The Eye of Patrick

Today was an interesting day to say the least. I woke up in the morning for classes as usual. But the weather in Japan has been poor lately, like we have been having a lot of typhoons. So I did not feel like going to school and I missed my morning classes. But then I would later learn that classes were canceled. So I did not have to go to school in the afternoon.

This meant I was able to stay home and do nothing. Well I decided to do something and that was to order pizza. I think since coming to Japan i had not had American style pizza, and as a result the first piece i ate, i made sure to suck in all the grease. Normally i would be disgusted by such behaviour, but i did not care The pizza was expensive i realized after, i think we paid 6900 for 3 large pizza’s. But every once and a while it is worth it to go out and enjoy food from back home. Don’t get me wrong, i really enjoy Japanese food, i think i have gotten hooked on eating rice every day, but sometimes i just miss the variety i can get back home. So when the chance arises and I can get good western food i will strike.

Then after that i spent about 2 hours researching my trip to South East Asia. At Christmas this year i will be unable to stay in my dorm and to find other places to stay in Japan would be too expensive. Well that is the fake reason i give myself, the main reason is that i want to see South East Asia while i am here. So i spent time researching and seeing what costs would be like. I have read many places were you can supposely have a good time for 20 dollars a day, and i can not believe that. But hopefully it is true as i have decided to budget 60 dollars a day. This will be my first solo trip so i am fairly nervous and excited. I hope I do not run into to many problems, but even if i do, that can be a learning experience.

The countries i have decided to visit are S’pore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Cambodia. I think it is possible as they are all very close together and I will have 25 days to cover them in. Possibly longer if my father does not decide to visit me.

This Friday in Kyoto there will be a fire festival, it is a festival where they burn stuff on the side of the hill. Supposely it is very interesting, i am mostly going to it so i can take pictures. I love how there seems to be so many new and different places to take pictures.

Well i am getting tired so i will go to bed

Post comment if you want

Patrick

Above: A simple shrine that I found in a street. I love the beautiful but simple nature of it.

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Above: The Danjiri, look at all those people, you can almost see the excitment.

Above: Just a street in the part of Osaka we went, you can see how narrow those streets are.

Above: This is the Danjiri that my teacher supported and the one that we went back to the club how to celebrate with. The old guy he has such interesting facial expresions.

Above: Some local childern we met on the street, they helped to give us directions. I love the inocents in them

Above: Some of the people involved in the danjiri matsuri, they were funny, and friendly. I ahd to take the picture as the teacher ran out of film.

Sunday nite and another day without my computer, i am starting to create a rythem for such an evironment. It just means rather then waste my time doing endless chats and continous news reading i spend it living in the real world. This weekend was one of those weekends that reconfirmed my faith in Japan. On Saturday i went to an Danjuri festival near Osaka. It was with my Japanese anthro class. My roommate was suppose to come too as he is in the class, but he had to “study” so i went alone. Which was not a problem as i wanted to remember Japan for what i accomplished rather then staying back in my dorm hearing others stories. So i arrived at the train station worried that i had not caught the right train, then i ran into an Italian from my class, he was nice and friendly, which was a change from the stupid italian who is in my Contemp. Business class. We ran into our teacher, and he gave us a quick run down of what was expected and stuff. I was slightly worried as i am a shy person, so to go into a new situation alone was scary as it seemed everyone was in groups. (I am uploading pictures as we speak) We made a tour of the area and he told us lots of history as he had lived there for a very long time before. Supposely it was the Yakuniku capital of Japan because it has the largest number of Yakuniku resturants in Japan. (Yakuniku Japanese BBQ where you cook the food in front of you) So as we walked the street you could just smell the meat and wish you could go in. But we had made plans to eat at 6 so i decided to wait. He took us on a tour of Korea Town and that was interesting, as supposely Korea Town is only a new thing. Like it was there before, but it was only until recently was it socially acceptable for Koreans to show pride in their heritage. So that when they started to make offical Korea towns, the local people some of them got upset, and so rather to flame more flames they decided to change it from a Town to a Korean Street. But slowly the social status of Korean’s changed and as a result it was able to offically become a town. But then even then, only 2 of the 3 areas that the government wanted to name Korean town’s became Korea towns as the other areas did not want to be associated with Korea. The Korean’s in Japan are an interesting bunch of people, as they have been here for a while, but even then they are not considered Japanese to a degree because in Japan, the term Japanese is usually associated with race, rather then birth place. Then we went to a Korean resturant for dinner as we were all getting hungry and needed to get some food to fill us up. So the teacher took us to a resturant, where it was different then what i was expecting. I was expecting a korean bbq, but we got instead was a more seafood style resturant. We had squid with noodles, octopus and other sea creatures. It was nice and interesting. I had a beer with a teacher which was an interesting experience as i have never had a drink with a teacher before. But many people were drinking so it was not a problem. Then… after that we went out in to the streets as the festival was really starting.

“A danjiri is a traditional type of wooden float, decorated with various ornaments, that is drawn around the town during festival days. Depending on the festival and locality they may also be called dashi, yamagasa or yatai. Around 30 massive floats made from unpainted wood play the major role during this festival, and, it is known as the Danjiri Festival.

From early in the morning to late in the evening of September 14th, groups of young people draw around the town the floats that are the pride of the neighborhood in which they live. If they should run into a danjiri from another neighborhood, the participants compete to ram the floats into each other in encounters. This is why the Danjiri Festival is often referred to as fighting festival. “

It was such an interesting and awe inspring experience i must say… it made me feel like i was in Japan, as you saw all these little kids and adults celebrating the festival, with such a live and exciting spirit. My teacher made an interesting point, that may be the reason that they are able to let there childern go so crazy is because Japanese culture is so rule driven that when they test the limits of society that everyone knows where it is, they are able to stop. This was great… i feel felt a part of Japan. (seeing my pictures won’t finish tonite i will show them later)

But after the festival we were invited to the club house of one of the Danjiri floats and there we had food, WOW is all i can say, the food was some of the greats food. They had chicken nuggets that were made of white meat, fries, sausages, and so on… i was amazed and other stuff.

I was more amazed at the hospitality, they were so friendly to us, i felt bad as i could not really communicate with them. But even then just smiling and laughing and stuff we were able to have a great time. We chatted about our ages, there was an old guy there who asked how old he was, i said 28 and he thought it was funny haha… i was only joking with them.

I seriously can say since coming to Japan, this is one of the most happiest japanese moments i have, not that the other moments i have experienced were not great, but i do not know, something about being so close to a festival made it seem so real. So yes… i want to go to another festvial

Today is friday… updating my journal again. I got home from golf club a couple hours ago, and i feel exhausted, too exhausted to go out. It is a friday but i lack the energy to even think of going out… how sad am i haha…. But it is ok, today i finished my japanese tests which lasted about a week. It was 4 tests in total, 2 for each class. So it was a lot of studying… but it was good, as i said before i was not taking my jaapnese too serious, but the last few weeks i have and i am making slow but meaningful progress… and i will make even more. Golf was interesting today as it was suppose to be weight training, but we did not do weight training we played baseball, it was fun to play for fun… i got a hit on my first try which was nice, as i am always worried… when i play sports. Then we played cops and robbers, and that was fun, me and my friend Taku-san were really bad at the game, every time we thought we had won, you know with only one left, someone would come out of no where and hit the can and we would have to start over again… finally we won hehe… and we quit. Then there was team pictures, which i did not think i would be in becuase i had only joined the team a few days ago, but they let me get in it, which was kind of them, and made me want to come to more pratices, it was very tiring That is why i am here. I will go to a festival tomorrow, for my class, i will take many pictures. I have decided to add a new part to my journal.

Reflection on Japan

What did i notice today, humm… that Japanese people relative to western cultures are more willing to dicuss personal matters. I made i have had discussions with people i just met regarding topics like sex, to drugs, it is amazing. But then at the same time, there is a more hierachical society, like in my golf club, like the power of positions is more definite. I think the reason that this may be the case is that in Japan there is a less of a worry to embrass yourself, i mean if you look at TV or people you met you notice this, they are less worried to do karoake even when they are bad. It is interesting to richness i have discovered in a culture that is percieved to be one of the more conserative ones

Hello All,

So today… i have a lot to write about.

Today… i woke up early as i had to go school to prepare for my test in Japanese. So i went to school and met my partner who then praticed with me for our converstation. We had to read a dilolugue and answer some questions. It went ok… but still i wish i could prepare more, kevin made a good point, he said even though i did not get them all right, i know it was not because i did not know it for the most part, but because i was nervous i must agree. Then i had to read a text for another class, that was horrible, i was so nervous as i had not prepared for that text so i did not know what to do, so i am hoping she gives pity to me.

After that… i came back to my rez and met Kevin and others and they were watching baseball game, i am not saying i like baseball, but when other people are watching i do not mind watching it. But the Yankees won, they are now my team… i do not know haha… we will see, but 1 game they win, hopefully more to come.

Then… back to school as i was having lunch with my speaking partner, which then i realized that the person i had saw earlier in the morning was her friend who has come to lunch with us before, it was nice, and i felt bad for not recongizing her.

Then…. i had to leave that early as i was going to meet the student teacher in my class, who was going to help me prepare for the test tomorrow. I feel very grateful to know her as she was taking time from her life to help me, so that was great.

Then…. class…. boring

then… golfing! I finally joined the golf club, yeppy! hahah… i never believed i would. I must say i am very happy to join the golf club… I met Taku who is the head of the golf… and we went and got on the school bus to get to the other campus so that we could hit balls. Along the way there i met other people who were members and we talked, i tried to use as much Japanese as i could, but it was slow… then we go to golf place and i will write more tomorrow… as it was fun…

ja-ne

pato-chan

My long weekend is almost over, it was a interesting one i must say.

Friday was the day in which i decided to have my birthday party, the reason i held it on Friday was that Monday was a school day and i was unable to find time to do something with tests and exams that week. So we decided to have it on Friday, which i think was a good decision because after a long week of studying it was once to cut loose and relax with a nice game of bowling. It seems bowling is one of the cheaper things you can do while in Japan, for about 700 ￥ you can have about two hours of fun. My first game was not that interesting as I was only able to bowl a 92. It seemed everyone was fairly poor on the first one, many gutter balls were thrown as people were warming up, this made me feel comfortable with my poor performance. My problem was that i was throwing nice strikes and spares but they were never in a row so i never got the extra points from doing that.

But we then decided to throw another game as it is not that more expensive i think. This game was amazing i must say, as everyone someone gained super-human bowling abilities and was throwing strikes and spares like it was no big deal. Some would throw it with spin and others with speed. Whatever it was they were throwing nice shots. I improved my score from 92 to 112 which was an amazing improvement for me and many people around me were able to throw 140-160, and a few were in the 80s. Which was not a poor showing.

It was a nice group of people, very relax and open minded, i hope we are able to go bowling again.

Then afterwards we went and played video games, and stuff, it was fun to release a few rounds in “house of dead” and “Time Crises III”. My friend Paul played a boxing game, and he was funny he would just go mad crazy at the boxing thing.

Afterwards we went outside and chatted as no one seemed to have the desire to leave, and as we were there we ran into people we had met at the yakuniku resturant. It was much more comfortable this time as i did not worry to speak Japanese. So we chatted out there, it would range from serious to funny and so forth.

I was worried a bit though as i thought i had left my bike key in my bike, during the time in which we went bowling or i had left it up at the bowling alley. But thankfully i have started to get forgetful while in Japan and not Brazil as when i went down to get my bike there was my bikes. Hehe i need to stop doing this. But i got on my bike and we went and chatted more.

It was interesting as across the street was some Japanese youth who were just chillin and stuff, but it should the effect of globalization as they were listening to there american rap music and they had a car that could raise to one side, like in those rap videos. I thought that was cool and interesting to see the intermingling of cultures.

After that we biked home and chilled and played war craft III.

Today….

I have become a changed person regarding my Japanese, before i was too lazy i think in my involvement in learning the language. But now i am now serious, i mean i can not expect to learn a new language if i do not apply myself. So i have talked to my teacher about it and i have set up study session with one of the student teachers, so that is good. This weekend i will probably not to anything too interesting, but i will probably study for the most part as i have much to catch up on. May be i will go to Osaka or Kyoto alone and check out the place, as i have yet to explore either place on my own. Who knows, If many people are still around may be i will do something with them.

I finally got in contact with the golf club, as i was thinking hummm may be _ = - in the e-mail address and i was right, so starting tomorrow, 3 times a week i will be going golfing, as i joined the golf club. I did not realize the commitment that is involved with joining this club, it is like 4 hours 3 times a week. So that is good as it will give me something to do, not that i have not had fun with my friends, but a new area, i want to remember doing stuff in Japan, i know gold if not japanese, but it is still more involvement in school then i have had so far in my college years. So that should be fun… plus i still have stuff to do on weekend, plus i can still have tuesday/thursday to study in library in the evening… so yah that is interesting….

I am now planning a trip to Hiroshima in november with friends… that should be fun, i can’t imagine all the pictures i will take, i will probably upload more this weekend.

Then tomorrow i will have my birthday party you could say, but first i will go with golf club to go golfing, as i feel bad not going as i have gotten in contact with them, so to go next week would be bad.

But there is another update, kevin should be happy.

Hello everyone

I am finally updating my journal after what seems like a long time away from the keyboard, it is as usual the same story, i am not busy when i need to be and when i am busy i don’t need to be, like at nite i am usually too tired to update my journal. But then i just found a sratch on my computer screen darn it i am mad… hopefully it is not too bad of a problem.

So… what have i been up to lately? I had my birthday on Monday, it was a fairly subdued affair considering that is was a monday and i would have two tests on tuesday i did not really feel like doing anything major. So i just went out to dinner with a couple of friends to a yakuniku resturant and had some good old japanese beef. It is a place where you cook the meat right in front of you, so yummy… but sadly so expensive that you only go there to enjoy the flavour and not to get full, well you can get full but it will probably cost you a pretty penny to do it. So we just went there to have a snack… it was nice… i never would have imagined i would have my dinner for my birthday at a yakuniku restrant, may be because i did know what a yakuniku resturant was until i go to japan. I have experienced things before in Korean resturants in Canada… where you cook the food in front of you, it is good too, different kind of meats hehe…. I think yakuniku came from Korea.

Then on friday i will go and have a bowling game with some friends, it should be a fun time, as i am starting to finally be able to bowl so i kind of enjoy it. I went a couple weeks back with Kevin and it was a horrible game, but it this way the score of my two games that time equaled the score of my best single game this time. I actually won, i was amazed, i realized i just have to get in the groove and things will happen. That should be fun, as a large group of people should be coming.

Plus they have a game called House of dead II or III not sure, but you have a shotgun and it is friggin sweet i must say, when i am angry at the world i think i will go there and shoot dead things then kill real people hehe, great stress reliever.

While i am sharing pictures, i will show some of the good ones i have taken since getting to Japan.

I will upload more tomorrow, but that is all the pictures i will share at the moment, i am truely enjoying the picture takening chance i have been granted since coming to Japan, hopefully i am able to make more trips and take more pictures. I just wish money did grow on trees.

My Japanese i must say is going mais ou menous, because it seems i can not give up, i mean i have to keep on going or i will fall behind. I think part of my problem is that i have spent to much time in my residences studying, where i can’t really study due to many distractions, but today i went to Toshakan (library) and studied, it was amazing because it as so quiet i was able to concentrate, i got my homework done, plus did some studying. i think i will return there tomorrow depending on whether i can survivie the day as it is my long day.

Plus i will be meeting my study partner (A japanese student that i am helping) and japanese student teacher, both are going to try to help me learn japanese, i think i can’t simply study from a textbook and that i need to go out side and experience things. I am unsure of the stuff i will do this weekend. It is a long weekend due to sports day, but i have 3 exams next week, so i may just stay in Hirakata (my city) and study and do stuff in the area, i would love to make a trip somewhere, i hope to go to Hiroshima in Novemeber. but this weekend will be a relaxing weekend and some fun, my friend Kevin will be going to Tokyo, hopefully he enjoys the wonderful city.

Today i had speaking partner, it is a person that i meet about once a week and we talk stuff, at first it seem unnatural as we were randomly selected to be partners, so the converstations at first were stressed atleast, but now they are finally getting better, today was very fun. We can joke with each other and stuff, which makes for a much more enjoyable experience.

I have discovered even more wonderful J-pop and J-rock cds.

But i will go to bed, i will update hopefully sooner, please leave commetns people.

thank you ,

Patrick