Travels

[Bllue]

Hi. I created this thread upon a request to hear story(ies) from my trip to japan last summer. I don't think it should be limited to that, so if anyone else has an out-of-america story they deem share worthy, by all means, go ahead...



      Now, the one thing no one thinks necessary to remind tourists is that Japan is a montanious country. Of course this is common knowlege, but mountains usually conote beautiful scenery. They fail to conote stairs. Trip-happy stairs.
      I was lucky enough to go on a shool based program in which i stayed with a host family for two weeks. My host girl stayed after school everyday because of her club, which she happened to be president of. This meant that she had to stay behind everyone else to make sure all of the windows were closed and all of the doors locked and instruments put away and students ready to go home.
      As space is limited in Japan, most buildings tend to go up, instead of out. Perfectly reasonable. So the school buildings had three floors. Also perfectly reasonable, right? It stops being reasonable when there are four three-story buildings for 400 students. The club building was number three. After a long day of understanding no one, suffering from jet-lag, and having your group leader unexpectedly take you on an uphill trek through the forest, wouldn't you be ready to go home?
      By the time my host girl was done shutting windows on this particular day, her friends started panicing, because the train would arrive shortly. The only thing to do was run, as well as you could in slippers, and, in the case of japanese students, heavy bookbags.
We ran down the second level to cross the brigde, entering the second building. We ran across the hall to the next building. Now down two flights of stairs. The shoe boxes were around the corner.
I wonder if i angered some god of stairs, because, as we began down that last flight, my slipper caught.

Ow.

I was lucky. My host girl caught me a couple of steps down. That didn't stop the near heart-attacks and shrieks brought on by several girls, myself included. Nor did it stop me lying about the ache in my foot as we changed shoes in order to run to the train station down the street, or up and down more stairs. I've been a lot more careful since.




I have more stairs... and food, and accidents and..... yeah...

[Xel]

Ohoho, I've got one. It's not terribly exciting, and it doesn't have a point, but hey, what precious memories do? <3


This was about two years ago. I was nineteen, and visiting my lifelong friend at his apartment in Shinjuku, which is a pretty swingin' place to live. I went with two other friends, and together we aaaaaall crowded into his one-room apartment. His bathroom was weird as hell; the entire floor apparently acted as a drain, so he didn't give two craps about how wet it got. Which I guess is nice, but when you have four people taking showers in succession (well, at most; one of my companions was not terribly known for his frequent washing habits), that starts to get a little oppressive. Gentlemen, I'd imagine you've been in a busy locker room before. Reduce the ball sweat (thank god) by about 75% and up the humidity by about 60%. It's perpetually wet, musty, and smelly in there. It's also roughly the size of two portajohns pushed together. Augh. I took to walking on towels because my feet felt too disgusting otherwise.

Our we got to his apartment at about 9pm Japan time. Dragging clumsy, rolling luggage through busy Tokyo streets is both embarrassing and fun. It really is a beautiful city if you like a lot of lights. <3 So we got in and settled, and then decided to see what Tokyo had to offer. One of my friends was a tired stick in the mud, and stayed behind to sleep. First thing we did was go to Shibuya and buy booze at the nearest konbini. Because yes, friends, they sell alcohol at convenience stores there, and it's awesome. This is a very exciting thing for a teenager for whom alcohol use must be a surreptitious practice in her home country. So there we go, drinking our drinks while walking down the street, classy as can be, and eventually stop at a club by the name of Gaspanic. This place... was awesome. It was mostly full of foreigners, like us, and perhaps the Japanese people who wanted to meet foreigners, but the MUSIC. They played nothing but like... old school American hip-hop from the 80s and 90s. I danced to some songs that I haven't heard since I was in elementary school. I walked in to the sight of a teeny Japanese girl doing a beer bong.

After a scant few hours we missed the train back to Shinjuku (they stop running at 1am and start again at 5am), so HEY, LET'S JUST STAY OUT ALL NIGHT! So I got, well--shitfaced is honestly the only appropriate word--and periodically ran outside to sit on the curb and get juice and water from the vending machines on the other side of the street (it really boggles me how pedestrians and cars share the less busy streets there. You can just walk in the middle of the road there, pretty much no matter where you are. Even on the main streets, cars are totally at the mercy of pedestrians). Some skeezy Japanese guys came up to me and initiated conversation for a while (one said I was uncute because I didn't have the faculties to not talk manly ;~; I said he was mean). One thing I've always experienced to be true is that anytime I have the occasion to speak Japanese to a Japanese person, all they want to do is speak English with me. XD; So we had this kind of retarded poor Japanese-poor English exchange going on for a while, and then they went... somewhere. Can't remember where. What else happened. A Japanese girl asked ME to teach HER how to dance (lol). Then we went to a ramen shop, which was badass. You like... electronically enter your purchase out front and then they make it inside. I don't know how to work the automatic doors there. DDD: And so then we went in and I saw those guys again and ate my ramen, and then fell into a hard, deep sleep on the counter. :B

And so we made it back home near dawn, and I was hit SO hard with the resulting hangover+jetlag that I wanted to up and fly home the very next day. It turned out okay, though. I'd like to go back there again.

[R. Daniel 01]

Woo, this thread is ever better than I thought it'd be! More info, please. From botha ya. Out with it.

From my perspective, and with my imagination, almost anything you say will be gold to me. You could write, "and my host family had a DOG!" and I'll be all like, "woooooah!"

[Bllue]

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! My host family had a dog. a beagle to be exact. Snoopy has a major following. when i got the letter from my family, along with a picture of the dog, they told me his name was Eyebee..... Can you pronounce that with out help? Japanese phonetics are different... I was stuck between Eh-yeh-beh, Ehyehbi, and Ibee (like I be madd!! )  i think they were supposed to be trying to be able to help me pronounce that easily... It did end up being the last one, which my host mom told me was because she loved the plant  IVY. i found it clever... The dog was frisky, only being two, and extraordinarily loud in the morning. He also attacked my bracelets... and prevailed over one  :'( *funeral march* It was interesting that they had a dog. The house was relatively small, so the dog was only allowed inside at night, in his corral. There was also no distinct backyard, just an endless feild of rice patties full of frogs... lots and lots of frogs. but those call for another time when my paranoid parents aren't about to come up and kick me off...

Ja, matta ne!

ps. They really do only want to speak to you in english, even if you don't understsand a single sylable spewing from their lips... lol...

[R. Daniel 01]

Yeah, see I just have a 6th sense for these things... like... dogs.

lol, so in other words, your host-parents spoke Engrish. Engrish is awesomely hilarious. I often speak Engrish just for kicks.

A Beagle in a rice paddy? That sounds very cute, in an incongruous sort of way. Did the dog often get wet, chasing after frogs?

Okay, what I really want to know at the moment is the differences in academic experiences. What material were you learning in your classes? How much of the material did you understand?

Oh, and that girl who was the president of the club, did you and her get along well? Ugh I can only imagine how much it would suck if you ended up with somebody you couldn't relate to at all.

[Bllue]

My host dad actually spent a year in the U.S. He spoke English very well. And he had this neighbor who majored in english, she was amazing. You need to see the amount of Jangrish they have everywhere. We went to a mall and my friend made it a point to try to decifer what the message was supposed to be. I saw chopsticks that say : I am happy friut. ... i cant remember the rest...
Eyebee was tyed up the entire time, being taken on walks along the road for excersise.

Naho and i were a nearly perfect match. She is intelligent, has a great love of music, and introduced me to most of the japanese actors that i know of.
I went to her english class 4 times, scince their scheduals are different every day... The teachers changing classrooms were rather entertaining. One of the teachers understood that we couldn't really attend very well, so he made worksheets for learning kanji on the back of a paper. he drew goku on my friend's paper...
The class i participated in the most, apart from english, was geography, actually. They were learning about different types of land, such as forests, tundra, deserts, etc. He asked me what kind of place i lived in, so i had a blast telling him about my desert, our produce, and finding on a map where my hometown is. So fun. He loved me...