Hard to believe it, but I’ve already been in Japan for over a week. Since I don’t have internet access at home, I’ll most likely be writing at my apartment from now on, and just posting whenever I get a chance to jump on the internet. Also remember that I’m mega lazy, so that might not happen. I will be putting the date and time in manually, so what you see if when I really am writing the entry in Japan time. Last fall I think I just changed the global time settings for the entire blog, but when I set it back in January it changed them all the Indiana time. This way, the entries for this trip to Japan will all show the correct time and stuff.

I’ve noticed that being in Japan is just old routine for me now. Even after I arrived at the airport last week, and Seth and Tre were there to pick me up, it was like nothing changed at all. This might sound kind of stuck up, and I’m not trying to do that, but I’ve become accustomed to living in Japan by now, so I guess that’s a good thing. In less than a week, I moved into a mansion (er, apartment), got a new keitai (cell phone), got a train pass, and was back to absolute normal routine. I guess it’s only been like 5 months since I was here, but it still seems a bit of a feat the adapt to living in an entirely different country so quick.

Anyways, enough of the philosophical stuff. What have I been up to? Up until like Tuesday of this week, I was pretty useless. It was like a vacation. I went on Saturday with Seth, Ari, and Tre to Kappabashi near Asakusa, which specializes in the fake food models that pretty much every restaurant in Japan has. It was really awesome seeing all this fake food, and also kind of strange. Half of the stores seemed more like museums than stores, with their stuff in display cases. Once you see the prices, you see why. The fake food is about 10 times more expensive than real food! For instance, a small piece of fake sushi is around 500 yen, and a fake bowl of ramen was like 6500! Instead of hollow plastic food, like I always assumed, the models are made of solid rubber-like material and are all made by hand, thus the high price. Yikes.

After that, on Sunday, I went to Akihabara for a few hours in the afternoon. I forgot that on the weekends they block off a lot of the roads there since there are so many people shopping and stuff in the area. There were also a bunch of cool bands playing in the street, including on band that was either Native American or Mexican. Either way, what in the world were they doing in the middle of Japan? Also, right when I got out of the station at Akiba, I noticed a big chance. What I vaguely remember from last year as construction and maintenance has now become a really sweet park-type area and a few new buildings. Japan seems to always be growing, and that was a big shock. Just like the Room Deco building in Makuhari near IES, spots that were under construction a few months ago are now complete. That night I went to Top Run, the yakiniku viking, with Ari, Lars, and Duy. I ate about half a cow and a full pig; Derek would be proud. I even inadvertently adopted Derek’s style of cooking: pile the meat on the grill, and start mixing. Oh man it was good. Oh man I was so full.

On Tuesday, I finally started actually doing intern work, but I’ll write about that later on. Summer kids orientation started yesterday, and I actually have lots of stuff to do now. I’m beat, and I think it’s time to just pass out. I have to wake up tomorrow at like 7AM, even though it’s a Saturday. Maybe this internship isn’t going to be as cushy as I imagined.