Japan: Ganbate!: Three months in: Japan--the bad, the good, and...did that guy just grab your nuts?

Hey everyone! We are now officially three months in, and I will go home in a month and two days! Time has seriously flown by, and it keeps whizzing by. But whatever, moving on, because I had a pretty fun weekend after long, crappy weekdays.

School has been whatever, I've been struggling through Japanese--it moves super rapidly here, covering two chapters every week and a half, including tests and vocabulary quizzes. They kind of have a "one style of learning" feel here, a strictly oral "you better pick this up" style. My sensei is an awesome person, but I'm definitely not picking things up like I normally do, and I think a lot of this is due to my being a hard reading and writing style of learner and everything we do in class is strictly audio learning. Not making excuses, just stating what I see. Classes are interesting, and my professors are pretty good--I like one better than the other, but what can you do. I got a 98% on that midterm paper I pulled off the day before after Tokyo, and I get my other midterms back this week so fingers crossed. And I registered for classes for next semester at USF, woohoo! Starting to get into my economics classes, so the workload might be a pain, and I got a Friday class, boo, but it's over early in the morning so whatever. Now I just have to start hunting for an apartment over by campus and my life is set. Anywho...

Friday night we went out to Kyoto to bar hop, and it was a pretty good time. When you start getting toward the bigger cities, you tend to forget that oh yeah, now people can understand me. We had a few funny examples of this Friday night in Kyoto: on the way there, we were discussing my cousin's story about the lady who ripped out her uterus in jail, and about my other friend who had her grandma's uterus fall out, and a lady (as she was getting off the train) turned and looked at us with such horror in her suddenly wide eyes, and gave me the most disgusted face I've ever seen a Japanese person muster. It was hilarious. And later, while searching for a bar or place to go, my friends were standing around debating about Hoeegarden, and this Japanese businessman stopped, stared, and laughed at us, and I was like, "Oh man, he's judging us," and he turned to me, looked me directly in the eyes, nodded and said, "Yes!" while laughing. Always catches you off guard.

Another drunken business man and his friend saw us and, realizing we were white, shouted, "Hello! Good Evening!" at us. He proceeded to shake all of our hands, going in and out of English and Japanese, comparing our hand warmth, and eventually (after asking him where it's cheap to drink), he started getting weirder--making masturbation motions, asking us if we wanted to see nipples (we're pretty sure he was trying to ask us if we all--me and my three guy friends--wanted to go to a strip club, or to have sex with each other, one of those), grabbing something out of his butt, and doing God knows what. This entire experience just would have been creepy and unpleasant if not for the last moment that saved it: as he was saying goodbye, he shook all of our hands again, and then for my last friend (the one who had been trying to speak Japanese to him), he daftly reached down and scooped my friend's man parts in his hands and walked away, laughing hysterically. Moral of this hilarious story? Weird drunk business people exist in every country, so keep your nuts tight to your body.

We finally found a bar with fairly reasonable prices, an Irish pub with way too many white people and the staff speaking good English, but it was still fun. They had three "half pints" of beer (or something like that, smaller cups), 3 for $8, and I instead opted for 2 Irish Car Bombs and a Pina Colada. I do love these drinks so. However, like always, the trains stop at midnight, and we finished our last drinks at 11:55pm. So an all nighter it would be--we grabbed some more drinks at the conbini before heading to the nearby McDonald's. This is something that is so classic odd Japan: we stayed there all night after grabbing some food, camped out in the upstairs part of the restaurant. What makes this so weird is that we definitely weren't the only ones--when we got there, there was already several people camped up by the outlets, trying to get comfortable. Oddly enough, McDonald's lets people stay, but they come around every hour or so and if you're laying down (instead of sitting up, or having your head down on the table) or have your feet up on the booth or on the chair in front of you, they shake you and tell you to stop. The crowd was mixed, with some business people, a young band, some guys in their 20s, and strangely not really anyone who looked homeless. The scene in the picture is just so quintessentially Japanese: the guy passes out, wallet fully open on the table, and another guy leaves behind a different wallet a few hours later on the booth next to them, but everyone sees the wallets and just keeps going. It's so reassuring, and something I love about Japan: if you forget something somewhere, you have extremely high odds of it either still being right where you left it, or having it turned in by someone else.

See his wallet? This guy was super weird though.

Anyway! I guess, if this is the alternative to getting an Internet Cafe, I'd take the Internet Cafe, because someone shaking me awake every hour or so would really get on my nerves. At least at the Internet Cafe you can stretch out on a recliner and throw a blanket over your head for some peace. The dumb thing is, most clubs here close around 1am, which leaves you with no options but to take a taxi or wait it out somewhere if you wait until 1--which, uhm, call me young but that seriously isn't late. It doesn't really make sense, but some students have found some clubs that stay open until 5am or later to provide a place for people to party until the trains start up again. My friend's birthday is in the beginning of December so that'll be when we first go clubbing, more on that when the time comes.

Saturday, recovering from Friday, I just kept it quiet and went out exploring the other half of Hirakata we never see. We got KFC for the first time, and it was one heck of a chicken sandwich, but the chicken boxes were insane. The Christmas special is a 12-piece original fried chicken with a chocolate cake and a side or two...for $40. If that isn't high, then by God I don't understand. Our chicken sandwich and (tiny) fry and drink was $6, but I'm not complaining because it was good and about the average price for a meal anywhere in Japan (or home, for that matter, it's usually just a little bit bigger). They were playing some delightful Christmas tunes though, which is always fun, especially before Thanksgiving (since, ya know, that doesn't exist here). We went to Don Qui Hote again, meandered around, found some cheap omiyage and kept our night simple. Very good.

Today my friend and I went to Fushimi Inari Shrine, the famous shrine with the million gates. It was really pretty, and the weather today was as perfect as I could ever ask--around 60 degrees and sunny. The climb up the mountain was still hot because of the physical exertion, but it was a nice hike anyway. It's so orange and bright and pretty, it's a really nice change from a lot of the concrete or gray buildings you see around Japan.

After Fushimi Inari and shopping around (with some really good deals on some great omiyage, yay, I'm almost done buying stuff!), we headed to Arashiyama. Arashiyama is famous for the bamboo forest and their bridge, and it was a really bumping town. There were tons of shops and food places, and it was still somehow quaint and cute. The forest was cool and beautiful, and my camera doesn't do it justice. It was pretty crowded but somehow it didn't bother me that much, probably because of how nice the forest was. There's a zen-temple near here too that you have to pay an entrance fee for, and my friend had done it the time before and was annoyed that he did it at all because it had nothing special on the other side, so do that at your own risk. But, these two places we went to were great because both of them were free, so that's always awesome. The bridge they're famous for (picture at the end of this post), Togetsukyo, was pretty and would be a pretty sweet date spot. It's famous for the cherry blossoms in the spring, which I'm unfortunately not going to see. We then grabbed some light food here and I got some delicious karage, mm. Also, do ya know how hard it is to find mayo in a bottle outside of the grocery store? They put it on everything, but you really can't find it. I have possibly ranted about this before, but the place I ate today did have some available, and it was great to finally have a ketchup/mayo mix on my chicken. Nom nom nom!

And now, here we are! It was a good weekend overall, and it made up for my less-than-perfect week. I know I'm saying it in every blog, but God--I'm leaving in a month. I can't believe it! I'm already so sad about so many things, from my awesome friends and the amazing people I've met this semester, to all the funny and beautiful things about this country. Ah! I can't even think about it. Not yet.

Random~~

29 Wonderfully Cute And Quirky Japanese Mascots 4

Hikonyan, the mascot for Hikone Castle

Tama, the Station Master for Kishi Station

I love fall colors

Japan loves mascots. They have them for anything you can think of: prefectures, cities, airports, wherever. They are usually adorable little cartoons, which they have people come out in costume and advertise for. I love this about Japan, because it does make certain places and things more memorable. This is also where my lovely little Kumamon comes from (from the Kumamoto Prefecture), and a bunch of other friendly, recognizable faces. You can find them at train stations, on different products, on maps, with statues and on advertisements. Recently, Fukushima Inc. came out with a new mascot, Fukuppy. This, hilarious as it is, has been all over the Japan Times as another great bad-translation from Japanese to English. They haven't officially changed it yet, just released a statement of apology for any offense they might have caused, but yeah. See more about that here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/in-pictures-fukuppy-and-other-japanese-mascots-8886161.html , and more about some adorable mascots here: http://sobadsogood.com/2013/03/15/29-wonderfully-cute-and-quirky-japanese-mascots/

There's also a cat, Tama, who is the official station master at Kishi Station. She's adorable. She has also brought in tons of tourism to the little town because of people wanting to see her. Not a bad way of bringing people to your area, as long as you find some way to reel them in farther than that.

Fun fact: considering the amount of old people in Japan, they have one of the most shockingly low rates of Alzheimer's disease, leaving many scientists to question what exactly causes AD.

Japanese people only ever use one side of the door. When a door is like a French door, both sides opening, they still almost always have one side locked, so everyone has to funnel through the one side anyway. This is both frustrating and confusing, because if someone is coming from the other direction you have to wait, and you often look dumb and extra foreign when you go to shove the other side and are bounced back by the lock. I have no idea why they do this.

Okay, well that's it for this week. Everything is going all right for the most part, and I hope everything is going well for you all out there too. This week we have to try to go by Costco with one of our RA's who has the card so we can try to find stuff to make for our little "Thanksgiving Feast" here. Strangely, they sell turkey legs at a lot of festivals, but we haven't been able to find any turkey (and most Japanese people have never had turkey), so we're going to see if we can find any, or if we can find a good substitute for it. Anyone ever try freezing a rotisserie chicken and cooking it at another time? And because their ham here tastes like HAM OFF THE HAM (ya know, where it kinda tastes hammy?) instead of like, normal sliced lunch-meat ham, I'm tempted to pour honey and sugar on it and cook it and see what happens, like a ghetto honey ham. Eh? Obviously the domestic goddess doesn't live in me, but I'll let you know how it all turns out.

Until next time, have a great week, mata ne!