dictionary software
This one is a bit of a funny story. I bought a Casio Japanese dictionary last summer. It's main purpose (other than to look up words I don't know) was for me to write Kanji that I could not read and give me a meaning. I hadn't really used it since last summer, so when I pulled it out on the airplane when I was brushing up on Japanese, I was really surprised when it froze at the starting screen. Even changing the batteries did nothing. Every time I reset it, it would just freeze shortly after. Without my warranty to get a new one, and not finding anyone who could fix it, my parents were just urging me to buy a new one. However, these things are waaaay to expensive and I couldn't bring myself to do it. So I decided to ask around the shops in Akihabara about this dictionary software I heard about for the Nintendo DS. It was the standard for English speaking teenagers visiting Japan a few years ago. I managed to find it in a small store, and bought it with a DS lite for about half the price of a new Casio.

Yesterday my class went on a field trip to Harajuku and Akihabara. I found some actually funny tee-shirts that I would consider buying, and some cool CDs. I didn't have time to check everything out in the Record store so I will go back there, and as for the shirts, it is so rare that I find a tee-shirt in tokyo that isn't super trendy ($$$) or super nerdy ([]_[]). However, this time around I am on a budget. I have about a third of the funds I had last time I was in Tokyo (to be spent in a time span of half the length), so I haven't bought any concert tickets yet. I do have my eye on one that looks really good (Eastern Youth and Orge You Asshole) and I will probably end up going to it. Also the Fuji Rock Lineup this year is kind of ridiculous (what is this Tom York and Flea project?).

So far some of my best adventures this time around have been the result of messing up and having to run off someplace in Tokyo to try to fix it. On that note, time to find my lost ID at the Ueno station.

P.S. Went to a maid cafe with my class. Extremely tame. Somewhat of a let down.

For reals-I am back

Waseda University to the rescue. Although they had like 30 layers of protection, I finally have fast, reliable wireless internet that I can use anywhere on campus. Adventure 2 for the day is getting my phone to work again.

I am back in Tokyo, and things feel about the same. Unfortunately I am in the Funabashi area and am about an hour from Waseda and Shinjuku. I did not realize how perfect it was to be living in the Iidabashi area until now.

Waseda is pretty amazing. The campus is really nice, and it was packed with people today. The other Yale students and the one Princeton student are awesome as well. I have already had one experience in a restaurant this morning where a bunch of the other students turned to me to translate and give advice. Apparently I might have the second most Japanese speaking experience out of all of us. Interestingly enough, the student who speaks Japanese the best has been abroad since last summer. We actually hung out a little last year.

Mostly I have been sleeping and fretting about not having internet, so I have not explored that much at all. Although my first internet cafe experience was pretty cool. It doubled as a Manga kissaten, but I didn't see anyone browsing. It seemed like the focus was the internet/reading in private.

Hopefully next time I will have more interesting stories to tell.

This post cost me 200￥

Just after I found out how to get the yen symbol. I spent a few minutes figuring out how to write in roman characters again.

I am in an internet cafe and the clock is ticking. Back in Tokyo and it feels great. But really? No internet.

My host family has dial up and there is no open wifi for me to use. Seeing as I have not been able to reactivate my phone yet, the internet would have been the only way for me to contact the outside world. Other important questions, such as what is there to do in Funabashi and what is the cheapest way to get back and forth from Waseda, remain unaswered.

Hopefully it will work out, since I would really like to get this blog going again.