わたしのにほんじんおとうさん

Today was the Marugame International Half Marathon. There were a ton of runners from all over who ran from my city Marugame to Sakaide and back. I went to see it with my Japanese Dad, Masamichi, and his friends. We put meant in the parking garage of a nearby mall and put together a bunch of flags. We were rooting for runners from Masamichi's friend's old college, Senshuu University. That's up in Tokyo. Senshuu also means last week, and I was a little confused by this. When I brought it up everyone thought I was making a joke, so I rolled with it. 

There were tons of runners both professional and non. My friend Laura ran it, but I think we left before she made it to our point. We were right next to the half way point where folks turned around.

Shrine behind the marathon route. 

Masamichi decked out with Senshuu gear. 

Afterward we went to an Okanmiyaki restaurant, which is where you cook your own food on a grill. Me and Masamichi got a dish that was basically like a pancake of a bunch of stuff--seafood, egg, lettuce and meat. He let me try to flip it, which was a disaster. You can see my failure at the end of this montage of me and Masamichi kicking it:

 

Then the group split up for a little bit and Masamichi showed me this super popular view from the top of a nearby mountain. Like that famous place in Europe I know pretty much nothing about other than it exists, lovers put locks on the wire fence in celebration of their bumping uglies. 

 The Seto Ohashi Bridge

 What is a Bridal Mother?

You tried so hard to English. 

(says the girl who misspells everything she writes in Japanese 

and 1/3rd of the shit she types online)

Afterward we all gathered back together at a little cafe where I played Majong for the first time. We played two rounds of games, and with the help of Masamichi I came out on top the first time and SO CLOSE to number 1 the second time. Don't ask me how though. I understood maybe a 3rd of what I was doing. 

This is an automated majong table. Somehow it spit out the same color tiles each time. No fucking clue how. 

Masamichi is a pretty rad dude. I'm really lucky that he's taken me under his wing. I learn and see a lot thanks to him. Like about Koukai, who brought zen Buddhism to Japan and built the 88 temples on Shikoku. So far Masamich and I have visited 74-78. He's also taken me to the Marugame Fan Museum. Marugame is famous for its paper fans, and you can watch people build them by hand there. It looks mega mega hard. Also we've gone to the Seto Ohashi museum, which was hella rad.

I'm working on re-stabilizing myself after the death of both Matt and Steve Watkins. Part of that involves sticking to a schedule for awhile. So hopefully if I stick to it, I'll be updating this more. 

Hope you all are doing well. 

-Couri 

Routines and Takuma

So I've gotten more or less comfortable where I'm at. It wasn't too hard. Marugame seems pretty easy to navigate, and there's a lot about it that reminds me of home. They're simillarish in size, and sometimes I see something that is just so Youngstown, I could forget for a moment that I'm in Japan.

such as sloppy English graffiti near the train station.

kinda suicide club esque. 

Every day I wake up, read some news, write a little of this or that, study either Japanese or for the GRE and then take a walk around the castle. Here, it seems easy to focus and manage all of that. Working in the evenings opens me up for my personal, most productive hours. Plus, the amount of hours are low and the work itself is kinda easy and fun. I like my students a lot. Right now we're actually switching semesters, so I'm not going to have many of them in the upcoming months. 

doodle by one of my faves that /I don't have next semester

As I get comfortable I notice more. Like the fact that the cigarette guy is selling smokes out of his house and he just has a window installed in the front. He seems way friendlier that I initially thought to, and chuckled when my yen almost floated away in the wind. I noticed because there was a woman sitting in the parlor talking, and it drew my eye a little deeper in. She smiled at me, said something to him, and he threw in a free lighter. (Score.)

I've been feeling a bit under the weather this weekend so no big big crazy adventures, except Sunday (today!) a few of my pals and I got together and headed to the Tokuma Mall.

Our train was attacked by a Gundam while we were en route. Only us and a few others managed to survive.

We spent the day going in and out of stores. There was a shop selling kimono for like 10 bucks, but the obis were like 50 so I passed. We also ate at a little cafe where we split a parfait that is legit the size of your head.

the most delicious head.

There were stores with bad english, halloween stuff, strange stationary and incomprehensible notebooks. Everything you could really want in a Japanese mall. There were also tons and tons of machines where you could pop in 200-400 yen and get a little figurine, like a lady who will sit on your cup, or a cat on a cake, or maybe a bathrobe for your cellphone. They also had their Halloween stuff out. 

Hell Pole. Where Satan lives with his elves, right?

We even had this adorable photobooth competition where we split in to teams and tried to beat each other in a cute, scary, sexy and ugly photo. 

Keiti and Jillian  

Laura and me

. On the way back to the train station Laura stopped near her house and we got to watch these weird fish that just jump out of the water all willy nilly for no determined reason. It was hypnotizing. It was a pretty fantastic day. Lots of fun. And things seem to be moving about as smoothly as they could be

Hope the states are treating you well, America-pals. And the semester for those at YSU.

Let's Go To the Mall!

Saturday Marugame festival kicked in to gear but I was feeling pretty lazy. I dropped in for a little bit. There were two areas, one near the station and one near the castle, where food tents were set up and dances were going on. There were several different tropes dancing one after the other. Some were traditional, while some were done to JPop and some were done to American hip hop. It was rather surreal seeing a traditional Japanese Dance followed up by (sometimes kids) dancing to gangster rap.

just like one of my Japanese animes

not so much like one of my japanese animes.

 It was a two day affair, the first night featuring fireworks that I watched from the porch of my apartment. The second night I climbed up the castle's mountain and watched it churn on below me.
I stayed up there watching the sunset Sunday night, and it was really beautiful. Marugame is kind of squished in together with Sakiade and Utazu, so its hard from that height to tell where one city ends and the other begins, but the three of them together seem huge. Things seem to be placed much closer together here than at home, so its easy to ride my bike through one city into the next without realizing it.

                                                               marugame seen at dusk from the castle

marugame as the sun finally sets

During the day Sunday I found my way to the local mall, which is about 20-25 minutes away from my apartment by bike. It's a pretty easy ride. The mall is called "Youme" (which I believe is a chain?) and about three stories in height. I bought some more sleeves to cover up my tattoos, and some weird english shirts. The food court was on the top floor, featuring a McDonalds complete with a Ronald Mc Donald Statue.  It's also right next to an arcade, so I'll probs be back to explore that soon.

 i do not regret this purchase at all.

 property value low, crime rate through the roof. schools? so so.

 can't decide if he's less or more creepy than his American brother.

scooooooooore.

So far things haven't been too bad. I even talked to a salesperson at a snow cone stand at the festival and they more or less understood me, and I more or less understood them. (Ichigo is Japanese for Strawberry. Hella important when it comes to snow cone buyage. In fact, I've been eating a lot of strawberry flavored things in general. Their pretty much my jams here. )

Today, though, I had a fumbling exchange with the cutest clerk at 7/11. I was trying to buy smokes, and we kept going back and forth trying to get to the right pack of Malboros. (Camels aren't native to these parts I guess.) I'd point and say "Sore desu!" and she would move to the wrong one and I would shake my head--ect. We were both laughing, at least, and she was absolutely so sweetly amused. Eventually I managed to tell her one over by saying "ich" and gesturing right. 

Learning is fun. So, sometimes, can miscommunication be.