More posts coming in the future.

Hey everyone, so I haven't posted at all since I've been back to America and I apologize for that. I've just been so caught up with preparing for my final semester of school that I have neglected this blog quite a bit.

I plan to write a long post on Reverse Culture Shock as well as the things I have been up to since returning to America (for all my international readers)!

Here is a little taste.

 Until next time!

-Garrett

4 DAYS! On finals and Aquariums.

Hey guys, so happy to be back writing again. It has been a busy week with finals! I had 4 of them between Thursday/Friday with the two hardest being (of course) on Friday.

Before I get to the tests though, I want to ensure everyone I have not been idle! My wonderful host family came to visit me on Wednesday and took me out to eat sushi, and then to the famous Umitomago Aquarium. Umitomago is a combination of 2 Japanese words meaning "Sea Egg" which is the theme of the aquarium.

I know many  of you are hoping for pictures, and I did take a few with my awful softbank prepaid flip phone, but since my Android Smartphone decided to kill itself I wasn't able to take any quality pictures, and for that, I am eternally sorry! :(

While taking these pictures on my cheap phone I named each sea creature I photographed. Looking back I really should have taken photos of the dolphins because they were awesome.

Sir Albert the First

Dead Phone/Final days approaching

As my time her comes closer and closer to ending, I am going to try to talk more and more about the different ways that this wonderful country has affected me, influenced me, and inspired me.

I was pretty surprised how popular the last post was about how/why I have lost weight here in Japan. I very pleased by the responses I received, so thank you very much for your feedback.

In other news, my beloved American cell phone is really screwed up. I am going to try a last ditch effort to fix it tonight, but the procedure is experimental and I won't get my own hopes up in the event the phone surgery fails and my baby flat lines. So very sad. In potential loving memory of my android LG Revolution (Which are awful phones never buy one), I have taken a commemorative picture via my Japanese cell phone. You may begin the mourning process now if you wish.

It would break 2 weeks before I return to the U.S...So useless

 So now I must decide what new phone I should get if this phone refuses to fix itself. Any ideas? Post a comment below or comment on Facebook.

In other news I have 4 finals this week, which is a pretty small amount compared to most students here.

Also, last night I met up with several of the other Globalinks students to have a farewell dinner. I had an amazing dish of Tempura, rice, and red miso soup. It was all so delicious, but I was unable to take an quality pictures because my PHONE IS BROKEN.

So back to what I started this post with, most of my future posts will be about how Japan has changed me and so on, so keep coming back and look out for those posts. :D

No song of the day. We will now share many moments of silence for my phone.

Interesting food/weight loss phenomenon

After spending 4 months in Japan (wow 4 months already!) I have noticed some major shifts in my personal lifestyle. 

 One of the most dramatic shifts in my "lifestyle" since I started living  in Japan has most definitely been the change in my dietary habits. Now, to be clear, I don't mean I am now on a diet or anything silly like that; what I mean is my dietary habits, or what kinds of foods I eat on a regular basis, have changed.


Before talking about the types of things I eat now, I will first attempt to paint you a picture of my dietary habits of the last few years in America to give you a "frame of reference" to make comparisons.

Weird pic, but shows that I'm thinner than you probably remember.

The initial problem

Where to begin. Well I can say this, I used to consume up to 7-8 sodas every day on average. That is between 2000-2500 calories each day on sodas ALONE. That, coupled with daily fast food, non existent exercise. It was a mess.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how many calories did I actually consume on a daily basis. and my best guess is around 4500 calories a day, on average. Honestly it was really easy to do that, and I never even realized. I actually remember telling someone that "I'm young, might as well eat whatever I want while I can." Even more sad, that person laughed and agreed with me.

40 thoughts from my head.

It is exactly 2 weeks until I leave Japan. This fact has forced me to really reflect on my time here in Japan. Below I will basically free write about some of my favorite moments here in Japan. I will include some likes, dislikes, and observations. Lets see what spills out of my head. I'm going to start with random thoughts before I get into experiences.

1. Avatar the Last Airbender is awesome and I wish I had watched it sooner. (Cartoon version)

2. I wish most American women had 1/4th of the class that the women I've met abroad have.

3. Mao Iwasa and Aisha Yuson were the first girl "best friends" I think I've ever had. Not only that, but their personalities are so different that it's pretty wild that I became so close with them in the first place. They're going to be successful in life.

4. People from San Diego are really easy to become friends with. Shout out to Kelvin and Vega.

5. Koreans cook way more than anyone I've ever known.

Random day trip to Fukuoka/Space World!

Yesterday (Sunday) was one of those extremely spontaneous days that turns out to be really awesome.

I woke up yesterday morning at around 10:00am and decided I wanted to have a productive day doing some work on a few side projects I have. I even scheduled everything out so I could get some real work done. Well low and behold at 11:00am right after I finished showering and eating breakfast I get text messaged from both Chison and Asuka telling me to be ready by noon because we were going on an "adventure" today with Vega and Kelvin.

Being the "yes" man that I am I was obviously all for it and and got ready for w/e they decided we were going to do for the day.

At 12:15ish I met Vega downstairs and told him that Kelvin couldn't go because he didn't have any money. Asuka and Chison said that wouldn't be an issue so I called Kelvin 3-4 times trying to get a hold of him so we could all leave. Unfortunately Kelvin did not have his phone on him so his part in this adventure is now over :(. Sad face.

Alright, so we then head out on our adventure and Vega and I are informed that we are going to a theme park in Fukuoka called "Space World." Basically a six flag-esque theme park. What a crazy turn out for a day that was going to be spent working in front of a computer screen! Fukuoka is the largest and most popular city in southern Japan and it is about 2 hours away from my Japanese University. So basically this was a mini road trip!

Interview #5 - Thom the hacker

 New interview today! My good friend Thom Hastings agreed to be interviewed! A little background on Thom from my own experiences. Thom is an extremely talented computer programmer and in my mind deserves the label "hacker" for both the original meaning and the modern meaning. If you don't know the difference you may go search Google now, we can wait for you to educate yourself :).

Allllllll right! Let's get started!

Introduce yourself!

Good day everyone, my name is Thom Hastings, and I try to be an open book.

Interviews returning soon!

Hello everyone! Going to be a short post today since I have had an unruly amount of schoolwork over the past few days.

For example, in my Japanese class alone I had these assignments due today
1) July 4th Speech and Powerpoint presentation
2) Normal homework page
3) I had a chapter quiz today that I needed to study for
4) A speaking Japanese voice acting presentation due today

That as well as the fact that I am supposed to be learning/teaching a Japanese song/dance to the rest of my Japanese class to perform on Wednesday.

Can you imagine ME, teaching others to DANCE...yeah so this single class is consuming a lot of my free time with endless speeches/projects.

Which is why I will be starting interviews again, so that I can provide some entertaining content without having to work too incredibly hard.

Some upcoming intervees!
1) Ame from Botswana
2) Bart from India
3) Beatriz from Mexico

As you can see I am going for a global approach to these interviews to get a wide range of experiences.

Thanks for stopping by again, as always and I'll see you again tomorrow!

Song of the day ( The dance/song my class is performing)

Do Karaoke, but don't hog the mic? Challenge accomplished.

Good morning/afternoon/evening
.
On Friday my friends and I decided we hadn't been to Karaoke in a while. Well mainly it was Martha deciding this and inviting the rest of us via facebook a week in advance. Now, initially I decided that I couldn't go because I did not have the money for it, but by Friday I needed a good time to forget the stress of the past week so I found a way to make it work. Onwards to Karaoke!

The adventure started before we even got onto the bus. You see, every semester there are different weeks set aside for various nations of the world. So far there has been Chinese week, Vietnamese week, and now Indonesian week. I haven't written any blog posts on these because I have class from 5:55pm-7:30pm every single day :(. Which means I am never available to visit any of the final performances. I digress. The reason I bring this up is that at 10:15pm on Friday night our Karaoke bound group couldn't get on any of the buses because they were full of people leaving Indonesian week!

Taking today off from blogging.

Hey guys, so today was the first sunny day in a month! So the guys and I went out and threw around a football and shot some hoops with this group of Chinese students. Let me tell you, some of them are really quite good. 

Last night  a big group of us went downtown to do some karaoke and hilarity did ensue. I will write a full recap tomorrow and provide a few pictures and perhaps a video once this involved decide whether they want them censored or not.

Alright well that is it for today, it's a short one because I wanted to take a break and enjoy the good weather. Hope everyone is having a great summer back in the States!


Day song of :

Likes, dislikes and observations

For this post I was originally going to post another interview, but I figured I'd take this time to talk about the many likes, dislikes and observations I've had about Japan since arriving.

I'll break this down into a like section, a dislike section, and then an observation section. I will provide explanations and examples for each.

Lastly, before I start I would just like to say this. If you disagree with anything I say here, that is super awesome for you and I'm sure you have many decent reason why you feel that way. These are my opinions however and therefore I am not looking to offend anyone. Not that anything I'd ever post would be offensive! :P

Happy Birthday America!

Well it is already July 5th in the land of the rising sun, but have no fear America I definitely celebrated your birthday! Well, a lot of Americans and non-Americans did!

This is kind of a funny story since nothing really went as planned.

SO, where shall we begin. Right, we shall begin with the weather of the past month, which has been rainy...nonstop. This past week it has been especially rainy, so much so that 2 landslides occurred on the mountain making the campus inaccessible from downtown. This forced the campus to cancel classes all day Tuesday! (So awesome)

So Wednesday rolls around and a Facebook group pops up looking to throw a big party in celebration of America's independence, so of course I am all for it. This party is scheduled to take place downtown in a vaguely non specified location where food would be cooked en masse, and beer would be distributed, also en masse. Well Vega, Kelvin (I interviewed them both), and I ventured downtown around 5:00pm thinking we knew which bus stop to get off of.

Interview #4 with Kazuma!

Today's interview is with everyone's favorite modest pretty boy Kazuma Hashimoto!

 Let me give everyone in America a little back story on Kazuma. Basically, when the Americans first got here we hadn't met many Japanese students that could completely and effectively communicate in English. Well when my friend Alex Caggiano and I met Kazuma, little did we know how ingrained in our lives he would become. Kazuma basically forced his way into the lives of all the international students at APU and we all LOVE him for it.

Mad respect for this guy and the way he lives life. Enjoy.

What is your Name?
Kazuma Hashimoto

Google Adsense

Pretty big post today. Which is kind of weird since I am dead tired from working on another HUGE project.

In today's blog I will be discussing these topics:

• What Google Adsense is and how I have been using it
• How you can utilize Google Adsense on your blog or website
• The pros and cons of using the service

Alright, here we go.

Some of you may have noticed that I have put ads on this blog. I have done this as an experiment into how Google adsense works. The first half of this blog will discuss my findings with regards to Google adsense, and the steps you can take to monetize your own blog with adsense. Read below.

Interview # 3 with a rapper - Alex Vega!

Interview number 3! I couldn't interview Kelvin without an interview with our boy Vega! Now I must warn you, there is some language in this one, because I dare not censor anything! It's actually not that bad though..in fact you're probably dying to read on to see what he says.

Well ask and ye shall receive. Enjoi! <- I know that is spelled wrong.

Introduce yourself.

Alex Gilfillian Vega. Watagwan (what's goin on, in Jamaican)?

Interview #2 - Kelvin Arca!

 We have a new interview up folks! This is a good one for sure. Today we have my good buddy Kelvin talking about his time in Japan, and we have some great pictures, and a HILARIOUS video for your viewing pleasure ;)

Introduce yourself why don't ya?

 Kelvin Arca. Nice to meet me.

Caligraphy and more!

Konnichiwa (こんにちわ）

Today was special day for Japanese class because today we took a Calligraphy class. Now for those of you who do not know what calligraphy is, basically it is traditional Japanese way of writing that many find quite beautiful.

Now, when calligraphy is written by someone who knows what they are doing, I'm sure it WOULD be quite beautiful. Unfortunately for all of you, my calligraphy is not very attractive looking. BUT, lucky for me, most of you won't be able to tell the difference since you have no frame of reference to compare my work to! Hooray for me.

Below is a short clip of me practicing how to do the strokes properly.

Progress

Alright update time.

What have I been doing lately? I have been doing boatloads of research on a variety of topics such as:

1. Starting a company
2. How to properly manage finances throughout different stages of life
3. Where I will be living next semester
4. Building better websites
5. How to passively make money using the interwebz!

Hope you enjoyed the foreshadowing.  Oh, do you know the keyboard command that is the opposite of Tab? It is not backspace. It is Shift+tab. Good command to know.
A fun thing happened to me on twitter earlier this month. My favorite author Brent Weeks tweeted to me on twitter. I took a screen shot to prove it happened :D.

So there you go; the sequel to my favorite book "The Black Prism" is being released in September! Now I have the authors assurance that it will be awesome. THIS is why twitter is so useful to business, authors, celebrities, etc. It allows them to directly connect with customers/fans on a very personal level. Good stuff.

       <--- Click there to view more

Quick update

Hey everyone. I'll be getting back into the swing of things by updating this frequently again. I've been busy lately with school work, among other things.

I'm starting to get into the habit of bringing my droid smartphone with me wherever I go so I can take quick videos of some of the things that I do so I can have some video content to show everyone.

Stay tuned.

I'll put up a song of the day with the next post coming later today.

Interview 2 is being delayed for a bit!

So instead of posting interview #2 today I decided to wait until tomorrow and make a video interview of sorts introducing both Mao and Aisha. I figured that a few answered questions doesn't really capture who they are like some real video footage does.

Aisha on the left and Mao on the right

Therefore I have decided that with each consecutive interview there will be a video to accompany it! Hopefully this idea yields some entertaining results.

Not much else to say about today other than I started the second quarter of the semester. I have two new classes I am taking, one of which is International Management which is one of the main things I came to Japan to learn about. The professor shows promise of being a genuinely talented educator. I have high hopes for this class as a result.


Alright that is all I have for now. Here is the song of the day.

Interview #1 - Aisha!

 Hello hello everyone! I have the first interview to share with you all today. As promised my friend Aisha agreed to answer a few questions I threw together. Please enjoy!

So, what is your Name?

Aisha Kanaya Yuson

Where are you from?

I was born and raised in Tokyo, but my mom is Chinese American so I can speak both English and Japanese. I can’t speak Chinese though L.

Are you a full time student or an Exchange student?

Full time student!!

Why did you decide to come to APU?

I came to APU for two reasons. First , my friend told me that he was going to come to APU, so I checked ed it out. When I got here I noticed a LOT of foreigners so I figured APU would be a great place to improve my English!

How did you meet me?

I met you at a nomikai! You saved me from the creepy guy.

What was your first impression?

My first impression of you was that you were really nice, since you kept that creepy guy from continuing to bother me!

Describe your favorite experience with me thus far here in Japan.

I just really like hanging out with you and Mao. You guys make me happy and I just really really love being around both of you!

After knowing me for as long as you have, would you ever visit Texas to see what it was like? Why or why not.

It is going to be really sad when you leave here to go back to Texas, so I would definitely come to Texas to visit you!!!!!!!!!

 It will indeed be quite sad when I return home to Texas. I also hope that you DO come visit. I can prove that even though many people there own guns, it is quite safe!

Well there you have it guys, the very first short interview! I hope you enjoyed it. Aisha is definitely one of the nicest people I have met since being here.

Tomorrow I hope to provide an interview from the APU legend Mao Iwasa, who was mentioned in the interview. If I were to describe Mao in 3 words it would be these : Outside the box. She has one of the most refreshing sense of humors I have ever encountered, and I hope she agrees to be interviewed since I am sure it will be quite interesting. As long as she takes it seriously ;).

Check back in tomorrow for hopefully another interview. Let me know what you thought about this one!

And your song of the day.

Changes to the blog!

Hey everyone. I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about how I want this blog to progress from this day forward. Obviously I will continue to update all of you on the goings on of my time in Japan, but I want this blog to continue after I leave Japan.

The next few blog posts will most likely be interviews with my friends here in Japan like I had previously discussed doing. How many of them I do will be determined by how many of my friends here are interested in answering the questions, as well as how many of the readers are actually interested in reading them. That is why I would really like feedback on the questions I ask as well as what other questions you would like to see asked.

The first interview will be posted tomorrow and you will all get to meet/learn about my friend Aisha. Her picture is below. Aisha has basically become like a little sister to me and is a really funny person.

So you can all look forward to reading all about her tomorrow.

In the mean time I will try to briefly discuss my plans for this blog's future. Hopefully you have noticed that just above this post a pair of tags have been added, one saying 'home' and one saying 'favorites'. I'll give you a second to scroll up and look at them now if you haven't already.

Clicking home will do nothing but refresh the page, but clicking the favorites tab will take you to my own little Amazon store where I have listed some of my favorite books by category. I plan on expanding this store quite a bit more over the next few weeks to include my preferences in all sorts of items such as Technology hardware and software, technology accessories, as well as many other books I have read in the past and loved. The reason I am doing this is because a lot of people ask for suggestions regarding things I have some level of knowledge about, which is mainly technology, business, and books. I've thought about recommending music, but no one buys music anymore, and if you do you probably use iTunes like a tool (no offense ;P). <--- Seriously.

Now some of you may be wondering; why would I ever go look at your store, when I can just go to Amazon.com directly, Well, often times if you know EXACTLY what you want, you will just go directly to  a site, but say you just finished reading an amazing book series like Game of Thrones, and you want to check out a Fantasy book that is similar to Game of Thrones to satisfy your medieval hunger until the next book comes out? Well, since I have been reading books pretty much non stop my entire life, the chances are I know a really good book or book series that you would really enjoy, So, instead of having to ask me directly you can instead go to this blog, check out my store and browse my personal suggestions. From there you can make your purchase through amazon and be on your way to enjoying some truly quality reading. This is just one example that can hopefully be duplicated across all the types of products I am going to be recommending. So keep checking the store for updates and additions as I more thoroughly populate it.

So, that store explanation gives a brief bit of foreshadowing to what I want this blog to eventually turn in to. I will still talk about the goings on in my life, since I have recently greatly broadened the geographic locations of my friends. But I also want this blog to be something more beneficial to people than just my daily life.

I have a lot of other ideas about expanding the content of what I put on here, and as always I would appreciate some feedback, so please leave comments below. <---- I actually WANT you to do this.

And a throwback song of the day.

Quarter Break! Guess what I'm doing...

Well it is quarter break here at my temporary university. Here the semesters are split into two quarters, and in between those two quarters there is a 6 day break! Pretty exciting stuff I know.

I had originally planned on going to Tokyo during this break, but unfortunately my constant begging for donations has proved fruitless and thus I am still too broke to afford a trip to one of the most amazing cities in the world. Sad face.

But do not fret dear reader for I am making great use of my free time. Here is a list of things I have accomplished in the past day.

1) Completed my course registration for my final semester at Texas Tech (Yeahhhhh boiiiiii)
2) Finished 'How I Met Your Mother' on Netflix
3) Am 18 Episodes into the show 'Supernatural' on Netflix
4) Completed my Fafsa thing that I have to do every year for financial aid.
5) Applied for like 6 random scholarships I found on the internet. (They were legit I checked, but thanks for your concern I know the internet can be scary :P )
6) Sent my wonderful sister Rachel a link to a website where she can apply for a pretty funny scholarship herself.
7) Played about 10 minutes of Diablo 3, then decided to revert back to being productive.
8) Read some REALLY interesting articles ( I will link them below)
9) Convinced a nice person that instead of throwing away some of their cooking items, that they should instead give them to me for free. Observe below.

So now I can eat cereal and cook for myself instead of eating at the Cafeteria all the time! Yep, I'm awesome.
10) Now this one is pretty interesting. I decided to set up Google adsense on this blog so that I can maybe make a little bit of money off of it since you're all a bunch of stingy bastards :). I will post a blog entirely dedicated to explaining Google adsense, how it works, why I chose to use it, and how you can use it too if any of you loyal readers decide you want to make your own blog about whatever tickles your fancy.


Okay so here are the links to some pretty useful/cool websites
1) How to feel satisfied with every day. - This is a Lifehacker article showing a pretty cool slide show on how to optimize your day in a way that makes you feel the most productive.
2) Khan Academy - Bookmark this page after you go to it because chances are you will probably want to use it in the future. Khan Academy is a website where you can learn basically anything for free. I expect this site will be quite useful for those of us still in college that have a teacher we can't understand.
3) Code Academy - This website is similar to Khan Academy except that it is specifically tailored towards teaching people how to code. So if you were ever interested in learning how to program. Check out the site, it is geared towards people who know absolutely nothing!

Well that is about all I have to say regarding my exploits the last few days. I think this is probably going to be what my blogs are going to look like from now on.

OH I FORGOT. I had an idea that I've been working out in my head that I wanted to ask all of you about. I've been thinking about interviewing some of my closer friends here in Japan so that everyone in America can find out who I am hanging out with, and what they think about me.

So I am going to ask that you guys post a comment with suggestions on what I should ask these friends of mine. If you don't feel like commenting you can always message me on Facebook, or email my Japanese cellphone at  gpetticrew@softbank.ne.jp


Finally, the song of the day!

Well well well, hellooooo again everyone! It has definitely been quite some time since I have updated this, and I truly do apologize. There are quite a few things to talk about regarding the last 2 months.

*** Sneak Peak!!!  This blog will cover my Birthday, the arrival of my other laptop (the reason I can write this) as well as everything else I have been doing since I last wrote here!***

I will start off with my Birthday. Well that particular day was one every APU student will remember, because that was the day that everyone registered for classes. Now those of you fellow college students from the states can understand the panic and rush of class registration. In America the registration usually starts at 12:00am on the day of the registration and EVERYONE is trying to register at the same time and often times the servers become clogged and the entire process is extremely slow and miserable.

Well at this particular school in Japan things are in some ways quite similar and in other ways quite different. The first main difference is that registration opened at 10:00am, and all Freshman, Exchange students, and transfers were all eligible to register at the SAME time. As everyone reading this SHOULD know...my laptop was not working, so I decided to head to the computer lab early and register from there. Unfortunately when I got to the computer lab every single space was filled. So I figured "Oh well, I'll just check the other computer lab..". That computer lab was also full. Sigh. What an exciting way to start my birthday. I decided to go ask my neighbor if I could use his laptop when he was finished registering. My neighbor is an American from Florida named Nick and in the wonderful hospitality of America, he let me use his laptop after he used it. He also gave me pointers on getting through the system more quickly. SO, thanks to him, I was able to get every class I needed for my schedule!  Props to him, here is a photo cred.

Nice looking guy eh?

Alright so from here I finished my registration like I said which was outstanding, well then I decided to take a short nap before I went out to eat with friends.

After that wonderful nap I met up with several friends and we went downtown to experience some Japanese  conveyer belt Sushi!!

This picture only shows a few of the people that partook in the feasting, so thank you to everyone that came :). We then had the wonderful idea to take a Purikura picture together. Now, before I came to Japan I had no idea what this type of picture was. Well, this type of picture is basically a glamor shot from a photo booth that makes you look like a 12 year old. It makes Japanese look cute and magnificent, but it just made me look like I was in the 6th grade. Observe..

If you can't see it that well don't worry, there will be more pictures of me later on that will do a better job of demonstrating the childlike changes it makes in my face.

Anyway, at this point I had had about enough of downtown so I headed back up to campus to visit some other friends. These particular friends decided to make me a cake as well as a photo collage of our awesomeness! Observe!!

Thank you so much to Misung, Asami, Mai, Chisa, Eri, and Caggiano. Probably one of the cooler presents I've ever received.

Well after eating the cake I proceeded to attend a Nomikai (drinking party) where alcohol was consumed and good times were shared. Another picture ...

Alright that pretty much concluded my 22nd Birthday and I must admit it was quite a good one.


Now since then I have been going to classes every week, and having fun every weekend. A few more photos for your viewing pleasure documenting a few events.

Well I hope that gives you a pretty decent view of the overall theme of my time here so far!

Now that I have a working computer I intend to make more regular updates documenting my shenanigans.


One kind of sad little anecdote though. I'm sort of running low on funds at the moment, so the fun times might have to slow down a bit while I consolidate resources and budget what I have left. There is hope however! Remember there is a donate option to the right towards the top of the page! If you want continuous, regular updates please consider a donation :D.  Anything helps!


Annnd here is the song of the day, enjoy.

Videos!??!

Well I video taped my computer failing. This will probably be one of the last posts I mention it since it is probably becoming quite annoying to hear about.

However, before I share my computer failure video I will share a video I took a few weeks ago of some modern age samurai playing with swords. The swords are REALLY sharp. What they are cutting are really tough straw like material with a bamboo core that is soaked in water to make it as close to cutting through a human body as possible! Intense stuff.

Now on to my computer fail video. Now keep in mind that when I recorded this I was EXTREMELY tired, and completely sober. I actually love Apple as a company I am just extremely frustrated with their inability to adequately fix my computer issue after having taken my machine into their store in Houston a good 5-6 times. Anyway, enjoy my very first Youtube video everrrr.

That is all I really have to report right now other than this hilarious picture I took of my friend from Uzbekistan drinking too much at a Nomihodai :P

Yes observant viewer, he is INDEED passed out UNDER a table.

Too many good times in Japan! And now your song of the day ;P.  I don't think I've thrown any dubstep your way thus far, so enjoy something that doesn't have any Skrillex in it.

My computer is awful, but Japan is awesome.

It has been a very exciting couple of days. My laptop is still a piece of shit and constantly shuts off randomly, so that has been pretty annoying. I am rarely in my room though so the lack of a computer is not really that big of an issue, however I am very concerned that come school time, the lack of a personal computer may hinder my studies. :(

Another issue has been my inability to purchase a prepaid Japanese cell phone. Apparently having my passport, student ID, international health insurance card, AND proof I have applied for alien registration is not enough proof that I can legally purchase a PRE PAID CELL PHONE. Someone explain the F***ing logic behind that. -_-

Anyway, on to more positive things.

School orientation week has been going on in full force. Today I participated in the schools entrance ceremony, which is a HUGE deal in this part of the world. Every male wore suits, and all the girls wore their traditional clothing. Guys...I'm talking eye candy for miiiiiiles. I digress. As far as school goes I am completely on track. I tested into the correct Japanese language level! Wooo, that was the one thing I was most worried about, but I handled it well enough to get into the level I needed.

Outside the entrance ceremony.

Many of you have probably noticed via Facebook that I have been participating in Karaoke quite a bit. Check this out. A night or two ago I went to Karaoke and paid 2300 yen (about $27) and recieved 6 hours of Karaoke time + nomihodai (unlimited alcohol). UNLIMITED ALCOHOL FOR 6 HOURS FOR UNDER 30 DOLLARS!!  There were 13 of us and it was simply amazing.

Enjoy the pictures!

Finally if you want to give me an early birthday present and help me get a new laptop I am going to start a fund called the .  GWANL fund (Garrett wants a new laptop). The paypal link has been moved to the right ----->

 Song of the day. Japanese girls like this band...don't judge me.

迚もご目なさい！！！！

I am sorry I have not posted more about my amazing time in Japan. My computer has decided to take a massive shit on me and has been turning off randomly. I think I have tried to write this post at least a dozen times!!!

It is friday night and I went to karaoke!! Then I went to a club called Plan B (hahahahahaha) then a bar called 68! At club 68 they have an active Beer Pong table which I excelled at! Gotta represent the US! I have posted about 98 pictures on my "Picasa Photo Album" available to your right. --------------------->

I am currently I tad bit intoxicated...but that is okay since my computer seems to want to work right now! I hope you enjoy the pictures I have provided and I intend to upload quite a bit more in the futre.

Everyone should experience Japan at least once in their lives. The people here are so nice, kind, helpful, and honest at first glance. It is quite a bit refreshing from people in the US.

I hope everyone who reads this enjoys all of the pictures I have provided and I hope you stay tuned for more posts in the future! This has been a post with a record number of exclamation marks! You will just have to deal with it.

Until next time...the song of the day. :D Good luck to Skrillex who is currently dating her. I hope you keep this one, since she is most certainly a keeper.

It was a Castle/Volcano kind of day

I have still had trouble finding wifi so I will not be able to upload pictures until tomorrow. I have a plethora of content to share with everyone so I hope you all stay patient!

Yesterday I spent the entire day with my host family (who still need proper introduction in their own update). We went to a very important Japanese monument called the Miki Coal Mine. This area is almost sacred to many Japanese people living in Kyushu (the southern most island) because of its nomination as a world heritage site. This was the largest coal mine in Japan in the early 20th century and provided the resources for Japan to grow as an industrial power.

After visiting the coal mine my host family took me to a town called the "village of rivers." Basically a Japanese Venice. My family and I took a boat ride through the city where we were shown a lot of the towns significant monuments. My personal favorite was the home of an ancient samurai family that has held to its traditions and still practices the "art of the sword" to this day. After taking the boat trip across the city we had to walk back across to get to our car. I'd say we walked about 10 miles through the town.

The next day (today) we visited the 3rd largest castle in all of Japan, learned to make noodles (which we then ate!), and visited an active volcano! Pretty busy day!
I will talk about the castle and the volcano much more in my next post when I have pictures to back up what I say. For instance, I snuck up on a ninja....twice! Owned.

Until then, enjoy today's "song of the day."

PICTURES! Sort of....

Here is a post with several pictures of my time here. There will be a LOT more pictures in a few days as soon as I can get wifi for my phone to upload all the pictures I took today, as well as a few videos of modern day samurai slicing stuff up.

Today I visisted an amazing temple up in a Japanese mountain, then I went to a Katana Swordsmith's workshop and learned how to make a Katana. I was then shows a demonstration of just how sharp these Katana are by the several trained "modern samurai." I was then able to wear a sword and swing it a bit. (Pictures to follow tomorrow.) I will also give a much longer description tomorrow when I have the time as well as the pictures to go with it.

I will also be doing an update regarding the host family I have been staying with. They are completely awesome and I feel they deserve a post entirely to themselves, so when I have the appropriate pictures I will create a post just for them.

Here come the pictures.

This is what the 777 jet looked like that I took. I loved this flight.

This was a sign at the airport depicting the bus routes. Think you could navigate them?

I am not exactly sure what this is, but it looked cool and I felt it was picture worthy. Don't you agree?

That about wraps up what pictures I was able to upload from my phone. I will upload quite a bit more the next time I can get reliable wifi on my phone!

Until then....enjoy the song of the day.

OMG OMG OMG OMG

Well my future loyal viewers do I have a few stories for you! Currently where I am it is March 22 and 1:41 in the AM. Where YOU are it is 11:41AM on the 21st. I am officially in the future.

So this entry is going to be extremely long because I experienced a lot of crazy stuff today. There are very few pictures to upload since my phone has yet been able to connect to any sort of WiFi...a bummer I know.

So my journey starts at my house in Houston when I wake up early and get ready only to learn that mother nature is about to open a can of whoop ass on Houston. I felt that mother nature can't hold me back so my father and I left the house without a care in the world about what the weather may bring.

So about 4 minutes later we end up getting stuck behind the longest train ever created. We left my house at 7:01am and did not get 3 miles from my house by 7:30 due to this ridiculously long, and extremely slow train. I have not gotten stuck behind a train in literally years. I almost forgot that trains still existed and railroad tracks weren't old ruins from a lost age. Well it turns out trains still exist and to make up for their scarcity they add a million cars onto them. So.Stupid.

So we bypass the train and continue on our journey across the city of Houston towards Hobby Airport. Well, had the train never showed up I doubt I would have seen any bad weather at all. But, the train did happen, and it happened so spectacularly that not only did the storm have the chance to catch up with us, it had the chance to get far enough ahead of us that most of our drive was through monsoon winds from hell. I remember vividly driving over an overpass and the wind picked up so much that it caused the rain to literally fall horizontally. Every car on the overpass had to stop for fear of veering into other lanes. At this EXACT moment the lovely weather service decided to tell us there was a tornado warning for central Harris County. At this point I thought "Well damn, nature doesn't want to me to leave the states SO BAD that it throws tornadoes at me. Well we showed mother nature up and eluded her vortexes of destruction and made it to the airport.

Upon arriving at the airport I went through all the security just fine, but when I got to my gate it showed that my flight had been delayed 15 minutes. No big deal. Mind you the flight was supposed to take off at 10:15...arrive at 11:00 which would allow me an hour and a half to make my international flight. Well 15 minutes goes by and I notice it has been delayed another 15 minutes. So now it is departing at 10:45 instead of 10:15. Still no big deal. We all get boarded on the plan by 11:00. I am STILL not worried. THE PLANE DOESN'T TAKE OFF UNTIL 11:55! Because of the weather it took the pilots an entire hour to download the new route they had to take. Now this made me think. If the pilots have to download the route information "for" the computer, they aren't technically pilots. If they let the plane fly itself the whole way and make sure nothing breaks, they are more like hardware supervisors. Silly stuff...anyway, long story short my plan arrives at 12:40, I beast my way to my gate and arrive at 12:45...the EXACT minute the plane was supposed to leave.
 

This flight was delayed until 1:30. I'm not entirely sure if this made me happy or irritated me further. That part of my day was a blur of emotions and running. I finally board this mega jet and discover that I have a window seat, as well as a free seat next to me to stretch out on, SCORE! The next 13 hours were blissfully peaceful and awesome. I was provided 3 delicious meals and was able to sleep for hours. Best flight ever.

My super jet arrives in Tokyo Narita and I get my first splash of Japanese culture. In a nutshell, everyone is super polite, super helpful, and super giggly when I try to speak Japanese to them. So here I am in a country that has too many crazy symbols in their grammar for me to read anything, but EVERY sign has English on it too! This makes it really easy for me to check my bag, get my new boarding pass, and find my new gate. My final flight to the area of Japan I will be living was not exciting at all. Everyone was Japanese, super polite, and super giggly at my attempts at their language. The flight attendants were AWESOME though, they gave me a menu with a lot of pictures and all I had to do was point at what I wanted. To make things even better, they did the same thing to everyone else around me, even though everyone around me could read the menu! Hahaha...awesome.

This is where the story gets interesting...seriously.

The problem is that after having to quickly reschedule my flight at the last minute, I ended up arriving a half day too early. I originally planned on just hanging out in the International section of the airport until I met up with the others in my party. Well there is a shuttle that takes people from the domestic terminal to the international terminal which takes about 15 minutes. When I get to the international terminal all the doors are closed and the lights are out. At this point I am simply thinking wtf. I hop back on the shuttle and go back to domestic to hang out there over night. IN THE 30 MINUTES I WAS GONE THEY LOCKED THAT UP TOO. So now I am stuck out in the 40 degree weather with nowhere to go and no idea how to get there.

I decided this was the ultimate moment to brush up on my Japanese speaking skills. I go over to the nearest cab driver and ask him where I can find a cheap hotel for the night. Somewhere in the translation he directs me to a 24 hour restaurant a few blocks from the airport that you can supposedly stay the night at for 500 yen, which is about 6 dollars. I'm thinking "hell yeah great deal!" Well it turns out that this 24 hour restaurant is just a restaurant and I was told I was not allowed to sleep at the tables. I ordered food anyway and enjoyed it. Then I explained my situation to my awesome waitress who seriously took the time to 1) call me a cab and 2) call a hotel securing me a room. This lady spoke absolutely no English, but my broken Japanese combined with my awesome sherades skills told her everything she needed to know. In what might have been 35 seconds a cab driver dressed in a tuxedo peeks his head in and bows to me and asks if I still want the taxi. He then proceeds to take all my bags down to the taxi while I paid my awesome waitress and thanked her a hundred times. My cab driver, who knew I didn't have a lot of yen, speeds through the city to my hotel in probably about a minute in a half making what would have been a $16 cab right about a $10 dollar cab ride.

After dropping me off this cab driver sets up a time to pick me up in the morning so he can take me back to the airport! I love the Japanese. So I then go into the hotel and secure a room. The concierge laughed at my Japanese more than anyone else and showed off her perfect English. I get my room key, go up to my room and spend the next 15 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the damn lights! Turns out there is a holder for your room key near the door that activates all of lights. Nifty trick Japan, nifty trick.

I hope you enjoyed spending the last 45 minutes of your life reading this short story. Hope you enjoyed it because the best is yet to come! Once I figure out the cell phone situation I will upload more pictures!

Song of the day/night.