5/29 - Today I bought socks at a god's house

So, Miyajima was hella thrillin'. In a historical, reverent sort of way.

I took pictures, until my phone ran out of batteries. Then I took more with Roommate's camera. Eventually I'll flickr them, for your viewing pleasure! But now, it is 11 PM, and I shall only write.

I'm calling this my second and third time on a boat ever, as the first time was with my host family on that tiny river cruise (I wondered why it seemed so unfamiliar) and Disneyland definitely doesn't count. The entire trip was rainy and miserable, as it's been here for the past three days straight, I kid you not. There was a typhoon passing by that we feared would screw up our itinerary, but it wound up heading southeastier, to Shikoku, the edge just brushing by Miyajima to ruin all of our hair/socks/fun. Nonetheless, the shrine and temple (and the fog on the mountains, and the ridiculously chill deer, and freakin' everything) were beautiful. I truly need an actual camera, so next time I go somewhere I don't have to lean off the boat DiCaprio-style to snap a crappy photo of what might be the vermilion torii gate at Miyajima, if you pretend it's not just an orangey smudge.

I feel I should take more time to stress how cold and damp and horrid it was, and that I brought only one jacket because this is summer in Japan and I should be feeling more like steamed rice than cold noodles at any given time. /:

That metaphor is best taken by someone who, like myself, doesn't particularly enjoy cold noodles.

But that's boring, on to the cool stuff. We got to watch a guy play the biwa and sing verses from the Heike Monogatari, which people who didn't have other homework that week know as a semi-historical, semi-legendary account of the fall of the Taira (or Heike) clan, and I know as the basis (loosely, as cows are the basis for Taco Bell beef) for Sukiyaki Western Django, which all of you should go out and rent right now (Mom too, but only for Dad's sake). We also ate a ton of amazing food, as seems to be the norm on this trip, including (but not limited to) an eel bento that was like eating a dinner date with Jesus Himself.

And yeah, I bought socks at the shrine. Holy socks. :P

I also bought one of those head wrap things that reads "certain victory," which I will wear to Magic: The Gathering tournaments in Tempe and still look like less of a dork than most of the other competitors. I'll also wear it when cooking things. Like miso soup and french toast, as those are pretty much the only things I can cook on a whim. I'll be like a sushi chef, but with no fish or rice or... no, there's seaweed in miso soup. So I'll be like a sushi chef.

Today's over, tomorrow's the tea ceremony, which is sort of a thing I can't understand, since when I have tea it's generally an unceremonious affair. But we'll see how it goes.

I probably forgot to mention yesterday... while I was in town on Friday, trying to get my hair did, I wound up making an appointment for Monday at 3, only to find out (after the ten-minute trek from the hair salon down to the end of the street where my friends were--Hondoori is quite long) that, hurp derp, that's when the tea ceremony is. After a flurry of WHY DID YOU LET ME DO THAT and WHY DID I LET ME DO THAT, I walked back to the salon to change it to Tuesday, looking such the confused foreigner, and back-back to the end of the street again. Then I napped, lol.

WELL THAT'S THAT THEN. Wish me luck on the oral exam thing tomorrow, at some hour of the morning that American students don't believe exists.

-Vic

5/28 - A whirlwind week of wonders and wetness and... studying

Apologies for the lack of updates. Using the internet where I am is like pulling teeth out of something that doesn't have teeth.

Anyway, week! It's been full of classes! I must say it's neat to be taught Japanese by actual non-English-speakin' Japanese people, but it also makes everything ten times harder because we're mostly limited to the (stupid) example sentences in our textbooks for English analogues to the Japanese grammar structures. Also, apparently Japanese teachers have this weird tendency to give you the worksheet with the vocabulary and grammar that's going to be on the test after the test happens. That's like when you set a game on "hard" mode and it does ridiculous throw-the-console-out-the-window things that make you never want to play video games again. This has resulted in both a decline in test grades and an increase in desire to get the hell out of dodge and explore Hiroshima.

Thankfully, that's not terribly hard to do, as everyone else wants to as well.

As a result, I've done a whole lot of shopping, mostly for pants, which is a shame because I only brought like six shirts with me. On the bright side, laundry is free. Other things I've acquired include epic gifts for a) a friend of mine who likes Pokemon to a degree that occasions nausea, b) a friend of mine who likes Gackt to a degree that has led to more financial troubles than even I can shake a stick at, c) my mom (oh god I hope she likes it) and d) my little brother, whose birthday I'm missing by going on this epic soulsearching journey. But I won't say what they are, because tantalizing is my favorite brand of sadism. <3

As for inspiring jealousy (my other favorite brand of sadism), I now own a shirt from SEX POT ReVeNGe, a fact which necessitated the measuring of my steps, to avoid skipping down Hondoori. I must assure you all that IT IS SO COOL.

In news my parents (who are also, coincidentally, my only readers) might be more inclined to give a damn about, I also bought a very nice (and, regrettably, expensive) yukata to wear to Toukasan next weekend. It's definitely black and LIGHT CARMINE, which is NOT PINK, not that I CARE WHAT YOU THINK about the color of my AWESOME YUKATA THANK YOU

It has butterflies and daffodils on it, oh jeez, those are just reprehensibly girly words, huh

It's better than it sounds, really really. ._.

Also, haircut appointment on Tuesday. Be prepared to be met at the airport by a disheveled, plane-haired version of Vic From High School.

So, yes. Going to the shrine and temple at Miyajima tomorrow, come more miserable rain or fleeting, still-humid sunshine. Then you get to read more of me!

-Vic

5/22 - Mada nihongo de omotte iru yo.

So, the homestay was FREAKIN' SWEET

My roommate and I got to stay with the Tange family, a husband and wife with one adult son who lives in Tokyo, for the weekend. We ate a metric boatload of delicious Japanese food, and I took a ton of pictures. Unfortunately a bunch of them are presently inaccessible, as they're on my roommate's camera, but I'm uploading the ones from my phone and facebook as I write.

Friday was fairly relaxing; I got to eat dinner with the Tanges, visit their nephew Inoue-san's house, and have a Japanese-style bath after. Not much to say about all that, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Saturday, we spent the day in town. We went on a tiny river cruise, where we could see the famous A-Bomb Dome and a bunch of tall buildings, then went to a Japanese restaurant on Hondoori Street (Hiroshima's main street, which has a roof over it, how cool is that) for lunch, then toured Hiroshima Castle. Then, because my hair has not been behaving and thus needed chastisement, I spent like half an hour trying to communicate to a store clerk in broken Japanese that I was looking for anti-humidity serum for my hair... I wound up buying a spray-type-thing. It helps, but probably the serum would be better... maybe I'll go back and look for it, or MAYBE I'LL CUT ALL MY HAIR OFF AARGH. In any case, that's when my phone ran out of camera memory, because I'm stupid and I forget my memory card in my computer sometimes.

Sunday was also pretty relaxed. The Tanges showed us how to walk from their house to the university and back, so we can come visit them on weekends for free dinners (epic win, as Mrs. Tange is an awesome cook). We had traditional Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki for lunch (there will be pictures, soon) and went to a Japanese cake shop afterward. It was so cute ._. Then Mrs. Tange took us to a big ol' supermarket and instructed us to pick out whatever we wanted for our last dinner with them. I picked sushi, my roommate sprung for chicken nuggets and pizza. Then we returned to the university, and I wrote this blog entry, about how I'd just been on an awesome... homestay...

...no, I refuse to be caught up in this again...

Anyway! Now I am all kinds of tired, and still thinking in Japanese, which is good, actually. This blog is lovely, dark and deep, but I have a GPA to keep, and homework to do before I sleep...

Sore ja, mata ne!

-Vic

Pictures From The Arrival

So, bunch of pictures. Flew from Tempe to LA (unremarkable, but the first time), LA to Tokyo (very long, and mostly dark), and Tokyo to Hiroshima (holy crap, I got a window seat).

Since sending them all to this blog would take forever, I'm just going to caption them in the flickr gallery I've set up and direct you there. One day I'll photoshop them all nice, but for now I have ten thousand other things to do, not the least of which is to figure out how to make my hair withstand all this stupid humidity. ._. saaaad

That said, here's the gallery. I'll make a new one for each gigantic buttload of photos I take, but for smaller batches, I'll just upload them here, I think.

Now, onward to homestay for the weekend. Oh god I hope my flat-iron works in their outlet...

-Vic

5/19 - So, It Happened

Yay me, I'm in Hiroshima.

Of course, I don't have internet in my room. So, /maybe/ I'll update every day. And /maybe/ when I do, I'll be prepared.

For instance, I'm currently borrowing someone's ethernet cable because I'm stupid and forget something crucial every time I go anywhere. Luckily, it's a cheap thing to replace.

In addition to that, this means I don't have all the glorious crappy photos I took today/yesterday/the day before (time runs together when you've been awake for 24 hours spanning three different days). I'll have to run to the campus store, get an ethernet cable, run to my room, get my SD card adapter and phone (which is really mostly a camera/mp3 player/timepiece presently), and do all of that without actually running, because I don't like running.

I'm having a bit of a child-fit because we were all advised not to go into town today, despite us being a bunch of Japanophiles in Japan for the first time. I will not get sushi tonight, alas, because apparently I need to go to bed at 8 PM and (as a result) wake up at 4 AM in order to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for my host family tomorrow night.

but explooooring. D:

Gonna go check on my minecraft servers, then run around Shudo like a crazy foreigner.

-Vic

5/17 - Leaving and Last-Minute Loans

Aaand we're back.

Everything is proceeding as planned, despite the fact that the financial aid office did that thing older siblings do where they hold out something you want, then lift it out out of your reach as you try to grab it, and make you hop impotently and flail at the thing for a while before they give it to you. I'm still hopping and flailing a bit, because I won't actually have the money until the 25th, but at least I have what little I saved, to get me through until then.

Now I'm packing things and doing a bunch of errands I probably should have done earlier, like buying a gift for my homestay family and picking up travel-size containers of shampoo and nail polish remover. As for emotions, I'm excited and nervous and freaking out still. Also, I never realized exactly what messes all my bags were, but that's not much of an emotion. More of a "human condition" sort of thing.

Gonna go dig out my Japanese character dictionary and put my wet clothes in the dryer. Wish me luck.

Not with the dryer. I'm good at that. With the trip.

5/11 - Money and Move-Out

Eww, I'm up early. For a test. Ewwww.

But, a Japanese test, so it's thematically sound, right?

I should probably be more worried about it than I am. What I am worried about, though, is Financial Aid saying they'd get my loans squared away in a week, and the fact that not only will a week from Monday be next Monday, and therefore far too close to the date I'm leaving for my comfort, but I won't be in Tempe to yell at them if they do anything wrong. Like, say, getting me the money on the 20th, while I'm in Japan, and after I've had my one stop in Tokyo.

Why, I would just fly into an implacable tiny rage. No one wants to see that.

So, let's hope the fact that I've been bugging them near-constantly about this means they've possibly realized I'm a bit concerned about money for this trip that's happening in eight and a half days.

5/4 - finals and finances

So, hello, I'm Vic, and I'm presently not in Japan at all. I'm at ASU, it's the day before finals start, and I'm varying between freaking out about a couple of my classes and the exams for them, and feeling all zen and self-congratulatory for getting all my other final projects done.

When you're a Japanese/Creative Writing major, you see, finals happen before finals week.

Luckily, the fact that I've only got 2 exams to worry about leaves me with more than enough time to despair about the financial aid office taking too long to get working on funding this trip for me. Goodness knows I don't have enough resources to do it on my own, so, like a crack dealer with his customer, they toy with me and make me wait until the absolute last second.

Hopefully they don't do like they always do fall semester. That is, take a month to get everything figured out, and then give me money for books.

If they don't hurry up, I'll be walking in next Wednesday to take out $9000 in student loans...