I ♥ Japan!

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Things I spent the most money on in Japan.

Here's a list for your reading pleasure of the things in Japan that I shelled out the most money for.  Most of the costs are estimates, but should be pretty accurate.

Number 8:  School Uniforms
Cost - 42,000 Yen.  ($401)
Cost includes: Male winter uniform, female summer uniform, athletic jacket.

Yes, I decided to purchase my junior high's school uniforms as a souvenir to take back to America.  For one, I can use them for cosplay events and anime conventions if I want.  Or two, I can hang them on the wall somewhere (ooh perhaps surrounding my painting...) to always remind me of my time at Aso Kita Junior High School.  The male uniform cost around $220, the female one was about $130 (Kate and Laura will have to try it on^^), and then I also bought a 7th grade P.E. jacket thing, which is red and dark blue, with white kanji on the back.  The perfect thing to wear to Indians games. ^_^

Number 7:  Xbox 360
Cost - 58,000 Yen.  ($554)
Cost includes:  Xbox 360 Console, 7 games, 1 extra controller.

Not much to explain here.  The 360 itself was nearly $400.  Then I bought Halo 3, Dead or Alive 4, Blue Dragon, Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball 2, Idolm@ster, Idolm@ster Live For You, and 1 extra controller, which I've only used once with Vicky....  unless you count all those countless hours I spend in Forge with Icy.  Buying the 360 was definitely worth it just for the hours I spent with Joe, Nakahito, and Uncle Jim in Halo.  Joe and I also got a lot of mileage out of DOA4.  And of course, Idolm@ster is awesome, but it costs a pretty penny with all the CDs and downloadable content as well....  More on that later...

Number 6:  Trip to Osaka
Cost - 60,000 Yen.  ($573)
Cost includes:  Plane ticket, shinkansen (bullet train) ticket, train tickets, and spending money (food/shopping).

This weekend I'm going to Osaka to visit the guy Uncle Dave works with.  He's going to show me around both Osaka and Kyoto, and let me stay at his parents' house for 2 nights.  My plane ticket there cost about $230, and the ride on the shinkansen back cost about $120.  The shinkansen doesn't come all the way to Kumamoto though, so I'll have to get on some regular trains as well to make it back.  I may have estimated a little on the low end for spending money, but I haven't gone yet so who knows.

Number 5: Idolm@ster
Cost - 68,000 Yen.  ($639)
Cost includes: Two 360 games, six CDs, two figurines, 18,900 Microsoft Points for downloadable content, and a 120 GB hard drive.

Coming in at number 5 on the list is Idolm@ster, one of the coolest Japan-only video games featuring 10 girls that sing and dance to original pop songs.  You train them, dress them, and watch them perform.  Seeing anime-like characters in 3D is a real treat.  The songs are fun and addicting, but unfortunately, the downloadable content for these games is horrendously expensive.  New songs are occasionally released for 1200 MS points ($10-15?).  Dozens of outfits are available for 1000 points a piece.  Some are 500, but the good ones are 1000.  Remixes of songs, new accessories, gamer pictures, themes, and videos are also available for around 250 points each.  But despite the hefty prices, the otaku have no choice but to pay it.  Part of being an otaku means paying for awesome one-of-a-kind game and anime merchandise for prices double, triple, or quadruple of what we'd normally pay for things non-anime oriented.  (and I'm conservative too, I've only purchased less than half of the downloadable content for only one of the two games...)  Oh, and I bought the 120 GB hard drive almost soley for Idolm@ster downloadable content, which is why I included that price ($170?) here instead of under the 360, although it appears some of the things may not take up as much space as I thought. 

Number 4:  Trip home for Christmas
Cost - 100,000 Yen.  ($940).
Cost includes:  Round trip ticket to and from America. 

Actually, I don't remember exactly how much this cost.  It was somewhere between 900,000 and 1,100,000 though.  So somewhere between $900 and $1,100 maybe.  But yeah, the great thing about this trip was that I only had to pay for the plane tickets.  No hotel, no food costs, no shopping costs.  Yay.  I could have probably included all the Christmas presents I bought at number 9 on this list, since I went crazy with presents this year.  But that'd be too hard to try to remember all the different things I bought and how much they cost.  And since it was so many different types of things too, it doesn't really count I guess.  But anyway, yep, the trip home ranks at number 4 on the countdown.

Number 3:  Music CDs
Cost - 128,500 Yen.  ($1,228)
Cost includes:  Music CDs.  Yep, that's it.

So at number 3 of the things in Japan I spent the most money on... are all the music CDs I bought.  Since I got here, I've bought dozens of CDs, almost all in the J-Pop genre.  Most of the CD stores here have several stations where you can listen to the CDs and see if you like them.  So I do this a lot, and ended up buying lots of stuff.  So with the total number of CDs I bought, it ends up rounding to about 1 CD per week.  I'm glad I bought all these CDs because I've found some artists I really like.  The discovery of Yui and Tokyo Brass Style alone was worth it.  Then there's the amazingly cute trio of girls, Buono! who tickle your heart with warm smiles and cute dancing.  Also, the Anime Trance series which I discovered in Akihabara is pretty awesome.  Some of the best anime themes remixed into techno/dance versions.  I bought 2 of those back in Akihabara, and recently found numbers 3 and 4 in Kumamoto City.  Then there are dozens of other CDs from different artists that I bought.  Yui and Tokyo Brass Style are the only ones that I don't need to listen to first to know I want to buy though.  So anyway, in the end, when it really comes down to it, music is my life.  And this was one $1,228 well spent.

Number 2:  Shaken
Cost - 150,000 Yen.  ($1,433)
Cost includes:  Shaken

This is the only bill-related thing on the list, and the only reason it was included is because the bill hits you all at once.  You don't get monthly increments of $100 or anything.  You get the option of paying it over 2 months, so half and half, but I just paid it all at once.  Shaken is the yearly checkup that every car in Japan has to go through (every other year if it's not old like mine).  But really, it's not that bad.  They take your car and examine and tune-up everything that needs fixing.  But the end result is that you can drive your car around for a whole year with almost no worries of having any problems, even if it's 13 years old like mine.  Other bills don't make the list, because those are all broken down into montly payments.  But if you're interested, internet is about 6,000 yen per month, and my house is about 12,000 yen per month. 

Number 1:  Trip to Okinawa
Cost - 170,000 Yen.  ($1,624)
Cost includes:  Round trip flight to Okinawa, resort hotel for 4 nights, rental car for 5 days, museum/park/aquarium tickets, food, and shopping money.

My trip to Okinawa, coming in at 170,000 yen (maybe more) far outweighs the cost of flying back to America for Christmas.  But the biggest reason for this is the cost of eating out everyday and staying in a resort hotel for 5 days.  The rental car was about $200, with another $50 or so for gas.  But with all the things I did on this trip (see below posts), it was well worth it.  In fact, everything on this list was well worth it to me (except for shaken, that's more of a necessity, but still "worth it" I guess).  But all these trips I've taken, all the CDs I've bought, all the hours I've played Halo, and all the thousands of Microsoft Points I've dished out just to see teenage anime characters in different outfits...  It's all been worth it.  And by the way, I'm still a millionaire.  ^_^

So I've got a pretty sweet deal here.  I've got a well-paying, enjoyable job.  I can pay all my bills with ease, travel around the country and fly back home for Christmas, live in a cozy house by myself for cheap rent, buy all the CDs I want, and still have tons of leftover money to throw in a savings account or spend at will.  So once again....  why am I leaving here?  I guess family's just that important.  But I may not be able to strap my wings down for long.  I've already been casually looking into Germany and Iceland...

2 and 1/2 days...

Yep... just two and a half days of school left before summer vacation, which means I won't have any more classes after this week.  Very sad...   Then for the remaining 3 weeks I'll get to go to lots of club activities in the mornings.  Brass band is from 9-12 everyday, and all the other sports are on similar times.  I'll have to go to kendo a few more times, but it's really hot and humid... XD  

I've been receiving lots of goodbye things from the students already.  I'm already completely done with 2 out of my 3 elementary schools.  They gave me a photo book, some origami, and some letters or something.  Then I've already taught my final class to 7 out of the 10 classes at my junior high.  All those classes gave me a letter of some sort.  Ahhh.... so sad. 

Ummm...  well the bug situation has been...  not too bad actually, but with the list I'm about to ramble off it might not seem that way.  Well, I got attacked by all the different species on different weeks.  First came the week of the spiders, where I had many demon looking spiders for almost a whole week.  That was right after the rainy season was starting to end and it began to get humid.  I guess I haven't mentioned the rainy season on here yet...  But yeah, it was raining pretty much non-stop from about May 23rd to July 1st or so.  Anyway, let's see, then came the attack of the ants.  There was one day when the whole army was scavenging my shower.  So after I drowned about 60 of them in four separate assaults, I quit for the day, leaving a few stragglers.  They never came back after that though.  They were just scoping out the place...  Then I put a few ant traps down the next day.  There was also a day after it rained where there were a few worms unearthed on the concrete on my doorstep in the morning.  I just ignored them, but when I got home from school, I saw a black blob on my doorstep.  After I parked and got out to look, I saw that it was the army of ants tearing apart the worms.  o.O  There was a massive trail of them, and then there were probably 20-30 all crawling over half the worm that remained.  Anyway, after that, came the week of the roaches.  I spotted 3 cockroaches(?) around my sink area.  I killed all the ones I saw though.  I've only seen one other one since then, so it doesn't seem to be much to worry about.  And I'm leaving soon anyway, so it doesn't really matter.  Also, mukade eat cockroaches for breakfast...  not really a comforting thought though....  less cockroaches, more mukade...  Which brings me to the next week, where I saw two full grown mukade back-to-back.  That scared the crap out of me.  The first one appeared on the floor right next to me when I was watching TV.  That was my longest mukade battle to date.  Usually, my vermin killer skills are highly efficient and quick.  As soon as I spot something, I jump to my feet, check where it's heading, fly across the room to my icy freeze, run all the way back, all in about 4 seconds or so, and then freeze the bastard.   Freezing time depends on the insect.  Spiders, even large ones, are more or less instant kills.  Roaches take several seconds, but that's mostly because they're fast and start running like crazy once you start spraying and they dodge a bunch.  Mukade though, aren't very fast, but it takes about 10-20 seconds of head-on spraying before they're incapacited.  Then after several minutes, they'll usually start to regain life...  so hopefully I've disposed of them on the train tracks by then.  Anyway, so usually the battles are over within 15-20 seconds of me spotting a demon.  But this bastard crawled under a scanner that I've got on the floor (but never used).  So I loomed above the scanner for a while with my freeze can drawn.  And from that moment on it was an intense cat and mouse game like one-on-one snipers on sidewinder with 1 life and you both have spotted each other but you each have good cover.  It's crazy!  So I finally got him to scurry out after about two minutes, luckily away from me, and then I blasted my frostthrower at him and got him.  Darn biznitches.  Then, the following morning, I spotted one on the wall while I was taking a shower.  This was my first shower encounter, which I've been fearful of ever since I got here.  Luckily, there weren't many places for him to hide, but unfortunately, a wet mukade is hard to freeze.  And also unfortunately, my freeze can quickly ran out of ammo.  So I ran to the other room, grabbed my additional supply, and ran back, cornered him and had a crazy mist spraying battle.  I wasn't able to freeze him well because of the water.  And since he was in a corner the mist kept blasting back at me, so I had to fire in short bursts rather than a constant stream.  So eventually I got him, and haven't seen any more since.  I did see another roach though, but only one.  And there was also a second army of small ants in my main living area.  I found where they were coming in the wall, squashed a bunch, and put an ant trap down the next day but never saw them again.   So yeah, like I said, the insect situation hasn't been too bad....  lol?  No more lizards though.  Did I mention the lizard?  Oh and there was a praying mantis on the outside of my house yesterday. 

Well that paragraph was a lot longer than anticipated.  Vicky and I are both leaving Japan in a few weeks.  She's really anxious to get out of here, but I really don't want to leave.  The two peeps that are replacing us are a girl from America, and a guy from South Africa.  So I'm gonna have to share my house with the guy for 2 nights the week before I leave.  Did I mention I don't wanna leave?  I shoulda at least stayed for a week or 2 longer.  I think I'm just barely gonna miss the summer festival, which is extremely sad.  That was a blast last year, and this year it would a ton more fun, because I'd probably see a bunch of my students there!  Last year I didn't know anyone yet though. 

Oh, so on Friday, that was a fun day.  I went to brass band for the first time in a while, and the kids were excited to see me.  But I soon realized it was just the 1st year students (7th graders).  So we played this one song twice, and then we took a break.  Apparently there was something else going on so we had to be quiet.  So we spent the next two hours of rehearsal time....  talking.  It was sweet.  Well after we finished playing, a couple 3rd years came in and said "Ohh! Daniel-sensei!" and then they had a secret meeting and told the 1st years to have "play-time" with me, lol.  So that was freakin' awesome.  Especially because all the 1st years are still pretty out-going and haven't crawled into their self-conscious puberty fortresses yet.  And there was one girl there who had REALLY good English.  It was awesome.  So she ended up acting as the translator for most of the time while all the other girls asked a bunch of questions.  Then they were crazy and dancing around and Shouko (the one with good English) told me jokingly that they were all bakas, lol.  And then the other overly-polite girl kept saying "baka jaa nai yo" every time Shouko called them bakas.  It made me laugh.  (Yeah I'm not gonna tell you what those mean, that's you're homework.)   Then we played a game like musical chairs, and then we talked more, and then I played the piano (what little I could remember) and they were like "ooooohhh" and then we talked more and more.  They taught me all their names and I memorized most of them, and then they asked me the usual questions like how old am I and if I'm married or not, and what foods I like and what music I like, etc.  I'm happy that I still get a "oooh wakai" (so young!) when I tell them I'm 24.  I always got that at 23, but it's nice to know I'm still "really young" now that I'm 24.  Although it's always strange when kids ages 6-13 tell me how young I am...    So yeah, that was my fun anime-like experience of the month.  I guess I didn't mention that they were all girls, did I?  Well except for one slightly chubby kid named Wa-chan, lol.  So yeah, hanging out with a dozen 12 year old girls for 2 hours.  That was sweet.

Hmm... I'm going to Osaka this weekend to visit Sadao, the guy Uncle Dave is working with.  I'm going to stay at his house for 2 nights, and he's going to show me around Osaka on Saturday and Kyoto on Sunday.  Then on Monday I'll take the shinkansen back to Kyushu.  So that should be a lot of fun.  There's also a slight chance I might see Keiko, the girl from Mount Union who gave me private lessons in Japanese the year before I came, since she's back in Hiroshima now.  But she might be busy.  She might be leaving for vacation in Vietnam that day. 

What else?  I've got a party with my school's teachers this Friday, a party with the Board of Education next Friday, and a party with my adult class next Saturday.  Then hopefully I'll have some sort of party with the kendo students or something before I leave, since they're the ones I've spent the most time with.  Gah~   so sad.  ; ;

Whelp, it's time to go watch anime.  Sayonara!

Global Peace Index

Thought this was interesting.  Here's the 2008 global peace index results.  Nearly every country in the world was rated on how peaceful it currently is.  Scoring was determined by things like ratio of murders, organized crime, ratio of prisoners, involvement in wars, people's trust in each other, respect for human rights, possibility of terrorist attacks, political atmosphere, etc etc etc. 

Top 5 Most Peaceful Countries on Earth:

1. Iceland
2. Denmark
3. Norway
4. New Zealand
5. Japan

Where do the other big name countries fall?:

11. Canada
12. Switzerland
14. Germany
23. Hong Kong
27. Australia
30. Spain
31. Poland
32. South Korea
36. France
37. Vietnam
49. United Kingdom
54. Greece
62. Cuba
67. China
69. Egypt
90. Brazil
93. Mexico
96. Jamaica
97. United States of America
105. Iran
107. India
116. South Africa
127. Pakistan
131. Russia
133. North Korea
137. Afghanistan
140. Iraq

"Japan is the only Asian country in the top 20."

"Why isn't Japan No. 1 in the ranking? The survey explains it is because Japan does not yet have good relationships with China and North Korea. If these relationships go well, Japan might get the No. 1 spot."

"What about the United States? The U.S. was ranked 97th in the survey, while China was 67th. The U.S. is the least peaceful country among developed countries. Because the survey was conducted before the riots in China, China may be ranked lower next time."

"Why is the U.S. ranked so low? This is because of its continuing military campaign in Iraq and the high possibility of a terrorist attack on the mainland. In addition, the number of prisoners per population is the largest in the world. The high murder rate and availability of guns are also factors in America's ranking."

Source:
http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings/2008/