The Hair Cuttery

At least I saved some money eh?

UPDATE: PICTURES HERE! (still no internet)

Yesterday I got paid......WOOP WOOP!! YEAH! Ya-da-dey!!! I also set up my bank account and got my cash card ordered, yay. Yesterday I bought a Honko, which is a Japanese stamp with Kanji (a type of Japanese character writing that is very sophisticated). You could choose from all sorts of Kanji, ones for Peace, Love, Joy, courageous, child-like, all sorts of stuff. Well I wanted something with Love, because those of you who know me know just how much of a loving person, and how obsessed I am with adoring love itself that I would definitely want a love Kanji. I ended up choosing "know love". And for those of you who might be wondering why, its because I strive to "know love" in its purest sense everyday I wake up. How can I be more loving, considerate, patient, kind, respectful, humble, and loving? And it also represents that one day I will truly "know love" in its purest form, and thats the love Ill have with my wife *cue in..awwwwww* Hahaha, all jokes aside, its the truth, but lets move on to why all of you read this blog, for the *drumroll* FUNNY STORIES!!





*Cue gameshow music* And now, the moment youve all been waiting for, here is your host for "funny stories from Japan" JEEERREEEEMMYYYY WHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITE!





Hello! Hello all!! Well do I have a funny story for you today. Two days ago I decided to cut my hair. It wasn`t getting unpleasantly long, but it was mentally time to cut it. So I got out my clippers, put it on 2 and starting buzzing. I was doing a good job, I managed to have two mirrors and was able to see the back of my head so that I didnt just have a big patch of hair sitting in one spot that I didnt notice. After about, oh, maybe 20 minutes or so, maybe a little less, I was starting to shape up my hair and all was well. The haircut looked good. So I turned off my clippers and went to bed....yeah right. I told myself that I wanted it shorter. So I decided to put the clippers on 1 and started buzzing....*buzz...buzz* OH CRAP!!!!! THATS TOO LOW!!! Ah...CRAP! CRAP! I cant stop now! CRAP! OMG! WHAT THE HECK! AWWW HECKZ TO THE NAW! Shoot! Jeremy you just HAD to go lower didnt you!! GEEZZ!! Little did I know that on my razor, 1 was a HUGE difference from two. Back at my barber at home, 1 and 2 werent too much different, and one DEFINITELY didnt cut my hair as low as I just cut it.





So I start the arduous task of again cutting my entire head on 1 and trying not to miss any spots. All of a sudden *buzz..buzz..bu..b......* My razor runs out of battery. "Hey jeremy, why didnt you just plug it up in the first place and cut your hair with it plugged in?" Good question mr./ms. smart alec who isnt letting me finish the story and who should just be quiet now while I finish telling you. If I plugged in my razor while I had it on, it wasnt able to charge AND function at the same time. So now Im sitting there with BASICALLY a maze in my head. Mostly, for any of you who are familiar with black hair, since I started cutting it in the front it looked like a reverse fade. I had a little on the top and most of my growth in the back. So if you were to look at me from the back it would look like my fade is going TOWARD my forehead. So instead of th least amount of hair being in the back of my head and the most being toward the front, the most was on the back and the least was on the front or the top. Yeah, it was like that.





I let my razor charge up for 20 minutes and it lasted for about 20 seconds. Then I let it charge up more, and it lasted a little longer. By the end of the night, probably 3 hours later becasue I had to keep letting it charge, I was able to get it mostly even all around. I let it charge overnight, woke up the next morning and finished off what little bit there was. The good news is I did NOT go to school looking crazy. The good/bad news is I told some of my students/co-workers about what happend and they thought it was funny. I guess thats funny news because I thought it was hilarious myself. Unfortunately I have no pictures for you all, but lets just say when I walk I can feel the wind. Hahahaha!





I still dont have regular internet so I cant post pictures yet, but when I get it, Ill post some pictures of my time in Tottori. Well, I have to get going. I gotta be at work in 15 minutes. Ja ne.





-Jeremy aka theguywhoactuallycuthishairbutgotgreedyandalmostmadeamessofthings

The sorry police

Their car definitely didnt have a spoiler.

Ok so I dont plan on this being a long post because my space bar button is just big enough for me to put both thumbs in between and on either side of the space bar there is a button that changes my roman characters to hiragana, katakana, or kanji, japanese symbols. So (1) Im not able to type as fast as I would like, and two, I still dont have interenet (Im at a net cafe) and I prefer to write my blog entries on my own computer, especially when I have such a huge space bar, haha.

Ok, second week in Tottori is awesome. I finally got my bike fixed so people dont hear me riding rim and squeaking all the way from the other side of the street. Its much easier to peddle the bike now. All that stuff I may have mentioned about my legs getting more defined and stronger because Im on a bike, yeah...that was due more to the fact that I was riding on a flat tire and it was THAT much harder to get the bike moving. So now I am very appreciative that I can go over bumpy surfaces and not feel as if my bike is going to fall out from underneath me. Oh..the small things in life.

Secondly, I went to Toys R Us today!!! YAY!! And I bought a medium sized pokemon stuffed animal (Turtwig for those of you who are wondering) and....(drumroll), I bought Relakkuma!!! YAY!!!!!! Click on the word to see what Im talking about. Lets just say hes my new favorite bear of all time!!! Oh, and last but not least, I bought Street Fighter IV. I wanted to buy another game as well, buuut...it doesnt have English subtitles and since its an RPG (role playing game) I KIND of need to know what the characters are saying so that I can progress in the game. Shoot, it was hard enough just scrolling through the SFIV menu today to figure out where the options were, the survival mode, and pretty much just how to start up a fight. If for no other reason, I need to learn Japanese so that I can understand my games!!!

Story time!!! So on Friday night me and Becca went out and hung with some other foreginers who teach English here in Tottori as well, but not for Amity, I believe all of them are in the JET program. We didnt intend to stay out late because we work from Tues-Sat with Sunday and Monday off. So Saturday is our real going out night. But anyways, as we are biking back home we dart across a street that doesnt have a cross walk because our building was RIGHT there. One small, eensy weensy problem with this. Unbeknownst to me and bex, we did it RIGHT in front of a police car. yay...no... They blarred something in Japanese out of their speakers, turned their lights on, got out of their cars and stopped us from going to park our bikes. We were AT our building and we are looking at each other like `Ok, I know we just jay walked with our bikes, but seriously...`. So the police officers first ask us if we are married. And we tell them no, they ask us if we are dating and we said no, we are just friends, we work together. And then they RAN OUR TAGS!!! Apparently, our bikes have little license plates on them, more like stickers. But they still count as license plates. So, if you dont know at this point, me and bex did not buy these bikes, they were given to us by the people we replaced. If you dont see where this is going yet, let me fill you in. THEY THOUGHT WE STOLE THE BIKES!! But then we told them that Brady and Andrea GAVE them to us. Please keep in mind, one officer didnt know any English and the other one wasnt too far behind him. So once I told him that it was Bradys and did the motion for GAVE, he understood, but they still wanted to see me and Bex passports. We were relecutant, but hey, what were we going to say, no. Ah, but let me back up. So I asked the officers as best I could, did we do something wrong? And I pointed to the street, the odd thing is, they werent concerned with any wrong doing as far the street was concerned. So bex is looking in her dictionary and we are trying to find the word for `trouble` and `wrong` to get them to tell us what we did. Ok, so fas forward. They know we are from America, we go get our passports, they are talking on their walkie talkies and telling SOMEone our names. So what I think happened is that they let dispatch, or WHOEVER know that even though those license plates came up as Andre and Brady, now Jeremy and Rebecca had them. So ultimately I think we got our bikes registered in our names.

The odd part about this whole story is that no ticket was written and one of the police officers kept saying sorry, like HE was doing something to US. They were both really polite and really cool. To this day, haha, like it happened so long ago, it was 2 nights ago...but anyway, to this day I still really dont know what happend. Im thinking they pulled us because we crossed the street right there but then they asked us if it was our bikes before they ran our plates, so I believe maybe they THOUGHT we may have stolen the bikes because they asked Becca if that was even her purse. Once we showed them that we had the keys for the bikes and told them Andre and Bradys names and told them that we teach at Amity, I think everything was cool, and thats when they had us get our passports so they could let dispatch know our names for the specific license plates.

Apparently foreigners are targetted a bit more for stupid stuff that Japanese people would get away with. This is coming from friends of ours we`ve met here that have been here for a year or so. So all in all, I still dont know WHAT the heck was going on, but its a great story....now anyways. Strange...but those were the nicest cops ever, haha, who says `sorry` when they are the police!!!?? Good times. So no, Im not in jail in Tottori writing you this and telling you how Im stuck here for Jay Biking, so dont worry, all is well and good in Jeremyland and hes not an international criminial.

Oh and if you see some of these posts that have some spelling errors, give me a break, there seems to be no spell check on these computers as I write. Thanks peoples.

-Jeremy aka The Jay Biking Criminal

P.S.- Just in case you need a reminder, I wont be posting pictures until I get internet for my OWN computer at my OWN place again. Just an FYI. Be cool peoples.

First week

Lets use this baby sonic as a metaphor for my teaching now. In the future maybe Ill be a legend in my own right.

Ok, yes, I know I havent posted for a little while, but people, Im not going to have regular internet for a good two weeks. The place I am at right now is pretty awesome, they give you your own little private cubby so you can have some privacy. The place also lets you play video games and rent dvds and watch them in a mini-theater type deal, its pretty nifty. Yes, I just said nifty.

Ok, so lets back up to last week. As you may or may not know my school week goes from Tuesday-Saturday, so for those of you who still dont understand, that means my weekend days are Sunday and Monday. I know, very strange, but hey thats the way the cookie crumbles.

Last Tuesday I spent all day getting information overload while shadowing the guy Im replacing, his name is Brady. I learned how to clock in, clock out, do student evalutions, do attendance, learned about changes to my schedule, learned where all the lesson plans, materials, and props were. I learned about how to organize, how not to organize, and pretty much everything else they couldnt have taught me at initial training because I wasnt at my branch school yet.

Well on Wednesday I taught my first lesson. BOOOOO!! I did horrible. I went through my lesson and I look up at the clock and I still had 20 minutes left. Granted I had two cute kids who were adorable (I believe they were 7 and 8) but still, I was nervous, I wasnt going through the lesson the way I was supposed to and I almost totally didnt teach part of the lesson, needless to say I was unprepared (even though I thought I was). Bring in the next two classes, a parent class and a 14 year old student (two separate classes with the parent class coming first). That one I did well in, and the 14 year old student class I did well in. Heres the thing, I barely planned for those lessons (because of the type of lessons they were, not just because I was lazy) and they went the best. Go figure.

Everyday after that got lots better. By the end of the week I was really liking my students and really excited to be on my own teaching (because even though I was teaching last week, Brady was sitting in on every lesson).

STORY TIME!!! Ok so I have a few good stories about my first week and teaching and/or observing classes. If you dont laugh at these, please go to the fun doctor and ask him to prescribe you some awesomeness with a dash of humor. Thank you.

Lets start with the ever infamous Ryo (pronounced Rio, not Ryu like the street fighter character).

OH SPEAKING OF STREET FIGHTER!! I got to play Tekken 6 yesterday at an ARCADE!! OMG BATMAN! Its not out in the states yet!! It was SO AWESOME!! AHHH, so awesome!!! Ok now back to our regularly scheduled story.

So Rio is a cute little kid. Hes kind of shy, but hes got a good vibe for a three year old. As I am going through my lesson plan, doing the hello song, asking him how he feels with my Mario emotion cards and what not, hes sitting there not responding. Just looking at me with this look of `dude..I seriously dont care what you are doing right now so Im just going to look at you and try to figure out how the heck your skin turned brown`. I seriously was coaxing him to talk for a good 10 minutes. Finally, I got him interested in the review lesson with a little squeaky hammer and the review cards of animals he had went over last week. So I asked him `Rio, whats this? Hit frog` and he started to respond. YAY! I would try to give him a high five and instead he just hit my hand with the hammer. Then we moved into our colors and I had him tell me what the colors were. He wasnt to interested in this either, and at one point I got to brown and he didnt care to point to or tap the card so I tried to make it interesting and I pointed at my skin. Still no dice. Then I had him crumple up the colors so we could play trashketball. This game involves you finding a color on the ground, crumpling it up and throwing it in the trash. Well he LOVED this and he was telling me the colors and at one point I asked him what a certain color was and Brady told me he said `fruit`...yeah thats not a color, crazy kid. I gotta learn Japanese so I can hear what these kids say cause sometimes they are OFF THE WALL. Hilarity in a child. But anyway, we move on to a song called 10 Green Bottles, and I knock them off the wall when one `accidentally falls` and then we have 9. Well we go through this song twice and he is literally just chillin on the palms of his hands leaning back NOT interested. After that song I try to get him to do some other stuff and this boy literally had his head rocking backwards and his eyes popped open when he jerked himself back awake. At one point during the lesson I asked him something and the room was quiet, then from the adjacent room on the comptuers you could hear the sound of crickets. I kid you not people, truth is always funnier than fiction. Oh irony.

Then I had another class, and poor boy, bless his heart, he started crying during the lesson. Not because I was scary or he didnt like me, but he didnt want Brady to leave. It made me think about my own kids back in NC how they didnt want me to leave either so I totally understood. He cried for a good 15 minutes and Brady had to take over and teach him the lesson. I hope he does ok with me this week.

Another group of kids we had, I think they were all three. They were all over the place. One kid was climbing on my back, another was dive bombing into the carpet and another was just standing their quietly not really doing much. This class is going to be fun. I also had a class that I taught where I tought the emotion for surprised and this one kid made an `O` with his mouth but then like made his eyes go into the back of his head. Talk about dramatics. He was also dive bombing, and rolling on the floor during the lesson.

One girl I had would not stop jumping up and down. Check that, I was shadowing this lesson, but she was jumping everywhere. She actually resembled a girl that I had back at the daycare. But the girl back at the daycare was not NEARLY as hyper at ALL!

There was one class I sat in on Saturday which was the last class of the day. It was with four high school students. Their English level is pretty low, but after the class I managed to talk with three of them (who were all girls, the boy had left right after class) and we started talking about Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Ryokushen (relax bear) Hello Kitty, Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh, Japanese Baseball, I told them a little about football and anything else we could talk about so that when they see me next we`ll both be comfortable. They are cool kids.

And lastly, the cutest kid of all time, well at least at my school. Her name is Saki, and its pronounced the same way we pronounce the drink, but apparently we pronounce the drink wrong so NO, she is not named after the famous eastern alcohol. She is really cool because shes so stinkin cute. There is another boy in class with her and they go to school together, so they are a joy to teach. When I did my high fives with her, instead of her high fiving me back with her hand she just took one finger and touched the middle of my palm. I dont really have a crazy story with her, but Im sure in time there will be at least one more.

Oh I almost forgot, I teach this one kid who is really smart, but he is very...oh whats the word...particular. When I had the CD player plugged in for use later in the lesson, he said (in japanese) `Stop wasting electricity` and he gets up in the middle of the lesson and goes to unplug the CD player. Hahaha, that was great!

But yes, I am excited about teaching all my students. Keeping up with everything that I got in the information overload the past two weeks, thats another story. But in time I know Ill be able to do very well with everything if not master it.

One last funny story. When I went to this dance club I met these girls, who came up to me and started talking. I really need to learn Japanese because just TALKING to them was a chore, it was fun, but it was not easy. Me and this one girl both slowed our speach down as if that was going to make a difference. If we dont know the words it doesnt matter if you say it fast or slow, haha, we still wont understand each other. But I did manage to get a few things across, charades and pictionary work when you arent playing the game as well, haha. But whats funny is at a couple points in the night I would ask her something and then she would say, `YES WE CAN` or if she said `America?` I would say `yes` and then she would say `YES WE CAN`. Great times.

Ok, I know that was a lot, but I dont have regular internet yet. Be cool everyone.

-Jeremy aka The guy who really needs to learn Japanese...or at least a couple of pick up lines.

Tottori-Shi, Tottori

Who is this character and why a I next to him?
Find out HERE

Hello from Tottori-Shi, Tottori (you can just say Tottori for short). I have been here for a day now and I must say, it is very quaint, pretty quiet (compared to Okayama) and even the random kids I pass in the streets say hello to me.

Me and Becs went around and explored. We went and applied for our Alien Registration Cards all by ourselves without the help of our wonderful manager Yummi. So I'm sure she will appreciate that. We also went and shopped a bit. I some stuff from a stationery store such as a briefcase, some pokemon stamps (stamps that you actually dip in ink and stamp onto something, not postage stamps) and some other misc stuff that I may need for my school.

Funny story; while we were in the store there were these two little kids who were going up and down the stairs. I believe their moms were upstairs in the store and they kept coming back and forth. Well I decided to say hello to them, just a quick "Hello" and they said "Hello!" and then for the entire time me and Becs were in the store they were running around and would say "Hello!" and then dart away and hide behind something, or go running back upstairs. I guess there is a sign on me in some universal language for kids that says, "I'll play with you as if I was your age too." I guess God wrote it on my forehead or something for ALL children to understand. It was very interesting trying to communicate to people today, but in the end me and Becs found what we were looking for...pretty much.

I also went to the 100 yen shop and among other things I got a blank CD. Why is this important you may be asking yourself. Well, I'm so glad you asked, allow me to answer; while Yummi was driving us around Tottori yesterday to get our luggage and what not she had Ne-Yo playing in her car. So we got to talking and she told me she liked Rihanna and Eminem as well (dude, I have such a cool boss). So me, being the ever so nice gentleman that I am, informed her that Ne-Yo had a new cd and I'd make her a copy. Well she really liked that. But then I remembered, I have no blank cds....so I told her once I got a blank CD I would make her a copy, she was very excited. Now I have one and I'm going to make her a CD..yay me!

My apartment is pretty cool. As you can see in the pictures it's pretty spacious. But if you'll notice, my living room is my bedroom because I have to put a little thin mattress down everynight to go to sleep on. Thank God I brought my own pillow, the little pillow they gave me wouldn't have cut it for too much longer. Feel free to comment, comment, comment on the Picasa web albums. You have to have an account with google, but it's free. And if you don't want to comment there or don't know how or SOMEthing, just comment on the blog, I'm enjoying the fact that a lot of you are enjoying reading my blog. Alrighty well I'm about to go eat some Sushi...seriously, I'm not just saying that.

-Jeremy aka The Brown Bear

Big man in a little country

That guy up there..yeah that's me...oh wait you didn't know?

So last night was the end of my training and what do you think I did? I stayed in like a good little boy and studied and studied and did lesson plan after lesson plan after practice after practice and....yeah right. I PARTIED!

Our trainers took us all out to dinner and we did a family style dinner where they had food set on the table and we just took our share. It was so much fun. For the parents who may be reading their children this blog post, please substitute some of the following words with more vivacious childreny words ;).

A lot of people got drunk. Haha. I had some drinks myself, but I wasn't bad. I tried Sake for the first time, and it reminded me of some wine I had back in the states. It's pretty good, although I believe you were supposed to sip it and here I am taking shots of it, haha. But anyway. After the dinner with our trainers and ALL 14 other people I trained with, we decided to go to Karaoke. Now, for those of you who don't know, in Japan, or at least at this place (called Big Echo), instead of singing on a stage at a bar in front of everyone, you reserve rooms and you all go in a room and pick out your songs and of course, you sing.

Ok, now that we have that out of the way, let's back up. So we are ALL outside of Big Echo and there are a lot of Japanese people out front (well..duh..becasue we are in Japan, but trust me, this is going somewhere). As we are all standing out in front, acting a fool (i.e. such as me jumping on Chris' back and him running through the street and us getting honked at and almost hit by a car, well..maybe not ALMOST...it was far enough a way to dodge...obviously) we start saying HEYYYYY and talking loud and stuff to all the Japanese people. All of a sudden they start chanting

OBAMA!

OBAMA!

OBAMA!

And I screamed out YES WE CAN!

And they screamed YES WE CAN!

YES WE CAN!

YES WE CAN!

And they thought I was the coolest thing since the invention of the cell phone and I was SO happy that I look like my president, haha. I felt so famous. I want to call Obama and just thank him for making me so famous in Japan. So we are yelling with the other Japanese people and taking pictures and taking video (which I hope to have for you all soon, it was on someone elses camera on both counts) and just having a good time. All of a sudden this Japanese guy comes out with an Obama MASK on and people start chanting "OBAMA!" again. So when the guy took the mask off I grabbed it from him and put it on and started posing and people were taking pictures and I felt so...Presidential...or at least famous like a President.

One of my friends, Tom kept saying, "Man! How does that make you feel?! Isn't that awesome! This is so awesome!" And he was absolutely right, I'm getting so much attention because I'm tall and black, but I'm also getting more because Obama is in office. Just today in Tottori (which I will have pictures of my apartment up later this week, no specifics as to when yet), at the grocery store I met one of the students that goes to Amity (yes it's a small town) and I was with one of the women who work at Amity who speaks Japanese and the little girl said something to her mother in Japanese and my co-worker translated for me and said, "She said you are on TV." And yes, yet again, this little girl thought I was Obama. I guess it really was a good decision to cut my hair. I didn't know if I could...but YES I CAN! ;)

And then later that night we all went out dancing, and their clubs here dont close until around six. I went home about four and it was still poppin. I danced with a couple Japanese girls and they were really diggin my style (yes, I just said that). I did the worm, I went back into a bridge, I was doing all sorts of stuff. I had people jumping up and down with me when they played "Arab Money," it was so much fun.

Well, that's all for now, my apartment is awesome but that posting is to come later. Until then.

ja ne (see you later)

-Jeremy

aka

OBAMA! OBAMA! OBAMA!

THE KIDS!!

I feel like I'm SUPER BABY MARIO! I can fly! I can fly! YAY KIDS! YAY!! YESSSS!!!

Editors Note:

To all my kids at the daycare, just because I'm excited about my new students doesnt mean I havent forgotten about you guys. I love you all too :-D

Hello everyone!! I am in my last and final day of being in Okayama, Japan and then tomorrow (or Saturday, for those of you in the U.S....which is practically all of you) I will be leaving to Tottori Amity (Tottori is the name of the city and Amity is the name of the school I will be teaching).

But, before that, I must tell you about today. Today we all (all 15 of us) did lessons for either 1 or 2 4-5 year old students. Yes, we actually taught the children today!!! It was a little frightening because up until this time we had been teaching each other with the trainers sitting and evaluating us letting us know what we needed to work on. My downfall this week has been explaining/talking too much!!! Imagine that!! I was transitioning too much (I'm a writer, what can I say) and I wasn't allowing the lesson to flow.

BUT today! In front of the kids I nailed it. I had two boys, I think who were around the ages of four and five (just like my kids back home! Hey you guys!! And girls!!). However, their names were a BIT different. I had one boy named Akihiro (AH-KEE-HERO) and one boy named Daigo (DIE-GO). They were fantastic.

My lesson involved teaching them foods (Chicken, Noodles, and Soup). However, that wasn't ALL of the lesson. In the beginning of the lesson I had an ice breaker if you will and asked them how they were doing today (Did I mention they were awesome?). And as I was teaching them different emotions I used non other than the infamous MARIO! Baby Mario to be exact (if you don't know what he looks like, look at the picture at the beginning of the post). I pulled him out and asked, "Who's this!?" and Daigo energetically yelled "MARIO!!" At that point I had them. We were spinning around like airplanes, racing to touch the vocab cards and singing throughout my whole lesson. It was wonderful and it really built my confidence heading into next week where I will be shadowing and teaching my own lessons to the children at my branch school.

During my evaluation; the trouble spots that I have had the past couple of days I fixed (SCORE!) and as always I was extremely energetic and positive and just having as good of a time as the kids were. Apparently at my branch school I may here them refer to me as Kisabi or Kiwashi or SOMEthing..I'm not sure what the actual word is, but either way it means "Bear." Not because they are scared of me, but literally because I am tall and brown. Haha! And it's even funnier because a girl here nicknamed me Jer Bear (before I was told that I might be called a bear). But I did have to break the news to her that she wasn't the first to call me that, but she still calls me that as if she was the first to call me that.

Oh, one quick thing, I'm sure all of you will want to see pictures of my children on my blog. Since I have a high respect for the company and the students families I am teaching I will NOT, I repeat will NOT be posting pictures of them on my blog out of respect and the fact that the recruiters told us that we shouldn't.

I can't express to you all how comfortable and at peace I feel here. It is a feeling like no other. I am extremely ready (well maybe not PREPARED but at least ready) for what this next year has to offer. It is going to be very busy and it is going to be very fun. And who knows, I may be here longer than a year, but now is not the time to be thinking either way, I'll cross that bridge when it comes. Right now I am just enjoying every second I have in this wonderful place full of excitement, positivity, optimism, energy, respect, consideration, and politeness. I hope EVERYone gets to feel like this at least once in their life, preferably all the time. All I know is that I feel like this and I never want to have it slip away, ever (and no I'm not saying I have to stay in Japan the rest of my life, I'm just saying I love this feeling and want to keep it forever. K? Ok. lol).

Tonight I am going out to dinner with my trainers and all of my fellow teachers. It's kind of bittersweet because although this has only been a week, we have literally been around each other for at least 18 hours a day. I definitely have a strong network if I ever need to go to Britain or Canada or even come back to Japan (one of my friends has a girlfriend who is from here, but she is currently in another country at the moment).

Well, I can't think of anything else to add. No pictures as of right now (I mean guys, I took over 100 and posted them the last time, enjoy those, haha). For now, it's time to just enjoy tonight and not think about anything other than that training is over and now it's time to celebrate one more time with my friends before we all part ways. I think we are going to karaoke.

"Fly me to the moon...!!!"

-Jeremy- The Japanese Punk Rock Star

I'm in Japan everyone!!

A friend of mine took this...I promise it's not photoshopped or anything...we are outside the Okayama Castle
I'm so Happy!!!! Yay Japan!!

The Pictures are HERE (click here)

I don't have internet readily available to me since I am not in Tottori yet. So I won't be able to post consistently for a little while, but I'll still try.

In one word my time in Japan thus far has been...comfortable. It's like a friend of mine said, "It's almost as if they just took Japan and put it in the United States." I know it's too early to tell, but so far I feel at home in a strange way.

The plane ride, although it was fourteen hours did not feel like it whatsoever. There was this one baby that kept getting on my nerves because he was crying a lot. ESPECIALLY when I was trying to sleep, it felt like every time I was drifting off he would cry at the highest pitch imaginable, which was extremely unpleasant. The ride was fine, my computer held up for a solid four hours, so I was very impressed with that. There was this guy a couple rows ahead of me who was playing his PSP for a good four hours. And then when his PSP died he had a SPARE battery. I mean, I thought i was really into video games, I don't know if I've ever played a game for four hours straight (that I wasn't writing a review for that had a deadline). It was beginning to hit me that indeed, I was heade for Japan.

As I stepped off the plane, customs was a breeze. I didn't listen to a song because I was too concerned about going in the right direction and getting to where I needed to. The customs guy didnt even ask me ANY questions, it was great. I got my bags (all three of them) and headed to where I met my Amity representatives. And then I met up with Becca and the rest of the crew. Me and Becca gave each other a hug like we hadnt seen each other in years, when in fact this is the first time we've ever officially met.

We took a train to Osaka and then one to Okayama. We took a regular train and a bullet train. On both trains it barely felt as if I was moving. It was actually an extremely calming experience. I started to get to know the people who I would be trainging with and soon realized that a lot of them were similar to me and then it started to make sense. We are all in Japan for at least a year teaching kids...we've gotta be off the wall in SOME kind of way. It really hit me as I was sitting on the bullet train and the two guys next to me (both of whom are going to be teaching English at another school) were playing there handheld games. One a PSP and the other a DS. And the guy sitting directly to my right LOVES Final Fantasy VII...yeah I'll fit right in.

As I was on the regular train I noticed that two Japanese young women had these Universal Studios bags that also said "Fantastic Land." And I got REALLY excited, started smiling, and started to point (which I shouldnt do, but apparently it wasnt a big deal because of what happened next); and the girls started to smile and laugh and wave at me. And I was thinking, "All right! Japanese girls waved at me!" So I started waving back and smiling and we had a good time for that 30 seconds just laughing and waving, haha.

As we got to our dorm rooms a few interesting things were pointed out to me. One, if I use the shower I have to turn on the heat for the shower to get the water warmed up. Two, the electricity to my dorm is not ALWAYS on, I have to use the key that was used to get in my room to power on my room. Three, the room was more spacious than I thought (I have a roommate, but only for this week) and four the comforters are AWESOME. It's like they imported a cloud right to Japan for me, wonderous.

I actually managed to stay up all the way until it was time to go to bed and instead of going out or anything I decided to just go to bed at a decent hour and plan to sleep in. The next morning my roomate was up way before me and I got to thinking, "Maybe I should get up because it's probably close to eleven, I don't want to miss the whole day." So I got up and asked him, "What time is it?", and to my surprise he said, "8:30"...yeah..wow.

So I got up and originally me and him (his name is Andrew) were going to just go explore the city. We were going to go to the Korakuen Garden and the Okayama Castle. Then I decided to go see if Becca and Jessica wanted to come with us, and they were on board, before we knew it everyone in our group (save 2) were walking with us to the garden and the Castle.

We had an AMAZING time exploring the city and of course, I was the class clown, wait until you see the pictures. We went to a lot of side shops, we went to a pet store, we went to the 100 yen shop (dollar store) we went to an arcade (only a small one), we took pictures of EVERYthing, and I mean EVERYTHING, even the stray cats and the seagulls, wonderful stuff. Brandon and Becca dressed up in Kimono's and we got pictures of them as well, that was a fun time.

When we sat down to eat on the way to the Castle I got something that I forget how to say in Japanese. It was Eggs and Chicken with rice. it was SO good. The meaning of the food in Japanese means "Mother and Child" so mom, I've been thinking of you :-D. AND! As I was using my chopsticks the woman who was serving us came up to me and told me that I was using my chopsticks well. That made me feel GREAT like Frosted Flakes!

Later that night I went get something to eat and I passed this group of Japanese girls (who were Middle or High School students I think) and they said, "HELLO!!" and I said, "Hello!!" And they started laughing.

Right now it is pretty cold although it was a great temperature yesterday. Today is the first day of training and I'm writing this at about 8:20 AM, it's 6:20PM eastern time for you guys the day BEFORE. Just to let you all know.

I am really excited about everything. I don't know why, but I feel very very very comfortable in this foregin country. Everything is so bright, so positive, so optimistic, so happy, every advertisement is smiling and colorful and so far the peolple are extremely nice. It is a much different feelign than when I went to Paris. I don't feel as if I'm a foreginer, part of me feels at home in a strange way.

Hopefully all of the pictures keep you all satiated for a while. I don't have regular internet access yet so I won't be able to post much. But I am posting over 100 pictures so I'm sure they will keep you entertained until I go to Tottori.

Until next time.

-The Japanese Punk Rock Star