SHINE★２００９

Sometimes I feel a bit cooped up in the office the school has provided for us, but I guess it's not long before the students come back into town when school starts up. Besides, I've done some really neat stuff even since the last update. We've gotten completely settled into our apartments and used some free time to explore the town on our bikes. We spent quite a bit of time running errands for school business, but we also managed to have an awesome weekend.

Friday night, we decided it would be a good idea to drop in on our friends at Super Star again. We invited Kawaguchi-sensei and Yamauchi-sensei, but the former was swamped with work and the latter had "prior engagements."

So we're getting ready to head out to Super Star that night, and Yamauchi-sensei calls us and invites us to Hoshi-san's wife's bar! By the time we got there though, it was absolutely packed and we had to head elsewhere. Here's where things get real fun. We meet up with Yamauchi-sensei's buddy Satou-san and he takes us to a hostess bar called Luna where the female owners serve alcohol to dirty old businessmen who keep on buyin'.

So that's where we had the first big communication error so far. One of the girls was trying to tell us that she wanted to do a homestay in America sometime. Well in Japanese casual speech, you often drop the subject and verbs aren't conjugated according to the noun. Thus, we thought she was asking us if we wanted to do a homestay in Japan...to which we replied, "But we have apartments!" She giggled like a schoolgirl for a while, and then we realized later that we had invited her to do a homestay with us. Oh, Japan...

Well, as the night progressed things got blurrier. They kept pourin' the drinks, and I was chatting it up with Satou-san and Yamauchi-sensei. It turns out this awesome guy works for a Japanese laser company called Arai and was legitimately offering us a short-term job. Eventually they got tired and split, leaving us American kids all alone. After a while, Jamie and I figured we'd run up a pretty big bill, but Satou-san had actually picked up the tab for us! So they keep pourin' the drinks and this Japanese fella keeps trying to tell Jamie in broken English for about 30 minutes that these women just want us to keep buying alcohol. Then this guy from across the bar we'd never met stands up, points at Andrew, screams his name, and challenges him to a singing competition. So the Japanese Thunderbirds theme song comes on the karaoke screen, and Jamie and I knew it was time to get out of there. All the way home, Andrew kept trying to convince us that one of the hostesses totally wanted to bang him. Goofy kid...

So we woke up the next day, made fun of Andrew, did a bit of shopping, then hit up this semi-annual party in town called SHINE. It's this gig where several regional DJs mix it up for a few hours one at a time. Our friend Noda played from midnight to 1 am. SHINE is also for all of the foreigners in and around Aizu to get together and have a good time with a bunch of Japanese folks learning English. I met people from all over the states, Canada, Britain, the UK, and Ukraine. There was an open bar and dance floor going all night. Of course, Andrew embarrassed me in public again...but we met a whole bunch of folks around Aizu that I hope to hang with again!

For some reason, Jamie and I thought it would be a great idea to hit up Super Star after leaving SHINE at 1 am. So we did. They treated us really well like always, and we met some cool folks that said they'd be there next weekend. We managed to talk Kuma-san (whose real name is Yamaguchi Masahiro as we found out) into making our favorite drink. So from now on, he'll whip up an "elixir" anytime we order one. Hoshi-san also guaranteed us that anytime we come for a visit, no matter how long we stay or what we order, they'll charge us a low rate of 2000￥ (~$20). Kuma-san even walked us back to the main street to make sure we didn't get lost so late at night! They really take great care of us over there.

With two crazy nights already under our belts, we figured it'd be best to take it easy Sunday. We checked out the Saty department store in town that's closing down and did some kitchen shopping. We got ourselves some pans and such and bought all of the stuff to make some curry. For it being our first time cooking Japanese food in our new apartment, I think it went pretty well! Looks pretty good, eh?

The next day was spent running several errands around town with Kawaguchi-sensei and Izumi-sensei. It turns out that Izumi Kuniyasu is just his Japanese name. He used to be a missionary from Mexico by the name of Juan Gonzales and can speak Spanish, English, French, and Japanese fluently. He was called upon to return, but he was so impressed by Japan that he left the service and has been living here for the past 37 years. He married here and has a daughter now as well. He's been a big part of us getting moved in, and he's a really kind man with loads interesting stories.

The first stop was to pick up our 印鑑 (inkan), or Japanese seal. Most official documents in Japan require a signature and 判子 (hanko), a Japanese-style seal-signature. Some foreigners are given Kanji (Japanese symbols) to spell out their name based on its Katakana (Japanese alphabet used for foreign words) transcription by a teacher or mentor. Since I have yet to be accepted into Japanese society in that way, I just had my last name printed in Katakana on two lines. It's backwards for stamping, but that's マクニーズ (pronounced mah-koo-knee-zoo).

When you stay in Japan for more than 90 days, you have to get a visa beforehand. Also, you have to fill out alien registration forms in the closest city hall, which happened to be our second stop of the day. It was a relatively short process in which Izumi-sensei was a big help. We've got to come back next week to pick up our official registration cards, though.

The last stop of the day was the bank. We had to set up accounts so the school can automatically deposit our scholarship money and the real estate company can withdraw our rent each month. It took a little while longer and a small processing fee, but soon we're going to have handy ATM cards to use around Japan.

Even though classes are still a ways off, I spent a large part of today trying to figure out which professor's research lab I want to be in here at the University of Aizu. I'm a little scared since I'm entering a graduate program and I'm only a junior back home. Luckily, there's a professor here who's studying linguistics and how tongues move during speech. Armed with a Ph. D in Linguistics from the University of British Columbia, he seems like the ideal advisor for me since his work brings together the engineering stuff I'm studying and the linguistics I'm developing a passion for. Normally he doesn't direct students, but we'll see what happens when I meet with him later.

I've already got plans for most of this weekend, and it looks like it's gonna be another good one. Dr. Orr's wife wants to throw us a welcome party on Saturday, and we've got some other social obligations to fulfill!

Oh yeah, your Japanese for the week is "osewa ni narimashita." When someone takes care of you for any length of time, it's very polite to say at the end of a transaction or when saying farewells. Since it took about 30 minutes to get everything processed at city hall, Izumi-sensei said "Arigatou gozaimashita! Osewa ni narimashita!" when we took off.

Chat me up on AIM or Skype if you've got nothing better to do and I'm online!

Mata ne!