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.