1998.05.24 SUN

Hello, everybody! I'm still getting used to the way things work over here in Osaka but so far things are going GREAT! I love it here, the biggest problem is that everything here is so =expensive=... Some things are cheaper, like Japanese food (duh) but other stuff is just a LOT more expensive - for example a 16oz coke is 100 yen (about 75 cents) and a chicken dinner at Kentucky Fried Chicken is about 500 yen (about $4) - and you don't get anything else with that. McDonald's burgers are about 200 yen (about $1.50). James is helping me a TON - so far he's helped me to make sense of the train system at least, among tons of other things. While some things are a lot more expensive, others are just plain FREE, which I guess is a good counter ;b

I didn't know about the difference between prefectures and cities before - right now I'm in Kashiwara City (shi = city), within the Osaka prefecture. Yesterday we went to Osaka - the city itself. In America, there's lots of space between the various cities (at least it's that way in North Carolina) but in Japan, there's nothing but DENSELY populated city... I don't think I've seen a patch of grass yet that wasn't farmland...

The cities here are very different from one another - Kashiwara, where the University is, is somewhat like a "backwater" part of Osaka - isolated on top of the mountain, the school is very quiet, and less dense. Namba, though, is more like Las Vegas: stores and fancy lights everywhere you walk, and prositutes walk all over the street (yes, prostitution is legal here)... veeeeery different from Kashiwara.

The "basukettobooru saakuru" (basketball circle/club) that James is in went to Namba last Friday, and I went with them... well, let's just say that drinking is very different here. The circle took a whole floor of this one restaurant we went to, and just about =everyone= drank. Lots of people smoke here, too... it's weird to see so many people lighting up. Yeah, I got drunk too... it's pretty much a prerequisite for karaoke, which we went to afterwards. Luckily I haven't gotten a hangover... I do NOT like beer though. The local favorite "Asahi" - I hate it. I can't drink a lot of the stuff ;b

Surprisingly, there's a lot of American music played here. There's even a radio station or two which broadcast exclusively in English - it's weird, the DJ was talking about the "three-day Memorial Day weekend" - but there's no Memorial Day in Japan, no one gets a vacation from work. They even play American music on the streets, like the one in Fuse we went to today. James told me, "I thought I could stay in Japan for a whole year, but no, not even here can I get away from it... this country music!!!" Poor James, we had to suffer through a whole half-hour of it... ;b

Oh, and we found the anime shop ("animate") over here today too - they had some neat books, I finally caught up on my Slayers manga ;b They also had a couple Macross books and an Eva art book - not too much of the more obscure stuff though. - oh, and there's a BIG arcade in Fuse. It's right next to the station, and called "SEGA WORLD", appropriately enough. All sorts of games, the entire first floor is full of UFO-catcher, pachinko, and driving games, while the second is full of fighting games, puzzle games, and a few pool tables, as well as a small store. A few of the fighting games (KoF '97, Vampire Hunter 2, Puzzle Fighter, and Rival Schools) are set up so that the players can fight head-to-head - a separate screen and joystick for each player. (I wondered how the computer had gotten so smart and why it suddenly changed its character...) They've got so much stuff in the store too - a King of Fighters 97 Complete art book (1980 yen, I think), and some EVA t-shirts for about 3000 yen. I think I have the only Slayers t-shirts in existence though... anime t-shirts aren't big here. The EVA shirts aren't all that great either - in all honesty, I could design better ;b

Anyways, right now I'm in the foreign student's dorm - there's four 486's here, no CD-ROM drives and win 3.1, they're really outdated. But I can at least use Notepad to write e-mails and web pages - just have to go to the lab at the International Students Center on campus to actually SEND any email. They've got new computers there, and can access the internet but the lab there is only open from 9-5 on weekdays. Also, they've only got 5 IBM compatibles and one powermac, so the computers are in high demand. Can't stay on and muck, I guess that's kinda a good thing.

OH! Almost forgot about classes - they started Friday. I'm lost in kanji class - James assures me I'll be able to catch up, but so far I'm about 100 kanji behind with my vocabulary nowhere NEAR that close. James does REALLY well here, he understands a lot more than me even though we were at about the same point in Japanese class when he left. Already I'm learning a lot, thankfully... Conversation class goes a bit better - there's four classes which I'm already signed up for (kanji and three other classes. I don't know the difference yet). Classes are a lot different here - classes are only held once a week usually, and only for an hour. However the pace is MUCH quicker - for example in Kanji class we learn 7-10 kanji a week, and the test on those is the next week. The Japanese books here are a lot better than the ones we used back home - they're actually organized in a logical order. Go figure.

Tuesday I'll probably be speaking with Shimakage-sensei, the art professor, to figure out which art classes I'm going to be taking. James is taking pottery, sketching, and two graphic design classes. I'll probably be taking the same, though I might also try to sign up for the figure drawing class in lieu of the sketching class.

Well, sorry for the long letter - I -wanted- to write on Friday but I ended up getting pulled into class with James, to see if I could get an early start. Again, if you don't want to be included in this more or less daily rant, just let me know ;b BTW, if you didn't get my first letter, you didn't really miss much, I just basically complained about how screwed up these Japanese keyboards are ;b (I didn't have my full list of e-mail contacts when I made the group alias ;b) I think I'm used to it now ;b