7/19-9/9 timeline of my nonexistent period (blog at least) part 2

on to part 2...

8/11 Went to the Arakawa-ku Education Office for the orientation of the World School English Camp. Met up with the Japanese instructors and some of the native speakers. First impression of Yoko was good. As soon as the orientation was over, I went to Yabuzuka, Gunma prefecture for the Onnuri camping. Only about 10 people were in total, but it was nice to have a nice chat while drinking beer.

8/12 Left the camping place and went north to the Tomohiro Museum in Goudo, which is written the same as Kobe. Tomohiro Musuem has the works of a disabled person, whose name is Tomohiro, exhibited. His drawings and poems were done by using only his mouth. Very nice drawings.

8/14 Sa-chan came back from her trip to America. I met up with her in Shibuya and ate ramen for dinner. She missed ramen while in America. Went to Shinjuku and killed time talking about our love lives. Saw her off at the highway bus terminal because she was going back to Kanazawa via overnight bus.

8/15 Met up with Scott, who's teaching in Tokorozawa as a JET, and Naomi, an e-mail friend, for dinner at Gyukaku.

8/17 Met up with Oikawa, a Japanese dude who speaks Korean really well, Chang Yup, who is Oikawa's Korean friend, and Chang Yup's roommate for dinner in Shinokubo. Oikawa's friend Ai joined us for karaoke afterwards.

8/18 Went to Shakujii Park in Nerima-ku with Nagasawa-san, a Japanese man I meet once a month for cultural exchange. Walked around and took some pics.

8/19 Part-time job at Alaya and Activision. Both are translation-check jobs.

8/20-8/22 Participated in Global International Camp in Koufu, Yamanashi prefecture. Group was mostly Japanese kids and mothers, but there were some foreigners as well. Sang a bunch of songs, surprised that there were lots of Korean songs, danced along the songs, and went hiking, etc. Nice to have fun with kids.

8/22 Met up with Chie, an e-mail friend, in Ikebukuro after coming back home from Koufu. Ate at Subway and talked a bit in English.

8/23-8/27 The best week of my stay in Japan so far. Went to Kiyosato, Yamanashi prefecture for the World School English Camp and taught English to 161 Arakawa-ku elementary school kids with 19 Japanese instructors and 17 native speakers. If being a JET is this fun, I will have a blast next year. Got to know many of the Japanese instructors, and some are good friends now. It was hard saying farewell to everyone on the last day, especially to the kids. I keep in touch with one of the girls via e-mail. We played badminton a lot during free time. She's a sweetie.

8/28 Went to Onnuri. Hadn't gone there for about 2 months. There were lots of new people. It was kind of awkward, so I didn't teach Korean to anyone and just talked with people. Didn't go to dinner with them and got back home quickly because of the Turkish Night event at my dorm. Head of Meguro-ku personally came to say congratulations. Ate Turkish food and watched some performances. Food was unique. Got out of the event a bit early to meet Hiroko, one of the Japanese instructors at the World School English Camp, in Ikebukuro. We both like each other, I think, but apparently she doesn't like the fact that I'm nice to many women. I could have started dating her, but I didn't have confidence in myself after breaking up with Hyoju. So, we are just friends now.

8/29 Went to Shiodome with Morita-san to volunteer for UNESCO as a representative of Meguro UNESCO organization. Showed visitors how to play a game and also helped people take a personality test. Bought a book containing the personality test and many other cool stuff, a mug cup with cute pics, and postcards. I got a free T-shirt for volunteering. Left as soon as the event was over and went to Shinjuku to meet up with Scott, the JET teacher. Window-shopped and ate ice cream before we called it a night.

8/30 Met Kanae, an e-mail friend, in Shinokubo and showed her around in Koreatown. Kanae is a nice person, but she hasn't been to many places in Tokyo even though she lives close in Saitama prefecture. Her father is very protective, I think. Went to Alaya to do part-time job doing translation check. Met up with Takano-san in Okubo and had dinner with him and his NPO's female interns. After dinner, some of us went to Jonathan's, a Japanese family restaurant chain, to talk more. Unfortunately, none of the female interns joined us.

8/31 Went to Wang-san's farewell dinner at Asahi Beer Garden near Mitsukoshimae Station. Japanese teachers in my dorm and some of the students joined us. Ate and drank too much so I almost threw up in the subway on the way home.

9/1 Movies tickets are only 1000 yen on the 1st day of every month. I was going to see a movie with Hiroko, but she canceled on me, so I invited Yuuki, an e-mail friend, via MSN Messenger. She said yes, and we went to see "LOVERS" in Shibuya. It's a Chinese movie starring Zhang Zhi Yi, Andy Lau, and Takeshi Kaneshiro. I enjoyed the movie and Yuuki's company. It was my first time meeting her, so I wanted to talk more, but she had to go back because she had left work early to see the movie with me. She works at IBM Japan in Roppongi.

9/2 Did an interview for a full-time job at Fairway Solutions, an IT company. Talked with a woman named Izui. Went to a panel discussion with Nagasawa-san and listened to 3 foreigners talk about manner in Japan. Met up with Hitomi, a chat friend from Utsunomiya, Tochigi prefecture, and her male friend in Shinokubo. Ate at a Korean restaurant first, then went to a Chinese restaurant and ate some more. The guy ended up paying for us, and I felt sorry because I didn't pay much. Hitomi's car that was parked on the street was gone, towed away for parking violation, so we had to go to the Shinjuku Police Station and paying money to get the car back. Pretty unique experience for me.

9/3 Went to the MIFA office for part-time job. At night, met up with Akiko, one of the Japanese instructors at the World School English Camp, in Chiba, and went to eat at an izakaya. We talked about the Camp a lot, how we missed the kids and stuff. Went for a drive after dinner, and I didn't want to go back home, so we ended up sleeping in the car. She drove me to a station and got back home to change clothes for work. It was Day 1 with Akiko.

9/4 Met up with Hiroko in Ikebukuro because I needed to tell her that I can only be her friend, no more, no less. After meeting Akiko the previous day, I had to choose if I wanted to date Hiroko, date Akiko, or stay single. I chose Akiko, but we are still not official yet because it's hard for us to meet. Anyway, so I had dinner with Hiroko but didn't have the courage to tell her anything looking at her face. On the way back home, I e-mailed her on her cell phone and told her I have no confidence in dating her, and she was cool with the whole thing. I'm glad.

9/5 Went to a Meguro UNESCO meeting and talked about many upcoming events. Went to izakaya for dinner, and 3 of us went to Shibuya for coffee afterwards.

9/6 Met up with Kan-san, a Chinese girl who went to the Meguro UNESCO International Exchange Youth Retreat together, and she taught me Chinese because we decided to teach each other Chinese and Korean.

9/7 Met up with Yoko, one of the Japanese instructors at the World School English Camp, in Ueno and ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. Talked about Akiko and me and other things troubling me. She's a good counselor.

9/8 Started a new part-time job teaching English to a Korean-Japanese 6-year-old girl, whose name is Ribong, and her mom in Nishiogikubo. They lived in America for a while, so Ribong can speak pretty well. Will be getting about 1500 yen per hour.

9/9 Went to Fairway Solutions again to do the 2nd interview. Met a Korean guy who's going to be working in Japan as well as the President of the company. Talked about full-time as well as part-time, and it's decided that I will start part-time job this year and possibly move to full-time job in March when I finish my research program. I think I'll stick to my JET Program next year.

Stay tuned for my 10-day homestay program in Kagoshima prefecture.

7/19-9/9 timeline of my nonexistent period (blog at least) part 1

Hey, everyone!

How's it going? I decided to come out of my intentional hibernation, partly due to some people dying to hear about my life =), so hopefully, you will be able to read about what's going on with me on a I-would-call-it-a-regular basis.

First off, I would like to go through what happened to me from 7/19 to 9/9 before I went to Kagoshima prefecture to do a 10-day homestay. Even though I didn't blog during last two months, I at least took notes about what I did.

One thing the readers should note is that I broke up with my gf in Korea on 8/11. Some of you know this already, but I've moved on after that, and rest assured that I'm doing fine.

OK, then. Here we go, back in time.

7/19-20 Trip to Hakone (a famous hot spring resort with lots of stuff to do about 2 hours from my place) with my ex, Hyoju.

7/20 Went to see Spider-Man 2 with Hyoju at Roppongi Hills.

7/21 Looked around Odaiba with Hyoju.

7/22 Went to the 45th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office building (Tocho) in Shinjuku with Hyoju for the nightview and met up with Muk and other UIUC students who were done with their study abroad in Kanazawa and were sightseeing Tokyo before going back to America.

7/23 Kanto from Kanazawa came back to Tokyo from his trip to Korea with some of the study abroad students, so I met up with him and Tony, Ray, and Scott (last year's study abroad gang).

7/24 Delievered my speech about gyudon (beef bowl) at the Meguro-ku Speech Contest, and 5 out of 13 participants got a prize, including me!

7/25-27 Went to Wadamura, Nagano prefecture for the Meguro UNESCO International Exchange Youth Retreat. Learned about UNESCO and had fun hanging around a bunch of foreign people.

7/28 Went to the MIFA office for my once-a-month part-time job. Basically, trying to help just-arrived-foreigners get used to life in Japan by making Meguro-ku, where I live, a more foreigner-friendly City. Ku is actually a City rather than a Ward, but many governmental offices use Ward because Ward has been used since the old times. It's messed up.

7/29 Went to the lab nomikai, drinking and eating event, because one of the members got married, one just came back from an internship in America, and one successfully defended his doctoral thesis. I feel like I'm the lowest in the chain because I'm just a silly, lost research student who doesn't get student discount on mass transit.

7/30 Did part-time job at Activision translating DOOM 3 manual. Korean and English. Went to a volunteer event and played around with Korean kids with disability who came to Japan for sightseeing. Met some Japanese volunteers as well who ranged from middle schoolers to college students.

7/31 Volunteered again by cleaning up a small park in Shibuya with some people from the night before. Went to the Sumidagawa Hanabi Taikai, the biggest fireworks in Japan, with Mina, Naomi and Mayumi.

8/1 Went to see King Arthur alone.

8/6 Met Satomi, a Japanese e-mail friend, in Kinshicho and had some English conversation.

8/7-8 Climbed Mt. Fuji with dorm people. Rained on the way up, but the bigger problem was I got sick shortly after eating cup noodles at the 7th station. Managed to get to the apex and take some nice pics but ended up throwing up 3 times during the whole ordeal. All in all, a good experience that I will not try again. Not any time soon.

8/9 Met Junko, another e-mail friend, in Shibuya and had some English conversation. Met Chie, another e-mail friend, in Kikuna and had some English conversation.

8/10 Part-time job at Activision again. Got an e-mail from Hyoju declaring an official breakup. My first relationship lasted 172 days.

to be continued with part 2...