Mountains and Octopi

Okay, so, let's go over the last week or so because I've been lazy to getting to this, as usual.

The last time I posted I had just gotten done hiking all over an anonymous mountain fairly close to where I live.  We walked about 5 miles and I ended up getting my legs eaten alive by the most invisible mosquitoes to ever exist.  I have giant, super-red bumps all over my legs and they're SO terrible looking and itchy at the same time, I don't even.

Emily and I standing on the trail.

It was a fun time, there were so very many steep trails and stairs and everything.  Emily and I got into a conversation about climbing Mount Fuji, so I think I might actually go do that.  I mean, who knows when I'll be back here again?  And how many people can say they've climbed Mount Fuji?  Especially people from Michigan.

The trails were quite steep and my feet hurt like crazy by the time we were done, but it was totally worth it.  I just drank my bottled water and ate my dried fruit, had friendly conversation, and enjoyed the absolutely fantastic views we kept encountering.  We found a couple cool, little shrines hidden in the mountain trails, and a cool, giant beetle.

The crazy-steep stairs that I had to walk down and try to trip over my own feet as I usually do.

Me walking into one of the little shrines we found.

There's so many things just about that little excursion I'd love to share with everyone, but it's not easy to show how amazing it really is when you're there.  Pictures don't do many things in nature justice.

After that we got ice cream from Baskin Robins here.  I "challenged the triple" because it means that a triple cone costs the same as the double and I love ice cream.  I got coffee, custard pudding, and mango flavors.  The coffee and custard pudding ones were okay, but the mango one was beyond delicious.

Today we had a takoyaki party in our lounge area of Michigan House.  It was a bundle of fun.  Takoyaki is like a dough ball with octopus in the middle.  We also had ones with quail eggs in it.  We had a lot of people come and it was a lot of fun. 

Here's everyone who came to the Takoyaki party!

First cut all the things up! Like cabbage, green onion, octopus, cheese, sausage, and red ginger.  You don't have to cut up the quail eggs, though.  You also have to make the batter to cook it all in.

You then make a mess all over the takoyaki grill and let it cook.  Here is where the ones with quail eggs were made.

Here's where the octopus(tako) ones were made.

Then you spin then and flip them until they're cooked to how you like them.  Elmo and I prefer them more cooked, but the Japanese people seem to like them really gooey and runny.  Makes sense, that's how they like their eggs, too.

Then, when they're done, you remove them from the grill with a pick and put them on a plate and everyone can eat delicious things with those pick things we're all holding here.

Besides all that, I worked once this week.  I work again on Friday, then I get five days off for some reason, so I need to find something fun to do.  I'm hoping to go to Hikone sometime this weekend.  Maybe I'll hang out with the Australian guy, Paul, on Monday, since that's his day off.  Elmo and I are going to a judo dojo on Tuesday, I think.  I'm also planning on making everyone zaru soba some time in the next week because it's been so ungodly hot out.  We're officially out of the rainy season and into the sweltering hot times.  It'll be unbearable hot and humid until right after I go home to America.

Tomorrow I'm going to the beach to go swimming with everyone, the Americans and Australians.  In the morning I'm planning on going bathing suit shopping with Wes.  The one I brought is getting old and faded and I want a cuter one that covers more... they're very modest here.  Plus, they have the cutest, ruffly bathing suits.  Love it.

Okay... Let's try this again...

Tori here!  I'm still in Japan.  The thing is that I moved to a new program and a new facility in the city of Otsu.  Before I was with quite a few other Americans.  Now I'm in an apartment building primarily occupied by Japanese workers for either the boat or the hotel next door.  There are only three Americans besides myself here, and two Australians.

Above is the new foreign line-up around here.  Just take out those two Japanese friends there.   The one in the back with her hand straight up is Natalie, she's one of the Austalians, along with Paul who is across from her.  Next to Natalie is Wes, one of my fellow Americans.  I'm the blonde closest to Paul with the yellow bag and side pony tail.  Next to me are Emily and Elmo. You can't see, but Elmo has hair that is probably longer than mine.  It's the most gorgeous hair I've ever witnessed in my life.  It's definitely worth mentioning.

This is the old group.   Only a few of these original gems remain over at JCMU in the town of Hikone.  Most went back home to America after the first month.  Starting from the girl in the white hat and going up the back row to the right and then winding back and forth, we have: Erika, Iyana, Rory, Marc(our Professor and an old friend of mine standing there in the back center), Yutang, Sean, Veronica, Uzonna(the one sitting on the right), Me(standing in the black and white), Katie, Ashley(sitting in front of Katie), and Desdemona.  The man in the front middle is a Hiroshima survivor

Man, how I miss that old group.  If I could just have them back and add Elmo on to that I'd be so very pleased.  Elmo is pretty cool and probably the person I enjoy hanging out with the most over here in Otsu.  We have very similar interests and he's just comfortable to be around.  And, again, he has the most beautiful Kenshin-mermaid hair in all the land... Just don't let it catch the light when you have a migraine, you might die. He also has an obsession with Pokemon that some might find crazy, but I just find it a tad adorable.  He's one of the top competitive Pokemon players or something of the sort.  Pretty cool.

Elmo.  I put my cat ears on him~! n.n

Wes is also pretty cool.  I like hanging out with him, but not like I enjoy being around Elmo, or any of the JCMU people for that matter.  Wes is older than all of us.  We call him Grandpa.  Although senpai, or uncle, or something like that would be more fitting.  I believe he's 26, and he's really damn good at cooking food.  He also LOVES cooking food and knows how to cook with all the ingredients here.  So, many times, he cooks us all food.  Today he made us something called nikujaga.  It's like Japanese beef stew.  We ate it over rice and it was pretty good.  Wes is also nice when you want adventure, because he's usually up for exploring or doing just about anything.  He has a GPS just in case we get lost, but we usually just check the time on it if Elmo isn't around.  Elmo is the only one with a watch.

This is Wes with ALL the ladies.  Fabulous.

The last member of our American crew is Emily.  Emily is my roommate and is a self-proclaimed depressive personality.  She hates the color pink and ANYTHING that could even remotely associate her with being a girl.  She's pretty distant, while the rest of us are always talking and joking and such. We generally get along, but I always feel... on edge around her...  Like she hates me.  Although, there have been several times where she's been quite pleasant and fun to be around... maybe she just takes time to get used to?  

The really awesome thing about Emily is the voice she makes when she's talking to her cat on webcam.  Yes, she talks directly to her cat, on webcam... for quite a while, too...  but yeah... her voice becomes SO high pitch and just... painfully, disgustingly cute.  Elmo and I attempt to not laugh our asses off every time. 

This is Emily doing something surprisingly cute (she doesn't really like cute too much... unless it's a cat) with one of our Japanese friends.

The internet here only works on the first two floors by the way.  They conveniently placed all us Americans on the 5th and 6th floor, so we all have to come down to the lounge on the 1st floor to use the internet.  It's probably a good thing, though, because otherwise we'd just sit in our rooms all day and be forever alone.  The lounge is nice, and we're working on fixing it up a little so that we can have parties down here and stuff.  The biggest problem in here so far is the massive amount of tiny ants that come out of nowhere in endless streams just to crawl over EVERYTHING you know and love.

The boat I vaguely mentioned way up there at the top is the Michigan boat.  This is where all of us foreigners work.  It's named Michigan after the state the Americans are from.  It's for the sister-state relationship that Shiga and Michigan share.  The boat is a big show boat with a red paddle wheel on the back(mainly for show)  There's a fancy dining room on the first floor, a cafe and buffet hall on the second floor, a food and drink bar and performance stage on the third, and then the top floor is called the sky deck, it's for viewing the scenery of Lake Biwa, the lake the boat cruises around in while people eat or get drunk or flirt with their date on the cruise they're on.

This is the best picture I can find of the Michigan right off the bat.  You get the general idea of it.

 

There's a couple nice pictures of what the paddle wheel looks like in action.  It's pretty fabulous.  Especially when the sun is setting so nicely in the background.  It's pretty loud, though, and splashes, so I don't always prefer to be near it.

 Here's a nice picture of us in our working uniforms out in front of the Michigan Boat.  Looking pretty snazzy.  I'll get an up-close picture of what it looks like later.

I actually quite like working on the boat, especially when there's school kids on.  Junior High students are the BEST in the world.  So much fun.  Some days it's really slow, though, but even those days are great because my co-workers are really nice and fun.  I often get called "kawaii"(cute) or I get called some random Disney Princess name or Barbie.  Hearing Japanese people try to say the words "gorgeous" or "pretty" is usually funny because it sounds so off.  It's pretty nice, although sometimes a little embarrassing.  Two of my male coworkers have asked if I'm single(which I currently am), so I'm curious what's going to become of that.  I don't see much of a point to it, seeing as that I'm going back home at the end of August, which is in two months.

The only bad thing about the boat is the plethora of spiders, and even that isn't that bad after the first week or so.  I've become pretty accustomed to spiders being EVERYWHEREEVER and dropping down on me at random times or me accidentally walking through or touching their webs.  The restaurant areas of the boat don't have any spiders, just the outside, so I only have to worry about it when I'm not working and when I'm anywhere else in Japan, really.  Spiders are literally EVERYWHERE here.  Just get used to it, or don't come to Japan.  They might be gone in the winter, though... not sure.

This here is the Michigan house by the way.  There's 7 floors and I live on the 5th with Emily.  Elmo and Wes are on the 6th floor.  There are also many spiders here, but again, I've gotten used to them.  It makes sense that they're here, though.  I mean, the walkways and stairways are all outside.  and the entrance and everything aren't THAT well sealed that they could keep out little spiders.  Just burglars and stuff, which is pretty uncommon here anyways.

I think we're going to go get ice cream now since it's so damn hot out.  I'll try to post about my day later tonight~

The Summary Goes On...

After settling into my apartment we started off bright and early the next morning with free donuts and juice for the first days breakfast!  It was yummy... donuts taste like pocky here.  My professor, Marc Thomas, doesn't really think that we should be sitting in a classroom the entire time we're here, so he did minimal classroom time and a lot of field trip type stuff and free time to explore on our own.

So far I've been to Hiroshima and Miyajima once, Kyoto a few times, Otsu a couple times, Tokyo twice and I currently live in Hikone.  Hiroshima is beautiful and obviously has a lot of history and emotion there.  Hiroshima's message as of today is peace and they want the world to be full of peace and love.  Everyone there and at Miyajima was really nice.  You can pet deer and see the Torii gate in the water at Miyajima.  Miyajima is a sacred island with many beautiful things on it, I suggest that anyone who gets the chance visit it.
Kyoto is a place of cultural and academic status.  It's very beautiful there and you will see many women in kimono walking down the busy streets.  Kyoto is a somewhat short train ride from Hikone, but when I move to Otsu it's a train stop or two away, so even closer.
Tokyo... is, well, Tokyo.  It is different.  It's a big city full of homeless people and crime, but it is FAR nicer than any big city you will visit while in America.  Just avoid the love hotels and red light districts and you'll be just fine.  People are still pretty nice there and are more likely to acknowledge or point at you because you're a foreigner... and in my case wearing a lolita dress and have blonde hair.  Shibuya in Tokyo is the place to go for general fashion and clubbing at night, but if you want Lolita or anything specialty like that, you have to go to Harajuku to get it, which is technically part of Shibuya, but about a 5 minute train ride away (160 yen).  Tokyo is HUGE and is easy to get lost in, but there's maps everywhere and it's much more common that people know English, so you'll be fine no matter what... just don't jay walk, you'll get hit by a taxi most likely.

Otsu and Hikone are quite close to eachother and less heard of.  Otsu is the capitol of Shiga Prefecture.  Hikone is a smaller city that has a lot of farming and such, but also shopping and stuff along with an old castle from back when samurai and such were around.  I have yet to go to the actual castle, but I've seen it in passing several times, and you can see it on the mountain from where I'm currently living. I'll be moving to Otsu for my second program in a couple days.  Just to give you an idea of how far Otsu and Hikone are from eachother, it costs about 900 yen to get from one to another, so it's kinda far, but not by much.  It might take 20-30 minutes by local train to get from one to another.  It takes around two or two and a half hours to get to Tokyo by Shinkansen.  I want to make it very clear that that is by the Shinkansen... that's like a plane, but it's a train... the fastest train.  Scary fast.

I'm not sure what else to write while I'm on right now... it looks like Erika has FINALLY returned from her excursion of the day and we have a project to write a proposal paper for that's due before we go out for Karaoke fun times! 

If anyone has questions go ahead and ask, it'll make it easier to know what to write on here.  I don't care whether I know you or not, this is a public blog for a reason.

Hello~!

My name is Tori and I live in Japan.  Only until August 22nd of this year.  So, not that long.  I've been here for two weeks, and I feel like I've been here much longer.  This entire blog is going to be dedicated to me describing, explaining, and elaborating on how my experience over here is. My friend, Erika, who will be leaving at the end of this month is also allowed to post, but I'm not sure how much she actually will.

Okay, so... let's try to start at the beginning...

    I arrived from my ump-teen hour succession of flights that started bright and early at 7am in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the USA.  We left Lansing, Michigan, where I normally live, at 3am, so that I could be there at 5am to wait for Erika and get through security.  We flew Delta, which was cheaper, but also a lower quality airline, so less awesome than what we've heard from our classmates who took Japanese airlines.  Once we got through security and on the first plane from Grand Rapids to Detroit we just kinda dead-panned the entire hour or how ever long that took.
    Once we got off the plane in the Detroit airport we were severely tired, starved, and confused.  We thought we had at least 45 minutes to get to our next flight, which we thought couldn't be too far away.  Upon further intense examination (reading a ticket) we found out we had hardly 15 minutes to get to a Gate 76 or so.  We were at 3.  We didn't realize we could take a shuttle there, even though we kept talking about the tram we saw, so we ran.  We did get to use the moving walk-ways to speed us up, though, and we sang Nyan Cat while pretending to be in a Sonic Level.  I made the speed up noises when we went over the moving walk-ways. 8B
    We somehow made the flight to Seattle on time, though we didn't have time to change seats to sit next to each other.  We ended up able to SEE each other, but to interact otherwise was near impossible.  Erika sat next to some beefy guy who was bro-ishly invading her seat with his broad-shouldered, muscly girth.  I sat next to a Chinese guy who had just graduated from MSU with a Chemical Engineering degree and was on his way back to China because he had gotten a job there.  Him and I got along pretty well... and he quizzed me on my limited Japanese(He was tri-lingual).  He seemed impressed that I even knew how to introduce myself, so that was good, I guess?  The guy on the other side of me didn't talk much until half-way through that flight.  Turns out he was a fashion designer.  And here I thought he was just a silly, tired old man snoring his way to Seattle.  He was fun, too, we talked about dresses.
   The third and longest flight we DID have to wait a little bit for, so we went to a little Japanese food place at the Seattle airport and shared a big udon bowl.  Then we sat with some Japanese school kids on the ground of the airport after we changed our seats to be able to sit next to each other.  Everyone on that flight seemed to be Japanese except for a few other people.  I sat next to Erika and this Japanese guy (who seemed to know absolutely no English).  The Japanese guy kept falling asleep and sprawling out all over the aisle next to him and my stuff and me.  I was not pleased with Mr. Plane Neighbor.  Funny thing was, I saw him several times on the trains later in Japan.  We just gave each other strange looks and then went back to holding the train handles and trying not to fall down.  Ugh... what to say about THAT flight, though?  It was the longest, most boring half-day of my life.  I swear.  They played the crappiest movies imaginable.  I was falling asleep, but waking up every fifteen minutes feeling panicky or getting hit my Sleepy Neighbor-chan.  I tried to play video games, since I brought my PSP and DS with me with all the actual game cards, but I was too exhausted to do ANYTHING but listen to music and eat periodically.  The last three hours I just stared at the clock and counted down minutes until it was over while Jack Black got tied up by some elves or something.
   When we finally got off the plane we had to wait in a somewhat long line to get through customs/passport & visa inspection and fingerprinting.  It was easy once you got to the window, but until then you just WAITED and hoped you filled out everything right so that you don't get turned away.  After you were through there you just picked up your luggage and headed towards the exit.  Stupid me packed WAY TOO MUCH.  You hear me mom?  TOO MUCH LUGGAGE. ;_;  I had to mail one suitcase to myself and take the other one on the various trains and taxi with me to get to JCMU.  And that was with my Professor and family friend, Marc Thomas', help.  I'm thinking of mailing the extra suitcase home early with souvenirs and things I discovered I don't need, because it'll be much less of a hassle than trying to get two big suitcases through a series of trains to Osaka and then to check in.

    So, anyways... Marc picked Erika and I up from the air port, along with another classmate and now friend of ours, Sean.  We took, as I said, a series of trains and a taxi to get to the JCMU center that I'm currently staying at.  My current apartment is bigger than I thought it might be.  The bed is not a futon, and is quite comfortable, and the tub is deep and I can take mineral baths. -u-  I'll post pictures with captions of my apartment later.  I think I'll finish this story later, also.  It's getting later here and I want to actually have fun tomorrow.  I have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off this week to do whatever I want!  My classmates/friends and I are all going to hang out tomorrow and go to karaoke later in the night.  And I get to sleep in~!  8D  This'll be the first time to do that since I've gotten here.




I'll try to post more tomorrow, so that I can summarize my whole trip up to this point.  Hope someone enjoys reading this. :nod: