Mid-stay crisis!!! October 22, 2008

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Actually it wasn’t that bad.

So basically, the weather has been really unpredictable lately, so since it is cold then hot then cold I caught a cold. In Japanese ‘Kaze’ which literally means ‘wind.’ So I caught a wind. So I was really sick with a fever and everything, but waking up from a good nights sleep and getting ready to settle down for my day off. THAT was when I received the call from Temple University. ‘Your host mom just called us, and we have decided for your safety that you need to move out of your house and into an apartment in Takadanobaba for a week or so. Sorry.’ So after I get off the phone, I go out to the living room to see what the heck is going on. My host brother who supposedly doesn’t live at home had slept on the couch the night before aparently, and my mom was pulling money out of her wallet. She handed me 200 dollars, and apologized that I had to go live somewhere else for a while. She said I could leave whatever I wanted and that I would probably be able to come back in less than a week. With that, Daniel packed a suitcase and lugged his fever-ridden corpse Northwards, to the land of Takadanobaba where he found himself a nice little room. I somehow found the energy to go to the supermarket and buy lots and lots of eggs and bacon and bread and fruit and 2 gallons of Pocari Sweat (Japanese gatorade) and 1.5 gallons of milk, then I layed down on my new bed and didn’t leave the room for a week.

At least, that was what I WANTED to do, but I had to go to school twice, so I left the room twice. Here are pictures.

A change of scenery, that is for sure.

Before me, apparently an american girl lived in the apartment. According to my hearsay she went down to a sketchy side of town late at night by herself, and something unpleasant happened so she promptly returned to the states. She was blonde – I know this because she didn’t clean the room at all so I consistently got them on my clothes. Also, she was kind enough to leave photos of herself and her friends in the drawer. And she left a Temple University Mug which I took. And pots and pans, and 10 rolls of toilet paper, and laundry detergent, and about $2 in american change. Also, she left me a pack of about 40 or so tampons. Thanks! Whatever your name is.

Last thursday, I moved back into the house with my homestay family. I guess everything worked out! They seemed happy to have me back. Last saturday I took a trip to Takushoku Daigaku, Akie’s University. (Also by way of clarification, Akie’s name is NOT pronounced like Achey ‘achey-breaky heart,’ for instance. It is pronounced Ack-ee-eh. Just fyi.) There was a university festival, which means lots of different types of foods and live music all day. However, unfortunately for us as we were riding the train there, I guess someone jumped in front the train as it was coming in and died. So the train was stuck at this random station. That meant we had to walk for an hour to another station to take another train.

We ended up taking a taxi, it wasn’t nearly as fun as this pic makes it look.

Once we got there, I met her boyfriend. We didn’t talk much.

I went to hear some ‘Jazz.’ It was really more pop-fusion.

In order to take this picture, they made me buy some. ‘Buta.’ Pig. I almost barfed eating it. It tasted fine, but looking at the face while chewing was hard.

While I was there, Akie surprised me by inviting Yuko, another Japanese girl that I met in Seattle this last August. There are pictures, but they are all on Akie’s camera, I will post them later.

A Modern Art Festival – no, I’m not talking about lots of people coming to look at my messy room. October 5, 2008

Although that statement is not too far from the truth; I understood about as much as if I had just stared at my clothespile.

So, update- I finally found a church, and as of today have gone to three meetings. I’m settling in, and have met alot alot alot of new friends. Friday night I went to Yoyogi park with Tyler, Saki, Motoko, Momoko, Arnaud, and Chris. It is a really big park, and it was very dark. But we talked very loudly so it wasn’t very scary lol, just fun!

On saturday I went with a bunch of my church friends to Yokohama Trienale, a modern art festival in, you guessed it, Yokohama. Present were me, David (from Hong Kong), Yuka (my host sister), Takako, Sen, Yasu, Sam, and yes Jon, I finally met an Akira, who was also there. Although not the type of Akira you would expect. This Akira plays electric guitar on the worship team. And when I asked him what kind of music he loves, he said ‘Jazz.’ And when I asked him what his favorite band was, he said ‘Radiohead.’ Like, I’m serious. I’m not joking. I asked him some of the most important character defining questions that there are, and he answered all of them the same that I would have. It was ridiculous. So apparently me and him and this other guy are going to go to a studio in Shinjuku and record some jams. Or something. Anyhow, on to the pictures.

This is TBC (Tokyo Baptist Church)~ that is a guest band, not the normal band. Which is why so many of them are white.

This is David from Hong Kong when we went to ‘Monsoon’ for dinner after church one day.

This is just a random pic of Ben that I took while we were video chatting across the pacific. I thought it would be the best for everyone if I included it.

We had lunch before going to art festival. Takako is cut off on the left, Akira is center, David from hongkong on the right.

here is one of the buildings that had art inside

This was one of the exhibits. Two microphones that swayed slowly up and down while a voice from inside sang an address to the Kazakhstan government in randomly generated tones. I'm serious.

This was another exhibit, this one is kinda difficult to explain… There was basically a hallway, a REALLY REALLY long, narrow hallway. And there were signs on the left wall, right wall, left wall, right wall, alternating like that so you had to go back and forth like a skier. Each sign had some kind of postmodern poetry on it. Basically the poem is complete free style, and it comments on your inner thoughts as you walk through the hall. It speaks about your fears that the hallway might go on forever, your cramped feeling as the hallway is narrow. Then there is a crude picture of people having sex and there is a purple cup on a small outcropping and a sticky note on the ceiling that says ‘joy’ on it. And the poem considers your feeling as these are so random and you HAVE to look at them since there isn’t anything else in the hallway. then the same picture and cup and note come back like four more times, and the poem describes how they become like familiar friends to you when there is nothing else in the hall but that. This picture above was the one sign that hung in the middle of the hall, the text gives you two options, right or left. the poem suggests that you shouldn’t think about your decision, just according to your gut reaction choose right or left. both sides are the same. Then afterwords, the poem describes your worry that you may have picked the wrong direction even though both are the same. Then towards the end of the hallway, the poem begins reminiscing about things you miss, such as trees and stars and grass. The poem suggests that you may make a vow to yourself to eat less and workout more, tell important things to the people you love, and finally you exit the hallway. It was pretty trippy, i have to say. Especially because english is printed on the BACK of the signs so to view it in english you have to wait another hour and they let guests go through from the opposite side of the hall. That means the WHOLE poem was backwards for me, and i had to remember each sign and then reverse them when I got to the exit. Lol.

This is Yasu. All day he would only talk about two things: hot springs, and billiards.

I asked him “Yasu, onsen to biriaado ha sekai ni ichiban ii koto?” (Are hot springs and billiards the best things in this world?) To which he said “definitely.”

Lol, it turns out Oktoberfest was going on on the same day and in the same place. So we saw a guy passed out in front of the art building. lol.

Everyone brought their camera’s that day (except me noone told me… ) So David was getting all artsy…

SO many people have this EXACT dog here... nande?!?!

I don’t know why she was so mad at me……………….. lol gomennasai!!! *bows* m(._. )m

We went on this really awesome pier type thing, inside was this huge box that people go in and sit for about an hour. It was supposed to be some type of art, I don’t know what the crap it was, so we decided to skip that exhibit. The next exhibit wasn’t much better though, just loads of boards strewn around a white room with sloppy paint on the walls saying things like “LOVE IS OVER”

We decided to go to the famous Yokohama China Town, the biggest one in Japan. It was big, and there was a man and a cart.

And a gate.

and a dog

Akira and Takako trying to be artists with their cameras lol, you can see me and even a little of Yuka in the background.

Finally, densha de kaette, minna ga choutsukareta… (We went home by train, everyone was tired)

Sam is on the left, he is half Japanese half Scottish. lol. Then Sen, then Akira, then Takako. I was sitting on the other side with Yuka, David, and Yasu.

nechatta ne…

Yuka seemed really happy to have gone with us, and my Japanese friends and I even had a chance to talk to her about God some which was really cool. It was a good experience to get a little closer to Yuka, we have been kinda distant at the house lately, partly because I don’t feel like I can relate to her kind of glittery lifestyle. So this was good for that aspect.

Also, something happened with my Japanese this last week… I think I am way way better than the week before for some reason. Suddenly I am more comfortable expressing myself. This morning I met a young Japanese woman named Nori on the steps of the church, who couldn’t speak any english. Still, for some reason my Japanese impressed her and she told me her whole testimony in Japanese, which I think I actually understood! It felt really good to finally begin having success in Japanese after a while of feeling like I was the worst ever.

Anyways, after we took the train back to Shibuya, we went out to eat Yakiniku, which is delish. Some people had to go home, so it was just me and yuka and takako and david and yasu. Then afterwards Yasu SOMEHOW convinced us all to go play Billiards with him… lol…

David wanted his leg to be on the table like that; he felt it seemed more ‘pro.’ whatever that means, i never use the word ‘pro’ in the SPU vernacular so i wouldn’t know…

FYI all the BIG pictures are taken from my cellphone and the small ones from davids REALLY expensive Nikon. Don’t ask me why. I don’t control the internet. Al Gore does.

~~Ok update, I actually DID fix the picture size. I guess I DO control the internet after all.

Cliff Jumping. (not really) September 26, 2008

The moral of this post is that you can jump over a large chasm to catch the edge of a tall cliff, try your hardest, miss the edge by a fraction, but you still fall just as far and die.

(Yes I posted the moral first.)

This evening Akie and I went to see the movie “Wanted.” Basically, this movie reached hard for that edge, but still fell just as hard. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 73%, justifying the rating because it is oriented towards a summer audience, wanting nothing more than brainless plots and brains spattered on the walls. I would say that you can’t justify that because the movie ALSO tries to include too many messages. It pushes its themes too hard. What you have got here is a champion of anti-establishment, anti-utilitarianism (or is it pro-utilitarianism?), anti-religion, rebellion against humdrum normality. When the main character breaks the invisible wall of the screen, looks at the audience right after shooting someone’s brains out, and asks the loquacious question, “What the f*** have YOU done today?” You know the director is trying way to hard to broadcast his themes. If he thought this was going to skate through the public unconscious, delivering subliminal messages to minds only expecting a mindless shoot’emup, well, he was exactly right. This movie somehow manages to screw with your sense of ethics, then reverse it, then have you not knowing what the frick you think, and wants you to love the excitement of your own confusion. This movie tries to juggle one too many plates, and drops them all.

On another note, last night Dad took me out to Ramen for dinner, and i had the 450 gram meal. That means not only do you have a bowl of ramen, but a pound more noodles on the side. I was full afterwords. And I have no plans for the weekend. Perhaps being EXTREMELY lazy is in order. Or perhaps, being REALLY motivated and going out and finding something to do.

The Land of the Free and the Home of the… Socialist Financial Bailout Plans? September 24, 2008

700 Billion dollars is a relatively large sum of money. If you care about what happens to that little bundle of cash, read on! If the economics of our livelihood does not interest you, feel free to stop here.

I am living in Japan right now, doing my best to do what it takes to learn about where I am, still sometimes a fire can burn bright enough to catch my attention from across the pacific. Therefore, in the interest of a diverse reader demographic and my own interests, I have decided to include this post on the current economic crisis in the good ol’ United States.

If you haven’t heard, this is the situation. The last two weeks have seen the government takeover America’s two biggest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and its biggest insurance company, American International Group Inc. We stood by while the nation’s fourth-largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, was forced to declare bankruptcy and another investment giant, Merrill Lynch, was forced to sell itself to Bank of America. On Sunday evening Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the country’s last two major independent investment banks, were allowed by the fed to change their status to bank holding companies, which will allow the two institutions to open commercial banking subsidiaries, greatly bolstering the resources of both companies.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the only way to put a stop to all this ridiculousness is to have congress pass a law giving the Treasury broad powers to buy as much as $700 billion in troubled assets, primarily dealing with mortgage-backed securities that have lost tons of value due mostly to slipping home values.

I’m pretty sure we all want the same thing here: the American economy to be miraculously rescued from it’s bowel loosening financial slump. Speaking of bowel loosening, we can boil this situation down to one big quetion. If the American economy is a giant toilet bowl, how big is the current financial hole? Judging from how fast so much money and house prices are getting flushed these days, it seems pretty large. Paulson and Bernanke are hoping that this $700 billion is going to be a big enough monetary turd to clog that hole, so some of the water can finally spill out of the bowl of rich senior executives and back onto the waiting floor of desperate homeowners. However, according to many congress members, it isn’t just the turd size we have to worry about. It’s also the consistency. The proposal “does not include the necessary safeguards,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. She called for “independent oversight, protections for homeowners and constraints on excessive executive compensation.” Members have also voiced that the plan is to big to happen so fast, it needs more time in order to be put into practice at maximum efficiency. Maybe this political poo is just the right size, but a little too slippery to resist the flushing waters of shaky planning and hasty implementation.

This isn’t the first time the government has taken a metaphorical squat recently either. Sen. Richard Shelby states that failures with Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, and attempts to save Bear Stearns last spring show the limited effectiveness of such an approach.

It is hard to make an accurate assessment of size and consistency in such a large and complex market, but some senators have other reasons why they disagree with the preposterously large proposition. Said a Senator about the substantial strategy: “why [are we] rushing to bailout companies whose leaders got rich gambling with other people’s money…” (Sen. Sherrod Brown)

Concerning Sherrod Brown’s comment, I may or may not have my disagreements with buying $700 billion dollars of irresponsibly made loans, but I definitely feel like maybe we could have a little bit better argument then that. (Those executives are BAD    BAD      BOYS!) I could care less about how ‘those guys may have had their hands in the taxpayers cookie jars before so now we should MAKE THEM FEEL THE PAIN!’ I just care about whether when I need to go get my own homeowners loan someday, I won’t be turned out cold from my local bank. Sen. Jim Bunning is a *little* more convincing:

“It will not help struggling homeowners pay their mortgages. It will not bring a halt to the slide in home prices. This massive bailout is not a solution. It’s financial socialism and it’s un-American.”

Perhaps that is something we really need to think about. According to the essential founder of our wondrous free market economy, Adam Smith himself said in his book ‘Wealth of Nations’ that we must create a economy by survival of the fittest rules. The ‘invisible hand’ guides some institutions to failure, others to success, leading to the happiest, healthiest market attainable. Government takeover of private firms (FNMA for instance) and this proposal are definitely not things you are going to see endorsed in that text.

Still, in my own humble opinion, we have to take a consequentialist view on this issue. I think it is pretty evident that the MOUNTAIN of poorly loaned funds resulting the freeze of the credit market are not leading us to the wonderland of a flourishing market. Also, for those of you who wanted to move to Canada during the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac incident, keep in mind that FNMA was originally chartered and created by the US government… It isn’t exactly foreign territory we are talking about here.

Normally, I would feel like the President (who by the way is a staunch advocate of the bailout) would be in a position to see the biggest portion of the picture, and also the most concerned with making people like me really happy. But these days, last term, right before he is out of that one place for good, I think history has shown that maybe they don’t have to worry so much about making us love them during the last stretch.

And the last, arguably most pressing question: even assuming all this works, what is the government going to use to wipe afterwords???

I know you were all wondering

In case you haven’t figured it out, I am in support of decisive action. I am merely concerned about the nature of that action, because even though things are bad right now, it could easily get a great deal worse when you throw in the monkey wrench of a poorly spent 700 billion dollars. Please, give me some comments to work with here~ what do you think?

Picnic, Corporate Development, Certain Death September 22, 2008

Let’s just say that yesterday was pretty crappy. In fact, it was so crappy that it was the kind of intense crappy that you have to give a few props for how crappy it was. In that way, it was actually pretty fun.

The day opened with the earthquake that woke me up. My bed is on wheels and it was strong enough to be wheeling me back and forth a little, so I would guess maybe a 3.5 or so. Probably the strongest one I have felt since this one random one in Language Arts class of 6th grade. It only went on for about ten to fifteen seconds though, so nothing terrible happened. No news coverage of course, these things are a dime a dozen in Tokyo.

Then I had curry for breakfast! That actually wasn’t crappy it was very tasty. Although, kinda random and quite spicy for breakfast.

Then the whole family piled in the car and we drove to Yokohama – about an hour south of Tokyo to a big park called 子供の国。(Kid’s Country)  This park is hard to describe. It is kinda like Enchanted forest except way bigger, and no rides, or castles, or anything else mythical or interesting, but what there WAS was just as old and decrepit as at the good old E.F. As far as I could tell, there was one giant pool, one really tall slide, one greenhouse, and one inflatable bounce house in the middle of a giant field. We weren’t there for the plethora of attractions though, we were there for a picnic! Apparently yesterday was some big event where people go and buy this traditionally popular time of fish： 秋刀魚. (Samma)  and you grill it yourself, shred your own 大根　(Japanese White Radish) and generally do everything else yourself except actually do the fishing.

(You can see the bounce house in the background)

Us grounding up Daikon (the radish). If I look like I have a little bit of a pained smile, you aren't imagining things.

I don’t know why anyone ever thought this was going to be a fun activity, probably some crazy person. Actually I think it was my host Dad, and I think he knew it wasn’t going to be fun. In case the pictures fool you into thinking it was fun, let me just say that trying to seperate the cooked mushy innards from the cooked mushy meat and the burnt scales with just chopsticks is about as fun as when Sean and I spilled around 20 gallons of Macaroni and Cheese around the dumpster behind our cafeteria and had to clean it all up.

Apparently the even the meat was not that good, mom said...

Also, we were joined by like 9 other old guys and one of them had his old wife there too. The one next to me was keenly interested in revisiting the English he learned in highschool with me. At length. Apparently the overall point of this picnic was to entertain and say nice things to this other almost bald dude that was with us.

This is what I think may have happened: Host Dad’s work friends schedule this lamo picnic for themselves, and the head honcho, the big cheese, is going to attend as well. Dad gets it into his head that having his whole family there will be a really good idea, and maybe even the token foreigner as well! So he somehow talks the event up to his wife enough that she thinks it is going to be really fun (and conveniently forgets to say that all his work buddies are coming along too.) When we get there, my sisters and mom are completely taken off guard when who is there to greet us but a crowd of businessmen holding an umbrella for, fanning, and generally sucking up to this one chubby dude. They hadn’t even put on the special ‘meeting dad’s coworkers’ makeup! Once we arrived, dad ignored us because you can’t be a family man and a salaryman at the same time… It was interesting I talked to mom about it some. We rushed through eating our fish, and then mom and the sisters and I excused ourselves to go ‘walk around.’ They kept apologizing and telling me that I was being a good sport for how lame it was, but I was just laughing because it was just a funny situation overall. Even though it was crappy it was an enlightening experience and I don’t think I could have spent my day in a better way.

Except that was when the Typhoon arrived. You see, there was a typhoon in Okinawa the last week or so. And apparently it decided we were a little to dry up here in Tokyo, so it made a house call.

I could be a weatherman, right mom?!?!

I made a diagram to illustrate. It was probably something like this. Although since I only saw one news cast on it and I did this in paint, maybe it isn’t that accurate. But it looked SOMETHING like this!!!!!

So the tempurature dropped maybe 25 degrees and it started getting windy oh and lets not forget pouring rain. So we had to leave early from the picnic (Dang!). The traffic back to Tokyo was so bad it took us 3 hours to get home. None of us ate very much fish cause it was bad so we stopped by McDonalds. I could have hung with friends but I told them all I was going to be busy that day, so I spent the rest of the evening sitting in my room not doing anything.  (>_<) Oh well.

At least I finally had a chance to crack open the little cakes that Akie made for me. Even the twisty on the bag was folded in a cute way… haha

Thanks Akie!

–I am adding more to this post after the next class so stay tuned. I still have to address corporate development.

Ok now it has been added:

So I was too lazy to post some of the most interesting stuff I found out the night I went out with Akie.

Keep in mind that I met her in Seattle, with three other Japanese students. When I met her she seemed like the kindest of the four, but perhaps knew the least English. She was the most willing to talk to me, and the most inquisitive and willing to go out on a limb. Still, she was a little slow at expressing herself but had an easy smile to make up for it. I think she never wore makeup when I saw her in the states, and always wore lose fitting clothes. I’m not sure what kind of image this engendered in me of what she was actually like, but let me tell you whatever it was couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

When I met her the other night in Shibuya by the Hachiko statue (a famous statue of a dog that is a very common meeting place) she had well applied makeup, stylish clothes, but the same easy style. We talked alot over dinner… her english had improved dramatically and my Japanese has as well so we could get into some in depth topics. Turns out she is REALLY smart. She is the same age as me, but has already written a book. O.o    Her major is in Developing Countries, and her minor is Corporate Development. Apparently her minor is the only one in the world and they are both exceedingly difficult. She has a part time job at a cake shop, and spends most of her free time working for a huge and famous national writers club or ‘circle’ as they literally call it here. She is a high ranking officer in this circle, and it was her job to do in depth interviews with famous persons in Japan and write a book on her findings, which she recently completed, I guess. She says most people in her major intend to be involved in the comings and goings of international non-profit organizations, but she wants to be a writer. She is also big into Japanese literature. She pulled out a book with a ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ cover (I don’t know what that portends, for those of you that know Evangelion, make your own conclusions ) and said “This is the book I am reading right now, it is by Haruki Murakami”  Who just HAPPENS to be one of the two Japanese authors I have read the translated works of, and along with Philip Pullman is perhaps my favorite author right now. In shock I said I had read lots of his stuff and turns out that she and I had read several of the same books in Japanese and English respectively. Which we both loved.

I guess it goes to show how much can be lost in translation. When a person goes to another country, not only are things lost because of culture differences, but you just act differently when out of your comfort zone. People can assume that you are much different then you actually are. I am glad that I could find out a little bit of what Akie is actually like.  びっくりした！　bikkurishita! (It surprised me!)

A classy night to Tempura, cake shop, McDonalds. September 20, 2008

Tonight I went out on the town with Akie! I met her last month as I was doing my intensive Japanese language course at Washington Academy of Languages in Seattle. She happened to be doing English as a Second Language courses there at the same time. I made friends with her and the other Japanese students there, and she returned to her home in Tokyo (just two stations away from me, about 15 min) just last week.

We spent the evening in Shibuya, and it was crowded.

Waiting to cross at the main intersection. My phone fails to capture the magnitude of people waiting to cross… (><)

This is in the middle of the street as the crossing is occuring.

Right before we were about to cross

After we ate tempura on the roof floor of Shibuya station, we went downstairs to a cake shop where she has a part time job. I met two of her friends there, and they gave us loads of free chocolates that said ‘happy birthday’ on them lol.

After that we walked around and saw the sites, we went to a CD shop and I recommended good American bands. We went to a coffee shop that was closed, and had to default to McDonalds where I got a mcflurry.

Afterwords, she gave me some little flaky cakes that she baked for me, (yay!) and we decided to go see that movie ‘wanted’ next friday cause she really likes action movies. She said if there were any sights or anyplace I wanted to go in Tokyo, I could call her and she would go with me! So I finally have a buddy to do some sightseeing with. Also there is a big 4 day party at her university in october where apparently she is working as some kind of traditional food cook for her agriculture club that she wants me to go to and eat some of her food.

It was good to come home though cause I have to wake up at 7:30am tomorrow to go to Yokohama with my family for some festival. Also I had to do a Japanese essay.

So… yaknow….

難しいだぜぇぇぇぇ　and all that rot.

oh Haha I forgot the most important picture:

this type of picture booth is called ‘purikura’ which is basically a Japanese abbreviation of the Japanese way of pronouncing ‘Print Club.’ I don’t know how i made such a creepy face…

concerning “everyonesmiles@softbank.ne.jp” and moral values. September 19, 2008

—My first cell phone—

Price: Free

Features: “call”

—My second cell phone—

Price: appx $360, reduced with plan purchase

Features: call, text, pic, pic message, video, video message, tetris (sold seperately $6.00), heavily drm protected mp3 player 6 song max no headphone play no play while phone is closed

—My third cell phone—

Price: appx $160

Features: call, text, pic, pic message, video

===Japanese cell phone===

Price: ???

Features: ???

New Cell Phone Email: everyonesmiles@softbank.ne.jp     –you should email or text me on it!

The first cell phone that I ever received was a hand me down from my mom. This occured somewhere during my time in highschool, (高校の時） and I was pretty ecstatic!

I’m sorry, that was a lie, and now I feel really bad for misleading you. Let me set the books straight.

I was completely nonplussed at my new phone because this is what it could do: nothing.    …And it even did THAT poorly as I recall! The only feature was some cryptic “call” function. I mean seriously, when is the last time that you actually “placed” a “call” as I think they say it. Nobody even uses that! And, being the adolescent highschool freshman that I was, I was ACUTELY aware of what everyone else did and did not do. And I was even more keenly aware that my phone happened to have one unimportant function and no important ones. (Such as the ‘make me really popular’ function or the ‘have girls look at me’ function. I would have even settled for the ‘texting’ function, but alas none were forthcoming from that grey piece of junk)

Now my parents, being the caring, coddling people that they are, eventually realized that their son stood out a little from all the other children. He was maybe just a little slower than the rest; a little ’special.’ They knew that only they could step in and save their child; only they could give him the one opportunity to make something of himself in this world, so they bought me a shiny new cell phone!

As a graduation present.

Ok, let me just put this in perspective here. I had the phone for maybe 3 weeks before the end of my senior year. How many times during those three weeks did I use special functions such as ‘text’ ‘picture’ ‘picture message’ ‘mp3 player’ ‘video’ and certainly not least important ‘tetris’? The answer is about 50 billion. Times 2. That is 100 billion times special features were used. How many times did I use those same wondrous functions once I got into college? Maybe 5. Minus 2. That is 4 whopping times! Not three because tetris broke before I got into college and I counted all the times that I REALLY wanted to play it as one time because I didn’t want anyone to accuse me of padding the numbers. My point here is, all of the ‘cool’ factor of functions like that evaporated like values in Vegas. Nobody cared anymore…

So when that phone’s battery started to go caput 2 years later, (not just started, it was only staying on for like 4 minutes) my parents bought me a shiny new cell phone! But this one was only shiny, and had no sweet functions. I say ‘no’ sweet functions because these days ‘picture’ ‘video’ and ‘text’ seem as old as dirt. Just the fact that a phone that I bought 2 years later had LESS features than my previous one was quite a feat!

All this to come to one focus: yesterday I finally bought myself a Japanese cell phone. I wish to do a short and hopefully quite revealing case study concerning one man’s (my) four cell phones.

Now, let us review the stats of each phone once again. And to make sure that you read it again and don’t just skim over, I have included a new ‘comments’ section for each phone. FYI I already had the comments when I wrote it the first time, I just withheld details. Morally questionable? Up to you, but I’m in Japan so I don’t have to listen to your complaints.

—My first cell phone—

Price: Free

Features: “call”

Comments: Grey and stupid. Especially when sand got in the speaker phone and made it sound like mom was an alien.

—My second cell phone—

Price: appx $360, reduced with plan purchase

Features: call, text, pic, pic message, video, video message, tetris (sold seperately $6.00), heavily drm protected mp3 player 6 song max no headphone play no play while phone is closed

Comments: AWESOME. For a highschooler at least, when you stand to be more awesome than you could ever be at any other time in life. mp3 player was really troublesome. never used it after i tried to upload some songs and it didn’t really work well.

—My third cell phone—

Price: appx $160

Features: call, text, pic, pic message, video

Comments: Functional. Spartan.

===Japanese cell phone===

Price: ???

Features: ???

Comments: ??? (so pissed)

This is how I purchased my Japanese cell phone. First, I asked my friend Kris how to get one. He said go to Softbank. It is the best. So on my way home one day, I stopped by the Softbank shop.

Me: “Eigo wo hanasemasuka?” (Do you speak English?)

Dude: “Sore ha chotto…” (That is a little….)   …basically means NO.

Me: “Dareka imasuka?” (Is there SOMEONE who can?)

Dude: “Aa, gomennasai, inaindesuga…” (Oh I am sorry, it is just that there isn’t one but…)       …NO

Me: “Tabun daijoubudesukara, puripeido keitai ga arimasuka?” (Maybe that is ok, are there prepaid cellphones here?)

Dude: “blablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablabla” (lots of stuff I didn’t understand with much apologizing mixed in, then he showed me a list of participating convenience stores and told me to go to one)

I knew that he had the wrong idea. The convenience stores are where they sell prepaid CARDS to put into a prepaid cell phone that you have already purchased. Even so, I could tell that he was right they didn’t have prepaid cell phones there.

Next day I left for Nagoya, and on the last day I was going to go with Naoki to get one. However, I needed my passport which I hadn’t brought since I have an alien registration card now. Go figure.

I come back and just ask my homestay mom. She says, all the stores in Shinjuku speak english! So I decide to go to the softbank store in Shinjuku, starting with the biggest store – “BikuKamera” which sells all brands of phones. I go inside to the cell phone section, no one speaks english, but a guy gives me a map to another Softbank store REALLY far away. So instead I visit a couple more softbank stores in the area. No english. No english. No prepaid cell phones. Finally, I give up and find my way (eventually) to the store on the map, a tiny tiny little softbank store in the basement of a building.

Me: “Eigo wo hanasemasuka?” (speak english?)

Cute girl: “Ano, sore ha chotto…” (umm that is a little…)

Me: “Yappari sou….” (yeah, I thought not.)

Me: “Tabun daijoubu. Puripeido Keitai ga arimasuka?” (its prolly fine, any prepaids here?)

Cute girl: “Aa hai! Arimasu!” (THEY HAD SOMEEEEEEEEEEEEEE)

Next two hours: “blablablablablablablablablablablablablablabla”

It was a good thing that I met a really patient and kindof cute girl working there or those two hours would have been HELL. Turns out they needed to call my host family and get their permission to use the address, amongst other completely unexpected roadblocks. During the process, the girl found a translation website on her computer and was translating things to english then writing them on a whiteboard for me to look at. Most of them made absolutely no sense like: “it is a little back.” “What is?” “registration back is a little.” “Oh ok, now it makes perfect sense.”

Mostly we just laughed though, and that made it ok, even though her coworkers were staring at us the whole time (there was a strange lull in customers while I was buying it….. hmm) Afterwards, she called the number for me and helped me to set all the right settings and so forth. Afterwards I said “Otsukaresamadeshita” (Thank you for the effort on my behalf!) Which made us chuckle.

Last night I investigated some of the features on my new Japanese phone which include:

call, text, pic, pic message, video, video message, VIDEO PHONE CALL (the camera rotates so that it faces out of the phone or in towards your face), preloaded music, preloaded ridiculous japanese games where you can like adopt a pet dog and have to take care of it amongst other games, a fully functional itunes knockoff allowing me to upload any of my current library to the phone and listen on the included headphones, around 2 gigs of hardrive space with no sd card yet, internet, email, (keep in mind that I have no plan, yet texting and emailing are still free and unlimited), endless absurd menu options (like having someone riding on a bike and the menu choices being the balloons he is holding), on board english dictionary, rudimentory translator, handy phrase book with accompanying video (like you walk into a store and then have options of what you want to say and it tells you what they are in english), and a data converter, and other less important options.

Keeping in mind that my two American Cell phones were $360, $160 respectively, how much do you think this phone cost?

….

$50.

I’m sorry let me just write that again.

$50.

This is probably the worst phone that Japan has to offer. and I’m afraid it beats the pants off of my $360 american phone. Yeah, I don’t want to know what values they had to cut corners on to put this phone in my hands for $50. I won’t ask. I will just put in my headphones, turn up the music, and text some bro. Like Uncle Dave in California.

Welcome to my Blog: September 16, 2008

Hi welcome to my, Daniel Meyer’s, blog. I started this blog when I left to study at Temple Daigaku in Tokyo, Japan. This blog mostly concerns things that have happened to me while I am here, but also contains my general musings about things. I know some of my friends and family that view this blog have *gulp* never looked at one before so this is for you: THIS, AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE, IS THE MOST RECENT THING I HAVE WRITTEN. The FIRST thing I wrote is at the very end, and not even on this page anymore. If you wish to start from the beginning or review things I wrote earlier, you need to go to the archives. It is over here on the right side of the screen >>>. Simply click on “August” to view my first few posts, then progess to “September” and so on. Thank you.

notice September 16, 2008

sorry, i should have forewarned. this weekend i went to nagoya and couldnt check email or post.

yuka made me do it (aka: it was the womans fault O LORD) September 4, 2008

~wouldn't want to meet late at night down a dark alley~

Since she is inevitably going to be weighed and measured by all my friends on this blog just by her looks, Yuka demanded that I post a picture of her right before she is going out with friends for the evening.

1. Take said picture

2. Post said picture on blog

3. ???

4. PROFIT

~~For all you channers out there. Although I think I only have one friend that has channed even once besides me. :/