New Year

Okay I’m sick of writing in Japanese. It’s the break, and ever since I got to the dorm its been all Japanese. Which brings me to my next point. What?! Jared’s in a dorm again? Did his host family go on another vacation? Nope, Jared moved out permanently. On top of all the rules, and the fact that I just didn’t spend enough time with them to make it worthwhile, during our own Christmas party the two sons got into a fight, and I don’t mean an argument. The worst part about the fight is that the older brother was holding his 4 year old daughter at the time the younger assaulted him, and then when we pulled him off, and the older brothers wife yelled at him, he pushed her and yelled “Urusai” which can be in this situation can be equated to “shut the fuck up”. Oh and did I mention that she was holding her 1 year old and standing in front of a coffee table. Luckily, I don’t think anyone was injured, but after that I was like, yah, I’m leaving. The dorm I’m in now isn’t permanent, but I’m staying here until the end of break, when they move me into another dorm. Hopefully the one with all the Judo players. Well anyways, it was New Years, and Yone decided to gather a bunch of people to go down to Umeda and watch the countdown. Before that I hung out with Kento, Marieah and Marina. Before Marieah and Marina came, Kento and I went to lunch at a, big surprise, Chinese food restaurant. Probably the greatest place in the world. It had All You Can Drink for $2. That is not a typo, there is not supposed to be a 0. Two dollars. 200 Yen. Unfortunately, because I don’t drink a lot of soda, I couldn’t make much use of it. I had one cup of Coke and then like 10 cups of Orange Juice. Once it got time, we headed over to Umeda. When we got to the countdown place. The countdown was in the form of a laser lights projected on the side of the building. And Japanese people don’t countdown from 10. They count down from 90. I think I might have been the only Exchange Student to do it the whole way. Though I do get a lot of practice at counting from 1-100 everyday at Judo when we do push-ups. Then again when I’m at home at night doing 100 more push-ups on my own. Yah, I do a lot of push-ups… where was I? Oh yah, On a normal day, we would have missed our last train going home, but on new years, the trains run all day long for obvious reasons. Even though they were running all night long, we decided to go to a restaurant anyway to wait until morning. There was maybe like 13 of us, but all I got was a thing of fried chicken which should have cost me about $5. However when we calculated the total of everybody’s orders, we came up $30 short. Why could this be? Well some people decided to leave early, and we are guessing they didn’t pay all of what they were supposed to pay. So from now on we have enacted what is called the “Go home early tax”. Though I think it is self explanatory, I’ll explain anyway, for those of you who may be less quick to catch on. What it means is that from now on, if you leave before the bill, you gotta pay more than what we estimate your total as. In the end I paid $10 instead of 5, so it wasn’t that bad, but still kind of a hassle. But I’m glad I participated in the countdown.
Because I moved out of my host family, I was not able to celebrate a traditional family New Years. But that’s okay, because I’m pretty sure I would have rather wanted to spend it with friends anyway. They all understand that I’m not into all that traditional stuff. Which reminds me, I think it’s time people start understanding that the culture, tradition, and whatever else they get out of visiting temples and shrines and stuff, I get that from sports parks, stadiums, and hall of fames. I also find it Ironic that the people who understand this and respect it the most are my Japanese friends and Usui-Sensei. But I think this is enough of an update for now. Sorry about that 2 month dry spell, I’ll try to update more frequently from now on. Maybe if I get a more stable connection in my next housing situation I’ll do it more, because I’m always trying to find things to help me procrastinate. Speaking of I got a short paper to finish. Haven’t mentioned Kobe Bryant once in this one either. Anyway, Hopefully really soon, I’ll have a pretty exciting update. If you want to know more about it, ask my Mom, Sister or Kaji. Speaking of my sister, she got a new Kitty!!! It’s sooooooo cute!!!!!
And If you all were wondering what those pictures on facebook of me on a stage with a microphone. That was me performing a comedy. I’ll post it later. And I’ll try to translate it for the Japanese people.