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)?