www.davynextdoor.com

Thanks duuuude, Danielle’s questions are next.

What’s the architecture of your building? I’ll post some pictures sometime, but it’s a 4 story building with 2 symmetrical sides of the building with a little open space in between. The doors open into the middle and the balconies look out over everything else. The lounge where I use the internet is on the 2nd floor. It’s certainly not the cleanest building in the world, by my room is pretty nice.

What sort of neighborhood do you live in? I live in a cute little residential suburban type neighborhood. There are some very small plots of farmland and greenhouses that I walk by everyday to get to the subway. There are some grocery stores, restaurants, and things of that nature but mostly housing. No huge buildings or anything and it’s very quiet at night. All the streets are so small by US standards they look 1 way but amazingly enough they are most definitely not.

How’s the weather? Danggg, I just answered “what is the weather like,” meng!

What does the city smell like? Surprisingly not so bad, actually. Certainly sometimes you get a whiff of something rancid but most of the time it’s not bad and if you are walking down a street with lots of department stores there’s often a nice perfumy smell.

Have you found any wallets lying around? All the time, I’m starting a collection.

Have you seen any segways? Unfortunately not, but I’m planning on buying one for my daily commute.

Do lots of people ride bicycles? Skateboards? I haven’t seen anybody riding a skateboard yet.  But bicycles, yes. There are tons of people riding bicycles. Old people, young people, women, men, everybody rides bicycles. When it rains they still ride their bicycles but they are amazingly skilled at hold ing an umbrella to shield themselves from the rain while they ride.

Have you seen any hackeysack? Frisbee? No, I don’t think hackeysack is too big around here. Frisbee though, Moe says she plays occassionally. I haven’t seen any yet, but I haven’t been to many open spaces yet.

Are there Parks? There are. Yesterday I went to one of the biggest, called Yoyogi, but I’ll post about that a little later.

Do people call you David? Nooo, I’m sticking with “Davy”

Do you speak Japanese everyday? Yeah, I definitely try to as much as possible when I’m around Japanese people. I’ve got a little book that I carry around with me and write down simple words and things I don’t understand. So far I’ve learned about 200 new things from the book. I’m trying as hard as I can to learn because I’m so far behind all the other students.

Do they have donuts? Buffets? Baguettes? Yeah, they do, in little bakeries but I haven’t had the luxury of purchasing any yet. I just recently upgraded to cereal from my toast and jelly all the time diet.

What time do you go to bed, get up? I go to bed around 1, and get up around 9 usually. It’s going to change when school starts though, I’ll have to wake up around 7:30 or so.

Are there street performers? Hobos? Hippies? Actually, street performers are surprisingly rare for how many people are here. I don’t think it’s as legal and tolerated as in American cities. The ones I have seen all have little amplifiers they play through though so people can actually here them.

When I was in Shinjuku we saw a really amazingly talented guy playing acoustic guitar for a while before the police came and forced him to stop. In Shinjuku we also saw a magician type guy with a hugeee crowd of people around him and a rubik’s cube. He talked for a long time, building up what he was going to do, and solved the cube in about 40-50 seconds.

In Harajuku I saw something really interesting that I realllyyy hope I get to see again and take pictures of. It was a girl, dressed up in the typical Harajuku goth style, with really long hair dyed tons of different colors. All she had was a microphone attached to an amp and she was pretty much completely flipping out and sreaming into it like she was in a hardcore metal band. She had a crowd of similarly dressed people around her that would kind of push and pull her in a very dramatic fashion like there was an invisible string attached between the singer and the crowd. All this while she was screaming and dancing around with the mic. It was really theatric and made me wish I had a video camera.

There are definitely some hobos here, although not as many as in most major cities I think (although maybe I just haven’t gone to hobo central yet). The hobos seem pretty docile for the most part, except for this one really crazy one that sits on the same corner everyday near Sophia and yells at people.

Hippies are, sadly enough, horribly underrepresented in Tokyo. Japan’s drug policies are much more strict than those in America or any other places where hippies convene for that matter.

How far outside of the city have you been?  Not once have I stepped foot outside this enormous city, yet.

Do they have the really fast mag-lev trains?  They do, but I haven’t seen them yet. They are only for longer distance travels than I take.

Why does the prime minister of Japan look so awesome?  Because Japanese people are awesome!

Can you tell us anything about the future?  Yes, your future is undoubtedly filled with wonderful and exciting things! Friday is going to rock your socks off!