Random Post

Well, the weather here is very, I sweated more today than any other day of my recent life. I have too much to say to put on facebook, but it is mostly random, so this post will probably be pretty much incoherent... But, if you know me, it should not come as a surprise.


So, lets talk about AIU. AIU is weird in the fact that the president has a TON of authority. So, when students place their evaluations of the professors, only that professor sees his result, and the president. So no teachers can see how other teacher's are ranked, and there are also some teachers that should not be teaching. Of course, most of the teacher's I have are awesome, but some are... bad. I could do better then them, (in my serious opinion). Not like it matters anyway, just used to having awesome teachers all the time. I am spoiled. :P


I am going to miss Japan, I have met a lot of good friends, and time is just too short. :( For the strangest reason my workplace is showing up in my dreams, maybe it is a sign I need to work more... Anyway, I need to get writing on my paper. (I don't know if this is racist or not, but my teacher is holding Foreign Students to higher standards than Japanese students, just wondering... bad impact on many levels... and ironic... and I should stop talking about it...)


Told you it was random... too many gummi bears and coke I guess. All hail the Queen!

Bedding and more. :)

Just like toilets, beds are different in Japan too! This is what your bed will look like when you come to AIU. No mattress. Thankfully, AIU will let you rent a futon and bedding. :) For about $70...

The futon mattress is not completely different, however it is much thinner than a standard American Mattress. The princess and the pea need not apply.

 It is about 1 and 1/2 inch thick. 
You also get a sheet, a comforter, a duvet, and a pillow. The comforter, duvet, and pillow all come with pretty white covers which can be removed and cleaned. For a small fee....
























There is not a fitted sheet for the futon, so I would suggest bringing one. A standard fitted twin sheet will do. :)

The pillow is perhaps the only weird thing. It is quite small, and filled with something like little beads. Odds are, you have never used a pillow such as this, and I would recommend that you bring your own pillow. I think it is rather an uncomfortable pillow. :P




Yay for bedding! I guess I can say about the many different clubs I am in at AIU. You are officially allowed to join three clubs, but you may go to as many as you want :P I am a member of Badminton club, English Debate club, Honeybee club (Visits elementary schools to spread English ^_^ ), Bible study circle, and Korean club (when I have time to). Joining clubs is pretty important at AIU because AIU is isolated in a Podunk town in Japan. There is not much to do or many places to go outside of AIU, so you should make the best of it. 


     Classes here tend to be rather different from the classes I am used to taking. The non-Japanese classes seem to either be heavily student presentation based. Which can be boring because you need to read the material in order to understand most of the presentations anyway. Or the content is much more teacher lecture based because it hard for students without a western background to comprehend. Group discussions are very hard to initiate simply because (most) Japanese students do not like to speak in groups or voice opinions. This causes very boring classes when nobody wants to speak at all. -__- But my Japanese class is AWESOME, and that is all that really matters. ;)


I think my writing of English is becoming Japanese... I wonder how the papers I have to write will turn out...


I need to get my camera out. I want to show people the interesting English signs in Japan. They are weird. Anyway, Bus tour on Saturday, so lots more pictures to come!!!! Japanese homework is starting to pile up, need to attack it! Oyasuminasai! (good night)

A toilet, and some other nice pictures. ;)

A Month and half has FLOWN by so quickly... :)

I always have something to do, so I don't update this blog as often as should. But between Bible studies, Badminton, Classes, Debate, and Japanese, I am busy. XD I am eating a danish filled with Red Beans... SO DELICIOUS!!!
America needs to embrace Azuki (Sweet Red Beans)!  
Aside from that random note, I did help teach English to some first Graders. They are really cute. They learned Hello, Thank you, See you. Looked like a fun class. :)




I picked out some nice pictures from the bus tour I went on.

Say Hello to the Chemically Altered lake again. ;)

There was this really big rock in the middle of it, there was a path, so look at the person on the rock to estimate size.

(Note: American Male is on Rock, so do not assume it is a shorter Japanese Person when estimating size)

This thing was on the top of the afore mentioned rock. It may be a Shinto... Shrine... thingy,I do not know. Cool though.

That tree is about four feet thick. The rock in picture (besides having Cool Japanese writing on it) is about as tall than me. OLD TREE alert. Lots of beautiful Nature. :)

We went to a sakura (All those pink trees I keep taking pictures) festival. Lots of people and sakura everywhere. This is where that Japanese Folk dance I recorded was held.

I got to eat Sakura Flavored Ice Cream. (Another thing that America REALLY needs to import) :P

Er.... Blogger's Picture moving thing annoys me. :(

Anyway, at the Sakura festival, I saw a museum of sorts. Right now, you only get to see some old China Plates. (Kirei = Beautiful)

CHOCO-BANANA!
(I think that may have been funny to some Japanese people... probably not though...)
Chocolate Covered Bananas, very popular at Japanese Festivals. Lots of stands selling lots of (sometimes unappetizing) Japanese food. Thankfully, everyone likes chocolate bananas.

 I Think that this scenery explains itself. I only wish my picture taking skills were better. (The fact that it was cloudy all afternoon did not help. >_<  )

I do not get tired of sakura pictures, I like this one a lot, with the focus on the front and the festival in the background. ^__^


And the last picture, I save for my Dad. I felt rather weird taking this, but here it is a Japanese Toilet.

yeah... You don't get to sit down. So actually kinda sanitary.^__^ Not sure which was to face at first either. :P




I would like to close by thanking my mother for doing my laundry every week(back home). I do not really care to do it. XD

230 Pictures... later

Yeah, so I went on a bus trip and took over 230 pictures. I have been too busy to go through them... But I did take 7 short videos, since it can capture more than a lot of pictures. So this should keep you over till I sort of the rest. :)
Japan is really a beautiful place. I have never seen water that was bluer. It looks chemically altered.

Yeah, I will work on some other posts that involve more than just some pictures.


My Japanese is coming along, I am finally learning the second alphabet. So hopefully I will be able to read a lot more. :)

Pictures of Akita

I was not taking many pictures here, mainly because the landscape was recovering from winter, and there was very little interesting scenery. Ahhh, but Spring has come.

I apologize about the quality of the pictures. I am not a very good photographer. Also, the sun does not like to shine here, bad lighting. And it is windy. Movement among the trees. :P

Hopefully my GIMP skills will help a bit.

I kept the pictures big to try to keep them as beautiful as possible. Hopefully The page will not take too long to load. :/

Hmmmm... They will be on Facebook too.

There are plenty of Sakura pictures.

That's all for now!

Trip to the Mall! (alone...)

Akita is a "rural" part of Japan. So it is like the area around Jackson,MS. What this means is you can not walk anywhere. So... You have two choices, take a bus to the Mall. Or take a Bus to the train station. I am not brave enough, nor have a need to go the train station. So I went to the Mall, Alone.

This is not really an accomplishment, since I had been there 4 other times with friends. However, since everything is in a language that I do not understand, so it is kinda adventurous!

Anyway, on a side note. If you are a foreigner in Japan staying at AIU and you need to exchange your dollars for yen, so can do so at the mall. There is a Hokuto Bank on the first floor around 4a. They exchange money during banking hours, you just need your passport.

That is why I came to the mall, to exchange money. The bank lady with her little ability of English, and my non-existent knowledge of Japanese were able to communicate enough to where I could exchange most of my money. Except for one sad $20 dollar bill. It was not in the best shape :(

Poor Mr. Jackson. He will have to stay in my wallet.

Then, I had lots time to kill, and I was hungry. So of course I bought some chop-sticks so I could eat. 

I paid about 400 yen for these nice chopsticks with a case. (Of course I found some or 100 yen AFTER I ate with them -_-)

So at the bottom floor of the mall, there is a supermarket! I'll blog more about the mall and supermarkets later, and they have lots of nice things. :)

At the supermarket I bought my lunch. MORE FOOD!

I ate some delicious sushi for 400 yen.

Most of it was pretty good. The third one from the left on the bottom was kinda not very delicious, but everything else was good. ^_^

I also got some vegetable tempura. For 100 yen. (like a dollar). It was delicious.

I also bought a coke for 100 yen. I really wanted one. Plus, in Japan, coke is "Refreshing & Uplifting". It really is!

Anyway, after I bought all the really good food and sat down and ate. I found these in the bag the cashier gave me.

Moral of the story. CHECK PRICES. Don't buy unnecessary chopsticks!

Meh, I need to clean my room, things get dusty here!

Coming Soon: Bathrooms in Japan.

 

AIU and Cafeteria Food

It is inevitable. Anyone who knows my family should not be surprised that my first post is about food. Here is my normal diet, the meal plan at AIU. The food ranges from delicious, to  "force myself to eat it so I will not be hungry".




Here is a typical breakfast. 
They will serve you - a random salad, a random meat, bread, and another side dish, anything from eggs to kelp. :P
Also, You get as much white rice and miso soup as you want. (It is a very good thing I like miso soup and rice).

As a side note, I eat a lot more than most Japanese people. They probably would eat about half of what is in this picture. XD


Sometimes the staff makes some really good food. Here is a picture of Pumpkin gratin. It is like potatoes au-grautin, but with pumpkin instead of potatoes. Actually very delicious. Oishii Desu!

However, sometimes the food is not very delicious. It seems the food is good when they cook Asian food. However, once they stray from that, not very good. I had some terrible "loco moco", and "Hamburg steak". However, the staff are some of the hardest workers I have ever seen. :) Very good people.


Here is a dinner. I think those were pork patties. They were good. There is some rice and miso soup. Three times a day everyday! Most of time you get a random side dish (Usually recycled from breakfast or lunch) or sometimes a couple of vegetables. The 


This is probably the hardest thing about adjusting to the cafeteria food: Most food is NOT warm. See those potatoes and carrots? Not warm. Eggs at breakfast, NOT WARM, See the pork patties? Not warm. See the rice and miso Soup? Warm :) Make sure you develop a taste for rice and miso soup. In America, you are required to hold foods above or below certain temperatures for health reasons. Above 140 F, or below 40 F. I don't believe so in Japan, at least keeping foods warm. You will see more examples of this later when we explore the super market. ;) 
None of the food (that is warm in America), is cold, so I think they are cooking the food, but they just don't maintain the temperature of the food.

There are toaster ovens, and a microwave. But the microwave has a big colorful sign on it that says "Trouble". So I haven't used it yet. :P I really need to take a picture of it.


Meh, enough about cafeteria food. 


Sayonara!　（Good Bye)


さよなら！