Last night I went to my friend's Halloween party. It was a bunch of us Californians with along with any locals we could convince to celebrate the weird holiday known as Halloween. I went as myself riding a short man with a horse's head. That's the only way I can really describe it. I thought it was pretty tacky but people were asking me if I bought it at a store. The answer is no, I just used my own clothes and some newspaper and safety-pins.
The theme of the party was to dress in school uniforms and surprisingly most people did. There were a couple cross-dressers, including Miho who decided to go in a high school jacket for men. In this picture she is the only non-Californian, and the girl to my right is the one who just lost her house in Southern California:
It's been a while since I have blogged hasn't it! Let's see, what's been happening here??
Since I last blogged I had a job interview at an English tutoring place. I had a cold, and was losing interest in the job but I still woke up early and paid for the train ride to the part of the city the seminar was being held. I sat through it and decided that specific job isn't for me but I have some other ideas in mind that I will pursue soon.
Saturday I went to Miho's hometown in Chiba prefecture. It is a nice sort of suburb of Tokyo. It does take time to get there though. By train, the only realistic method of a daily commute, it is 2 hours for her to get to this area of Tokyo I live in. Anyway, I went and visited her family and we all went to a fireworks festival. It was really cool! We brought a delicious Japanese style picnic dinner. The next morning we all watched the Indians - RedSox game. Miho and I went and played Frisbee a big park by her house, ate dinner with her parents, and finally I went home.
Feeling adventurous, today I tried to follow a cookie recipe on the back of a box of pancake mix I have. It didn't even call for chocolate chips so I chopped up a bar of dark chocolate and added it into the cookie dough. The final product resembled what the children of pancakes and cookies must taste like. I found that I need to slightly burn them for them to taste the best. I almost made a huge mistake though when I decided not to read a part of the instructions and just skim and when I saw numbers I just assumed that's how long they needed to bake and that was actually the amount of time they were to sit before eating. It was a close call when I started to smell burning sugar, but everything turned out alright.
I've been watching and understanding more and more of the comedies on TV which is really fun!
Some random notes are that Brad Pitt does cell phone commercials here and Tommy Lee Jones does coffee ads.
Brad Pitt Ad
Tommy Lee Jones Ad
Tomorrow I am going to make my really weird Halloween costume. My friend is having a party on Friday, should be great. I will bring my camera and share pictures later!
Oh ya, I just found out that one of my friends' house burnt down in San Diego along with hundreds of others. She in an exchange student here as well. Apparently absolutely nothing of hers was salvaged. I hope all of you in Southern California stay out of harm's way!
Hello again! Here's my school ID and Alien Registration card. I just got the Alien card yesterday.
Since my last blog a couple notable things have happened. The first is that I got my hair cut at a beauty school for free! It was really high tech. For example the chair I was in was fully motorized for all the lifting, reclining, legrest and stuff, it had electrical outlets, seat warmer, and more. They first shampooed and conditioned my hair, cut it, shampooed and conditioned again, gave me a scalp, neck, ear, and shoulder massage, then finally shaved me. I was in the chair for two hours but it was worth it.
Another big thing is that I caught that cockroach! I saw him in the kitchen and threw a trap at him. He cringed as it approached him, hid behind a counter, then within a minute he entered the trap being that he was attracted to the smell of the bait inside. Want to see what he looked like before I terminated him?
Monday was a national holiday and I was taken out to dinner by Miho's family at a soba noodle restaurant. I ate duck, sushi, soba, and tempura. It was so good. I cook a lot at home though and am starting to like it a lot. Something I noticed though is that if you don't wash your pans good enough your fried rice will taste like French Toast.
Oh ya, I am brewing up some awesome ideas for my Halloween costume this year and have a bunch of events I will hopefully attend. here is one of them: http://lacittadella.co.jp/halloween/
I have been here one whole month!
Well, it has bee a while since I last blogged to let me try to catch up. The week following the weekend of baseball I just got my stuff together. Stuff like shopping for stuff I need around the apartment, registering for the National Health Insurance, and more. I also signed up for classes, attended some welcome parties hosted by the school, and finally started school this passed Monday.
I have really scored when it comes to getting appliances and stuff for my apartment. I have been on Craigslist searching the classifieds and so far have gotten a free rice cooker and small electric oven (both bought in January). I got those from a girl moving out of an $8000 a month apartment.
On Thursday the 27th I went on a day trip to the mountains to the west. The first stop was this nice little town that used to be a rest stop for people making treks on foot and by horse a long time ago. Therefore there are lots of old hotels. Here are a few pictures:
Waiting for the bus in Tokyo:
The town:
Then we went to a famous castle. This castle is older than the USA and was primarily used back when samurai ran Japan:
I took some pictures of Tokyo at night after I got back to town:
School has been great so far. I love living so near the campus. It is a very cool environment. College life here is a little more group-oriented so you are less on your own. I like it so far, especially my Japanese classes.
Some minor, random notes from the last couple weeks: my Ikea bed is already broken, there was a mouse-sized cockroach in my bedroom and I didn't catch him, the Chinese girl living in the other bedroom moved out and a Swedish girl is moving in, I cooked lotus root for the first time in my life, I met someone from New Guinea for the first time in my life.
I can't think of anything else at the moment. Hope all is well wherever you are. Ren
Yesterday was another big day. I was taken to a pro baseball game showcasing the Marines vs the Buffaloes. It was around an hour away from my place by train in Chiba prefecture.
I met Miho at one of the train stations I made a transfer at and we continued to the ballpark together. We were trying to make it there early because we wanted to see her sister's performance as she is a cheerleader for the team.
Here is a shot of the stadium from a distance, and a shot of a convention center near it that was hosting the famous Tokyo Game Show while we were there.
Before the game we hung outside the stadium where there were booths setup for buying food and other things being demonstrated. Miho and I ate some Takoyaki (breaded, balled chunks of octopus). We also posed with some police vecicals on display at a little public safety demonstration area.
Finally we went in the stadium and got our seats. It was open seating so it took a while to find seats that were open! There are many differences between American baseball games and Japanese so I will try and see how many I can remember.
The most obvious is the singing and chants. Their chants are not like ours that are started by music that comes from the public address system. Theirs are widely known team specific songs. All of the right field seats were full of people wearing the same colors and chanting constantly when the home team was batting to the beat of one huge drum that lead the pace. Our section above third base was a lot more tame, and we were so high up that it gave me a good view to observe from.
Team accessories also seem a bit more important here in Japan. For example almost everyone has a team scarf that they would raise in the air using two hands when they sang certain songs. Also, there is one point in the game where most of the fans blow up balloons and let them fly at the same time. I got a picture of that.
The enthusiastic right field didn't seem to lose a single person all game and was just as loud even though we were up 8-0. They all stayed, and most of the rest of the crowd too, in the stadium for around 20 minutes after the game to see the "hero interview" that takes place on the field with the player of the game.
Another big difference is how affordable food is in the stadiums. Having already eaten takoyaki, I wasn't too hungry but I did buy a box of cookies for around eighty cents. I think a slice of pizza was like a dollar sixty, beer was five dollars, etc. You also aren't allowed to throw your trash on the floor!
During the game we were trying to spot Miho's sister cheerleading but it was hard to tell which was her. We did get to see her dancing outside the stadium at a post game party though. Here's her picture a also some of the fans watching the cheerleaders perform.
After the game I finally was able to get my cellphone. It is a bit of a headache trying to get a phone as a foreigner here but I finally did it. It is crucial here and people make loose plans assuming you have a phone so you can be reached and notified of changes or people's tardiness. The phone was free and some of it's features is it picks up digital tv signals free, it has infrared sensors for sending files, pictures, and contact info to other phones, and it has only been on the market for a couple weeks! It is really awesome how you just have to hold your phone next to someone else's to get their contact info . That is all people here do now.
Feel free to send an email to my phone anytime!
My address is: ShiaWasedaRen@ezweb.ne.jp
Also, my mailing address is:
Ren Hollis
520 TsurumakiCho Waseda
Apartment 602
Shinjuku-Ku Tokyo 160-0014
