Christmas:
Parties Parties Parties
Nabe Party:
Thursday night, two days before Christmas, two other tutors from my English class that I am a tutor in invited me, the other tutor Nicole, and my two friends Lina and Shae to join them to have a Nabe party together. We all brought presents to exchange, but this time we all sang a song and passed our presents in a circle until we stopped singing and then each person received the present in their hands at the time we stopped singing. I received a mug which said Daisuki on it which means I really like you. Which was pretty funny because it was one of the Japanese girls that I received it from and I think she was a little embarrassed. It is one of my favorite mugs that I have ever owned. My present was really 4 presents which included a pen with anime designs on it, stickers, bubbles, and of course giant Pocky. After this party I headed to the next party that I had been invited to before this one, so I didn’t get a chance to eat Nabe.
Chinese Friend’s party:
Some of my Chinese friends at the International Food Night told me they wanted to make me dinner sometime in the future. These two Chinese girls are some of my favorite people at the school. They are both very fun to talk with and I really enjoy hearing about their lives in China. I have only been able to meet both of them a few times and hope we will all get together more often in the future. They are also both very good at cooking : )
English Cafe Party:
I recently helped cook food for an international food night that I helped put on with other international students for about 1,000 customers. My job included cutting potatoes, shredding potatoes, frying chicken, and basically helping people with whatever they needed. With the few hundred dollars we raised from this event we threw a pizza and dessert party where a secret santa exchange also took place. I tried my first slice of pizza with mayonnaise on it instead of more traditional tomato sauce. I do not plan on trying that again. I received about 5 different gifts including: New Years decorations, a dog mask with dog ears and an item that uses elastic straps to rap around my ears and hold a dog mouth over the place of my mouth, and of course a one time use can of helium. I gave a picture album to my friend Ryo with a message written on a picture that I put inside of the album. She read the note, then turned around the picture and found out who her Secret Santa was, AKA DTRAIN. We also held hands around the Christmas tree with most of the students at the party and sang the song (Avu Dore?) that the Whos sing in the story of The Grinch. This is also the day I bought my night bus ticket to Tokyo.
Onsen:
This is the first time I went to a hot spring in Japan and it was a great. They have many different pools at various different temperatures. They also have some chairs with jets and a sauna. It was one of the most relaxing things I have ever done. If you ever come to Japan I definitely recommend you try this out. It is a little different than what I am used to because everyone is naked, but it wasn’t a problem. One thing that was a little strange was when I walked back into the locker room to get a drink of water, a woman staff worker walked into the mens side of the Onsen. This was a little sketchy for the woman to walk into the mens side, but other than that everything was good.
Tokyo:
Tokyo was a blast! I didn’t do any sightseeing, or anything really that most people would come to Tokyo for. I did exactly what I wanted to do and enjoyed ever bit of it. My adventure started at 10PM when I headed off to find my bus near Okayama Station (15 minute bicycle ride from my dorm). I parked my bicycle and got on the bus after about 30 minutes of waiting in the freezing cold. My bus buddy this time was a good one. He also was tall like me, but managed to get through the 10 hour bus ride sitting next to each other. The night bus experience as I mentioned before is basically 10 hours of sleeping for an hour and half then waking up to the bust stopping for a twenty minute brake. It is not the funnest experience, but also not the worst experience.
When I arrived at Shinjuku Eki (something like the 2nd largest train station in the world), I was a little worried I wouldn’t be able to find the right line to take. I saw a building that I recognized from a previous trip to the stating and walked toward that building then followed a sign that pointed down the street. After walking for about 5 minutes and not seeing any more signs, I figured I was probably walking in the opposite direction of my line, let alone the whole station. I stopped and remember how God tells us not to worry, so I prayed and told God I wouldn’t worry and felt like I should keep walking forward. About 30 seconds later I found an underground entrance to the station that led directly to the track I needed to board my train on. Keep in mind that there are tons of tracks and lines there and that it takes probably 40 minutes to walk across the whole station.
After this I headed to my friend Rei Rei’s house soon to be picked up by her mom at my arrival station. There house was interesting because it had the living room and kitchen on the top floor. Rei Rei ended up being sick when I arrived, so I spent most of the time hanging out with Rei Rei’s mom which turned out to be a lot of fun. We had a lot of good conversations. She could only speak Japanese which was really good and gave me lots of good practice. We went some good meals at home like beaf stew, and the following day headed out to Akihabara.
After my time with Rei Rei’s family I went to stay with the Hirashima Family for two nights. We once again at some good food, went to Tama Center 3 times, and spent lots of time together. Asako has a her University in two weeks, so recently she has been studying for about 10 - 12 hours everyday. I didn’t think this was possible, but she is really doing it with the goal of getting into one of Japan’s most prestigious Universities, Tokyo University. We ate traditional Japanese New Year’s food. One thing we ate was mini fish only about a few centimeters long and I was surprised to find out it tasted like beef jerkey. We also ate warm soba with tempura. You will be able to see in the upcoming video some of the other food we ate. We also watched one of Japan’s popular television shows that included many different Pop groups performing. We were planning to go to Costco (my favorite store) on the last day I was there, but my friend Mari e-mailed me saying she could meet up on that day. I was very happy to receive that e-mail from her, because I was really hoping to be able to meet up.
I hopped on a train about one hour after that and headed to the station Mari lives at. She met me at the train station and gave me a Ninja sword as a gift as she had previously given me ninja stars when she came to Eureka. Her house turns out to be right next to the famous Keisen High School. We decided to go back to her house for a few hours before I headed off to visit my friend Yasushi in Chiba. I was able to meet one of her brothers, dad, mom, and grandma. I was very happy and joyful as I went into their house. I was felt very welcomed by her whole family. We sat down and played Monopoly Tokyo edition and chatted with what little time we had. It is always good to sit down with old friends and new friends and play a game together. Mari’s English turned out to be worse than my Japanese, so we spoke Japanese most of the time! This is good as most people usually start by speaking English to me. Mari told me that she plans to start at a university next year where she will study education and will work towards becoming an Elementary teacher. After my short time spent with Mari and the family I headed off to meet with Yasushi in Chiba.
I have know Yasushi since my first year of college when he participated in a one month exchange program living in the same dormitory as me. We met and quickly became good friends. He lived in a studio type of apartment which is pretty typical for students here in Japan. He was very generous and gave up his bed for me the two nights I stayed at his place. Our two main events included going to the Chiba Zoo, and watching Tron. We also ate at the Korean restaurant that he works at and received some free drinks and a discount. After about two days I was soon heading back on another night bus to Okayama. The night bus ride back was a little worse than usual. I was sitting next to a teenager for the ride home liked to snuggle. He would fall asleep on my shoulder every now and then and give me crazy looks every time he looked over at me. Luckily I learned many different tactics to combat the crazy sleepers from taking long road trips from Eureka to San Diego with my siblings growing up. I am not saying that I did not used to be a crazy sleeper, because I have been know to sleep walk in my teenage years. I arrived at Okayama eki (station) around 6:40 AM and headed back to my dorm room. I took a nap and then finished this blog entry. Didn't post up this post until now, so you didn't have 5 pages of Dillon's awesomeness to read about at once. I didn't want any want to explode.
Two quick pics from my friend's birthday party. We had 23 people at some point in her room, which I am guessing sets the Dormitory record for most people in the same room.
I don’t plan on waiting two months before writing the next entry, don’t worry.
New video update will be coming very shortly.
much love,
Steele
