Sleeping Jellyfish

Happy Holidays From JPL 102!

So much has happened in the last two weeks, and net cafés aren’t the greatest places to be sorting through pictures and uploading tons of content to the net, since most of their bandwidth is taken up by addicts playing World of Warcraft or Starcraft. Detailing the trip in chronological order will be difficult, and that’s why I’ve been doing my best to keep a written journal for reference, but today I will try to provide the skeleton of what has happened, and flesh out the bones when I get back to school. Except for the first day, since I didn’t take any pictures so I’ll just get it out of the way now.

The first leg of my journey began Thursday, December 18th, two days after my last final exam on Tuesday. I had to get my re-entry permit for my visa at the regional immigration bureau in Akita City, so I took the bus and train into the city and walked (what I thought was 20 min but turned out to be almost an hour) to the office and got my permit in about 10 minutes. I then trekked back to the City, bought a new prepaid card for my phone, bought a night bus ticket from Akita to Tokyo and then began to sit on my duff till my bus left. Then I realized that I left the most important thing I could have forgot in my room (except for maybe my passport). I forgot a box with some Christmas gifts for AJ in my room.

I called a few people to see if anyone was coming in to the City tonight but most said “no” due to the poor weather. Fair enough. I finally decided to plead with my good friend Riyo to see if she would be willing to deliver the box to me at the station seeing as she was one of the only people I knew with a car. When I rang her she said a group of them were coming down for dinner and to see a few people off at the station as they departed for Tokyo and their flights back home. Score! The box was delivered, we went out to eat, me and Rachel (Australia) ended up on the same night bus, and had a jolly good old time sleeping away the Holiday Blues on the bus to  Tokyo.

When we arrived it was still dark out and bitterly cold. Rachel planned on crashing at a friend’s flat while I had no itinerary except to make it to Korea in the next few days. Her friends weren’t expecting her for a few hours, and another friend from AIU was headed to Beijing, so we thought we might try to meet up with him as he was arriving at the famous Shinjuku Station, not Tokyo Station, where we were at. We had a fine morning walking around the Shinjuku area, had some morning coffee and then Rachel and I said our goodbyes, as she headed back to her friend’s and I decided whether to try to find a place to charge my phone and meet up with Urnukh, or head out on my own and see what Shinjuku was made of. (Sorry Urnukh, but) I ended up picking the later.

おはよございます　新宿!

Over the course of Friday, December 19th to today, December 31st, New Year’s Eve, I went from Shinjuku to Nagoya, to Osaka, to Shimonoseki, to Pusan, South Korea, to Gwangju, to Seoul, to some mountain a few hours away from Seoul, back to Seoul, back to Gwangju. Although originally I had planned to meet up with friends in Osaka on New Year’s, having left Korea on the 29th, the weather, public transportation, and time constraints have been unfriendly. So, in two days, on December 2nd, I will head back to Pusan and back to Japan.

Anneyong-haseyo Pusan!

I have to be in Akita by the 8th to take a placement test for my Japanese courses, but I also want to spend a day on the 3rd visiting different temples which will still be celebrating the arrival of the New Year. Speaking of which…

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! It is very hard to be away during the holidays and I’ve missed all of my friends and family at home terribly. I hope the weather has been kind, friends and food in good supply, and holiday cheer in everyone’s glass.

It has been snowing in Korea as well. I thought you might like to check it out.

Merry Christmas From Gwangju, South Korea!

…is what we say in Japanese when you haven’t seen someone in a while, just like “long time, no see” or “it’s been awhile” in English. We use it both literally and sarcastically, just like in English to. So, to everyone and anyone who might read this blog, ひさしぶりね〜

I haven’t taken many new pictures lately so for I felt less inclined to put up a new post, but more demanding has been the last few weeks of school. For anyone who is or was a college or university student, you know what the last two weeks of class and then finals week is like, quite possibly one of the most physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding and draining tasks one might experience. Even though most of the time your just sitting around.

One difference here though, being an international university, is that many of the new friends that we’ve made are leaving. It always surprises me how quickly people can become attached, and within a few weeks or months, craft relationships that may very well last for years or a lifetime. Of the ryugakusei (or international students – us) about 35 or so are returning home, some only studied here for this semester, others have been here since the spring. Of the nihongakusei (japanese students) who are either returning home or going abroad I would estimate that about 100-150 are leaving this January. So of our small student population of 103 international students and 600 Japanese students, almost 200 are leaving. Thus, people have been getting pretty emotional. It’s always sad knowing that a good friend, even a new one, is going to be leaving so shortly.

So, tonight I will be going to the city with some friends to see a few of them off that are going on the night bus to Tokyo and then back to the US/Sweden/Taiwan/Canada/etc. This is after I just took three exams back to back to back yesterday. This is something very distressful that I’ve never experienced before. Usually we just party after finals are done, and everyone is excited for the winter holiday, but here all of the post-exam parties are Going Away parties as well.

So enough of that. I have some neat pictures to show. My favorite time of day here is about 3-4pm when the sun is getting low but still pouring through the clouds and trees. The morning too, about 9-10 am would be its counterpart but sometimes I am not up yet.

The first door on the right is my door. There are actually about 4 more doors before it but this is just how the photo was taken. Room A-103. The Global Village is set up to be more like student apartments than a dormitory, but because we are for all practical purposes on campus it is hard to tell the difference sometimes. The rooms are double stacked, one on top of the other, so the doors that are right next to each other lead to a 100 level room and a 200 level room. I think the upstairs rooms are a little bigger, but I don’t know why. The map shows the layout of the Global Village. I like our little village.

If you were to walk out of my room and turn left and walk about 15 steps you get to a little landing area where to the right (first picture) is a wheel chair ramp and then a road leading towards the other block of apartments and then the convenience store on the corner, the Bonafi. If you turn left there are stairs leading down to the grass and road which heads toward the university buildings and the bus stop.  The buses generally go one of two places, either Wada train station or the AEON shopping center.

In the GV area there is the laundry room and the bike rack areas. The laundry room serves two purposes: 1) to wash and kind of dry your clothes and 2) to party. When the weather was warmer we used to party outside near the laundry room because it was a great way to meet and greet passerby and also there was shelter in the laundry room when it would rain (which was and is often). The dryers don’t really work that well so most people hang dry their clothes. I got sick of putting 2-3$ in the dryer for one load of clothes so I started line drying mine as well and actually, the dry fine hanging up in our room or the bathroom where the fan is always one (its mandatory). The bike rack also serves dual purpose as both a place to put bikes but also random other stuff like snow tires, old microwaves, and other stuff. There is one section that is just for stuff people don’t want to keep in their room or are giving/throwing away. Because people are constantly leaving the country there ends up being quite a consistent flow of good stuff in there.

Here is Komachi Hall which is the dormitory style residential hall. As you can see when the weather was nicer many people dry their clothes outside. I am also kind of jealous of their balconies but I don’t often see many people out there, even when it was warmer. I would fully utilize my balcony let me tell you. Mostly for reading books and innocent tomfoolery. The other picture is also Komachi but I thought it showed a little better its size. Also notice the trees. Our campus is very green and in fact I notice everywhere Japan’s love of nature but in a controlled and planned sort of way. Symmetrical forests in some areas even, but regardless it is very comforting to have so much greenery around.

The first picture is Genghis Khan. True to its name sake, it is a place of intensity, gluttony, and barbarians.  Really its just a wooden floor with a bar, and you can rent it out for all you can eat/drink get togethers. This is a popular thing in Japan, its called 飲み放題, or nomihoudai, and literally means all you can drink, but Japan, in its endless effort to be hospitable, includes food with it. I’ve been to Genghis Khan once and another nomihoudai once, and both times, you are provide with a hot plate or some sort of cooking device and then are brought giant plates of food, and you cook it yourself. Usually it only last two hours, so everyone chows down hardcore with a few drinks for the first hour and then the last hour is a series of drinking games from around the world.  Way better than American buffets. Unfortunately it is closed for the winter as we recently found out when planning a post finals party.

The other picture is a hotel/restaurant type place near school. To be honest I’ve never been there, but I here they have a public bath you can soak in and also pretty good food. It’s pretty though.

I’ll leave off with this picture. Grass doesn’t seem to exist here. In some areas there is a wild tall grass, but mostly it seems to be this moss. It’s actually quite nice, and feels great on the bare feet, but seems to hold in moisture even better than grass. A bit peculiar but I like it a lot actually. This lack of grass also explains why even many outdoor soccer pitches are not grassed, they are dirt or clay, another new experience for me.

Happy holidays to all, I am off to Korea to visit AJ for Christmas. We will travel around South Korea a bit and then she’ll come back with me to Japan for almost a week, where we will ring in the New Years in Osaka with some of my friends and visit some of the great places of southern Honshu. Cheers!