My first day in Tokyo was spent doing my favorite thing to do in Tokyo – browse around the street fashion shops in Harajuku. Any store that looked like a band I might listen to was explored. One shop was playing my all-time favorite album, Vidoll’s V.I.D., so they ended up luring me in and getting my business. Body Line was full of bratty kids who stood around begging their parents for money for clothes they would scarcely be able to wear in a normal social setting. One shop tucked [...]

No, this post is not about one-night stands. If you’ve been paying attention you know what’s coming – a post highlighting visit number two to a host club. I took a highway bus out of Hiroshima without thinking. Since it’s currently Obon season, everyone is traveling back to their hometowns. This makes for full buses and awful traffic. Getting out of Hiroshima city took over an hour. Getting from Kobe to Osaka took probably more than an hour. As everyone I knew in Hiroshima has started to go home or [...]

Tomorrow is my last day in Saijo. I’ve spent all of today cleaning out my room and packing. The walls are now void of the many posters that once filled them and incredibly lonely looking. While I was going through things I realized most objects had a memory.  “Look, it’s the bag D-san carried through Hiroshima for me.” “This is the paper clip I linked with my friend on the first day, though we didn’t know whether we’d get along at the time.” “The magazine S and T-kun were in!” [...]

Unfortunately when I went to Osaka I didn’t have the courage to try this, but today I was provided with the chance. I shot three people from Osaka and slashed another with a samurai sword. All died almost instantly. What? I saw this video about half a year ago. After seeing it I was immediately inspired to see if this tale about people from Osaka was true. My first victim was a friend of Osaka origin attending school here. Sure enough, he pretended to die upon being “shot”. I tried [...]

The wind started to get vicious last night while we were playing soccer. By the time we got back from stuffing our faces with parfaits (there goes the exercise) it was even harsher. When I woke up this morning it was to the wind whistling from every which way, knocking on my door from the hallway and sending bicycles and tree branches flying outside my balcony. I drifted in and out of sleep for much of the morning thinking about how much I didn’t want to venture down the hill [...]

Yesterday was a summer concert held by the jazz circle. Our group appeared in the performance. As it turns out, it’s the last performance for both our vocalist and I – the band’s next gig is supposed to happen the same day I leave Saijo. To be honest there have been times lately when I wasn’t sure where my relationship with the other band members fell, but on this day I was truly happy to spend the entire day with them. I think all of us are a little bit [...]

At the university there was a festival called Yukata Matsuri, with food stands and performances all day. As I’d very much enjoyed the School Festival near the beginning of the year, I knew that wearing a yukata would only up my excitement at this event. I slept the morning away and went in the afternoon. However, I would come to regret not having gone a little bit earlier. “I want to meet that person at least one more time.” Apparently during the morning my Pokemon Rival from the beginning of [...]

In this blog I’ve typically stuck to a mostly matter-of-fact tone of voice while recording my experiences. As my time in Japan draws to a close, however, perhaps these posts will be colored with a little more emotion. This isn’t a bad thing, of course. I’m just typically a private person in that sense. Several weeks ago I don’t think I would have written this post, because I was doing everything I could to try and forget that my time is running out. There are still so many things I [...]

The title of this blog comes from the title of the documentary movie that originally sparked my interest in host clubs. Because while I was in Osaka, I was finally able to make my dream come true and go to one! Going to a host club is probably a strange dream. I can see where people will raise eyebrows at me. I suppose I can’t entirely refute this kind of skepticism—the beautiful men waiting on you hand and foot is nothing to complain about—but my interest goes slightly beyond this. [...]

Saturday was our band’s jazz live. It was the first one we did in a public venue. We performed in a small, rather popular cafe on campus called Mermaid Cafe in front of friends and people who just wanted their morning coffee. The acoustics in the cafe were awful, and I missed a few notes (I’m sure we all did), but people enjoyed it! One of my friends who had run off before I got a chance to talk to him even sent me a private message on facebook saying [...]

This past weekend was the three day festival, Yukata Matsuri. Due to the price of commuting to the city, I only went on Saturday. I sort of regret not going every day, but I suppose there’s no point in regretting it now. Though I wish I could have seen more, the simple atmosphere of Japanese festivals pleases me enough. It’s a feeling completely different from street festivals in the United States. Perhaps it’s because the festivals always feel distinctly Japanese – there’s always something pointing back toward traditional culture integrated [...]

One of my good friends from Minnesota came to Japan. He’ll be studying in Beppu for the next two months, but on his way from Tokyo to Beppu he stopped for roughly three days in Hiroshima. Glad to have someone I knew well from back home to talk to for a while, I spent these days showing him the most famous spots in the area. The first day, a group of friends and I went into the city to go shopping before my friend arrived in the evening. We had [...]

I am currently taking a class that focuses on the common mistakes made by foreigners when they write in Japanese. When last semester I had to write several papers in Japanese for my Korean and proverbs classes, I was quite frustrated by how much harder it was than writing in English. I was also frustrated when one of the people who helped to make sure my paper was understandable told me I wrote like an elementary school student. Of course I wasn’t mad at him – I asked him to [...]

The weather suddenly took a climb toward the pleasant-to-hot range. Coats and sweatshirts are no longer needed, except for at night. The entire town is about as green as I’ve ever seen anything. It’s lovely, and lately there have been events and whatnot abounds. Also, stray cats. So what’s been going on? Jazz circle welcome party. Intended to convince freshmen to join the circle, I enjoyed it: a jazz live with my favorite vocalist in the circle, Kaluha, getting hit on by freshmen, late-night karaoke, and coming to realizations at [...]

To those of you cool enough to know where I got this entry’s title, kudos. To the rest of you: the past 10 hours have been interesting ones. As it is currently 7:30am, and I haven’t slept a bit, a list shall suffice. A group of friends, all foreigners, went to hang out in the new common area. 5 freshmen came in and decided to join us. Turns out all of them live in the same dorm as the exchange student boys. We got to know each other fairly well [...]