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Guess the singer and win a prize that Stephanie will bring you home from Japan!!!

This is a song that nobody knows
I couldn’t begin to describe how it goes
But it makes me cry or laugh right out loud
It’s a song that I sing when there’s no one around

This is the man that nobody sees
He wears my old clothes and he looks just like me
Just one of the boys who gets lost in the crowd
He’s the man that I am when there’s no one around

It’s four in the morning
I’m lyin’ in bed
A tape of my failures
Playin’ inside my head
It’s heartache and hard knocks
And things I don’t know
I listen and I wonder
Where will it go

This is a glimpse of a child that’s within
He’s so immature but he’s still my best friend
If he could learn how to fly he’d never touch down
He’s the kid that I am when there’s no one around

This is the dance I do every day
I let my feet go and get carried away
I let my soul lead and follow the sound
It’s the dance that I do when there’s no one around

It’s four in the morning
I’m lyin’ in bed
A tape of my failures
Playin’ inside my head
It’s heartache and hard knocks
And things I don’t know
I listen and I wonder
Where will it go

This is a song that nobody knows
I still can’t begin to describe how it goes
But it makes me cry or laugh right out loud
It’s a song that I sign when there’s no one around
It’s a song that I sign when there’s no one around

So it has been awhile since I last added something to my webiste. It’s a lot of work you know. Adding stuff to a website. Maybe not to all the computer people out there, but to me, it takes a lot of time and effort on my part. Writing something is not hard at all, but YOU don’t want all the writing do you? I know that most of you who read this skip the writing almost altogether and only come to the website to scroll down to the pictures. The pictures take a long time to add on you see. First, I have to go through and choose what pictures I want to show you, these pictures have to be interesting and fun for you to look at. Then I have to export them out of iPhoto through Mail (Because I am ghetto and do not have Photoshop yet… computer people will understand that, if you do not, please move on…) Once I have the pictures I want sitting in an email in front of me, I have to right click them, rename them (For me this IS necessary), and then save them to the desktop. After that I have to go online and upload each file into the new entry. Then I have to write something about the pictures, so you will understand what the pictures are about, and when I have finished, I usually try to re-read everything to make sure I didn’t have a trillion spelling errors, which is a common mistake for me. (I do apologize if I don’t always make it to this step, for after a while I become tired and give up, thus creating a work of writing that contains several stupid mistakes, which make me look half my intelligence level.)

And usually it’s not even all the work that goes into the new entry, it’s the thinking. YOU MAKE ME THINK! I not only have to give you pictures and a sometimes a video, as well as explaining what is occuring in the pictures, I also feel the need to give you something interesting to read, something you will enjoy while you sit at your computer, and are putting your time and effort into coming to my site. I feel guilt if the entry is not up-to-par. I also have a big internal issue dealing wit laughter. I strive to make what I write on my website funny. If it does not make one person laugh, I have failed in a way. I know I should not feel this way, and sometimes I do not. But it does explain my lack of cool “stuff” in the recent days, in a way.

My last, and most recent problem is “What to write”. When you are in a foreign country, everyday something happens, everyday you see something that interests you, everyday you find yourself saying “wow”. Take those little moments and times those by ten, and that is what I experience everyday. So much is going on, that I never know where to start. It eats away at me. Which is why I take pictures of everything. I will leave Japan with my mind full and my photobook fuller (new word). So this is what I will give you today, some random thoughts, tomorrow I will work on getting some pictures online, but until then, those of you who skip over the writing, you may leave at will, for the rest of you, read on…

1. Take off your shoes. This is something that is becomming so natural to me that I didn’t even realize that I didn’t mention it online until someone I told was shocked when I mentioned it. Take off your shoes. When you walk into a building, you take off your shoes, leave them at the door. When you eat at certain resturants, you take off your shoes before you sit at your table, which contains no chairs, only cushions. When you walk into your dorm room, if you are Japanese, you should take off your shoes before you take that little step up into your actual room. Noel’s roommate always left a pair of slippers in the hallway area, as well as in the dorm room. He would change shoes no less than three times between when he entered the building, and when he stepped foot into his bedroom.

2. You sleep in your car. It happens everywhere, it is becomming such a normal thing here that I don’t even look or think twice. All over the place, we see people in cars off the side of the road, with their feet up, eye’s closed, and their mouths wide open. You also almost always leave your car on when you sleep in your car. Noel and I have asked many people about this, Japanese or not, and no one has really given me a concrete answer to this question. The best one I got was that people that are on their lunch break go sleep in their car. Apparently, it’s the cool thing to do.

3. On Saturday and Sunday, you take your family to the beach, you have a cookout, you go swimming, and you set off fireworks. You leave late at night and go home, but you stay there ALL day.

4. You scream IRASHIAMASE!!!!!!!!! AT LEAST TWO THOUSAND TIMES when you work… ANYWHERE!

5. If you are girl, you wear heels. You wear heels with everything. Jeans - heels. Shirts - heels. Shorts - heels. A jogging outfit - heels (well not really… but sounded funny)

6. If you are the train driver, you must raise your arm at every green light you see along the way, even if you have to raise you hand a total of 199 times during one train journey, you will raise you arm, and point your finger at that green light. I apologize that I cannot explain this that well online, but talk to noel or i, and when we get back, we will demonstrate it for you.

7. Noel’s birthday is FRIDAY. That is THIS FRIDAY. Everyone that knows Noel should wish him the best birthday ever, send him an email, give him a call on his business phone and leave a message, but at least, in some way, wish him a happy birthday. He deserves it.

8. I made tacos tonight. They were good. I made them. And they were good. This is a giant step up in Stephanie’s cooking.

9. Noel made the guacomole. (Spelling?)

10. I am avoiding my homework. Which is why I am desperately trying to think of something to write, so that that I will not have to face it. It is evil.

11. People need to email Stephanie. Stephanie needs emails. She will write you back. She promises. She will even write you back in first person. So long as you email her…

12. I have reached the point where my mind is empty. I am sorry for this. I will go try to do that homework junk, and get some rest. Pictures tomorrow, okay? I promise.

13. Goodnight. Good Afternoon to all of you.

Today is Thursday, June 8th 2004. It is Savanna’s Birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SAVANNA!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!!!!!!!

So I have been thinking for a long while about what to put on my website for your birthday. My Nana’s (Pretty Birthday Cake), Becky’s (Pictures of LLAMAS), David’s (Spiderman of course) were easy to think up. But you, I am still having trouble with. So I went and bought you a gift today, that seemed to make my mind feel better about your birthday. You should be excited. You have gifts coming to you from Japan (Which is REAL foreign country - remember??? LOL)! That should make you happy, even though you are at work. Noel’s birthday is next Friday, and do you know what else is next Friday? Our second midterm. Noel is not too happy about this. But if you look on the bright side, the midterm will be over, and then he can relax over the weekend and have a great birthday.

So, I will list a few updates as to what I have been up to, perhaps a picture or two, and then if you keep scrolling down, it will Savanna’s birthday-on-Stephanie’s-Website-Gift (Not to be confused with the REAL birthday gift coming later!)

Well, there is no better place to start than today I suppose. Today I woke up at 9:00am and had 5 minutes to get dressed and get by butt to class, as class begins at 9:10… No shower was taken, I was smelly and sleepy and not in the mood for school. Then it was over, and I went straight BACK TO BED, I mean, where else was there possibly to go? A mid-day nap is my heaven. It is the best experience in the whole world. And the best part? When you wake up in the morning with that tired-don’t-want-to-ever-leave-this-soft-as-a-cloud-bed-even-if-my-house-was-on-fire feeling, you get to tell yourself that in only a matter of hours, you will be back in your pajamas, back under the covers, and laying your head down on your soft pillow. In fact, just to make myself believe in my afternoon nap a little more, when I crawl out of bed, I leave the bed with the covers pulled open, just so that when I get to return back to my room, my bed is waiting there for me. He calls for me, and all I have to do is sqeeze myself right back in the hole, only to continue where I left off, before I was so rudely awakened by the sound of that wretched alarm, and that whole school problem…

Moving on… After my nap, and of course Noel’s nap as well, we headed out to Bell Road. Those of you who know me can kind of think of Bell road as an equivalent to Eureka Road in Southgate, or even to Michigan Ave in Dearborn. It contains loads of shops, including: grocery stores, dollar stores, department stores, clothing stores, electronic stores, camera stores, along with a ton of other little fun shops. It also contains a wide variety of resturants, big and little, as well as ice cream shops, burger places, and Denny’s-ish places. When all the stores had closed, and after Noel and I had eaten, we rode home with our baskets on our bikes full, feeling very happy indeed.

And now I am here. I apologize for the lack of… everything on the website during the past couple of weeks. You expect a fun filled website full of stories and pictures and movies, and this past week I have given you McDonalds, pictures I didn’t take, of countries the states I have gone to (not so interesting, huh?) and information about people at home, instead of about Japan. (I am not saying that my dad’s new harley and David’s birthday are not important, I am just pointing out that nothing has been about “Japan”) I will change this shortly. Tomorrow, we have our class field trip to Kyoto, where we will visit some intersting sites, even one called “Monkey Mountain”, where there are supposedly monkeys walking around all over the place. I will post the pictures and stories shortly after we return.

Well that is it for now, I will post a few pictures, and of course explain each of them above the picture. Then I will post Savanna’s birthday suprise at the bottom. ENJOY!

This is a dessert we got at a resturant called “Grills” that we ate at. I want you to look at the detail in the plate. DO YOU SEE THE HEARTS??? It was a very fancy-pansy dessert if you ask me.

This is Noel and Yoshi outside of Shogetsu, a Japanese resturant Yoshi took us too. It is famous for it’s Japanese style pizza, which Yoshi informed us before we left was: “Like American pizza, but NOT”. You will see what he means later on…

This is the cooks cooking on the grills, they were fun to watch!

Here is a pic of Noel and I at the table.

This is how the food arrived at our table, (our table had it’s own grill on it, as the picture shows). The waitress placed the “pizza’s” down, and then she poured mayonaise over each of them. Yes, I did say mayonaise. Then, AFTER the mayo she put on this brown sauce, as you see in the picture.

So now you want to know about the pizza huh? Well let me paint you a picture, and you can come to own conclusion on how it might have tasted. Okay, so you start off by cutting up a cabbage, for numbers, let’s just say you have half a cabbage. Then you have 2 potatoes, put that on the grill and let then cook. You are going to need to get out the ginger, because you need at about three pinches of that as well. I am assuming something else had to have been added to the pizza to make it all stick together, and since I am a terrible cook, and an even worse food-guesser, just think of something like pancake mix, you know, it thickens upon heating, and the goo all of the sudden magically sticks together, well it kind of was like that, in a weird way. So now you have your pizza in a “pizza” shape, it looks like a big cabbage pancake (sound good yet? Didn’t think so. Unless you are a cabbage freak or something). Now the cooks are done, and the pancakes, I mean pizza’s, are brought to your table and yes, you guessed it, BRING ON THE MAYO. It was the nastiest sight ever, she comes over to our table with a big jug of mayo, dips in a paintbrush (I am NOT kidding), and literally paints on the mayo. the last step, of course, is the brown goo, which tastes like nothing you have had in your life. Now I done describing the pizza and you can guess what it must have tasted like. Personally, I won’t call it great, or even good, or really even pizza. But, when you are taken to a restuarant by a Japanese person, you trust them to order you the best thing, and for Yoshi, he ordered our pizza’s just like his. This way we get the “real” experience of it, instead of just ordering something that we are familiar with. Honestly, it wasn’t the worst taste in world, just cabbage, mayo, and brown goo, but I don’t think I will eat it again. All of you at home, the next time you bring home a mouthwatering pizza from Little Ceasers, or wherever you like, think of me when you take that first bite, and ask yourself what is better, cabbage and mayo, or cheese and pepperoni. I think we all know the answer to this, that is of course, unless you are a bunny.

This next picture deserves to be framed, and it will be soon. You are asking yourself, “What on earth is on Noel’s back?”, Well it’s not a time machine, a halloween costume, or a floatation device, as you may have guessed. This is his soft-foam mattress pad. the beds here feel like you are sleeping on a rock, more or less. I find my bed very comfortable, but it did take a little to adjust to, that’s for sure. But poor boney Noel was NOT doing too well on his bed, so we found a cheap, softer than a cloud mattress cover, and Noel bought it on the spot. Well, “On the spot” meant with our bikes. So now we had to figure out a good solution to get this huge mattress home, riding our bikes. I don’t think I need to explain how we managed this…

Well, just taking a picture was not enough at all. Just to make sure we rememberd how funny Noel looked with the bed-foam thing on his back, we decided we needed to make a movie.

Watch the movie and laugh.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAVANNA!!! I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT DAY!!! HAVE FUN!!!

I am once again up at night avoiding my homework, so I decided to do mark how many states I have visited, which are shown on the map in red, and under that is going to be the countries! (Be sure to count all THREE countries I have been too!!!)

create your own personalized map of the USA

create your own visited country map

No, I did NOT see fireworks.

No, I did not have a cookout containing burgers and hot dogs and potato chips.

No, I did not wave a sparkler around.

No I again, DID NOT see fireworks.

Well I did kindof. Not really though. A bunch of people here made a big bonfire and lit off fireworks over the lake. It was fun for a little while, until people started getting really stupid. When the first firework made it’s way through the crowd of people instead of up into the air, Noel and I decided we had had enough.

This, however, does not mean that we will not see a fabulous firework show in Japan, because we will at the upcoming festival. We just cannot see one today, that’s all. But that still does not stop us from remembering what the Fourth of July stands for.

For this entry I have decided to tell you, in tremendous detail about the quality of McDonalds here. I hope you enjoy the story. I feel it is funny, and every word is completely true, you have my word.

I will explain to you why MA-KU-DO-NA-RA-DO (McDonalds) here is so freaking awesome. First you go and you order. You have to tell them you want a LARGE drink, because the medium drink is the size of a happy meal drink at home. You also have to order an apple pie every visit, i will explain why later, just remember to order the apple pie. While you are ordering you notice that everyone who works at McDonalds is wearing a very complex uniform. The women wear orange shirts with a white shirt, orange vest, black shoes, and even a bow tie. The men wear similar colors, but with navy blue pants, and everyone’s clothes look like they have just come from the cleaners and were ironed prior to coming to work. This sight makes you question what the people at home wear, and then you remember, OH YES, they wear a dirty dark blue shirt with an M on it, tucked in or open, with any kind of pants they chose, clean or dirty (If you don’t believe me, go look). You also notice that the people are all very chipper and happy and smiling and they are actually working hard. You see one lady run to get someone their bag of food. Once you have ordered and paid, a big number is placed in front of you. The man who took your order smiles at you and motions for you to have a seat. As you take you tray that contains you burger, your drink, you apple pie, and your big number 4, you glance behind the counter to watch the person at the fry machine drop in your fries. You sit down and begin to eat your food. Then a lady in her cute clean uniform comes out and brings you your steaming hot fries on a tray, and takes your number away, as she runs back to help the next customer. For a minute you think to yourself that you got lucky, and they ran out of fries and you had to wait to get yours, which would be the equivalent to “please pull up to that door and wait” at home. (You don’t realize until you have visited McDonalds 5 more times that they ACTUALLY make your fries fresh for you. EVERY TIME, fresh HOT fries!!! Do you know what fresh hot McDonalds french fries taste like? can you even remember the last time you got some???? Think all of you, think!) So you almost burn your tongue eating your first fry, and you bite into your also freshly made burger, and you glance at your apple pie, which you are still curious why someone made you buy one of those in the first place, because really, they arn’t all that nice. As many of you already know, a “Hot Apple Pie” from McDonalds is never hot, hardly apple, and tastes more or less like cardboard than a slice of pie… Once you have finished with your fries and burger, you pick up the apple pie and pinch the box between your thumb and your index finger, just enough to allow you to peek inside at your pie. Right away you are a little taken back. With your newfound curiosity you quickly open up the box and pull out your pie. You have to take a minute to squint in wonder at what is sitting at on your tray. It has the same shape as an apple pie from McDonalds at home, but it is clear that this is either NOT an apple pie, or there is a pastry chef in the back-room who made this specially for you. You pick up your pie, noticing that it feels hot, not luke warm as you are used to, and bite into it. Your eyes light up! It is wonderful! It is tasty, it is real apples! It has a hint of cinnamon, the crust is crunchy, and it is so hot that you have to reach for your drink when you are finished. Honestly folks, it really tastes like an apple pie. If someone baked you a fresh apple pie, and then rolled it up and shrunk it, (like they do on those Pizza Roll commercials) that is what it would taste like. It is superb. Once you are finished with your food, feeling both full and fat at the same time, you pick up your tray to take it to the trash, only you are interrupted by the lady you just saw behind the counter. She has run up to you, is smiling, and takes your tray for you, she bows at you and tells you that she is glad you came into eat, thank you, come again (all in Japanese of course, and she says that all in one word by the way). You get up and walk out of McDonalds, feeling quite good that you ate there, very full, and still a little puzzled about where your apple pie could have come from.