Most of today was spent in class practicing my Japanese. However today I did put aside sometime for exploration. Today’s trip: the #2 recycle store. It started with a brief trip on one of Sapporo’s big clean subways.

Afterwards me and a few friends went exploring in what we thought was Japan’s goodwills’. Well we were in for a shock. Used junk for way more then you can imagine. Used jeans selling for 50-70 bucks usd. A friend of mine found a jean jacket selling for over $1000 usd. Not cheap! It wasn’t long before we left in shock.

Some times you can find deals elsewhere, like my bike. But don’t going looking for a deal at a recycle shop… because there is none!

~J

*I noticed that the “Comments/Questions?” link was locked for “blogger member’s only” Sorry about that. I unlocked it so hopefully you guys can leave a comment without having to sign up for an account.

A couple of hours ago I bought a new Japanese style bike. a “Bike” in Japanese is called a “Jitensha” (自転車）. Japanese bikes are really expensive, but you’re kinda limited as to where you can go, if you don’t get one. If you’re wondering, I paid 5,000 yen for this bike (~$42) . Here’s the pics of this beauty:

Ok so here’s the specs:

• 2 new white rim tires
• front basket & rear back-pack holder
• Front headlight*
• Solid Frame (Aluminium)
• Rear (back tire lifting) kickstand
• 6 gears w/shimano gripshift system (*new)
• Wrap-around handlebars (made for Japanese)
• Adjustable rear seat
• New Tires and Tubes
• Front self locking bike lock————-L@@K————->

Ok… so check out this bike lock. It hooks to the front fork of the bike and basically has a dead-bolt that you push to lock it. Once locked you take the key out and the front tire is supposedly locked because the bolt stops the spokes. While this is pretty nifty and *feels * like it is locked, I’m not convinced. I’m compelled to go get a separate lock (100 yen) as well, for the back.

In Japan bikes aren’t locked to anything. To lock your bike you basically lock the back tire by putting a lock around the tire and the frame. Theft here is pretty big, but theifs aren’t punk kids looking to get a deal, it’s typically drunk businessmen looking for an unlocked bike so that they can ride home. There’s tons of bikes here so I guess, while they’re expensive, they aren’t THAT hot to steal… that doesn’t stop me from getting a rear lock though. (they’re 100 yen anyway)

*So this front headlight isn’t battery powered instead it has a small generator connected on the front tire so when you start riding the bike, the front headlight comes on. Cool eh? It’s like a magneto for a bicycle light. Crazy… every bike has one here in Japan. Some are more advanced and some are basic like mine, but they’re all pretty much the same. I had to get one because it seems like distance is measured by how long it takes to get from point A to point B by bicycle.

I hope to get the most outta this thing while I’m here. Since I live far from the school I expect to use it often. Feels good to have a little freedom.

~J

For 9/11 2006 in Japan it was tough in many ways. Starting with it being 9/11, the Japanese recognize it as an American tragedy. There isn’t a big vigil or anything just a mention of it on the news. While I know for Americans the memorial is tomorrow, I can’t help but think about the tragedy when I look at the date on my bus ticket.

Besides that a more pressing issue on my mind was the first day of school. Yes, today marks my first day of School at Hokusei Gakuen University (北西学園大学). To say that the day was rough is an understatement! It was like going back to the first day of elementary school… However this time I fretted more about the route there then the class!

Several Important Questions passed my mind as I traversed this mysterious and complex transportation system. Questions like:

“Is this a bus stop? (バス停)” or

“I hope this bus is going to the right subway! (新札幌駅)

“man.. look at all the black hair, Japan sure has a lot of Japanese people!”

luckily my host father came with me up until my train stop then I was on my own. So naturally as I exited Oyachi Station I asked myself, “Ok now what?!”

For about 10 minutes I was lost, then I recognized a 100 yen shop and I was on my way to school! YYYYOOSH!

The first day for me consisted of Japanese class and that’s was it. However Japanese class is about 3 hours long with a 10 minute break. By far this was a long day… I can’t imagine what it will be like when I sign up for more classes.

I am supposed to get 4 books for this class and the sum total is about 100 bucks US. Luckily I got it but that’s just for Japanese class. The electronic dictionary helps when doing homework though. Good thing I got that. Yesterday I got a Canon C50 Wordtank.. This thing is a beauty! My Secret Weapon against the Japanese!

However today the bookstore was closed, but that didn’t stop me from exploring. Today I got myself a subway pass worth 3300 yen (1 way in a subway is 280 yen) and I went exploring to the groovy ward of Otari (Sapporo’s City Center) There I meandered through the many shops in the subway station. After what seemed like hours of walking I went to the surface to find the JR Radio Tower; A wonderful grand tower that towers over the ward. There was fountains and street venders and sorts. There were plenty of big sky scrapers and people too. It was fantastic!

5:00 pm rolled around and I decided to go home. I found that rush hour in Sapporo doesn’t happen on the streets, but in the subway. They didn’t shove me in, but there were a lot of people! It was hard to find a seat for most the trip. I was headed to Shin Sapporo Station from Otari which is a long ride on that thing! Sure enough I got to the shin-sapporo station. Now it was time to find the bus… Earlier my host father suggested either bus stand 9 or 10 so I stood at terminal 9 hoping that this next bus would take me there. Knowing me though, I couldn’t stand * just * not knowing which bus to take so I asked a nice Japanese man if he’d tell me what stop to get off at. He did, he told me bus 26 and then made sure, on the way to the stop, that I got off at the right place. The bus trip cost: 200 yen

(*note: all of this interaction was performed in Japanese!)

Now that I was in the right neighborhood, you’d think it’d be easy to find my house.. Yeah right. Ya see the neighborhood is split into sections, and these sections are broken into blocks, and the streets here are NOT labeled. Should I repeat that? NOT LABELED. Not even an innocent bi-standard on the street could help me find the house. All he knew was that it was on the east side not the west side of the neighborhood. So I started searching, walking endless streets and looking at all the houses for a sign. It took about 15 minutes until I found what I thought to be my house and I checked the name: 室谷 (Murotani) YATA! As soon as the name matched up I recognized it as my house, like a key to the mind. I walked in and said with a confident holler, “TADAIMA” or “I’m home.” Kei (my host brother, 13) greeted me, along with two of his friends. He was wearing the Mariner’s tee-shirt I had gave him with “Ichiro” on it.

The Ordeal was over, I was home. I went to my room and laid there… happy I’d got home.

Pretty cool eh?

Before I go I should tell my readers I have a new cell phone now. It’s the Sanyo W33SA/SAII the advanced spec sheet could be seen here: http://www.au.kddi.com/english/product/lineup/w33sa/index.html Briefly this nifty model comes equipped with:

T.V. (6 channels); FM Radio; Mp3 player; Video Player (avi); Camera w/flash; flashlight; JP-EN & EN-JP Dictionary; Calendar; Email; The Internet; and a photo-kanji recognition system (PKRS). (What’s a PKRS? It works with the camera. You see a kanji you don’t recognize or understand and you point this thing at the kanji. A box comes up and identifies the kanji and then translates it into hiragana or katakana
characters which you then can put into the built in JP-EN dic and quickly understand the kanji. All of it takes about 30 sec to identify and then translate into english.

What you say? T.V.? Camera With Flash? A Photo-Kanji Recognition System?! No way! That musta cost a fortune! Nope it cost 1 yen. The charger cost more then the freak’n phone! How did I get it? Well the family started a phone family plan here that costs roughly 26 bucks US a month. They wanted me to have a phone to call them if I’m going to be late. Technology doesn’t get better then this thing! I was just surprised it had T.V. but the analog t.v. here is free so the service is free too. All I can say is SUU-GEI (that’s impressive in JP) it’s hard to put it down.

All I wanted was a cell phone and what I got was crazy Japanese tech!

Well time to finish my homework (shuu-ku-dai) it’s not much, but it’s gotta get done.

Ja mata~

~J out

As if I couldn’t handle it more…. More came.

Japan is “open” for your business. In fact I’ve probabally spent more then I should.

Things here are very colorful and bright here. This is from a curry shop which tried to replicate indian food.

Everything here is small and narrow. And cars here are small, cheap, and all hybrids here. Anything that’s 5 years or older are not wanted and sell for cheap like 17,000 yen cheap that is roughly $150-170 USD.

Weather here sucks though! You can tell form the baseball picture you can tell it’s very cloudy, humid, sorta cold, and rains like Oregon.

The streets are small and crowded. Check it out… this is my Street

Crowd’d eh? The houses too!

BUT.. if you think this is bad get this! None of these things are not labled either.. The rule here bring a map and mark it out and hope you can find where you’re going!

Today I’m on the hunt for paper, pencils, and a Jisho (dictionary). Plus a bicycle for exploring! More pics to come… here.

HELLO FROM JAPAN ALL!

I’ve made it all the way. The flight was long and very boring. The best part was finally showing up in Nagoya where I met a lot of new friends from Hokkaido University. They were all friendly and eventually asked where I was staying and I mentioned Hokusei… Ehhhhh? they said “Hokusei is our rivals” in broken engrish. In fact, everything is in engrish..!

Coming in Nagoya.. alone was fun! No one spoke english and everyone was facinated with my blonde hair. The best part was finding my connecting flight.

Here’s what I saw when I tried to find my connecting United Flight.

After getting there we were met by a friendly green bus

The fun and games didn’t stop there! After arriving we were given a futon and bedding and were shoved in little dorm rooms and thus the day ended…. Ahhh YATA!

The next day we were given our first Japanese meal..

Qoo, Green Tea, Meat thingy, Potato Salad, Tempura, 2 strips of Salmon, Vegie stuff, Melon, Corn Meal, and yes Rice always rice here.

Next was a placement exam which was hard to say the least. 2 1/2 hours of pain remembering lessons learned 3-4 months ago… Funny how you forget it all and then all of a sudden it comes back.. Too bad it came back in the form of a test!

The fun part was next. Lunchie! 1 bowl of Ramen= 120 yen and good ramen too! However we (the LC Folks) got to meet new friends!

Then orientation started and we were led like a herd of cow around this twisty and small university. I should say that Hokusei isn’t big at all. It’s small but the people are fun. School in Japan starts in Two weeks on the Japanese schedule so this pack is known to get “packed out.”

Money was given next and this school is all business! Based on your host family location you’re given the exact amount for a bus pass and train pass. Mine was a lot of yen in comparison because I guess my host family lives far away.. … we’ll see! This is the richest I’ll probabally be in a while.. ne?

All is well now in our little house. Tomorrow we will meet our host family. I will get my luggage finally! And all will be well… I hope. I can’t say that I’m not nervous because I’m very nervous! Who knows what will happen tomorrow.. I hope someone shows up.. I’m eager to meet them .

My first impresson of Japan is that I feel totally safe and pampered here. Nothing here goes unexplained without great pictures or signs. People are facinating..! They don’t run away from you they just want to talk and get to know you. If you speak a little Japanese they listen intently and thus when someone says there’s a “communication gap” it’s really only with words and grammer. I feel like I can communicate well here as long as I use my hands, face, and basic knowledge of Japanese. I know I’ll get better later on. For now these people are very friendly and constantly check up on me. I feel good, I feel happy, and when I thought I’d get lost I didn’t these people, who might not even know English, try hard to make you feel a part of their culture. Maybe I’m speaking too early.. who knows.. It’s a land of unlimitless opportunity. I hope as I go along I can accomplish my goals here and come away with a pure idea of who these people are.

But until then, here’s “ja-ne” from Japan.

~j-san

Today I wrapped everything up and am checking my gear for stuff I need or don’t need. I cleaned my room as well and got rid of a bunch of junk I should of gotten rid of months ago.. Oh well.

This will be my last post from America in a while. The next one will be from the land of the rising sun: Japan. Who knows what’ll be awaiting for me there only that I appreciate all the support everyone’s given me thus far.

So time to pack this laptop up and venture off into yonder. If you’re wondering if I’m excited, nervous, scared, anxious about Japan, no I’m really not. However~ I’m a little ” ” about the whole airport situation… I hope that I can get to Japan with little or no hastle.

~J out

Today I shop for whatever I need then pack it. Ni-mh batteries, Personals, travel goods, passport, papers, etc. It all gets done today without distraction.

I can’t say how this makes me a little nervous. I think i’ve already maxed out my camera’s mem card with family pics and self pics. The cat must be blind by now with all the flash pics I took of him. All in all, most of the “farewells” have passed making today and tomorrow essentially the calm before the storm meaning that this time will be just me in waiting for the *big trip.* With all my stuff packed, papers in order, and people contacted for arrival arrangements. I sit and wait. Tomorrow I’ll try to reflect on what this means to me… I’ve lived and traveled in North America for my entire 21 years and 10 months without leaving this giant mainland. In roughly 49 hours all this will change! What a mind trip!

~J

PS: *New Layout*

With the new settings in blogger beta, I’ve redone my blog a little to add more life to it. I know I need more pics and that’ll come in time. For now I’ve added some more links and two new feeds: Google World News & Tokyo Times. Right now I’m looking for a time and date feed from Sapporo to add which would say what the time is in Japan, but till then you can use the “world clock” link in my links sidebar. I’m still editing the site and may add or delete feeds for better ones. we’ll see.

Here on this last Sunday comes the “good byes.” The Family, the GF, and the grandparents. It’s not “goodbye” per-say just bye for now…

oh today was memorable… lets just say my butt was kicked by both plants and bees today!

what a day

~j

Maintance on the blogger site:

Today I transfered the old blog to this beta.. hope its better.. here’s the old posts.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

T-3days: Going to war

The time is near and war is approaching!

Packing has begone along with the many different photo shoots with members of the family, the girlfriend, and the house..

The packing has been intense! On my first tier I’ve packed the basics. It’s like my first day of Boy Scout Backpacking trip all over again. Back when I was just a wee scout I remember packing everything (all but the kitchen sink!). I thought that now, as an Eagle Scout, packing would be easy and simple. Alas.. it is not.

Packing for a 50 miler is one thing, but packing as if you’re moving is different. Questions arise like, “just what do they have in Sapporo? mmm I wonder if I should take this? This asprine will be expensive I should pack that. Ohhh what if they don’t have __X__ or it’s too expensive? I should pack it. Oh the misery! And then when it’s all packed then I need to find space for the plethora of presents I’ll bestow on this poor family who’ll be my guides to this land of undersized clothing and weird food.

All shouldn’t be that bad. They have to live there as well therefore be able to get basic necessities right?

I’m sure everything will work out. Time to take more pics and pack. Time is windling to the big day I hope i’m ready!

~J out

posted by R3dragon at 12:46 PM

Thursday, August 31, 2006

5 days and a wake-up

Here’s my first of many blog posts.

I got 5 days and one wake-up till I’m on my way to the land of the rising sun. I’m working on getting my gear ready and checking my papers twice! Life will be different to say the least.. Hopefully i’ll try to be diligent enough to post my epic adventure for all to read!

So here’s to a great adventure!

J out!