Yay I got into college, accepted early to MIT and Caltech.

So I just recently got home after the freshman preview night. It was a tad bit on the long side but overall it was ok. Talking in front of a good 7-800 people is always a tad disconcerting, but I was greatly honored by Anita who let me be the one to tell the class of 2010 the odds are good line reproduced as I said it below.

"And we'll finish with a message to the ladies... TJ has an excellent male to female ratio. This means if you dress nicely, you will likely be asked to Homecoming. We have a saying to describe this phenomenom. We like to say, the odds are good... but the goods are odd (pause for long laughter and applause) Good luck in all of your endeavours at TJ, romantic or otherwise"

Now I just have to come up with a micro analysis of some random quote from the Great Gatsby, do some kanji for japanese and read a lab for Bio. Fun.

Victor

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It is my last day before I leave :(. Yesterday was pretty interesting. We went to one of those natural hot springs. And because this was in the middle of a typhoon (it was pouring a lot) we were the only ones there. But it is important to note that the hot springs are actually covered, so I wasn't sitting in the middle of the rainstorm. It was pretty nice, though it is kind of strange to sit naked in a tub of boiling hot water in front of other people. And it was really hot, like a good 45 degrees celsius or so. I kind of started feeling sleepy after a while and got out. After the hot springs we went to this place that had really good grill. They had the grill on the table and you did it yourself. And they had some really tasty sauces to go along with the food, so overall it was great. Though I think it was very overpriced for the quantity of food given, but hey I'm in Japan. Went home, and packed a bit, watched some episodes of Family Guy (which is a great show by the way). Packing was rather painful because I have a bunch of stuff to put in there, and I think with everything it will just barely fit, and I mean just barely. And I will feel like a pack mule with my giant luggage, backpack, camera case, laptop bag, and a bag with my dad's special present ;) that I have to haul on the crowded public transportation system at rush hour. For an overview of my trip, I leave my house around 7am. Take the train for an hour to Nagoya. Take the Shinkansen to Tokyo for an hour and a half. Take another train to the airport which is actually 50 kilometers away from the city. Then I take the plane for 10 hours to San Francisco, 3 hour layover, and then finally another 6 hours or so to get to DC in local time at 10PM (on the same day), although I will have been traveling for a good 30 hours or so. Argh.

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I can't say I have been doing all too much since school finished, except for a few occassions. Thursday was pretty interesting. I had to wake up and take the train for an hour to get to Nagoya. Then we hopped a bus courtesy of Toyota Motors for a tour of their plant and their exposition hall, and museum. Some parts of it were kind of boring because they were drawn out. But, for the most part it was rather interesting. The exposition hall was pretty cool, it is where they have all of their future vehicles. Although most of the vehicles that they show you are just shells that don't actually function with any of the features that they expect, they are still pretty cool to see. And I like the I-Unit thing that they were showing, it was very cool. However, they seem kind of scary for high speed since they have no safety precautions given how people drive today ;). The museum was kind of boring, it had some interesting stuff, but it was mostly just historical Toyota things, and a good part of it wasn't cars. They started off by making automatic looms. On Friday night I went to Toyohashi with my friend Kevin from Texas, and we had dinner and talked for a while. And today was just sitting around basically, since I didn't have anything to do.

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So... for the second time this year I seem to be celebrating the last day of school : ). Tuesday was a relatively uneventful day, I just read Harry Potter for the most part, and I finished the book. Took me two days lol, shows how much time I had. I thought the ending was kind of sad, but hey, it makes the next book interesting, whenever it actually comes out. Tuesday night I was frantically trying to come up with some ideas for a my speech, sat around thinking about it for a while. Wrote it in English, and then had to translate it into Japanese which was the hard part. I got to school this morning and I was kind of tired, but I didn't have to go to the first class as it was a class meeting or something. Then came the last cleaning, which was rather long, and finally the end of the year ceremony. My main thought coming out of the ceremony was how incessantly long it was. Several teachers got up there and ranted about thing that I could not really discern. But upon questioning after, I found out that they all talked about the things that they were responsible for over the summer. Each of them for at least 20 minutes... And most of the stuff was not even applicable to most people. They could have cut the speeches to 2 minutes, given handouts, and saved everyone the pain, but no. I gave my speech and I thought it was pretty good. I was the only one who did it in Japanese, everyone used English except for one idiot who just screamed random stuff really loud. Then I went to Toyohashi with Kevin (a guy from Texas). We walked around everywhere, ate lunch, and a snack and bought some stuff. But now I am really exhausted after walking around the whole day and I'm going to bed. Tommorow is a trip to Toyota for YFU people who want to go, and it should be fun.

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Friday night was relatively uneventful, one of those relaxing days. Then Saturday was spent out and about, I had to do one of the things that is the bane of my existence... shopping. I don't really mind it when I need to get something myself, but waiting for other people to shop drives me absolutely out of mind... I really don't know why. I had to go shopping with the family for clothes for my brother who is going to America soon, this being because I couldn't take money out of the bank with my stupid card. I've been able to get money from anywhere else I've been to but here. So I bought stuff using the card for my family and then I got money from them for the purchases, so I could have some cash on hand.

Saturday night was the fireworks, which I liked and took a bunch of pictures of. Also I tried to make one of those cool night city pictures with the streaky lights from a long exposure time of some cars on a bridge. But it was exceedingly difficult to hold a camera still for 10 seconds without a tripod, but I did get a pretty decent picture up there. But getting there I was going out of my mind because we drove around for a good hour trying to find a place to park. I mean all I knew was that we were going to leave 30 minutes before the thing started because it was close. But that is like saying, hey let's go see the 4th of July fireworks, and because we live near DC we can go there 30 minutes before they start. Not the best idea. Got there with an hour left on the fireworks, but anticipating the huge traffic jam that would follow the event I persuaded my family to leave early, which was a very good idea.

The next day consisted of going to a nice mountain about an hour away and walking around for a while. Hopefully I'll be able to go to Mt. Fuji next week as the weather is supposed to be good, and I'm hoping, we shall see. Also we stopped by a book store and I caved and bought the 6th Harry Potter, though I'll already have it at home by now from Amazon I needed something to read so oh well. Now I'm sitting here after lunch with a friend of my host dad's who went to England for 2 months but refuses to speak English with me (grr...), I do need a break from time to time. 2 more days of school left, it seems kind of weird counting down the days until school ends... again. And I am rather nervous because I need to give a farewell speech, in Japanese, and I haven't started writing it yet, I'll have to come up with something good.

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Thursday was sports day (one of two or three apparently, I never knew there was more than one). What a day that was. The entire day consisted of playing a game titled Dodgebee. There were two teams on each side of a drawn court in the field, and you had to throw the frisbee and hit someone with it. You also had three people from the other team on your side of the court, one outside each side of the square that your team is in who the opposing team could pass the frisbee to. It was very amusing, whenever someone would throw the frisbee to one of the people on the side, all of the girls standing near there would start screaming and running away, and this happened constantly. I thought it was very funny until I had my foot (which already hurt from before) trampled, several times. Also, my team had no concept of strategy whatsoever. People would randomly throw the frisbee instead of passing it to someone who was in better position to hit someone but eh, life goes on. The only problem was when the sun came out, mornings are usually kind of cloudy, but if it is not raining it tends to clear up and become sunny. As it did on this day... why oh why. It became sweltering hot, and I got a very nasty sunburn. My neck still looks like I have a red necklace or something weird on, and it hurts like... you get the idea. And at the end the principal ranted for 20 minutes. Try to imagine this... it is 2pm, the middle of the day, and approximately 90 degrees fahrenheit, the sun is shining, and everyone is sitting on a dirt field, and yet they manage to keep on talking... The next day I stayed home because it was excruciating putting a shirt on as it would rub around on my neck and that was no fun. Also, I started reading Dune, which is a very good book by the way. Tonight is the summer fireworks, and I'm hoping they will be cool, and that I can snap some pictures of them :).

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So yesterday I skipped school (yes!) to go with my dad to work for 2 hours and get a grand tour of the place where he works. He works for a company that cranks out a lot of electronic equipment, consumer, and heavy electronics for industry and whatnot. So I got a nice tour walking around all of the factories and stuff. It was very cool I didn't know what lots of the things were since it was all labeled in Japanese but oh well you know, I'll take what I can get. It was very cool, I got to seem some stuff that the average person never gets a chance to see, and I liked it. The way some of this stuff is made is pretty cool, you don't know how much work goes into one of your average things that has a made in Japan sticker on it. Also, I got to work a big robotic parts mover thing, you tell it which part you want and it gets it from these giant bins in long rows that are from the floor up the to ceiling which is about 30 feet up. Then I went shopping, I had to get some postcards, and a new battery for my watch since the old one died. And my other watch is on the fritz, it seems to have a y2k problem except every 5 minutes, it will reset itself to the default time for no apparent reason. Anyway, tommorow is some kind of sports day which should be interesting. Barring rain (which is likely), there will be frisbee dodgeball all day. When I first heard that I thought... sounds painful, we shall see.

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So there is this one girl in my class, and it is always so weird. Apparently she is half Japanese, and half Brazilian or something like that. And she doesn't look very Japanese at all... but she acts like one of the Japanese school girls and it drives me crazy. It just doesn't fit lol, first day I thought, oh another exchange student, until she started squealing, and then I was just like... sigh. Anyway, I had a really long day today. It was 32 degrees, and I was kind of dying. My long pants aren't summer pants so, in addition to the heat and humidity, my own pants are against me. The weekend was ok, just kind of lounged around the house. But also I went out to eat twice. Once on each day. I finally had my first sushi in Japan. It was really good, we went to my host brother's grandparents house. And they live right next to a sushi store, so there was a giant plate of sushi that everyone ate from. In addition to eggs, salad, meat, and more. Tommorow I don't have to go to school because I'm gonna see some of my host dad's workplace. He's an engineer for an electric company, should be cool.

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No, just no.

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Yesterday was my belayed July 4th celebration. Went out and bought some fireworks to shoot off in front of the house. I thought they were pretty reasonably priced, 10$ for 5 or 6 pretty big ones. And this was at a convenience store, there was a fireworks rack that had a variety of them on there. Came back, and had some fun, but the bugs were swarming around and attacking. Also, I found a great site that has all sorts of stories from a guy who was teaching English in Japan. Take a look at http://www.outpostnine.com/editorials/teacher.html and read them all, it'll give you a good laugh. So to go with the title of this post... I met and talked with an exhange student from the Netherlands yesterday. It was kind of scary. He told me how in the Netherlands you can go to a coffee shop, and get some marijuana to smoke along with your coffee. And some other weird stuff that I choose not to repeat, but yeah. I was hoping to go to Mt. Fuji today but it is rainy as usual, so it would be impossible to see anything if I go. Hopefully it will be nice next week, because I'd like to go before I leave :).

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Eh this week was kind of interesting in that I was doing different things than I usually do. With the middle school and elementary school visits. The elementary school was fun, did all kinds of interesting things, but the middle school was pretty boring. I'm back in highschool now that exams are over, and there are like 10 days or something of school left. I never really got why the exams came so much before the end of school but meh. Also, I truly had food with a face. For dinner one night we had a fish that was cooked whole, and you had to cut it down the middle with chopsticks and take the meat out. This was very reminescent of the pig dissection in bio two years ago, which I would rather not relive, it was kind of creepy seeing all of the other parts in my dinner. Yesterday was a break day, I slept in for the first time in forever, though one woudn't really call it sleeping in, woke up at 9AM. Talked to Lee and a few other people, and just generally lounged around for the day, studied some Japanese, relaxed etc.

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For the next two days I'm gonna be going to middle school. Then Wednsday is a day off, and then I start actually going back to my actual school. Saturday I did a lot of things, which kind of wiped me out, and Sunday was just kind of loafing around, and studying kanji endlessly (akin to taking a large brick and smashing your brains slowly out from the inside). On Saturday, I woke up at 6AM (which I always think is a criminal act to do on a Saturday, despite what Manny might think), ate breakfast and headed out by car. We drove west for about an hour or so, until we hit this bay and hopped on a little ferry. It was pretty small compared to ones I've ridden in the past, like the ones Italy. But it went fast enough. After getting to the other side, it was a bus ride to the final place. Which is a town by the name of Ise. Which also holds the largest shrine complex in all of Japan, with the most and the biggest buildings. Most Japaneses people make a pilgrimmage here at least one time during their life. It was pretty cool, near the temple there are a lot of stores to walk by. One of the most notable was the sea food store with the very devilish looking squid (see pictures). Had lunch, I thought it was something with steak, or some substantial meat, get some protein in me after eating tofu and rice all the time (I'm convinced that that contributes to my tiredness, I eat a lot of it, but I still don't get much energy.) But there is a catch as usual, the meat is only thinly layered, over you guessed, a bowl of rice (sigh). After lunch we headed off to the temple, and walked around. Learned how to pray at the shrine, you bow twice, throw in some money, clap twice, and bow once more. Interesting. After that, took the boat again to the aquarium near the ferry port. The aquarium was pretty nice, but once again I felt sorry for the animals, because they were so cramped. Like I remember when I went to the Baltimore one, and the dolphins had a giant pool, but here it was like 1/20th or so the size of that. But it was pretty cool. Then went home, had some dinner, and crashed after a long day. And Sunday was pretty uneventful, nothing of real interest to mention. And I'm off...

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So yesterday was my last day at elementary school. It went fairly well, though it was very very tiring. The kids seemed to like climbing on me, pulling me, dragging me, and other combinations of the aforementioned actions. But overall it was pretty fun, played some games with first graders, listened to some music, and took a bunch of pictures around the school, of people, and random things. And oh man are the beetles around here big, they're like monsters, see one of the pictures. The lunch was pretty good, but it wasn't meant for someone of my size, so I ended up still being hungry, though I had two servings. After that we had a small party of sorts in the 6th grade class. And they gave me flowers, which was very nice. And then I had to say bye bye and leave. My host mom and I were in a hurry to get to a bank to change some traveler's checks, only to find that they didn't change traveler's checks. And we rushed off to another bank and barely got there before they closed, but at least we managed to accomplish our goal. After this was the summer festival that Hikari and Eri invited me to. It was very fun, it was basically a street lined up with all sorts of good food stands, and some games. The games included, catch the goldfish, pick up the balloon from the water, darts, ring toss, and pick up toys from the water. For all of the ones that involve picking up something, you use a tool that begins to deteriorate as it gets wet, a kind of tissue paper, so you have to be quick or else it rips apart when you try to pick up something. In between walking around and eating we would go into a shop which sells futons. And also had Hikari's (I think) grandmother's house in the back, so we would relax. At the end, we went to do furikura. Which is like those photo booths you see in the US. But are like 20 times better. You like pick one of two bazillion backgrounds, and then you pose, it takes a picture. Then you get some more, pick the best, and then you can write on them, and print any sizes you want and whatnot. It was kind of cool. And now I'm heading off to Ise for the day.

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So today was my day at the elementary school. What a day, what a day. I'm tired as I was paraded all around the school the whole day. And everyone wanted to talk to me. On the bright side, it did make me feel loved, but combined with the fact that this school also has no AC, and that it was 32 degrees celsius with 90% humidity, I was very quickly tired. I had to give a short speech in front of 100 kids which was kind of interesting, as I was trying to feign that I knew what I was actually saying. After that I got to chill in the teahers lounge for a while which was great due to the fact that I literally mean I chilled. There was AC in that room so I was ecstatic as I got to cool down for a bit. After that I was off to give an English lesson to 6th graders, and they all asked me questions and whatnot. It was pretty interesting. And after that, the ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) came to teach English. This is the guy from where the title of this post comes from. Apparently at all of the elementary schools, one of these teachers comes twice a year, for one day, for one 45 minute period, to teach some english stuff, supposedly. I miss the whole point, you're not gonna be learning much in 1 hour and 30 minutes a year, but I digress. The Aussie was a nice guy by the name of Michael. We had a chat and whatnot, what do you do, why did you come to Japan, etc. And there were a few funny excerpts from this conversation I would like to note. One of which was in reply to me asking him what he does for a living besides teaching. He said that he teaches English privately, at night, and he also has an interesting hobby on weekends. Apparently, him, and many of his Aussie friends have a weird hobby. They will dress up like priests, and perform weddings for Japanese people who just want to do it to be cool, and western or whatever, and haven't a clue that he isn't a priest. He said that he gets $200 per ceremony, and he usually does one a week, not a bad deal. And that some of his friends do up to even 30 weddings a month, which I though was insane but eh. Later on we came back to this subject when I asked him what one of the funny stories of his stay here was. Which led to the story of one of his friends first wedding ceremonies. It was a standard wedding, and the bride was almost ready to walk down the aisle, at which point the "priest" was supposed to announce that the bride and her father were coming. But unfortunately, the phrase came out of the "priest's" mouth a bit garbled. What he ended up saying is, the dick, and her father are about to walk down the aisle. The family was not all too amused. Asides from that, we made a little bit of small talk and it was all good. Helped teach 2 classes with him, where he talked about Australia a bit, the animals and whatnot, and ended up with a game. After that I went with 3rd graders to do origami, which was actually pretty cool. This little girl made me an infintesimal paper crane, I'm not quite sure how she managed that but it was pretty cool :). Had lunch, which at elementary school is provided. But I thought it was kind of interesting that some of the children put on aprons, and then they serve it to their classmates. This was followed up by a class period where they sang songs, which was also pretty nifty in my opinion. My own concert, not too shabby. Then that was basically the end of my day, had a pretty good time, a kid gave me a cucumber on my way out (they grow them) and I had it for dinner, it wasn't bad. Tommorow I hope to maybe take some pictures, I didn't bother taking my camera today, didn't want to scare the little kids :P. Came home and relaxed, and a little while ago finished watching Minority Report on DVD. Which was a good movie btw, I've seen it before but I had forgotten. And now I'm off for the night.

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So I figured I would write about the sweeping generalizations, which I know are bad, but some of this stuff is pretty weird and or interesting. Some soda machines will have all of the soda be the same price, and yet some of the bottles will be smaller than others, of the same soda, for the same price. One might wonder why this is, but apparently some people like the smaller ones because they are more cute lol. Also, in general, the boys all act as if they are at least 4 years younger than their age, and the girls 2. But of course this isn't true for all people. People told me this stuff before but I didn't really think it was true, I thought they might be joking or something. But they weren't it holds true for a large majority, which is kind of scary. I blame the kids TV, which I watched once or twice. It is some of the most random stuff I've ever seen, it seemed to me like it was made for someone with ADD because every 2 minutes there would be some other random thing to keep you entertained. Anyway, I've been well but I'm tired from a combination of the massive heat and humidity, and all the bike riding up hills. From the train station to school its ok, but from the train station to home its generally during the hottest part of the day, and the incline is rather steep. Today is my last day at high school for a week, since all of the people are taking exams for the next week, from Thursday to Wednsday, didn't really get how that was planned out. I guess it gives you some more time to study after the first exams are over. Tommorow and on Friday I will be going to elementary school to help out and try to teach english. And the same on Monday and Tuesday, at a middle school. This Friday I'm going with some people from my class to the summer festival, and on Saturday, I'll be heading off to the famous Mt. Fuji. Fun stuff :) (but hotttt....)

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I did a lot of stuff this weekend and as a result I'm very tired, and I'm convinced that at one time or another I was suffering from an acute version of heatstroke, because it was so damn hot and humid. But it's all good. Saturday I went to Nagoya, which is the 4th largest city behind Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. Went to a bunch of stores, the first of which had grossly overpriced but nonetheless cool electronics (see pictures). Then I went up into a big tower, and got a nice view of the whole city, and took a bunch of pictures of the city scape and cool things I saw. After that we went to the Nagoya Castle, which was very cool, it had been converted into a big museum of stuff that had been in there and you could walk around and whatnot, it was pretty interesting. Also, it was a refuge from the heat as the inside was air conditioned. Then we went to a few more stores and gift shops, and ended up stopping at some random restaurant. I ordered a steak, so I could get some protein in me, but even though it was expensive it was still pretty small :(. Got home and listened to some guitar playing, and went to sleep exhausted. The next day I woke up leisurely, and it was the zoo day. We went to the local zoo, which is pretty nice, it was really big and had all sorts of things (see pictures), but I felt really bad for all the animals. Like the elephant hardly had 3 body lengths that he could walk in his cage, and it was pretty sad. Also, I dragged my host mom on the little roller coaster that is in the zoo which was fun. And then we went off to this department store, where I got some of the traditional japanese clothing, the summer version of a kimono, a yukatta. After that we stopped off to get my Dad's secret gift ;) and went home. And now I'm getting ready for week 2 of school. It's only 3days for me due to exams, and then I go help teach or something at elementary and middle school

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So my first week is already over, it seemed to just fly by. Except during some of the classes when it was like smashing my brains out because I couldn't understand anything. Looking back I think it was pretty fun so far. Yesterday I had tempura and soba which was kind of interesting, I don't think I've ever had it before, so it was an experience. The tempura was all sorts of things fried, and then you'd dip it in this sauce that was made of like 5 different things mixed together, along with the soba (noodles), but it was pretty good. Today I think I will be going with my host dad to Nagoya, to go shopping and whatnot. Nagoya is the 4th largest city in Japan, after Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. So it is pretty darn big, and though its like 100 or 150km away its only an hour by train. The Japanese train system is pretty speedy and efficient, but it is also pretty expensive. Also, next week my class mates start having their exams, from Thursday to the Wednsday of the week after, which struck me as kind of odd but oh well. And during that time I don't have to go to school so I think I'm going to an elementry school to help out for 2 days, and then to a middle school to teach a bit of english.

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So I'm skipping out on Japanese Language class since it is totally beyond my comprehension. I really tried, but I couldn't understand anything, so me and another exchange student came to the computer lab for this period. Prior to that I had been trying very hard not to fall asleep during health where they were talking about the effects of alcohol. Health is bad enough in English, but put it into Japanese and ugh. Anyways, yesterday Hiromasa and I went home (walking several miles in hot humid weather, not fun). And we stopped at Toyohashi, a big city, to eat some food as we were both hungry. Where did we eat? McDonalds, sigh, the food is really tiny, but it does't hurt to get some grease in me after eating tons and tons of rice, vegetables, tofu, and other healthy foods. Finally, once I got home I was really dead, after all of the days walking I just kind of dropped into my bed for a while. Read a little bit, and later listened to some Japanese instrument playing, the instrument is called a koto. And it sounded pretty cool, after that I went to bed. I could hardly drag myself out of bed this morning, but somehow I managed to. And was rewarded with a 30 minute bike ride through pouring rain. By the time I got to school I was drenched, but it was ok.

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