Mini-Post: Blue Hawaii Pepsi

In my favorite class ever, there's one guy who always sits by us who plays golf. You know how I know this? His left hand has a glove tan so bad that the skin on his hand is about five shades whiter than the rest of his skin. And he wears a golf hat. Anyway, today I noticed he was sipping on some Blue Hawaii Pepsi.

So of course I went out and got one for myself. I thought I would be appalled by the combination of pineapple, lemon, and Pepsi, but it is quite refreshing. It tastes more like fruit punch than anything. Just another example of Japanese companies introducing silly new things to keep consumers interested. I must admit, this strategy keeps me buying soda and snacks that I wouldn't normally spend money on. "Oh new flavor! I'll get one and try it, just to say I did..."

Ashlie: So Carly, does it taste like the motherland?
Me: Indeed.

Eigo wa chotto muzukashii da yo...*

My final midterm is in the form of a take-home essay. It's for my favorite international politics course that I always talk about -- I don't think I've discussed any of my other courses to the extent that I have with Anno's class. Anyway, Anno posted the essay questions on Moodle (the Japanese version of Blackboard) along with a tip sheet for writing essays.

This tip sheet, though I have only skimmed through it, is like a window into Japanese academic culture and language problems.

The opening sentence is, "Many of your sempai who took this course in the past (natives as well as non-natives) have had difficulty writing good English."

The "writing good English" part is universal. I know people at Creighton who can't write a decent essay to save their lives, and I'm sure it's much harder to write an essay in a second language (Aside: I think "...have had difficulty writing English well" sounds better? It sounds awkward as it is. Whatever). It also implies my English skillz, as in I haven't gotten a paper back with less than a B+ in two years, will secure me a good grade. At least better than those three guys I drew a few posts back.

The sempai-kouhai relationship is unique in Japanese culture. The sempai is like a big brother or big sister -- they help their kouhai in whatever way they can to make sure they succeed. In exchange, the kouhai is like the sempai's slave. Anyway, this sentence leads me to believe that everyone and their mom has some sort of sempai-kouhai relationship. Everyone's got someone looking out for them or is taking care of someone in this university setting. The natives and non-natives part confuses me a little. Does that mean gaijin and nihonjin can mix together? I wasn't aware I was allowed to have a nihonjin sempai or take on a nihonjin kouhai, it seems kind of weird.

Anno goes on about different grammatical structures that he finds students have problems with, like the use of apostrophes in certain words. Native English speakers wouldn't have trouble on most of the things he mentions, but the apostrophe thing is one of the most irritating grammatical mistakes I see from native English speakers. "It's", "its'", and "its" are all SUCH SMALL STUPID MISTAKES that soooooo many people I know make all the time. I'm sure someone can find an example of it in my own writing, possibly on this blog, but I do know better.

If I find any other gems worth mentioning I'll edit this post. For now, I'm going to go do Japanese homework.

EDIT: All this talk of grammar has me wondering about Japanese grammar. The girl to the left of me is writing something in Word in Japanese, but in the traditional up-down style. Most natives in the computer lab write their Japanese essays and whatnot in the Western style of left-right, like the girl to my right. And I'm just a crazy gaijin in the middle typing a blog in English.

*The title is supposed to translate as, "English is kind of difficult..."

Disneyland ni ikimashita!!!

I wish I knew how to write the title in Japanese.

I WENT TO DISNEYLAND TODAY YAAAAAAAAY!!! THE HAPPIEST JAPANESE PLACE ON EARTH!!!

I left the dorm at 730 this morning to get to The Japanese Magic Kingdom at 945. Tokyo station is just... unnecessarily LARGE; it took me like 10 minutes to get between the lines I needed to take. I was kind of scared to take such a long journey by myself, but John had to do it so I couldn't complain. I haven't seen dearest John since December 2005 so it was good to see him.

I saw *maybe* 15 gaijin the entire day, it was kind of weird. There are more foreign tourists at Asakusa on a given Saturday than there were in all of Disneyland. I suppose foreigners don't come to Japan to go to Disneyland, especially Americans since we've got two of those in our great nation, but it's still *Disneyland*.

Japanese society never ceases to amaze me. In the 8+ hours I was in the Disneyland park -- eating, waiting in line for rides, walking around, etc. -- I heard two kids cry. TWO KIDS. No tantrums, no fussing; some complaining and fidgeting but I sympathized. I really thought I'd get to witness a melt down during the wait at the Haunted Mansion, however. Mom, Dad, 4 year old son, and maybe 2 year old daughter were in front of us; Dad had just returned with water and gave a bottle to the son. Mom told him he had to share with the sister, and the sister had the biggest grin on her face sipping cold water from the bottle, watching the brother, SHE WAS SO SASSY. I feared the worst from the son, but it never came! You could tell he was getting anxious, but he never complained and was perfectly happy when Dad gave him the water back.

WHATEVER I KNOW YOU WANT PICTURES.

Entrance to *Tokyo Disneyland*!!!

John bought me Minnie Mouse ears, I bought the churro.
Why they have churros at Tokyo Disneyland I'll never know.
Please note the American flag in the background.




HI MICKEY! YAY! LET'S ALL WAVE! Everyone, adults and kids, waved at the characters. It was almost rude not to.

Anyone who knows me well knows that THIS IS MY RIDE...




... even if I'm not allowed to do stupid things in the boat.


Lunch at the Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall.


Heart-shaped hamburger!!!


Possibly worth the $18.


BYE BYE!!!

We hit up most of the big attractions -- Big Thunder Mountain, The Haunted Mansion, Star Tours, Pirates of the Caribbean (featuring new life-like Jack Sparrow being weird everywhere), Buzz Lightyear, I forget what else. I think we waited the longest for the Haunted Mansion, more than an hour, but it's like that in America. We found out toward the end of the day that some of the other big rides, like Indiana Jones, were in DisneySea next door. Damnit. I enjoyed what we did see, though. Buzz Lightyear was interesting:

I was wondering about the whole language thing before I got to Disneyland. Do the speaking characters speak Japanese or English? Would the songs on the rides be different? Can you really translate something like, "Savvy?" I'm not sure what Disney is trying to aim for with what they chose to change and what they didn't change, but it was all mixed up. The Greeting Parade theme song was English, but Mickey always spoke Japanese; some recordings were in English and some were Japanese. I heard English and Chinese instructions for one ride, but most announcements were in Japanese. So long as no one dies it doesn't matter.

We finished Disneyland at around 7pm. Ate dinner in Shinjuku, and did PURIKURA!!! I unintentionally chose a super girly set of backgrounds, but these things are supposed to be hilarious in my opinion.

My feet are tired and I am broke. Disneyland cost me about $100 ($60 ticket, $25 in food, the rest in small souvenirs) BUT I HAD FUN. I wanna go again. Damn you, Mickey!

Mini-Post 3

I found a long-lost gem on my phone. My international politics prof was discussing the USSR and communism and Marx and Lenin and whatever, and he thought it would be appropriate to sing the communist anthem. I think. It's only 15 seconds and you have to turn up your volume pretty loud, but it's something:

If it doesn't play... well I really have no idea how to fix that. You can see that one guy in the front going, "What the hell is going on?" Wait I take that back, he's Japanese so he's going, "Nande???"

McDonald's got rid of the Katsu Cheese Burger(!) and replaced it with the Mega Tamago (egg). It's like a Mega Mac, but the top beef patty has been magically turned into Egg McMuffin egg bit. Are Japanese consumers that bored that new items have to be introduced so often? I wish I could have taken an advertising course while here, but they're all taught in Japanese. Sad.

Disneyland in like 16 hours!!! Yay!!!

Let's play catch-up

This post shall hopefully make up for the dust gathering around this site -- it's been almost a week since I last wrote about my adventures!

So my dear friend Brian was in Tokyo last weekend. He and his buddies had already done all kinds of cultural nonsense, so we went clubbing one night and hit up an izakaya called The Lockup the next. It's a theme izakaya, made to look like a jail that Dr. Frankenstein would manage. About an hour after we sat down, they killed the lights, played "scary" music, and monsters came around banging our doors and making a fuss. I'll have to go again when Dan comes.

They make the wait staff wear jail uniforms. Cute.




The big beaker is Calpis soda, and the little tubes have orange juice, grapefruit juice,
melon liquor, and the last two I forget.






YAY PURIKURA!!!

I found Sprite Zero at the cafeteria combini last week! You can't see it, but under the "NEW!" banner in the top left corner it says, "Sexier than water." Yeah, okay. I just want to be refreshed and possibly entertained by some 90's rappers in a commercial.

Where are Redman and Method Man when you need them?

Look at what my phone can do! PICTURE FRAMES! So fun.

And finally, I succumbed to all the McDonald's advertisements on the train and had a Cheese Katsu Burger. The official Japanese website has the nice professional photos not taken by a keitai. Despite my initial hesitation of mixing katsu sauce and cheese, it was quite delicious. It would probably do well in Hawaii, since we like that kind of stuff. Next I'm gonna try the Shaka Shaka Chicken off the 100Yen menu.

Cheese in the middle!


"Saku saku" on the outside, blah blah blah I forget and I can't make it out from the picture.

Prof. Anno mentioned in politics today that the Japanese currently pay about 170yen for a liter of gas. Let's see if the journalism major can do some basic math:

1 US gallon = 3.8 liters
Current exchange rate is about $1 = 100yen

$1.70 x 3.8 = $6.46

Thus, the Japanese are paying almost $6.50 for a gallon of gas. Makes that $4 you're paying in America seem like a steal, doesn't it?

I'm in the middle of midterms and there's a typhoon going on outside, so there is nothing going on. This weekend, however, will be filled with debauchery and Mickey Mouse and gaijin-smashing because my dear friend John is in Japan. Hopefully Tokyo Disneyland will still be fun in spite of the crap weather we're having.