Here are some pictures I’ve been wanting to share. Some are ok, some aren’t great, but I like them, and have been persuaded that I don’t post enough pictures. So here, enjoy them! If you are interested, feel free to ask about them.
Posted March 17, 2009 by Cory under Japan, Photography
So where have I been? That’s a good question. A small town in Niigata prefecture. Very small town. Of course, it being Japan, there were still two convenience stores. For those of you in the know, THERE WERE ONLY TWO CONVENIENCE STORES!!! Not much else to speak of. At the beginning of February I hopped on the Shinkansen and headed in that direction. We got off at Niigata station and hopped on the local train. The local, three-car train. It could have been one or two cars, so it wasn’t as small as I thought it was going to be. However, this didn’t take into account the fact that once we arrived at the station it was still a 20 minute taxi ride to our final destination. Which was really in the middle of nowhere. A small town called Muramatsu, population of about 2000.（Here)
Which begs the question, why in the world was I in the middle of nowhere in the first place? Well, as part of the study abroad program I’m participating in at Waseda university, for approximately half of our two month long spring break all of the students in our program were given an option to have some sort of practical experience in Japan. There were about 7 different programs affiliated with the program. Students went to the smallest prefecture (population-wise) in Japan and did school visits sharing American culture. Others spent the month at a Buddhist Temple meditating and doing other fun Buddhist things. Still others worked at a ski lodge, a nature resort, a farm, and other places. What was I doing? I got to work at a preschool. It was hands down the best program (take that, everyone else!) I spent every day from 9 to 5 hanging out at the preschool, helping the teachers, keeping an eye on the kids and building too many things out of legos. This was a six day a week experience (a lot of parents work on the weekends, which means that a good number of kids still come on Saturday, and there are a few that come on Sundays as well. While it was a blast working with the children, that wasn’t the whole experience.
Where did I go everyday after work? Normally the head teacher at the preschool has hosted the students in her house. (This is a reoccurring program.) However, this year due to complications, we nearly weren’t able to go at all. However, they did manage to scrounge out living accommodations for the two of us. (I went with my friend Kerry, another Waseda student.) We ended up living in a group home. Yeah, one of those places where old people live. It was a really nice house. It was also populated with 8 elderly people between the ages of 79 and 95. We spent our dinners with them and had the opportunity to talk a little bit, but it was a bit difficult between heavy accents and their aged ears. Speaking of dinner, that was the hardest part of the whole experience. It was all very Japanese food, which in theory I don’t have a problem with, but when it’s lukewarm, super soft (toothless old people can’t really chew) and everything is grey, dinner really becomes a battle. That meant that nearly every day Kerry and I would head over to the convenience store for some after dinner snacks. Upon returning we’d break out the snakes and typically either watch a movie or play video games. We played through Monkey Island 4 (a bit short, sad) and and several games of Civilization 4 (There’s a time killer if I’ve ever seen one.)
That’s not to say all of our free time was spent at the house playing video games. While we weren’t able to stay with the head teacher, she would take us places on the weekend. We got to go into Niigata city, see some really neat temples – there was a really cool one nestled in the forest.She also found about our eating difficulties and made sure to take us to delicious food when she could.So there wasn’t a complete lack of that. I think I did lose about 5 pounds though (it’s all back now that I’m in Tokyo.)
The weather wasn’t nearly as cold as I expected it to be. Every kept warning me that it would be freezing and there would be meters of snow. Perhaps that was true for other parts of the prefecture, but where I was it was about 5 degrees Celsius every day. (About 40 Fahrenheit.) There were three days where it snowed perhaps a total of 30 centimeters. However, that snow only lasted for about two days before proceeding to disappear again.
I’m running out of blogging steam here… The last couple of days included one where the teachers all gave us a thank you speech, we were forced to play the piano, subsequently sing, receive a bouquet of flowers, had a round of hugs, and left through tunnel of people. That may have been the most embarrassing day of my life. It was lots of fun, but boy was I red. We dropped Kerry off at the Shinkansen station that night as her parents were scheduled to arrive the next day. That left me alone for an additional day of fun. Hirai Sensei (the aforementioned teacher) took me up to the city of Murakami in Niigata. Famous for its salmon and beef, we spent the better part of the day looking at dolls on display in celebration of the Doll Festival, held on March 3rd. After spending a significant amount of time doing this, we stopped for lunch at a little restaurant where I had the most expensive steak of my life. 150G from 7000. It was a treat and she had to cover the price side of the menu with another menu – otherwise I don’t think I would have been able to order anything. It was the most delicious steak I’ve ever had – it melted in my mouth. After that we went to a salmon museum. It actually wasn’t very fun at all, but the reason I bring it up is because on the way out one of the workers stopped us to ask a few questions and take a picture. You can now find a picture of me located on an obscure Japanese salmon website. (Located here, halfway down the page on the right.) We ended the day with a quick trip to the Japanese sea, which was really cool
I finally made it back into Tokyo. I’m going to miss the experience, but I’m glad to back! There’s actually stuff to do in the evening! I can just hop on a train and essentially go wherever I want. There are people everywhere! I will miss some of the peace and quiet, as well as being able to look out my window and see mountains.
P.S. Formatting with these pictures is a NIGHTMARE!! Here is everything I kept trying to stick in the post. >:(
Posted March 16, 2009 by Cory under Japan
I know, I know. It’s another one of those “I’m sorry I’ve fallen off the face of the planet” posts. I have a good excuse this time, I promise! I’m spending the month in Muramatsu, a small town in Niigata-ken – that is to say, a two hour Shinkansen ride from Tokyo. I’ve been able to latch onto an unsecured wireless network occasionally, but never for more than about five minutes at a time.
Well, I got my hands on a wireless USB adaptor today, and coupled with the power of a pringles can, I have a somewhat reliable internet connection! (That is of course until whoever’s network this is notices and shuts me down.) Seriously – this is what my setup looks like right now.
Posted February 16, 2009 by Cory under Technology
While adult-oriented video games continue to dominate the market in the US, the staples here remain as cute as ever. (That’s not to say the likes of Master Chief and his buddies haven’t made it over here.) One franchise that I see every day here is Nintendo’s Pokemon. Seriously, it’s never going to die. With a still-running television series, games that continue to boast impressive sales (even if it’s a near repackage of an existing edition), and more merchandise than you can shake a stick at. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I happen to enjoy Pokemon. Like the series itself, it servse to keep alive a part of my childhood that doesn’t want to die either.
I bring this up because I went to an arcade the other day with my 5 and 9 year old host siblings where they were set on playing a Pokemon arcade game I had never seen before.
This is it right here. Pokemon something or other. I wasn’t actually playing the game. As you can see it’s the perfect height for children. Placed in a bunch of other games like “One Piece Fighter” and “Dance with the Princess.” Apart from the branding, this one actually seemed not so bad. They started off by inserting their trainer keys. I’m assuming you buy these at a store somewhere and are another way to suck money from unsuspecting parents. However, they do serve a purpose. They save your data and remember it for next time. So you’re not starting for the beginning, but rather where you left off. I actually have a similar card for a sweet rhythm game myself, which I hope to detail in a later post. The first “gimmick” the game throws at you is that after you insert your hundred yen and select your game mode, out from the bottom pops out your very own Pokemon “pog.” I actually thought
they were poker chips at first, but that didn’t actually make any sense. My host siblings have quite a collection of these things. Turns out these are the Pokemon you get to use in the game. If you don’t have the required three Pokemon to play it lets you use a base team built into the unit, but once you’re on your third play you will have received three Pokemon. What’s really cool is that the machine can read data from the Pokemon. Apart from the sticker on top there’s got to be a small chip inside that lets the game know you are, in fact, using “Chikorita.” You place your Pokemon onto the green space and start playing. The game starts with your three Pokemon on a field oposite three opponent’s Pokemon. Then, this is exciting, by moving the tokens around the green area your Pokemon move around the field. It’s actually quite interesting and used in several games. I’ve seen several baseball and soccer games. People collect their favorite players and use them, running them around the field. Anyway, you use this “moving time” to collect acorns which presumably up your attack and then place your Pokemon into formation, some of which up your 
Pokemon’s attack. You then select a Pokemon, based on their positioning, fatigue level, and effectiveness against your opponent. (For those of you who’ve played, all the weaknesses are in effect. Choose wisely and you receive 1.5x attack.) After this the game progresses to the battle phase where the point it not, as my host brother would lead you to believe, to press the large yellow button as fast as you possibly can. In fact, a number shows up on the top screen for you and your opponent. If it’s a positive you hit the button and recieve the bonus to your attack (in addition to an extra bonus for your reaction time.) If it’s negative, you don’t want to hit the button as that will be subracted from your attack. After that weakness are applied, automatically. The Pokemon doesn’t faint from an attack though. Instead of individual health, the three Pokemons’ health are added up to a team HP. Once you have depleted the oposing team’s entire HP, you win! Of course, collection is a big aspect here, as it always is in Pokemon games. Each Pokemon has a different HP and unique attack and defense stats.
And of course the really good ones show up a lot less than the weak ones. In fact, I decided to try the game for myself, and the first one I received was a shiny 3rd evolution of Totadile (I can’t remember the name – help, Ali!). That was exciting, and I’ve been protecting the poor thing from attemped Poke-napping by my host brother ever since.
Sure, the game is definitely aimed at Children, but like the whole Pokemon series still maintains a march larger appeal. (When Diamond and Pearl released I knew quite a few people who had grown up with Pokemon and were perhaps too excited to pick up the new version.) Actually, I’ve got three Pokemon now, and two of them sucked. I’ll have to go get some more good ones when no one is looking.
Tags: arcade, Japan, pokemon
Posted January 24, 2009 by Cory under Gaming, Japan
Well, I just noticed I neglected the blog for over a month. Sorry about that. Someone yell at me the next time that happens. Please? Anyway, it’d be a huge post if I were to go into all the details of my trip, so I’ll leave you with some of the more exciting happenings.
-The intial surprise was great. My girlfriend’s friend picked me up at the airport (he had previously dropped off a friend there, so things worked perfectly.) We had to wait about 45 minutes for luggage to show up on the carousel and then hopped a bus to the train station. From there we took the metro system to the commuter line as we were headed to Concord. As we got to the station, the train was about to leave, so we bolted for soon-to-be-departed engine and jumped into one of the cars. However, what we didn’t realize (ok, so we actually sort of did, but the train was leaving.) was that we didn’t really have enough money between the two fo us for tickets. John had meant to stop at the ATM before we got on the train and grab some cash – I had about 1000 yen on my person – about 10 dollars, but not American. After sitting down, we realized that we had $3 between the two of us. Well, apparently this trip was $6 a person. So, our first hope was that nobody would come by to check tickets. Sure enough, Mr. Ticket-checker himeself showed up. “Tickets, please.” He was met with a great response that went something like this, “Well, funny story. I was going to stop at the ATM and get money, but the train was leaving, and I only have 3 dollars. My friend here just flew in from Japan. That’s all I can tell you.” Then the train man looked and me. “You have any yen on you?” I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. In any case, he took the $3, gave us two tickets, and walked away with a, “Next time, buy your tickets BEFORE you get on the train.” Oh, the look on her face when we got there was pretty great too. 
The day after Christmas we went to Boston Symphony Hall to see the Boston Pops play a Christmas concert. It was actually a really good show; they did a really fun rendition of the twelve days of Christmas where each day was set to a different tune. In addition, the premiered a piece from the Polar Express complete with a slideshow and speaking actor. It was pretty good. The show was preceded by a lovely dinner at a delicious Thai restaurant with Emily’s family and her grandparents.
Other things of note: It was really cold. The climate here in Tokyo has been mostly 40s. After negative temperatures in the states, it seems downright balmy here. We hit the beach with a freezing wind at cape cop, and there was a -30 temperature on my porch in Minnesota. And apparently it’s only been colder recently.
Fun on the beach.
The last sunset I’ll see from my backyard for a while.
Tags: boston, holidays, home, minnesota, usa
Posted January 18, 2009 by Cory under Uncategorized
Oh, yeah – that title up there? It reads “nengajyou”. What does that mean? It’s basically a New Year postcard. There are so many fun things that you can do at New Year here, which I basically missed out on. However, I sure got in on this action. It’s essentially like a Christmas card equivalent. Except the numbers are rather large. Well, maybe not, but seeing as I don’t send a lot of Christmas cards to begin with, when I heard that there are people who send 100+ (I don’t know if this is normal, or the exception – I’m sure some of you are crazy enough to send that many Christmas cards.) I was quite impessed. I’ve seen at least twenty lying around here and I know my host parents wrote at least that many. (What, I moved? Yeah. Maybe I’ll write that post sometime.) Originally it was a way to let people who you didn’t often see that you were still alive. Now it really does seem to be that “Christmas letter” that you send, “Johnny broke his leg playing football in the fall, Sylvia still wants that red convertible – she’s not going to get it until she at least learns to pull out of the driveway properly…” etc. Quite a few are even less than that. A simple card that reads “happy new year” is what most of these turn out to be. Which is maybe why so many are sent.
In fact, apparently the end of December and the beginning of January are the busiest times of the year for the Japanese postal system. You can buy “official” postcards that are guarenteed to be delieved on the first of January as long as you mail them before a set deadline, which was sometime mid-Decemeber, I believe. This, however, only applies to Japan as my friend sent me a postcard knowing I was going to be in the states and it showed up after I left. Which was the 6th of January. Or maybe she sent it left. I wouldn’t put that past Romi…
I had a chance to write my own nengajyou this year. We spent a day in class learning to use a caligraphy pen/brush, combo and then wrote cards to a friend. It was quite fun. Writers are encouraged to draw a picture that goes along with the New Year theme. For example, seeing as 2009 is the year of the bull, cows were especially abundant. Granted, I screwed my up, forgot horns, and it kind of lost that whole bull feeling, but still… It was a fun day, even if it felt a bit like being back in third grade again.
Tags: Japan, new year, post card
Posted January 18, 2009 by Cory under Japan
Merry Christmas to everyone!
I’m in Boston celebrating with my girlfriend, which is great! That means I’ll be away from Japan for the next week and a half. Hopefully I’ll find some time to catch up in the next couple days.
Posted December 25, 2008 by Cory under Uncategorized
This is just a little heads up, I’m planning on messing with layouts and stuff this week. The site might be a bit jumbled during this whole process (especially because I have to everything at school.) Everything should be faily stable again come next week.
Posted December 8, 2008 by Cory under Uncategorized
I’m not neglecting pictures, I promise. Here are some I took this weekend that I really like.
A view towards Shibuya during the early morning hours.
The city is full of light polution, but you can still see Venus and Jupiter on a clear day.
Tokyo is always moving.
Posted December 8, 2008 by Cory under Japan, Photography
Yeah, lots of random things happening in Japan. But how I am doing? Quite well. I’m making the most of things these days and because break is coming up even bothersome things are tolerable. I still probably play too many video games, but I’ve been hanging out with people a lot this week which has been really nice.
Yesterday was a pretty awesome day. I finally got my haircut, which I needed badly. My hair was getting so long. When you’re used to paying $15 for your haircut at Great Clips, when the cheapest places in Japan run $40 it seems a bit much. Luckily my friend introduced me to a place near the Waseda campus where the first cut is half off – so only about $20. (On top of that I got a membership card and a $10 off my next cut.) Boy, was it worth it. They shampooed before and after, with a small scalp and shoulder massage. And the haircut is really nice. I would definitely go back and even pay full price for that kind of service. It was absoultely awesome. Getting a haircut in Japanese wasn’t the easiest thing, but it wasn’t that difficult either. It consisted a lot of telling him how much I wanted cut off and then pointing at pictures. And then a lot of small talk. Good practice.
Afterwards I went bowling with a couple friends of me and a lot of people I don’t know. It was a lot of fun. I bowled horribly the first game, with a 94. The second game though I made a determined comeback and actually finished 2nd out of the 13 of us with a 151. Hooray improvement!
After bowling I went home and was extremely exhausted. I got ready to settle in for a nice relaxing movie for bed when I got a message from Romi. She was bored. I was bored. She suggested karaoke, and seeing as it has been like 15 months since I have actually done karaoke (and I’ve been in Japan for 3 already) I figured, hey, why not, it’s about time. What I didn’t realize was that we were talking “Free Time” karaoke. Which means really cheap karaoke. Which sounds like a good thing. And is. Except for the fact, that, well, it only happens after midnight. So, I met Romi at Baba at midnight and we karaoked until 5. And then caught my first early train in Japan. I was completely exhausted. But made it home. And finally fell asleep around 6. It was so much fun!
Posted December 8, 2008 by Cory under Japan
