Man I don't remember art being this fun

So today or rather yesterday (Saturday) I had my first sculpture class which was 7 hours long and will be for the duration of the subject. Since I haven't done any art whatsoever since year 10 I was quite nervous to be giving it a shot at university level. My anxiety was well founded there are a lot of keen, talented and skilled artists in the class of about 16. Now don't be disappointed when I say that we didn't actually do any sculpting, my teacher said that working on a 3D object in our first class would be nigh impossible so we spent most of the time doing sketches and colourless paintings. I was never any good at drawing, but something that did help me was my mum being an artist I remembered some of her drawings and used the same technique to draw our model. The first pose was just basically standing straight feet slightly askew, we had 30 minutes for this first sketch. Even though the pose was the same having one leg askew served to confuse me on two points, the legs had different proportions and different areas of the knee were showing. I spent quite some time just trying to get the legs right so my image had some balance. Giving the picture balance was like yeah...Also for some reason

Wow I just killed a mosquito and bright red blood came out that's creepy.

Anyway, for some reason my drawings were smaller than everyone else's but I was like 'meh' and kept on going. Drawing the first pose also helped to understand the thoughts of the earliest sculptors, because the standing pose is how sculpture started. Class progressed and the model adopted two more poses before we got our brushes out. We only drew one painting on large paper in black and white. I think it was to try and capture the tone of the body as best we could, I did really badly mine was just black and white with only a minimal amount of grey for shadows. The model was dressed in black and had black hair so it was quite appropriate to only use black and white haha. Side note here because the pose was sitting down, the model actually started to nod off, she had been from the start but this was a real challenge. However as expected of a professional dancer and obviously experienced model she pulled through hahaha. I had extra time so I actually made a second painting using the other end of the brush to replicate Aboriginal style paintings. That just turned out weird, pictures will be up soon ><

The last part of class was more to relax but I think I liked this part heaps, 3 poses, 3 minutes and 3 pieces of paper. Those were the conditions we had to make 3 drawings lightning fast. The idea behind this was to make us prioritise the key features of each pose to capture well...to capture whatever the heck we wanted to bahaha. I think the end of art class is also fun when you look everyone elses drawings, no two are the same since fundamentally everyone has a different angle of vision. Oh! back to why my Images were small, I actually held up the image next to the model from where I was sitting and the size was about 95% the same, I think I have difficulty zooming in hahaha.

Wow I just noticed a mosquito bite from previously mentioned dead mosquito dam ninja got me first how annoying.

Today I mage Nikujaga, commonly served at Izakaya around Japan. Heaps simple, meat is cooked until it changes colour then onion chopped 4 times, followed by carrots chopped in small wedges and potatoes in quarter wedges. About a cup of Dashi soup stock is added and brought to a boil, then left to simmer on medium for 10 minutes. I added soy sauce, sake and mirin (instead of sugar) at this point and then left to simmer till almost all liquid was gone. I also added noodles at the 10 minute mark, just normal soba I'll need to try with noodles that are actually made for dishes that have liquid in the preparation haha. But I think this is also another healthy dish, super tasty and super easy haha :D I think I made it for less than 400 yen and any place would charge 1100 yen minimal for it I think ><

Level up!

Time is counting till mission but that aside I want to talk about a super simple dish I made for the first time. It's called Gyudon which simply means beef served on rice. Apart from putting rice in the rice cooker the only prep required is for the meat. The method I used today was along the lines of my previous 'don' dishes i.e. sliced onion, dashi soup stock, soy sauce, mirin, sake and you can put sugar but I refuse to. Before I put the onions in I made sure I gave the liquid some time to simmer so that the alcohol evaporated. After that I used about 90grams of thinly-sliced beef, covered and left to simmer for about 5. The critical point to the meat preparation is the heat level and time spent cooking. Too low and the meat will be uncooked or over-chewy, too high and you'll run out of liquid you want a little left so it mixes with the rice. If the meat is also left to cook for too long it starts to lose its flavour. The finished should be taken off the stove asap with the meat looking thoroughly cooked and some liquid remaining. So simple and all things considered it cost me about 250 yen to make and TASTY!

Other than this new dish I've mainly been trying new methods with known dishes. I no longer use oil for my soba, I use miso soup to go with my somen noodles (although I still haven't narrowed down the cooking time well enough, I end up with water from the noodles diluting the miso soup) and the other day I finally made a recognizable Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki. The last one is a really tough dish I still haven't gotten the proportions right. The one non-Japanese dish that I've been practicing is Croatian-style crepes like my mum taught me, if we had an oven I would try the strudel recipe handed down through from my grandmother on my father's side to him to me. The pancakes are really tricky, I've gotten the technique down nigh perfect but the proper batter quantities still need tuning. One thing that is throwing me off a little is that Japanese eggs are really different from Australian ones, somehow the yolk is huge and also there's a huge translucent part different to the white of the egg. I was also originally having trouble with the flour clumping but that has been solved by sifting and a secret ingredient that I forgot at first. Other than that on the topic of food I'm looking forward to heading into ShimoKita finally to get some supplies for the next dish I wanna try - Nikujaga, more on that later.

Karate is going well there was no Judo yesterday because of University foundation day or something like that. Right now most of time is going into trying to will myself to get an assignment done for UTS. Future news will be arriving on my sculpture class which starts this Saturday and the camera I finally decide to buy, currently leaning towards the DMC-fp1 but I'll see what my dad says first :D

Ijou desu.

Martial Arts update

So I had Karate on Tuesday night plus Judo wednesday arvo I'll mainly focus on the cool things that happened there.

I'm really starting to like tuesday Karate classes because the Sensei always goes through Kihon (basics) and each time I learn something new about how I kick, punch or block the wrong way. This lesson however we spent the first majority of the class going through a different way to punch. I'm basically the lowest grade in the class so most of the stuff gets pretty advanced for me but I try to keep up as best I can. The first way you are taught to punch in Karate with a straight motion from the side of your floating rib to the desired target location. Along the way the fist turns from having the palm facing up to facing the floor. Basically the whole idea is get the fist from A to B as fast as possible with a straight line, in practice you usually start from the floating rib, but when practicing actual Kumite (sparring) use of the technique the punch starts from your choice of guard position. Two huge things I learned from that lesson about my punches is that I had formed a bad habit of turning my fist at approximately the same speed of my punch, the correct form is to turn the first 180 degrees in the last 10=20% of the punch extension, towards the end as much as possible. I think this is because the extra power generated by the Kaiten (turning) motion is only available if the fist turns faster than the punch. The second thing I learned was at the end of my punch I was slightly dropping my hand at the last millisecond so I hit the target, again wrong because the importance on punch delivery is that the motion is as straight as possible.

Aside from my problems, Sensei showed us a different way to deliver punches and kicks, we didn't go through kicks for lack of time but he showcased the difference. The difference of this delivery method is that as the fist turning towards the end you turn the fist past the point where your knuckles are parallel to the floor ending up at a 45 degree angle. The idea that is if your opponent has block your punch you can still try and use the same driving force to execute a slightly curved punch that penetrates guard. We did the same trick with roundhouses, in a high kick situation if you can turn your foot past the point where it is parallel to the floor you can drive it in through the guard. There is a risk with the roundhouse variant, if the hooked kick doesn't make contact against a trained opponent you've just trapped your leg. This slightly curved punch is also risky because rather than pulling back and trying to attack again, you continue for a few milliseconds which gives your opponent extra time to move or worse, counter. I would like to stress the difference between this punch and a 'haymaker' i.e. picture a drunken dude whirling his arms around or a 'hook' this method is neither of those. The elbow is extended to the same point as during a normal punch it is simply that the result of the over-twisting motion is a punch that moves slightly horizontally to reach the target. The punch does not follow a curve that would have no more it's more like a last moment tangent. This will take a lot of practice.

Judo! I had my first Judo lesson with the group on campus. I have to start off by saying that Judo is almost in every aspect different to Karate so it's really exciting to learn this while I'm here, and maybe continue in Australia who knows. Stretching is fairly the same however the post-stretch warm-up exercises are just...weird and crazy haha. They mainly involve traversing the floor in a straight line in different ways. First up was a standing forward double/triple roll hadn't done it in a while but I managed. Next is standing reverse over-head roll, this is getting freaky but keep going. Little harder was the cat roll, which is basically using only one hand to execute a curling roll, if using the right hand the roll starts along the upper arm to the right shoulder and then down to the left back kidney area. After that we switched to forward roll with legs spread wide apart, which is hard and then decided to do that backwards at which point I thought I would injure my neck but I finished safely. Up next was hand stands, which with my weight I'm not confident enough to attempt at the moment. Will need to gym a little more for that.

I mentioned these warm-ups before but I'l do so again briefly. They also have this mad abdominal exercise that looks totally ridiculous but I like its effectiveness. First up was kinda like doing Breaststroke without the water, without hands or feet, just forearms and knees. Next using only the tip of one shoulder and the opposing foot I traversed across the floor on my back. The motion was sort of like roll onto one side, curl up and then simultaneously spring forward using your back, with your shoulder as a gripping point of the floor and also using your feet to push your lower body off the floor. It's really hard to co-ordinate for the first time. There are a few more exercises however I couldn't do them because I was pretty much stuck on this next one. You start off lying on your back, facing perpendicular to the direction you intend to move with arms and feet off the floor. In order to move, you need to twist your arms and upper body in the opposite direction of the intended movement direction while kicking up with your legs to raise your body off the floor. You can imagine someone of my weight trying to do that, quite comical. That is the end of warm-ups, GROUND FIGHTING TIME!

Unlike Brazilian Ju Jitsu, Judo does not utilize strikes in any form nor does it involve hand scraping to the face. The basic rule for any choke is that you cannot grasp the heck with hands or use leg-only chokes. You can use clothes to choke, which is a very effective method to choke someone from the front or behind. Since we wear uniforms with long sleeves you can even use the inside of the sleeve to execute a oxygen choke, more commonly the elbow is using to execute a blood choke. Just for clarification there are two types of chokes to the neck, compressing the windpipe is an oxygen choke and placing pressure on the pulmonary artery and vein is a blood choke to the brain. I don't know which is more effective but I think blood might be because it stops oxygen delivery faster, but I'm not a biologist. Other submissions methods are triangle-choke and various forms of the arm bar, ground and pound is not allowed. Those are the main submissions I remember. All the attributes that used in Karate like speed, flexibility etc are used in Judo. I do find myself thinking a lot more in Judo because ground-fighting has it's pauses, you can't wonder off though because a quick shift and you are in trouble. Also I think it's a much better suited style for women's self-defense than the stuff I learn in Karate. Not that Karate isn't useful I just think in the most common scenario where a female would need to defend herself Judo would be more effective. Using the lethal moves of Karate...you may be charged with using excessive force. Against multiple attackers, I'd say Karate and some knowledge of Judo throws.

Anyway, we moved onto throwing practice just before sparring. Being my first time I wasn't able to practice every throw, heck I can't even do the one I was taught well enough yet. So I spent most of the time trying to figure out how to execute this throw. I forgot the name which is quite shameful but anyway, it's totally different from what I though and seriously awesome feeling getting it right. Grabbing the opponents uniform around the chest area(in the street obivously clothes, btw Judo in the street ain't a joke) and using your free hand to grab the opponents nearest arm/sleeve is the start. From here you form a slight L with the clothes grabbing arm and you pull the opponent off balance while also stepping forward with your balancing leg, next the sweeping leg passes by the opponent, on its return journey as you make contact you also tip your upper body forward so that their leg comes forward while their body goes backward. The contact point is your Achilles heel and your opponents Achillies heal. Because Judo uses the weight of the opponent as the power source, the heavier the are the more shock you feel hitting the floor if you don't do falling-training. I got quite a shock about half a second to a second where I totally vulnerable. This is the awesome thing about throws, after executing one you have momentary free reign to run away, assume a favourable offensive position, attempt submission or smack their lights out like in MMA. The other throw I was briefly showed was the side throw, same execution except that instead of pulling the opponent from infront towards yourself, you pull the opponent sideways towards you moving the majority of their balance onto the nearest leg and then you sweep that leg. After throws I watched my Senpai (Seniors) spar, they are really strong I'm so looking forward to training with them :)

Animal Cruelty

Today was a pretty fun day started off by having a lazy breakfast of jam on bread (no toaster) and bananas which was good cos it gave me the carbs for my swim/gym. After exercise I headed into my bank branch to once again try and get the details I need to do IMT (International Money Transfer) from my Australian bank account. The person who conducted my orientation into Tokyo Tech had emailed us with explaining that all large transfers into Japanese bank accounts would require us to call the bank and explicitly answer their questions because apparently Japanese bank accounts have been used for terrorism (I'll explain why that might be so later). She also included in that email two names of people who work at my branch that can speak english, so I walked in quite confident that my queries would be dealt with in a swift, Japanese manner through English communication. But given my luck it just so happens that for some reason that I couldn't quite understand (I'm finding that even if I can actually ask questions in Japanese I may not always understand the answer) they basically were not available. So the lady in the end gave me a ticket and I joined the rest of the people in the queue waiting to be served. The wait time was not too bad I think about 10-15 I don't know I just blanked out until I heard my number quite simply, except when a lady stepped on my foot. Once I was called to the counter using a basic amount of Japanese I relayed my queries of why I cannot use Internet banking, that I wished to change my signature PIN (this particular Japanese bank requires the use of a PIN along with your signature to sign for example a direct debit contract) and what bank details do I need to use from the Japanese bank to be able to transfer my money. The answer to the first was I cannot use internet banking because I have not been in Japan for more than 6 months, she didn't say it on the spot but I read on the website previously that this was a precaution against terrorist or criminal use of Japanese bank accounts. She also provided me with all the details I need to do IMT in the form of a paper sheet written in English so that would be smooth. I've saved the response to the PIN change query till last because I will explain something funny about Japanese banks.

When I was first served by a bank representative I said I had forgotten my signature PIN (which was true) so she actually brought the physical contract I signed and before showing it to me asked for my passport, I gave her my Alien card and she performed an ID check. Then she flashed my signature PIN to me like you would in a game of Memory. After that she gave me the ticket and returned my contract to their filing system. When I was being served at the counter, the lady asked me to write down my previous PIN (I had also provided ID beforehand so she did the ID check first) she then checked that number against the PIN I wrote down in my contract, the same piece of paper the previous lady showed me. After that I was allowed to write a new PIN on that same contract. After doing so she returned my contract to their filing system. Now heres the problem that may be leading to Japanese bank accounts being used for terrorism, um hello? any bank employee and infact any staffmember at Tokyo Tech who helped process my application would have seen my PIN. To compare to Australia when you need a new PIN, they ask for 100 points of ID and then they erase the old PIN and ask for you to enter a new PIN using the keypad. The numbers on the keypad are asterixed as they are on the computer the employee is using. Also when you make your initial application even if you were an international student and say UTS processed your application they would have no way of knowing your PIN because it is generated randomly and sent to you via mail. Which you can then change or accept, which means that to find out your PIN someone has to search through your mail and break the seal on the letter. I kinda expected more lol, anyway enough about banking.

After the bank I headed home to put away my gym clothes and confirm my journey to the Japanese bookstore, Bonjinsha. It's basically a retailer of Japanese language learning and teaching material. When I say confirm my journey, everytime I go somewhere new in Japan I use google maps to map a train route to the nearest station, I also have to translate station names for the interchanges, destination and 'direction indicators' (Rather than having a screen on the platform that scrolls down through the stations that the train will stop at like CityRail the platform signs include the name of two or three stations usually big interchange ones or terminating stations that indicate which direction the train will be going. Whether or not your train actually stops at the station even if your going the right direction must be determined from the train maps). I made it to the new area and found my books without problem and returned to Shibuya. I'm in the market for a camera I want a Nikon D90 but its a bit expensive and troublesome to carry with me just for amateur shots so a few people had suggested the Canon G11. I was set on this but then I realised that the G11 is not a hybrid but more like a half-baked camera. It's more 'pro' than most compact digi-cams that can't have their lens changed, has more manually controllable settings and produces great pictures. But the body of is basically identical in size to that of a D90, its just that the D90 has interchangeable static lenses compared to the G11's retractable. But the G11 certainly cannot fit in your pocket, its not my idea of compact. On that note I've been looking at two promising models that are new and heaps convenient both Panasonic. The Lumix DMC-FP(1,2,3) and DMC -FT2. Now heres a funny thing, the only camera from the FP(1,2,3) series that's on sale in Japan is the FP1 which is the most basic and cheapest model. However in the rest of the developed world the all models from the series from 1 to 3 are available. The 3 series is the one I really want because it has slightly better screen which is also 3 inches compared to the FP1's 2.7. That screen is also touch sensitive, you can touch the screen to tell the camera which points of the photo you wish the focus to be on. The 2 series is....just useless we won't talk about it. But this Japanese company does not sell the 3 series in Japan, yet anyway only overseas, isn't that a surprise for someone who would have thought Japan is the best place to shop for cameras. Heck it's even on-sale at Myer that's just bad, fail Japan, fail. The other contender the FT2 is more than double the price, probably takes only a slightly better pictures (the FP series takes really good pictures already) and has more features, also waterproof, shockproof, coldproof and dustproof to substantial limitations. I'm considering this because those 'proofs' are built for me, I don't think a normal level camera of such size would last with me. But I've resolved to think about it a little more before I spend. Also a final note on the the G11, it has a viewfinder but it crops 77% of the actual picture that is, the picture you get will be wider and taller than what you saw in the viewfinder (super annoying, PASS).

To qualify the title of this post I will explain what I had for dinner. The recipe is pretty much identical to the katsudon recipe except for a few things. The meat used is chopped up chicken instead of deep-fried or shallow-fried (I shallow fry) pork. Cooking time is basically 10 minutes, 1 minute for the liquid to heat up and then the chicken goes in for 3 minutes a side, plus another few minutes with the beaten egg. The advantage of this dish is literally no oil is used, since the soup stock is made from kelp and doesn't use a meat base. The only cholesterol is in the egg yolks of which two were used but I'll try with one next time. Now if you haven't caught as too how this dish is animal cruelty or simply have no clue what I'm yapping about I'll give you a hint in the form of the name of this dish. Oyakodon　親子丼, those of you who learn Japanese or can otherwise read these characters should know by now. For those who are still clueless ill describe the meaning of the characters. The first is for parents, the second is for children and the third basically indicates that this meal is served over a bowl of rice. So in one phrase it literally translates to parents and children, served over rice. This is quite accurate given that in this dish chicken is cooked in chicken eggs, so you've basically taken out a family right there. Somehow I don't think I'll be invited to speak for PETA anytime soon. Despite the weird but accurate name, I like this dish alot since no oil is used and the chicken meat is succulent and tasty from absorbing the stock, sake, mirin, soy sauce, onions, I also added ginger, salt and pepper and skimped out on sugar to add more zing and less sweetness. That's it I hope you enjoyed my latest, hopefully soon this blog will have pictures :D

Why no food WHY

Yesterday was a pretty hectic day the summation of which led me to not eat till about 11pm

I woke up late and didn't have time for brekky because I had to rush off to class! I barely made it in time for role call. Class was fun we were trying to discuss the differences between marriage ceremonies in our respective countries and then we did some listening. Western ceremonies stood out the most by far, me being the only Westerner in this class. The most dominant demographic is South-East Asia. Not many sub-continentals and only one dude from Africa.

After class I decided to go for a quick swim/gym so I would finish just in time to be a little late for Judo class, I didn't have the intention of participating in the first class just wanted to see what they do. Warm-ups wasn't a surprise to me but probably would be to anyone else who saw these people throwing their own body across the floor and attempting to do Breaststroke without the water. To clarify, Judo is a martial art that has two stages. First is the standing stage, both fighters start standing up and the initial part of the revolves around executing a trip or throw to 'ground' your opponent. The one who executes the throw/trip has the advantage because their opponent is stunned for a few seconds after being thrown and likewise after executing a trip the fighter has dominant control of their opponent. Now going back to throws most throws result with the opponent on their back so in order to increase one's resistance to the stun that occurs after being the victim of a throw Judo fighters need to condition their backs. To this end there are various exercises that include the back impacting the floor at about moderate intensity. The fighters also traverse across the floor on their stomachs using hands and feet (not forearms/elbows and knees like soldiers do) and on their backs using elbows and feet in a kind of weird twisting, pushing motion. This builds up the huge amount of stamina and strength needed to perform Judo. Then they started the ground-fighting and throwing training, I won't go into that since its quite complicated to write up.

As a side note kendo class is on the same time as Judo, in the same room. Those guys are crazy, completely different from the kendo I found in Australia.

After Judo they showed me where the club room was, everyone changed here into Judo outfits that were on loan from the university. I'm assuming that there is some sort of laundry system haha. You'll have to wait for next wednesday for more details on how Judo goes.

I intended to head into my bank branch to see if I could get some banking done since I don't have access to internet banking. The reason I don't have access to internet banking for my own bank account is that they I could be a terrorist. Unfortunately the office section was closed apart from a variety of ATMs that perform different services. I don't know if this is normal, if it is things could get difficult. At any rate I resolved to return another day when the office would be open and ask my aussie friend whats the deal. Since all of these things happened right after the other I still hadn't eaten anything so I was looking forward to eating something before helping a friend with basic karate.

So I got home and opened the fridge....NOTHING...well not literally nothing but only about half the stuff I need to make anything. Lucky theres a few fairly ok stores nearby so I went shopping. By the time I returned with everything I needed it was about 20 minutes before I needed to help my friend obviously I could have bought something to eat along the way or asked to postpone the karate instruction a little while but a) I was already carrying a substantial amount and b) I was helping someone else out later on. So I just drank some vege juice and went downstairs to do some karate. After that It was already getting late so I quickly headed off to Shinjuku to meet my other friend. Shinjuku at night is weird, I still don't understand the paradox of Japanese people saying they are busy when they have the time to go out eating and drinking till late in the middle of the week. Of course alot of this 'tsukiai' business entertainment (i.e. meeting with clients in more casual settings to discuss business). Still there were alot of people out couples, uni and high school students (still wearing uniform), salarymen, retired people, foreigners, people trying to sell you stuff or invite you to their nightclub. Anyway I met up with my friend and we headed off to a good internet cafe so she could apply for a student visa to Australia. I hate applications and trying to decode the mass of information on the Australian Immigration website took a while but we finally found the 'start application' page. Now she had asked me to help because everything was in English but seriously even as a native I don't think I could apply for a student visa to Australia. Too long and boring and complex 'sigh'. No clue how international students apply for theirs not knowing native level english maybe tenacity, maybe witchcraft don't know.

After about 2 hours of application I headed home and finally had breakfast/lunch/dinner. I stayed up a bit after eating but eventually slept in until 12 today. So tired.

A week and a month

This past week was quite cruisy after golden day festivities. The main things that happened were going to a one-day gathering of KGK (Japanese IFES group) university students from around the Tokyo area...and even a little beyond. That happened on saturday, met quite a few people and while listening to the sermon in japanese (first time listening without english translation) I grasped how far my Japanese has yet to improve. The topic of the sermon as far as I could understand was about two roads of life, I'd heard this topic preached on before but it made me heaps happy to hear something of this depth in Japan. Afterwards we had a chance to meet people in our university district 'buroku' (thats 'block' btw). I met people from Sophia, Keio univ etc Trying to converse in Japanese was quite hard for me, topics stayed superficial but I equally looked forward to meeting the people of KGK, the staff who our team is partnering with and also the opportunity to practice Japanese. On a side note I did take away from that day the realisation that practicing speech isn't enough because speech uses what you already thoroughly know and remember at the time you speak. To actually increase one's ability to comprehend and engage in more complex discussion it starts with the study you've done. That's how it appears to me anyway, to take a martial arts analogy (love it) study is your hours in class doing repetitions and technique tuning, endurance and strength training etc while discussion is your tournament, just like you don't have a sensei to guide you in your fight, you don't have your study notes or google to help you talk. I also met a few of the KGK staffworkers who knew about our team coming to Japan, we met after the program was over with the lady who was in charge of our first two week Tokyo itinerary. I couldn't tell who was more excited at us being in Japan, partnering with them will be great.

Dinnertime! So Harry, Harry's KGK friend, Harry's Jewish-American friend and I (yes I have no friends :P) went out for dinner with the mother and younger daughter of Harry's home stay from his previous time in Japan. We went to a department store and after sometime deciding (man I hate long decisions I have no patience!) we entered the Chinese restaurant. Strangely enough Chinese food reminded me of Australia more than anything so far but a difference in the cuisine served in the two countries exists. I think after eating it here, definitely the taste is Japanized as all things are BUT I swear it makes the stuff back in Australia look cheap and un-authentic (sorry guys). I'm no expert but I've been to quite a few so it's not ignorance that is the source of this conclusion. After the meal before we could even reach for out wallets, Harry's host mum had shown us all what real ninjas are. By the time I stood up, she had run ever so quietly and subtly and already paid for us.....it's like there never was a bill. I don't know how much of the conversation between me and Harry her daughter translated to her but somehow she got the feeling that Harry and I were still hungry. So she took us to the lower levels of the department store and tried to find something for us to eat after we parted despite both Harry and me intensely protesting and thanking her for treating dinner. Downstairs was awesome, and bang on 10 minutes after 7 certain perishables get 20% off stickers so smart shopping can save you lotsa money. The first thing we tried was some cheese, to be honest I would have liked some cheese since I do like it and haven't had any since leaving Australia. There was a guy who was serving samples of what they called cream cheese, but I think is supposed to be camembert, not too sure. To my taste it was sweet and the man said that was because of the raisin it was served with so he offered me one without one.....I tried to discretely say that it was sweet to Harry's host mum so we could move on. I hope the guy didn't think I was a douche. In the end we found some gyoza which was tasted so good eating at home later. Before that however we went to Vie de France, don't let the name fool you it's owned by a Japanese bakery company. Mainly to just have a chat, they treated us drinks as well (my gosh so not used to hospitality like this from someone I've just met) I ordered coffee, I'd had coffee before but Starbucks is well American so yeah I didn't have high expectations....to prove my point I also tried coffee at a okonomiyaki restaurant which was drip coffee (ewwwww) also brought over by, Americans. Anyway THIS coffee was compared to all of them amazing, didn't taste fully authentic but it 'passed'. Over our drinks I was also asked by Harry's host mum who's also a christian why I became one. Saying my testimony in Japanese was quite hard even with Harry and the host daughter's help but somehow I managed so that was great.

The next day was church and lifegroup nothing new to report. It was also Mother's day - Happy Mother's day to all mums :D

Today I had my fortnightly meeting with my tutor, this time around we conversed in Japanese which I still wasn't able to do to the full extent but somehow we managed to discuss some various topics and compare culture etc. Afterwards I went to gym/swim which I had put off for a while so going back felt great. The gym is especially fun because the people there are just funny, to me anyway. I guess to help you understand, the ideal Japanese form is tall, slender and handsome face for guys, for girls its slender (I should really say ghostly but I won't), white skin and about the same height as the guys or less. Now the reason this makes gym funny is because Japanese people work hard we all know that, as a result they don't eat much and because of the landscape conditions and climate of the country the main things that grow are vegetables and grain. The average Japanese person lacks in my opinion alot of fats, oils, protein, sugars, carbs compared to a Westerner for example. What this means is that Japanese people are already quite thin by nature and comparatively not as muscular. Thus going to the gym to burn what little carbs they did consume, not gaining much muscle for lack of protein and even losing muscle by dieting means they approach the realm of literally skin and bone (and thin bones at that). Fair to say the complete opposite of Australia, especially for men.

With that I end this post and my first month in Japan :)

My feet are not killing me, they've actually hired assassins to throttle me in my sleep

Last Thursday until this Wednesday (with the exception of Friday) is called Golden week in Japan. For anyone who loves peace, harmony and just easy-going don't set foot outside during golden week, if you have plans cancel 'em, because there are people EVERYWHERE! I've been slot of hanging out with other UTS people that came to Japan and their friends since Saturday haven't had much time to do even blog so I'll start from way back saturday night.

Our Contemporary Japanese (subject I did in Australia last semester) tutor or sempai as he titled himself, planned a huge get together of UTS students from as far north as Sapporo to as far south-west as Osaka! Everyone flocked in to meet at Shibuya, some people got lost or were doing something right before so we actually got to sit down at the Izakaya (Japanese traditional drinking house) quite late. Normally, that isn't a problem unless you have a booking for a set time. For the sum of about 3500yen pp we got 2-3 dishes of light food and unlimited drinks for 2 hours from the start of our booking, last orders were taken after about 90 minutes. All in all it was quite light stuff, mainly had beer and moscow mule (sounds so cool, the Japanese pronounce it MOSuKO MIYUURu). After the group was relaxed a bit we hit the Karaoke bar. I think we started at 8-830? the last people left at 12, I walked some people who had to go earlier back to Shibuya and then I myself headed home. Unfortunately upon arriving I couldn't really sleep because I was distracted with writing up my shopping list (before cooking something, I need to find a good recipe, decode the ingredients, translate what I need to buy in Japanese, look up how it's written in Kanji, find an image of what it looks like, and any special words I would need to know to be able to describe it if I couldn't find it, e.g. if I wanted Miso paste I would ask for the Miso used in Miso Soup). Then I played some video games, read a little and before long I was making breakfast as the sun came up. I ate and took a little nap but quite soon after I headed out to meet Harry and Hanna.

The weather was quite nice, sunny but not hot good temperature to walk around another huge city of Japan, Yokohama. Yokohama to my knowledge started off as a seaport for trading, until it slowly became urbanised, the local population grew and it actually became quite a big district. Starting off as a trading port it has had quite frequent foreign visitors and residents so english is quite easy to use, not that we did :p The train station structure alone is huge about the size of Central (actually most stations that interchange more that 3 lines are huge) and included in the actual entire building are shops of all sorts. It's probably equal to Shinjuku station in size but Shinjuku Station is surrounded by a ton of shops, eateries, departments stores, clubs etc etc. Anyway, we had a little time so we went downtown to find a yodobashi because hanna's camera was playing up. Unfortunately, they were of little help during Golden week so we decided to trek back and we also stopped at a restaurant along the way. It wasn't cheap 800yen standard, but I wasn't a happy camper since the soup had a weird taste to me, Harry had the same but said it was fine, Hanna also had curry for the first time rofl! Oh yeah totally forgot that one the way to Yodobashi and returning I saw Geishas for the first time. I don't know if they were proper Geisha Geishas but they looked the part, pretty cool.
We headed off to see Hanna's church in Yokohama called New Life Yokohama?! Charismatic church thats grown quite well in its 6 year plant in Yokohama. That day was a special children's day service with appropriate sermon, for which I largely don't remember seeing as I was so buggered and after 15 minutes lost concentration and fell asleep... I felt really bad so after the service I loaded up on coffee and chocolate in order to wake myself up for meeting up with two of Harry's Japanese friends at Shinjuku.

Getting out at Shinjuku we found one straight away and we hung around till the second arrived. Originally there was supposed to be more but they canceled for various reasons, the first friend also left shortly after meeting us but no big deal. We found out from Hanna that some more UTS students would be coming to Shinjuku soon so we thought to wait for them, we waited quite a while and then split up weirdly? I joined the Kinokuniya group cos I wanted to check some manga/anime prices. They didn't have all of the anime (Trinity Blood) I wanted, but they did have the entire Manga series (Hajime no Ippo) I wanted, a whole 91 volumes, each about 400yen. Harry's friend told me that I could check second-hand book stores since they priced them at around 100 yen, I decided a quarter of the price is worth my time since I'll be here for a while hehe. We re-joined and headed off for dinner when Harry's friend had to go to another engagement. We also found out that another International student from Yamanashi wished to join us so we waited on the highway quite a while. After said while we went to find the restaurant and sent Harry back as a scout to go find the losties who had been given wrong directions by the Japanese, according to them hahaha. I had a spinach and bacon PIzza with Latte. The pizza was....When they said spinach and bacon they really meant it, it only had spinach and bacon with a thin crust. The coffee.... was a big cappuccino with no chocolate, as for the beans they used....whatever I was glad to have coffee in me again at that point. After bidding everyone goodbye and sending some of the Yamanashi crew home I trudged home and fell ontop of my bed and slept. Until....

Hanging-out-with-Victor-day! So Victor told me some his intentions for his last day in Tokyo (he's from Yamanashi but stayed an extra day) on Sunday so I invited myself. First up we were both late but we headed to Daimon station, to walk to POKEMON CENTRE!!!!! The journey along the way was quite eventful though, even though we got off the same train (didn't know at the time) we managed to head in completely opposite directions so it took us a while to find each other. Then while enroute to the centre we took a wrong turn into a building and a lift upto the wrong floor to find a ecchi/hentai comic convention...lovely....So we started to walk back and while he was attempting to decipher the map a flyer girl tried for the second time to hand me a brochure. Since I was waiting on Victor I decided to read it.

Faith-related stuff, don't read if you don't want to but I suggest you do, at the very least so that you don't put me in the same boat as these people who call themselves Christians.

The title is 'THE END OF THE WORLD IS ALMOST HERE! HOLY GOD WILL BRING JUDGEMENT DAY ON MAY 21, 2011', before I walked over to ask 'wat the crap', I decided to look for the church sponsor of these people and sure enough at the bottom of the back page 'Family Radio is a Bible-based Christian broadcasting ministry with no church affliation', wonderful. So I went back and asked more politely than I intended to 'Where you[they] got this date from?', he replied in an American accent and a smile 'The Bible'. So I asked where, he said the date isn't actually written specifically but they had ascertained the information from the Bible by the means of using certain references and using a Bible calendar. I'll quickly go into the gist of it.

It starts off going on about Judgement day being the feared day of man, The Bible gives us the correct day, Bible is the Holy book 'written' (I put those apostraphes in for fun) by God. It was completed about first century BC, it it's original languages it has never been changed, each and every word in the original languages is from the 'mouth of God' (more fun). The bible is divided into two parts yadayadayada... quotes 2Tim 3:16 and Jer 36:1-4. Quotes and explains some creation and sin stuff, at this point I started looking for Jesus in this pamphlet. On the bottom of the second page...Talk about 'God being so great and glorious He calls Himself by many different names', tomorrow I'll call myself anthony just for fun sheesh.. 'Each name tells us something about the glorious character and nature of God. Thus in the Bible we find such names as God, Jehovah, Christ, Jesus, Lord, Allah, Holy Spirit, Savior etc. Names such as Jehovah, Jesus, Savior and Christ particularly point to God as the only means by which forgiveness from all of our sins and eternal life can be obtained by God's merciful and glorious actions'
Weird plug about hoping will save me.
'Many books have been written about the BIble or considered additions to the Bible, life the Koran or the Book of Mormon' Goes onto say that out of these only the Bible is Holy. blah blah blah and Now the way judgement day is worked out.
'By careful study of the Bible we learn that in the year 4990BC God brought a flood of water..', I'm so glad they solved it for us so easily 4990BC it amazes me that the scholarly world is still divided on a proper calendar to my knowledge.
So we have the period 4990BC and the date 17th of the second month, as the date of the flood from this pamphlet Gen 7:10-11...
Gen 7:4 is quoted followed by the explanation that 2Pet 3:8 means to us that one day from Gen 7:4 can be considered as 1000 years. So God was warning us that he would destroy the world in the seven days warning he gave Noah back in Gen 7:4. Math time!!
-4990 + 7000 - 1 (no year 0) = 2011 YAY May 21 is equivalent to 17th of the second month of the Biblical calendar. Followed by random plug about more information available on the subject.
The rest talks about how God MIGHT save you, that on Judgement day 200 million people (according to the bible) will be saved, on the first Day of Judgement they will be caught up (raptured) into Heaven because God had great mercy on them.
So, our action plan? Don't go to your priest, pastor etc turn away from your sin, beg God for forgiveness. Thank God for His great Mercy in letting you know when he will kill everyone and hope you win the Heaven lottery. Does anyone else think
......these people have too much spare time to be making this sort of crap and then distributing it.......as you can see im angered

call me arrogant, I might be making a mistake but that's just got to be the most unhelpful stuff...ever....
End of Faith-related stuff, back to Pokemon Centre!

So finding the place it was smaller than I expected and since it was Golden week...Chock-a-block with families. As I waded through the store I looked at the merchandise everywhere and didn't really find anything I liked, even the mobile phone chains weren't to my liking. After Victor was done being a fan I totally encouraged him to battle a Japanese dude since Victor had brought his NDS. The Japanese dude was maybe a little younger than us, but since he was dressed with a weird puffy black train-conductor type hat, checkered white shirt tucked into oversize beige cargo pants and black sneakers. Along with a UTILITY BELT that contained cases for his DS and mobile, wired up with music and a small pokemon train-as-you-walk gagdet. He looked pro. Not only that when Victor started a conversation with him he was acting quite confident and cool, he didn't know that I was watching him before lose his cool while battling a primary school girl rofl. Shortly the battle started, as we find out 3 pokemon into the match he ran a theme team, which was basically an all water type team for a team bonus and use of a special skill to increase the accuracy of certain killer skills. However I did mention that we found this out 3 pokemon into the match, 3 of his pokemon of course. He had started with his strongest number which Victor took out in two shots, luckily it was paralyzed and couldn't retaliate. After that he lost the next 5 straight without Victor's pokemon going to half hp. That dude's bubble was burst, the next contender was quite a bit younger....also no chance against Victor's more defensive pokemon. But man was I happy he beat the first dude hahahahaha.

After that ownage we trekked off to catch some trains to Akihabara, big electronics district in Tokyo. We had the hope that it was also a manga/anime meccah/makkah of sorts and to see some stereo-typical Otaku. After walking around for about 4 hours out hope was crushed. But we did manage to see alot of Akiba (short name), two main things worthy of mention. First up was MAID CAFE ROFL ROFL. For those who don't know in Japan and mainly in Akiba there are cafes where the staff dress up in cosplay (anime character dress-up), maid cafe's are most common we also saw a Office-Lady (stereo -type fetish dress-up of course) cafe. Back to the Maid cafes, you can pay quick a bit extra for your meal/drink to become a course with a time limit. The time limit is for talking to the waitress employees i.e. they sit and chat with you, of course using Japanese maid talk which is super honorific and they use the word Goshujin-sama heaps(which is like referring to another person's husband except the sama make's the status of the dude like royalty). Now we thought that it was like a cafe full of Otaku's and no girls, but it was actually like 40% girls and less weird than I thought it would be, they even had Western-nationality maids. I order Iced cocoa which was 600 yen.... and washed down with a 600 yen kebab after we left (kebabs are quite a popular sell in Akiba, Japanese portions sux though). Victor order Curry rice for 1200 (he kept whingeing about the cost for the rest of the day cos he's tight, but so am I, still I did point out it was his idea). Now when his meal came...he had to do the become-delicious-power-dance BAHAHAHA I knew about this, but didn't think they would do it so I didn't actually warn him, sooooo funny watching him struggle through that. There is also a dance for drinks and I also should have joined in making Victor's curry rice delicious (BAHAHAHAHA) but I was quite happy to passively guide them away from that idea. Victor found the meat quantity insufficient for 1200yen but I was too busy enjoying myself at his expense to have the slightest bit of compassion.

We kept on walking around after the cafe, looking for stuff. We found a book-store where Victor bought a ton of short novels he'd wanted to buy. He didn't find one series which we found later back in Kinokuniya in Shinjuku. Can I just say that if you think Japans Manga, Anime and games selection is big.....the adult selection probably is about quadruple or more the size and more popular and way more available, from the manga section I counted about half the people that were in the adult section. Also apparently in Japan it's not weird if you just read like a whole book in the store and don't buy it, I found that weird. We also went to look around the more shabby places, found a souvenirs shop. They had sword stands and tea sets etc. I had a look at some of the sword blades before I noticed the 'do not touch' in Japanese sign. Luckily went unnoticed. They also have a sign in English too that says the swords aren't real. From there it was largely uneventful till I spied something funny from a distance.... GUNDAM CAFE!!!! Apparently only opened this year sometime, inside it's a normal cafe, the staff wear Gundam cosplay and theres certain menu items that are Gundam-related somehow. We didn't go in cos the line was about 30 minutes long (Japapese are not averse to lines, it comes with the territory and the population). It did look super cool so I need to pay a visit eventually.

For dinner we went to a cheap sushi-train joint. Spent about 9 bux on 6 plates. Along the way though an African-American dude was trying to invite us to a club, even though I gave reasons like I'm tired (which I was) and that we've just finished shopping (evident by the heavy heavy bags we were carring) he was trying hard to no avail though. We got some things for a friend and then I bade Victor farewell at Shinjuku station after hitting Kinokuniya. In the last 4 days I've had about 9-10 hours sleep so I'm looking forward to it right now...night :)