001 - First Contact. Country: Japan. A filipina entry.

I started this post ten thousand different times. Once, while I was in Chicago, eating this amazing lasagna to prepare myself for my rather long, 13-hour flight. I was under the impression that they will only offer beverage service, so I treated myself to an early and very expensive airport lunch.

Imagine my surprise when I ended up eating four different times during that flight.

1. First time: Snack - peanuts and Japanese citrus juice
2. Second time: Lunch? - Seafood Curry with Caesar salad, Japanese meatball, and caramelized foam dessert (eloquent, yes?). I was given the choice between this and something with the word Kangaroo in it I think. I'm not sure. But even if the food's name was more than intriguing, I would go for seafood anything always.
3. Third time: Post-nap snack - ham and cheese mini sandwiches and coffee
4. Fourth time: Meal 2 - Salmon alfredo pasta, fruit, peach yogurt, and italian dressing and salad. I am refraining from calling it dinner, because the sun never changed positions during my entire 20 hours on planes. I've been up 48 hours now. STAYING UP THE NIGHT BEFORE 20 HOURS OF FLYING CAN BE PROBLEMATIC IF YOU'RE NOT ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO SLEEP FOR A LIVING. Like the other person on this blog, for example. She LIKES to sleep.
   

Just wanted to let you know that Japanese Air Lines is the best when it comes to in-flight meals. They were pretty good, and I don't mean airplane-food-novelty is cool. I mean, I'd rather eat this than cafeteria food any day.

They're not so awesome about luggage though.

Here, let me change the font on this too, just to emphasize my feelings

MY ONE PIECE OF CHECKED-IN BAGGAGE IS LOST

This is one of those times when I don't want to just stick to Black, Arial, 11 point font I picked that dark red font color because it reminds me of a scab. Something that incessantly irritates at all points of the day, interrupting any passing thought, and it's something that you want to do something about, so you pick on it and pick on it and pick on it, until suddenly you're out of those weird-sized coins because you don't know how to operate a phone booth in a different language. And you realize its no longer an ordinary scab, its one of those nasty -- ARGH. Anyway, I'm trying not to explain this metaphor any further. I don't dwell on scabs. But my first few purchases in this wonderful country includes toothpaste, contacts solution, and a t-shirt for the next day.

I was lost at the airport today, almost missed my last flight. Everything was lost today. My bag is still lost, I've been found, obviously. I'm calmly and very effectively writing this belated blog post. But at least I have some of the necessities on my carry-on. Like my study material and this wonderful beautiful laptop that from now on will stop this 'Not Responding' business. Starting now. By the way, if you're using internet access in a different country, and they happen to have a different alphabet. You know, one that has 3000 characters in it, you're screwed. Just so you know.

Okay, now that my train of angsty thoughts is over and done with, lets get to the good part.

This is my room. This angle doesn't show it, but this picture was taken right by the bathroom. Now all of you know about Kanji, right? It's this alphabet that unnecessarily uses 3000 characters to express each and every concept imaginable --well at least 3000 said concepts. For the longest time, I didn't know how to turn on the lights on anything. My computer won't charge; the room basically had no electricity.

Were I in a more stable state of mind during this point in time, I would have used the phone sitting on my desk immediately to inquire why my room has no electricity. But I wasn't sane. I contemplated hard and long, about 20 minutes of deep thinking, how it would be like to take a shower in the dark.

Thankfully, I was still human enough to recognize that taking a shower with the bathroom door open, even if you were the only person in the room was even more unnerving than having no electricity. So I called front desk, fearfully asked them if they spoke English, and asked them how to turn on the bathroom light.

Well. They answered that I had to turn on my room. You turn it on with this. Yes you read right. You. Turn. It. On. I originally thought it was this really long keychain that made no sense.

It still doesn't make sense to me. AND I LOVE IT.

I stuck that orange piece in the wall and I became Belle in Beauty and the Beast. My furniture came aliiiiiiiiiive.

In my room, there's a remote for everything. Some control panel or whatever. The light switches resembled something Star Warsy. My air-conditioning remote is this Kanji-ridden little gadget that acts as a thermostat and a control, with every-stinking feature you could come up with for air-conditioning. Air-conditioning. Soon they'll come up with a remote for the toilet. Oh wait, they already do.

Yup, there's one on my toilet too. Features: butt-washing, front-washing, force of water, stop water flushing, bla bla bla bla bla bla.

And of course I couldn't resist, so I ended up getting the walls and the mirors wet. They're not kidding when they put a max option on there. You want to give your butt a shower on max, water hits the wall and ceiling when you try to take a picture of the water squirting.

I am too third-world to even think about using this for real. And all this time, I was thinking of encountering one of those, 'squat over this area' public restrooms that they have.

Despite all the bad stuff, including keeping awake up until now, adding at least 5 hours to my poorly abused body, I really really really really really really love Japan. So pretty here.

And this country is so intense about being technologically savvy. My shower head is the sink and my sink is the shower head. My coffee maker is super cute. And I have a safe in my room. Which, actually, tells me I should be weary of my personal items, but all my mind wants to think is "I have a safe in my hotel room that is smaller than my dorm. That is Awesome."

I'm really thankful to be here. My sanity was restored by a toilet fountain.

I'll try to get more pictures of me, but its hard to make friends when we're all sleep deprived.

please do not read while operating heavy machinery

herro everybodeh! as i write this, i'm watching a documentary about the great wall of china on discovery travel and eating a bowl of ramen (with chopsticks because i am awesome). you can't make this stuff up. that is just how asian i am. as you should already know, my blog partner and i are very asian people. so asian in fact, that we look asian. and act asian. and often (if you're lucky enough to partake in it), speak asian. at the very least we have very authentic asian accents. and this summer, just to prove how asian we are, we're going to be going to asia. but because life is never rabbits and rainbows and marshmellows and leprechauns, we won't be going to countries we know really, really well (read: malaysia and the phillippines) - we're headed to japan and china. like badasses.

I suppose you're wondering why we started and are now striving to maintain this peculiar blog. Why "strive"? It's a word that could describe the painful and countless hours that both of us have devoted to html-formatting, blogspot-cursing, and google-searching. Why "peculiar"? Because as the fruit of labor by two mentally unstable post-pubescent girls, there's no other formal-sounding word for it. But to answer your question: Because. We. Are. Studying. Abroad. IN ASIA.

We are great propagators of the Asian culture, being Asian. We are both currently studying Asian languages, in addition to our own native language that is also Asian. And we are both aware of how ironic it is that both of us, having lived in Asia for most of our Asian lives, are studying abroad in Asia. (Don't try to count the number of times we say Asia in this blog entry. Unless you plan on using Microsoft Word or something. But that would be cheating.)

we are very aware of the fact that the title of the blog makes little sense to you. it probably makes zero sense to you. unless you get puns. because we are very punny people. hoho. get it? punny? okay. i'll stop now. forgive me if i sound like i'm rambling and making stuff up as i go. because i totally am. i digress.

Let's analyze this further. Both of us, being so Asian, aren't as extremely Asian as most people would assume us to be. We both think in English, we both dream in English, we both fantasize in English (assuming we fantasize, and assuming its with white men...or women), and we both communicate in English 95% of the time. We know how to order fast food FAST (which is the point of these things), though we do sometimes use our coupons. We have adapted to the American culture so much so that we can write essays on our music tastes, knowledge of pop culture, and love for boy bands.

i'm here to explain the title of our blog to you. i will do it as well as i possibly can, which may (or may not) be well at all, because we don't really know what it means. but i will say - we chose "southeast" because will, our families and backgrounds are from southeast asia. and because we're going to school in the university of arkansas, fayetteville, which is located in the southeastern region of the united states. yep. i'm getting better at this whole geography thing. though i did learn like, a few days ago that rhode island isn't really an island. go figure.

This blog shall then focus on our re-adaptation to the Asian culture. Think about it. Us two Asian girls have been educated halfway through our undergraduate careers in the South -- the geographical region of the United States where liberalism and conservatism, and left-wing and right-wing politics will certainly clash on a college campus, a campus that emphasizes diversity and equality in a state that has a history of infamous discrimination--where these ideals, political criticisms, and beliefs have surrounded us and engulfed us so intensively that our way of thinking has been influenced, especially since we both came from conservative Asian backgrounds. We've both managed to live in two worlds, having put one aside in order to survive in another. But when we are faced with a short-term commitment to integrate into the culture that we have, for a while, forgotten to manipulate, the question is not whether can we do it, but will we? In our case, "re-adaptation" becomes both complicated and simple.

my blog partner and i have spent (quite literally) an equal amount of time in asia as we have in america, and so, to say that we suffer from identity crises is an understatement. our daily struggles include: do we leave the shoes on when we enter houses?, do we want an order of burgers and fries or dumplings and fried rice?, when annoyed do we flip people off or curse at them in every asian language we know? you know - the usual. but that's in america.

These soul-searching and individual-defining thoughts will probably not make it to this blog. They will probably stay in our well-abused minds, having been smoked out of juice after hours of intensive language lecture and culture-ization (Yes, my English does fail at times). No, this blog is for our entertainment (and therefore, yours as well). We aim to log our adventures, our secret romances, our coup-de-tats (oh, what little French I know), and our multi-language ramblings on this very domain. We shall have pictures, and multi-media content of food, sushi, sashimi, rice pastries, dumplings, ramen, sushi, sushi, REAL RICE, sushi, dim sum, wonton, non-buffet Chinese food, dim sum, and sushi! We shall gloriously triumph over the fact that we are going to study abroad for only a summer by creating havoc and mayhem all over Nagoya/Beijing with our extremely Asian selves. We shall take pictures with our newly-made friends using our expertly made peace signs. And we shall be the envy of all. Cue sinister laugh.

and because we're asian, going to asia, to learn about brand new asian cultures and languages, we are aware of the fact that we will probably be judged as asians by asians. so that's why we plan on shedding our western twinkiness while we're there - western preconceptions and ideas, opinions and perspectives, food preferences and accents, and our dependency on walmart (though one of us will be covered in beijing). in a sense, we'll be attempting to go in cognito (that's the plan anyway) in asia, doing our best to fit in and get in touch with our inner asian there. the mission? to assimilate our southern selves into the culture and learn everything we can while we're there. like secret asian agents. agiants, if you will. pause for effect.

told you we were punny.