Musings

Japan is one of the most modern countries in the world in some regards. However, that seems to be only what you see on television. Just from my short stay here, I have noticed that it seems backwards in some ways. There are wires everywhere. Despite the fact that everyone has a cell phone nowadays, and there is all this talk about the "wireless revolution" there are still wires everywhere overhead. There are no buried wires in Japan. One of my friend's says that it's perhaps because of the Japanese mentality of "If if ain't broke, don't fix it." Regardless of what the reasoning, the dichotomy is still a bit unsettling.

It's started to settle in just how far from home I am. I've found myself wanting certain things from America: a decent-sized burger, a regular pepsi, sandwiches (crazy, I know), an American beer that doesn't cost 6 bucks a bottle, the list goes on. So I've been a little down these past few days. However, last night we went to karaoke and had a blast. I sang "Pink" by Aerosmith and Jet's "Cold Hard Bitch." It felt good. There was also a rendition of Linkin Park's "Breaking the Habit" which took me back to middle school. Evanescense was also sung, giving me an oppurtunity to explain to the Japanese amongst us about emo subculture. It went something along the lines of: "Emo people are very sad and so they cut themselves." The response to this was, "So emo and cutting...onaji (same)?" "Yes, yes they are." After karaoke a group of us split off to go into the city to visit a gay bar and go drinking. I would have joined them except that they weren't going to be back until 5 this morning. I took a miss because I ingested far too much alcohol on friday night and had a massive hangover all day Saturday. The Nagoya group had fun, though.

I miss you all, a lot. Loves,