Monday, November 27, 2006

Late night studying....

There are no 7-11's in Japan.

There are 7-i holding's, but those just sound funny. Same company and all, but doesn't do it for me. So late night studying can't consist of taking 4:00 am trips to get YooHoo and chips with Erv, Andrew, or Mark. But I guess their absence (and the fact that there's only a Family Mart within walking distance) makes that impossible anyway.

When I need to study late into the night here, I go to Johnathan's (basically a Friendly's/Denny's substitute). It's open 24 hours a day, is a 15 minute walk from home, and has a great deal- all you can drink coffee/tea/soda/juice for Yen400 (about $3.50 or so). Of coure, this invariably ends up with me studying successfully, but always regretting the idea of "getting the zen for my yen" by drinking enough coffee to fill a salaryman's quota. That being said, it's a nice setup.

I'm about to go to sleep. I just finished memorizing 40 or so Japanese terms, all of which look strikingly similar (try dismantling separate meanings from seiri, seida, seiru, zaibatsu, zairen, saikin, blah, bleh, and blooh) and have similar meanings (orderliness in the workplace, cleanliness of the desk, meaningless of this management technique, pointlessness of that economic theory) for my Japanese Management midterm tomorrow.

One thing I do want to say (besides the stuff I already mentioned) about Johnathan's is that there's a great song they play every 10 minutes or so. Most of its in Japanese, but spontaneously the singers break out in the following English chorus:

Lalala, we're gonna have a hardy party toniiiight,
Yea we're gonna have a hardy party toniiiight,
A hardy paaaaarty,
Yea a hardy paaaaarty,
A hardy paaaaarty,
You heard right a hardy paaaarty.
All right?


It amuses me.

That is all.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Brian,

I'm just checking in to tell you how much I'm enjoying this vicarious journey you're taking us on. Pippa is asleep in my arms, with a long trail of drool from her mouth to my arms (teething ...ouch), so I know I'm still in Jersey, but these humorous little trips to the Land of the Rising Sun, well, all I can say is domo arigato (or something like that)little bro ;P

See you when you head west again.

Love, Kelly

Andrew said...

I've been to a Japanese 7-11. It was in Kyoto. But there were no Slurpees. It was pretty much the exact same thing as Lawsons.

Unknown said...

So I walked in on my host family watching this really weird movie. It had a famous French actor (Jean Luc someone maybe?) in Japan and it was soooo strange. There was this scene where the French guy starts beating up all these Japanese guys with guns...using a golf club. Let's just say it was not believable. I'm not even going to go into the fact that he was French.

Counter