Saturday, April 29, 2006

my feet hurt

i explored today. and when i say explored, i mean i walked for like 4 or 5 hours. i walked halfway across downtown tokyo, got poured on, and had an amazing time. i finally saw some really neat stuff. i went to the island where the imperial palace is, i walked all around there, I went to a history museum, the national science museum now has a place in my heart for having a permenant exhibit on bikes, and the museum is sponsored by NJS. NJS, when translated into english comes out JBA, and is the japanese bicycle association, or nippon jitensya shinkokaisha, or something like that, and they are teh people behind all the keirin stuff. walked some more, went to yasukuni jinjya, that was a blast, and came home. i finished off my memory card, so I will be sending 325ish new pictures home soon.

love

peter

Friday, April 28, 2006

I have nothing new to report except that I am 17. I feel no different. Actually, I am much hungrier right now then I was a while back.

Bye

Peter

Thursday, April 27, 2006

rockin.

Yesterday was super sweet. I didnt see the girl who i usually walk to the station with, but I got invited to walk with some of the other girls in my class. Typically, they go the other direction at the station, but yesterday, they went the same way as me. We chatted for a while on the train, and we hungout. We went to Ikebukuro, as they (three girls, 2 from my class, and one from teh international course) said they were going to see a movie and asked if I wanted to come. I of course said yes, as I would have been hella bored otherwise. So, we watched a japanese teen flick which wasnt half bad, and speaking of halfs, I understood more than that, and was super surprised. It was about some kids and they start a music group and of course at first they fail, and then they try something new and they succed, something about this one really hot girl who is friends with the lead singer but dating the lead singer in those one really famous group who they all love, and Konishiki was in it, which made it even cooler. The english translation of title is "Check it out, Yo" which has something to do with their music. I will say that I enjoyed it. We then walked a bit more around Ikebukuro and did the obligatory purikura. the english translation of that is print club. they are the photobooths that tons of people go into, and is a national pasttime, and is really weird. for example, guys arent allowed to take pictures by themselves. so we took some fun pictures, and then we got to decorate them. at the decorating booth, as we were leaving, they was a screen on the computer where we decorated the pictures. this screen absolutely takes the cake. I have seen some really funny signs here and there, and have started collecting pictures of bad english, but this was amazing. It was the obligatory take care of lost items sign, but this one had cute little drawings of things you might forget. the usual keys and wallet, coats, bags, umbrellas, and the not so usual................panties. It was unbelievable. I was rather shocked, and had to ask the girls I was with why this was. none of them gave me a straight answer. oh well.
I walked to the station with the usual cute girl and one of the girls who I hung out with yesterday, and we killed some time. I ate more japanese fastfood, which was pretty funny, but It was nice to hang out with friends. Next week is the huge holiday week, so we dont have school on saturday, so we will hangout again tomorrow after school. So technically today is my birthday, but i wont turn 17 until late tonight, I didnt really tell anyone, but the two girls I was hanging out with saw it on my ID card at the restaurant. whatever that means.

thats all i can think of. I am off to go eat something, and dont really know what to do else.

peter

A quick comment

Japan is incredibly undiverse (indiverse?). Either way, it is. I have been here for over a month and I saw my first people of hispanic descent yesterday in Ikebukuro, there was a group of people performing Andean music. I rarely see people of african descent, and when I do, they all own hiphop shops. Whites are only somewhat less rare, but I was incredibly surprised that Japan was like that. I had no idea when I left the states. oh well.

peter

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

I gotta go!

oh you know, im chillin. I am doing fine sort of. I hate television. I enjoy enough to watch it, but I always feel really wretchid after watching it. I am also rather sick of books. I have been reading a book called Confucious lives next door. It is writen by the guy who was the Washington Posts east asian corresdonent, and is about his family living in east asian, which is interesting enough, but his experiences are very different than the ones that I am having. I have found somemany common asian sterotypes that are completely false. I cant pick up a book for more than 20 minutes and feel like I have wasted the time. There is so much in Japan that I can do, but its really hard to see it all. I also feel really let down by my program/host family, because they havent shown me anything about Japan, which really bums me out, becasue i dont know what there is to do. Thats about all i have time for, as I want to go explore as much as I can in the near by area. Thats another bum thing. I live way out in the boonies so it takes a super long time to get into the downtown part of Tokyo where all the happening things are.
Calligraphy was fucking sweet. There are 2 people in the class. Including me. 3 if you count the teacher. The other is a first year highschooler in the international course. she is in the same class as the other exchange student. pretty nice, and speaking of pretty, i keep walking to the station with that girl, but since I dont even know how to hit on girls in teh states, I have aboslutely no idea how to do it in another language. So, if you have an experience, please share. I realized today, that I am the one speaking the foreign language, and that Japanese isnt a foreign language because I am in Japan. It is really harde to grasp that the language I thought I knew so well is actually the strange foreign one.

If you have any advice on getting girls in foreign countries(or just in general) please share. Im sure a good companion would do me good.

Im off to explore.

Peter

Sunday, April 23, 2006

whoa

i just got this really weird feeling. my birthday is coming up, and it will be sweet because i will turn 17 in Japan, which is a pretty cool birthday present. BUT, im not really sure when my birthday is. sure its april 27th, but april 27th in the united states. april 27th in japan is not april 27th in the US, save i couple hours late at night. does that mean I turn 17 on a day that isnt my birthday? how cool is that!

peter

i hurt.

ug. woke up this morning, eat breakfast and rushed up to tachikawa for the team roadride. those dudes had some pretty studly bikes. oh yeah, they were hella fast too. i got dropped about about 45 minutes. i wish i had brought my camera, because where we rode (up towards the mountains and into the wilderness) was hella pretty. i turned around alone and rode back to tachikawa to go to the track. that was a blast. I rode for about 3 and a half hours, and just got worked over. i had a blast and will definately go next time if i can move by then. i barely had the energy to walk the 15 minutes from my house to the internet cafe. i wish i had brought my camera to the keirin thing too, becasue i bet i looked pretty studly in the sick keirin outfits and silly helmet. and bike that really didnt fit very well. at all. if i turned to sharply, the front wheel scraped my shoes. that was fun.
14.36s in the flying 200m
20.68s in the standing 200
6 and then 7 in the keirin heats.

i want more

peter

Saturday, April 22, 2006

some news

heya heya just finished my first full week of japanese school. pretty keen, but i havent had calligraphy yet. i am hungry. i am gonna go on a group ride tomorrow up in tachikawa and i might join that team. sorry veloshop, if i want to race in japan, i have to belong to a japanese team. i am gonna cheat and wear their jersey over my veloshop skinsuit so at least i have veloshop on my legs when i rock the japanese racing scene. i am also going to tachikawa keirin for training. once a month on sundays they have a learners class. i am stoked!!!!!! about all, i walked to the station again with said good looking girl again today. it was really funny. we go in different directions, but i was waiting with her on her side of the platform, and adam (the other exchange student) walks by, and askes "dont you go the other way" and i told him yes, but she was a lot better looking then he was, so i would talk with her instead. however, she was standing there as i said this in english, so she asked me what i said. oh shit. "id rather speak japanese"
few. i dont know what the hell im supposed to talk to american girls about, let alone japanese ones.

im hungry, and tired, and lots of other emotions because im an in japan. so later

peter

Friday, April 21, 2006

news

not really. I am just chillin after a day at school. It was my first day with my revised schedule. oh yes, yesterday was the end of my first week at school, so i sat down wiht my teacher and we picked classes. and by picked i mean which ones were pointless and thus dropped. i dropped old japanese (as i have enough trouble with the new one), chem(hella easy and i didnt understand anything anyway), math practice (sit and do worksheets from like a year ago, i think not) and i think that is it. i also added one class. calligraphy. bitchin. had some fun today with holes in my schedule sitting in the library working on kanji. speaking of libraries, for all my librarian friends out there, I am compiling info for a large library post, so more on the library later. thats about all the news that i have, i had a very pleasant walk and naturaly feeling conversation to the station today with a very good looking girl. that was kinda fun.

all for now

Peter

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

rad

I am watching tv at the internet cafe and it is sweet. I am watching a show called "zenmai samurai" zenmai means spring and the main character is a windup samurai. His sword and special technique have to do with dango, which are boiled rice balls that are then stuck on a stick and grilled like yakitori. i had them with tomity when we went to this temple. they are tasty. speaking of tomity, i havent ridden my bike in far to long, I am just wiped when i get home from school. speaking of getting home from school, I got a package from home yesterday. It had some underwear and like 3 pounds of chocolate. i am stoked.  about school, there was a math test today, the stuff was really easy, but I didnt have time to write my answer because I took a long time writing everything out so technically i failed the one question quiz, but since I am an exchange student I didnt have to stay in detention like everyone else who failed until 5. that is rough. I walked to teh station with one of the kids who didnt fail. nice kid. When ever I walk in the halls I get giggles from girls and heys from guys. A group of guys keeps telling me to join the rugby team, but since I turned down the judo team because I didnt really want to get the shit beat out of me, I turned down the rugby team too. judo would have been really cool, but id rather meet a bunch of new people first. not much else to say.

mata nee

peter

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

hmm

I am getting this question alot: do I change rooms? Simple answer is no. I do go to a different classroom for geography and PE. The teachers are the ones who go from room to room. The lockers are all in the room, which makes the halls very clean. The school is very clean. Note to PPS: in Japan, the students clean all the rooms. something to think about for saving money? Speaking of questions i get a lot, just about everyone asks me a couple questions. 1) what music I like, so that we have some to talk about 2) what sports do I like (I told a couple guys that I raced bikes and they started touching my legs, it was really weird, but there were impressed by my ripped quads) and the worst question of all 3) do I have a girlfriend. Just about everysingel person I have met has asked me that question. Even the geography teacher said something along those lines today in class, the girls were introducing themselves (second day of class) and after one of them was done, the teacher asked me a question that I interpreted as "would you date her", but I said i didnt understand. I am also getting kinda sick of girls squeeling and saying the tradiational "haro", waving isnt so bad, but my hears hurt. I like correcting english, it makes everyone laugh. I am acutally now kind of iffy about getting an electronic dictionary because I corrected the english in it. It has speak function, and the pronounciation was wrong for this one word, but right for all the others. I wont say what that word was because it is a long story and I dont have much time.
Grandpa- I do have a counselor, he works for the exchange program and he is a pretty nice guy, he calls every so often, but right now I cant call him because the phone in my house broke, and my host family is pretty poor.
Speaking of phones, I went to find out about cellphones today, I t was pretty interesting, and whats more, I understood what the woman was saying.
Chris- could you please include a link to the blog in the cardinal times article, so that everyone in the school can read about my adventures.

Thats all I can think of for now
love

wait! thats right, 31 percent on the 288 compound test. I was hoping for 25, so I am pretty happy. I told my friends (who are writing the tests and helping me sutdy) that right now, speaking and listening was the most important thing, and the kanji is actually second right now.

love

PEter

Monday, April 17, 2006

today

I went to school today, but felt like getting on the train on the opposite side of the tracks. It would have taken me to Nikko, which would have been much cooler than going to school. But I didnt. I went to school, did the usually little dictation thing with the kids, then we had an assembly. I was told about 5 minutes before that I would have to make two speaches during the assembly! 5 minutes is not a lot of time to write a speach. It was an introduction to myself in japanese and then in english. Went pretty damn well. But, now everyone in the school runs by me in the halls screaming and giggling and waving and attempting to speak english. i think i am going crazy, but i might just be deaf. anyway, at least now I know people, school was pretty dull, not really understanding much of the japanese, but the stuff is all super easy. Didnt take a kanji test because I told my teacher that 144 was WAAAAAAAAAAAY to hard. now i have to do about 60. bullshit, im just gonna sorta plug and chug. then i went home. i walked to the station with about 6 other classmates which was nice becasue now i feel like i have a bunch of friends. I think some of us are gonna chill this weekend. hot shit!

mata nee (later)

peter

Sunday, April 16, 2006

correction

ok, so here is the scoop. it is 144 compounds a night this week until i finisht he first book. with a test the next day. I dont know what will happen when i finish that book. saturday was a halfday at school, which ment i got there before 8 and left about 3:30. and i got an 88 out of 100 on the 144 compounds that i learned last night. it is getting ridiculous, i spent more time learning kanji then i did sleeping. that is nuts. and because of stupid school on a saturday i missed the sekidobashi cyclo flea market. i mean shit, i didnt understand anything anyway. classes are really weird. I know how why the asian schools are so hard. because i cant understand what they are saying! i can do the math in my sleep, and i have done the physics, and chemistry, ive never taken biology, but i didnt understand anything in that class anyway, so thats ok, the civ/econ equivalent i didnt understand anything, same goes for old japanese, and the japanese writing class, but i havent had all my classes yet. PE is much more fun in japan than in the states, and the english class is hella hard because it is all in japanese. by the way, whast an adverb? the english is really really really...really easy, and sometimes wrong, but i have trouble doing it because it is all in japanese. about the kanji, i am most certainly not in the ESL class, which is called teh international course, while the other exchange student is, but he is also a first year. I didnt get a choice, i just got put in the math and science course, which is kinda lame, because i have done all of the math and science except for biology, but i cant understand it!!!!!! grrrrrrrrrr. and will someone, more than one people tell mr. halpern that he needs to return my emails! ok, end rant. some is well, i know some peoples names, which is kinda nice, but they are all guys, the class is segragated in the sense that guys on one side and girsl on the other, and i didnt understand what the kid was saying when he tried to explain it to me why that was. I have seen teachers hit kids i think about 3 times, though 2 were joking, but my teacher (the same one who is making me learn this compounds) hit a kid pretty hard in the head yesterday because he had is head down. dont you get fired for that in the states?
im hungry, and have to finish learning those 288 compounds for monday (saturday and sunday, 144 times 2, this is just plain stupid)

ug

peter

Friday, April 14, 2006

itai! (it hurts)

i had a full day of school today, and by that i dont mean 8:15 to 3:15 with the optional flex, I mean I got to school about 5 of 8, and didnt leave until 6:20 in the evening! so, this will porbably be my last post for some time, as I have to start doing uber kanji. my homeroom teacher wants me to learn a little elementary school book in a week. he has six of them. that comes out to about 144 characters a night for the next 6 weeks. 144. I think i learned about 400 in 3 years at psu. oh yeah, and i have a test everyday. 12 pages with 12 characters each. 144, my classmates were amazed, im not sure ive ever worked this hard in my life. ug. speaking of classmates i learned some names. last names only of course. im wipped, im gonna go eat

love for some time

peter

Thursday, April 13, 2006

You know you are cool when...



...you have a jacket for the school uniform of a fancy Japanese private school with your name in it, IN JAPANESE! Yeah, I feel pretty rockin right now. I went to school today, did everything ok, i think, and had fun. There is so much to tell about it, and I dont have time right now, but it was super cool. Then, I went to Ikebukuro to return the jacket that I had been wearing. When I got my uniform, the jacket I got was just display version, and I had to wait for them to get more of them in my size. So, now I have a jacket with my name in it! I feel awesome. Thats about all I have time for right now, Im super tired and hungry.

ask questions, I will try to answer them.

Peter

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

I am cold.

I rode to my school today. It was fun. I got up, ate some, and got on my bike. I really had no idea where I was going, on a vague idea of streets. 33 kilometers later I rolled up to my school gate. It takes about exactly the same time to ride there as it does to walk and take the train. About the time I got there, it started to rain. No biggie, Im from Portland. Riding back, I decided to take a different route to see if it was shorter. Well, Japanese streets dont really have street signs, so I got crazy lost. The return trip was over 10 kilometers longer than the coming one, and took a lot longer. By the time I got home, I was absolutely freezing. I took a nice warm shower and put all my warmest clothes. Riding home, not thinking I would be out that long, I bonked. I get home, shower, and eat. I had some generic chocolate corn flakes, some fried shrimp (a couple days old, the japanese dont throw food away), and a big bowl of last nights nabe. Now, if I were to translate that straight to english, I would say that I had a bowl of pot, but that is not true, as Marijuana is highly illegal in japan, and I dont smoke. Nabe is the japanese word for pot, but it is also the stuff that you put in the pot, so it is a soup that has whatever you want to put in it. It was good, but I am still really hungry. My eating habits have super changed since I got here, it is really weird.

oh well

Peter

Sunday, April 09, 2006

This post is for Chris Stadler



Good enough for you, buddy?

Natto


Here is the deal with natto. Natto are NOT rotten. They are fermented soybeans. Lots of people told me before I left that I would hate them. Apparently, they smell gross. I think they taste awesome. They come in little styrofoam containers, and they come with some sauces. You pour the sauces on them, mix them up with chopsticks, and then dump then on rice. mix that up and enjoy, or dont, which ever you prefer.

This is a picture of natto after you mix it up. It really doesnt do them any glory. Natto is stickier than all hell. As you pull up with your chopsticks, strands of something (shown as the whitish stuff in the picture) come too. They are crazy nuts and will never leave you alone until you eat them. Alex or Chi, if you are reading this, this is what you need to use to hold those green dorms together.

Peter

Sasato usero, baby

I watched Terminator 2 on TV yesterday, I had no idea what was going on. What else did I watch? Extreme bike racing ninjas? that was rad. didnt catch the name thouhg, kinda bummed. Went to Shibuya yesterday and met some friends from WYS, we walked around for a couple hours, saw some sites shopped. I got a cool jacket that is to small for me, but everything in the store was 700 yen, and the jacket probably would have cost about 50 bucks in teh states, so I got it. It seems to me, at least in Harajuku anyway, that if you go into a used clothes store, the price goes up, because nobody pays 5000 yen for an old tshirt. I went to the big intersection that you alwasy see pictures of, that was cool, there are a whole lot of people in this country. oh well, im diggin it.

peter

Friday, April 07, 2006

This post is for Mr. Halpern


Oh yeah, you know it.

Ankle socks and loafers is the only way to roll! It is pretty sweet with that really nice uniform.

Peter

School



Sorry about the whole sideways thing, but that is me in my uniform. I can and will get any close up shots that people want. So, my first day of school. Yesterday I went to school and met my teacher. Then I went and got said uniform. So, this morning, as I had to get up early, I set my alarm clock for 5:45. I went to bed about 11, and my body woke me up at 2, 4, 5, 5:15, and 5:30. I ate breakfast, got dressed in my snazy new digs, and left my house at 6:30. I boarded the 6:44 train to Shinjuku and was so nervous, my heart rate was probably 3 or 4 times what it should be. Anyway, I had no problems getting there, I met my teacher on the train and we talked, mostly in Japanese, and then we walked to school. I got to school about 7:45, which means that it takes about 75 minutes to get to school in the morning. Hmmm, I think my commute in Portland takes about 5. I was supposed to be at the teachers room at 8:20, so I wandered around and got lots of funny looks, stares, and of course, giggles. Oh boy. About 8 I met the other exchange student at the school. He is in a different program than I am, but we both wound up at Teikyo. His name is Adam and he is from Brisbane. We chatted for a bit, and then went to the teachers room. There, we talked with the head of the international course, and he told us that we could either wait there or go talk with all the girls that were waving at us from through the window. We chose the later. Then we went back to the teachers room, and introduced our selves to the entirety of the teachers. We then went to the big school assembly that was boring, but probably because I couldnt understand what was being said. I think it was just introductions. After that, my teacher took me the class, and I introduced myself to the class in Japanese. Then, everyone in the class introduced themselves in English. I dont know a single persons name. The english could use some work. I dont really remember anything about the class, but according to the teacher, the boys are very shy, and the girls are very domininant, or something like that. He wants me to be a leader. Oh shit. At least there were some cute girls in the class. Since it was just the opening day, we were free to leave about noon, and Adam and I went and got some food. That is twice in one week that I have eaten fast food, which is more than practically in the past two years. The other time was with Tomity. I ate lunch, in Japan, at Macdonalds, with a professional bike racer. How cool is that? The next several days at all tests, so my next day of school is the 13th. My school rocks, half day saturdays! Wait saturdays!? Fuck.

Peter

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Pictures


Ok, here we go. I can upload pictures at the cafe, but I dont know how to crop them, so they are about 3 meg a piece. So right now, I will only do one until I can crop them.
Here it is:
This is the tatami room at Seibuen Keirin. It is really funny to think that right next to all the bike parts, you have this pristine(sp?) tatami room. Well, not really prisitne, because right above the guy taking his pants off, they have a good luck charm in the form of a pinup calendar. But I like the juxtaposition of concrete floor with lots of choes, and tatami room with bike parts at the edge. Off to the left of the picture is where all the tools are, so that adds more to this really weird image. More when I figure out how.

Peter

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

What a day!

Today was sweet. I woke up, ate, went to net cafe, and there, I had an email from a guy I had been corresponding with on bikeforums.net. He is a professional keirin racer, and lives in japan (no shit, pro. keirin only exists here and in korea). SO, today, I met him, and we spent about 4 or 5 hours chillin. He took me a track when gambling wasnt going on, and we talked track, we walked around the track, went into the lockerroom, which might sound kinda weird, but when we got there, there were a bunch of bikes, a bunch of keirin racers riding rollers, and...a tatami section. Tatami is a traditional japanese cushion. I have some pictures that I will try and post later. I met a bunch of keirin racers, including the japanese keirin champion. that was cool, holy shit, is that guy ripped. We were chillin there, and I was looking around and came across the trash. What was there? tons of track tubulars. unfortunately, they were all seamless, so it would have been impossible to repair. There was also a sugino zen chainring, that Tomity (thats his nickname) took, and he gave me some other stuff we found in the trash. I got a special NJS certified keirin saddle, and... a keirin helmet!!!!! those are so stupid looking. I also got a poster from the japan championships, and a manga called gamble racer, which, you guessed it, is about keirin. Then, we went for a very pretty drive, passed the stadium where teh Seibu Lions play, and went to this really cool temple. It was called Yamaguchi kannon. kannon comes from the buddhist god kwanyon, and is also the namesake for canon camera. Then we took me home. He told me about a cycling flea market (sweet huh) that is taking place next weekend. I will go and buy lots of cool japanese cycling things. Back at the house, he gave me a keychain that has a special track cog that he hand customized. He makes a bunch of these things, and they have won at least 2 world championships. It is super polished to reduce friction or something like that. And I understood most of what was being said too. I was proud. I am happy. I now have ambitions to become the worlds first foreign keirin racer in Japan. The keirin school in open to anyone if they speak japanese, but as of yet, no person other than a Japanese has completed the school. Sweet.

love to all, and pics. I am gonna try to upload some tomorrow.

PEter

Monday, April 03, 2006

more silly japanese TV

just a quick update on japanese TV. there are only about a dozen channels. 1,2,3,4,6,8,10, and 12 are the only public ones, and 5,7,9,11 are cable. my house picks up the neighbors 5 and 9. so, funny things i have seen on TV recently. jackie chan in japanese, hot flying korean girls. that korean show is hilarious. pity it is in korean, but it has japanese subtitles. I watched the return of the king dubbed into japanese, that was funny, lots of baseball, and this one show called the adventures of odenkun. kun is a suffix used with friends, and oden is a traditional japanese food. oden kun has a friend called something like daikun, which is a joke on daikon, which is a japanese radish. speaking of jokes, I dont know any japanese jokes that I could translate into english and would make sense.
here is one that doesnt make sense
ichi tatsu ichi wa?
(whats one plys one)
tanbo no ta
(a rice field)
it is a kanji thing

WHEE!!!

peter

Tired

see above. I rode to Tachikawa today to the bike shop. That place is cheap. It is about 120 yen to the dollar. This place had tufo cross tubulars for 3000 yen. i wish i had had some more money on me. bike parts seem really cheap here. some of them anyway. 8 dollar tubes? no thanks. 12 dollar vittoria road tubulars? sweet. I asked the guys about commuting by bike everyday from my house to my school. It is about 15 to 20 miles. it is possible, but they didnt know how to do it. oh well, i will explore tomorrow. school starts on thursday, I dont have my uniform yet, i will call WYS today or tomorrow and ask about it. After my ride I walked into the next town over which is where the train station is. it is about 15 or 20 minutes. found a tasty place to eat. the people were very nice and i had a nice chat with them. there was also a chinese woman in the shop and we talked. then just before I was leaving, an english teacher walked in, she was japanese but, I had some pleasant chatting, and am proud that I can chat like that. I just finished off my trader joes chocolate covered espresso beans. bummer. japanese chocolate is ok, but i will cry when i finish off my droste dark chocolate pastilles. mmmmmmmmm. not much else to say. it is almost exactly 5 miles from my house to the bike shop, which is nice, but cycling in japan just feels really weird. I have only seen about 3 people over the age of 3 wearing helmets as they rode, and one of them was me in a mirror. There are mirrors everywhere in japan, but they are all at little street corners so that you can see if anyone is coming. good idea. Im diggin it here. ask me questions, I will try to answer. I am also still working on getting this picture thing sorted out. maybe I should sneak my usb cable into the internet place and uplad some pictures. speaking of sneaking pictures, I took some pictures at keirin, but a guard saw me and told me not too. bummer. I watched hot girls eating lots of food yesterday on TV. It was an eating contest. Holy shit those girls could eat. I doubt that I could eat that much even if I wasnt timed. 118 deep friend shimp in 45 minutes? damn. she was hot too. speaking of hot girls, the guy at the restaurant said that I would be swamped when I get to school. man, things sure are different here in japan.

peter

Weather and a bike ride

The weather here is just plain silly. A couple days ago it was really cold and windy. The next day it was really warm, then it was cold again, then it rained, now it is absolutely beautiful, warm, and the wind is blowing at about 25 miles an hour. everything is getting knocked over. It is nuts.
Iwent for a bike ride yesterday, it was fun. I will try to ride to my school some time this week. I start school on the 6th but i have lost all sense of time since i got here.
Peter

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Keirin

Holy Shit. Holy Shit. I went back to the velodrome today, because it was teh weekend. Holy Shit. It was amazing. It is just as much a part of Japanese culture as sushi. well not really, but if you go to japan and dont go to keirin, you are an idiot. nuff said. then i went looking for bike shops. i knew of two thanks to a magazine that i bought, and went looking for them. the way address work in japan is way different than elsewhere. you dont go by street name, you go by block. so you have prefecture name, city name, neighborhood name, area number, block number, house number. it is prety confusing. so, i found eveything but the shop number for this one shop, but when i got to that block, all i saw were love hotels and massage parlors. i walked around teh entire block and then found a whole in teh wall bike shop with some cool stuff. not like veloshop, but still pretty cool. bikes and babes? hot. next i went to the other one. when i got there, some guy told me that it is pretty famous for road racing. so it looks. i got some info on racing in japan. sweet. more later, i have lots more, but no time


peter

Oh the wonders of this country

It is 10am and there are already people in the pachinko parlors. sweet. One thing I dont really like is that fruit is expensive. the net cafe where i go has a drink bar so I drink about 5 glasses of minute maid OJ, which is ok, but the fruit is all expensive. I bought an apple yesterday at a fruit stand and it cost me 80 yen, which is about 60-70 cents. oh well, it was good.

im off, dunno what im gonna do today. saw a sweet bike yesterday. maybe i will go back to tachikawa and look for a bike shop

peter