BIG THING, little thing

July 3, 2007

This is going to be a very long month. I awoke at 9:00am and immediately thought it was 4:00am. This was due to the fact that we have large metal garage door type barricades over our windows. Why? I have no idea. Maybe for zombies. Nonetheless, Will walked in and told me it was 9:00. In a normal situation, I would have said, “That’s nice,” and rolled back over to sleep. But I was in Japan, so I decided to jump on out of bed.

I took a shower, still lacking a towel, and went to the kitchen to find that my new favorite cereal was gone. So I ate another cereal that tasted like trail mix and asked what was going on. Because we were mostly out of food already, Mike, the number two Chief Boss under Jesse, decided we needed to go to the grocery store. This sounded like a great idea to me.

Our entire party met outside and began the fifteen-minute walk into town. We’re sort of in the sort of country, so getting to town took a nice walk down a serene country road past some of the coolest houses around. I’ll get some pictures later so I can avoid describing their greatness at this point.

Now, usually going to the grocery store is boring and not something I look forward to…ever. But shopping for groceries here makes me so giddy, I think I actually uttered “tee-hee” while deciding whether to buy the stick cookies that with the pandas or the chocolate robot. We went through the store and sort of filled our baskets with what would mutually benefit us all. I got Koala’s March cookies, that cereal I like, and milk. After a time, we began the walk back. At this point, it was like 10:30am or something, but the walk back was one of the hottest walks I’ve ever experienced. Maybe I just stay inside too much in America, but I don’t ever remember being in such muggy weather in my life.

Back at the homestead, I aired out my muggy shirt and set out the groceries just as Jesse called for us to mobilize. We had a short meeting about another meeting we would have at two and how to take care of the house. This particular house was built for the tennis coach by the school after his team did well one year. He only uses it on the weekends, so we use it during the week. The catch is, we have to be invisible and disappear all day on the weekends, because the guy is racist and hates Americans. We have to make sure we take extra good care of the house, because if anything happens, we’re done on a bun. If everything goes according to schedule, we won’t run into him, but I’ll let you know if anything interesting happens.

After our meeting, we headed to the cafeteria for lunch. It’s set up really weird, but kind of great. There are vending machines all over Japan, and the cafeteria was no exception. We looked at the food on display, memorized the Kanji symbols, and then bought a ticket for it from a vending machine. Then we went to the counter, placed the ticket on it and waited for the food. After going through three years of crappy caf experiences, I wasn’t expecting much. This was a college campus and a caf, just like mine. How good could it be? Let me tell you that for 420 yen, I got a lot of food that was really really good. I wonder if that could have anything to do with the unselfish sense of Japanese service? You know, that people working even in a cafeteria do their best work. The answer is yes. And my cafeteria can die by fire.

After lunch, we met with Jesse again on the third floor of the college building and talked about the program. He gave us the lowdown, which was that our English lessons will be teaching the kids how to get around Canada when they go to visit next month. The latter half of each day will consist of our project. I myself am teaching cartooning. The only thing that came as a surprise was that we’ll only be teaching for a week before the presentation and we go to teach at a city school for a few days. That means less time to work with the kids, which made me sad. But they’re running the show, so I didn’t complain. We brainstormed and asked questions a little bit before Jesse told us our night was free. He asked what we wanted to do and it was pretty much unanimous. We were going into Tokyo.

While we waited for the bus to take us to the train, we talked to a group of college girls who tried out their English on us, as Jesse translated between the groups and told each side what to say. I was no good, and still can’t pronounce Japanese very well. I think the most important cultural thing we passed onto them was pounding your fists together and saying “Gimme some juice!” in a gangsta voice. They liked that a lot.

The train was fun in itself. Maybe it’s because their trains are way cooler than our trains or because the scenery you pass is new and fun. But I think the most likely reason is the effect we have on the train as foreigners. People in Japan don’t talk on trains very much, and if they do it’s usually quiet. It’s usually dead silent, or at least it would be if we weren’t in there. We were all talking and acting up, which always get interesting looks from the Japanese. As I understand it, foreigners are kind of expected to be big sloppy loud casks of insanity that roll by in Japan every once and a while. As long you don’t break anything, you’re okay.

We arrived in Akihabara around 6:00pm and met Julie and Mike who are the other leaders besides Jesse. As soon as we entered Akihabara, I noticed why it’s called “Electric Town.” Every light in the electronics district is on. It’s also pretty much nerd central. Anything a self-respecting nerd could want is here. Action figure and anime shops, five level arcades, DVD and CD stores, and of course, Super Potato. We went to an arcade first called “Club Sega.” It was five levels and pretty amazing, I first played a game in which I continually changed clothing and chucked bananas and guns at men in dresses. After that, I accidentally played a game of “Melty Blood” against someone on the opposite side of my console. I had no idea that the arcades here were double-sided for versus battles. Needless to say, I never played before and got my hiney cut off, folded, and neatly handed to me. I went to the highest level, which was completely dedicated to games based around the giant robot anime, “Mobile Suit Gundam.” There I met Ryan and Alex who rushed me over to a console. “Here! Do you have 300 yen? You have to try this.” It was three hundred yen to create a profile and burn it to a card, and then five hundred yen to sit in a giant enclosed seat modeled after the mobile suit pilot stations from “MSG.” This was too awesome to pass up. I created a profile and sat in line as a very nice Japanese man tried his best to explain to us the complicated controls. The enclosed cockpit had a complicated assortment of knobs and levers, but he did a good job and we got the gist.

Once in the cockpit, I must say, I was blown away. The screen stretched far over my head and the headset, which I used to communicate with Ryan and Alex. All the machines of this type are linked all over Japan, so the three of us competed on a team against other mobile suit players, and let me say we whooped them up nice! I’m afraid that if I go back, I may have to play again. It was that great.

After meeting up with the group, we headed to one of the greatest places ever…SUPER POTATO! It was three levels. Two levels of old school games, and one level of retro arcade machines. Sadly, I have few pictures of Super Potato because I was so wrapped up in visiting. Sadly, most everything in their was made for Japanese consoles and unavailable to me. A lot more happened and a lot more wandering around took place before we decided to head back. We were going to go home when someone mentioned that should never be mentioned when the night is still young: Karaoke. It was settled. We were going.

We took the train to another section of Tokyo where we rented a karaoke room for our party. 2200 yen bought an hour and a half karaoke and drinks. Things got loud and obnoxious, kind of like an average day in America. But it was fun as all! I myself sang “Thriller” and “Take On Me.” You never really know how out of your range “Take On Me” is until you sing it nervously in front of a room full of people who don’t know you well enough to not pass judgment. By the end of the night, everyone was dancing around the room and singing at the top of their lungs. I even tried two drinks, which all in all, had the combined alcohol content of half a Zima. So I was nice and sober, but everyone else was…not so much. It was interesting trip back home.

We were more American than usual on the train and it didn’t stop when we got back. Right now, everyone is still running around, yelling, and “booping” each other on the nose. They’re a really fun bunch. Tomorrow we have to meet the principal of the school and present ourselves to the faculty. However, my luggage has yet to arrive and I will have been wearing the same clothes two days in a row. I’m afraid the principal might think I’m homeless, but I’m praying for a surprise miracle tomorrow morning in the form of my luggage on our doorstep. I guess we’ll see. Back to sleep to do more work. Night!