Dude, Stussy has suddenly become really cool and fashionable in Japan. It had been kinda underground before, but lately it is all over the place! I’m sorry, but that company canNOT become popular again….how does it even exist still? Dude, that is like SO the 6th year of the Emperor, what are these Japanese people thinking? ;)
Let’s praying that No Fear and Mossimo shirts don’t start popping up next….
Thursday, May 25, 2006
A Summary of My Winter
Wow, two blog entries about weather in a row, I am really turning Japanese.
Anyway, I am reading Bridget Jones’s Diary for the first time (yes, ten years too late) and am thoroughly enjoying it. I found a paragraph that describes ALTs’ winters perfectly:
“Very much enjoying the Winter Wonderland and reminder that we are at the mercy of the elements, and should not concentrate so hard on being sophisticated and hardworking but on staying warm and watching the telly.”
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Anyway, I am reading Bridget Jones’s Diary for the first time (yes, ten years too late) and am thoroughly enjoying it. I found a paragraph that describes ALTs’ winters perfectly:
“Very much enjoying the Winter Wonderland and reminder that we are at the mercy of the elements, and should not concentrate so hard on being sophisticated and hardworking but on staying warm and watching the telly.”
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Changing Tenki
(Yes, Cindy wrote like the exact same thing on her blog, but ours are already the same, so why change?)
So, apparently summer is knocking on the door, but I refuse to answer, dammit! It has slowly been getting warmer, and last week it suddenly became muggy, bah! However, it’s weird, because it doesn’t really FEEL muggy, but I’ll get to work and be sweaty and gross, and just be confused as to why I am sweating.
I hate the damn cold here, but I also hate the damn heat! If it was just hot, I could handle, but the mugginess is enough to do me in. Me no wanty sweat!!! Also, why do Japanese people not sweat? Is it because they don’t drink any water, so they don’t have any liquid to release? Or do they not need water because they don’t sweat? Hmm. Also, doesn’t that mean they just keep all of their toxins in them? Ewwww.
Anyway, summer is upon us, and it doesn’t even feel like we got a spring. It wasn’t freezing, but it wasn’t nice spring weather for like more than a week, either. Sigh. Crazy Japan and its crazy weather!
So, apparently summer is knocking on the door, but I refuse to answer, dammit! It has slowly been getting warmer, and last week it suddenly became muggy, bah! However, it’s weird, because it doesn’t really FEEL muggy, but I’ll get to work and be sweaty and gross, and just be confused as to why I am sweating.
I hate the damn cold here, but I also hate the damn heat! If it was just hot, I could handle, but the mugginess is enough to do me in. Me no wanty sweat!!! Also, why do Japanese people not sweat? Is it because they don’t drink any water, so they don’t have any liquid to release? Or do they not need water because they don’t sweat? Hmm. Also, doesn’t that mean they just keep all of their toxins in them? Ewwww.
Anyway, summer is upon us, and it doesn’t even feel like we got a spring. It wasn’t freezing, but it wasn’t nice spring weather for like more than a week, either. Sigh. Crazy Japan and its crazy weather!
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Let’s Sex More Often
From a Japan Times article on marriage and relationships:
Even today, when 88.6 percent of marriages are love marriages (prewar, some 70 percent of marriages were arranged), conjugal bliss, if measured in terms of the frequency of marital sex, is more elusive here than elsewhere. A 2005 survey by the condom maker Durex showed a Japanese average of 45 times a year, far behind the world average of 103 times.
Even today, when 88.6 percent of marriages are love marriages (prewar, some 70 percent of marriages were arranged), conjugal bliss, if measured in terms of the frequency of marital sex, is more elusive here than elsewhere. A 2005 survey by the condom maker Durex showed a Japanese average of 45 times a year, far behind the world average of 103 times.
Don't mess with our food!
So, I haven’t really blogged that much lately, and since I am sure EVERYONE wants to know what I have been up to, I’ll write about my weekend! On Friday night, a few of us decided to meet up for sushi at our favorite place in Ota. We usually train to Ota, then walk 30 minutes to the sushi place. However, we decided to be healthy and exercise-y and bike to the place! Normally I would NEVER consider biking to Ota proper, as Yabu is way north of it, but I have to take advantage of the not-really-humid weather while I can!
I went down the 78, looking for a fork at which I was supposed to turn right. However, lots of drama and construction was in the way and got me WAY out of the right direction…I finally figured out where I was an hour into the ride, when I saw Joyful Honda. Um, that only takes 30 minutes to get to! Who knows what happened. Anyway, eventually I ended up at sushi, which was yummy, as always. After dessert at an Italian place, we all biked home…by the end of the day, I had biked over 25 kilometers! Go, Jeff!
Sean had organized a baseball trip to Tokyo for Saturday (thanks for organizing, Sean!) evening, but Shinders and I of course wanted to go on an eating adventure, so we headed down to Tokyo early for lunch. At first we wanted to do pho at an apparently-amazing place, but we looked it up online and they don’t serve lunch on Saturdays, meh. So, we decided to go to the yummy Indian place in Harajuku. We trained to Harajuku just for it, with the assurance from their business card that they didn’t close after lunch….only to find that they closed after lunch (which was like TWO minutes before we arrived!). Um, we were NOT amused. Do not get in the way of us and food!!!! We wandered around Harajuku, desperately searching for somewhere to eat…I swear Tokyo is the shittiest big city for food in the world. Hello, there should be good restaurants everywhere. Meh. Anyway, we eventually decided to try Yao, a brunch place that had a good menu and wasn’t too expensive.
When we got into Yao, I was surprised that it wasn’t very expensive, as it was very posh and pretentious-looking. Also, the waitress gave us a bell (like, a real bell) to ring if we needed help. Um, that is never a sign of UNpretentiousness! So, when we got our food, we discovered why it was cheap…..they give you like a bit of food for 1500 yen! NOT ACCEPTABLE WHEN ONE IS HUNGRY!!!!! We got this pate thing which was pretty much fruit spread on a piece of Spam (but HIGH CLASS spam!) for 1100 yen. Then we got this curry and a pork thing, both of which were good, but were appetizers at the very most. So, after spending 4000 yen, we went to fucking Freshness Burger to fill up. Sad. Needless to say, we were not amused.
After that we met up with a buncha ALTs at the baseball game. We didn’t see the Giants, as they are famous and expensive, so we saw the Swallows? Ahahahaha. Yes, the team name was the highlight of the game for me. We were in the fan section, which meant all of the crowd was super genki, singing, screaming, and standing up the whole time. We decided that baseball games are where Japanese people allow themselves to be real human beings! Anyway, I didn’t care enough about the game, so I just sat down and talked to people, meaning I didn’t watch any of the game. But it was fun anyway :)
After much convincing, and Cindy and I being drama queens, we eventually got persuaded to stay out all night and go clubbing with everyone. We went to Shibuya for a late dinner, then did an hour of karaoke, then ended up at Club Asia. A recommendation for anyone ever in Tokyo: DON’T EVER GO TO CLUB ASIA. Holy shit, it was the shittiest club ever. It was “house night,” so they played house ALL NIGHT LONG. Um, house is meant for the background of restaurants and bars, not the foreground! You can’t dance to that shit! We decided to make our own fun out of it, but that only lasted for so long, so we left earlier than expected, then waited for the first train (5 am for Yabbers). I got home at 8, assed out, had no Sunday, then worked on Monday. Hehe.
Anyway, despite food and dance drama, it was a fun weekend.
I went down the 78, looking for a fork at which I was supposed to turn right. However, lots of drama and construction was in the way and got me WAY out of the right direction…I finally figured out where I was an hour into the ride, when I saw Joyful Honda. Um, that only takes 30 minutes to get to! Who knows what happened. Anyway, eventually I ended up at sushi, which was yummy, as always. After dessert at an Italian place, we all biked home…by the end of the day, I had biked over 25 kilometers! Go, Jeff!
Sean had organized a baseball trip to Tokyo for Saturday (thanks for organizing, Sean!) evening, but Shinders and I of course wanted to go on an eating adventure, so we headed down to Tokyo early for lunch. At first we wanted to do pho at an apparently-amazing place, but we looked it up online and they don’t serve lunch on Saturdays, meh. So, we decided to go to the yummy Indian place in Harajuku. We trained to Harajuku just for it, with the assurance from their business card that they didn’t close after lunch….only to find that they closed after lunch (which was like TWO minutes before we arrived!). Um, we were NOT amused. Do not get in the way of us and food!!!! We wandered around Harajuku, desperately searching for somewhere to eat…I swear Tokyo is the shittiest big city for food in the world. Hello, there should be good restaurants everywhere. Meh. Anyway, we eventually decided to try Yao, a brunch place that had a good menu and wasn’t too expensive.
When we got into Yao, I was surprised that it wasn’t very expensive, as it was very posh and pretentious-looking. Also, the waitress gave us a bell (like, a real bell) to ring if we needed help. Um, that is never a sign of UNpretentiousness! So, when we got our food, we discovered why it was cheap…..they give you like a bit of food for 1500 yen! NOT ACCEPTABLE WHEN ONE IS HUNGRY!!!!! We got this pate thing which was pretty much fruit spread on a piece of Spam (but HIGH CLASS spam!) for 1100 yen. Then we got this curry and a pork thing, both of which were good, but were appetizers at the very most. So, after spending 4000 yen, we went to fucking Freshness Burger to fill up. Sad. Needless to say, we were not amused.
After that we met up with a buncha ALTs at the baseball game. We didn’t see the Giants, as they are famous and expensive, so we saw the Swallows? Ahahahaha. Yes, the team name was the highlight of the game for me. We were in the fan section, which meant all of the crowd was super genki, singing, screaming, and standing up the whole time. We decided that baseball games are where Japanese people allow themselves to be real human beings! Anyway, I didn’t care enough about the game, so I just sat down and talked to people, meaning I didn’t watch any of the game. But it was fun anyway :)
After much convincing, and Cindy and I being drama queens, we eventually got persuaded to stay out all night and go clubbing with everyone. We went to Shibuya for a late dinner, then did an hour of karaoke, then ended up at Club Asia. A recommendation for anyone ever in Tokyo: DON’T EVER GO TO CLUB ASIA. Holy shit, it was the shittiest club ever. It was “house night,” so they played house ALL NIGHT LONG. Um, house is meant for the background of restaurants and bars, not the foreground! You can’t dance to that shit! We decided to make our own fun out of it, but that only lasted for so long, so we left earlier than expected, then waited for the first train (5 am for Yabbers). I got home at 8, assed out, had no Sunday, then worked on Monday. Hehe.
Anyway, despite food and dance drama, it was a fun weekend.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Sooooooo sick the The DaVinci Code
I don’t give a shit about whether The DaVinci Code movie is good or not (apparently it is not, according to all of the reviews)…however, I am very glad I read the NY Times review, if only for a few choice sentences:
“The DaVinci Code, Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence, arrives trailing more than its share of theological and historical disputation.
"The Da Vinci Code," which opened the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, is one of the few screen versions of a book that may take longer to watch than to read.
Hahaha. Shitty writing, indeed. Got to wonder about a book in which a “chapter” is ONE FUCKING PAGE.
Anyway, I recommend reading the review for plenty of more pretentious, queeny humor (and really, is there any better kind?).
“The DaVinci Code, Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence, arrives trailing more than its share of theological and historical disputation.
"The Da Vinci Code," which opened the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, is one of the few screen versions of a book that may take longer to watch than to read.
Hahaha. Shitty writing, indeed. Got to wonder about a book in which a “chapter” is ONE FUCKING PAGE.
Anyway, I recommend reading the review for plenty of more pretentious, queeny humor (and really, is there any better kind?).
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
El updato de la photos
I have finally added Spring Break and Mexico pictures to my photos page. I will try to get off my ass and post the dame Judi Dench photos on my blog by next week.
Ahahaha, that makes it sound like I'm actually posting photos of Judi Dench.
Ahahaha, that makes it sound like I'm actually posting photos of Judi Dench.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Jefu the Judge
My favorite pastime when bored at my desk is judging other teachers by their strange actions…it is the best way to pass the time, especially now that I have the best people-watching desk in the staffroom! Some observations from bored Jeff:
-The choir/band teacher is ALWAYS running around the school as if there is a choir-related emergency just around the corner. She seriously runs everywhere she goes. I really don’t know why she is always in such a hurry, but because of this constant exercise, her calves are HUGE! They like the size of my torso! Eek! Don’t get in a kickboxing fight with the choir teacher, yo!
-There is a new 1nensei P.E. teacher who has a permaconfused look on his face. At first I thought it was just because he was new and he didn’t know where he was going around the school, but apparently he is still lost 2 months later. Poor guy.
-The new female P.E. teacher has the most unfortunate fashion sense ever! She wears her track pants up to her boobs, and she isn’t even that old! Maybe late 30’s? Hello, it’s okay to wear your pants at your waist! Whenever she comes into the staffroom and is standing around between classes, she hikes up her pants as far as they go, even though they were plenty high as they were! To add to this extremely hot look, she has recently donned a most heinous and ENORMOUS visor to protect her from the sun while P.E.-ing. Yes, it is probably good for your skin, but sometimes fashion must take priority over health, I am afraid. There is no reason to wear a visor the size of Greece on your damn head when it isn’t even that sunny, woman!
Yes, I am going to hell, but at least I’m having a fun ride on the way there.
-The choir/band teacher is ALWAYS running around the school as if there is a choir-related emergency just around the corner. She seriously runs everywhere she goes. I really don’t know why she is always in such a hurry, but because of this constant exercise, her calves are HUGE! They like the size of my torso! Eek! Don’t get in a kickboxing fight with the choir teacher, yo!
-There is a new 1nensei P.E. teacher who has a permaconfused look on his face. At first I thought it was just because he was new and he didn’t know where he was going around the school, but apparently he is still lost 2 months later. Poor guy.
-The new female P.E. teacher has the most unfortunate fashion sense ever! She wears her track pants up to her boobs, and she isn’t even that old! Maybe late 30’s? Hello, it’s okay to wear your pants at your waist! Whenever she comes into the staffroom and is standing around between classes, she hikes up her pants as far as they go, even though they were plenty high as they were! To add to this extremely hot look, she has recently donned a most heinous and ENORMOUS visor to protect her from the sun while P.E.-ing. Yes, it is probably good for your skin, but sometimes fashion must take priority over health, I am afraid. There is no reason to wear a visor the size of Greece on your damn head when it isn’t even that sunny, woman!
Yes, I am going to hell, but at least I’m having a fun ride on the way there.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Dammit!
Photos and video of the penis festival that we sadly missed. Man, MUST go next year! Too amusing.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Let's saving the environment!
Oooo, hopefully this helps Japan wean itself from the damn wasteful waribashi.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Mexico! Part Tres
Last entry about Mexico! So, Friday morning, Eduardo and I got up and were a wee bit hungover…I felt bad for Ana and Luis Felipe, as they had to get up early and go to work! Ewww, not fun! We were hungover and we slept in! Anyway, we got some amazing Mexican pastries and headed to downtown Mexico City for tourist-y things. The downtown was so much more historic and beautiful than I expected. I LOVED the buildings. We wandered around a bit (with plenty of Gatorade to make up for the drinks the night before…man, I miss real Western Gatorade, rather than the shitty Gatorade here), then ended up at the third largest public square in the world? Or something. It was huge! It looked like we were in Russia. They had an enormous church there that was very pretty, but the foundation of all of that area is all screwed up because it used to be a river or something…..so all of the buildings are like sinking in. Anyway, that means all of the buildings are a bit crooked, and it messed with my head whenever we went inside anywhere. It felt like I had vertigo or something! After the church, we went inside…um…a diplomatic big building thing. I think it might have been the president’s house back when they were all dictators. I think. Eduardo will have to help me on that one! It was huge and really interesting…it made me feel patriotic and I’m not even Mexican! I loved loved loved the murals on the walls by Diego Rivera (it is where Diego was painting in the Frida movie). They were beautiful, and showed the history of Mexico. We explored in there for a while, then walked around downtown some more. We ended up at the BIGGEST bakery I have ever seen in my life. It was seriously my definition of heaven….pastries as far as you could see, and they just kept wheeling out more fresh ones! I wanted to take pictures, but was sadly too embarrassed. I think I want to live there!!!!
After being in heaven, we next went to hell….an unairconditioned subway for a half hour on a very very hot day. Not very fun! We went to the part of the city that Frida lived in, which felt completely different from the other areas we had gone to. It was very hippie-ish and didn’t feel like it we were in the city at all. It was really pretty, though, and a nice area. We had lunch there, then wandered around the markets and stuff. The area had a really cool vibe.
We returned to Eduardo’s exhausted, watched some Sex and the City, then showered (much needed after a hot day in Mexico, eww) and went out for a gay night on the town! First we went to Lipstick, a very pretentious gay bar where everyone looks the same and thinks they’re the shit. Aww, how I miss the gay community! I FINALLY had the Red Bull vodka that I have been craving for 11 months, and it was fucking $15!!! WTF! Beers were only three bucks, tho. We danced there for a while until the music started sucking quite a lot of ass, and we decided to have dinner at 1 am. Mmmm, tacooooooooooooooooooooos.
We next went to what Eduardo calls “the trashy gay bar,” which was even trashier than I expected. Um, they had a Beegees music video on when we went in. Since when did they even have music videos back then?! It was awful and there were like five people in the bar, so we didn’t last very long there. On that wonderful note, our night came to an end! Hehe.
Saturday was like the busiest day EVER EVER EVER. We got up far too early for going to bed at 4:30, went to Costco (aww, I miss me some Costco), had brunch with Ana and Luis Felipe, then did a few shopping errands I had to do before leaving. We then went to Eduardo’s aunt’s house for dinner/his cousin Julia’s birthday party. His aunt made tamales and they were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good. They were also in the hugest pot I have ever seen in my entire life. There had to have been hundreds of tamales in there, and I am not exaggerating. God, they were so good.
We stayed there for a long time, and it was fun…then we went to Ana and Luis Felipe’s to say goodbye. We thought we would only be there for like a half hour, then go back to Eduardo’s to pack and relax…we didn’t know that they had made us ANOTHER huge dinner! Holy shit! I had had six tamales, plus two desserts and was sooooo full….but I didn’t want to be rude, so I somehow had yet another dinner AND a dessert. Who knows how that worked. It was really fucking good, tho. We got back really late, I packed while we watched 40 Year-Old Virgin, then got two hours of sleep before we headed to the airport at 4:30 in the morning (fun!).
We had my last mango of the trip at the airport (sad!!!!), wandered around a bit, then said goodbye (MUCH MORE SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). That was not fun at all :( :( :(
I then traveled home for 25 fucking hours, where I landed in the “why is it cold in May?” country of stupid Japan and returned to my stupid lonely apartment! Hee hee, I am not bitter.
Anyway, it was an incredible trip. Before going, I had only thought about seeing Eduardo, and didn’t really think about actually going to Mexico….I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I loved the country. It is so beautiful and has really interesting history, architecture, etc. Also, everyone was so nice! Well, Eduardo’s friends/family, not bitchy people on the street, hee hee. Plus they have good-ass food, of course. So yes, it was a GREAT trip, and I want to go back right now. AND I GOT TO SEE MY BOYO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, yep, that’s my trip! I am really behind on posting pictures, but I hope to do that in the next week (yes, I always say that, but I actually plan on it this time).
After being in heaven, we next went to hell….an unairconditioned subway for a half hour on a very very hot day. Not very fun! We went to the part of the city that Frida lived in, which felt completely different from the other areas we had gone to. It was very hippie-ish and didn’t feel like it we were in the city at all. It was really pretty, though, and a nice area. We had lunch there, then wandered around the markets and stuff. The area had a really cool vibe.
We returned to Eduardo’s exhausted, watched some Sex and the City, then showered (much needed after a hot day in Mexico, eww) and went out for a gay night on the town! First we went to Lipstick, a very pretentious gay bar where everyone looks the same and thinks they’re the shit. Aww, how I miss the gay community! I FINALLY had the Red Bull vodka that I have been craving for 11 months, and it was fucking $15!!! WTF! Beers were only three bucks, tho. We danced there for a while until the music started sucking quite a lot of ass, and we decided to have dinner at 1 am. Mmmm, tacooooooooooooooooooooos.
We next went to what Eduardo calls “the trashy gay bar,” which was even trashier than I expected. Um, they had a Beegees music video on when we went in. Since when did they even have music videos back then?! It was awful and there were like five people in the bar, so we didn’t last very long there. On that wonderful note, our night came to an end! Hehe.
Saturday was like the busiest day EVER EVER EVER. We got up far too early for going to bed at 4:30, went to Costco (aww, I miss me some Costco), had brunch with Ana and Luis Felipe, then did a few shopping errands I had to do before leaving. We then went to Eduardo’s aunt’s house for dinner/his cousin Julia’s birthday party. His aunt made tamales and they were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good. They were also in the hugest pot I have ever seen in my entire life. There had to have been hundreds of tamales in there, and I am not exaggerating. God, they were so good.
We stayed there for a long time, and it was fun…then we went to Ana and Luis Felipe’s to say goodbye. We thought we would only be there for like a half hour, then go back to Eduardo’s to pack and relax…we didn’t know that they had made us ANOTHER huge dinner! Holy shit! I had had six tamales, plus two desserts and was sooooo full….but I didn’t want to be rude, so I somehow had yet another dinner AND a dessert. Who knows how that worked. It was really fucking good, tho. We got back really late, I packed while we watched 40 Year-Old Virgin, then got two hours of sleep before we headed to the airport at 4:30 in the morning (fun!).
We had my last mango of the trip at the airport (sad!!!!), wandered around a bit, then said goodbye (MUCH MORE SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). That was not fun at all :( :( :(
I then traveled home for 25 fucking hours, where I landed in the “why is it cold in May?” country of stupid Japan and returned to my stupid lonely apartment! Hee hee, I am not bitter.
Anyway, it was an incredible trip. Before going, I had only thought about seeing Eduardo, and didn’t really think about actually going to Mexico….I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I loved the country. It is so beautiful and has really interesting history, architecture, etc. Also, everyone was so nice! Well, Eduardo’s friends/family, not bitchy people on the street, hee hee. Plus they have good-ass food, of course. So yes, it was a GREAT trip, and I want to go back right now. AND I GOT TO SEE MY BOYO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, yep, that’s my trip! I am really behind on posting pictures, but I hope to do that in the next week (yes, I always say that, but I actually plan on it this time).
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Mexico! Part Dos (Hotcakes!)
This blog title is a shout-out to Holly and the fine folks at Denny’s. Hollah!
Anyway, back to too many details about my Mexico trip! Tuesday morning, Eduardo and I woke up early and went into downtown Guanajuato, which was AMAZINGLY beautiful. The town was home to Spaniards in the 1500s, and was an important part of the revolution/independence, as Mexicans fought the Spaniards there and took back the town. Anyway, because of its history, its architecture made us feel like we were in Europe. The buildings were colorful and beautiful, and there were tons of small plazas where the locals would just hang out. I will post a million pictures of it eventually.
We got a yummy cheap-ass breakfast, then started walking for hours and hours and hours. We got a ton of exercise while we were there (and throughout the whole trip in general). There is a viewpoint on top of a hill in which you can see the whole town, so we hiked up there, among other places. We found a DELICIOUS street vendor-ish place (Not a real street vendor, but not a real restaurant, either. Fuck, I love street vendors) for lunch, where we ate like 300 meals’ worth of food. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. We relaxed a bit for the afternoon, then went back to where we had breakfast, as they had CHEAP-ASS BEER! We got a 1 liter beer with salt, lime, Worcestershire sauce (sp?) and chili mixed in for $3.50 each! These were incredibly classy beers, as they came in huge styrofoam cups with straws punched through the lid! It looked like some sort of secretive Big Gulp or something. Eduardo is apparently an alcoholic, as he sucked his liter of beer down in like three seconds. I have become Japanese, as I couldn’t drink all of it because I wanted izakaya-type snacks with it. Hello, you can’t drink beer by itself! So, Eduardo was a lush and helped me out with mine :)
That night we had a semi-romantic meal at a restaurant near the plaza. It was meant to be more romantic, but there was blaring Mexican music coming from bands in the public gazebo, and a soccer game that all of the dumb straight people were freaking out about. But it was still fun….tho we ate wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much and kind of wanted to vomit. Hmm, maybe not so romantic, now that I think about it ;)
We walked our meal off around town that night, then went to bed. On Wednesday morning we got some pastries for breakfast (MMMMMM, Mexican pastries are the most amazing things in the world), then wandered around town some more. I bought omiyage for my damn teachers (stupid, stupid custom!) and…I dunno what else we did. We got an amazing fruit bowl from a street vendor. It was my mission to have a mango every day I was there, as they are shitty and over a dollar each here! Then we had lunch at the same place as the day before. Mmm, chile rellenos (sp)! Fucking good shit.
That night we took the nice bus back (but it only had dubbed movies….as much as I wanted to watch the Dukes of Hazzard movie in Spanish!), then crashed at Eduardo’s place.
On Thursday we did stuff! Um, wtf did we do on Thursday? Oh, that was our first day in Mexico City. We went to the gay area, where I bought some perfectly legal copies of gay movies! Mmmhmm! We met up with Eduardo’s friend Enrique for lunch. Oh, but before that, we paid to let Starbucks poison us! Allow me to explain….Mexico has recently made the most sketchy invention ever….milk that doesn’t go bad! Um, yeah. It comes in cartons similar to soy/rice milk, but it is “normal” milk. However, you don’t have to refrigerate it before you open it?! Um, yeah, that is incredibly trust-worthy. Starbucks doesn’t have soy milk, but only has the lactose-free version of this milk. I had issues with it earlier in the week, and did once again with Starbucks. Ugh, stupid sketchy milk!
That night, Eduardo and I became members of Mexico City high society by attending the premiere of the National Geographic furniture line. Ana works for Liverpool (a high-class department store) and is in charge of the company’s entire furniture department. She organized the event, and invited us to it. It was in a SUPER SUPER SUPER nice restaurant in the Mexico City equivalent of Central Park. The restaurant is at least $150 per person for a meal! Damn, boy. So, it was nice to go there for free and pretend to be important people. I wanted to take a picture of their bathrooms, if that shows how nice it is. Anyway, the premiere was cool, and it didn’t hurt that we got free wine out of it. It also had a view of an incredibly beautiful lake/fountain thing. Oh, and the speaker at the event was the Mexican/Argentinian equivalent of George Clooney (hot old-man actor).
After drinking lots of wine, Eduardo, Ana, Luis Felipe and I headed out to a bar and had some yummy yummy mojitos and danced a bit. After getting successfully drunk, we had the BEST FUCKING DRUNK TACOS EVER. Holy shit! I had like five and wanted approximately three bazillion more. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Drunk tacos are SO much better than drunk yakisoba!!!!!!!!!
After that, Eduardo and I went home and assed out yet again.
To be continued!
Anyway, back to too many details about my Mexico trip! Tuesday morning, Eduardo and I woke up early and went into downtown Guanajuato, which was AMAZINGLY beautiful. The town was home to Spaniards in the 1500s, and was an important part of the revolution/independence, as Mexicans fought the Spaniards there and took back the town. Anyway, because of its history, its architecture made us feel like we were in Europe. The buildings were colorful and beautiful, and there were tons of small plazas where the locals would just hang out. I will post a million pictures of it eventually.
We got a yummy cheap-ass breakfast, then started walking for hours and hours and hours. We got a ton of exercise while we were there (and throughout the whole trip in general). There is a viewpoint on top of a hill in which you can see the whole town, so we hiked up there, among other places. We found a DELICIOUS street vendor-ish place (Not a real street vendor, but not a real restaurant, either. Fuck, I love street vendors) for lunch, where we ate like 300 meals’ worth of food. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. We relaxed a bit for the afternoon, then went back to where we had breakfast, as they had CHEAP-ASS BEER! We got a 1 liter beer with salt, lime, Worcestershire sauce (sp?) and chili mixed in for $3.50 each! These were incredibly classy beers, as they came in huge styrofoam cups with straws punched through the lid! It looked like some sort of secretive Big Gulp or something. Eduardo is apparently an alcoholic, as he sucked his liter of beer down in like three seconds. I have become Japanese, as I couldn’t drink all of it because I wanted izakaya-type snacks with it. Hello, you can’t drink beer by itself! So, Eduardo was a lush and helped me out with mine :)
That night we had a semi-romantic meal at a restaurant near the plaza. It was meant to be more romantic, but there was blaring Mexican music coming from bands in the public gazebo, and a soccer game that all of the dumb straight people were freaking out about. But it was still fun….tho we ate wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much and kind of wanted to vomit. Hmm, maybe not so romantic, now that I think about it ;)
We walked our meal off around town that night, then went to bed. On Wednesday morning we got some pastries for breakfast (MMMMMM, Mexican pastries are the most amazing things in the world), then wandered around town some more. I bought omiyage for my damn teachers (stupid, stupid custom!) and…I dunno what else we did. We got an amazing fruit bowl from a street vendor. It was my mission to have a mango every day I was there, as they are shitty and over a dollar each here! Then we had lunch at the same place as the day before. Mmm, chile rellenos (sp)! Fucking good shit.
That night we took the nice bus back (but it only had dubbed movies….as much as I wanted to watch the Dukes of Hazzard movie in Spanish!), then crashed at Eduardo’s place.
On Thursday we did stuff! Um, wtf did we do on Thursday? Oh, that was our first day in Mexico City. We went to the gay area, where I bought some perfectly legal copies of gay movies! Mmmhmm! We met up with Eduardo’s friend Enrique for lunch. Oh, but before that, we paid to let Starbucks poison us! Allow me to explain….Mexico has recently made the most sketchy invention ever….milk that doesn’t go bad! Um, yeah. It comes in cartons similar to soy/rice milk, but it is “normal” milk. However, you don’t have to refrigerate it before you open it?! Um, yeah, that is incredibly trust-worthy. Starbucks doesn’t have soy milk, but only has the lactose-free version of this milk. I had issues with it earlier in the week, and did once again with Starbucks. Ugh, stupid sketchy milk!
That night, Eduardo and I became members of Mexico City high society by attending the premiere of the National Geographic furniture line. Ana works for Liverpool (a high-class department store) and is in charge of the company’s entire furniture department. She organized the event, and invited us to it. It was in a SUPER SUPER SUPER nice restaurant in the Mexico City equivalent of Central Park. The restaurant is at least $150 per person for a meal! Damn, boy. So, it was nice to go there for free and pretend to be important people. I wanted to take a picture of their bathrooms, if that shows how nice it is. Anyway, the premiere was cool, and it didn’t hurt that we got free wine out of it. It also had a view of an incredibly beautiful lake/fountain thing. Oh, and the speaker at the event was the Mexican/Argentinian equivalent of George Clooney (hot old-man actor).
After drinking lots of wine, Eduardo, Ana, Luis Felipe and I headed out to a bar and had some yummy yummy mojitos and danced a bit. After getting successfully drunk, we had the BEST FUCKING DRUNK TACOS EVER. Holy shit! I had like five and wanted approximately three bazillion more. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Drunk tacos are SO much better than drunk yakisoba!!!!!!!!!
After that, Eduardo and I went home and assed out yet again.
To be continued!
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Mexico! Part Uno
Soooooooooo, I went to Mexico for Golden Week and FINALLY saw Eduardo for the first time in 11 god damn months!!!! I had an amaaaaaaaaaazing time…even better than I had expected. I wanted to write about it so that I remember all that I did. So, in order to not write about it twice, I will just post my journal-ish stuff to my blog. It will probably be hella long, so….yeah. You can skip it if you want :)
On Thursday I woke up early out of excitement and got ready to go to Narita. For those who don’t know, Narita Airport is 1) not in Tokyo (tho it pretends to be) and 2) is fucking far away no matter where you live. It takes three hours to get to Narita, and is a bitch with luggage, but is even worse by bus. So, I impatiently trained for three hours so that I could sit on planes for a bazillion more hours. All together, I traveled for 24 hours. Fun stuff!!!
Despite taking sleeping pills, I couldn’t sleep on the 12-hour flight to Houston. This is proof that Japanese medicine doesn’t do shit, yo. From Houston, I took a plane of death that holds 50 people. It was so short that I couldn’t stand up completely, as my head would go through the roof. Also, my “row” had one seat in it. Um, not acceptable! I had to close my window because it was too scary. Fortunately I slept through most of it (I think out of fear more than exhaustion). Anyway, I finally landed in Mexico, got through customs quickly, and SAW MY BOY, yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! I barely recognized him, as he was skinny and in a suit! Crazy old working man ;) hehe. We immediately exchanged my money, where the lady tried to steal $100 from me! WTF! I gave her $650 (well, in yen), and she said it was only 550. Fortunately I noticed the “error” and she was just like, “Yeah, I’ll give you the other 100 in a minute.” Um, nice first experience in Mexico! Hehe.
We had dinner at the airport (mole! And a margarita! Mmmmm), then went to Eduardo’s apartment, where I eventually assed out….only to wake up 4:30 in the morning, unable to sleep anymore! Yes, four hours of sleep in 30 hours is apparently all jetlagged Jeff needs. We made huevos rancheros for breakfast (orgasm), then got ready to go out. Eduardo had a bit of work to do at Berlitz, but first we went to see Rent (the movie)! It opened the day after I arrived….coincidence? I think not! There was only one other person in the theater with us, sad! We were both amused that they renamed it Rent Extreme Lives….you know those gays….they live to the extreme, man! Anyway, it was fun to see it on the big screen. I didn’t like the movie the first time I saw it, but I like it a lot now. And it was nice to see it with my boy, awwww!
After that we went to Berlitz, where Jeff assed out and was about to eat Eddy’s desk out of pure starvation. After acting like a grumpy 5 year-old (do not mess with jetlagged Jeff!), we went and had a HUGE lunch of tacos and tortas. Fuck, it was amazing.
That evening we met up with Eduardo’s friend Ana and her boyfriend Luis Felipe. They were nice enough to invite us to spend the weekend with them in Luis Felipe’s family vacation home in Tepeji del Rio. It was a great place! It’s away from the city, and was really relaxing.
On Saturday, we got up and drove to an area whose name I don’t remember! Eduardo is going to send me a list of place names, so I will add them later. Anyway, we went hiking on a monolith (only three in the world exist) and it was a good workout! We didn’t go up that high, but it was pretty tiring and hot! From the halfway point (fuck going up all the way, yo!) we got a great view of the beautiful traditional town beneath it. We had a gooooooooooooood lunch and beers in town, where I saw an EXACT double of my cousin Zack, which was really freaky. I took sneaky stalker pictures of him for proof! I think Zack grew braided rat tails and is living in Mexico!!!
That night we made dinner and had sake that I brought over at their request. Mmm, it was yummy!
On Sunday we had breakfast, then Eduardo and I took the bus back into the city to meet up with his family. Eek, meeting Eduardo’s family! They don’t speak English, so I was a little nervous, but it was nice to meet them! They are loud and crazy like my family, so I felt at home :) Eduardo’s aunt was VERY excited to meet me and cook for me (hello, they are as obsessed with food as my family….we were meant to be!), and DAMN did she cook a shitload of food. I sat at the table and ate for like three hours straight! We had tacos, and they were sooooooooooooooooo fucking good. She made the best chorizo I have ever had, as well as fried cactus (mmmmm), great guacamole, salsa, fried onions (I don’t know the word for the type of onion….the ones with like the bulbs at the bottom or whatever), and more. FUCK it was good! I was a bit overwhelmed with the Spanish at first, but I understand more Spanish than I thought I did! It’s just like English but with o’s and a’s at the end ;) Hehehe.
We bused back to Eduardo’s apartment that night, then got up early on Monday to go see the pyramids. They are about an hour outside of the city, and they were fucking amazing! There were two pyramids (one for the sun and one for the moon), as well as the ruins of the old marketplace, a temple, and more. They are the first pyramids I have ever seen, and they were beautiful. Also, might I say that the Aztecs must have been fit as shit, because those stairs are NOT easy to climb! Jesus, our legs were sore afterwards. They were incredible to see, though.
For lunch we went to this cool restaurant that’s in a cave near the pyramids. Holy shit, it was muy oishii! We had this lamb dish that was great, as well as yummy appetizers and a VERY good margarita. Mmm.
From there, we went back to the bus station, where we took a 5-hour bus ride to Guanajuato, a really old town northeast of the city. We took the first-class bus and it was SO nice! You have a shitload of leg room, the whole bus is dark so you can sleep, and it has movies and stuff. It was better than a plane! We got into Guanjuato late at night, went to our hotel, and got a room…Eduardo had warned me that since it is in central Mexico, they are conservative there. Man, was it amusing to get a single-bed room for the two of us! The guy at the counter was like, “One bed?! I can give you two! It will be a lot more comfortable.” Eduardo said one was fine, and the guy was like, “Okay…..but I can give you two beds!” After a few minutes, the guy gave in and gave us the room, hehe. We promptly assed out in preparation of our day of all walking on Tuesday.
Told you this would be hella long, Jesus. To be continued tomorrow, maybe.
On Thursday I woke up early out of excitement and got ready to go to Narita. For those who don’t know, Narita Airport is 1) not in Tokyo (tho it pretends to be) and 2) is fucking far away no matter where you live. It takes three hours to get to Narita, and is a bitch with luggage, but is even worse by bus. So, I impatiently trained for three hours so that I could sit on planes for a bazillion more hours. All together, I traveled for 24 hours. Fun stuff!!!
Despite taking sleeping pills, I couldn’t sleep on the 12-hour flight to Houston. This is proof that Japanese medicine doesn’t do shit, yo. From Houston, I took a plane of death that holds 50 people. It was so short that I couldn’t stand up completely, as my head would go through the roof. Also, my “row” had one seat in it. Um, not acceptable! I had to close my window because it was too scary. Fortunately I slept through most of it (I think out of fear more than exhaustion). Anyway, I finally landed in Mexico, got through customs quickly, and SAW MY BOY, yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! I barely recognized him, as he was skinny and in a suit! Crazy old working man ;) hehe. We immediately exchanged my money, where the lady tried to steal $100 from me! WTF! I gave her $650 (well, in yen), and she said it was only 550. Fortunately I noticed the “error” and she was just like, “Yeah, I’ll give you the other 100 in a minute.” Um, nice first experience in Mexico! Hehe.
We had dinner at the airport (mole! And a margarita! Mmmmm), then went to Eduardo’s apartment, where I eventually assed out….only to wake up 4:30 in the morning, unable to sleep anymore! Yes, four hours of sleep in 30 hours is apparently all jetlagged Jeff needs. We made huevos rancheros for breakfast (orgasm), then got ready to go out. Eduardo had a bit of work to do at Berlitz, but first we went to see Rent (the movie)! It opened the day after I arrived….coincidence? I think not! There was only one other person in the theater with us, sad! We were both amused that they renamed it Rent Extreme Lives….you know those gays….they live to the extreme, man! Anyway, it was fun to see it on the big screen. I didn’t like the movie the first time I saw it, but I like it a lot now. And it was nice to see it with my boy, awwww!
After that we went to Berlitz, where Jeff assed out and was about to eat Eddy’s desk out of pure starvation. After acting like a grumpy 5 year-old (do not mess with jetlagged Jeff!), we went and had a HUGE lunch of tacos and tortas. Fuck, it was amazing.
That evening we met up with Eduardo’s friend Ana and her boyfriend Luis Felipe. They were nice enough to invite us to spend the weekend with them in Luis Felipe’s family vacation home in Tepeji del Rio. It was a great place! It’s away from the city, and was really relaxing.
On Saturday, we got up and drove to an area whose name I don’t remember! Eduardo is going to send me a list of place names, so I will add them later. Anyway, we went hiking on a monolith (only three in the world exist) and it was a good workout! We didn’t go up that high, but it was pretty tiring and hot! From the halfway point (fuck going up all the way, yo!) we got a great view of the beautiful traditional town beneath it. We had a gooooooooooooood lunch and beers in town, where I saw an EXACT double of my cousin Zack, which was really freaky. I took sneaky stalker pictures of him for proof! I think Zack grew braided rat tails and is living in Mexico!!!
That night we made dinner and had sake that I brought over at their request. Mmm, it was yummy!
On Sunday we had breakfast, then Eduardo and I took the bus back into the city to meet up with his family. Eek, meeting Eduardo’s family! They don’t speak English, so I was a little nervous, but it was nice to meet them! They are loud and crazy like my family, so I felt at home :) Eduardo’s aunt was VERY excited to meet me and cook for me (hello, they are as obsessed with food as my family….we were meant to be!), and DAMN did she cook a shitload of food. I sat at the table and ate for like three hours straight! We had tacos, and they were sooooooooooooooooo fucking good. She made the best chorizo I have ever had, as well as fried cactus (mmmmm), great guacamole, salsa, fried onions (I don’t know the word for the type of onion….the ones with like the bulbs at the bottom or whatever), and more. FUCK it was good! I was a bit overwhelmed with the Spanish at first, but I understand more Spanish than I thought I did! It’s just like English but with o’s and a’s at the end ;) Hehehe.
We bused back to Eduardo’s apartment that night, then got up early on Monday to go see the pyramids. They are about an hour outside of the city, and they were fucking amazing! There were two pyramids (one for the sun and one for the moon), as well as the ruins of the old marketplace, a temple, and more. They are the first pyramids I have ever seen, and they were beautiful. Also, might I say that the Aztecs must have been fit as shit, because those stairs are NOT easy to climb! Jesus, our legs were sore afterwards. They were incredible to see, though.
For lunch we went to this cool restaurant that’s in a cave near the pyramids. Holy shit, it was muy oishii! We had this lamb dish that was great, as well as yummy appetizers and a VERY good margarita. Mmm.
From there, we went back to the bus station, where we took a 5-hour bus ride to Guanajuato, a really old town northeast of the city. We took the first-class bus and it was SO nice! You have a shitload of leg room, the whole bus is dark so you can sleep, and it has movies and stuff. It was better than a plane! We got into Guanjuato late at night, went to our hotel, and got a room…Eduardo had warned me that since it is in central Mexico, they are conservative there. Man, was it amusing to get a single-bed room for the two of us! The guy at the counter was like, “One bed?! I can give you two! It will be a lot more comfortable.” Eduardo said one was fine, and the guy was like, “Okay…..but I can give you two beds!” After a few minutes, the guy gave in and gave us the room, hehe. We promptly assed out in preparation of our day of all walking on Tuesday.
Told you this would be hella long, Jesus. To be continued tomorrow, maybe.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
ONE WEEK ONE WEEK ONE WEEK ONE WEEK ONE WEEK
In seven days, I will be at Narita, waiting to board my plane to MEXICO CITY to see MY BOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY, yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa sevenyahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
If you don’t know what that subject means, you don’t know me, bitch! Hee hee. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa sevenyaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh babagitibaba. I am SO motherfucking Rafiki from The Lion King, yo.
So, on Saturday morning I woke up a bit hungover from the enkai, and went with Ann into Tokyo to do some shopping, meet up with Emily, and see The Lion King (the musical). It was a very important day, as I went to the Kate Spade store and got my Jack Spade bag that I had seen when Kris was here. I had literally been dreaming about it, and decided to treat myself to it, even though it is more expensive than a month of rent. I have decided that I can live in my bag for a month if I have to. It is so cute!!!!!!!! It is the gayest thing I have ever seen in my life, but cuuuuuuuuuuuute. Thank god Japan is the gayest country in the world, because no one thinks twice about it. However, I fear I may be attacked if I carry it in the States. Let’s hoping that Americans become more fashionable before I return!
Ann and I wandered around Omotesando and Omotesando Hills (the new fancy-shmancy mall there). Hills’ architecture is cool, but I would never buy anything there. Like no one has ever heard of 7/8 of the stores there! I swear they are just expensive because they are in that mall. If a place is too pretentious for me, that is a bad sign.
Anyway, after some fuckfuckfuckfuckwe’refuckinglateandgonnamisstheshow running to Lion King (with Ann in heels, sorry, Ann!), we made it to Lion King. Only Japan would start a show at fucking 5:30 at night (good for trains back to Gunma, tho). Anyway, the show was good! I had seen it in LA, so I knew what it was like in English. I think I enjoyed it the most, because Ann and Em were like “it just made me want to see it in English!” It was really good, tho. I looooooooove how it is directed. The only bad thing is that when Japanese people pretend to be black and soulful, they fail miserably. Hello, you’re Japanese, your voices are thin as paper, you aren’t soulful. But that wasn’t a problem for most of it…good shit! Yay, theatre!
So, on Saturday morning I woke up a bit hungover from the enkai, and went with Ann into Tokyo to do some shopping, meet up with Emily, and see The Lion King (the musical). It was a very important day, as I went to the Kate Spade store and got my Jack Spade bag that I had seen when Kris was here. I had literally been dreaming about it, and decided to treat myself to it, even though it is more expensive than a month of rent. I have decided that I can live in my bag for a month if I have to. It is so cute!!!!!!!! It is the gayest thing I have ever seen in my life, but cuuuuuuuuuuuute. Thank god Japan is the gayest country in the world, because no one thinks twice about it. However, I fear I may be attacked if I carry it in the States. Let’s hoping that Americans become more fashionable before I return!
Ann and I wandered around Omotesando and Omotesando Hills (the new fancy-shmancy mall there). Hills’ architecture is cool, but I would never buy anything there. Like no one has ever heard of 7/8 of the stores there! I swear they are just expensive because they are in that mall. If a place is too pretentious for me, that is a bad sign.
Anyway, after some fuckfuckfuckfuckwe’refuckinglateandgonnamisstheshow running to Lion King (with Ann in heels, sorry, Ann!), we made it to Lion King. Only Japan would start a show at fucking 5:30 at night (good for trains back to Gunma, tho). Anyway, the show was good! I had seen it in LA, so I knew what it was like in English. I think I enjoyed it the most, because Ann and Em were like “it just made me want to see it in English!” It was really good, tho. I looooooooove how it is directed. The only bad thing is that when Japanese people pretend to be black and soulful, they fail miserably. Hello, you’re Japanese, your voices are thin as paper, you aren’t soulful. But that wasn’t a problem for most of it…good shit! Yay, theatre!
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Nikkuneemu
Among the many nicknames that my kids have for me, a new one that a 3nensei has given me is “Mr. Donuts” (the name of a donut chain). Um, I can hardly think that this is a complimentary nickname! I don’t even want to know….
Oh, well, maybe it’s karma for the name I recently gave a 2nensei, “Nama Ninjin-chan” (raw carrot girl)…I won’t even bother to explain that one.
Oh, well, maybe it’s karma for the name I recently gave a 2nensei, “Nama Ninjin-chan” (raw carrot girl)…I won’t even bother to explain that one.
Druuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunk with teachers
On Friday night I finally went to my first big enkai with teachers (I went to one the week before, but it was only with the 3nensei staff). Friday was a big send-off enkai, as all of the teachers and staff that left for new schools returned for a big BORING assembly during the day (18 speeches that were NOT brief!), followed by a drunk “we’ll miss you!” party at night. It was wayyyyy more fun than I expected, and I also got wayyyyy more drunk than I would expect to be with a bunch of old people!
I got a ride to the place (a nice, fancy hotel, where I was the only one without a suit, oops) from Ms. Kimura’s husband, which was cool, because I didn’t have the motivation to bike there. Enkais are expensive ($50), but I got my money’s worth, as they give you like three meals’ worth of food, plus nomihoudai (all you can drink). P:LUS I got the coolest table there (almost all of the young teachers, somehow, even tho we decided where to sit by pulling numbers? Weird). The Japanese policy is to pour other people’s drinks, even if there is only like a sip missing from the cup….in other words, there is NEVER an empty glass. Um, this is MUY abunai! I swear I must have had…I don’t even KNOW how many beers, because the teachers just kept filling me up! Hmm, that sounds rather dirty.
Anyway, once I was completely drunk as shit and bonding with teachers that I hadn’t even talked to before, we went to the nijikai (second party) at a karaoke place a block away. It was only 20 bucks for karaoke, nomihoudai, and food! Hell yeah, bitches. Ya know, ‘cause I needed more food and drinks. At karaoke, I found out Mr. Satou (a cute teacher who left that I hadn’t ever really talked to) is like fluent in English and knows more English songs than me! We sang My Charona (Sharona?), and it didn’t even have katakana for him to read, but he could sing it all! WTF! And we also sang Oasis’ Wonderwall. Clazy! Then I sang Train Train with Morita-Sensei, who is cool because he is the only teacher that is my age. I also bonded with dear Fujii-Sensei (AKA Hot-Ass Sensei), who was even drunker than me, and was napping during most of the nijikai. He asked for my keitai numbah, hollah! Hee hee.
After karaoke, the hardcore teachers went to a fucking SANjikai (third party), but I knew my limit, so I went home…however, Ms. Kimura abandoned me and I had to walk home drunk as fuck for an hour! Thankfully I had a sense of direction, as my teachers told me to “just go straight,” which would have taken me to Isesaki! Um, no, thanks!
When I got home, I immediately bumped into my thingy that holds my glasses (I don’t know English) and a wine glass shattered on the floor. My drunk reaction to this was, “Oh, of course that happened, I am really drunk,” so I non-chalantly got out the vacuum at 1 in the morning and cleaned it up (while cutting my fingers and bleeding all over).
Yes, a fun night! Apparently I made a good impression, as my kouchou sensei was like, “You have to give me your keitai number so we can drink in Ota!” Haha, yay drunk bonding.
I got a ride to the place (a nice, fancy hotel, where I was the only one without a suit, oops) from Ms. Kimura’s husband, which was cool, because I didn’t have the motivation to bike there. Enkais are expensive ($50), but I got my money’s worth, as they give you like three meals’ worth of food, plus nomihoudai (all you can drink). P:LUS I got the coolest table there (almost all of the young teachers, somehow, even tho we decided where to sit by pulling numbers? Weird). The Japanese policy is to pour other people’s drinks, even if there is only like a sip missing from the cup….in other words, there is NEVER an empty glass. Um, this is MUY abunai! I swear I must have had…I don’t even KNOW how many beers, because the teachers just kept filling me up! Hmm, that sounds rather dirty.
Anyway, once I was completely drunk as shit and bonding with teachers that I hadn’t even talked to before, we went to the nijikai (second party) at a karaoke place a block away. It was only 20 bucks for karaoke, nomihoudai, and food! Hell yeah, bitches. Ya know, ‘cause I needed more food and drinks. At karaoke, I found out Mr. Satou (a cute teacher who left that I hadn’t ever really talked to) is like fluent in English and knows more English songs than me! We sang My Charona (Sharona?), and it didn’t even have katakana for him to read, but he could sing it all! WTF! And we also sang Oasis’ Wonderwall. Clazy! Then I sang Train Train with Morita-Sensei, who is cool because he is the only teacher that is my age. I also bonded with dear Fujii-Sensei (AKA Hot-Ass Sensei), who was even drunker than me, and was napping during most of the nijikai. He asked for my keitai numbah, hollah! Hee hee.
After karaoke, the hardcore teachers went to a fucking SANjikai (third party), but I knew my limit, so I went home…however, Ms. Kimura abandoned me and I had to walk home drunk as fuck for an hour! Thankfully I had a sense of direction, as my teachers told me to “just go straight,” which would have taken me to Isesaki! Um, no, thanks!
When I got home, I immediately bumped into my thingy that holds my glasses (I don’t know English) and a wine glass shattered on the floor. My drunk reaction to this was, “Oh, of course that happened, I am really drunk,” so I non-chalantly got out the vacuum at 1 in the morning and cleaned it up (while cutting my fingers and bleeding all over).
Yes, a fun night! Apparently I made a good impression, as my kouchou sensei was like, “You have to give me your keitai number so we can drink in Ota!” Haha, yay drunk bonding.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Koizumi: Friend or Foe?
An interesting (and rather depressing) article from the New York Times about the changes in Japan's economy since Koizumi came to office.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Indoor Orinpikku
Today the 3nensei and 3nensei teachers (which includes me, woot!) had the “indoor Olympics” during 3rd and 4th period. It was a fluke that I was actually here for it, as I am always at shougakkou Wednesdays (and, it turns out, I think I was supposed to be there today, oops! Hee hee), and I am very glad that I got to see the indoor Olympics in action! The event consisted of 5-6 relays, with the five classes competing against each other. It is basically like field day, but, er, in the gym. Man, it was hella fun!
I have to say, for being a rather quiet and reserved people, the Japanese have some fun and quirky relay games hidden up their sleeves! The first relay consisted of blowing a Kleenex in the air and not letting it drop. The person to keep it up the longest got a point for their class. This is harder than it sounds! I beat everyone, bitches, ‘cause I specialize in blowing, mmkay!
The second relay had everyone put their forehead on a cone, spin around ten times, then race each other to the finish line. The teachers did it last and had to spin TWENTY times! It was hardcore. It was fun to see everyone fall over tho, hehe.
The third relay was fucking CRAZY! Everyone got into groups of five, and they each had a page of newspaper to stand on. Then they played a mass game of janken (rock, paper, scissors) with me (the “janken champion,” according to the rules!). If they lost janken, they had to fold the paper in half, then all stand on it. This continued on until everyone had teeny pieces of newspaper. Man, Japanese kids are good engineers! They had kids on their backs, on their shoulders…anywhere to make it so five people would fit on the teeny piece of paper. No wonder half the population of America can fit on an island the size of California!
The next relay was the wheelbarrow…that’s what we call it in English, right? I think so. They call it “supercar.” Then after that was the crappiest game EVER! The kids had a towel, and had to run to the next person while keeping the towel on the ground with their hands (so they were running hunched over). Hello, that is totally a sneaky “let’s clean the gym!” game, and is clearly NOT a real game! We’ll forgive them for that one.
For the last game, everyone was given a straw, which they kept in their mouth. Every team would line up, and have to pass a rubberband from person to person (i.e. straw to straw) not using their hands. It is a little makeout-ish, if I do say so myself! I had played this before once with Pocky. It’s fun!
Anyway, yeah, that was the indoor Olympics….hmm, maybe it doesn’t sound as fun in writing. It was a lot of fun, though, and it was nice to see everyone being so genki and bonding! Awww, my once-little-shits-of-2nenseis are growing into nice 3nensei so fast!
I have to say, for being a rather quiet and reserved people, the Japanese have some fun and quirky relay games hidden up their sleeves! The first relay consisted of blowing a Kleenex in the air and not letting it drop. The person to keep it up the longest got a point for their class. This is harder than it sounds! I beat everyone, bitches, ‘cause I specialize in blowing, mmkay!
The second relay had everyone put their forehead on a cone, spin around ten times, then race each other to the finish line. The teachers did it last and had to spin TWENTY times! It was hardcore. It was fun to see everyone fall over tho, hehe.
The third relay was fucking CRAZY! Everyone got into groups of five, and they each had a page of newspaper to stand on. Then they played a mass game of janken (rock, paper, scissors) with me (the “janken champion,” according to the rules!). If they lost janken, they had to fold the paper in half, then all stand on it. This continued on until everyone had teeny pieces of newspaper. Man, Japanese kids are good engineers! They had kids on their backs, on their shoulders…anywhere to make it so five people would fit on the teeny piece of paper. No wonder half the population of America can fit on an island the size of California!
The next relay was the wheelbarrow…that’s what we call it in English, right? I think so. They call it “supercar.” Then after that was the crappiest game EVER! The kids had a towel, and had to run to the next person while keeping the towel on the ground with their hands (so they were running hunched over). Hello, that is totally a sneaky “let’s clean the gym!” game, and is clearly NOT a real game! We’ll forgive them for that one.
For the last game, everyone was given a straw, which they kept in their mouth. Every team would line up, and have to pass a rubberband from person to person (i.e. straw to straw) not using their hands. It is a little makeout-ish, if I do say so myself! I had played this before once with Pocky. It’s fun!
Anyway, yeah, that was the indoor Olympics….hmm, maybe it doesn’t sound as fun in writing. It was a lot of fun, though, and it was nice to see everyone being so genki and bonding! Awww, my once-little-shits-of-2nenseis are growing into nice 3nensei so fast!
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Train train, don’t fuck me over! Train train, you can burn in hell.
When we last left Jeff, he was drinking Friday night away with his teachers and biking back drunk.
So, what did I do on Saturday morning? Why, get up at 4:30 in the morning to hike, of course! Daniel organizes a hike every month or so for Gunma JETs, and Cindy, Sean and I decided to join the others in order to do something different and do something ACTIVE, for once. Little did we know just how active we would be!
I got up ridiculously early to shower the second-hand smoke off of me, then catch the 5:47 train from Yabu to meet up with everyone in Maebashi. I was somehow surprisingly awake and not hungover, which I think is because I had been mentally preparing myself all week long for the awful morning. Oy, that is such a ridiculous hour to wake up!
Anyway, from Maebashi, we broke up into cars and drove to somewhere in Kanagawa (where I studied abroad), then took a couple of buses to the mountain. It took like five hours or something to get there?! Eek! After all of that sitting, I was very ready to start hiking.
The hike was hard in a good way….more work than Sean, Cindy and I expected (just a bit more steep than the usual hiking we do around AEON!), but a good amount of burning-the-winter-fat-off exercise. It took two hours to get to the top, where there was a beautiful view of the surrounding area, including the OCEAN (I miss the ocean! Stupid land-locked Gunma). It was pretty, but hella windy up there, so we hid in a covered area and ate our lunches. I fear that I may have actually gained weight from the hike, as I ate like four cups of rice that day, as well as who knows what else. I also ate all day long Sunday out of pure starvation. Hrm.
Anyway, the way down was just as much work as the way up, as it was steep, and really muddy. I surprisingly didn’t eat shit, though there were many close calls! Eventually we got down to the bottom and found a BEAUTIFUL area full of cherry blossoms and plum trees. They were soooo purty.
From there we had to go to the eki to take the train back to cars….us lazy peeps were not amused to find that the eki was 25 minutes away and uphill! Oy!
Once we got to the eki, the train drama started. We realized the best way for us Ota/Tatebayashi people to get home on time would be to take trains the whole way home. So we looked up the train changes on our keitais (how did anyone ever get around Tokyo before keitais?) and relaxed in the meantime. About 45 minutes into our train ride, we were in the middle of an intense game of let’s-entertain-ourselves-on-the-train charades (it also entertained some old people around us, who seemed to be trying to figure out our gestures, as well). All of a sudden, the train stops and EVERYONE gets off. It takes us a minute to realize this is probably not a good sign. The eki guy comes in to clear the train, and we are like “Wait….does this train go to Kuki?” It was most definitely a bad sign that the eki guy didn’t even KNOW where Kuki is!!! After panicking greatly, we realized we somehow took the wrong train for about 25 minutes (I still don’t know how it happened). It being hours away from the last train, one would assume it would be all right. Or NOT. There was one route we could take that would get us on the last train to Ota (not even our own stops, but Ota), and many routes we could take that would get us there at 7 in the fucking morning the next day!!!!! So Cindy, Sean and I decided to ganbaru to the max and take the route, despite its impossibly short amount of time to switch between trains, subways, and other train lines. What followed is impossible to even give justice in words, but I will try.
At one stop we were about to get on a train that was leaving within 30 seconds, when I asked an old man if it was going to where we wanted. When he said no and pointed to a train on another track (with many stairs in between), the three of us SCREAMED and ran faster than humanly possible to get on the train before it left. Then at the next stop we had five minutes to run off the train, go down many stairs to the subway track, pay our leftover fare from the train, buy tickets for the subway, then go down more stairs to get ON the subway. This involved throwing our tickets and a random amount of money at the eki guy (while yelling “Sorry, sorry, last train, no time, sorry!” in Japanese to him). Then when the subway arrived in Asakusa, we had 9 minutes to walk 550 meters (3/4 of which is going up stairs, and includes two crosswalks that never agree with pedestrians) to the Tobu eki where we had to buy tickets before going up stairs to get on a train. Not only did we somehow do this, but we made it in FOUR MINUTES. Is that even humanly possible?! It was like the eki Olympics! I have literally never ran so fast in my life! I refused to stay in Tokyo for the night, and Sean and Cindy felt the same.
So, in the end, we made it, and none of us even peed our pants on the 2-hour train ride home (a feat in itself, considering how much water we had). We got into Ota at 11:50, then got rides home (thanks, Nacchan!). I then slept so well that I am guessing the entire apartment complex heard me snore.
Lesson from the hike: stay in Gunma when hiking! Not as many trains involved!
Second lesson of the day: Cindy and I are NEVER climbing Fuji in September, as we had planned. 2 hours has me sore enough, let alone 7+ hours. Um, yeah.
So, what did I do on Saturday morning? Why, get up at 4:30 in the morning to hike, of course! Daniel organizes a hike every month or so for Gunma JETs, and Cindy, Sean and I decided to join the others in order to do something different and do something ACTIVE, for once. Little did we know just how active we would be!
I got up ridiculously early to shower the second-hand smoke off of me, then catch the 5:47 train from Yabu to meet up with everyone in Maebashi. I was somehow surprisingly awake and not hungover, which I think is because I had been mentally preparing myself all week long for the awful morning. Oy, that is such a ridiculous hour to wake up!
Anyway, from Maebashi, we broke up into cars and drove to somewhere in Kanagawa (where I studied abroad), then took a couple of buses to the mountain. It took like five hours or something to get there?! Eek! After all of that sitting, I was very ready to start hiking.
The hike was hard in a good way….more work than Sean, Cindy and I expected (just a bit more steep than the usual hiking we do around AEON!), but a good amount of burning-the-winter-fat-off exercise. It took two hours to get to the top, where there was a beautiful view of the surrounding area, including the OCEAN (I miss the ocean! Stupid land-locked Gunma). It was pretty, but hella windy up there, so we hid in a covered area and ate our lunches. I fear that I may have actually gained weight from the hike, as I ate like four cups of rice that day, as well as who knows what else. I also ate all day long Sunday out of pure starvation. Hrm.
Anyway, the way down was just as much work as the way up, as it was steep, and really muddy. I surprisingly didn’t eat shit, though there were many close calls! Eventually we got down to the bottom and found a BEAUTIFUL area full of cherry blossoms and plum trees. They were soooo purty.
From there we had to go to the eki to take the train back to cars….us lazy peeps were not amused to find that the eki was 25 minutes away and uphill! Oy!
Once we got to the eki, the train drama started. We realized the best way for us Ota/Tatebayashi people to get home on time would be to take trains the whole way home. So we looked up the train changes on our keitais (how did anyone ever get around Tokyo before keitais?) and relaxed in the meantime. About 45 minutes into our train ride, we were in the middle of an intense game of let’s-entertain-ourselves-on-the-train charades (it also entertained some old people around us, who seemed to be trying to figure out our gestures, as well). All of a sudden, the train stops and EVERYONE gets off. It takes us a minute to realize this is probably not a good sign. The eki guy comes in to clear the train, and we are like “Wait….does this train go to Kuki?” It was most definitely a bad sign that the eki guy didn’t even KNOW where Kuki is!!! After panicking greatly, we realized we somehow took the wrong train for about 25 minutes (I still don’t know how it happened). It being hours away from the last train, one would assume it would be all right. Or NOT. There was one route we could take that would get us on the last train to Ota (not even our own stops, but Ota), and many routes we could take that would get us there at 7 in the fucking morning the next day!!!!! So Cindy, Sean and I decided to ganbaru to the max and take the route, despite its impossibly short amount of time to switch between trains, subways, and other train lines. What followed is impossible to even give justice in words, but I will try.
At one stop we were about to get on a train that was leaving within 30 seconds, when I asked an old man if it was going to where we wanted. When he said no and pointed to a train on another track (with many stairs in between), the three of us SCREAMED and ran faster than humanly possible to get on the train before it left. Then at the next stop we had five minutes to run off the train, go down many stairs to the subway track, pay our leftover fare from the train, buy tickets for the subway, then go down more stairs to get ON the subway. This involved throwing our tickets and a random amount of money at the eki guy (while yelling “Sorry, sorry, last train, no time, sorry!” in Japanese to him). Then when the subway arrived in Asakusa, we had 9 minutes to walk 550 meters (3/4 of which is going up stairs, and includes two crosswalks that never agree with pedestrians) to the Tobu eki where we had to buy tickets before going up stairs to get on a train. Not only did we somehow do this, but we made it in FOUR MINUTES. Is that even humanly possible?! It was like the eki Olympics! I have literally never ran so fast in my life! I refused to stay in Tokyo for the night, and Sean and Cindy felt the same.
So, in the end, we made it, and none of us even peed our pants on the 2-hour train ride home (a feat in itself, considering how much water we had). We got into Ota at 11:50, then got rides home (thanks, Nacchan!). I then slept so well that I am guessing the entire apartment complex heard me snore.
Lesson from the hike: stay in Gunma when hiking! Not as many trains involved!
Second lesson of the day: Cindy and I are NEVER climbing Fuji in September, as we had planned. 2 hours has me sore enough, let alone 7+ hours. Um, yeah.
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