This is your faithful reporter patrox on the set giving you the hot scoop on our latest project Petbusters! First off it stars shamby’s own Tim and Steve as petbusters kicked off the force due to their unorthodox methods. Sam plays the petbusters chief who constantly busts balls. Joelio says hi, he’s the still photographer and has a cameo as the green petbuster. Even your very own patrox rumble b has a cameo as a shirtless man who hasn’t showered in 2 days. Maybe that’s just because that’s how tim and steve woke me up this morning! WAH BA DOOP BA DOOP!

(i know i promised no more posts but i am just to angry not to write something).

I slept 4 hours last night, was violently ill with my stomach raging the whole time.  My host mom feeds me a agar (like corn syrup but made from kelp) tea connoction (for diarrhea, which i don’t have), and it looks like gak that is poop green. It ranks as the worst food i have tried this entire time. I try one bite say, “hmm that is interesting excuse me” and promptly throw it up. I call my program director to ask if she will try to smooth things over with a teacher who i have a midterm paper due today.She says that even if i emailed the paper to the teacher she couldn’t guarantee that I won’t automatically fail. I go on the my 1.25 hour one-way commute carrying my little vomit bag, luckily manage to grab a seat and never throw up. I spent a lot of my time trying to decide that if i do throw up should i aim for the burnable or non-burnable trash cans. I come early to go to the free clinic, it is closed for lunch, and has no english so i accidentely went to the women’s only first. When I go back after lunch I realize that the clinic is run by VENDING machines, and totally incomprehensible. I would point out while my teacher for this class is most likely a brilliant man, he cannot understand any english and will probably not be able to understand my paper. As he is not able to understand anyones questions. I am so ready to get out of here.

Fuck you, Waseda.

P.S. Your mascot is a inbred cross-eyed bear. http://www.waseda-shop.com/images/doll_w_bear_1.jpg

I am debating how to translate that title, but it is something akin to “It’s been awhile, Honorable-Mt. Fuji,” (Japanese use the suffix -san for mountains that have important religious relevance, it is sort of like mr. That is what my host mom said when she saw Mt. Fuji when we went out to go the the 5 lakes that surround it. It was an amazing day and there were no clouds surrounding the mountain. My host parents said it was the best view they ever had of Mt. fuji. I was very skeptical of it being worth the 2 hour drive, but in actuality the mountain is something to experience and was incredibly beautiful! I am going to miss my host mom very much I think.

I other news, I have ten days left in Japan! CRAZY! that means at most you will get only one more post of me being here, but mostly i will be too busy to post getting ready to go home. Today I have to write a six page paper. I came to the computer lab with the best of intentions but I found myself changing my facebook profile into ironic interests, movies, hobbies, etc. Poops. I also have to be done with my paper soon because there is a party tonight that I am planning on attending. Boop Boop! I really feel like there was a bunch of stuff I wanted to share with the shambodiance, but now I have forgotten it all. I haven’t even left Japan and already things that I felt like I would remember are forgotten! eek!

OH YEAH! Kabuki-za! I went to the most famous kabuki theater in all of japan and bought a standing room ticket for 1 act, a steal at under 8 dollars! Plus usually all kabuki acts are self-contained stories, and while sometimes they seperate acts might add up into some greater understanding how the world works, they are their own hourish long stories and you really miss very little by not going to the 4 hour long 3 story deal. Plus, that cost like 120 dollars for seats, and 40 dollars for standing room only!

I am guessing most of you know very little about kabuki, but if you do know a lot skip this paragraph, as I am sure it is filled with errors as I know absolutely nothing about the Japanese art except originally it was all female actors and very erotic. When the government found out they banned women from performing on the stage. To this day, all Kabuki acting troupes are all-male with female impersonators. There is dialogue but it is a weird singsong candance with a chorus of men in the background who I assume narrate (i couldn’t understand any words) and play traditional japanese instruments. The paticular play we saw was relatively new and known for having some of the best dance numbers in all of Kabuki. It is opening in Paris in 2007, and the female was a famous japanese actor who also does commericals for tea and is very good looking in an alien sort of way. He has the most intense stare of anyone I have ever seen, like ben kingsley times 20!

So yeah, super cool, and super incomprehensible. I ended up sitting next to an old japanese lady who would confer with her friend then try to explain the play to me in broken english. Of course her english was so bad that it was no help, as it was all understandable from watching play. For instance, she once spent like 20 seconds talking to her friend then turned to me and said, “Now…. Sleeping…” To which I was like, I understand we sleep that way in America too! After the play was over I talked to her in Japanese and figured out a lot of it. Crazy cool and highly suggest that anyone go to kabuki if you have the chance and the patience, as it was very very challenging.

WOWZ! I only have 18 days left in Japan. That is seriously blowing my mind right now. I have so much shit to do before then. But instead of doing it, I am going to write a shambot update.

My back has been hurting me for the past 2 weeks but now it is totally fine! HOORAY!!!! I am no longer an old man.

I am going to to into two cultural ideas that I have right now. The first is I am writing a paper on Hoop Dreams and I realized that the whole movie is really about the American dream, which was so weird because then I started thinking about the Japanese dream, and whether or not such a concept even existed. We started to postulate what the Japanese dream would be, but it was really unsatisfactory in the end. Secondly, our chapter on the textbook was on marriage roles, and I have to say it was pretty sexist. The first woman said that she was really forgetful so she wanted a man to put her on a leash (literal translation). Also he had to play sports and be a manly man (also literal translation). Finally she said that she would quit her job for her husband as soon as they got married and have lots of babies. I have to say that if I met a Japanese person like this, I don’t know that I would immediately berate them because jobs in Japan are really stressful, and it’s her choice. But at the same time it seems a little wrong to create a character that follows gender roles so strictly even if there are many people in Japan who think this way (woman included). I was so sick of it when asked what type of woman i wanted to marry i responded she has to be sexy, but she also need to know how to clean. The teacher didn’t even realize it was a joke. She was just like, heehee, good ideas, don’t you think she needs to cook too? OH JAPAN…and your fucked up gender roles.

My mom is coming to tokyo this friday, it is kindof silly because i will see her 5 days in the states after she leaves, but I think it will be tons of fun and give me a chance to do all the touristy things in tokyo that I haven’t done yet.

I have been working really hard on a scrapbook to take back to America, but after seeing Bill’s amazing scrapbook-esque picture on Shambot I have decided never ever to try again. WAH!

However in much better news I am super pumped about Petbusters. To a ridiculous degree. I was thinking about it, and I think it is quite possibly the most unique idea that we have ever come up with because it does a really good job of subverting the genre of dystopias. Plus it is promise of being funny as well. I dunno kindof silly to be talking about our movies like this but I have never heard of a film that is set in a dystopia following the armed force of the facist regime that has absolutely no moral qualms with it. Even though the cops never question what they do. Of course it is so ridiculous that we avoid a lot of problems, but still I think it is a very interesting premise. I think for it to work we need to have as little backstory (on the dystopia) as possible, and not bother making up a reason why pets are illegal. I just hope it doesn’t go to a place that is too dark. I was talking to someone about it here and he said that he thought it was amazing and he wished he could have come up with it. Therefore I think we can and should, no MUST, finish this for CRIFF. I think it has so much more potential than Waldo and the audience recieved that warmly. Anyways….

I’m out!

As some of you may already know I went to Tokyo Disneyland yesterday. I am not really a big Disneyland kind of guy but I was curious about the experience and it was definitely better than just hanging out around my hometown. First of all, if you were to remove the Japanese people from Tokyo Disney and replace them with Americans, there would be almost no way you could tell you were in Japan. English is the primary written language, with tiny Japanese subtitles, although all the people speak Japanese of course. There was only 1 Japanese restaurant! I was actually disappointed how little was different. It felt exactly like the American Disney with a few notable exceptions.

The biggest difference was the how wide the streets were. Up until 3 years ago Tokyo Disneyland was the number 1 most visited theme park in the world, with Toko Disneysea being number 2 (Together they make up Tokyo Disney, but we only had time for Tokyo Disneyland). The park planners knew that it would be super crowded so it has the widest streets of any Disneypark. Luckily, it was a wednesday and we got there early so we never had to wait more than 40 minutes for a ride and that was buzz lightyear. I also think the rides are run faster here because they want to move more people through. Maybe I am crazy, and it has been a long time since I have been to disneyworld, but I actually had a hard time taking in everything on the rides.

Also, another difference is that in Japan, is the existance of Disneysea. While I didn’t make it there they make it a point to not have any characters (besides the traditional disney ones, like mickey, minnie, donald, pluto and goofy) overlap in the parks. That is to say since there is a Aladdin section in Disneysea, there is no Aladdin anywhere in Disneyland. Disneysea is more of a date spot and you can drink alchohol there while Disneyland is dry. Disneysea is also nautical themed (obviously) with each different world (e.g. The Aladdin World) being a different port. I think you can take ships between the ports, but you don’t have too.

Minor differences are:

Stitch from “Lilo and Stitch” is by far the most popular character. People literally would run after him and moms would swarm him shove their kids near him and snap pictures. However you could never get a picture  with just you and stitch, that is how crazy popular he is. They don’t like the movie though, just the look of Stitch. I bet Stitch is another character that is able to transcend the Disneyland/Disneysea demarkcation

You don’t get splashed on splash mountain, it is seen as uncomfortable to be wet wearing clothes, and rude to make your guests uncomfortable. Ergo, no splash.

The Haunted Mansion had made decked out in a Nightmare before Christmas theme for the holidays. They totally changed the whole ride and it was super awesome. I never really liked Nightmare before Christmas as a kid, but i like the look of Tim Burton’s stop motion and it translated amazingly well to the anamatronics of the ride.

I dunno that is all I can think of right now… I am sure there is more, maybe I will edit this later.

26 Days to go. Kindof crazy. I definitely feel my time in Japan is winding down. Three papers are the primary obstacle between me and finishing up here. One will be on Hoop Dreams, the other on Ugetsu, and the 3rd is undecided, but will probably be on a Modern Japanese intellectual. I hate to be too negative about my experience here because so many things were positive about it, but I have to say, the Japanese education system (at least post-secondary) is horrendous! I am at a top tier university and I would say that most of the students don’t care at all about school. Routinely talking/emailing during lectures, to the point where the teacher has to tell them to shut up maybe 4 times a lecture. Also they have to take attendance and usually after they take attendance half of the students walk out.

In other news, I have hurt my back. Not really sure how I did, but I am sure it has something to do with my terrible posture and I feel asleep on the couch in a rather awkward position. Anyways, at first it messed up my legs but now I just have a stiff back. It sort of sucks to get back problems when you aren’t 21 yet but hopefully it will get better and the next time i will hurt my back will be when I am at least 35.

The other day as I was coming home on my commute I started getting a little upset because I realized that Tokyo has become an important part of my life and it sort of bugged me that none of my friends and family could ever understand. I dunno I am sorting thinking about it as I am writing this, but it sort of upsets me that people from back home could never understand the spatial layout of my life right now. Even people like my dad who visited still has no reference point. I noticed it when I told Deedee I was going to go to the internet cafe, and as I was walking to it I just seemed strange that she had no idea where the internet cafe was in reference to my house, my school, the train stations etc. I was thinking about a way to bring back that spatial understanding to people in the States and realized I couldn’t.

In a related point I saw some of Chris Marker’s San Soleil, only about 15 minutes of it. It is a reflexive documentary about memories and dreams and travels. Sort of a movie equivalent of a collage with narration by a female reading what I presumed to be Marker’s autobiographical letters that he wrote around the time that he filmed that paticular scene. Anyways the point is that much of the movie takes place in Japan and the scenes I watched dealt with trying to share these memories that he was making in Japan. Anyways, kindof pointless musing but for obvious reasons it spoke to me. Anyone else seen that movie?

Finally, I noticed there has been a shake-up in the Shambot lineup. I think sometime in spring semester we should have a shambot mixer in Minneapolis and try to get all the members together for an epic party. What do you think? Oh pooples i realized that some of the shambotians will most likely be doing internships next semester, I dunno, still I think it should be done.

That’s right. Now is the 2nd most popular time to go outside and look at trees in Japan, right after hanami which is the cherry blossom time in the spring. The Japanese Maples are turning red and are really pretty and I feel tempted to take pictures of them, which all the other old japanese men. Anyways, to celebrate Koyou, me and a few of my friends from the program went out to the very last stop on my train line. Pretty much the farthest you can leave tokyo and still say you are in tokyo. Getting to Okutama took about 1.5 hours for me, but I was closest, it took other people around 3 hours! After we arrived we took a 35 minute bus ride, then hiked for another 30 minutes through mountains and arrived at our destination, Nippara Caves. They were pretty sweet, but all the stalagites/stalagmites had been broken off and stolen in the 19th century, so they weren’t that impressive. But hiking through the mountains was really fun, especially with the colors of Koyo all around. It was crazy to think of that area being apart of Tokyo because it was much more like a tiny old Japanese town. There was basically a few houses around the train stop but after just Mountains and wilderness. All the houses were really old style and some even had traditional thatched roofs! Although, I am pretty sure those were abandoned. We found a vending machine in the middle of nowhere that was easially 50 years old and unoperational, but it was cool to see the old style soda cans. I learned a statistic that said in tokyo there is 1 vending machine for every 2 people, and in all of Japan the ratio is closer to 1 to 5.

Then for day 2 of Koyo celebration I went to the park in my town, koganei koen. I had a picnic and found another amazing area. It is a playground for adults. You do excercises there. I saw like 3 old men doing the exercises and it was really cool. I think they should have those in America too! Anyways, I realized I only have 33 more days in Japan! I am definitely looking forward to seeing everyone, but I think I will be sad to leave Japan too. I feel like I will be so bored in Cedar Rapids, and it will be so weird to not have to walk everywhere, and not have to plan things at least an hour in advance because that’s how long it takes you to get to downtown. However, I am a little homesick, and I want to be back in Iowa with all my buddies.

So, let’s recap. I went to the Tea ceremony. It was super cool, but i had to sit crosslegged for 2 and a half hours. Ouchies!

Then today I went to Ebisu with a few of my friends from the program. I went to the sapporo beer factory and had their beer sampler. It was delicious, but the factory was kindof small. Then someone knew someone who worked in a sushi restarant nearby so we went there and had some delicious sushi. After that Murphy wanted to go to the World’s only Parasite Museum. We went. It was gross. I saw an 8.8 meter tapeworm. I regretted eating raw fish.

THE END!

Yup, I know I haven’t written here for awhile, but I wanted to say that Japan goes well. I am getting a little homesick, basically missing one diana spradlin, but also a lot of other people back in the USA, including my friends and family. Anyways, I experienced another one of those gentle nudgings I talked about earlier, it occured last night with my host family. When we were discussing the going to a tea ceremony on Sunday.

“The tea ceremony is very formal.”

“Should I wear a suit coat?”

“No, but it is formal.”

“Should I wear a tie?”

“No, but it is very formal.”

“Okay! I’ll get my hair cut!”

 So yes, I went to the barber today to get my hair cut. It was a very interesting experience because I usually have a hard time expressing how I want my hair to be cut in english, let alone in Japanese. They gave me a style book but all the styles were from the 80’s and pretty much looked like Japanese businessmen. So then I thought how I would roll if I was a Japanese businessman and picked a style, but I said “not as short as that one, but look the same.” I think she understood, and I am relatively pleased with the haircut. Not super happy, but I was feeling like I would hate it. Anyways, I am really excited for the tea ceremony tomorrow and I will probably write someting about it later.

Okay, so I just got back from giving my speech, and let me tell you it was recieved 100 times better than I thought it would have been! Luckily I gave it when all the Japanese student volunteers were in the room, which more than doubled my audience to about 30. I told about 4 people ahead of time that I was reading sailor moon fan fiction but most had no idea what they were in store for. I honestsly practiced this speech way more than I would have had I written a normal speech, because I knew delivery would be crucial for it to work. So in fact I think I learned more in spite of everything.

My favorite moments the speech were as followed. After I said the line about fan fiction the teacher was interrupted me and was like “umm excuse me?” so I repeated it and she just got this look on her face that like oh god, i know where this is going. At first only the people I told I was going to talk about sailor moon fan fiction as a joke were laughing but pretty soon everyone was laughing except for the japanese people who were absolutely mortified. I added some awesome parts to the speech that were not in my rough outline. About how during the scary parts of the rollercoaster ride she held my hand and it was awesome. and I ended it with when the date was ending I wanted to kiss sailor moon, but it hasn’t happened yet. I managed to keep a straight face throughout the whole thing, with only a little nervous laughter which actually made it seem a little more realistic. When I ended there was just this incredibly awkward silence. To which I added, “Any questions??” The teacher just looked at me and said, wow, your delivery and story is very good. I said thank you. Then Hikaru, who was the only native english speaking person who didn’t realize it was a big joke said, “You REALLY like sailor moon?” I realized then that it was the moment the joke had gone too far.

I came clean and said that my speech was a joke and I don’t know anything about sailor moon and i have never read the manga. At this Hikaru seemed a little upset, but the Japanese people in the room finally realized and they started laughing. My teacher said that she was very glad it was a joke because she was beinnging to think I was “a little dangerous” because of my speech. I don’t think Japanese people have much satire because it took some convincing to make them understand it was a joke. Anyways, the people in the class said I should win the best speech award, and it was the best day ever.

THE END