Whats been going on Blog 5.1

Things are going good. Time has been really flying by. I only have two weeks left and then I am back in New Haven for football. School has been getting better. For some reason this past weekend I crashed. I took it easy from going out and just relaxed a bit more than usual. Let's see what else has been going on...

Right now I am getting backed up with a lot of clips, but not enough for a complete video. I may just start to post some of the interesting clips in case anyone is interested... and so that the clips don't go to waste.

Rewon and I got Japanese haircuts, so in the next vlog you'll get to see those. We're planning to try at least give you guys the sense of how Japanese people dress in general etc... Ahh so many things: still have to do Akihabara, eat at this restaurant that serves the same thing sumos eat,  go to a prison themed restaurant, etc... Oh I also randomly talked to my friend from high school who happens to be in Japan, so I'll be meeting up with him...

Anyways, before I get back to homework here, the pictures down below are from the Ueno Matsuri parade and a middle school we visited. Enjoy!

Vlog 5

Blog 4.1

Wow, the summer is flying by. I am almost halfway done. Before I know it, I'll be back in New Haven for football. Tokyo has been amazing so far with all the sight seeing, food, etc... I feel like a summer is really too short. I would have applied for a year, but I had football and other commitments back home.

I feel the program is slowly improving, but my classmates and I all still have our gripes. Nothing much to do about that than just focus on how we can make the most of our time left.

Recently a few friends from the states have contacted me that they are coming up to Tokyo, so I'll probably be showing them around or trying new things with them. I am a bit worried these last few weeks will be lived on few hours of sleep. Its hard to juggle everything, especially, trying to work out and stay in shape with everything that's going on. Ahhh commute is killing me LOL. Sorry if everything seems really random with typos and grammar errors. I am taking a break from studying in the wee morning hours.

Things Rewon and I have planned for possible upcoming vlogs: climbing part of Mt. Fuji, experiencing Akihabara (I think the name literally translates to electric city) culture, onsen (bath house), and the Matsuri festival. We are still figuring out a good system to get these vlogs out on a regular basis.

Pictures: celebrated my brothers birthday on the 6th of July. The first picture is from the party. They ordered 7 orders of ribs, we finished it all... pretty quickly I must add. Towards the end of the photos there are a few photos with my host family. The picture of me standing in between two people with their arms around me next to a motorcycle are my host parents, and the picture at the end is with my host sister who lost two teeth today. They've been an amazing host family so far.

Well back to studying.

Post 4 sort of

Well, it's turning out that these vlogs are gonna be a bit more challenging than we thought. Doing these videos in Japanese and then editing the video with subtitles have been major hurdles. Recently, we've been slammed with a lot of busy work for class (Busy work = no fun). On top of that as you can see in the video we are also taking Karate classes among other things. Rewon and I need to figure out a solid system of taking the video and then editing it.

Since there aren't a lot of words and no subtitles, I'll walk through the video. As I said earlier we are now taking Karate lessons. The teacher is going to be teaching us old Karate. In other words, we'll be using swords etc... Also in the video we see a lot of clips of the subway. That's because most of our time is spent on the subway going back and forth. For me it takes about an hour to school. The commute cost is draining my wallet. It comes out to about $10 each day just to go to school and back. Towards the end of the video a lot of our friends get introduced, from Yale or people we met through our program. There also is a quick shot of some random Japanese people we met. We've meet a decent number of strangers on the streets so far, from college students to a CEO of a company. There's also clips from backstage access at the Kabuki show (props to Josh for opening that curtain like a pro) and a tea ceremony we went to.

Pictures: O ya there is a picture of shave ice from Japan. You can compare it with the picture I took in Hawaii from Vlog 2. They are both the same flavor and toppings. Also there is a "Palette Town" for all you pokemon fans out there.

We'll until next time. Hopefully, I can get these vlogs going.