TheLeong.com

OK so wow; I haven’t made a really substantial update on here in a long time. I’m sure that all three people out there in the world who read this blog constantly (all of whom I have probably never met) are just grinding their teeth wondering “what has become of Mr. Anthony Leong?!” Well, internet-stalkers, here we go, with a giant update of the last three weeks or so of my life.

I left Japan on July 28th. While I was planning on pulling an all-nighter before my flight, I accidentally fell asleep for longer than planned and had to rush to finish up all the packing and stuff in the morning. To make a long (and slightly funny yet slightly embarrassing) story short, I made it to Narita airport only about 30 minutes before take-off, thus missing my flight. After a few hours of waiting around at the airport, hanging out with Yuji, unsuccessfully waiting on stand-by for two flights to the US, they decided to transfer me to Singapore Air. This was actually a better deal for me, since it was a lot nicer than what United would have been. So I made my way to Los Angeles via airplane, got to sleep most of the way, watched some movies and TV on the flight. The nice thing about Singapore Air was that all the programming on the personal TVs (every seat has their own, as do most nice international planes) was on-demand. I don’t know if I’ve ever had this before. But instead of waiting for the movie you want to watch to finish then start-up again, you just use the remote and access what you want to watch. I watched an episode of Frasier and one of Arrested Development, saw the I, Robot movie that wasn’t as bad as I expected, and watched the first half of Kung-Fu Hustle. This was all after I slept for about 8 hours, having not slept much the night before.

After I finally made it to LA, I had a bit of time before my flight back to St. Louis. I got stopped by some Indian guy (from India, not native American), and he tried to get me to donate to his cult or whatever in exchange for some books about Indian religion. I lied (of course) and said I didn’t have much cash on me, and ended up giving him only like 120 yen and still got one of his weird little books. Nice omiyage, I guess. After that I got on a plane to StL and things were good. Now for another funny story: I’m sitting on the plane and hear the lady next to me talking about her son who graduated from Northwestern, something about law, something about marines, etc. Since I spent so much time in Japan this time watching Detective Conan, I think my detective skills were pretty polished or something, and I figured out that the lady sitting next to me flying to St. Louis was Bryan Reynolds’ (from IES Fall) mom! Wow what a weird coincidence. But his mom was busy talking, and I was really tired, so I went to sleep for most of the four hour flight. I woke up and near the end of the flight asked his mom if she was who I thought, and I was correct. Conan would be proud. And I did it without a bow-tie, stun-gun watch, and a crazy Professor friend. Well, that was a mystery solved. And thus I was back in America.

I only spent about three days back at home in St. Louis. I actually really liked it, even though I didn’t even leave the house for two whole days. My sleep schedule was still pretty messed up, but it was nice relaxing at home for a bit. I think I must be getting older or something but just sitting at home or hanging out with my parents is pretty nice nowadays. On Saturday morning I left with my parents to hit the road back to Indiana. I had to move out of my old apartment by the end of the month, which was kind of a pain in the butt as I would have rather just loafed at home for longer, but oh well. Spent all weekend moving and stuff from one apartment to the other with my parents, and that was that. I’m living in a new place now, it’s really nice. The set up is different from the old place, and while I think the new living room leaves a bit less space to have people over, it’s definitely better for me just being lazy by myself, which I probably do the most. And it’s not like I ever have masses of people over anyways, so it’s good.

It’s hard to believe I’ve been back in Bloomington for over two weeks now. Things have seemed to just fall back into place like I never left. My schedule for now is really easy. The only thing I do every day is go work on IUSTV stuff at the office from around 1 to 4PM. Starting tomorrow, though, I’m having more important meetings, etc, so I suppose things will get a bit more intense. Hanging out with everyone (who’s back) has been great; I think senior year is going to be a lot of fun. I got the new Katamari game, and it’s awesome. I beat it in like two days, but like the first one, there’s so much replay value that you never really “beat” the game. I’m not especially looking forward to the start of classes, well at least not for the actually class work, but I guess there’s no real choice for that.

Well I think that’s a pretty decent entry. I do have to say, my life isn’t exactly amazingly exciting, but I’m going to keep doing this blog thing for a long time I think. I’ve said before that I don’t really care who reads this. I’m sure some friends and stuff read it, but mainly I think the reason I have this is so I can look at it a bit down the line and just see what I’d been doing, what I was thinking, etc. A journal or something like that, although it’s also fun to post up stupid stuff for other people to see. It seems like a few more people I know have blogs nowadays, so those are always fun to read when I’m bored. Now it’s time to plan a bit for my first Exec meeting of the fall IUSTV semester. I’m really in charge now, so it’s a good and weird feeling. That’s about it for now, I’m watching Iron Chef and just loafing around. Life is good, summer has been great, and this entry has officially become way to freaking long.

After a long day (two I guess), I’m back home in St. Louis. I’ll write stuff in more detail, and put up a ton of pictures from Japan sometime early next week. I’ll be back in Bloomington by Sunday.

Once again, I haven’t updated in quite some time. Things have been pretty busy around here lately. Let me now then attempt, true believers, (anyone get that reference?) to sum up everything that I’ve done of importance since my last post. In summary, I’ve gone to/done: Ghibli Museum, Kabuki-cho, real Kabuki, the Meiji Shrine, Kaihim Beach, Harajuku to see freaks, karaoke a bunch of times, Disney Sea theme park, and the Yokohama International Fireworks Show.

Wow, going through my pictures to summarize all of that makes it seem like I really have been doing a lot of stuff. Nick left a little bit ago, after showing him a good old fashioned Y’s. Brian is still here, after extending his flight by about a week and a half. He’s pretty much adapted to living here like I have, and the only real difference is he doesn’t have a cell phone. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a major handicap here in Japan.

I’d like to sit here and write a blog entry about every awesome place I went, but I’m way too lazy. However, I’m going to try and put up pictures of most of these places soon, and I’ll have (er, try to have) substantial descriptions and captions for them.

Since I only have 1 week left here in Japan, I’m actually getting pretty busy with everything. It’s almost 1:30AM now, and I’m planning on waking up tomorrow around 7AM to go get some b-roll of the summer IES classes. I’ll write another entry sometime soon, and hopefully I’ll get pictures up again this weekend. I will be back in the States on the 28th, and back to Bloomington by August 1.

Today the IES kids went to Kamakura. Since I’m such a good intern, I went along with. Before I go any further, I must mention how awesome I am. That is, I was supposed to be at the center between 8:00 and 8:15AM. Since I live out in Myoden, and usually leave myself an hour to leisurely get showered, dressed, and ready, I was planning on waking up at like 6. I even set my keitai alarm clock to wake me up at 5:45. Well, I decided even though I needed to be up earlier than I have all summer, to stay up until around 2 or so in the morning watching Kamen Rider Blade, which I brought with me. Yeeeeah, that didn’t work out so well. I remember waking up once around 3 because a HUGE mosquito was eating chunks of my flesh, but the next thing I know it’s 7:08AM. I definitely couldn’t not go on the Kamakura trip, and showing up late would be really bad since I’m supposed to be like staff or something.

First thing I do, of course, is check on my keitai what time my train leaves. 7:29, if I want to get to IES on time. Note again that it takes a bit under 10 minutes to walk from my apartment to the station. Somehow, I’m not really sure how, I managed to shower, get dressed, pack my bookbag, and RUN through heavy rain to the station in time to catch the 7:25 train! Since I’m pretty sure doing all that stuff in so little time is impossible, I will just assume that I am awesome.

Yes, it was raining. That’s not ideal for this kind of tour, where you go look at various temples and outdoor places. The bus ride wasn’t too bad, a bit under 2 hours with 1 rest stop, but I got a bit of a headache. Maybe it’s because I had my tornado of awesomeness getting me to the center on time. Anyway, I never get headaches, and I even less seldom take medicine, but I took some Tylenol on the bus. Worked I guess. I can’t remember the names of most of the places we went today, but I’ll cheat and read them off the schedule I have in front of me: Engakuji Temple (円覚寺), Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine (鶴岡八幡宮), Giant Buddah (大仏), and finally Hase-Dera (長谷寺). That was the order we went in. For the first two, it was raining hardcore and wasn’t so great to walk around in. By the time we were getting to halftime (AKA lunch), the rain was stopped and the weather was actually getting somewhat decent. The last two places were pretty sweet. I still would like to think that if I somehow ever get filthy rich, I’m going to buy a lot of land and make a house in old Chinese/temple style.

I’m not going to go into much more detail about each individual place, but I might a bit when I put up pictures (will be soon). One more interesting thing to talk about though: once again, I was mistaken for a Japanese person. I’m not talking about the just walking around the street kind of blending in, I’m talking about someone I’m actually having a conversation with. The first time it happened on this trip, last week or so, it was an IES student who didn’t know very much Japanese. He tried spitting out the sentence “Where did you study English?” Ummm yeah. It’s happened once or twice after that as well. Today’s was one of the summer students, Karen’s, host sister who came along, and we were talking or something and she asks me “So how long were you over there?. I at first assumed she was asking how long I’m in Japan for, and I asked “you mean this time?” until a few seconds later when I realized she was asking how long I was in America for, assuming I was a Japanese guy who studied abroad. So, it looks like my Japanese is somewhat decent enough to pass as a Japanese person. More importantly, my English is somewhat decent enough to pass as an American after a somewhat awkward explanation.

I’m never really offended when it happens, but I really think it’s kind of funny. There’s nothing like the distinct Japanese girl “へぇぇぇ？” (What?) when you say something like “No, I’m not Japanese, I’m American.” Maybe I should take it as a compliment.

I’m at home in St. Louis right now, finally getting around to packing and stuff. As usual, I’m waiting until the very last minute. I’ll be taking off tomorrow morning at 6AM for New York JFK, then going from there to Japan. I’ll be on airplanes tomorrow for around 16.5 hours total, most of which I hope to sleep through. For the time that I’m up, I’ll probably watch News Radio on DVD. It’s the first real DVD that I’ve bought in months, I think. Haha, well I’ll probably write an entry while I’m on the plane, then post it later.

Sunday was pretty fun: went to the “Entama” (Entertainment Market) which was a lot like TGS, even at the same place (Makuhari Messe). Not as many booths or people, but I almost think it was better. Mainly concentrated on anime stuff, and had a lot of stuff you could buy. I spent about $40 on Naruto stuff, which includes a metal Hidden Sand Village head protector, a stuffed Pakkun doll, and a Sharingan wristband. Ah well. 🙂

I’m getting ready to go to Nagano as we speak. I’ll be there until Sunday evening. Staying in a temple then a ryokan (Japanese style inn), soaking in all sorts of hot springs with “magical powers,” going to places like a Ninja theme park, etc. I probably won’t be posting until I get back. If there’s anyting urgent (I know there won’t be probably), e-mail me on my cell phone.