YEA! Halloween is coming!

I went to Universal Studios Japan last weekend with some friends (the pictures should up on Picasa, USJ 2) and everything was decorated for Halloween!! I just thought this was funny!

And now the school is all decorated for Halloween, with ghosts and pumpkins and all sort of things hanging up,,,, I'll post a picture or two soon! I Love Halloween,,,, I guess living in the Halloween Capital of the world for 5 years helped.

NBC stinks (aka another Jenna rant)

Okay, everyone who knows me knows that I watch too much TV. I have my favorite shows and I don't like to miss them. So when I first came over here, I downloaded my favorite shows off of iTunes; Heros, Battlestar, Eureka to name a few. I thought that even though I was on the other side of the world, why should I miss my favorite shows? So after reading about all new cool new shows starting this fall in the states I thought I would just download those as well,,,,, oh but nbc hates me. Well, not just me, but I can take it personal right?
NBC took all of its content off of iTunes and moved it all to Amazon's Unbox, something about wanting to try something else... okay, I thought, I'll just have to go to two places to watch my tv shows; Heros airs on nbc and the new shows Chuck and Bionic Woman is there as well. But then I find out that you have to download a special player (okay, I did that for iTunes) and I would only get to watch it on my computer (that sinks a bit, but I'll deal). So I download the software and free pilot of Chuck BUT when I opened Unbox to watch Chuck I got a message saying the show couldn't be downloaded because of copyright issues because I'm not in the States!
Then I find out it's the same for all of the shows!!!! Now I don't know if it was just like that because it was a free download and I didn't have to put in a credit card number, but I was logged into Amazon and I have my US credit card on file. But I wanted a free show!!! The reason why I used iTunes was because I could still download everything (legally) from Japan cause I have a US credit card.
If I find out I all the shows are the same, free or not, then I'm off to bittorrent. For all the talk about tring to keep people from downloading things off the Internet illegally and all the lawsuits, nbc just pushed me there.
okay, sorry about my rant, I just had to get it out!

ARRRRGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes I hate being a Red Sox fan!!!!
I watched today's game (9/14) at home until about 11, the 6th inning, when I had to leave to go to work. We were winning 5 to 2!!! When I got to work, it was the bottom of the 8th and the score was 8 to 7,,,,,,,,,,,, YANKEES! I'm kinda glad that I didn't see that part, but COME ON!!!! I watched (kinda) the last inning on ESPN MLB Gamecast. You really need to check it out, cause I know I can't explain it!
Now, Saturday's game is at 4pm Boston time,,,, which s*x for me cause that's 3AM in Japan,,,, I hope they show the game later in the day. I don't want to wake up the whole house watching the game at 3am.

Oh, one more thing. Today I was wearing my Youkilis shirt, and when I was on the train going to work, a Japanese guy came up to me and asked "Do you like Red Sox?", so I answered "Yes, very much" then he said "I love Big Papi,,, Go Big Papi!!!" and WALKED AWAY!! I think I stood there for a while just laughing to myself.

Not going to school?

I've noticed something here that I've finally asked Auntie Miki about. One of Sakura's friends didn't go to school for a while. She just said she didn't want to go anymore and apparently her mom was okay with it. It was only after a week or two did the principal of the school get involved. It was almost three months before she went back to school! I asked Auntie Miki about it and she said that it's normal in most schools to have at least one student per grade not going to school and the parents can't say no to their kids so the kids miss school. The principal, if he's (she's) nice enough, he'll go to the student's house to find out why, but there is no agency or police that gets involved. So the student doesn't go to school for a while, the school will just try to get them back to school and there is no "holding back" of students in Japan, so the student will just go on to the next grade even though they missed a lot of class. I don't know the details about it, but the whole thing is just strange to me! What would happen to a student in the states if they just turned around and said "I'm not going to school anymore"?

Hit and run Bicycle!

hehehe,,, I love that title!
The women here (mostly older ones) sometimes wear these visors. That in of its self would be fine, but it’s the kind of visors they wear that just weird me out! The visors are like the tinted windshield of a motorcycle helmet, but without the helmet part. Sometimes the visor just covers the eyes, which is okay with me, because you can see that they are looking ahead. But sometimes the visor’s band becomes like a headband and the visor covers the entire face, all the way to the chin, so you can’t tell where the women are looking, if they even see you at all. The worst part is that these women wearing the visors are riding bikes down the sidewalk, and I can’t tell if they see me walking or do I have to just get out of their way completely! I always think they don’t see me and get a strange feeling that they are going to run me over with their bikes. I can see the obituary now,,,, Death by hit and run bicycle!

No cold water?

So everyone knows it’s wayyyyyy too hot here in Osaka, but this is a little crazy.
I guess the water pipes are close to the surface or to the outside walls of the houses because at school when I turn on the COLD water to wash or when I flush the toilet WARM water comes out!!!! Okay, I think I’m going to have to explain the toilet thing. Japanese toilets (in houses) have a sink like thing (for lack of a better word) so you can rinse off your hands with the water that’s going to fill up the toilet bowl. It’s a good idea, I think; conserve water and all that. When it first happened, I talked to Yukari about it and she said that some days when its been hot for a long time she has to run the water for a while to get cold water. We joked that in America (with hot water heaters) you can run out of hot water, but in Japan you can run out of cold water!

I think I'll put up a picture of a toilet someday,,,,, I never thought I would ever say/type that!

A train story.

Here’s a story I just had to share!
I was riding the train to work this morning and sitting next to me was a young kid (around 3 or 4 yrs old) and his mother. The kid, as most kids do, started to stare at me. So I did the only thing I could think of, I stared back and then made a funny face. That made the kid laugh. Just as the train arrived at my stop, he decided to make a funny face at me, tongue sticking out and everything. Well, I just caught a glimpse of the face before I got off the train, but I guess his mother saw the face and got really mad at him. As the train door closed, I heard the mother yelling at the poor kid for making faces at foreigners.
I got a little boy in trouble,,, I should feel bad, but it’s just too funny!

My new car!

With a post title like that I know what some people might be thinking, so NO I didn't get a car over here!!! But the other day I was out with my Aunt Miki looking at cars and I saw one that I just love! Aunt Miki has been thinking about buying a new car for a while, so to get an idea of what kind of car she would like, we went to a used car dealership to look around. I saw alot of cars I would like to have, but this one just screams JENNA!!!! Don't you think so?

(insert unoriginal title here)

Okay,,, so I’m a bad person,,, I know that, you know that,,, lets move on…

I just put up my Summer vacation pictures on Picasa, the url is somewhere around the blog….
It was strange being home again. I kept on comparing America to Japan; from the prices of things (Japan is more expensive) to riding the trains (just imagine if the T was always on time…). Now that I’m back in Japan, I think I miss America more than I did before I left. I guess you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Before, I was just trying to get into the county, and it was like a world-wind of lets see this, lets go here, and now, I think I’m getting the hang of things here in Japan making me more aware of missing America. Well, I’m happy to have this opportunity to live in Japan, so I’m going to make the best of it and enjoy!

p.s. The title of this post was going to be "I'm BACK!!!!", but then I thought that would just be cliché, , , ,