2nd/3rd Days of School

I am already starting to get lazy with my posts! Luckily, I forced myself to write this last night. ^^

On Tuesday we went to class as usual. We had foundation from 9:30 until 11:20 and then we have an hour break for lunch. We went shopping and bought some really cute bento boxes. After shopping, we were almost late for class and didn't have enough time for lunch so we bought soda from one of the vending machines along the way (there were at least 6). Unfortunately, in our hurry to get back to school, we turned at the wrong street. We ended up being 10 minutes late.

After our second block of foundation, we have culture classes on Tues, Wed and Thurs. Tuesday was calligraphy. I am really bad at calligraphy, so my name stamp looks kind of awful at the top. I got better by the end, so the last character in my name is nearly perfect.

We also painted the kanji for dream--after practicing a dozen times--on really nice paper. But first we had to make the ink, which is a long process of scraping an ash stick thing around in water. Shelly and I both put the kanji off-center, but our sensei told us that it was okay because where we signed our name and put our stamp fixes it. It is not a word, but a work of art.

Then we went home, and had dinner in the cafeteria with the other girls. No one talked to us, but one student in particular kept smiling at us. Unfortunately, we didn't know that you are supposed to use a card when you go in there--and no one was brave enough to tell us. So we got in trouble with the dorm lady, who is actually quite scary.

After that we were going to give the dorm lady a present when I fell asleep. Shelly came into my room and scared me half to death, and then I didn't wake up until 6.

Today, we went to school, weren't late at all and learned tons! We had Wendy's and crepes for lunch. It was delicious but quite expensive, so we won't do that again. We also signed up to go to the Shabu Shabu party on Friday--which was also expensive--but I am sure that it will be well worth it.

Culture class today was pottery. We went to a pottery master's home where he taught us that pottery is a fun art, unlike kendo and judo which requires "serious students." We won't get our cups until next month though, so maybe Maki-sensei (the teacher in charge of planning the culture classes) will have to mail them to us in America.

After getting home we made our first meal--onigiri (rice balls) with sake (salmon) in the middle, scrambled eggs and chopped carrots. It doesn't actually sound that good, but before we put everything in the bento boxes (and totally smashed our huge onigiri) it tasted quite good. I'm rather excited to show Mai-san (the receptionist at Genki JACS) our awesome, however untraditional, bentos.

Then we made friends with one of the other dorm girls. Her name is Ayumi (she specifically asked us not to use any honorifics with her, which you only do with good friends in Japan). She is studying American/English Literature at Kyuushu University. She was quite excited to meet us and she even complimented our Japanese (obiviously flattery as we are completely horrible!!).

Now we are getting ready for bed, even though it's only 8. Changing time zones is actually very difficult, especially without any sleeping aids (beyond benadryl).

1st Day of School!

I have to take a shower in 20 mins or else I'll be late for school, so this is gonna be short and sweet.

Yesterday we had our first day of school. We were 15 mins late due mostly to stupidity.

It was the first day of school for 3 other students as well, all of which were definitely past their 30s. Their preliminary tests were rather long. I was kinda worried, but not terrible. I mean, how worried can you be when you already know that you're gonna fail horribly, right?

Finally it was my turn and I could answer the first question, and then I had to admit my inability to speak the language.

Then, we were placed into classes. Shelly and I are the only ones in the beginner level. Mika-sensei was our teacher that day is she is incredibly nice. I'm so glad that we came to school here and that we finally have homework!!

We learned basic greetings and how to introduce ourselves. Today we have a vocabulary test, but it shouldn't be too difficult.

At the school, we rented some bikes for the rest of our stay here, a phone and a cooking set. Overall, it was kind of expensive, but I am very glad that we have bikes. Even though they are hard to ride and avoiding peds is nearly impossible (in Japan bikes ride on the sidewalk with the peds).

We also went to Daiei which is like a mall with a produce section. It is huge. We bought a bag of rice and tons of other essential food items. But we forgot to get salt. I really want salt. And we also didn't get bento boxes so we can't take a box lunch to school. We will start cooking today.

We had takoyaki (octopus dumplings) for dinner and they were amazing. We watched a movie called Nana so that we wouldn't fall asleep before 9. Shelly cheated and slept during the movie. I didn't notice until she started snoring though. Of course I woke her up.

In the end, we both went to bed at a reasonable hour. But I still woke up at 4:30 this morning. But hey, that's 30 mins later than yesterday. And a whole hour later than Sunday morning! Yay!!

Oh and japanese cream puffs are awesome. We bought a pack of frozen ones for Easter and then forgot that we had them.

2nd Day in Japan

Today was equally eventful as yesterday, however, I am much more tired than yesterday. As I mentioned earlier, I have been awake since 3 am. That means I have been concious for the past 16 hours.

First order of business was once again a shower. It is very humid here, in fact it is very warm every day. The weather is perfect. So far it has been cloudless and somewhat hot, but always with a nice breeze.

After our shower, we ate a quick breakfast of rolls with butter and some pocari sweat. Then we headed out to go to church. We expected to find some more breakfast along the way as the church was a very long ways away. We got about half way there before admitting that there was in fact no hope that we were going to find it.

Just before we decided that we were lost, we were stopped by a local who apparently wanted us to come to his beauty shop (hair/make-up/ect.). We took his card, but I doubt that we will go there. But, this was our first encounter with a local who wasn't required to care about us.

As we came home, we found that there was a grocery store about 2 blocks from our dorm (much better selection than Lawson's). We bought some icecream as it is easter, 2 hamburgers, lots of discount onigiri, noodles and some spagetti sauce. Until tomorrow, we still don't have any cooking utensils, but it is good to start getting some of the essentials now.

After eating the 3 pack of onigiri (seaweed, hamfried rice and pickled cherry flavors) and almost dying of grossness, we set out to find the Nishi Park. It took us about 5 mins. We passed 2 shrines on the way, the bigger of the shrines makes a sqwaking sound as you drop money into the prayer box.

The Nishi Park is more of a forest trail than a park. It has several playgrounds within it, but none are visible until you are almost on top of them. The best part about this park is that no one actually goes into it. We were almost completely alone and therefore, not stared at.

We headed home for a quick study session (we still needed to learn the katakana before tomorrow). Then we went to the Ohori Park once again, as there was nothing else for us to do. There we say tons of children! We had missed them yesterday because we had fallen asleep. We also saw many gaijin.

The funny thing about the other gaijin is that they are all men. The other weird part is that they don't acknowledge our presence beyond giving us a double take as they walk by. However, one of the gaijin did stop us and we had a pretty pleasant conversation about the weather, why we are in japan, why he is in japan, ect. He was a rather loud speaker, but in the end it was rather nice finally speaking to someone other than Shelly. Even though I do love her dearly.

Lastly we went home, attempted to eat our discount onigiri (mine turned out to be okaka flavor which is fermented fish--I gagged and had to spit it out), asked when dinner was, got told that there was no dinner on sunday (or any other meal), pouted, went grocery shopping, bought lots of drinks, tasted some milk, bought a butter knife (which we definitely needed), got some salmon for making good onigiri with, and finally came home once again.

Now I am going to sleep. ^^

Oh, yeah and no one will accept my debit card. The internet says that the major store chains should accept my plastic, but so far no store has (including Lawsons, 7/11, ect.). I am starting to feel very upset about it. But there is a post office right across the street from us.

First Day in Japan

Welcome to Bike Land!!

Okay, so I should have blogged yesterday's events this morning when I woke up at 3 am. Unfortunately, I was trying way too hard to go back to sleep (I never did get back to dreamland). It is now 3 pm and I have only had one 30 min nap.

Yesterday, Shelly and I basically explored the area. First we tried to find the ocean, what we really found was the marina. It's cool, they are definitely real fishing boats there (none of those joy boats that everyone in south jordan owns).

Then, we headed toward the Ohori Park. It is huge!! You can't believe how pretty it is! There is an entire lake in the middle of it. Around the lake is a track that lots of people walk/jog on. Along with their dogs so you have to watch out for piddle.

The Ohori Park is actually quite famous, and after seeing it, it isn't hard to see why. It's a borderline national park! There are tons of things to do in it. You can take the swan boats onto the lake, play baseball, play on the huge playground, walk on the track, explore the foresty areas and go fishing in the designated fishing areas. There are also free theatre productions every once in awhile.

Everyone here stares at us. I did not realize that we were Fukuoka's only gaijin (foreigners). Actually, there are 3 other foreigners in our dorm but they are all asian.

Shelly and I are sort of a novelty here at the Wings Nishi Koen Dorm. Everyone knows that we can't speak english, so they don't say anything to us beyond "konnichiwa" (hello) and "ohayo gozaimasu" (good morning).

After a rather sad breakfast of riceballs and soda from the pluthera of vending machines (they are literally on every corner) we decided to once again find the ocean. Unfortunately, we went the wrong way.

Luckily, after touring a greater park of the inner city, we stumbled upon our school!! Huzzah! That was easy to find . . . Anyway, touring was not very fun, mostly because I was quite tired.

Then we went shopping! Not actually that exciting. We bought butter, some chips that taste like Kudos, milk, grapefruit juice and Pocari Sweat (like Gatorade).

Now, after getting lost several times, we were ready to find the ocean. And we did, after a very long walk. We went under the free way and along a really long road. It must have been over 10 blocks from our house.

But, it was all worth it! The beach was kinda overgrown with grass. I don't think that people actually swim in the ocean because we found lots of washed up jellyfish. And even saw one that was still in the water. Ew.

There were a few other people at the beach, of course they all stared. As we were making our way home, we found the Yahoo! Dome. It is very large. It is where the Fukuoka Hawks (Fukuoka's baseball team) plays. They actually had a game on the day that we arrived.

We found a fruit/vegetable store on our way home and bought expensive strawberries, but we were soooooo hungry! It was definitely worth it. Especially since we ate them for dinner too.

After buying the strawberries, we happened upon a 7/11, here we bought dinner and the rest of our lunch. We stopped in a park and finished off some more riceballs and gyoza.

Finally, we arrived home. We decided to take a nap and that we wouldn't sleep more than an hour. Shelly slept for 6 hours before waking me up. By then it was bed time. Hence the reason I woke up at 3 this morning.

But today we have vowed not to sleep at all! Not until at least 9pm, otherwise we will be very tired at school tomorrow.

Our Journey to Japan

Okay, so I am definitely in Japan now!! First off, airports are not actually that difficult to navigate. With that said, on with the story...

The SLC airport was a breeze, except for security where Shelly and I held up the line. But the people there are really nice, so it was okay.

LAX was hard, but mostly because we had to take a shuttle and Shelly thought we were supposed to go one way while the shuttle-man told us a different way. And because we are obviously smarter, we got lost finding our own way, and in the end, found that the shuttle-man was right.

Then we sat for six hours. It was really boring, so we browsed the stores. And watched people. And slept in our chairs outside the terminal.

Finally, we boarded. We were fed really gross noodle things, but there was tons of soda so that was good. I didn't go to the restroom the entire fligth, which is actually quite amazing because the flight to Tokyo was approx. 13 hours. I don't know how I did it.

We watched 3 movies on that flight and slept the rest of the time.

Finally, we were in Japan. Here we were herded to quarantine, which was a breeze. Then immigration. Then customs. And then, security once again. The Tokyo airport is nice because there is only one way to go. There is no chance of getting lost.

We got to our terminal with 30 mins to spare, and sat some more. The flight to Fukuoka was horrifying because Shelly and I did not sit next to eachother. But it was okay. The men on either side of me kept to themselves (aka, slept).

Once in Fukuoka, we got our bags and hailed a taxi. The taxi doors open by themselves, so you should never touch them.

20 mins later, and after asking a few people on the street, we found our way to our dorm. The taxi man was very helpful, even though he spoke no english at all.

Then the dorm lady greeted us and gave us a tour of the dorm. She was really nice too, even though she doesn't speak english either. The other dorm girls are all japanese--they don't speak english--and they think that we're funny looking, but I think it's gonna be okay.

Shelly's and my room are right next to one another.

Figuring out the gadgets in my room was interesting. I can work everything very well except my remote control for the heater/air conditioner and the lamp on my desk. I successfully made my bed, which is harder than it sounds. I am completely unpacked and ready to head out on the rest of today.

Anyway, sorry for being so long/boring!! It's only 7AM here (on Saturday), so I haven't woken Shelly up.

Take Action Tour

So I went to my very first (real) concert on Tuesday.

I wasn't really all that excited, I consider concerts more of a right of passage rather than a party (had we been seeing The Pussycat Dolls or Lily Allen it would have been a different story). Unfortunately, my friends were very excited so I kind of dampened the atmosphere.

They made me drive. Which was pretty funny because I had no idea where we were going. Her parents were giving me directions, but I'd never driven that far north so I pretty much just smiled and nodded. The only part I remembered was that we had to drive on "Main Street." And I was thinking, Hmm . . . I wonder where main street is . . ."

We got to the concert though, even an hour early. Just in time for the doors to open. All the tickets were general admission so we smashed each other for the best spots. Or rather, they smashed while I watched.

The performances were pretty good, they were local bands so there weren't any fancy effects. Of course the band we were there for performed last, but I figured this way I could brag about all the different bands I saw. 4 different bands performed and I managed to get a Meg&Dia t-shirt.

The only problem with the whole thing was that it was loud. Like really loud. Like, I should have brought earplugs loud. Or maybe my sound blocking headphones. Did I mention it was LOUD?! My left ear was still ringing until this morning. Do you understand how annoying that is? I, mean, it would have been one thing if both my ears were ringing, but no. My right ear recovered within 30 mins after we left for home.

Anyway, I'll quit ranting. I can officially say that I've been to a decent concert.

Oh, and yesterday, Nick held my hand for the first time ever. This was our 6th or 7th date and he finally got the guts. I was pretty sure that he would, what with all the hand twitching on our last date, but . . . it was still pretty exciting. ^^ Maybe next week he'll kiss me?! lol

Daylight Savings

So I knew that it was daylight savings. I knew that my clocks wouldn't change by themselves. However, I had faith that my cell phone wouldn't fail me. I thought that, just like 6 months ago, it would change on its own.

I was wrong.

So now, I am over an hour late for church. Not that I mind really, it's just that I promised the new girl that I'd sit by her again this week . . . oops.

What's funny though is that my sister came into my room to ask me for a ride to church, I was far too tired at that point and refused. I thought that she had some sort of meeting an hour early. But no, she was off to attend church. Unfortunately, she didn't mention her decision to anyone (asking me for a ride doesn't count). My entire family, except Alyssa, was absent today.

Oh, and The Annoyance gets back on track tomorrow. Too bad that missing hour means I'll have to put up with him an hour earlier that I would have otherwise.

I can't wait until I leave for Japan, I've heard that they don't have daylight savings or The Annoyance there. What a brilliant country.