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Me and Ryoko
at the top of the ferris wheel at Tokyo Dome city Oh, the ups and downs. The more I find out about this place, the more I can’t seem to understand it. For more strange, sometimes drunken, never normal adventures, I now have over 1100 pictures up for browsing on my photo site.
http://jetsetseattle.zoto.com/galleries (bookmark and I wear smile!)
The first thing I can’t understand—how I got a girlfriend. Her name is Ryoko and she’s cute as a button. I can’t even get a date in the states and somehow I’ve managed to pull off a somewhat stable relationship with a Japanese girl who doesn’t speak English. Maybe I talk too much in the US. Even though, Ryoko and I are having a great time. We go on dates maybe 2-3 times a week, and they’re always a ton of fun. We’ll usually go out to eat, sit in a coffee shop for a couple of hours, look around a bookstore until it closes and then just wander around Tokyo. I’m not exaggerating in the least. I think we’ve followed this same pattern for the last 3 dates. Not intentionally—she and I always joke about how we end up drinking coffee at a hole-in-the-wall place or looking at books. Though
Top of the gov't offices
Taken last night in Shinjuku last week we did go to the Tokyo Dome Amusement Park to ride the rollercoaster!!! A rollercoaster in the middle of downtown Tokyo—kick ASS. Communicating? A breeze. Well not on the roller coaster, it’s too windy (duh). I’m not saying that my Japanese is great, I’m just saying that we get each other. She seems to understand everything I say, and she responds—and not with just yes and no, but with comments and questions. The really dark picture of the city is one I took last night from the observatory on the 45th floor of the Japanese government building in Shinjuku. For not being originally from Tokyo, Ryoko knows a ton of cool spots. You can see most of Tokyo from this one building. Tokyo tower is in there too, but I’m not telling where.
Okokokok, enough mushy stuff. Sometimes daily life in Japan can get a little (a lot) annoying. The second thing I don’t understand—how I can have a conversation with my Japanese prof about classes and attendance and stuff, and then can’t even order a goddamn cup of coffee. I know exactly what I’m saying, and I don’t know how to make it any easier! I
can use more complicated Japanese, but if the coffee shop girl can’t even understand “coffee” in Japanese, then I’m just confused. I haven’t slaved over textbooks for the last three years to have some bimbo point to a coffee mug and nod. SeriousMe! (>_<)
I had to post the picture of me all dressed up in the head priest’s robes. I think my favorite thing about this picture is not the photo itself, but the fact that when I showed it to my friend Jordan his response was, “How sacrilegious is THAT!?” The funny thing is, though, there wasn’t any real reason for me to be dressed up like that other than the fact that it was really slow that day. My boss just kinda turned to me and asked if I wanted to try on the robes and learn how to do certain Shinto prayers. Hell yeah!!(oops) I’ve learned how to do an Oharai, which is a Shinto purification ritual. My boss actually had me purify the food given to the Gods the last time I worked. Not just for fun, but to actually perform the daily ritual for the temple, and to bless the food given to
Sakura dance
Nothing to do with anything...just really like this picture the Gods in the altar. :O I was shaking like a Polaroid picture.
Outside of my dates and trials and tribulations in coffeeshops, not a whole lot of spectacularly interesting stuff is going on. I’m a little worried about my grades since Tokyo will give anybody instant ADD. How the hell people study here is beyond me. I don’t mean that I wanna just goof off and drink until I can’t feel feelings, but I want to go out and experience the country that I’m in! Like to have lunch with some Japanese students I just met, tutor kids in English, explore Tokyo, and learn why people do what they do—live here!! How many times am I going to be able to do this? I can bury my nose in a book anytime at home—and usually am. But here, it’s tricky. At the same time I realize that good grades = not flipping burgers. A conundrum.
A boy could just think himself to death, he could.
~alex~
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