Oct. 28th

Japanese bakeries are the coolest. Where else in the world can you buy a sweet roll shaped like a Totoro?! (For those of you unfamiliar with Totoros, you need to see Hayao Miyazaki's film "My Neighbor Totoro". Its so cute!). Things are goin' good over here. I got some nice bruises in karate on Monday, we actually hit eachother! I look like a victim of domestic violence again ;P. On wednesday we spent the entire two hours working on our kata. Not many people come on wednesdays for some reason, even though it feels much like any other day in karate, but it can be nice since Braden and I can get what feels like private karate lessons on those days, hehe. It was so cold though. Yesterday was the first real cold day we've experienced here in Matsue, and for the first time since coming I had to break out my winter coat and scarf. The dojo was freezing, and even though doing kata helped warm up my body, my fingers and toes were numb pretty much the whole time :P. They didn't really warm up till we got home and I had some hot chocolate. Today its rainy again, still cold, and I'm already hoping winter goes quickly. Its not really pleasant to bike in the cold rain. We have rain jackets and rain pants, but the rain still gets in my face while I'm riding and makes it kinda hard to see. Spring can't come soon enough (and I have a while to wait :P).

Oct. 25th

Ah, Mr. Donuts. My favorite store in Japan. Good thing there's more than one in Matsue! :)

On Saturday Braden's friend Ed invited us over to Izumo to watch his Aikido dojo, and man was it cool! Braden and I both do Karate but Aikido is way different. Its a purely defensive style that excels at throws and defensive maneauvers. It was alot of fun to watch the black belts practice throwing themselves around, they really know how to fall well :P.

On Sunday we rode our bikes to church in the rain and got soaked, but everyone was really nice and welcoming and we had a good meeting :). During Relief Society (a meeting for all the women that comes after the main meeting and sunday school) there was a woman who spoke a little english and she helped translate the lesson for me, it was really nice ^_^.

I love my new cell phone, but so far the only person I have to talk to is Braden, so I text him all the time, even when he's right next to me. I have unlimited texting so I may as well take advantage of it right?! Lol. Still, it's nice to have it when I go out shopping, that way if I have a problem or get lost I know I can get a hold of him :).

Oct. 23rd

Melissa: Yesterday Braden and I got our brand spankin' new cellphones! They're so pretty! But the funny thing about cell phones in Japan is, they all look so much alike. They're all the same exact size and shape, its wierd! o_0. Only the colors and designs are different. I was telling my brother about it and he said it's probably cause in general the Japanese like to blend in, and not stand out, and I think that's very true. In general I see less diversity in Japan - the phones look alike, many of the cars look the same, the houses are all very similar, and as a result when you do see something different it tends to stick out. People who aren't Japanese tend to stand out too. Matsue is not nearly as diverse as Seattle, or even Idaho for that matter (which isn't all that diverse), and so whenever I do see a white or a black person they stand out to me. I kinda felt that way in Chile too, but here in Matsue its even more pronounced. Anyway, I love my cell phone, and the little charm that my sister got for me in Korea to put on it. Its all very kawaii (cute ^_^).

Braden and I got to learn some new stuff in Karate yesterday. The senpai showed us a new kata, called Tekki. We also reviewed some of our other kata. The senpai had Braden and I demonstrate Pinan Go to the other students, and they seemed impressed (that is one of our better katas I think) but then the senpai taught us some of the differences between our version of the kata and their version here in IKO Matsui. There aren't a ton of differences, but they are there and we do need to learn to do them their way. A few other things that are different in this dojo are the rules of courtesy. For instance, back home we only bowed to the shrine at the beginning and ending of class, and here they bow to it at the beginning and end and also between every break. Also, we are expected to greet and bow to every member of the dojo individually before and after class. And after you do any kumite or a drill that involves hitting another member of the dojo, afterwards you're supposed to bow, then shake hands and say "thank you very much". In general we have to be more polite and learn to bow more here. So far Braden and I have worked lots on our technique, I have a feeling our kata's are going to be really polished by the time we get back to Ellensburg, but so far only the more advanced belts have worked on toughness, that is, hitting eachother or the punching bags. We lower belts have worked almost entirely on technique, but we do it fast and energetically, so it's still a really good workout! Since we're still fairly new to the dojo I'm sure that some of these things may change over time, they're just my first impressions of everything. Oh, and I think its really cool that Braden and I get to have our names written in Japanese and put up in a traditional dojo name plate holder :). I really don't know what the thing is called. Its a big wooden frame thingy on the wall, and all the students have a little wooden plate that goes into it with their name on it. I'll have to post a picture of it sometime.

Let's see, what else has been going on around here? Mostly I just like to ride my bike around and go to the store, hehe. Japanese class is good too, I'm learning a little more everyday. Just gotta keep on practicing. Well, I guess I'll let Braden have a turn now :).

Braden: Hooray, I finally have classes now. First thing every morning I go to a focused Japanese conversation class where we all talk about whichever topic the teacher brings up. Recently we've been talking about a children's game called "Daruma San ga koronda" which means Mr. Daruma fell over, which is a Japanese children's schoolyard game, and the Japanese equivalent of Red Light Green Light. The teacher also invited other students in the class to talk about games they played as children. One of the German girls talked about a game she played as a child in Germany called "Black Man", where all of the children run away from the child who's "it" or "the black man", which I found quite hilarious. Another class I'm taking titled "Introduction to Understanding Foreign Cultures" or 異文化理解入門 was rather fun. We got grouped off with Japanese classmates to talk about each other's cultures and what not. Two of the guys I got paired with were rather funny to talk to. I could tell they were the type of kids who probably just goofed off in High School (which is probably why they're in Shimane U *cough*). One of them really liked System of a Down, which is apparently very rare in Japan, so we connected pretty quickly. The other one was an English Literature major so he asked me if I read Catcher in the Rye, to which I had to embarassingly answer no.
Hmmm, what else has been happening. Karate is really fun. So far Sensei Nakamura is pretty impressed with our form and technique. I'm pretty sure going to karate 3 times a week is going to make me lose weight, because just to bike there takes around 35 mins, and then there's the trip back. Just yesterday we saw the white belts doing some very strange katas that we've never seen before and apparently aren't actually a part of the standard Kyokushin kata, but Matsui has incorporated them..... or something like that. One we learned yesterday is called Tekki 鉄牙 (Iron Fang), which is from an Okinawan style. The entire kata is in Kiba Dachi and you make sliding steps to the right and then to the left, all the while do several different fist techniques. I'll have to show it to the dojo when we go home.
Oh yeah, another crazy thing happened. While Melissa and I were attending our church's area's large stake wide meeting called Stake Conference, I saw one of the Elders who were in my district while at the Missionary training Center! I hadn't seen him in like 4 years or something. He apparently lives right near us in the neighboring city of Izumo, participating in the JET program. So, we're probably gonna go hang out with him today, and he wants to show us his Aikido class that he's attending. I've always been pretty interested in Aikido, though I'll probably always stick with Kyokushin.
Sorry, I'm absolutely sure I have a lot more things to talk about on here, but I can't seem to think of them right now. Until next time, sayonara!!!

Oct. 20th

Melissa: Yesterday while Braden and I were in the mall we picked up our very first official Inkan (which we had ordered a few days before). In Japan, people don't sign their names to make documents legal, they stamp them with a name stamp with red ink. Ours says Benaito in Katakana, which is about as close as we're gonna get to our real name, hehe. While there I also bought a Japanese to English dictionary, which also includes an English to Japanese section, but unfortunately that section only uses Kanji for the Japanese, with no Hiragana to help me out :P. It might help some people if I explain written Japanese a little bit. In Japan they use three different written languages. Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. The first two, Hiragana and Katakana, are phonetic - that is, each symbol represents a set sound. All of the sounds (except n) are a whole syllable, not just a letter (In English we have m, n, k, etc. In Japanese the letters are na, ma, ka, etc). Hiragana is used to write only Japanese words - mostly particles, prepositions, verb conjugations, and a lot of grammar stuff. Katakana is used to write foreign words or names. Kanji symbols are Chinese characters, and each symbol represents a whole word or idea, rather than just a sound. Kanji is used a lot for nouns, verbs, and Japanese names. Sometimes in children's books or games there are hiragana symbols next to the kanji symbols to help children sound it out, since they haven't learned all their kanji yet (There are about 2000 kanji that are considered important for day to day living and reading. Obviously it takes years of study to learn them all :P). I have basically learned most Hiragana and Katakana, but my Kanji knowledge is less than that of a first grade Japanese kid :P. I can read things like sun/day, moon/month, (some symbols have more than one meaning as you can see), water, rice, fire, person, woman, child, etc.). I still have ALOT to learn.

After buying our inkan and dictionary we walked by the movie theater and noticed that The Borrower Arrietty by Studio Ghibli was playing, so we decided we'd splurge and watch it ^_^. It was soooooo good! Course, most anything by them is good. Everything they do is beautiful! The animation was gorgeous of course, I especially liked the way they animated the interaction between Arrietty and the human boy, they did a really good job of making him seem big and intimidating in the eyes of Arrietty and her family, even though he's really just a young man. The music was beautiful too, and kind of celtic sounding. I already can't wait for it to come out on DVD so I can watch it again! The movie's been out for a while, so maybe it'll come out on DVD pretty soon. There were only maybe four or five other people in the movie theater with us (which was probably a good thing, cause there was no one close by us to be annoyed with Braden constantly whispering to me the translation of everything being said :P).

Anywho, that was the highlight of my day right there. The day before in Karate we got another good workout, but I felt like I was doing pretty poorly. I was still sore from the last workout, and as a result my balance was out of wack, and we ended up going over a lot of kata, and since I was already out of practice, and since they do their kata a little bit differently in IKO Matsui, the Sensei and Senpai had to be constantly correcting me, and since my Japanese is terrible, that was a little hard for them to do, they had to mime everything for me :P. Most of the day I just felt embarrassed and nervous and sore, so I wasn't having the greatest time, but I'm sure that after a few weeks I'll be back into the swing of things.

I just remembered something else I did at the mall yesterday, I got a haircut. The last few classes in Karate I've been annoyed with my hair because even though it's in a ponytail when I go, the ponytail was long enough that it whipped me in the face everytime I turned my head quickly. I'm not very good at putting my hair in a bun, so I decided I should just get a haircut. I didn't cut it too short, just shoulder length, long enough for a ponytail but not so long that it hits me :). I didn't know how to tell the guy cutting my hair that I wanted layers, and neither did Braden, though he tried to look it up, but the guy must've figure it out cause he did put some subtle layers in my hair. I thought it turned out pretty well even though it was just a cheap salon in the mall that only cost about 12 dollars. I'll put some pics up a little later. Right now blogspot is telling me that image uploads are disabled for two hours due to maintenance :P.

Oct. 18th

Melissa: So on Saturday Braden and I were riding our bikes around Matsue looking for a rental store when we stopped at a stoplight and saw across the street two white guys riding bikes and wearing suits and ties. We looked a little closer and saw their black name tags and realized that it was the elders! (Mormon missionaries who are guys are called elders). So as soon as the light changed we went over to them and started talking (they were both american so I was actually able to speak in english) and we told them we had just moved there. Last sunday we had found out where the church was and when the meetings were, but when we got there nobody showed up. We figured that they must've been watching a rebroadcast of General Conference in another church building somewhere (which the elders later confirmed). We figured we'd just try again next week. Well it's a good thing we met up with the elders or we would've wasted another bike ride to the church building this Sunday, because they informed us that it was Stake Conference this week and everyone was carpooling to a Conference Center in Okayama. So they gave us the Bishop's phone number and we called him that evening and he offered to give us a ride to the conference. The next morning we went on a nice car ride back through the Japanese countryside, following almost the same route that our train had taken when we first went to Matsue. Eventually we left the highway that followed the railroad and took another road that went deeper into the mountains and to a city where the Conference Center was. The conference was really good, or at least what little I could understand, since it was all in Japanese of course :P. Braden translated some of it for me, and let me borrow his dictionary on his DS. We saw quite a few American missionaries there, and quite a few of them approached us to say hi, since we were one of the few americans there who didn't have missionary name tags on, so we kinda stood out. There was one other american guy that we did see that Braden had met during his mission five years ago. We were in a line to go in and Braden saw him a few feet away and called out to him and he turned around was, like, "Whoa!!! Elder Bennight?!?!?!" It was pretty funny :). It turns out he's staying in Izumo as part of the JET program, which is a town right next to Matsue, so that's pretty cool, he and Braden are probably gonna hang out sometime. Anywho, after the conference we rode home, and the Bishop's family shared their yummy lunch with us. It was sandwiches (YAY) and fruit and Onigiri (fancy rice balls with seaweed and seasoning in them).

Have I ever mentioned how much I love sandwiches? I really miss subway, and sub sandwiches, and salami on rye with swiss cheese (thanks, dad, for introducing me to the wonderful taste of salami on rye ^_^). In Japan they do eat sandwiches at times, but there aren't many places to buy sub sandwiches, and I've yet to find sandwich pickles in the super market. It seems the Japanese prefer cucumbers on their sandwiches, instead of pickles, which is good, but I still miss pickles :P. Anyway, after the ride home Braden and I had some fish and chicken and rice for dinner and watched one of the movies we rented.

We rented two Ghibli films that I had never seen before because they've never been released in the US. Lucky for me, the movies actually had english subtitles. They were called "Only Yesterday" and "I Can Hear the Ocean" (those are approximate English translations of the titles). They were pretty similar movies actually. They're both about people reminiscing about their childhood. In "Only Yesterday" a woman goes to visit some relatives in the countryside and thinks about her life in fifth grade, and the experiences that she had that affected what kind of person she became. In "I Can Hear the Ocean" a young man in college goes to his High School Reunion and reminisces about his last year in high school and the drama and angst that he went through because of a love triangle between his best friend and the girl that they both liked. They were pretty good movies, but I liked Only Yesterday better, mostly because I thought that the main girl in "I Can Hear the Ocean" wasn't very likeable (she's really kind of jerk for a lot of it and yet all the guys want her, why is that? lol). Now the only Ghibli movie I haven't seen, I believe, is Pom Poko. I think I've seen every other one ever made. (Most of them have been released in America, so I'd already seen quite a few before coming here). Anyway, enough of my ramblings about movies.

Today I don't have any Japanese class but I do have Karate to look forward to. And I gotta go shopping (feels like I always have to go shopping 0_o.) Lets see how well I do without Braden with me, hehe.

Oct. 15th

Melissa: Yesterday I went to a market with my neighbor Fumi to buy some fresh fruits and veggies, and in the back where the seafood was they had packs of fish for only a buck fifty!!! Thats right, about 10 fishes for only 150 Yen, which is around $1.50-1.75. Now, I normally don't eat fish, I'm not a seafood lover, but Braden loves it, so I decided I better buy him some since it was such a great deal (I guess that's normal in a town right next to huge lake that's apparently full of fish). The only problem was, these fish were fresh and whole, and I had no idea how to prepare them. So Fumi offered to teach me. After we finished shopping I stopped by Fumi's apartment where she taught me how to gut and clean fish and boil them for a yummy meal. So afterwards I went upstairs and gut a fish for the FIRST time in my life! Man was it GROSS!!!! I almost puked a couple times at the sight of all the fish blood. Man, I didn't even know fish had that much blood o_0. It was really awkward the first time, I really don't like to cut into things that still have a face 0_0', but I managed, and I got better at it as I went along. Now I'm sure there are some of you out there who have done this before tons of times, but for me it was unusual, so I thought it was noteworthy, lol.

Last night Braden and I got to participate in Karate for the first time since coming here. It was great!! We worked a ton on our technique, did pushups, and worked up a real sweat! This morning when I woke up I was all sore (its been a whole month since the last time we did Karate, we're getting out of shape!), but it felt great! Some of the techniques we have to relearn in a slightly different way though. Down blocks, for instance, are done differently. In our karate dojo in Ellensburg, which was a member of the IKO Matsushima (The one here is IKO Matsui) we started down blocks by putting both fists up by our heads and then bringing one down into the block while the other went into chamber (which means it went into the prep position for a punch, with your fist closed and up next to your rib cage). Here in IKO Matsui we start a down block with one fist by our head and the other blocking the groin area, then the one by the head goes down into the block and the other goes into chamber. We're both still getting used to it. When the sensei tells us to do a down block I immediately want to put both fists up by my head, then the sensei has to come over and correct me :P. But I'll get used to it eventually. Then, when we return to our dojo in Ellensburg, we'll have to relearn the downblocks yet again! lol.

So some of you out there already know that I'm a fan of movies by Studio Ghibli, especially the ones written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Well, here in Japan is a paradise for fans of Ghibli movies! In the mall I found a store that had a whole Ghibli section, with tons of awesome Ghibli merchandise, CD's, Books, Movies, etc etc, and man, I just wanted to buy the whole section!! Too bad I'm not a millionaire :P. There are a couple things I really want though, like the complete set of Nausicaa graphic novels and a Totoro doll. I'll have to save up for it :). What Braden and I did end up buying from the Ghibli section this week was an awesome CD of Ghibli songs done by a Ska band called Ska Flavor. It's an awesome CD! The latest Ghibli Movies, "The Borrower Arrietty" just came out here in Japan a couple of months ago. I can't wait for the DVD release, I really wanna see it!

Oct. 13th

Yesterday Braden went to his first day of class! And me too! I signed up for a free introductory Japanese class on campus and went to my first day yesterday. There are only a few students. Me, two chinese guys, a guy from Mongolia (I think), a woman from Indonesia, a guy from Sri Lanka, and a guy from Kyrgystan. ALL of them speak at least some japanese, except me :P, I feel like I'm the only one there who can't carry out even a simple conversation in Japanese, but I was happy to be there. Braden went with me the first day, I was too nervous to go alone, but now I've met everyone, and there's at least one person there who speaks really good english (the guy from Sri Lanka) so if I'm having difficulties I can ask him for help. The teacher speaks a little english, but not very much, which I guess is a good thing cause if the lessons are mostly in Japanese I'll have that much more exposure to it. Braden is taking a lot of Japanese classes this quarter. He's taking Japanese 1 and 2, Intensive conversation, Prep for JLPT part 2 (Or something like that :P. Its a prep class for a national Japanese test that foreigners can take), and he's also taking a Japanese culture class, and an Intro to Foreign cultures class. Sounds like a lot of work, but two of the classes (the intensive conversation and Prep for JLPT) are not for any credits, they're just kind of like bonus classes for now. I'm excited to learn Japanese, I can't wait till I can actually talk to people, but I gotta be patient :P (Never one of my strongest attributes, hehe).

The University had their school festival the other day which was fun. All the school clubs and organizations had booths out and they were selling all sorts of snacks and food, and there was music and lots of socializing. I bought some candied grapes and a chocolate covered banana. Braden bought some cool little fried ice cream balls. They were little scoops of ice cream covered in some sort of fried batter, they were really good. There were tons of people around, it was sort of like going to the fair, except just the food area :P. Oh, and by one of the booths was a girl dressed as a maid and holding a guitar. Lol, I wish I'd had my camera. Then nearby we passed a booth where there were guys dressed as maids, the poor things looked like they'd been put up to it by the president of their club. They were obviously trying to attract attention to their booth, and it was working, but one of the guys looked quite embarrassed! The next day (It was a two day festival) I saw a guy in the same area dressed as Pikachu from Pokemon. Lol, it was like a mini anime convention. I had mentioned earlier that I hadn't seen that much sign of the anime culture in Matsue, but then I realized you just have to go to the right places to see it. Like rental stores. The first time Braden and I went into one I was shocked by the sheer number of anime and manga (yes, you can rent comic books in Japan) you could rent there. The video game and movie sections were comparable in size to rental stores in America, but the anime and manga sections were huge! Too bad its all in Japanese, I can't read any of it yet!! Someday though, someday :).

Oct. 10th

Melissa: Happy Health and Sports Day everyone! Today commemorates the anniversary of the opening ceremony of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Its a national holiday to promote an active and healthy lifestyle. From the number of bicyclists I've seen so far in Matsue, I think the people here are doing a pretty good job. I'm in the computer lab of the international student house right now and I can hear loud music coming from the University, but I'm not sure what's going on over there. When I'm done here Braden and I are gonna check it out. Yesterday I downloaded Skype and called my family. It was so nice to talk to them! Braden and I still don't have our own phones. We're planning on buying cellphones at some point, but we were told it would be better to wait until we got our foreigner ID's and students ID before trying to sign up for a phone plan, and we still have to wait a week or so for those. Oh well, I have the internet in the meantime! The last couple days have been pretty uneventful otherwise. Braden hasn't started classes yet, so we've just been riding our bikes around the city, taking in the sites, and going to the store pretty often. Since everything comes in small packages and since we can only buy so much at once to take home on our bikes, we end up going to the store pretty often :P. Oh, last night we did do something fun, we went to a Welcome party for all the international students. Everyone brought some food (Braden and I brought some Japanese cookies that we bought at the store) so there was a large variety of dishes to choose from. There was sushi, curry, some sort of squash dish, a pineapple noodle dish that I really liked, lots of rice, and other dishes I don't know the names of. There weren't any serving spoons though so everyone just kinda dug into everything with their chopsticks. Hopefully no one has the flu or everyone's gonna get it, hehe. One of the Japanese students, Yoichi, is sort of the RA here. He's from Ishigaki, in Okinawa, which is one of the areas Braden lived in during his mission. He lives in the apartment complex with the other single students and is there to answer our questions and help us out and stuff. He's super nice, and musically talented too. Last night he played a Shamisen for us. Its some sort of traditional japanese stringed instrument that you play sort of like a guitar. Afterwards he started teaching one of the Chinese girls how to play it. He also brought a BIG bottle of Okinawan sake 0_o, and after the introductions and food alot of the students participated in a drinking game where they had to remember their neighbor's name or else they had to take a drink of sake. Braden and I just watched, hehe. So far all the other students here are really nice. They try to talk to me sometimes, but since I don't speak japanese very well yet, I just look at them blankly and guess what they're trying to say, lol. Some of them will try to use english after that, but only a few of them know english really well. I'm gonna study Japanese every day though, so hopefully I'll be speaking it before too long :).

Braden: Well, not too much has been happening recently. I'm still just kind of waiting for classes to start. We're kind of stuck in a limbo right now where we're still waiting for our Gaijin registration cards and my Shimane student ID to be done, and until then we can't get cell phones. Also, with the post office closed today, we can't withdraw any money. Mostly we've just been kind of laying around and playing games, watching anime and studying Japanese. I can't wait until I actually have a full schedule. I'm gonna work my absolute hardest on everything I am given. I absolutely can't wait until karate starts again. I've been feeling myself getting fat again, which is terrible. We need to start P90X again. Last night was cool. I got to talk to lost of international students at the dorms welcoming party. Well, I don't have much else to write about right now. Until next time!

Oct. 8th

Melissa: So today Braden and I went to the Kyokushin Dojo here in town. It was a lot harder to find in the dark and the rain then it was in the broad daylight 0_o, but we got there! We arrived just as class was starting so we just sat down and watched the warmup, and then afterwards the Sensei came over and talked with us. He seems really nice. His name is Nakamura Sensei and he's a 2nd dan black belt in IKO Matsui. He told us that since we're coming from another style, even though it is a kyokushin style, we'll need to start out as white belts, which is okay with us, it'll just be great to be doing karate again. It seems like so long since we did any real exercise (unless you want to count dragging over a hundred pounds worth of luggage across japan as exercise :P). The warm up was pretty basic, it consisted of a traditional kyokushin warm up with stretches, ankle rotations, hip rotations, etc etc, then they went over all the basic movements (which is called Kihon). After that the lower belts reviewed various movements and techniques while the higher belts pounded on punching bags to prepare for a tournament they're going to this Sunday. The last half hour of class was spent practicing Kata (Kata consist of many karate movements put together in a sort of choreographed way). One big difference I did notice between this dojo and our dojo back in Ellensburg. We didn't see a single pushup o_0. Oh the horror! Lol. Oh well, Braden and I will have to do some on our own to keep up our upper arm strength, hehe. So we got all our paperwork to join the dojo. Unfortunately they're not meeting again till next Friday because Monday is a Japanese holiday and the Sensei will be gone on Wednesday. Which is sad, cause we are so looking forward to starting, but I guess another week of waiting won't kill us. Now we're back home and starting to dry off. We wore ponchos which kept our upper bodies dry, but our legs and faces got soaking wet. I'll be so happy when the sun comes out again. It's much funner to explore the city when it's not raining!

Braden: Hello everyone! This is my first entry. Me and Melissa decided to do posts together whenever we make a post. So I will also be posting from now on. Today was kind of a downer. I took the Universities Japanese class placement test and found out that I suck at Japanese. I only made it to 2nd half Intermediate level, so I'll have to start out with a lower class than I expected. It's okay though, I guess, because I know how important the basics are, and I want to completely master them (Even though I'm thinking I did bad mostly because of my lower Kanji level). We bought of bunch more things we needed for our apartment like rice and a pot to cook it in. The most interesting part of the day was going to our Karate dojo and checking out the Japanese IKO Matsui Kyokushin. The warm-up was extremely routine and quick moving, as if they had done the same thing thousands of times. I talked to the Sensei (which was really hard because he had a very slurred and relaxed accent). We talked about the entry fee and how the payments work. They do automatic withdrawals so we'll have to make a bank account by the next time we go. I don't mind starting over from white belts again. I always kind of thought that would be nice while at the dojo back home anyway :D. Nakamura Sensei is going to give us our dogis as a present, which is pretty nice, even though I think it's just fair since the entrance fee is a hundred dollars.... Well, until next time!!

Oct. 7th

So this morning Braden and I are going to search for some inexpensive bicycles. We are going to be able to save a lot of money on bus fare with bicycles, thats for sure. It seems like we've already spent quite a lot on the public transportation system, and I don't want to spend any more than is absolutely necessary. There are tons of people here who ride bikes, at the college there are hardly any parking spaces for cars, but there are large lots for parking bicycles. Even the large grocery stores have big bike parking lots. The bikes here are kinda different looking. They're big, and the seats seem low, and every single one, it seems, has a large basket in the front, and most are locked by locking the wheel to the frame of the bike so that it can't turn, as opposed to locking it to a metal bike rack. I'm slowly getting used to way things are done around here.

One thing thats hard to get used to is sorting the trash. When we first got here, we, and the other international students, got at least two long lectures about how to sort the garbage and recycling, and we've all been given the handbook called "A guide to the separation and disposal of household waste" at least three times. That book's all over the place! So, as a result, my kitchen has FOUR wastebaskets. Each of them contains a specially marked waste bag. They are labeled "burnable waste", "non-burnable waste", "paper recycling", and "plastic recycling". And that's not all! We also have to separate the plastic and aluminum bottles, copy paper and magazines, milk and juice cartons, and cardboard. If your garbage isn't correctly sorted, then the garbage men won't pick it up. Instead they'll place a big sticker on it saying you did it wrong and you have to sort it again. And they DO check it. And they are very particular about it. It's kind of hard at first to know what goes where, but the guidebook helps (it even has an index), and we can ask the landlady questions too. Even though its kind of annoying I guess its really good for the city, and Japan probably has much fewer landfills because of it.

Oct. 4th - 5th

I finally got around to using the internet again! My poor laptop died, and the cord is three pronged, and all the outlets here are two pronged, so I can't plug it in. There are computers here in the international student house, but we didn't know the password for them till now. Surprisingly the computers in here are really old. They are still Windows XP and the keyboard kinda sucks :P. Oh well, at least it works! I've felt so disconnected from anybody without any internet, and I haven't been able to call either. I hope I can find an adapter for my laptop tomorrow. There isn't any internet in our apartment, but we can connect our laptops to the modem here in the lab. So far things have been quite busy, but eveyone here has been super nice and helpful. Today we went to City Hall to register ourselves as foreigners in the city, and we signed up for the national health insurance. Tomorrow I think we are going to open a bank account and hopefully buy cell phones and maybe bikes too. Oh, and cockroach killer. Man those things are nasty. Thankfully I've only seen a couple live ones, and a few dead ones, but we're going to buy some bug spray just in case we see any more :P. The other international students here are really nice. There is only one other american student, a guy named zack, and we've also met 3 french students, a couple of chinese students, and the couple who lives beneath us are Nigerian, which is really cool cause they know english! They are really nice, they have a little boy named Joseph and the wife, Fumi, is expecting another child sometime next year. There is a japanese student named Hiroki who has been helping us alot, and he studied in the states for a year or so [he's even been to Ellensburg] and so his english is really good. This is all good for me, cause I still know very little japanese, and its frustrating when I can't talk to anybody! But I am learning new words everyday, so hopefully I'll be able to communicate with everybody soon.
Tomorrow is orientation, and then hopefully braden can sign up for his classes. The other students here have already started school, but I guess the international students start later then everybody else. The University here is not too big, but not too small either, its pretty nice so far. We went to the cafeteria today and got some authentic japanese food. I'm still trying to get used to real japanese food. All the restaurants smell really funny to me, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. There are a few stores close by where we were able to buy some food. Everything here is so small though! Nothing ever comes in a gallon sized package, not even half gallons it seems. The milk, juice, even the laundry detergent, everything comes in small packages, even the fruit is small [at least the bananas are pretty small]. There is alot of cool technology here, but its usually small stuff, like the bus stations have electronic signs and the elevators too, and everything seems to talk. So far, surprisingly enough, I have seen very little sign of the anime culture. Everything is cutesy, but I haven't seen as many signs of anime as I thought I would. Just a few posters here and there, and I'm sure the book stores have lots of manga to choose from, but everything else is pretty normal, at least by japanese standards. Oh, and mom asked about the train ride so I guess I'll talk about it too. It took about five hours total to get to Matsue by train. We took a normal commuter train from Shiga to Kyoto [It started to get really crowded, but then it emptied alot just before Kyoto, I guess it must've been a business sector] and then we took the Shinkansen. The shinkansen was pretty cool, it kinda feels like you're on a low flying airplane, and the ride is pretty smooth. We took it to Okayama, which took about an hour. After that, we took a normal train to Matsue. It was an older looking train, and the ride was not as smooth, but it was still pretty fast. It was also the longest leg of the trip. Unfortunately, when we got on the train, we accidently boarded on the wrong end. We entered in the reserved seat section, and our tickets were for the non reserved seats, which meant we had to move ourselves and our heavy luggage down several cars to get to the right section. It was pretty difficult, since the aisle was narrow, and in between every car I had to pull my suitcase over a metal disk that helped the cars turn around the bends, and by the time we were done my arms were very tired. They're actually kinda sore today. Finally we arrived in Matsue and a couple of people from the university picked us up and took us to the apartment, and then some students took us shopping. Well, all in all its been an exciting and exhausting couple of days. I can't wait for us to get our bicycles so we can see more of Matsue. Right now we kinda have to rely on the employees and students of the international exchange office to give us rides and show us around town. I'll be sure to post some photos on facebook as soon as I get an adapter for my laptop.

Oct. 3rd

Today was really fun, Hiroko and her family took Braden and I to the city of Nara, the old capital, and showed us some of the major monuments there. We walked through the park, which is just chock FULL of deer, and all the deer are completely used to humans, and they just come right up to you hoping you have some deer food, which you can buy from various vendors throughout the park. And when you DO get some food, boy do they get excited! They come up to you in hordes and try to nip and tug and your clothes, hoping to get some food from you, and its really funny, esp if there are lots of them. It feels like they wanna eat YOU they way they keep tugging at your clothes, lol. After that we went to the Buddhist temple there, and they have the biggest Buddha statue in the WORLD, and I think its the biggest wooden statue in the world period, its HUGE. They have tons of other sculptures and stuff there too. One of the pillars inside the Temple has a hole in it, the same size as the Buddha`s nostril, and kids can climb through it and it`s supposed to bring them happiness. There were also several young women going through it too, so Hiroko told me to give it a try and I fit, so I guess that means I`ll have a happy time in Japan! After visiting the temple we went to a famous Shinto Shrine in the same area. There were gardens and beautiful lanterns everywhere, and there was a wedding going on so you could occasionally here the priests ringing the gong and playing the flute and other instruments. It was all very neat. After visiting all these monuments, we traveled back to Shiga (it was about 2 hours from Shiga I think) and we stopped in a large multi storied department store for some ice cream and ingredients for dinner. It was a really big store, and there were lots of people, but Braden and I were seriously the ONLY white people there, it was funny. Its surprising sometimes to see the difference in diversity between Seattle and Shiga, whereas in Seattle its hard to stick out, in Shiga we stuck out like sore thumbs! It wasn`t like that in Nara though, cause there were lots of foreign tourists. I`m glad we got to tour the grounds with a nice japanese family though, it made the experience all the more special. Right now I`m kneeling in Hiroko`s living room, while the family prepares some Miso soup, salad, and croquettes for dinner. Then we gotta turn in, cause we gotta wake up early to catch the early train tomorrow.

Oct. 1st - 2nd

We are currently in Shiga, a city outside of Kyoto, staying with a wonderful japanese family who are friends with the Bennights. We arrived in Tokyo about three in the afternoon japan time, and then we had to hurry through customs, inspections, etc and then had to catch a bus to the next terminal, then wait in more lines, and we just barely made it to our connecting flight to the Kansai airport in Osaka. Once we got there it was around 7 in the evening Japan time but it was about three in the morning our time :P. It was another hour and half by train and then another hour and a half by car to get to Hiroko`s house. It was almost midnight, but Braden and I had pretty much been up all night our time. We slept really well on our futon and the birds enthusiastically woke us up the following morning. One of them sounded exactly like one of Sally`s squeeky chew toys. But louder. It was actually kinda annoying but there were some other birds that sounded very pretty and one that sounded very... well, large actually. Shiga is out in the country, and Hiroko says there is a lot of wildlife out here, like bears and deer, etc. This morning we had eggs, sausage, and toast for breakfast, nothing too exotic, which is good to start out with in my opinion, we can eat the wierd stuff later! Today we are probably going to see more of Shiga, and then tomorrow morning we are catching a train to Matsue. It will be about a five hour train ride, but I`m looking forward to seeing the Japanese countryside :).