Category Archives: Grad School in Japan

Heaths Come to Japan – Day 3 – Marine Life and Monkey Sex

Tuesday the 12th was a sort of “off day” after the action packed introduction to Beppu that was Monday. I didn’t have any concrete plans for my parents, although some sort of scheme with Choki-san was penciled into the afternoon timeslot. In short, my parents got to enjoy the charming luxuries of their ryokan while I slept in.

I wasn’t kidding when I said I had set them up in one kickass little place – check out this spanking awesome breakfast promptly laid out at 7:30am for my mother in the adjoining room.

ryokan_traditional_breakfast

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Heaths Come to Japan – Day 2 – Oita at Last, the Blitzkrieg Begins

Their unplanned night in Tokyo having drawn to a close, my parents boarded their morning flight out to Nowhere, Japan – aka – Oita. Originally they had been due to arrive in Oita around 8pm Sunday night and with this in mind I had crafted a whirlwind itinerary that kicked off from the following Monday morning. With my parents instead arriving in Oita a day late they had the pleasure of beginning their activity-packed adventure right from the get-go.

My girlfriend and I arrived at the airport about 10 minutes early and began the wait for the two giant Americanos to emerge from the arrival gate… mom made a suitably grand entrance.

She's very low-key.
She’s very low-key.

We had some coffee and introduced the parents to my darling girlfriend, then caught the bus back towards Beppu.

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Heaths Come to Japan – Day 1 – Lost, Cold, and Alone in Tokyo

As I am so fond of reminding my mother, the entire sequence of events that led to me living in Japan for 2 years while studying for a masters degree can be traced back to one fateful “conversation” around the dinner table before I began my freshman year of college at Washington & Lee University. We’ve got more important (and interesting) things to talk about so I’ll keep it short, but here’s a summary of that conversation:

Me: I think I would like to study Japanese at school…
Mom: I think that’s a terrible idea…
Me: Well I’m going to do it anyway!
Mom: Well then you can pay for your own tuition!

Now there was certainly more dialogue, and Dad chimed in with some bits of wisdom regarding his studying Russian at Amherst, and there may even have been some profanity, but that about covers the gist of that humid summer’s evening back in early August of 2001…

Fast forward almost exactly 5 years and I’m standing with my girlfriend in the seafood section of the basement grocery of the largest department store in town trying to decide which platter of sushi to buy and bring with us to the airport to meet my parents. Selection made, girlfriend proceeds towards the registers – awesome array of sumptuous and succulent sushi in hand (that’s called alliteration boys & girls!) – while I head for the drink section when my phone vibrates…

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Shake Me Like A Polaroid Picture

There I was just minding my own business on my laptop in my room when some clown decides to shake the whole damn building…

Nevermind, that was definitely an earthquake!

The yellow ring on the last map is my approximate location, I can actually see the epicenter from my dorm window. We got a nice 3 or 4 second shake, not enough to worry anybody but more than enough to get your attention.

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Guo Choki Paa

Saturday rolled around and it was time to blow off some steam, so the usual suspects were rounded up and plans were drawn. It was going to be a typical sushi & karaoke outing, but with a twist – we were going to visit a brand-new SCBR that had opened a few kilometers west on the same road as the one we usually patronize… bit of foreshadowing here for you: we were not going to be disappointed.

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The World Photo Exhibition

Perhaps two or three weeks ago Jessica, the Taiwanese Representative of the YonKaiChiimu, came to my room USB drive in hand in search of photos chronicling “American life.” After ensuring that there weren’t any pictures she could find that might get me arrested, I left her alone with my vast and bizarre array of digital camera photos that I’ve taken while traveling hither and yon in the past 3 or 4 years. When asked why she needed said photos she mumbled something about an exhibition or some other such nonsense. Frankly, I wasn’t really listening…

So you can imagine my surprise when a week ago people I ran into on campus started telling me that they really enjoyed my pictures, or alternately, that they had spotted me in “the exhibition.”

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4AM Fishing

So I ran into Kazu in the halls of AP House Thursday night around 11pm or so… and to make a long story short he breathlessly invited me to go fishing the following morning at an absurd 4am.

What sort of advantages Kazu seeks to earn by departing at such unearthly hours are unbeknownst to me. Perhaps he thinks, in that twisted mind of his, that if we arrive early enough we’d actually be able to simply pick the bass up out of the water, such would be the depth of their slumber.

Who knows… In any case, never one to pass up an opportunity to abandon work and embrace the nirvana of watery pursuits, I accepted.

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Purple Sanga

Saturday I returned to the Oita “Big Eye” Stadium to join the blue maniacs and wildly cheer on the Oita Trinita for another two hours. This time Satoshi, Jane, and Jessica had other things to attend to – or simply just didn’t want to sit next to a screaming idiot for that long again so they were scratched. However, I did manage to talk Michelle (my RA / buddy) into going and the adventure was on!

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