New York again

Yes, after a 4 months stint in Japan I am sitting home in front of my brother's computer and typing this. The trip back home took close to 30 hours if I consider the trip to the airport, check-in, the flight, the car ride back home. A few things I noticed right away...I can read everything! I don't need to stare and try to remember a Kanji, my brain feels so relaxed. Second, I discovered I have trouble sleeping on mattrasses, they are too soft.

Well, I'll keep writing about my reverse culture shock, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Everyone!

The Tokyo Homecoming

Well, I am back at Sakura Asakusa Hostel. My day today was, not fun, I will say that moving out/in is not a lot of fun. I ended up sleeping only 3 hours during the night, packing until the last minute, ending up with more stuff then I expected and making the bus 3 minutes before it left. Telling a quick good-bye to two close friends and taking some last minute pictures.

Still, by the time I got to the station I wanted to talk around the akita city a little bit, but by then I could not find the energy to do it. So, I locked up my stuff in a coin locker and spent a little bit of time just wondering the station buying some food. I ended up sleeping most of my 4 hour train ride to Tokyo. Dragging the luggage around, it still was not nowhere near as bad as my trip to Akita.

Arriving in Tokyo, I coldn:t help but feel a little relieved. Akita is so rural, so seperated from the outside world. Being in a real city gave me some kind of sence of relief. Still the atmosphere was very different, the atmosphere wasn:t as laid back, it had city energy. I made it back and checked in at the hostel without any issues. I have one full day in Tokyo, I probably won:t leave Asakusa, I will try to meet up with a friend who is leaving for Canada on the same day as me and will also be in Tokyo tomorrow.

Picture update starting with this one. Includes pictures of Snow at AIU and Okonomiyaki with the Aikido club.

2 Days

Well, 2 days left, I have lost control over my sleeping patterns, sleeping for very short times over long periods of time, then sleeping for an extremely long time, I doubt this is healthy but then again what time I sleep won't matter since I'll have to switch very soon.

Besides that, over my time in Japan I had a lot of interesting food such as "otskumi", "Shabu Shabu", "Sushi", and probably my last interesting food here: Okonomiyaki. Pretty much you were given meat, a mixture of eggs and vegetables and there was an oven in front of you. You pretty much cooked everything yourself on the oven. Funny, its not any more or less interesting then anything I tried, but I have difficulty giving any more details. I was thinking, that because you are given an oven, that if something like this exists in the US, you would probably have to sign a waiver before using it. Considering a price, I still say that Sushi is the cheapest and best tasting thing here.

8 days

Well, I've got 8 days to go, 6 days at AIU. I am done with all my finals and I have one class visit. I can't help but say that AIU's finals week is kind of a mess. There is a finals week, yet a lot of the finals are before that week, and some classes are still on during finals week? I really don't follow things here, it seems ot be kind of a mess. I have one high school visit left later today, one more practice with the Aikido club, hopefully a small going out with them over the weekend. There is a concert on Friday by a music performance class that a friend of mine is a part of. There are a few small souvenirs I want to buy before leaving, and of course there is packing. I dragged my luggage all the way from Tokyo to Akita on my way here, I have no intention of doing that again. Luckily, the luggage can be sent ahead directly to the airport, I just have to carefully allocate everything I might need during my last few days here.

Oh, and funny story about the snow. On the first day of snow, a friend of mine was flying from Tokyo to Akita (about 1 hour flight), unfortunately when the plane arrived here it couldn't land because of the snow. So, it ended up turning around and going back to Tokyo, where the airlien bought her a Shinkansen (bullet train) ticket to take instead. So, a trip that was supposed to take 1 hour took about more then 6 hours. I told her that she should've just walked.

One debate that I'm having with myself is, was it really worth taking a Japanese language class? I am really not so sure anymore, the classes were really intense and I felt like I could get more out of self-studying and itneracting with japanese people here. That way I could also go at my own pace. Furthermore, Japanese lcass is 6 credits, I could have taken two other classes and met more Japanese upperclassmen, something I feel I did not get to do enough of here. On the other hand, I'm not sure I would have realized that if I did not take the class, so I'm not sure.

AIU cafeteria

So it is still snowing, but while I am at it I decided to share some thoughts about the AIU cafeteria. Now, its pretty common knowledge here, that the cafeteria gets pretty low reviews among the students. The cafeteria defends critcisim by saying that, this is the best it can do for the low flat rate meal plan.

Now, a few days ago a japanese friend of mine asked me to proofread his essay. It was an argumentive essay, in which he argued that the cafeteria's low quality is the result of it only caring about profit. At the time of me proofreading that, I didn't really pay attention at the content and focused on fixing the grammar and vocabulary. Later however, I couldn't help but think that I disagree with that point. The cafeteria's qulity is what it is, not because of it only cares about profit, but because it DOESN'T care about profit. I will explain how the meal plan works. Only 2 groups of students are allowed on the meal plan, freshman and international students. Japanese upperclassmen are excluded from the meal plan, but they are allowed to buy the meals from the cafeteria. Still, they account for a very small portion of the people buying the food as, they even need to call someone to the register when they come to pay as there is nobody regulary standing there. Furthermore, I would say that the cost is rather high for them.

Now, freshman living in Komachi Hall (the freshman dorm) as well as the international students living there are automatically included in the meal plan. International students living in the other dorm, the global village apartments are allowed to opt out, but only during the first week. I was in this group, and this really wasn't enough time to make a decision.

So, to put it all together, the freshman and international students are pretty much forced to buy the meal plan, while the upperclassmen are pretty much excluded from it. Now, what profit is there to be made here and what motivation would the cafeteria have to improve quality? The international students are here for a year at most, there's no reason to satisify them to keep coming back, and the freshman will become sophmores and they aren't really costumers either. Kind of a funny system if you ask me.

Snow

Well, I just wanted to announce that, in my last week here, Akita snow is finally here. There were flurries before, but the snow never stuck. This morning however it snowed pretty hard forming a thin layer of snow on the ground. Its evening now and the snow is very intense now. According to weather.com, the snow will not stop for the time I am here. So...I guess I'll update about it soon, if it snows as intensively as it does not, no doubt there will be several feet of snow by the time I leave next Tuesday.

Christmas Party

Post #100! The AIU "Christmas Party" was tonight, it was very similar to the "Halloween Party". I will briefly mention that what they call a "Party" here is more like a "Talent show" back home, and they like these a lot here. We did a lot of dancing and singing, and a really cool movie made by the event commitee. I don't think I mentioned this but there was a movie at the Halloween party, a scary movie about a student that vanished in the computer lab. (Yes, it was rather scary without any major special effects).

This time the movie was a romantic story, where a guy goes away to study abroad for a year as all AIU students are required to, and how the girl waits for him. I guess this is it for now.

Picture update

Ok, so my AIU People Album is up. It has a variety of pictures from an elementary school visit, AIU Christmas party, some pictures that I just took randomly wondering around. The philosophy behind it is to try to include myself in these pictures, something I hesitating doing. I guess looking good in pictures is a skill in itself, I will add more pictures to this album, I will also add captions telling a little bit about the people in each picture.

The "Election"

Ok, this is something I have to chuckle about, about 10 minutes ago the election for the President of AIU student government took place. Having lived in the states, I have seen many elections, ranging from president of a junior high school student government to president of the United States. Not all of these elections were perfect, some were uncontested, this however....well, by American standards I have difficulty calling that an "election" at all.

The way it worked is, the outgoing president of student government picked one candidate, and the job of all the students was to give them either a vote of "confidence" or "no-confidence". I really have no idea how many 'confidence' votes this person needs, and what would happen if they wouldn't get enough, either way, we had a couple of speeches from both the outgoing president the candidate. Most people just put the confidence mark before even hearing the speeches. So I guess...democracy in action?

I don't meant to insult anyone...but this is a system I have difficult agreeing with.

16 Days to go

Well, I am officially down to 16 days which is a little bit over two weeks. Wha have been up to the last few days? Well I had another what I believe was a really bad cold, the influenza panic seems to have calmed down a bit. I went to get some Sushi again at a different sushi place, this one was much smaller and rather then using a computer the orders were yelled directly to a chef. This place also had an English menu, still overall I felt that the place I went to last week was better. Of course fresh fried squid sushi is very good!

I also went to another event similar to the kids event a few month ago. It was with the same group, the families baked a lot of food, we talked and just like last time played games. Unfortunately my cold seems to have gotten the best of me here, and I couldn't enjoy the event very much. We did play one new game whose rules I'd like to remember here, everyone sits in a circle and music plays. Two people join hands and run to the opposite side of the circle grabbing both hands of a third person and running back with them. Then, the people that were sitting to the right, and left of the "third" person that was grabbed join hands, and repeat the action. The game goes on until the music stops. I had my camera...but I hate to use it as an excuse I was kind of busy running back and fourth to the bathroom to blow my nose (this is a 'no-no' in public here).

I haven't posted these pictures yet, but I've been walking around campus trying to take pictures with people that I've met over my time here. Not going as fast as I'd like to, but hopefully I'll take a lot of pictures since there are quite a few things going on over the next few weeks. First, the "end of semester" gathering and the "Christmas Party" are going on back to back next Friday. No excuses, I will take a lot of pictures, including asking people to take pictures of me. The Aikido club is also planning a little "going away" party for me and another Japanese member who is leaving for his Study Abroad in Canada in the spring.

There is no doubt, that if I had to point out my closest friends over my time at AIU most(but not all) of them would be members of the Aikido Club. Of course 600 people is an interesting amount of people. Its too many to meet everyone, but it still seems like you see a couple of people all the time and you kind of wish "Hey, I wish I've spoken to this person more, they seem nice/interesting".

Going home is definitely a mixed feeling, in a way I do miss home and I can't help but look forward to go back, see friends and family back home and tell about my adventures here. But it seems that there is so much more to do and see here, and so many people that I would like to get to know better. Coming back from Study Abroad, a lot of people when they hear about it the thought "going back to your old life"' might come to mind. But, that's kind of a bad way to think about it I think, Study Abroad is not a "vacation". I don't think I can go to the way things were (not that I really want to). I guess I'll have to wait and see, it seems to me like returning (reverse culture shock as its called) might be an experience on its own. Well, at least for now, this blog isn't gonna go anywhere so I might blog about it, tell how it goes.

The AIU Swine Flu epidemic

Well, I don't know about the rest of the world but things are getting kind of crazy here, there are free surgical masks everywhere, and anti-bacterial spray. Rumor has it that if there are 3 confirmed cases classes will be canceled, if that is indeed true then the chances of that happening tomorrow morning are extremely high. Of course the school put several people into isolation for a week after they were confirmed as having swine flu, as such I think some people might be hesitant to report it.

As far as I go, I do seem to feel very mildly sick, actually I think I'm getting better, somewhat surprising as I did end up getting the flu last May in New York right at the peak of the epidemic then. Perhaps however, the reason that its relatively mild now is that I do have some immunity to it.

I'm not really sure if the precautions are being taken too far, generally I would say that swine flu isn't any worse then the regular flu, and all these precautions won't do very much. But a LOT of people seem to be getting sick, so I guess we'll see.

Non-Fiction

Ok, so I was thinking that while I do read a very significant amount, the vast majority of books I read are Fiction. However, having talked with many of my professors at AIU I became very interested in reading more non-fiction. This reminds me that, when my family installed cable TV for the first time a little over a year ago (I think). I quickly discovered that I enjoyed things such as the "Science channel", "BBC", and "History" a lot more then things such as HBO or Sci-Fi. While going through my mind, there is quite a list of non-fiction books I want to read, however the first 2 books currently on my list are something by Barack Obama (Probably "The audacity of Hope") and the 2nd being "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith.

The reason I want to read the first book is that my Debate teacher keeps talking about him (trying really hard to meet him). Motsumoto-Sensei (debate teacher) says that has read all of Obama's books as well as all the books that Obama likes according to his facebook profile. Motsumoto believes that by reading these books he can get an insight into the person's mind, which I guess fascinates me a bit, could I get a deeper insight into the current president's mind?

The 2nd book is written by Adam Smith, my Economics professor (Lacktorin-Sensei)'s favorite economist and his "Hero". Adam Smith is a strong supporter of free market laissez-faire policies, in other words the belief that the government should not interfere with the market, and that interfering will only cause damage in the long term. Either way some of this guy's ideas sound absolutely fascinating. Afterwards, if this goes OK, I would like to read Marx as well.

Now, the question I would also wish to briefly address here, is why didn't I read more non-fiction before. Well, to be honest non-fiction scared me, what if it uses lingo unique to its topic that I won't understand? What if its an old book (Like the "Wealth of nation") and uses old language that I won't be able to understand? I guess once does have to consider the intended audience when approaching a non-fiction book. If the author intended to reach a general audience, then he should make an attempt to make his book easy to read.

Restaurant, Bus, Train

So, I just wanted to briefly talk about how the 3 of those things work there. All 3 seem to work on a philosophy of saving you time.

Restaurant: generally in a family type restaurant such as Udon place or family restaurant, there is a button on the table to call a waiter. This eliminates the issue in the states of waiting forever for a waiter to come take your orders. It also eliminates the issue of the waiter coming to your table bothering you with the phrase "Is everything ok?"

Bus: Generally the way the bus works is that, the bus has 2 doors, the middle and front door. You enter through the middle door and take a ticket form a machine. The ticket has a number, there is a board at the front of the bus which gives the price from the bus stop you got on (number on the ticket) until the next bus stop. When you get to your stop you go up to the front and drop the ticket along with the payment into a machine next to the driver. Obviously sometimes you can pre-pay a ticket from point A to point B, in which case you just drop the ticket.

Train: Generally on local trains and metros there is a board at the station which gives the cost of a ticket to a certain station. You buy a ticket that is worth a certain "value", or the cost to your destination. If the train you're taking is an express has reserved seating then you'd have to bay for a specific time and date. When you get on the train you pass through a gate, using your ticket to open it. When you get to your station, your use your ticket to get out through another gate. On a local train if you pass your stop, you would have to go to the fare adjustment window and pay the extra cost. I'm not sure, and don't really want to know what happens if you lose your ticket. In more rural areas on small stops there are no gates, so the tickets are sold and collected by a cashier. When the cashier closes, one of the conductors from the train might collect some of the tickets.

AIkido Test

Ok, so after quite a bit of training and some last minute training I went to take the 5th kyu Aikido Test today. Me and the other people taking the test were told to be at the Dojo at 9AM. Now, since there are no buses at that time meant we left the school at 6:30AM. We did consider taking the Taxi, which would cost 3500 yen (bus costs 150), split between the 6 of us it would cost around 600 yen. Unfortunately, as we discovered the taxi van was booked which means we'd have to take two of them, we decided we'd rather walk. After taking the train we ended up taking another good 30 minutes to walk to the Aikido Dojo (school).

The Dojo is very small by American Standards. There were about 10 of us and it was quite crowded. As students of the assistant Sensei we were treated as members. Those of us that took the 5th kyu test (lowest rank). All the tests were graded by the school's Head Sensei. Considering the set up of the school, I think he lives over the Dojo. Following the 5th kyu students, higher ranked students took far longer test after us. After we were done, we practiced some anti-knife techniques. The results...we weren't told. It seems that if we pass a certificate will be mailed, but I'm really not sure.

The day ended with lunch with everyone at a nearby Udon place, and taking the bus back. Well, that's how my day went, the Dojo was very traditional, I was thinking that I should have went here before for classes at least once in a while, its a little out of the way from the school but it would have been a good way to meet people outside of the University.

Sushi!!

Ok, first for a brief picture update.

I've added 4 pictures here related to my visit to the community center a little while back

The 2nd update related to this entry here, 10 pictures added to the Random Akita #2 album about my visit to a Sushi place.

So, yes it is quite overdue but I finally got some Sushi. Why did it take so long? Well, my only experience with Sushi were mostly California rolls from back home. I found them rather slimy and unimpressive. Today however, I finally went with a Japanese friend of mine, Takuma to get some Sushi. On the way we went through the mall and met up with Kris from Canada, and another Japanese girl named Marina, who I know from Aikido and who is Kris's Japanese conversation partner.

Well, let's just say I don't remember last time food made me this happy. I'm not sure if they have stuff like this back home so I will explain how the Sushi place worked. Pretty much we sat at a table with a conveyor belt to our right, seen here:

From Random Akita #2

You could pretty much take whatever you want from the belt. Also, if you felt like it you could use the menu to order something that you liked by typing it into a computer screen. Above the conveyor belt there was kind of a mini-rail. And a train would arrive carrying your orders. According to Takuma, food ordered directly was fresher and of course sometimes you had to wait until what you wanted arrived on the belt. In addition to sushi the menu contained a variety of things of desserts, chicken, omelet, takoyaki, (but of course the Sushi was the best). We also got some really good green tea with our meal. In one of the pictures early in my meal I tried some Hamburger Sushi, while it looked impressive initially it was really hard to pick up with chopsticks and not that tasty in my opinion by the end of the meal. I also tried some Sushi whose flavor I don't remember but apparenlty really impressed both of the Japanese students who told me that they've never seen anyone eat it on their first time. (mah? I thought it was good). Overall, however, the menu literally had hundreds of items and even the 2 Japanese people said that they have yet to try everything.

Overall, I think I want to just want to live near that restaurant so I can there all the time. Just a quick note on the price, all of the Sushi at this place had a fixed price of 105 yen (about $1.20) per plate. Side items such as soup, chicken, and dessert sometimes had higher slightly prices. I ended up eating about 8 plates of Sushi and side dishes for a total of about 1100 yen (A little over $11). Considering the quality and quantity of food I would say that's pretty cheap. I liked better then shabu shabu which had a fixed price of about $20, of course its apparently much cheaper during Lunch, so if I'm around the area at night I will definitely pick Sushi over Shabu Shabu.

JET ALT

So, I was talking to some about this and they suggested that I blog about it. JET is a government program that allows people from other countries to come into Japan and work. The most popular position that covers for 90% of JETs is ALT or 'Assistant Language Teacher'. An ALT is pretty much assigned to a school (or several schools) and he assists generally with English class. (Actually, ALTs can be teaching any Language, but mostly English). ALTs have 2 major requirements: Be an native speaker in the language you teach and have Bachelors degree. There are some other age-related and how much time you spent in Japan requirements. More information can be found on their website.

But I wish to talk about my personal thoughts about this. I have definitely considered becoming an ALT almost as soon as I came here, even meeting kids with the primary purpose of seeing if I can handle this and getting some experience. My final thought is that, while I think I could work with kids, I seriously doubt I would do ALT now. There are several reasons for this. First, ALT is not a career and JET limits you to 5 years. This puts you in a rather silly position in Japan, where lifetime employment is a big part of the culture, and while it is fading, teachers do generally get lifetime tenure. As such you are not really teacher, since you have a college degree, it also seems like you should have a serious job at a company.

I have met some JET's and a lot of them feel like outsiders. They justify this because they are 'Gaijin' (a derogatory term for western foreigner), personally, however, I disagree with this assessment. I think they are outsiders because they are ALT's for the reasons stated above, rather then their nationality. This is based on my personal experiences at AIU versus what I've been told by JETs.

Having met some ALT's I can definitely see ALT as sort of a "finding yourself" thing. I think this why I got to do Study Abroad, my thoughts however, more and more, is that I do have the background to do a more serious job. Yes, I will have to learn Japanese, but this was my intention from the beginning.

And of course there is the little thing of ALT's getting pretty poor near minimum wage pay. Now, there is another position that does require Japanese knowledge (ALT has no Japanese language requirement) which JET CIR, or coordinator for international relations. They pretty much put you in a local government office to assist them with things such as translating, interpreting, maybe dealing with some international guests. Possibly, occasionally teach English. apparently this various quite a bit based on where you are.

Japanese Food

So, I remember a reoccurring joke about Japan, there are 3 food groups: Rice, Fish, and everything else. Part of the reason for this joke, is that meat was illegal in Japan for many years (fish was ok). These days however, being a vegetarian causes confusion and international students that are vegetarian are in serious danger of starving here. Meat is quite a popular food, and you do not have to be a fish lover to enjoy it all. So, I will mention a few foods that I like since I got here. I did write an entry on shabu shabu a while back. So some foods:

Katsukare - Japanese rice curry with a fried pork cutlet. Yeah, they are sold in the cafeteria at lunch time, I tend to get a craving for this once in a while..

Udon - Beef over rice, a somewhat modified version called "Cheese udon" with Cheese is available.

Hamburger Steak - This may be American food but its quite popular here with "Hamburger steak" places. Its pretty much a bunless hamburger with spices and some side dishes.

Takoyaki- fried octopuses, I tried this once and can't say that I have a taste for it. However, I Tried it at a convenience store and supposedly it wasn't very good quality.

Nikuman - Also sold at most convenience stores. Flour dough filled with pork, can be filled with other things

Onigiri - rice ball with a fish filling. Common for "lunch on the go"

Taiyaki - a popular sweet, fish shaped. Usually filled with red bean paste but can contain other fillings

Reflection: Sleep

Ok, I've been told many times by family that you should always get up early, I also heard from certain teachers and doctors that its good to keep your sleeping regular and not sleep in on the weekends. I never really gave much thought to this advice, until now. There are I think 2 major reasons why sleeping regularly 7 days a week is important. First, if you sleep in late, you will find yourself up late into the night. Unless you had very clear plans for that night, that time is a lot less productive then the day. A lot of people are sleeping, stores are closed, you can't go to as many places. The other reason is that sooner or later, with work and school, you probably will have to get up early. At this point, if your sleeping isn't regular, you will feel sleepy the entire day and as such that day will be extremely unproductive.

Nagano-Sensei's dinner party

So I realized that over the last few weeks there really wasn't much going on, I haven't gone to Akita City, There were no field trips, I think my somewhat negative mood was due to this. Last night I attended Nagano-Sensei, the nursing school teacher. Unfortunately, none of her students were there but there but I did get to hang out with some International students from AIU: Joanna from US, Evelyn from Singapore, Seok from Korea, and one more guy whose name I can't remember from Taiwan. I also got to meet some ALT's (assistant language teachers that teach in schools) and a lot of Japanese people overall. We got to eat some food and drink Sake (Alcoholic drink from Rice) and Chuhai (Fruit cocktail/beer) which was quite sweet.

One thing I will say about a Japanese dinner party, there were about 40 people there, the floor was heated and everyone was sitting on the floor. This really fixes the problem in American and Europe of never having enough chairs when you have people over. Hey, you can have as many people as you like as long as there is enough floor space which was quite full. Nagano-Sensei also gave us some pictures from when we met the nursing students, I know have the only 2 paper photos from this trip (everything else is Digital). Overall, however, except for the light headache from the alcohol I feel better now then I've felt in weeks. I believe next Saturday I might go to Akita city to the Aikido dojo to watch a black belt test, and in 2 weeks possibly if I feel ready, for my own test for 5th kyu.

Lara Fabian

I seem to be listening more and more to piano lately rather the any "popular" music. It just seems like a lot of the music I used to like, I guess the singing just lacks something. A few singers like Leona Lewis, Avril Lavigne, and the German bond Monrose seem to be just "ok" to me now, rather then great. However, here is one voice that I do find absolutely amazing. It is the Belgian singer Lara Fabian. She is fluent and sings in 4 languages: English, French, Italian, and Portuguese. Americans might recognize her song "I will love again" which reached #1 on some American charts about 10 years ago. However, this song that I found is in French and it means 'Immortal', check it out:

Greetings

Ok, I don't think I wrote any entires relating directly to the Japanese language. So I just feel like talking about greetings a little bit since I think its a topic I have a good grasp on. This definitely exists in European languages, but not to this extent. In Japanese there is a clear difference between formal and informal language. I will distinguish between formal and informal greetings. Formal is used for Superiors, teachers, older people, and generally all people you just met. Informal is used with friends, classmates, family members.

So Greetings:
Ohayo- Informal, Good morning. Almost like saying "Good morning" with the informality of saying "hi".

Ohayo Gozaimaus - Good morning, formal

Konnichiwa- Good afternoon, used for both formal and informal

Konbanwa- Good Evening...there might be an informal way of saying this, but I can't remember it.

Yasumi - 'Good night', informal

Arrigato Gozaimashita - Formal "Thank you", in certain situations used to say "Good bye" formally.

Otsukare - Generally translated as "Good job". Used as an informal greeting (both hello and goodbye) between co-workers, fellow group members, fellow club members, pretty much anyone you've worked with or helped.

Yosh -Sort of a "What's up", informal, a little masculine I think and more used between men. (all do not always).

I guess since I'm at this, Japanese has minor differences between how Men and Women speak. I don't think the difference are that big, but generally it seems more approopriate for women to be a little more formal then men. Women tend to put 'o' before certain objects such as "O-hoshi"(chopsticks) rather then jut "hoshi". The more notable differences are pronoun "I". Some ways of saying it:

Watashi- Gender neutral and used by what seems to me 95% of people.

Atashi- feminine, 2nd most common "I" that I've heard in Japan

Boku - masculine, I've only heard this one Swedish guy who is fluent in Japanese use it.

Ore - masculine, somewhat arrogant, I have not heard anyone use this one.

Ok, this is the same piece that I posted before, Moonlight Sonata 3rd Movement, But I Really like the way she plays it. Performed by Japanese Pianist Atsuko Seto.

More Aikido

So, I guess my two main focuses since I came to Japan were Piano and Aikido. Both share some similarities in perhaps that I was previously not too enthusiastic about either and now really like both. On November 29th I might take a test to increase my rank in Aikido. Just some brief information, unlike Judo and many styles of Karate (In the US) Aikido does not have a color belt system. It only have two belts, white belt "kyu" and Black Belt "Dan". You start at 6th Kyu, move up to 1st Kyu, then go to 1st Dan and go up. I might test of the 5th Kyu, of course is you are 2nd Kyu or above you can wear a black Hakama.

1000 hits!

I have officially past 1000 hits mark for my blog, woot!

Some more running thoughts

If doing something has a high failure rate, standing still guarantees it. Doing it, gives you a slight chance of success. Occasionally doing something of course can cause failure at something else, but more often then not I think people are held back by the fear of failure, failing to realize that by standing still they failed already. Ok, that sounded like a tongue twister, I hope you can follow it.

So, with a little over a month left here I find things getting somewhat complicated. When you deal with people as far as personal relationships are concerned. How much can you improve your friendship with someone who you won't see again for a long time? Personally, I would say as far as I can, but I can't help but wonder if that's the case on the other side. I want to make the best of my time here of course. Then there is the question of relationships that are beyond simple friendships. For the first time in my life I feel outgoing enough and understanding that I think I could pursue those with little difficulty if I wasn't under at time limit. This is causing causing dilemmas, dilemmas that I don't have time to resolve, and such I am acting more on instinct.

I feel like I've gotten some funny looks from some of the Japanese students lately, weather those looks are all connected isn't clear. None of the looks seem negative, perhaps I'm just wearing something interesting? The hat or the scarf? I did get a rather cryptic message out of my economics group the other day. Which I might mention later, perhaps when I understand its opening, until then I will avoid putting it up here.

Moonlight Sonata 3rd Movement

So, practicing the piano, as of now I am trying to improve a piece I used to play known as the Sonata in G Minor by Beethoven. You can listen to the piece >here. As nice as this piece is, it is known as one of Beethoven's two "easy sonatas" (easy by Sonata standards, not overall piano standards) made primarily for teaching purposes. So, I really wanted to play something more serious and interesting. I have considered for some diversity to try another composer like Chopin. However, I ended up settling on Beethoven once again. So, behold, one of the coolest piano pieces I have ever heard.
Beethoven's less famous 3rd movment Moonlight Sonata. I've already printed out the sheet music, and let me just say my hands, especially my right hand will probably have grow some new muslces. The piece is classified as "Presto", out of about 20 tempo speed classifications this is the 2nd fastest (the fastest being "Prestissimo") with metronome speeds of 168-200 beats per minute. So, as soon the sorness in my arm is gone, I'll get right back to studying it.

Random #324324

Ok, some good advice, don't starve yourself. I've done this yesterday by accident, I woke up after lunch, which means that food is scare unless you go to a nearby town. I was too hungry to motivate myself, and only ate dinner and whatever I could find at the vending machines afterward. I could not sleep because I was starving. The next day I ended up waking up before lunch (after relatively little sleep), had a big lunch, a few hours later went to McDonalds, bought a lot of fruit so I don't starve anymore.

As I mentioned I slept little today, and its kind of late, so I think I have some more concrete things to express but they just aren't coming out at this hour. Maybe I will write more tomorrow since I haven't had updates in a while. I actually sat down several times before this and I tried writing somethings but none of it got posted.

Oh, I also played piano yesterday until my hands were sore. I'd like to finish this "Sonata in G minor" by Beethoven so I can both perfect it and move on to the more complicated "Sonata Pathetique".

Day 3 of concealment in the Global Village Apartment...

Ok, so don't get sick in a foreign country...actually getting sick when you don't have any family to take care of you is quite different when you don't have family around, and you don't speak the local language too well. Lucky I was only mildly sick, I stayed in the room, only came out when I absolutely had to (for food, really couldn't stack that up in here). Rested, drank warm tea when I could, etc..

On a more positive note, I have finally been able to type my Kanji name: 亜渡夢. As I mentioned, the Kanji are: "Asia, Traveler, Dream" and was given to me by a nursing student named Shizuka (静), its actually two Kanji glued together, her name means "Blue Fighter" which I think is kind of cool too, and kind of matches her outgoing personality. I will try to learn to write these so that in situation where Japanese is used, I can use that to sign my name rather then Katakana (アートム). I will briefly mention again, Katakana is one of 3 Japanese Alphabets and long with Hiragana is a phonetic Alphabet. It is used to spell many words that originated from other languages, and most foreigners that don't have Kanji names will use Katakana as well.

Oh, the nursing school professor has sent me and the other international students an invite for dinner at her house on Saturday in 2 weeks. She mentioned that her husband is a Junior High English teacher, and that she will invite some of her Nursing students. I am hoping to see some familiar faces...

Meeting the Nursing students

2 pictures starting here.

"Nursing school" is for Nurses, not "Nursery school" which is for Kids


So, I met elementary school students, High school students, and today I met some university students that don't really have international students. The school happens to be Eisei Kano Daigaku, which to English was translated as "Akita Hygine and Nursing school". A few things about Eisei Kano, first of all being a nursing school its 99% girls, it has somewhere between 100-200 students, and its located in Yokote city, about 1 hour drive away from AIU. We were actually told that the school was only recently moved to a new building in Yokote (maybe 2 years ago), and actually used to be located in Akita City.

We were invited to come by Naganuma-Sensei, the school's English and international communications professor. After the 10 of us took the 1 hour drive in a mini-bus we were met by the first of two groups. The first group we met were "Senpai", or upperclassmen. The students were extremely outgoing and eager to meet us (the professor actually later told me, that they were more outgoing then usual). The class had less then 20 students by the way. The teacher gave us a format to follow, but we did not stick to it, the high school students could use this format, I had not issue talking for 1 hour and a half to these guys.

We were given a 10 minute break before meeting some of the Junior students for another 1.5 hours. I enjoyed both of my conversations, but..some of the students in the junior group made a more lasting impression on me. The junior group was much bigger with 38 students, in the senior group I was talking to 3 students, here there were 6. What was the conversation? its funny when this happens, you have a great conversation with someone, yet for the life of me can't remember what it was about. Its almost like an adrenalin rush, I know I talked about the countries I went to, and playing the piano, and some other things. Eventually the teacher gave us a board game of sorts, pretty much you rolled a dice and moved our pawns. Each place had a question sort of "Typical breakfast", "Childhood trip", "High School memory". Probably the most interesting one that everyone ended up landing on was "First Love". Well, we all found some silly childhood story to tell about that one, actually one of the girls named Shizuka, told the funniest story that she confessed she loved someone when she was 4, and the guy did not feel the same way. Later she came up with a Kanji spelling for my name, yay! Hopefully I'll figure out how to type it, but its 3 Kanji, Asian-Traveler-Dream.

I ended up giving away two remaining gifts that I brought from the states. Note about Japan, you can never bring enough gifts here. Me and the other AIU international students ended up being waved Good-Bye by a huge crowd of students who looked like they were ready to cry. So, it was great fun, and with the AIU Halloween party tonight it might not be over yet!

Debate

So, I wanted briefly talk about debate class. The teacher, who describes himself as the Debater of Japan, ok, I will post his name as soon as I find it. I can definitely characterize him a little bit, he is a follower of the teachings of the "Book of the Five Rings" by Miyamoto Musashi, who is considered as the greatest of all Samurai. Our debate is clearly based on those philosophies.

Generally our debates go something like this, we break into 3 groups, the positive side, the negative, and the Judges. Each side has 3 people, a Rock/Air Person, a Fire/Water person and a void person. The void judge is the head judge. According to the teacher's philosophy Air represents logic, Rock represents Fundamentals, Fire represents Emotion, and Water represents the coming of everything together. The void can become any one of these. These are by the way the titles of the 5 Rings in the "Book of the Five Rings". The way the debate goes is the positive side's Air/Rock person makes an "Air" speech based on "facts" as to why their side feels the way it does. The speech is usually about 2 minutes, after wards the other's side "Air/Rock" person cross examines them by asking questions for about 2 minutes. At this point the 'Void' can jump in if someone becomes stuck. After this part, the sides are switched, and the Negative's side's person makes an "Air" speech while the other side's "Rock" cross examines them.

After this is done we have a "Saka debate" or "Free" debate. Where both sides throw arguments at each other, and try to respond to each other's challenges. This is organized somewhat differently from debate to debate based on the Judge's feelings. Afterwards the negative "Fire/Water" person makes a "Fire" speech. The purpose of the "Fire" speech is to sort of put some emotions into your argument rather then facts. The positive side also makes a "Fire" speech. The debate is then concluded by two "Water" speeches. The purpose of the "Water" speech is to calm everyone down, thank their opponents for their good debate and make sure that everyone leaves happy after ward, but each side also re enforces their points.

The judges then make their decisions on who they felt "won" the debate. The "Air/Rock" judge mostly judges the "Air/Rock" person, while the "Fire/Water" person judges the "Fire/water" speeches. The Void judge makes the overall decision and serves as a tie breaker.

Some of the questions we have debates so far include "Bushido (Code of the Samurai) can mix with Christianity", "Beautiful women are more successful in careers then not so beautiful women", and "Barack Obama was more influenced by his Mother then his Father". Debates are usually made with minimal research and are based on personal experience rather then facts, both sides take about 20 minutes to prepare for the debate, we generally do not get to choose what side we are on.

Several things I can, its amazing, what 3 heads put together brain storming can up with with very limited information. Like for today's debate I had to debate against that "Barack Obama was more influenced by his Mother then by his Father". Now, what we did know was that Obama's father left when he was 2, he met him once, and he visited his grave. This was a difficult side to debate, but after some thinking my group came up with a point, that the absence of a father could have been more influential, or rather was the root of Obama's relationship with his mother, therefore making his father more influential by not being there. I don't know if really agree with this, but this argument allowed us to go head to head with a side which seemed to have the better points.

The other interesting thing, is when you start becoming convinced by the arguments that your side is making, at times I disagreed with the judges and felt like "My side won because they convinced me of something I did not agree with before. " So, debating is fun, I don't know what next week's debate is going to be except that it will have something to do with "Jealousy".

Google Analytics

Ok, so a few days ago following the advice of certain people I placed Google Analytics on this blog. For anyone who does not know, Google Analytics pretty much collect information about where the people visit your site from, when they do it. Initially the results were almost boring and uninterestsing, but after a check a few moments ago I couldn't help but but be awed. Japan and the US of course are currently leading as the two countries that I get the most visitors from, interestingly enough I have twice as many visitors from Japan then the US. However, after Japan and the US I got some surprising results. The country in the third place with the most readers after the US and Japan is...Pakistan...yeah, so Salam! Thank you for reading, um, comment if you can, I'd be very interested to learn about you. After Pakistan I have received one visit from the following countries since Google Analytics was put in place: Italy, Ukraine, India, Canada, Russia, and the Philippines. It seems I have a lot of diverse people checking out the blog, its pretty awesome!!

Let's see, With the help of my Japanese debate classmate, Rika, I have proofread and translated my piano entry in Japanese. It was edited and shortened somewhat, I foolishly thought that the editing process would take about half an hour, it took about one hour and a half, and if Rika had more time, it probably could have taken even longer. I will post the Japanese version soon, it needs some tweaking before being posted, and I might place somethings back that were removed in the interest of time.

Yokobori Elementary School and Yuzawa High School

Pictures are here.

Ok, so today I met with Yokobori Elementary school students and Yuzawa High School students. Both meetings were fairly short and both took place on campus.

The first meeting with the elementary school students went, well I met them in the designated place, they got all excited and started shaking hands with me (Being western). Several of them wore New York Yankee sweat shirts, so they got all excited when I said I'm from New York. Afterward, we had a brief English lessen with them. The international students were broken up into pairs and the students were broken up into groups. The international students were moved from group to group of students playing different games with them. My partner was Haishi from Taiwan, our game was pretty much to put a bunch of flags on the ground and all out country names, the kids would then have to pick the correct flag. Note, I know quite a few flags, surprisingly American was not one of them. After the game, we went to lunch with them in the cafeteria, talking a little bit with the teachers.

My second meeting was with High School students and pretty much just involved talking to them in a classroom. There were 4 groups of 4-5 people. 3 groups of girls and 1 group of guys (Maybe its an Akita thing, but seems women greatly outnumber men here). Oh boy, you poor High school students, what did they do to make you so shy? For the first 2 groups I was alone, I did my best to keep the conversation going, but beyond "What's your favorite food?" things did not seem to go too well. I was hoping that the group of boys would be more outgoing...they were probably the shyest. I tried counting and saying the days of the week in different languages, I think they found it interesting but I can't be sure. About half-way through Sarah from England joined me and I was in a pair, she spoke quite a bit of Japanese so she could translate. I did not take a picture of one of the group of girls. The best conversation ended up being with the last group of girls that turned out to be surprisingly outgoing. We asked a variety of questions about which countries they want to visit, what Manga (Japanese comics) they like, what movies they like. They asked me if I have a girlfriend and what kind of girls do I like (yes, I got checked out by Japanese High School girls, I hope some of the older girls share their interest.) At one point, the boys were merged in the hopes that they would talk, no such luck, me and Sarah pretty much continued talking to the "outgoing girls", we tired to include the boys in the conversation but they just remained stone quiet.

@#%(@#$%()

Ok, so 2 behaviors that are extremely anti-social and annoying:

1. Having headphones in your ears when you're walking
2. Starring at the ground

Seriously, don't do either of these, if it someone I know, I will seriously just yell your name out next time. Furthermoe, new pictures are up including those of the shrine. What else? What else? What else? I am seriously considering translating this blog into Japanese, it might be my new project, but so far I found myself in a serious lack of motivation. Perhaps I'm just a little tired from all the running I've done over the last 2 month. Which also means I am about half-way through my study abroad, as much as I don't want to come back, in a way I am curious, sure the place I'm coming back to probably didn't change much, but I have, I am curious to notice things that I have not noticed before.

Ok, unorganized entry, I am a little frustrated, let's see: there are 1 out of 6 people on this campus that I really want to see right now!! I am pretty sure 3 of them are not on campus right now...geez, I practically live with them and yet I miss them when I don't see them for too long, ok very random entry, but I guess it happens

The Rice Shrine

Ok, I would have posted pictures of this place, but blogspot was down and I am no longer in my room to upload them. I will do so later, anyway about a 30 minute walk a way from the school there is a shrine, while I've taken pictures of other shrines especially at the last bus trip this one is nothing like them. First of all, it stands alone on a hill, in the middle of the rice fields. There are no shrines around it, and almost no people.

If there was any time I would believe in a supernatural presnece, this would definitely have to be it. The first time I went to this place was at night...it was very scary and very ovewhelming, quite a few people that I talked to have agreed with this evaluation. Last time I went there, while I was taking pictures, a wind started blowing "into" the shrine...could shrines be positioned in such a way so that the wind blows into them? I don't know, but I decided not to try its patience. My pictures are only of the entrance, I did not dare taking pictures of the inside. I will try to use words to describe the place.

You can see it in the pictures, there are two gates that you go through, after the gates you reach the hill with the stairs going up. Once you reach the hill, this is where the actual shrine is, one thing to keep in mind is that there is no building here to enter, it is outside. The entrance is guarded by two stone lions, anyone entering will be starred by both of them very directly. There is a walk way forward towards, with pillars at each side. If one hasn't been in as shrine, its hard to describe the end of the walkway, its sort of a "house" that you bow to, to pray.

Writing

Ok, so just when I was getting pretty bored of my Japanese class, of memorizing a ridiculious (30) number of Kanji per day the teacher told us that we have to make a speech as a presentation next week, the speech also has to be memorized. While everyone else was busy complaining about the length of the speech, and debating the teacher on how long it should be, and the fact that its smooshed right in between two tests, a comletely different thought flashed through my mind. The first was "I get to write!! and I get to share my writing with people." My second thought? "I can ask all my Japanese friends for help! This is going to be awesome."

I actually had trouble focusing for the rest of the class, because there were ideas floating in my head as to how I should go about this. The teacher wanted us to write about our country's 'Manners'...yeah, I felt somewhat unethusiastic to write about American manners. (Never admit defeat in an argument, no matter how ridiculious you sound, its how Congress and FoxNews do it). Of course all the teacher wants is for us to include a certain grammatical item in our speech, besides that he, as I expected is very flexible with the topic. I am thinking that I will translate my piano entry with minor modifications to include the grammatical rule.

Some blog statistics

Just a brief thought about the blog:

Approximate number of hits per day:

When I first started writing: 20
When I removed the link from facebook and stopped daily updates: 8-9
When I put thel link back on facebook: 80

So clearly the number of readers skyrocketed over the last few days. As of now I can only guess who is reading, I initially thought that maybe its AIU students, but perhaps because of all the pictures I posted on facebook, some people that I haven't spoken to in a long time may have become interested. Nobody from AIU has commented, either on the blog or to me personally, so until someone does i can only guess.

Piano in the cafeteria

So, I guess this is also more of a reflection piece. There is a very nice piano standing the middle of the Komachi Cafeteria. I don't know much of the backstory about the piano, but apprently it belonged to a student that passed away during his studies and a a memorial plack stands on top of it. The piano is kept nicely tuned and is free for the students to use 24/7.

I remember during the first 5 days when I heard Airi play it, it was lunch time and I couldn't help approaching and complementing her on her playing. I stopped playing piano about 2( or is it 3 now?) years ago, this was honestly the first moment in those 2 years that I regretted stopping. I was very impressed by the depth of her music. Over my time here I heard a variety of students play the piano enough, that at some point I dug up some sheet music of a Beethoven piece I used to play. However, it wasn't until I heard another girl I met here named Yuna play a few pieces. Her playing also impressed me very much, finally enough for me to sit down and try playing. So yes, on October 19, 2009, at 1AM in the morning I sat behind a piano for the first time in 2-3 years and started playing. Perhaps this was also the first time I truly played because I wanted to, rather then because somebody was pushing me.

There is something that started to concern me here, about many piano players, for a long time I thought I knew a lot of good piano players, however, I know realize that perhaps "good" is not the correct term to use. A better term would probably be, "Good technicians". These people can play the most difficult pieces in the world, but their music is empty, it puts you to sleep, and yet in fear of sounding "Unsophisticated" none of the listeners will ever admit what their music lacks.

Where are the kids?

New pictures here

(I don't know if there are issues at Google, but I can't seem to be able to add captions, I will try again later)

Ok, the title of this is a serious question I want to ask, but not about Japan, but about Long Island. Having lived in Akita for a while, I see people of all ages and families with their kids all the time. Weather its at the city, in the mall, even sometimes on campus, I always see kids. This sounds normal, until I start thinking about back home, and feel like I never see families. There is certainly a possibility that I simply never paid attention to this before, but at the same time I feel like this isn't something I could have missed. There is always something so positive about a family out with their little kids, I guess I'll find out when I come back.

Today, I spent the day at a "Community center" with my "host family" or rather just the Host mother as well as a large group of Japanese people and 6 AIU international students. We began the day by cooking lunch. I can't remember the name of the food that we made (I'll make sure to ask), apparently the food is unique to Akita. It pretty much involved taking rice, mushing it for a while. Taking a pair of chopsticks (single use, not taken apart), putting the rice on it so it in around shape so it looks like a "Rice corn dog" and then fry it. Some of the rice was then taken off, and put into a vegetable and meat soup. The Korean international student also made some "Korean Pizza" that I tried at the AIU festival

We had a very nice meal in the Tatami room (Japanese style room), before playing a bunch of I guess Japanese kids games. I'll try to remember the rules of the games we played. The first one was the one I understood the least, one person called out a number and then you had to sit in a circle with people of that number. The music then played and you did sort of a dance, and the process was repeated. If the music ended, everyone who was not in a circle (because they couldn't make one of that number of people) lost. The second game involved two circles of people, one on the inside, and one on the outside. The music would play and the people on the inside of the circle would challenge the people on the outside of the circle to "Rock, paper scissors". If the outside person won, then the inside person would have to go challenge someone else on the outside. If the inside person won, then the two switched places. This would continue for about 10 seconds, then the people on the outside would join hands walk in and sort of "playfully kick" the people on the inside. Once again the game continued while the music was on.

The third game was one I played before at an AIU ice breaking party, everyone walked around and challenged others to "Rock, paper, scissors", the loser would put their hands on the winner's shoulders and follow them around. This would continue until there was one large snake. The third game was tag in slow motion, still not quite sure how that worked, you pretty much had to run away from the person that was "it" or as they call him in Japan the "Demon", but you had to do it in exaggerated slow motion. The final game was also tag, but this time the "Demon" came up with a "walk" and everyone had to follow that. For example you had to walk on all 4's or you had to pretend that you were swimming, or you had to jump on one foot.

One interesting custom that seems to happen here, that I only thought was done in elementary school is that at the end of the day before everyone leaves, the guests are expected to give a short reflection on the day. In this case it was the 6 AIU international students. Later on the drive home, Maxwell, one of the students that was with us who talked to his "Host Mother" told me a little more about the group that we were with. They are known as the "Hippo Families" (I think) and they pretty much get together and study languages by listening to tapes. They then interact with families around the world sometimes sending their kids on exchange. Thanks to these tapes, some of the adults can speak 10-12 languages on a basic conversational level.

Bus Trip #3

Pictures here.

Yesterday I went on the third trip organized by Student Services. I think only about 3/4 of the students went on it (almost everyone went on the first trip, and very few people on the second one because of its timing).

I finally figured out how to turn off the flash on my camera, that way I could take pictures out of the moving bus without the flash reflecting in the window. A lot of the pictures did end up really blurry and I ended up deleting them. We arrived close to the western coast to the ocean and all the places we visited were very "scenic".

The first place we visited was full of shrines. One thing to note, you generally have to give money to the shrines (There is usually box). The Kamis (Spirits or Demi Gods) prefer 5 or 50 yen coins because they like the number "5" and because those two coins have wholes in them, which makes them similar to ancient Japanese money. I ended up running out of 5s and started giving 50s, I better have a lot of luck coming my way. The shrines were awesome, see the pictures.

After the shrines we ended up having lunch at a train station that overlooked the ocean. Good lunch, good view, good pictures. The third place Mt. Chocoate (I think that's the name). We drove onto the mountain which was full of very colorful autumn trees. We also had some great views of the ocean and the cities below us.

The final place we visited was also near the ocean. I actually took a picture of the description written I very nice English.

Japan: a reflection

Ok, so I will not let this blog die, I will try to keep it at least 2 entires per week. This shouldn't be difficult this week as tomorrow Bus Trip #3 is coming up with hopefully a lot of pictures. Sunday I am visiting my "Homestay family", so its definitely a very busy weekend.

So after 2 months here, my Japanese language skills are steadily improving, but one thing that is improving more than that is how I understand myself, and others. As a matter of fact I am wondering if my biggest issue for many years was that I completely misunderstood myself and how I think? Some things I learned is that I am very much a "people" person, I don't get tired of people no matter how much time I spend with them. I get a lot more done if I am sitting next to someone and discussing it with them rather then sitting alone in my room, as a matter of fact I get very little done that way. Another thing is that when you look at personality tests a lot of them will compare a person that makes decisions carefully by logic vs. a person that makes decision on instincts and impulse. I always thought of myself as the first time but lately I think I follow a very middle ground between those two. There are times when I think I made a decision based on "logic" on to later realize that it was very impulsive and I actually thought very little about it. Still, I think its a good way to make decisions, logic can be very flawed and sometimes you might be reasoning about something and your instincts will tell you that something is not right. My instincts rarely lead me astray.

About people, I am definitely more social here then I ever was. Back at Stony it seems that I would feel embarassed and would look for reasons not talk to people. Here I started doing the complete opposite, having a feeling that a person might be interesting or just seeing somebody's face a too many times in a day (which happens here) might be a reason to introduce myself. A good place I found to just start talking to someone is on the bus or at the bus stop. The bus ride is about 15 minutes (to either the station or the mall), so if the person does feels uncomfortable or does not want to talk to me they don't have long to wait (I don't think that happened do). At this point I pretty much have two ice breaker phrases for the Japanese students, the first being "Where would like to Study Abroad?" or "Where did you study abroad?". The second one that I like is "What does "Otsukare" mean. "Otsukare" is a Japanese word that is impossible to translate into English, it is generally used as a "Good bye" but you would only use it in certain situations. If I had to interpet it, it would be something like "It was nice to work with you, you've worked hard, please rest". In other words you would use it with someone you've worked with and that person would be tired by now, so you're thanking them for putting so much energy into this.

About my appearence, this is something I admit I cared rather little about. In the morning I would take as shower, brush my teeth, sometimes shave, put on what's clean and go out. This has changed, I shower, while doing so I shave, wash my face, brush my teeth. When I'm done I put on after shave lotion, deodrant, cologne, comb my hair. I am seriously considering going cloth shopping, to wear something that I think looks good rather then any other reason, but perhaps I will hold up until I come back home. I also brough hair gel today because I got tired of seeing my hair being messy in all my pictures.

AIU Festival Day 2

Day 2 photos have been uploaded


Day 2...280 pictures taken. There were tons of performances, more food, fireworks, an the Kanto Team (As epic as ever), an epic closing ceremony. I don't think there is much else to say, I should have the pictures up in a few minutes and I think they will speak for themselves.

AIU festival Day 1

Pictures are now here

Today was the first day of the festival, and yes I took a few pictures and will definitely take more tomorrow. The festival became with the opening ceremony which involved some speeches in Japanese, and the releasing of the balloons. There was then a variety of rock performers all day, different clubs on campus organized booths with food from all over the world. I would definitely describe the feeling as having a "globe" in my stomach. In one day I tried food from Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Mexico, some other places that I am not sure of. I will definitely try more tomorrow. A variety of bands performed on stage, few of them however, really caught my attention. At the end of the day there was a performance by a professional band called "Karasu". They were ok, I can see why they are called professional but I think the music could have been more suited to my taste. After the band there was a "candle lighting", and path of candles was lit on campus. A group of Okinawan students (An island south of Japan) performed a traditional dance among the candles. We then had some hot coco.

More on Aikido

Aikido practice is becoming increasingly interesting. During our last practice we practiced with actual wooden swords. (Rather then before, when we practiced with short wooden staffs, meaning you could grab the tip). We learned some cool moves to disarm an opponent armed with a sword as well. (Yes, not too useful in today's world, but still pretty cool). We also learned this interesting move that involves grabbing the wrist a certain way and cause intense pain. Definitely something I want to try again.

Yesterday I went to an Aikido demonstration (and actually participated briefly). One thing about this, Aikido is extremely traditional and we had to follow some very traditional rules during the demonstration. (Definitely did a few "faux pas", our Aikido Sensei usually stopped us before we did something too wrong). Here are some of the rules:

1. Do not make noise or speak loudly around the changing rooms.

2. Bow to the Senseis when you pass them

3. Follow the special bowing ritual before getting into the performance area (get on your knees, bow twice, clap twice, do a third bow that you hold for several seconds)

4. All performers are to sit on the floor, when others perform you are either to sit in the Senza position (on your knees) or with your feet crossed. (Unless the Master of this school demonstrates, then you have to sit in Senza).

5. When all the performances are done, every group that performed bows to the "home" group. The "home" group remains until everyone else left the performance area.

What I definitely learned about this, is that sitting in the Senza for extended periods of time really hurts. Also that Aikido is absolutely awesome. Especially the last 2 performers, the second to last performer did a bunch of moves including knocking 8 people to the ground. The very last performer was the Sensei of the school and I believe the highest ranking master in all of Akita. He challenged his students to attack him in any way, he would send them flying in the air no matter what they did. The guy was probably in his 60s, not someone you want to get into a fight with.


Pictures on this are...coming, Since I didn't know how things would work, I did not get a chance to get my camera out of my bag and I ended up taking a lot of pictures but with my Sensei's camera. I should be able to pass those on, once I get them.

Shabu Shabu

So, earlier today I went out to dinner with some international students to have some "Shabu-Shabu". Someone said that it means "Winter's coming", not sure in what language. It is considered a witner dish that is eaten year round, it definitely warms you up. The way it works is that a gas oven is placed in the middle of the table and sauce is poured in. The oven is then turned on. You then go to the buffet and collect some vegtables and side dishes. Meanwhile, the waitress brings thin slices of pork and beef to the table. As the sauce in the pan over the gas stove warms up you can use your chopsticks to put the pieces of meat in. Since they are thinly sliced, they are done in seconds, you then dip them into another cooler sauce and eat. You can also put the vegtables in to fry as well. This definitely required some superior chopstick skills, I had trouble gettig the pieces out of the pan over the gas stove sometimes.

JCF Otsukimi party

Ok, so I finally have pretty decent entry about the Otsukimi (moon viewing) party organized by the Japanese Conversation Friends club. Technically the party should take place during the full moon and we did it one day after that, and because of the rain you couldn't really see it but it was still fun. I did unfortunately forget my camera again (grr...I'll write it on my hand or something). The party took place in the Japanese style tatami rooms on campus. The first part of the party involved making Rice cakes, this was pretty straight forward and just involved mixing rice flour with water and then rolling balls out of it.

While the rice cakes were cooking, we ended up playing a slightly different version of Human Bingo. This time all the questions were in Japanese, and after we were done names were actually pulled out of a bag. When a person's name was called, they would introduce themselves in Japanese and you would cross out their name and try to get "Bingo". The winners got some chocolates.

The Final part of course was eating the rice cakes. The rice cakes were put in the middle of the table along with red bean paste, brown sugar, soy sauce, and syrup. Everyone would use their chopsticks, dip the rice cake in one of those then eat (not dipped in anything the rice cakes themselves had little taste). We also had green tea ice cream, that everyone pretty much dipped their chopsticks in and ate separately.

During the night I did talk to some Japanese and international students. I think I knew all of the international students that were there, including Sophia and Austin from Taiwan, Tracy from Malaysia. Rina my Japanese Conversation partner was there, and I did talk to a girl named Yuki most of the night. Yuki actually spent a year in Saratoga Springs, NY for Study Abroad in High School (Only went to the city once). She hopes to go to Italy for her Study Abroad.

I will briefly also talk about AIU festival preparations, with 1 week to go a lot of the Japanese Students are busy preparing. It seems like there are going to be a loot of "Dance routines". I was also told that the entire campus would be decorated including a giant boat made of chopsticks in the cafeteria.

Brief update

So, I am not writing as many entries, or entries as long as I used to. There are of course several reasons for this, I can get quite busy with schoolwork, and probably now that some of the culture shock has passed things that might have surprised me before don't really surprise me now. Well, I did recently discover that in addition to selling cold drinks, some of the machines actually keep the cans worm and sell hot tea in cans. Now, its been one month into the semester and people will sometimes tell me that it will be over before I know it. This is not something that needs to be repeated to me, I never thought of a semester as being a long time.

Now I don't want to give anyone the wrong idea that a lack of entries means that I am in any way bored. The people and the campus community here make it very hard to ever be bored. I rarely stay in my room for too long, simply because it gets boring and I want to go out, go to a lounge, see if I meet anyone. Today is my first 'free friday' in quite a while. Generally I go somewhere on a Friday, like to an elementary school or just into the city. I will go into the city tonight, however, I should probably keep in the back of my mind to plan something on Fridays. Other people have class during the day, so it can be quite boring after I'm done sleeping in and there is nobody around. Well that's it for now, the AIU Festival that I mentioned before is coming up on October 11-12th and a lot of the Japanese students are busy preparing for it. I will try to take a lot of pictures, and hopefully will have a nice blog entry too.

Homestay with a Family

I don't think I mentioned this in my posts before but I did sign up for a "Family homestay". A lot of times when people go studying abroad they stay with a Host Family. While, this is not the case with AIU we did get an opportunity to sign up and to be paired up with a Japanese family for a "homestay". I met my Family on Saturday, they were a couple that spoke a little bit of English. Their names are Tomoyo and Masaki, Masaki works at a Pharmaceutical company (If I understood correctly). They invited me to visit them on October 18th. Unfortunately, they were supposed to have another student from Korea also assigned to them, but he did not come...which felt unfortunate. Besides that I simply don't have that many news, I plan to go out into the city this Friday. There are a few things on my mind that will determine what I will do here. I am also trying to sign-up for another elementary school program, but unfortunately all of the ones available now are for Thursday mornings when I have class.

Ota kita elementary school field trip to Daisen City

Today I had a long day with the Elementary school students from Daisen City. I forgot my camera, I forgot my camera, I forgot my camera and I am very upset about that. Now, on to the trip itself. I will briefly mention, while called a "City" Daisen was a very rural area. However, according to Wikipedia it is officially considered the largest "City assembly" in Japan surpassing even Tokyo.

The day started with me, along with 6 other international students being picked up by some teachers from the school. 6 of us were Americans and 1 girl was from Korea, she spoke Japanese better then us...and the kids bothered her more as a result. The drive to Daisen city was a little over an hour so it was a long trip...in a small cramped Japanese car.

Our first destination was a "Japanese golf course" to play Japanese Golf. Ota Kita elementary is a very small school with only 66 students in grades 1-6. They were broken up into 8 groups (each group has diverse ages) and each one of the international students were assigned to one group to play golf with. Japanese golf is hard to describe, you had sort of a potato shape club and you had to hit the ball in an area marked by a flag and a round piece of metal. Because it wasn't an actual whole, going through the mark was a common occurrence. You also had to make the whole in less then 6 hits. We had the game explained to us by some "professional players", a group of elderly looking Japanese. (The explanation was translated to us).

The game itself, well it was me, 8 kids, and a teacher. The only Japanese the kids knew was how to say "My name is" and count a little. Still, communicating with them wasn't that difficult. The teacher knew a tiny bit more, but not too much of a speaker either. The game was a lot of fun, and I did get 2nd place. It did get a little repetitive, since we would move from whole to whole and besides the distance it really wasn't that different.

After the game, we drove to a pique-nique area and every group cooked together. My group ended up making Ramen with Potatoes, carrots, beef, can't quite remember what else there was. Watching the kids cook was interesting, I mentioned I think to some people about "group mentality", it was clear, the kids were taught to cook together and then share the food together. Group achievement is more important then individual achievement. Well, the older kids did most of the cooking, the young ones liked running around taking the international students with them, to ask how to say different things in English and catch dragon flies. The ramen was good, we also had some Onigiri (rice balls), after cleaning up we headed back to campus. We were all very exhausted and ended up sleeping for a while afterwards.

Aikido #2

I went to my 2nd Aikido meeting yesterday, the class went relatively the same, but I wish to talk a little bit about the formalities of the class. First, during practice there is always a chair with a portrait of Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido.
Second, Before, every move the instructor usually demonstrates it with one of the Senior students. During demonstrations everyone always seats on their knees, and the student always approaches the instructor by walking on his knees. Before the move begins everyone bows and says "Onegaishimasu" (A very formal way of saying "Please"). After the demonstration everybody bows again and says "Arrigato Gozaimashita", (a very formal of saying "Thank you" in the past tense, thanking for something that already happened). We then repeat this with your partners that you practice the moves with. The practice sort of ends with a ritual where everyone bows to everyone else in the class with the word "Arrigato Gozaimashita". Its funny how small things can really build relationships with people. Besides that practice, was very similar to last time except that perhaps I didn't get as tired and even instead got more of an adrenalin rush at the end.

Tawazako, Professional Basketball game

Sorry, for the lack of updates, it has officially been 1 month since I arrived in Japan...it was definitely the most eventful month of my life and I honestly think that I am not the same person I was a month ago. Its been a month, and I am trying to see if I can stay longer then I initially planned...

Yesterday, I took a day-long trip to Tawazako, a bout 1 hour away from Akita by bullet train looking for some open-air hot springs. This did not go too well (all do I did find an open air hot spring). It did not go well for the following reasons:

1. It rained
2. I forgot my camera
3. When I arrived, I discovered that the bus to where I am going won't come for another hour
4. I tried taking the Taxi, but the price would be ridiculous, it cost 800 yen (around $8) to take the bus, the cab driver told me that it would cost 6700 yen (Around $67). One the plus side I did ask him and got a response in Japanese.
5. I did not find the onsen I was looking for.

So, I definitely want to go back here, unfortunately its quite expensive. So we'll see if it'll happen.


Today I went to see a professional basketball game, the first professional event I've ever attended. The game was between the Sendai 89ers and the Phoenixes from somewhere south. (their location name was written in Kanji, so I don't know where they are from). The game was quite interesting to watch and the cheerleaders performed several dances. I did take some pictures, but none of them really turned out that great, not sure if I will post them. In the end the phoenixes crushed the 89ers with a final score of 90 to 65. At one point, Louis a Canadian that also came told me that of all the pro basketball games he attended, he was worried that he would see one team have double the score of the others which at one point looked unfortunately likely.

Kanto: The ultimate badass traditional performance

Kanto Pictures.

Yes, these guys are very badass, They have team unity, physical strength, cool uniforms. Now, "Kanto" is the actual name of the staff, "Sachite" are the people carrying the Kanto and "Ohayashi" are the musicians that played the flute and the drums. The performance would go like this, one of the members (I guess the Captain) would give a whistle, and the Ohayashi would play an intro before going into a continuous beat. The drummers would also cheer as they played. One of the Sachite would lift the staff and balance it for about 30 seconds before passing it on to another Sachite. The entire performance would go on for about 10 minutes. The Drummers would also alternate every few minutes without stopping the beat. The staff is relatively light and the strong wind today made things difficult. My roommate, Hiro who happens to be a Sachite told me that they follow some strict traditional rules (such as the fact that only men can be Sachite).

Watching these guys, I realized that they have a lot of team unity. It made me truly believe that the lack of team unity might have been the reason as to why the Varsity Men Squad of Stony brook crew did so poorly last fall. Its hard to describe the performance without being there, the drummers beat the drum until they were red in the face.

Aikido

Ok, so I'm adding two entires at the same time so make sure to read the one before this. In this entry I will talk about the Aikido club that I went to yesterday. The practice lasted from 6:30-9:30PM, yes it was long and I was completely exhausted afterwards. I will break apart what we did.

6:30-7:00PM, put together the mat (out of giant puzzle pieces), then clean it
7:00PM-7:30PM, Warm up, a variety of stretches, practicing falling.
7:30-8:10PM, Practice with short wooden swords, can't remember what they are called.
8:10-9:10PM, Hand to Hand combat with partner, about 5 minutes per move. most of the moves were pretty short but I think they could be very effective. It included protection against punches, grabs, and some other things
9:10-9:20: Free practice, we could practice whatever we wanted, falling, wooden swords, hand-to-hand, etc
9:20-9:30 Clean up

This was fun, and it was a workout. There were about 15 people and the class was about evenly split between Japanese and International students. The only down side, is that the practice on Tuesday is canceled because of the holidays, I know have 1 week to forget everything.

Toshima Elementary

So I have I think a pretty interesting entry today. First I went to Aikido practice yesterday, and this morning I spent 40 minutes with a bunch of 3rd Graders at Toshima Elementary. I'll speak about that first while its fresh in my mind.

Pretty much there were 6 of us, and we were broken into pairs for 3 classes. 3rd Graders, 4th Graders, and 6th Graders. I was paired up with Hannah (I'll double check her name, but I think that's what it was) from New Zealand. One of the English teachers explained to us what we had to do, and then 2 students led us to their class. Our lessen pretty much consisted of teaching the names of different foods to the 3rd Graders. We began by introducing ourselves, telling them our name, where we are from, what our hobbies are, what food we like in Japan. 2nd we had a bunch of cards with different kinds of foods, pronounced them, and had the students repeat after us. The two words that I had difficulty were "Parfait" and "Crepe", they are both French words and I had to think trying to remember how to say them in English.

We then had them say "I like" and "I don't like" to the foods before finally playing a game with them. The students were broken up into 4 teams, and the cards with different foods were placed in the floor. Me and Hannah would call out different foods and one member from each team would try to grab that card. The winner was the team that had the most cards. Well, that was the 40 minute class, now I am going to another school next week for the entire day that's actually paying the participants 2000 yen. We were volunteers here, but the school did give each one of us a bag of Apples and Bananas as a Thank you gift. Now I did not have a camera, nor do I think I would have the opportunity to take any, however a member of "Community outreach" (the office that organizes this at AIU)did take some pictures and told us we could get them later.

Not feeling creative enough for a title

New pictures added. Sorry, for the slow down in the entries, my days are a little bit more routine now, all do I do have a break coming up for a few days next week and I can't help but look forward to it.

I mentioned to some people, I made a discovery recently that Japanese upperclassman can't have a meal plan here. As a result there are some social barriers, and I am not really taking any classes with them here. I will do my best to meet them through clubs. I guess I will briefly mention some of the Japanese students that I met. There is Hiro my roommate, he is a senior who just came back from studying abroad in Hong Kong and volunteering in Africa. Risa, who is my conversation partner who I briefly met yesterday. She is a junior planning on studying abroad in New Mexico next year (possibly a strange choice, but then again so is Akita when talking about Japan). There are Yuka and Takaya who are both freshman and members of my group in economics. Ah, also there is Takuma who I believe is a Sophomore, he is in my debate class. I want to meet more Japanese students because interacting with them is, different and interesting in a way.

Random thoughts #24324

Ok, so I have another *3 poster in day, what does this mean? Quite simply that I am very bored, which is to be expected as I simply planned to do HW today, which is progressing slowly but surely. I woke up at 10Am this morning which is my first "late" wake-up here, and it did not feel like I overslept. As I mentioned in my previous entry I would like to find an open-air hot spring. This is rather difficult, there are very few English language sites that provide much information and I am sure that there are tons of these places that have no presence on the net. If an Onsen has website it usually entirely in Japanese. The websites that provide information on Onsens can also be very vague in that they will provide very few directions and sometimes just a Japanese address, which is almost useless to me since Google maps either provides directions in Japanese or just says that it can't find the location. This lead me to the decision that perhaps for my long weekend I should explore some of the rural towns around here, especially those that seem to have a lot of open-air and see if I can just find one. Partially I am seriously considering going back to the Onsen in Akita city tomorrow, the only thing holding me back is the fact that tomorrow is Sunday, which will very likely be the most crowded day of the week. Soo...I'll resist and wait until Monday when I only have one class in the morning and then tons off free time to go.

Prices

So, I received some requests for prices, so I will write some random ones. The prices are in yen, the exchange rate is $1=91-92 yen. For simplicity you can just divide by 100 to convert, but realize that it will be a little more then that.

Lodging:
Narita Airport Hostel in Narita 2000 yen/night
Sakura Asakusa Hostel in Tokyo 2940 yen/night
Capsule Hotels (Rumored) 1200-1500 yen/night
Ryokan (Japanese Style Hotel) 10,000 yen + (But if you book with other people it might be cheaper)


Transportatin:
Shinkansen ticket from Tokyo to Akita 16,890 yen
Tokyo Metro Ticket 160-300 yen(distance dependant)
Akita bus to Aeon or Wada Station 150 yen
Local Train from Wada to Akita station 230 yen
Bus Ride from Akita to Sendai 3,600 yen
Shinkansen ticket from Akita to Sendai 6,600 yen

Food
Instant noodles 168-200 yen
Canned Soda from Drink machine
or convenicne shop 140 yen
1.5 Soda battle at department Store 198 yen
McDonalds BigMac with fries & drink 560 yen
School Cafeteria Fried Pork with
Rice and Curry 340 yen
Hot Dog and Fries University Cafe 440 yen



Other:
Akita Onsen Plaza Admission 750 yen (+100 yen on weekend)
Coat Hangers *5 260 yen

If I remember anything I'll mention it here.

A thought on Japanese..

Is Japanese the hardest language for western speakers to learn? Apparently so, most people, if asked what the hardest language to learn is would probably think that its Mandarin Chinese. While I have not studied Mandarin, I have spoken to quite a few people that have and drew some interesting conclusion.

It is true, while Mandarin has way more Kanji(Symbols) then Japanese, having studied Japanese for a little while now I can say that the Kanji themselves are not the hardest part of the language. What makes Japanese difficult is the fact that many Kanji do not have constant pronunciations, the pronunciation may vary depending on if the Kanji is used on it sown, with a combination with another Kanji or Kana, and other things like that. The 2nd thing that makes Japanese difficult is its nightmarish grammar and very conjugations. While initially did not feel that conjugations were difficult and complicated there. There are so many conjugations including, the present informal positive, the present informal negative, the present formal positive & negative, the past formal and informal, positive and negative. Then the verbs change based on weather you want to say "Should we do this" or if you are demanding.

Based on what I've been told, Mandarin lacks all of these, the Kanji as numerous as they are do not vary in pronunciation, and the verb conjugations are almost nonexistent. In other words it seems to lack everything that makes Japanese so complicated. I will briefly mention two other languages that are generally ranked as very difficult to westerners, Korean and Arabic. Korean's grammar is said to be similar to Japanese, however, Korean does not use Kanji and as such is simplified. About Arabic, I will admit that I don't know much about it, however, somebody who seems to be knowledgeable about these things did once mention to me that it is much simpler then Japanese as well.

Onsen

Ok, so I finally went to an Onsen! (Japanese Hot Spring) And let's just say this is definitely everyone should experience at some point! Anyway, AIU Student Services were nice enough to tell me how to get to one in Akita City. This took me a little while since as I think I mentioned before, Akita City is no Tokyo and you can't expect to see signs in English or for people to understand it.

Still, the attendants at the Onsen once I got to it were very nice and explained everything to me. Probably one of the things that I like here, when you look confused people will try to help you. Here is how it works:

1. you arrive into the lobby (The onsen was in a Hotel), and then you put your shoes in a locker.

2. Buy a ticket from a machine

3. Enter the "Onsen Lobby", rather then the "Main Hotel Lobby", give the tickets to the attendants and get another locker key as well as a towel if you want.

4 Go to the locker room, undress, lock your stuff in a locker

5. Wash yourself (Dictated by cleanliness etiquette that you wash yourself before going into the pools). The Showers have soap and shampoo

6 Then Soak.

Now, there were a lot of pools there of different shapes and sizes, I think they had different minerals, but the descriptions were in Japanese (plus I did not have my glasses), so I'm not sure. Anyway, after wards I definitely had a "regenerated body and soul" type of feeling. I am coming back here...soon. Of course now I also want to find some "open air" springs, before it gets too cold. So, on to research...

Entry #36

I am a little too tired to come up with clever titles, but with entry #36 on my 19th day here I think, I am averaging almost 2 entries a day :) Once again I will talk about a few random things on my mind. First, thanks to the coat hangers I purchased at the mall my side of the room now looks less messy, but it still needs some work.

I was able to get a location on the map to a Japanese Onsen (Hot Spring) in Akita City, so I will try to go there tomorrow. Despite having no classes I have quite a few things going on, in the morning as I said I am going to the Onsen, at 4PM I will attend a meeting of a club called "Japanese Conversation Friends." Its pretty much a club that pairs up international and Japanese students with conversation partners and organizes some events. At 7PM is the highly publicized "Gathering Party", not quite sure what to expect but it sounds fun, so hopefully it'll be an interesting day.

Plans plans

Ok, a little bit of my energy came back so I just wanted to update my plans for the next few...weeks. Tomorrow I'm going to the mall and buying primarily some coat hangers, and maybe some other things to store my stuff.

Friday (The 11th) I will try to go to an Onsen (Pending I find out where it is), and in the evening there is some kind of "Gathering Party". I think its just some party with music and food sponsored by AIU's Student Government. On September 18th I signed up to be a "guest" at elementary school, on September 23rd I am going on a field trip to a Professional Basketball game. On October11-12th there is an AIU Festival. Festivals are big in Japan, the meal plan is not available on those 2 days so hopefully there will be a lot of interesting food to try and of course hang out with people.

Still not sure what i will do for the long weekend that's coming up, There are some people trying to come up where we can go as a group, but people don't want to spend much money. I think that's it for now.

Another set of Random thoughts

Well, my entries are getting shorter but it has more to do with me getting tired with classes. Perhaps, I will write a longer entry over the weekend, I'll try but no guarantees. As far as the classes go I had a nightmare about Kanji (Chinese symbols) last night. Whoever, came up with the idea of having Japanese 4 days in a row is...not a good person. Some of the international students here are actually taking Japanese, Mandarin, and Korean at the same time...crazy people. Oh, and one more interesting thing is that the Japanese students all have electronic dictionaries that they carry to their lectures, if there is a word they don't understand they translate it right away.

There were tons of High School students touring the campus today, they appeared a little shyer then the group that came before. A few did greet me with "Hello", considering that they did in 3 people together made me think that they are a little nervous about talking to us. If students come again I'll make sure to greet them myself.

Some interesting Social things that I noticed. First, smoking, there are only few small spaces on campus that you can smoke, unlike Stony where there are some rules but they are barely enforced. There is a small room in Komachi hall with a table. So I feel like they have sort of their own club.

The other thing is language, while everyone here speaks English pretty well the Japanese Students tend to speak Japanese between themselves as do the students from some other countries. Even if the students are friendly this does create a barrier of sorts, if they are talking in their native language you have almost no way of joining their conversation. On a more negative note, you can't be sure if they are talking about you, it is irritating (did happen) when you have the strongest feeling that something was said about you and you have no idea what it was and weather it was true. I guess this entry is descent sized...