Weekend away...

Sorry mom, I should've told you, but I didn't want you worrying _that_ much...


So, this weekend was the last 3-day weekend, so I was off in Tokyo for a while.

Saturday:
Get there, I am completely lost. I walk around the train station looking for a station map, and finally find something. I spend the next 10 minutes trying to match what I'm seeing to the station map in Lonely Planet and getting nowhere. I finally find a solution when I turn the Lonely Planet upside down and realize that the station map isn't any of the stations I'm seeing. (one company's map in the guide, one on the station map) After promptly figuring that out and getting my bearings, it was pretty straightforward figuring out the rest of what I needed.

I got there around 5, and my first priority was finding the place that I was sleeping, which was a capsule hotel (I have pics that I'll put up eventually) nearby Akihabara. After finding there, I spent the rest of the evening around Akihabara. Basic description of the place: if you are a fan of anime and you like technology, it is Mecca. I didn't buy anything special or expensive, but I do know some future plans :) (especially because I could look at and fool around with the new Macbooks)

This, however, is the crux of _all_ of Japan: these stores close way too early. I exited from a huge store at 8:10 to find most of the district closed or closing. From there, I pretty much headed back and fooled around in the capsule hotel for a while. Around 11, there was some breaking news story about some homicide. (or hit-and-run) It was interesting watching it, mostly because it was so different than something like CNN, but also because I had a good chance sitting alone to decipher Japanese through TV.

I still haven't found an unprotected wireless connection in Japan. This includes Tokyo, Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, and Hiroshima.


Sunday:
I honestly started the day thinking about going and seeing if I could head back a bit early. (I set up the trip here for both ways through the Shinkansen while in Osaka; I found someone who spoke English at the ticket station then) I ended up taking a loop line the long way back to the Shinkansen station, stopping at a few places, such as the Imperial Palace, Ueno Park, Shinjuku, and Shibuya. I'll have some pics from the places, but here's the reason I went to Shibuya. Ueno has a pretty good-sized park and had some good sights, and both Ueno and Shinjuku had some interesting bazaar-style business streets. (I could swear at one point I entered the alley of an alley of an alley and found a store)

There's more, but it's kind-of a mixture of tiredness and soreness here...

We visited a prison today...

There was a makeshift gift shop setup for us.

Enough said.

Some pics

Went to Kyoto again as a field trip for Zen, meeting a Zen priest in the area who came from the US.

Added some pics from both that and the Hiroshima trip.

...it's 2:30 right now...and not the good one.

The Election in Japan

When the polls first closed in the US, it was 9AM here. I had an 11AM class, but after noon I was free to keep an eye on everything.

The campus had a room setup especially for the election coverage, having CNN available on all day in a room that could hold about 150 people. Most of the day the number hovered around 30, peaking at the Obama speech at around 60-70.

The call on CNN was made at 1PM; though it was obvious to us that it was guaranteed, we all still needed the visual to be sure. There was a good amount of cheering going on, and many people (myself included) at least shedding tears, if not more.

For me, though, my main thought was about in the summer of '07, I can't remember who I was talking to, but my honest opinion at that time was that I would be lucky to ever see a non-white president. That thought still hasn't sunk in yet, as I'm sure it hasn't to many people around the country.


EDIT: I did send some pictures I took in to CNN, and it's posted here: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-138714
Apparently, they're going to send some stuff back home as appreciation for sending in stuff for them to use :)

The other thing, though, was that I saw and watched friends who I've made around here crying because McCain lost. I could use some of the paragraphs above to describe them in the same way, and the only difference would be the tone.

It still seems odd saying this, but this is the first major election I've not been in Madison for. One professor I talk to frequently called Madison something along the lines of a "socialist stronghold", and even I talk about it to others as the San Francisco of the midwest. Eau Claire seems like it's close to a 50/50 split, and though here it seems easily 80/20 towards Democrats, that a large difference to a high school where you could come close to counting the number of Republicans on a pair of hands.

Money updates

Here are the numbers back just under a week ago...

USD: 92.79
Canada: 71.625
Britain: 144.43
Australia: 58.481
Euro: 118.164

Checking now, this is how much they've moved:

USD: 99.30 (+ 7.02%)
Canada: 83.041 (+ 15.938%)
Britain: 161.065 (+ 15.177%)
Australia: 67.584 (+ 15.566%)
Euro: 127.67 (+ 8.044%)

Many people here are getting relieved that there wasn't a crash. (Though, if it get's up to 105 again, I may just play it safe and transfer plenty over to a local bank account we needed setup here)

Random Friday Night

Well, Friday was a relatively interesting day; here's just what happened, as an idea of a random day here:

- Classes at 10:00AM and 11:00AM.

- The school is having a festival this weekend, so I looked around the festival. It was mostly a bunch of food stands, along with various clubs doing demonstrations. For me, it was people constantly going towards myself and the foreign students to try to get us to buy food. It also being the weekend(ish) of Halloween, I saw some costumes that you'd never find anywhere close to the US. (I won't get into that right now...)

The whole thing was the second time I really got nervous in Japan since coming here; most of that was the combination of being in a very crowded place and being in a place where everything was in Japanese. (cool, but stressful)

I just ate in the cafeteria; I honestly didn't want to try some random food and they were serving maabou-udon (Sichuan tufo on rice) today.

- 1PM social sciences course, which was just a class to get some dates settled for the rest of the class.

- After that, I headed down to Osaka with a few other people who play Magic. Getting there pretty much involves a 10-minute bike ride, then a half-hour on a train, then 15 minutes on a second train, then a 15 minute walk in an place where there really aren't street signs to know where you're going.

We spent a little while at the magic shop, but we split, with me heading down with a couple other people to one of the manga districts nearby in Osaka. Yet another place where I kept thinking "only in Japan". A couple notable things:

:: Every single place with merchandise had three places in common: sections on Neon Genesis Evangelion, sections on Haruhi Suzumiya, and sections on Ghost in the Shell. Someone with said that he thought about having a competition with another person in Tokyo on who can find the most items between three things: the NERV logo, the SOS団 logo, and the Laughing Man logo.

:: Most of the places had adult sections; unlike US stores, every store we just randomly stumbled into it. There is just so much less in "body issues" here like there are in the US; halloween showed that just as much as being around the manga district.

- After hanging around these guys for a while, they headed back home and I hand back to the magic shop to watch some games and grab a couple things.

I left Osaka around 8:30 and got back to the dorms around 10:00; my main reason for going to Osaka was to not be around the dorm that night, as there was a party until 10:00. Unfortunately I got out just as everyone was getting kicked out, so I literally was waiting outside the gates for 15 minutes while 50 drunk people on bikes were coming out to go out and party at karaoke parlors for a while...


Well, that's just a random day where I actually do something.

I've got a backlog of pics and small videos; I'm just getting a little lazy on getting them up.