/|| joel in japan ||\

6-1

two updates in row, i must be getting homesick. well i got a shirt a gar yesterday at gap, its a x-small "tatami mat" green shirt it great. however when i began to try on the shirt one of the workers insisted that i also try on the small and medium too. and he really insisted, so i try on the small and x-small and decided the xs was the best. i love that gap here sells x-smalls. anyway mike and i went to dennys tonight. keep in mind dennys here is actually good. the have a huge variety including japanese, chinese, and american.

[ view of jiyugaoka from dennys, our house is actually just down this road a bit. across the street is the garden grocery store i often go to ]

well, tomorrow i plan on going to this small japanese volunteer class, i heard about because chikage is friends with one of the girls that works there. i went last week it pretty good. it was real small, only about 3 teachers and like 8 students. as soon as i got in there they didnt let up. they had me fill out a form and then gave me a short interview, then sat me down with 2 other chinese people. it was cool, the building was really old and really really small. it took me like an hour and a half to get to the place, and then i got lost and wandered around for a while until a old man asked me "doko?" he took me a the way to the place and even made sure i knew which floor it was on. of course that wasnt the first time someone has actually taken me places i couldnt find.

[ i went here last night, i cant remember the name of it, but there are a lot of these fast food resturants. they usually have rice bowls, ramen, and this one had curry. you can get a set with a salad and miso soup for under 500 yen, about $5. you buy a ticket at the michine of the meal you want then give it to the worker and take a seat at the bar. oh and it comes fast, really fast. i had the curry, it was very very good ]

6-2

well today i went to the japanese class again, it was intense. the girl teaching me was just spewing out japanese at a quick pace. i mostly just said "hai" since questions are always arranged for you to agree with. it was good, but i went away realizing i dont know much of anything. oh, then i walked back to the train station with another guy from the class, who is chinese; it was so wierd he didnt speak english so communicated with japanese to find the station. it was funny both of us using our second language. well anyway, i started thinking about how different the roads are here. but there isnt any picture that really captures it, so i thought i would try to describe it. imagine walking down the side "gutter" area of like a 35 mph road with 2 lanes. this is what 80% of the roads i walk down are like. they rarely have sidewalks, since there isnt that much space.

[ a road right around the corner from the green house, the plants on the left are actually on the green house property ]

on saturday i hope to go to yokohama, the second biggest city in japan. in fact tokyo and yokohama are becoming so big that they are kind of running into each other. yokohama is only 30 minutes from the jiyugaoka (where i live) station. oh man, today i was on the train around 9:30, bad time to be at the shibuya station. i was sitting down as more and more people pilled in, when we got to my station i had to push just to stand up. then i proceeded to push people in way ive never done to complete strangers before. i was only way i was being to think the doors would close soon, until someone notice me and began to yell something out, and then everyone parted like the red sea and i got out just in time. i dont have any pictures of the crowded trains because its literally to hard to get my camera out.

[ here's a train that was four times less crowded than the one tonight ]

[ anime has been acurate in SO many ways, most apartment actually do have clunky metal doors and an intercom. for all of the eva fans theyre just like rei's apt door ]

[ this is best shot i could get of a school girls bunched up white socks, without looking like a weirdo, ill try again for a better one ]