Trip to the Ceramics Museum

One of the Chinese girls who lives here invited a Japanese friend for lunch. They cooked a lot of strange food that we did not know how to eat. Her Japanese friend talked to Jessica and Me a lot and we understood very little of what she said. And I think sometimes they were talking about us in Japanese. The instrument the Japanese lady is holding is known as the peepa. It looks extremely exotic but sounds just like a banjo. It even has four strings! ...like a banjo.

Here is a picture of me holding the instrument in the way I think It should be held. But how do I know, I am not a banjo player.


The following day on Saturday (Friday for Americans) the ceramics class me and Jessica are in had a mandatory field trip to a ceramics museum. Beforehand we decided to go around Owari-Seto (Downtown Seto) and visit all of the wonderful ceramics stores. Here is a picture of one now. The building is very beautiful both in and outside.

Here is a picture of a funny pot with googly eyes!

Another Shop.

These shops are filled to the brim with ceramics made locally and afar.

A picture of quaint Shinto shrine. These babies are everywhere.

Picture of Jessica purusin the store.

There are some really funny ceramic figures which can also be found in strange American Asian antique stores. Goofy, Strange, and Exotic.



Ceramics range in price here from roughly 70 cent bowls and tea cups to $10,000 dollar vase! Expensive!

You can see some of the cheap ceramics in front of the store. Some at 80 yen, which at today's exchange rate cost about 71 cents! The ceramics here are beautiful and cheap, probably as cheap as you can find Japanese ceramics in the world.

And of course a ROBOT! What would Japan be without robots?

After we walked around and got tired we found two of our friends here. Corey is on the left and Spring is in the middle. Jessica is the goofy one on the right.

More of our class came off of the bus. Don't expect me to name them. Its impossible. For me anyways.

The man on the right is known to me as "Jackie Chan". When I first met him I was talking to an International Student Office employee named Coomagai. He thought I looked like Tom Cruise! And now Coomagai calls me Tom. I call him Jacki Chan as retaliation... Even though he is Korean and Koreans hate being mistaken for Chinese. Now many many people here call me Tom Cruise. I wonder how long this nickname will last?

Group shot with some girls Jessica knows. There I am in the background doing a Zoolander face.

The bus was incredibly crowded! I have never been in a bus this bad. Everyone who got on were going to the world expo. They were not only incredibly crowded but they were also old Japanese people. The shot is a little blurry because the bus bounced too much.
Here is a beautiful shot I took when we all got off of the bus. This is the museum grounds.


The museum.

The museum grounds were incredibly beautiful. These are some artful rocks in a man made pond.


Now Japan has the most amount of spiders I have seen in my life. The walk to the museum had over 100 spiders on trees and bushes. At night there are some spiders the size of golf balls.

The museum was incredibly beautiful. It had ceramic art dating back around 800 years. That means a fragile bowl lasted over 800 years without being damaged. Many of the pieces were found underground. They also had Chinese and Korean ceramics. However, the most beautiful pieces were those made right in seto city.

That was my day. And what's a better way of ending this day than with some great shots of Engrish. Here are some cloths with intangible English on them.

"Merrily mind moke sun power"


"The mountain path of point"


"Florida Sweet Fruit: Natura slects "
"Taste to fresh banana!"

"Holiness depictto. A pure heart is expressed by the various colors."

"It tried to show what it thought of at that time without hiding what, too, by the color"


Yes that's right. I feel inspired and enlightened. I shall now go moke some sun power.

I love everyone. Fee free to leave a comment. The next installment will be my trip to Nagoya Castle!

First Week In Japan

So I have finally arrived in Japan!

I drove 18 hours from Florida to St. Louis arriving about 4:00am in the morning and straight afterwards loaded up all of jessica's stuff and drove another 4 hours to Chicago where we spent the day packing my things and getting some paperwork done. Then we work up around 4:00am the following morning to get to the airport. Another 18 hours on a plane later we were in Japan. Here is a wonderful picture of Jessica being very tired at the airport.



Our school paid for a jumbo taxi to take us to our new living quarters which are kind of in the city Seto. Actually we are in another city bordering Seto where our school is located. On the way to the two hour long ride in a taxi I snapped a beautiful picture of a Japanese sunset...because Japanese sunsets are different you know?



And me and Jessica in the taxi.



Here is a picture of our new colorful Japanese friend who lives in Hawaii and speaks mostly English named Corey.



Now the very first thing I noticed that struck me as something you never see in America is.....ALL CARS ARE SHINY. Meaning, all cars are clean, shiny, and spotless. On my two hour track to our new Japanese domicile I have not seen one car that is dirty, rusty, or junky. In fact, I have not seen one all week.



Japan was the only country that allowed 70lb luggage without a grand fee...my luggage was 69.5 pounds! Perfect...However this was true until yesterday. Therefore I will be paying lots of money coming back to America because most likely, I will have more things to bring back. I will probably be shipping lots of things back to America. Oh, and here is a cute picture of me and Jessica on the train we take to school.





The small dormitory we live in is very nice. Its more of a two story house because it only has 8 rooms. We have a kitchen, living room, and two bathrooms. Now there are about five girls living here including Jessica and only two boys...me and Corey. We live very close to a big department store and supermarket that both take VISA. Our new favorite drink here is Qoo (pronounced coo).



Its a wonderful Japanese drink made by non other than Coca~Cola. Ah wonderful globalization. The school I am going to is called Nagoya Gakuin University. It is a school atop a hill kind of out of the city. I take the train and a free school bus there. The campus is very beautiful...breathe taking actually. And of course it has exquisite shrubbery.







One of our favorite places to eat now is called Mos Burger...very delicious....and not too pricey.



Which compares a lot better to McDonalds of Japan although they have the McTeriyaki Burger.





One of the first events we went to was the Seto town ceramics festival. Seto is world renowned for making ceramics. The city is about 1,200 years old and one of the oldest kilns can be found here. Seto is also hosting the World Expo.





And some very colorful statues with phalic humor. Dirty Samurai



There were delicious snacks to eat....



While the children at the festival played games and were given the chance to win stuff...like teddy bears and toy guns...well not really, more like a PSP, Nintendo DS, and Gamecube. You can see the DS in the upper right corner...



A building....



There is a strange obsession with Shrubbery here that bewilders me. Many of the plots of grass here have become large games of checkers...



And another picture of shiny cars.



Here are some pictures of the beautiful town. Some of the buildings are very old, and some are very new. With no central town planning involved in the creation of this city, it has vast winding streets and mini shops and surprises around every turn. It feels very different from the gridwork of the suburbs of Chicago. This city feels very alive and the history of it seeps through everything. It feels very safe here. Many buildings look old and can be mistaken for slums, however in that second a shiny car will pull out of the driveway.





Jessica and I visited the local "Michigan Avenue" called Sakae. It is about a half and hour train ride but well worth the trip. The first thing off of the train is a huge underground shopping mall where I followed Jessica around looking at designer cloths.



Above the mall is a beautiful modern city scape with large sky scrapers. The area lit up like a Christmas tree with glowing billboards and enormous TVs....and a Ferris Wheel!!






Now another very Japanese thing is the crazy amount of vending machines you can find here. There are vending machines on every block! There are even vending machines that serve Beer....



With nudy girls on the side of them...



Now one of the most amusing things about Japan is their obsession with English. They put English on everything...they think English is cool but as you can see...Its not quite correct...Its engrish.








And last but not least, our beloved dorm dog...Nobu.



I will post more pictures as they come. School is going to REALLY start tomorrow so I have to get organized. Six months of this is going to be interesting. I love my family and friends and I hope the US of A is treating you well. If anyone wants to talk, they can call me on skype. Goto www.skype.com and talk for free! If you want, you can call me here in Japan using this phone number (630)448-4936. My skype screename is mempko. my email is mempko@gmail.com

I hope people send me their pictures and feel free to make comments. Chow for now.