Despite what I say about my dad at times, I do love him very much. I can't help but be worried about his health at the present moment because of his lifestyle. He works from morning till night. He doesn't exercise. He's not that happy. His health is deteriorating, and at the present moment, I feel like he's not going to make it past the next two years if he keeps on going like this. He just turned 61, and I want him to be around for many more years to come. Actually, every time I see him, it makes me so sad to see him in this condition. I always feel like he's working himself to death. From the moment he wakes up till the moment he goes to bed, he's always working. He doesn't stop to take breaks or go exercise. He just sits at the computer working away. Even my cousin was saying that he really should quit this lifestyle because it's just asking for an early death. I want him to be around when I get married, have kids, see his grandkids. It's very important to me that he be part of their lives. He even said that when he retires, that he wants me to take him around Japan, which I will be very happy to do, but I don't think at the present moment, that he'll make it that far. Actually, tonight at dinner, my cousin and I talked to my dad about his health. I think 90% of the conversation was about his health. I do hope that he took the things I said to heart. I know how important it is to keep healthy. I've suffered for about a year with my illness. I can only pray that he finally does something to starting getting himself fit. I love him so much. I love you, Daddy.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Keep healthy
I haven't been out lately. I've been just studying and meeting with my dad. Today, though, I went out to eat with my dad and my cousin since my dad is here only for a few days. He's leaving tomorrow night to go back to Taiwan. I'm genuinely concerned about my dad's health at the moment. I'm going to take a moment tonight to blog about it. If you don't want to read it, stop now. It's going to be a long boring entry about me and my thoughts that I feel I need to get down on paper (in this case, blogging).
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Melon Pan is #1
I find myself trying to find the best melon pan there is in Japan. I feel like I'm totally addicted to the bread, which is such a bad thing because it's quite unhealthy, but I just can't stop eating it! I must find some other food that would pull me away from this addiction!
I had a small ordeal this week with starting class. I somehow was put into a completely beginner's class, which really pissed me off. It didn't really help that that time of the month came, and I became more moody as usual. I did fight to put myself in a higher class, which I like because I'm learning a lot more. I'm glad that they let me into a higher class, because I really want to learn Japanese. I do have some catching up to do, but I think I'll manage and get tons better before I go back to the US. I think I'm already planning to come back to Japan after college and take a year or two to strictly learn Japanese before I go find a job or apply for graduate school here. I'm really liking it here. I love exploring around Japan. When my Japanese gets good, I'd really like to take my family around Japan for sightseeing. My dad already said that he'd like to take a trip around Japan, so if the time is right, I'd like to take my whole family around at the same time. I think it'd be a trip of our lives. We could go into the mountains and go to the hot springs, visit the temples, go hiking in the woods... oh the possibilities there are!
So, Saturday, I had the "brightest" idea of taking an petrifying trip to Tokyo City to see if if I could find a shopping district, and of course - no map! (Ok, maybe not petrifying, but it was still quite a scary experience!) I seriously thought exploring Shinjuku and Akihabara was bad enough, nothing tops this experience of going into Tokyo City by myself, alone, no map, and a small bag of 2 nigiri and orange juice. Yup, small me surrounded by the tallest buildings I have ever seen in my life that in every direction, IT ALL LOOKS THE SAME! Of course, me being really dumb, I always exit the wrong side of the station where there are just buildings upon buildings. This time, there wasn't a walkway for me to walk back into Tokyo station and walk a different exit. So, I was stuck walking around completely clueless on the surface streets. I did manage to find a bookstore where I went in to take a small breather from the heat. I ended up buying another Jane Austen book because I absolutely loved Pride and Prejudice. she is a fantastic romance writer, and I think I will end up reading all her books. The one I bought this trip was Persuasions. I hope it's as good as Pride and Prejudice. I find it weird that I'm starting to enjoy reading so late in life. What have I missed all these years...
I had a small ordeal this week with starting class. I somehow was put into a completely beginner's class, which really pissed me off. It didn't really help that that time of the month came, and I became more moody as usual. I did fight to put myself in a higher class, which I like because I'm learning a lot more. I'm glad that they let me into a higher class, because I really want to learn Japanese. I do have some catching up to do, but I think I'll manage and get tons better before I go back to the US. I think I'm already planning to come back to Japan after college and take a year or two to strictly learn Japanese before I go find a job or apply for graduate school here. I'm really liking it here. I love exploring around Japan. When my Japanese gets good, I'd really like to take my family around Japan for sightseeing. My dad already said that he'd like to take a trip around Japan, so if the time is right, I'd like to take my whole family around at the same time. I think it'd be a trip of our lives. We could go into the mountains and go to the hot springs, visit the temples, go hiking in the woods... oh the possibilities there are!
So, Saturday, I had the "brightest" idea of taking an petrifying trip to Tokyo City to see if if I could find a shopping district, and of course - no map! (Ok, maybe not petrifying, but it was still quite a scary experience!) I seriously thought exploring Shinjuku and Akihabara was bad enough, nothing tops this experience of going into Tokyo City by myself, alone, no map, and a small bag of 2 nigiri and orange juice. Yup, small me surrounded by the tallest buildings I have ever seen in my life that in every direction, IT ALL LOOKS THE SAME! Of course, me being really dumb, I always exit the wrong side of the station where there are just buildings upon buildings. This time, there wasn't a walkway for me to walk back into Tokyo station and walk a different exit. So, I was stuck walking around completely clueless on the surface streets. I did manage to find a bookstore where I went in to take a small breather from the heat. I ended up buying another Jane Austen book because I absolutely loved Pride and Prejudice. she is a fantastic romance writer, and I think I will end up reading all her books. The one I bought this trip was Persuasions. I hope it's as good as Pride and Prejudice. I find it weird that I'm starting to enjoy reading so late in life. What have I missed all these years...
Anyway, I wander around some more. I end up walking into the underground shopping street. There were tons of people walking around. I think I was the only one that had a lost look on my face while other people were joyously shopping in the shops. I walk out of the underground street and some street, cross the street and walked about 2 blocks before I hit another really big bookstore and... a department store called Takashimaya! Man, I really thought I hit jackpot. I walked around the bookstore a while before heading into Takashimaya to look at clothes. I bought a pair of nice jeans by Joe's again. I really like this particular brand of jean because I think it really fits my body shape. After looking at more clothes, I was getting a little tired and wanted to go back home, but then I didn't remember which door I came in and which direction the train station was. I didn't really think much because I thought I would be able to find my way around once I stepped outside. However, there was a very nice surprise when I looked out the door... it was raining cats and dogs. My jaw completely dropped. I immediately start panicking because now I need to find an alternative way to get home. At first I wanted to go take a taxi to the JR station, but then thought it would either be too expensive, or not very expensive that the taxi drivers would get mad at me for taking a taxi. I walk back into the store. Then I thought I might just buy a bigger umbrella so that I could walk outside and find the station myself through that method. When I looked at the price of the umbrellas in the department store, 30-120 USD!! At that point, I had to scratch that idea. So then, I start looking around the store again for another alternative, and I see a sign that points to the subway system. This system is different than the JR system, but slightly interconnected. I think I sat at the ticket counter for at least 10 minutes trying to read the stupid map because I was trying to figure out if I could switch lines at the station that I wanted to go to. I decided to try anyway, and bought the ticket and proceeded into the subway. The subway system in Japan is slightly tricky because transferring to a different line requires going through many ticket stalls, which got me completely confused because I thought I needed to have a transfer ticket to get to another line. Turns out, all I needed was the same ticket to zip through the stalls and get to the next platform. It really wasn't all that bad, but it still had my heart racing because I was afraid I was going to get lost in the subway system.
All in all, it was quite an exciting adventure. I hope to explore Tokyo next weekend. I didn't have much time to go today because I needed to meet with my dad. I somehow missed 10 calls from him on my cell phone... Hopefully the new settings on my phone will enable me to hear the stupid ring better! Anyway, time for bed. Must get up early to study some Japanese in the morning!
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
school
Getting things tweaked with classes... will blog later about it. First... MERONPAN! (melon pan XD)
Monday, July 7, 2008
Weekend
I'm trying to not get lazy about blogging my adventures, but it is really easy to get lazy and not blog about anything. Must not get lazy! I think I'm starting to get a fan circle since I've told a few people about this blog, and they really like reading my adventures.
Anyway, Saturday was absolutely fun. Though... the farm part was slightly boring in the beginning of the day, and it was really really REALLY humid and hot. Worst of all, my monthly came and I was standing in the heat, drenched in sweat and not being able to feel that I was leaking. For all the guys out there, be GLAD that you're not a girl... Absolutely a miserable experience (not to mention forgetting to bring extra pads...). Ok, enough about the "girly" stuff and on with the story. So the day started out with me having to get up early to catch the JR train to Kemihamagawa (I think that's how it's spelled). I again thought I went to far and missed the station, so got off on the one before. I will one day get this whole train system down in under my belt one of these days! After getting back on the train and getting off at the right station, I saw my cousin, and was heading to the car, but then realized that I hadn't eaten breakfast at all. Boy was that embarassing. I ran out the door without eating breakfast... But my cousin was nice and let me run to get a bun at the nearby store. Of course it was a melon pan. I don't know how many melon pans I've eaten since coming here. I think I've been having at least one a day! No wonder I've gotten so fat...
The first stop was going around to the farm. My cousin took two of her friends with her, so there were four of us all together. The first farm we went to was a carrot farm. I didn't take a picture of it since all you'd see in the picture would be carrot leaves and not the carrots themselves. My cousin did most of the talking because she's really into healthy eating and making V8 type smoothies. At the end, the lady farmer gave my cousin three carrots to try. They looked really fresh, and my cousin was really excited! The next stop was the corn farm. I must say, eating fresh corn is absolutely AMAZING. I personally don't eat very much corn, but nothing can beat eating corn fresh off the stalk! The sweet juciness and crunchiness... Absolutely fantastic! My cousin was able to buy the corn from the farmer, and after we were done at the farm, we went back to cook the corn at the guide's place, and the taste, I can't even describe how good it tasted. No butter, no nothing. Just straight up corn on the cob. *sigh*
After visiting the farm, we went to Narita and there was a festival going on. I forget what the festival is called, but it was really fun to watch.
I got to see them going around pulling this big wagon. What was even funnier was seeing a kid version of the thing. Really cute to watch~. 
After watching the parades, we went up to the Japanese temple that opens only once a year called Naritasan park. I don't want to bombard this post with pictures, so I'll post the rest of the pictures up on Picasaweb and link them here. It was really neat to see Japanese architecture. It's very similar to Chinese architecture.
The last stop of the day was to an old Japanese street that looked very much like an old Chinese street. It was interesting seeing how much similarity there was between the Japanese street and the Chinese street. I really do enjoy this type of history. I like the older part of Chinese and Japanese history. The architecture and culture is quite a different world from today. I was able to get a souvenir of a Japanese painting. I really like it. The scene is people walking over a bridge, and in the background there are the mountains. I can't wait to bring it home and frame it~! Overall, it was a fun and exciting day. If I get a chance to go back to both these places, I'll definitely explore more. We didn't get very far that day because we were all pretty tired. I actually slept all the way back to the JR station.
On Sunday, I made a complete nosedive into exploring Shinjuku... my god that place is enough to make my head spin. Getting there wasn't really a problem, but it was getting out that got me lost. I actually went in the wrong direction coming out of the JR station. I headed towards all the government offices which was a big mistake because there was nothing to see except big buildings. Though, I did get to see people filming a drama in front of one of the buildings that day. It was really really hot, and I felt really bad for the extras who had to wear suits and a tie. I did want to take a picture, but didn't because I didn't want them chasing after me in order to delete the picture and have a whole mess of copyright infringement and exposing what was up and coming in the drama. But it was fun seeing how the filming process works. So, I headed back towards the JR station and walked in the other direction, where I found a small shopping district. I really picked the wrong day to go because there were TONS of people walking around in the shops and a mad frenzy for all the on sale items, which was practically everything in every store. Note to self, never go shopping on a weekend in Japan. I did manage to find a few cards and MONO erasers. That was practically my weekend. Nothing much happened on the first day of school. Just orientation and stuff. I'll have more stuff to blog about school tomorrow because that's when the first class really begins. Should be interesting~
Anyway, Saturday was absolutely fun. Though... the farm part was slightly boring in the beginning of the day, and it was really really REALLY humid and hot. Worst of all, my monthly came and I was standing in the heat, drenched in sweat and not being able to feel that I was leaking. For all the guys out there, be GLAD that you're not a girl... Absolutely a miserable experience (not to mention forgetting to bring extra pads...). Ok, enough about the "girly" stuff and on with the story. So the day started out with me having to get up early to catch the JR train to Kemihamagawa (I think that's how it's spelled). I again thought I went to far and missed the station, so got off on the one before. I will one day get this whole train system down in under my belt one of these days! After getting back on the train and getting off at the right station, I saw my cousin, and was heading to the car, but then realized that I hadn't eaten breakfast at all. Boy was that embarassing. I ran out the door without eating breakfast... But my cousin was nice and let me run to get a bun at the nearby store. Of course it was a melon pan. I don't know how many melon pans I've eaten since coming here. I think I've been having at least one a day! No wonder I've gotten so fat...
The first stop was going around to the farm. My cousin took two of her friends with her, so there were four of us all together. The first farm we went to was a carrot farm. I didn't take a picture of it since all you'd see in the picture would be carrot leaves and not the carrots themselves. My cousin did most of the talking because she's really into healthy eating and making V8 type smoothies. At the end, the lady farmer gave my cousin three carrots to try. They looked really fresh, and my cousin was really excited! The next stop was the corn farm. I must say, eating fresh corn is absolutely AMAZING. I personally don't eat very much corn, but nothing can beat eating corn fresh off the stalk! The sweet juciness and crunchiness... Absolutely fantastic! My cousin was able to buy the corn from the farmer, and after we were done at the farm, we went back to cook the corn at the guide's place, and the taste, I can't even describe how good it tasted. No butter, no nothing. Just straight up corn on the cob. *sigh*
After visiting the farm, we went to Narita and there was a festival going on. I forget what the festival is called, but it was really fun to watch.
I got to see them going around pulling this big wagon. What was even funnier was seeing a kid version of the thing. Really cute to watch~. 
After watching the parades, we went up to the Japanese temple that opens only once a year called Naritasan park. I don't want to bombard this post with pictures, so I'll post the rest of the pictures up on Picasaweb and link them here. It was really neat to see Japanese architecture. It's very similar to Chinese architecture. The last stop of the day was to an old Japanese street that looked very much like an old Chinese street. It was interesting seeing how much similarity there was between the Japanese street and the Chinese street. I really do enjoy this type of history. I like the older part of Chinese and Japanese history. The architecture and culture is quite a different world from today. I was able to get a souvenir of a Japanese painting. I really like it. The scene is people walking over a bridge, and in the background there are the mountains. I can't wait to bring it home and frame it~! Overall, it was a fun and exciting day. If I get a chance to go back to both these places, I'll definitely explore more. We didn't get very far that day because we were all pretty tired. I actually slept all the way back to the JR station.
On Sunday, I made a complete nosedive into exploring Shinjuku... my god that place is enough to make my head spin. Getting there wasn't really a problem, but it was getting out that got me lost. I actually went in the wrong direction coming out of the JR station. I headed towards all the government offices which was a big mistake because there was nothing to see except big buildings. Though, I did get to see people filming a drama in front of one of the buildings that day. It was really really hot, and I felt really bad for the extras who had to wear suits and a tie. I did want to take a picture, but didn't because I didn't want them chasing after me in order to delete the picture and have a whole mess of copyright infringement and exposing what was up and coming in the drama. But it was fun seeing how the filming process works. So, I headed back towards the JR station and walked in the other direction, where I found a small shopping district. I really picked the wrong day to go because there were TONS of people walking around in the shops and a mad frenzy for all the on sale items, which was practically everything in every store. Note to self, never go shopping on a weekend in Japan. I did manage to find a few cards and MONO erasers. That was practically my weekend. Nothing much happened on the first day of school. Just orientation and stuff. I'll have more stuff to blog about school tomorrow because that's when the first class really begins. Should be interesting~
Friday, July 4, 2008
Nothing Much
These two days haven't been too exciting. I went to Akihabara again to check prices, and it seems I'm getting a really good deal on a dictionary I want. Today, I went to Sogo again to just walk around. I had shao mai. So good! Oh! I have one of the best sweet potatoe... so sweet! I forgot to take a picture. I will be sure to next time when I eat it again~. Now, time to go watch Maou. They had Code Blue on last night, which I missed half of it because I didn't know when it was airing. Now I know. My Thursdays and Fridays are scheduled with Japanese doramas!
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Akihabara
Today I wanted to check out Akihabara for myself. It was quite interesting. First, I saw a LOT of foreigners walking around. Also, there were a TON of electronics. There were buildings and buildings of electronic stores. I wanted to check out the Japanese electronic dictionaries because I'm going to be studying very soon, and they are EXPENSIVE! I really don't see any chance that I'll be able to buy one since the one that I want is roughly about 500 USD. I can only dream about the little electronic dictionary for the time being... I did have a nice walk around part of Akihabara. I'm not really sure how big the center is, but you can buy any electronic that you could possibly think of: movies, anime, dvds, cds, computers (every type of computer), ipods, wires, manga... you name it, they've got it. When I go back next time, I'll take some pictures. I forgot to take pictures this time because I was focused on not getting lost. I find it quite easy to get lost in Japan since the roads are twice many than I'm used to. I'm really liking exploring Japan by myself. I don't know why, but I get some sort of high from exploration by myself. It's really fun! I think that's why I like places with a subways system. Exploration ideas are endless!
pant fest
So yesterday, I really wanted to find a pair of pants that I could wear in addition to the pants I already have... turns out, I'm too fat for practically all the pants they sell here. I must have tried on at least 20 pants at this one store, but they all were really uncomfortable. It was either my legs being too fat or the waist not fitting at all. I felt really bad for the girl, but there was nothing I could do. I just couldn't fit into any of the clothes! I did manage to to into another store called Max and Co. and buy a shirt and undershirt. I think the bill came out to be over 100 USD. Uhh... Hope my parents have money?
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