wacky adventure!!! OR: How to sleep well on trains!

Alas, the new year is almost done, and it is about time to welcome in the old. Or something like that.

Christmas is already behind me, and thank god. Quite the lonely one I must say. I wont go into to many details, I'll just say that eating Christmas dinner alone in McDonalds is not my ideal way to spend the holiday. However, I did have a fun night on the 26th (27th?) and quite the adventure.

I started out the day going to baseball practice with Ojihara and Tanaka. We were the only three that showed up, so after throwing the ball around and practicing our swings, we decided to clean the field and get lunch. They took me to this wicked good ramen place, in some back alley of Kabuchi-cho, where for 750 yen you can chose 1, 2, or all 4 heaping toppings of pork, veggies, garlic, and pork innards (?) to have with your already ginormous bowl of super thick ramen. Needless to say it was filling.

After that I met up with Gea and went with her to Micky Ds (I did not eat... just coffee). We wandered around Shinjuku and played UFO catchers (like those rip off claw games, but somehow more easy looking and harder to win) and then my all time favorite: Elevator Action Death Parade. We had some time to kill before Korey's bday celebration possibly house party extravaganza (lots of time since the time, place, and event itself were all still TBA), so we decided to have a drink at this classy lil joint called Kuimono Coconeel.

OH BOY, let me tell you. We got there at 5:45, the place had just opened so we were the first customers. I started out with Tanquery and Tonic, Gea with I don't even remember. While we were having our first drinks, and our food, the bartender (I have named him taro, for lack of actually asking him his name) was taking out these giant, square ice cubes (rubic cubed size) and shaving them into spheres. We finally found out what drink they were for when I asked for his recommendation, and got Earl Grey Liquor with a giant ice sphere in a rocks glass. Quite fantastic. Annnnnnyways,

More T&Ts, fancy drinks, Chocolate pies, and a couple hours later, our friend mark showed up and joined us before we eventually headed out to the now in progress house party. On the train there, Mark and I were comparing who had better headphones (to Lady Gaga, Poker Face, a classic) and I was taking mine off and putting his one and off and on and off and on and then we got to our stop and we got off and my vision was blurry and.... wait... where are my glasses? No where on my person... oh fuck a duck.

My glasses fell off while I was enthusiastically ripping and shoving head phones on my head, and were now on the Tokyo metro 10:55 train bound for god-knows-where. Yippee. Thus, slightly blind, quite buzzed, and very full from Ramen, Deserts and cheese platters, I stumbled off to the lost and found (to report my glasses) and then to Korey's.

11:00: arrive at Korery's (friend's) apt

11:15: get wrecked by Korey in beer pong

11:30: find kotatsu and crawl underneath

11:32: get away from kotatsu because the Japanese kid next to me is throwing up... on himself and kotatsu

From this point on I really stopped thinking about time, but I am pretty sure we were at Korey's until at least 12:30. Finally the guy who actually owned the house wanted us out, and we wanted to go out, so it was off to Roppongi to Club Ferrier (possible name of the club, because of the lack of glasses I didn't really pay attention to anything ten or more feet away from me).

The club was pretty fun, pretty basic for a club I suppose, danced around for quite awhile until one of us realized the 4th floor was deserted and we could move our entire gang up there for our own personal dance floor. We danced around some more, and suddenly it was 5:00 am and we were leaving. I don't really remember being tired until we got to the gyro place, and by the time it was 5:30 Mark and I stumbled to the trains.

It was most likely the worst train ride of my life. The goal was this: Depart: 5:35 Roppongi>>>Ueno>>>Home @ 6:31 - Total travel time 56 minutes (@ 730 yen)

What actually happened: Mark and I fell asleep on the train. We went an hour past Ueno.
(6:45)

Went back to Ueno (7:45) Mark and I go separate ways at this point. My train does not leave the station until 8:00. I fall asleep waiting for it to move. I wake up, an hour (give or take a couple min) past my stop, in the countryside. I swear I heard a cow moo when I got off the train. (now 9:30)

Finally get home, at 10:30. In summery: Total travel time Roppongi to my house: 5 hours.


I slept all day.


For any parental figures that may worry: 1.I found my glasses. They are probably cleaner than before I lost them.

2. I spent the day after recuperation at an aquarium. It was pretty and educational. I saw dolphins and a fish with a really long squiggly nose.

3. After that I have been at home with my host family (and manic 5 yr old host brother) doing my HW that is due after break.





OH and Happy New Years! I am going to Nikko for three days with the host fam.


see Nikko: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikk%C5%8D,_Tochigi

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Title says it all folks. I've never been good at keeping a diary, journal, or any sort of blog. I just don't really wanna write on the darn thing unless the spirit moves me so to speak.

Anyways, over this past weekend our wonderful group of CIEE space cadets ventured down to the edge of Japan to visit Hiroshima and Miyajima. We left Tokyo at around 6:30ish on the infamous bullet train (日本語なら『新幹線』だな). Flying on the tracks at about 150mph, stopping at each stop for about a minute at the most, we reached Hiroshima at 10:30 (it would take 10 hours to drive). The following day we toured the Hiroshima peace museum and park, heard a talk from a professor about why the USA actually dropped the atomic bomb, and lastly we heard a first hand account from an atomic bomb survivor. Thanks to Middlebury Japanese Language School, I've had the privilege of hearing three such talks (now four) to date. Each account has been so different, and so moving in their own ways. You can look at pictures of Hiroshima, see the flattened houses and the inexplicable flatness of the devastation that took place. But when you hear first hand from someone who was there, someone who was burnt so bad her skin melted and was hanging off her arms, someone who watched her friends and family die, someone whose own father couldn't believe it was her because her face and body was so badly burnt, you forget about the need to drop the bomb. Nothing politically motivated can justify such a horrible, wicked thing. And you feel sick, that mankind can conceive of something filled with such viciousness.

But the sadness is replaced with an even deeper fear at the realization that the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are pebbles compared to what our country has now. Consider this:

People about 1 mile from the hypo center in Nagasaki were pretty much unaffected by the blast and subsequent radiation. However, if a Hydrogen bomb were to used on Washington D.C., the following fallout would result (depending on wind direction) in the entire eradication of the eastern seaboard. Goodbye NYC, Philly, Boston, etc. That is how much radiation would be released from one of these newer bombs.

I didn't really set forth to talk about this, I meant to talk more about our night after the tour of Hiroshima, and Miyajima the next day. But alas, the mind wanders.