Men of all nationalities

While men all over the world all have their own little quirks that I can find attractive (Japanese and Korean men are very stylish and nice to look at, Irish and English men have super hot accents, etc.), I have come to the conclusion at this point that American boys just feel like home. When I find one I like, I just really connect with them on a way I don't think I could with anyone else, at least not as quickly and easily. I think part of it is the shared cultureand growing up in a relatively similar environment. Just lets you make that leap of being together that much easier.

No, this it not my way of saying "AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!". I really do like Japan, though I don't think I could ever live here on a permanent basis, but I just really like the American guys more than the Japanese ones when it comes to a level beyond just eye-candy.

P.S. Especially the tall ones.

Foreign-Japanese dynamic

Yes, my updates are pretty intermittent. Not that a lot of people read it anyway, but I was inspired this weekend by my night out with some friends.

To start with, it was me and 3 other foreign girls (Another from America, one from Canada, one from England... we represented the typical West pretty well that night) and 2 Japanese guys. The only person in that group that I didn't know was the girl from England, but was still somewhat connected to her since she is going out with a guy in my program.

Anyway, the place we went to was a little izakaya (in that the floor plan was little, though it's apparently 6 floors) in Shinjuku that my Canadian friend had recommended. Not only are the beers 100 yen each, but the gyoza there is to die for. This essentially put me in the right mood for the night because I was free to drink as much as I wanted and it was a relatively small group so we could all converse pretty well together.

One thing I noticed was the conversational dynamic that is created when you get Western girls and Japanese guys together. As the boys confirmed, there is pretty much no way Japanese guys are going to be talking about topics like sex with Japanese girls, and yet much of the night we spent talking about that particular subject. In regards to America, though it may change with the relationship between the guy and girl, I can't imagine that a guy and girl who aren't particularly close friends could have a casual conversation about sex without the guy thinking this is a kind of hint that he might be able to hook up with her at some point. (I may be stereotyping a bit here and if you think differently, you're more than welcome to comment, but that's just what I have experienced.)

Though it doesn't inspire me to revitalize my search to attempt to understand Japanese guys, I found it quite interesting to observe.

(My attempt to figure them out went like this:

• Okay, I think I know what Japanese guys like. Kind of timid and cutesy, right?
• Fuck I don't know how to be cutesy, should I just be myself? Crap that scared them off.
• I have no fucking clue how to deal with them, shitshit what do I do?!
• Fuck it, this is too stressful, I don't give two craps anymore.
• Yay, American boy to play with! No more worrying about Japanese guys!)

And now... Pictures from that night!

I'm too lazy to make a witty title

So Golden Week was full of me being at home doing a whole lot of nothing. On Sunday or Monday (can't remember which) I got so bored that I just decided to type up an update and post it when I got the time. Here ya go!

So I have too much time to myself, which leads me to over-analyze anything that I could possibly over-analyze. Also, to horribly exaggerate my woes. I feel so silly sometimes for complaining about being in Japan and not home in America, but it's hard to stay positive at times when I have nothing to mentally occupy me at home but homework and music (not enough for me), and nothing to do outside of my house for free but go to school or go to the park (also not enough for me).

I was talking to my best friend yesterday about how kind of depressed I am and how I have nothing to do, and she was telling me that I have to stay positive, which I am sure is advice that I have given her numerous amounts of times. But as they say, easier said than done.

I feel like if I had something to distract me then the next two-and-a-half months would go by very quickly, and thus came my idea of working out and trying to get into better shape. This came to me just a bit after I got back, and I have been going, but what with my a) love of snack foods and b) proficiency in procrastination and half-assing things I haven't gotten very far with actually trying to healthify my diet (yes, I know that “healthify” is not a real word, deal with it).

Something has changed though. Over the last couple of days of vacation, sitting at home re-watching movies and shows that I have seen at least half a dozen times while in Japan, I had my down point decide to incline and my brain go “Oh, right, being POSITIVE.” This dieting infomercial came on the TV this morning and I was glued to the TV for the whole 30 minute run-time. After watching it and coming upstairs and fooling around for a while on my DS, it just clicked into place. I realized that, now of all times, when I have nothing other than school distracting me, would be ideal to take advantage of when it comes to taking care of my body. We all know it's the hardest to start exercising and eating healthy when we have other things giving us excuses as to why we shouldn't go to the gym, or why we should just eat take-out instead of putting a meal together. Although I can't really work on cooking for myself right now, seeing as I am living in someone else's home in which my dinners are cooked for me (though that's a positive in itself), I most definitely can start taking exercising seriously and also watching what I eat for lunch.

On one hand I feel like such a stereotype in Japan for wanting to diet, but on the other... I am not stick-thin like a lot of Japanese women, I could lose a good chunk of weight, and I really just want to be a healthy person. I need to reign in my eating habits for they have been in the low for a long time, with too much junk food thrown in there. It also helps that I'd like to return home looking nice and hot for a certain boy... ;D

On a side note from the dieting thing, but in regards to taking up time and lifting my spirits, I should probably start working on the whole procrastination thing. Start working on my homework as early as possible and not doing shit last-minute the morning/day it's due.

P.S. From Today (05/09) The whole not procrastinating thing isn't working quite yet, but I am trying. Sort of.

湿度? More like 死度. Bad joke.

Though the temperature has levelled back out again to what I would call normal Spring weather (take into consideration that I come from western WA where it's typically 50-55 degrees and rainy for the majority of Spring), it peaked at about 70-75 for a bit about a week ago, and from what the internet is telling me it's supposed to be close to 80 tomorrow. Normally I'd say that that temperature is not a big deal, but there are a few very vital defenses I have back home against the weather that I do not have here:

1. Only time I absolutely HAVE to spend out time is either walking to and from the car when at my parents', or the maybe 5 minutes it takes to get to class when I am at PSU. Here I have to walk outside 20+ minutes which is not bad in and of itself, but add onto that the amount of time I have to spend packed inside a stuffed, oven-like train... these are the minimums by the way. Using computers in rooms that are not air-conditioned? Not fun.
2. FREAKING CENTRAL AIR. The only defense against the heat I have at my host parents' place is a little electric fan. Uhhh?!
3. Things to do at home that will distract me when all I want to do is curl up into a naked ball and die from the heat. Only shit I have to do at home here is re-watch the videos that I have seen a thousand times by now, as well as read the shelf of Danielle Steele books my host dad has stashed in my room. Not the best of options.

Not to mention how god-damn humid it gets here, Tokyo with it's special population-enchanced climate. I do not deal well with humidity, evidenced by the fact that I have actually passed out once while in the shower from all the humidity/steam and whatnot. I am going to be drinking a wholewhole lot of water in the coming three months.

Heat + humidity = Death of Keitorin.

P.S. My English is slowly becoming more influenced by Japan, and what really worries me is that I don't usually catch it. This tells me just how deeply it's affecting me. I am praying for a quick recovery when I get back into English-speaking country.

That's What HE Said

New season, new semester, and I am still having a few struggles. I think the sun is beating some of it out of me (pun most definitely intended) , but it hasn't fully accomplished its job yet.

I think Japanese today kind of picked me up again, though. I made a snap-quick "that's what she said" remark today (most assuredly related to how much of the Office I have been watching lately), and it made me happy to make so many people in class laugh again. I wouldn't consider myself the class clown by any means, but I do enjoy making people laugh with my stupid jokes.

New boys always help to pick your mood up, too, even if they ARE halfway across the world :P

That's pretty much all I have got to say at the moment... oh, and Sociolinguistics is piquing my interest.

Ijou desu.

No, I am not dead.

Yeah. I know. I kind of disappeared off the face of the blogosphere, and I am sorry for that. I have been home in good ol' WA since mid-early February, so I have been kind of distracted with being a social human being who can eat whenever/whatever I want, sleep whenever I want, use the internet whenever I want, go places without spending tons of money on the train... basically having a life I control myself. Anyway, I am coming back to Japan in a week so I decided that I should probably poke all of you again and say hi.

I am not exactly sure what to talk about, I am actually stealing my friend's Star Wars virginity at the moment--I don't even know how we have been friends for 14 years and she hasn't seen it up until now--so I am a little bit distracted by the movie, though I have seen it only God knows how many times.

Anyway, I suppose if you guys have any questions then shoot, otherwise I will just try to think up something interesting for whenever I decide to update again :P

I know, I know

Yes, I have been terribly inattentive. But the last month or so has been the term finishing up so yeah. There's my excuse, despite how shitty it is! :)

What's new? Let's see...

-Got to meet J, badass with the Japanese and quite the alcohol lover, not that you'd ever guess from the horrendous amount of beer updates he's made lately.
-Got my first cold of the year... on the first day of the year. Joy.
-Turned 20, now I can legally drink here! Even though I'd already been doing it for 3 months prior!
-Found out I am going to be going home for Spring Break (for about 6 weeks, woooo), and looking forward to it. Already got the ticket there bought.
-Cut my hair to probably half the length it used to be, if not more.
-Had a bit of my soul die from witnessing Jessica Simpson attempt Japanese. -cringe-

I guess it's not really anything any of you guys will find particularly exciting, but then again there is only so much fun to be had when you are worrying over every little cent (or yen, to be more precise) that you spend. If only I had internet at home, I'd be less bored (nope, I will not stop complaining about this! :P).

Well my time for internet is up, so... adieu, until I next feel relatively unlazy.

White Christmas... or lack thereof

Now, more than ever, do I want to be home for Christmas. The day is coming up pretty quick here and I've heard from family and friends alike about how much it has been snowing back at home. Apparently they got 9 inches, which is fucking crazy if you think about the fact that we usually only get like 2 or 3... cumulative, for the whole winter. (Which, by the way, still shuts down the schools on occasion. It's the northwest, we're built for rain not snow!)

It's been years and years since my parents have had a Christmas tree at home, and with them having it this year, and having all this snow on top of that, I'm really sad I can't be home.

One thing that should help me feel better though is that I'm going to see my friend Paige today, who was in Japanese with me last year (aka, fellow PSU student) and is studying at Aoyama Gakuin (AGU). For some strange reason, we've both been here 3 months but have yet to hang out. So we're fixing that tonight by going out to eat in Shinjuku... and probably getting lost haha.

Fellow blogger JT has also offered to provide me with some social comfort in the way of a drinking/move watching/whatever-ing buddy over the break, so at least I'll have someone to hang out with.

Ok, time to stop slacking off and go study for my exam that starts in three hours. Sigh.

Just my luck

Junior, cute Japanese boy who volunteers in my class... has a girlfriend. That he's been with for almost 2 years. Of course.

Which makes me think about Saturday night when I was out with my friend Ken and his coworker. At one point we were talking about Christmas and Ken was telling me that I have to get a boyfriend (he might have said should get one, but I was relatively drunk at this point) . Anyway, because of this they then proceeded to ask me what kind of guy I like and I wasn't very detailed, figuring it'd take too much dictionary use to give them a big list, so I pretty much summed it up to smart, funny, and cute. They also asked me if there was someone I liked at Waseda, and I told them there were a couple nice guys, but that I had no confidence. Now that I look back on that, I was referring to two--Junior and the guy who first subtly rejected me. So that was kind of pointless.

I don't really have time to go into how ridiculous Sunday night/Monday was, but just suffice it to say that Tokyo Cowgirl and I got the best kind of bonding two American women in Japan can get--getting completely drunk together. On a side night, that night also reaffirmed my love for Dave Chappelle.

"Fuck yo' couch!"

Distance makes the heart grow fonder

This whole no internet thing is seriously The Suck. I'm not entirely sure what The Suck is, I can't strictly define it for you, but if I could it would definitely entail lack of internet at home. To further the issue to even more irritating levels, I found out from my program associate (after asking her to talk to them about getting wireless at home) that my host parents are completely against setting it up, even though I offered to pay. Apparently they have this ideal that, if I have internet at home, I'll turn into some hermit, doing nothing but sitting in front of my computer. Which, admittedly, is almost all I do when I am at home... but I DO go out, TC can at least attest to that.

Anyway, to catch you guys up on things, last time I posted I talked about going out for all you can eat yakiniku and karaoke... which ended up being completely alcohol-less, much to my dismay. But it was a lot of fun! There were way more people than I anticipated, and that ended up meaning long waits for songs and such, but it was great to see everyone so excited and into it. Once it hit 3:30 in the morning, though, I started to get veryvery tired since I'd been up since 6:3oam, technically the day before. This caused the loud music and ruckus to become veryvery annoying, but I managed and got home and to bed at 6.

Problem with that is that I then had to get up at about 10 or so to call the family and say Happy Thanksgiving and all that. It was nice, but I was seriously beginning to resent them for talking about all of the delicious food they were eating.

Other than that, my week since then has been relatively unexciting. My little study date kind of thing with the Japanese boy (who henceforth shall be known as Junior) turned out somewhat disappointing in that another guy from class decided to tag along to help Junior. Oh well, nothing probably would have come of it anyway.

This weekend should turn out at least semi-interesting, though. I'm supposed to hang out with my friend Ken on Saturday and his friend and then Sunday go over to Tokyo Cowgirl's place and probably drink way too much considering I have to be up at 6:30 on Monday. But honestly, I don't think I cut loose enough here, so hopefully this'll be a nice break.

Clipped wings

You know what really pisses me off? When keys on keyboards decide that, in order to WORK, you must intentionally exert three times as much force as is necessary, thus making your typing speed three times slower. I don't know about you guys, but I type with speed and most definitely without looking. And so... when my quicker fingers, which usually dance across the keys, have to instead jab... I am likely to get thoroughly irritated.

That aside, here I am at just past 6 with still an hour and a half until meeting time for my all-you-can-eat meat-athon, and I am already tired. This does not bode well, for a night of karaoke surely means another twelve hours of ridiculousness are ahead of me.

Perhaps the anger will get my blood flowing and wake me up a bit.

Nostalgia

I've been feeling an overwhelming sense of nostalgia and homesickness lately, what with the Holidays coming up, considering that this will be the first time I will have spent them away from home and family. Just one more step into the "adult world," so to speak. I never thought I'd feel homesick, I've always been able to adapt up to this point with being away from home and not missing the family too much, but I don't think I've spent more than 2 or 3 months without seeing my parents. Kind of silly when I think about it. No matter how much I like to think I'm an adult, there's still bits of childishness trailing behind me, slowly but surely drifting further behind.

The homesickness has made me realize that, honestly, the life I lead here is closer to the same as in Portland last year than I had really anticipated. My regular schedule basically consists of wake up, breakfast, school, return home, do homework/study (or more realistically, slack off and end up doing the homework before class in the morning) then go to bed. Pretty exciting, right? The major differences between here and there are that:
-I live 40 minutes from school, as opposed to 5 minutes from class.
-I have no internet at home (Which will, hopefully, be remedied very soon)
-Japanese. Japanese.

And that last one cannot be emphasized enough. Though I am getting better at Japanese (at a snail's pace, it seems), it's still not to the point where I can hold very interesting conversations. I can talk about food, school, and other relatively basic matters, and when I do I occasionally get comments from native speakers that my Japanese is good... until I open my mouth to speak about something resembling an opinion other than whether I like it or hate it. At this point, I'm pretty sure they'd feel bad about taking back the comment, so at least I'm left with my ego intact.

I've degressed, and also run out of time... but do expect an update in the next few days about eating way too much grilled meat and being thoroughly exhausted from a karaoke all-nighter--my Thanksgiving plans. Wish me luck!

Soon-to-be Sensei adventures

The last few days have been quite unremarkable, though not entirely uneventful. As I have mentioned I was working with an American Business class on Friday, "volunteering" (I use quotes, because I don't think getting money for something is volunteering) along with some other exchange students, by helping the Japanese students make sure they understand what's going on in the episode of The Apprentice they watched. Because of this, and how ridiculous reality TV is, I realized that I have a very high probably of laughing in pretty much, well, any situation. This makes for awkward moments when you see something cheesy in a show, laugh, and find yourself the only person in the room having done so. Can we say "awkward silence"? I wish I could say this is the first time, but I'd be lying if I did so.

Anyway, this class thing is going to only last for a couple more days, and talking with some of the other exchange students about doing private English lessons has prompted me to create a profile on a popular site for this purpose and I think I am honestly going to try this to make some extra pocket cash. Undoubtedly, this'll resort in some interesting hijinks, so I hope all (three) of you are looking forward to reading about it. :)

Money and a life... and I'm complaining?

Sorry, no pictures until possibly tomorrow when I will be coming into school--even though I don't have class. I signed up for helping out this class on the Engineering campus of Waseda, assisting the students with a project that requires they use English. Great thing about it is that I get compensation of the cash persuasion. Thirty bucks for each day, three days total. Can anyone say "free money"? FREE MONEY.

After all the complaining about nothing to do, now I feel like I have too much to do. Lots of studying yesterday and today for my big exam later, helping that class tomorrow, and I got invited to do three different things this coming Sunday. When did I actually get a life?

Short but sweet.

If I didn't know tutoring was a common thing among exchange students and Japanese students here, I'd be super excited about the fact that I'm helping out a cute Japanese guy next week as he is studying to take the TOEIC. As it is, I'm still kind of psyched about it. Makes me feel slightly productive, on top of the fact that I get to spend time with him.

I think tomorrow I will try to upload some of the photos I took at the potluck I went to last night with some of the other exchange students and our host moms. The hotel was freaking ridiculously expensive looking, you'll have to see for yourself.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

With a fiery passion, to rival all of the burning, seething, fatal flames of hell, do I HATEHATEHATE the fact that I have to lug my laptop to school to use the internet. And not only that, but that I also have to screw around with proxies and pull out half my hair getting nowhere to use Pidgin or any IM service. Then I try meebo.com, browser-based IMing, and that still screws up by logging me out every 5 god damn minutes.

Can you tell how pissed I am right now? Seriouslyseriously pissed. That's how pissed.

A couple small things

A) Obama has prevailed. Praise Americans for making the right decision!
B) I am pretty sure my Japanese Cultural Anthro. professor uses words the Japanese students can barely understand (if at all), let alone spell well enough to properly scribble them down in their notes.

On an entirely different note, I've been feeling uncharacteristically introspective lately. Or maybe I just have more time to myself forced on me so I'm only just now noticing it.

Buddhism teaches that everything in the world is interconnected, part of how they justify no killing. To follow Buddhism, to think this way, one must change the way they act before they can change the way they think. When I did youth corps a couple years back, one of the crew leaders put it well: "Fake it till you make it."

A couple issues that I'd been wanting to attend to while abroad is my lack of care of myself (eating more junk food than I should, not getting out and doing physical things as much as I should), as well as procrastinating more than is healthy. I figure if I can just force myself to do these things than it'll eventually become more natural to me, and not so much of an ordeal to do so. Problem is that I am finding it incredibly hard to get up the willpower to start. One of the wonderful things about having a significant other: someone close to you, who (presumably) wants the best for you, to push you when you don't have the power to push yourself.

This is becoming a blog more about me and less about Japan. Hrmmm. How should I remedy that?

Annoyance by proxy

To think, today is the first time I've been online since Thursday! Ghastly, I know. I'm really finding it quite irritating dealing with no internet access at home (and stubborn proxies on campus), and I'm reallyreallyreally quite tempted to buy a router and set it up at my host parents' place, though not yet tempted enough to outweigh the headache I anticipate maneuvering my way through a Japanese operating system and an undoubtedly Japanese instruction guide for the router itself. Just thinking about it makes me break out into a sweat.

In other, but somewhat related news, I started uploading my photos onto my google/picasa account thing (since the school proxy apparently doesn't like Flickr), and I have a few I wanted to share, simply because I absolutely love messing around with fireworks settings and nighttime scenery. That's what you'll find floating around this entry.
One thing I noticed I have not yet figured out is the idiosyncrasies of Japan's weather. Though somewhat similar in relation to Northwest weather, it's definitely different enough that I find that the chilly morning does not indicate a chilly day, and that a scarf added to my sweatshirt will just be hot and uncomfortable and subsequently removed once I get to school, though I may desire to remove it before that time. October and November have just been so much warmer (at least during the day) than at home, and I find myself suddenly questioning why I am complaining about this. Perhaps I am just in a whiny mood.

On another note, I remember now that I haven't updated about the meet and greet (more like meet and eat) that Tokyo Cowgirl and I had the weekend before last. We went to this ramen shop in the area of my school and feasted on deliciousness after convincing the server that, yes, we did know it would cost more to pay for things separately instead of in a lunch set, could you please just take our order? After talking for a while and buying drinks (and receiving little trays of food we didn't order... I have a sneaking suspicion this was to keep up appearances that we weren't loitering and had an actual reason to still be in the little shop), we headed out for a walk in the area and had a pretty good time. Though, for some reason, I ended up being quite tired at the end of the expedition. We plan to hang out again on Friday. Happy happy joy joy for getting to converse with another American who isn't studying abroad.

Alright, this update turned out a bit more boring than I expected, but the weekend was too full and I have too little time for a proper entry. Enjoy the pictures at least, and I'll try to update again tomorrow or Thursday!

the International city

I am one big ball of whining and complaining. Apparently it shows, because I got grilled the other day with questions about if I am okay, am I homesick etc. etc. from another girl I am friends with from my Japanese class.

Honestly though, I am feeling a lot better over the last few days because a few things happened:
1. My host parents didn't freak out when I asked to stay at a friend's house since he was having a party for me and it would start kind of late (although since then the party has been canceled. Oh well)
2. After venting to my mom via email about how expensive it was here, how much money I'd been spending, how much money I didn't have... she basically told me to stop stressing out, that she'd put 600 dollars into my bank account, and to keep in contact about how spending money is going and all that.

So, yay for loads of stress taken off my shoulders!

Anyway, Tokyo Cowgirl and I are going to meet tomorrow and eat ramen. How very gaijin of us! That's okay, we both love it, that's all that matters, eh? I'm pretty excited to meet up with her, we've been talking for a few months and she seems like a firecracker. I just wish her and I could have met earlier, would probably mean I'd have had something more to do this weekend than sit on my butt at school on a Saturday! I love Tokyo if only for the pure fact that it's such an international city. Being an exchange student, I've already met so many people from all over the world, and even a lot of people from all over the US.

I think it's pretty damn nifty.

Exhausted with being exhausted

So much for posting on a more consistent basis. Looks like I am starting a once a week trend now that I can only really use the internet on campus. On top of not having internet to keep me distracted at home, I have been absolutely exhausted on days that I am busy with school. Though I get tons of sleep on the weekends, I feel like I get barely enough to get through the week, and that thought is dragging me down already.

Okay, maybe I should move to something more entertaining before I zonk out at the desk and scare all of the Japanese students around me.

I met with a friend this weekend that I first met online, and one of the great things about that was the hilarious conversation we had while sitting on the Tsukuba express, discussing the courtesy seat symbols. (I have read at least one other blog entry about this topic, but I thought his points would be entertaining nonetheless.)

He's a sign that's not the same, but similar... I'll explain the differences.


Anyway, the ones we were looking at didn't show the bottom part of their legs, just the thigh part. Because of this, my friend was saying that supposed thigh part of the person could just be a shadow of a standing figure. This, to him, made the equivalent of the 2nd picture appear to be a man stealing away with a bag of kidnapped children slung over his shoulder. I asked him why his deluded mind came up with that as opposed to say, Santa with a bag of presents over his shoulder, and he said it was obviously not Santa because he doesn't have the Santa hat on. Of course. Also, I am pretty sure I don't need to go into detail about what that first figure looks like. Oi.

That's all for my entertaining stories for now, I have to wake up super early tomorrow morning to go to Hakone with the rest of the students from my program, and I need to be bright and bushy-tailed first thing if I am going to make it through the day. Ugh, time to trek on home.