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| There seems to be some confusion, so just to be clear:
All further blogging can be accessed at www.slicedwater.com/blog
Pictures can be accessed at www.slicedwater.com/slicedphotos
Thanks for reading my Xanga, everybody, but those days are over. Sliced Water from here on out!
-Scott
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| Since Sliced Water is back in business, look for my next Japan blog at www.slicedwater.com/blog.
There are new pictures, please check them out! www.flickr.com/photos/jhscottio
Sorry that it's been a few days. I've been falling asleep at strange hours, and in a strange manner that I'm not used to--that is, actually going to sleep when I get tired! What a concept! Unfortunately, being in a new place and learning so many new things in such a short time seems to really take it out of me. Anyway, I'll try to do better in the future, so please bear with me for now.
My orientation has been going well...I'm making plenty of friends, and learning my way around campus and Kyoto. I've also been busy reuniting with lots of my old friends...I hung out with Yuki, and then Daisuke and Azusa! I went to Hirano Jinja both times, during the day with Yuki and at night with Daisuke and Azusa. The cherry blossoms are breathtaking. It's incredible that Hirano Jinja is hardly even mentioned when discussing places to see beautiful cherry blossoms -- this must mean that even more beautiful places exist! It kind of makes me wonder why I never felt like this back in America. It's either the scenery is more beautiful here, or I'm in more of a mood to appreciate it. Maybe it's a little of both.
Walking around campus during opening week is CRAZY. There are clubs EVERYWHERE, that do EVERYTHING, and all of them are desperate for new members. I saw an a capella club, at least five rock music clubs, a climbing club, an astronomy club, four or five martial arts clubs, a bunch of clubs decked out in samurai gear (complete with swords), art clubs, traditional japanese music club, three or four baseball clubs, a hockey club, a "soft tennis" club, an american football club, several rest-of-the-world football clubs, two or three cooking clubs (traditional Japanese and otherwise), clubs for both traditional and modern fashion...and I tried to stick to the least crowded pathways. There are at least four times as many different kinds of clubs as I listed here. I don't even want to begin to think about the sheer numbers of different clubs. It seems to me that Japan's pathologically conformist attitudes when it comes to how you should live your life get utterly chucked out the window where free time is concerned.
Speaking of free time...today I met up with one of my friends, and she showed me around some of Kyoto. We went to a department store (Izumiya [Fountain Shop]), an electronics store (Midoridenki [Green Electric]), and a dollar store (The Daiso! [The Daiso!]). After that, my friend hopped on a bus home, and I opened up my bus map to figure out the best way back to a train station. The way my bus map was laid out, it seemed like I was only a few blocks from the proper station, so I decided to hoof it. Little did I know that the blocks on the map were actually referring to whole DISTRICTS...two hours later, a slightly wearier, slightly wiser me stumbled onto the station I had been searching for. The one thing I'm grateful for: my stubbornness in resolutely not asking anyone for directions before I set out. I would have looked like an idiot.
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| Photos from Japan are up: www.flickr.com/photos/jhscottio
I hope everybody's April Fool's Day went off without a hitch...Japan is crazy enough, it doesn't need to set a day aside for it. Today marks my first full weekday in Japan. I'll be meeting up with my friend Yuki later today, and I can't wait to see her, and have her explain to me some of the insanity that goes on here.
I went to the Takashimaya Department Store yesterday, in downtown Kyoto. It was huge...eight floors, plus a basement level totally devoted to food. This basement had basically the same function as Reading Terminal Market, but it was 1.5 times as big. The department store proper was everything you ever imagined capitalism could be...it was a paradigm of wish fulfillment. I didn't exactly feel comfortable there, but I was able to find a good deal on lunch in the basement, so it was all good. After that, I hit up a 100 Yen store to buy some basic goods, such as a laundry basket, bowl, chopsticks (reusable), cup, handkerchief (there are no paper towels or air dryers in the bathrooms here), pot (to boil water for my instant noodles), and some more clothes hangers (there are no drying machines here, everything must be hung out to dry!).
I also went to a video game store...but video games here are priced kind of outrageously, as far as I can tell. For example, I imported a game from Japan, a Japanese-English dictionary for my Nintendo DS. After paying shipping and everything, the final price was $48.50. That was rough, but worth it for the value of the product. I found the same thing in the video game store, priced at 4800 yen. That puts the game at about $40 by itself! Without needing to cross the Pacific Ocean! Ridiculous! However, not everything in Japan is ridiculously overvalued...
I want to talk about convenience stores for a little bit. I was told to expect this, but you can't really appreciate it until you've experienced it -- Japanese convenience stores are INSANE. The major convenience stores here are Lawson, Circle K, and 7-Eleven, although there is some fierce competition from Family Mart and a plethora of 100 Yen Stores. As I described before, the convenience stores suffer from an overabundance of helpfulness during they day, with as many as four employees in the store at a time, although this means you usually don't have to wait to check out. They have tons of fresh fish, sandwiches, rice concoctions, onigiri, wraps, salads, more fish, cold drinks, heated drinks (on shelves, an amazing concept), snacks, candy, dumplings, more rice creations, even more fish, tons of magazines and books, fresh produce, ice cream, frozen foods, lots of alcohol, and MORE. All this in a space about the size of your average gas station food place in America. Also, the prices are better than America (although not on beverages). Heck, they even have gourmet Pringles. It is a heaven of snacks and deliciousness.
In fact, I can only find two complaints about Japanese convenience stores, and one of them only applies in small towns. My first problem is that, in small towns, there's not really anywhere to sit down to eat whatever you just bought. You just kind of have to carry it home. Really, there aren't benches or anything. This isn't so much a fault of the convenience store as of the society, and the problem is alleviated in cities, where there are these little squares to sit on all over the place. My second problem is something amazing, considering the cleanliness of Japan. There aren't really public trash cans anywhere. Most stores provide trash cans, and convenience stores especially, but considering that there is are at least two vending machines every 25 feet, you'd think it would be easier to find a place to get rid of the trash when you're done. But in a smaller town, it can't be done. You have to stumble across another convenience store or hope you get rushed by a town beautification squad.
Tomorrow, my orientation begins. I'll let you know how it goes.
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| I'm experiencing some technical difficulties with Sliced Water (it will all be sorted out in a few days), so for now, the first post of my Japan Blog will appear here:
So, here I am in Japan. I'll post some photos of my room and some parts of Kyoto soon, but for now I need to rest. I departed Philadelphia at 12:43 pm on Thursday, March 29th. The flight to Detroit took 1 hr and 45 minutes. The Detroit airport is an interesting place; apparently, it's a major hub for Northwest Airlines (the one I took), so a ton of Japanese come through there every day. That means that the guidance signs all over the airport have English and Japanese on them, which surprised me. I got on my flight and was off to Japan!!
The 13hr flight was pretty grueling. The guy sitting next to me got in a fight with the flight attendants because he felt that his seat was broken (they disagreed, even after sitting in it themselves) He was very, very rude to them, and the situation made me feel pretty uncomfortable, but eventually he quit complaining (after they switched him to another seat, and was told it was broken, too...). I rode out the flight in silence, getting up every few hours to stretch my legs and generally passing the time as best I could. I finally arrived in Japan at 6:25pm, Japan time! That's 5:25 a.m., EST.
I went through customs with no trouble, changed some of my money into yen, and got on the shuttle that took me to my dorm. On the shuttle, I talked to a Canadian named Didier who was going to visit his sister. Didiet was originally from the Ivory Coast, then studied in France, and now lives in Montreal. We talked about a lot of stuff, from American cultural imperialism to the metric system to Japanese attitudes towards Africans.
I arrived at my dorm and was given the tour, which was kind of disappointing. I'm living in a pretty crummy place, it seems. I need to ride public transportation for about an hour before I can get to my college, my room is incredibly tiny, and I can only access the internet in a computer lounge on the first floor. However, the people here seem cool, especially three Australians I met just after arriving. Although I don't like to generalize, I have never met or heard of an Australian who was anything less than really, amazingly cool. It looks like it'll be fun to live here, despite the crummy accommodations.
Things I have learned so far about Japan:
1) Cars can go anywhere. No matter how small the opening, there is a car tiny enough and a Japanese person crazy enough to make it happen. I don't think people even bother parallel parking, here - they just get out, pick the car up, and put it down wherever it needs to be. I'll show you some pictures later; there's simply no other explanation for some of these parking jobs. They're impossible.
2) Japanese people run whenever they want. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Young or old, male or female, the Japanese people I have seen so far are as likely to break into a sudden sprint as they are to stop sprinting ten seconds later without any apparent cause. As I typed that last sentence, a man sprinted by on the road outside, only to stop sprinting when he reached the top of a hill and resume a leisurely walk. I saw people running around in outdoor markets, on the subway, at a temple, at a college...they just run like crazy, and then stop. This may be why the Japanese are so thin.
3) No job that takes one person may be performed by less than three. This may just be a consequence of the feeling of excess that has taken this country by storm as it slowly recovers from a crippling, decade-long recession, but it seems to me that stores and businesses all over the place employ approximately two people for every one customer in the store at a time. It doesn't sound so bad, but it gets pretty ridiculous in convenience stores, where the number of employees literally causes inconvenience because they wind up blocking the aisles in the relatively tiny stores. Supermarkets are another story, where employees constantly run back and forth shouting the same completely unintelligible phrase to each other, over and over again. It's kind of distracting.
That's all I've got for now. I'll post some photos soon, but Japan is pretty fantastic so far.
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| Well, everybody, it has been too long.
Since last I updated here, things have changed. I have finished my first office job, lost a friend, prepared to leave the country for the first time, made some important decisions about my future, helped friends in need, seen a play, realized where I want to take Bertram, decided to move my blog off of Xanga, and played my cello for the last time in four months.
My blog will be moving to www.slicedwater.com/blog (easy enough to remember, I hope). That site actually contains my blog, Harry's blog, my Japan blog, and the continuing adventures of Bertram. If I get it working, it might even contain a blog that I write in Japanese. Right now, it isn't working very well, but I hope to have it up and running by the time that I leave (March 29th! Mark your calendars!)
As for that, a Scott's Japan Trip Update: I now know my housing situation in Japan. I'll be in an apartment (where I will have to pay for all of the utilities! argh!) that's an hour (by train) from the campus! I'm pretty bummed out about this, but hopefully I will be able to buy cheap games for my Nintendo DS to occupy me. I still need to get my visa, but everything else is well in order (don't worry, it only takes four days to get a visa).
Right now, I'm kicking it back in North Carolina. Rick's family owns a beach house that is a glorious place to relax. I'll be returning home tomorrow, but it has been a great week. Heck, I even got to play Settlers of Catan. How can life get any better?
If you have any suggestions for things I should absolutely do before going to Japan, please let me know. I keep feeling sure I'll forget something important. Thanks!
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