Steve Perkins

Friend Profile: Hank Vogel

Steve Perkins — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 10:55:02 +0000

pre beard Hank

When I first started blogging, when I was blogging a ridiculous amount about stuff no one in the world cared about, one shining gem was the friend profile thing I did about once a week, detailing odds and ends about some of my friends from Drake and Illinois. Well it’s time to start making fun of my friends while boosting their ego all at the same time again. The first person selected in random lottery style (believe me I had custom made ping pong balls designed), is Hank.

I met Hank through the fraternity and quickly realized how horrible it is to know someone from Illinois that is a Packers fan. Terrible. Besides that Hank and I did share one thing in common: our 1st semester GPA: 2.46. I know this and likely won’t forget it to this day because at the time we were told that to make it into the fraternity we needed a 2.50 or better. So Hank and I were as close as we could come without making it. So I imagine Hank went through the same brief turmoil before we were informed the cutoff was actually 2.40.

Sophomore year Hank was a roommate along with Garrett and Justin. Probably the best room ever. Most stories from that year cannot be posted publicly for fear that my relatives that read this blog will disown me and not allow me to speak to my friends again.

Senior year Hank and I were briefly roommates until he decided I wasn’t cool enough for him and he moved into Drake Park Apartments. I’ve since forgiven him.

Hank is known pretty much as the outdoorsy nature guy of our pledge class. I intend to ride his coat tails once he has his own nature show. In college, Hank discovered a turtle species previously thought to not be naturally located in Iowa. He was in the newspaper and Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo, and Raphael sent him a thank you card.

One time I went with Hank when he was working for the Iowa DNR I believe and we spent what seemed like 12 hours trekking around the prairie of Iowa checking traps for animals and documenting or whatever. It was fun, but one of those “I’m glad I did that once” situations. Hank was doing it every day all summer long. Really cool stuff, simply not for me.

Hank is now in Wyoming, with a beard jesus would be proud of doing all sorts of animal and nature stuff. Besides all the nature stuff we’ve done a pretty darn good job of staying in touch regardless of the distance (even more so now). I will likely call him immediately following the Packer’s loss to the Bears this season.

Soccer, Scantily Clad Women, and Hamburgers

Steve Perkins — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:03:47 +0000

Lots of random observations and interesting things of note have come up lately. First of all, Japan has more bats than I have ever seen in my life. I now bike home at night squinting and with my mouth closed; I assume all the bats are trying to attack my face as I head home.

Anyways, I was at the Gran Park Mall, and of course had to go to the top floor which is like a massive Dave and Busters when I came upon this sight:

On the big screen is a huge soccer video game and all the little screens are displaying something pretty similar. So I’m thinking it’s just an arcade version of some soccer game. Upon closer inspection, I notice that the flat part of all the consoles is a mini soccer field and every one has cards on them. They’re frantically shifting and moving the cards. That’s how you move your players! Apparently there must be a chip in each card and you have to move your guys around. The cards are purchased like baseball cards, you don’t know who you are going to get but they are all real players. So it’s a weird combo of fantasy sports, video games, and card collecting; all things I am on board with.

So I decide I have to try this and there is a big machine that dispenses the cards. There were 3 button options and I chose the cheapest, hoping for just a few cards because I’m not willing to drop a lot of money if it’s not that fun. I put in my money and out comes….plastic card sleeves. The cheapest button doesn’t give you cards at all, just sleeves to protect the cards that you purchase. And then I also had no more money. So that kinda sucked. I’ll be back though, mark my words.

Sunday has become my traditional go to Mos Burger day, the fast food burger joint near the train station. Everything obviously has an asian flair to it but there is enough familiarity for my taste buds to give me a reminder of flame broiled beef back home. And since I’ve kind of made Mos Burger sunday my little tradition, the workers all kinda recognize me and are very nice to me. I’m able to manage to say, “i’d like…” and point to objects and I’m getting better. This past sunday after I ordered a burger the cashier starts to play rock, paper, scissors with me. For some reason I was doing it wrong though and she kept trying again and again. She even had the manager come over. Apparently they are running a promotion where if you order a certain burger, you get to play rock paper scissors against the cashier. If you win the game, called Jan Ken Pon in Japanese, you win a prize.

Well I gather the reason she said I was wrong when I kept throwing scissors is that she wanted me to beat her with paper, so finally I figured it out and got my prize, a sweet Mos Burger mug. I kinda love this place. I always get a spicy mos burger with cheese, also called a supaisi mos chiizu hanbaga.

Lastly, a common sight at nearly every convenience store is a row of men and women standing by the magazine rack, reading till their hearts content and not buying anything. They just stand in 7-11 for a long time and read what ever they want. You’ll find magazines for golf, soccer, news, right next to anime, manga, and 99 percent naked pictures as well. There also appears to be no sense of shame reading any of this stuff. I think maybe they could care less about people in 7-11 knowing what they are going to read, but there is no way they are going to buy it and actually bring the stuff home, so they just read it there.

But it is so weird to walk around and see lots of things that would cause the FCC and whatever other regulatory bodies there are in America to go nots over stuff that is relatively common place here.

Every time I have gone into the convenience stores, which is often, there are always at least 2 or 3 people, and on some occasions I’ve seen about 6 or 7. Just kind of interesting, when you consider that magazine racks at most gas stations/ stores in the US are usually pretty barren unless you’re actually at a book store.

Middle School in Japan: Wacky

Steve Perkins — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:40:02 +0000

So I started my first few days at Minami Chuggako. Chuggako means middle school and I found out that Minami is just Japanese for south, so it’s not unlike where I worked in Des Moines, North High School. Thursday was my first day, and it was the official first day of the second semester (they do schooling year round), and so a ceremony was in order. Everyone piled into the gym.

The assemblies I have seen in my life, whether it was a pep rally, an honors assembly or something else, did little to prepare me for this well oiled machine of a ceremony. There are no seats or gym bleachers, every student is sitting on the floor. Divided by gender and grade. Because this is a uniform school, it all looks even more organized. The back of the gym is males and the front females, then they are split by grade, which is easy to tell because their uniforms are color coded; red, blue, green or white. All students were silent when the first teacher took the stage. Dead silent.

After several teachers spoke, next up was my speech, I proceeded to talk for about two minutes, of which I’m sure they understood very little and then Sano sensei translated for me. Then it was off to homeroom. During homeroom it was explained that there was going to be an earthquake drill. Every student has a seat cushion that they keep in the room (the students don’t change rooms, the teachers do), and the seat cushion opens up and doubles as a pillow hat. Every student was instructed to put their pillow hats on their head and we marched down to the exit. Teachers get helmets, students get pillow hats. On our way out of the building, every student has to change into their outdoor shoes. I pray they don’t do this in the event of an actual earthquake. After the drill came lunch time. I’ll get to interactions with the students after I talk about gender roles here.

Students preparing for earthquakes in their pillow hats

Lunch isn’t served in a cafeteria. There is a kitchen that cooks everything up and packs it into neat little boxes like airplane food. Students help each other and carry a box of food, and a crate of milk to each of their respective homerooms and most teachers eat in the teacher workroom. I’m fairly certain students are left on their own for lunch. Meanwhile in the staff room, the women are busy pouring everyone tea. Kou now knows which mug is mine and she makes sure I have tea every morning and for lunch. She also serves me my lunch. It’s crazy, I don’t have to do anything to get my lunch, and that’s just the way it is. I do have to bus my own food tray back to the storage crate but Kou makes sure I always am topped off with steaming hot green tea. Everyone does wash their own chopsticks though, but otherwise a few females pretty much make sure everyone gets fed.

My first few classes with kids have been pretty interesting to say the least. Everyone has said “hello, how are you?” or “my name is such and such, nice to meet you” to me about a thousand times, but conversationally that seems to be the majority of their grasp. I’ve been told they learn much more of the writing and sentence structure than actually speaking. For my first lesson I was introduced by Yamada sensei, I’m Steve sensei over here because most of them can say Steve easier than Perkins, which comes out more as Paakinsu. I had created a simply introduction paper with blank spaces in it. As I read the paper slowly, the students were instructed to fill in the blanks. They did pretty well with the written stuff, and nearly EVERY student volunteered to write their answers up on the board.

Next we did a question and answer session where they could practice speaking. Most questions were simple asking me what food I liked and what my favorite color was. One student asked if I loved Ms. Yamada, to which I replied, “she’s nice”. Otherwise everything went rather smoothly. At the end of every period, the students bow to the teacher and says something along the lines of, “thank you for your knowledge”. Awesome. Tomorrow I am bringing in my computer and will be showing a slide show of things in Iowa and Chicago. More stuff later, I’m hoping to begin posting at least once a week.

Random in Japan

Steve Perkins — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:15:10 +0000

So I finally got my modem shipped to me. I had everything plugged in and ready to go but when I went to ESPN.com nothing happened. So I looked through my documents and there was a website listed and it turned out to be the setup site. Apparently if you get to the rabbit, you’ve got internet. I don’t know how it works but I got to step five somehow and internet now works. I wish every setup had cuddly animal steps that you needed to get to in order to get whatever it is you want. So the past few days have been great because I’ve been able to go exploring and meet new people, without the burden of that thing called work to get in my way.

My bike ended up being busted, the frame was rubbing pretty bad on the tires, so for a few days I walked, and sweated, everywhere I went. A few days ago I decided to walk to a mall that was about 5 or 6 miles down the road. This would be equivalent to walking from Drake to the Valley West Mall. Needless to say it sucked but it beat being in the apartment all day doing nothing. The first two floors had standard mall stuff but then I came upon a sign that said ”3F – Amusement”. Where do you think I went? The third floor had a bowling alley and the loudest rendition of Dave and Busters I had ever seen. After dropping ten bucks there I started my hour long walk back to the apartment.

That’s it for now, I’ll try to do something on baseball or beer next.

Day 2 in Japan

Steve Perkins — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 01:40:46 +0000

I know my posts aren’t in the most timely fashion but internet is few and far between. I will not have internet in my apartment until at least next week. In fact, I signed up for internet with three separate internet providers yesterday…simultaneously. It was really frustrating because I signed up for fiber optic service with the phone company, then had to call the connection company (which is somehow separate), and they informed me my building was not set up for fiberoptic. Long story short I cancelled one yesterday, have to cancel another one today and may ask one of the english representatives on a date she was so helpful.

For breakfast Etsko asked what I normally eat and she said they don’t eat cereal. Most of my breakfasts thus far have been a piece of bread, cold soup and an egg with ham. The first time I tried to eat the soup with a spoon and was corrected because the bowl was small enough that I was to sip it.

Later in the day Toru and I went to check out my apartment. Embarrassing moment number two on the day: I took one step past the entryway with my shoes on. He was on me like a hawk and reminded me to take off my shoes. The apartment is very nice, though the temperature of the surface of the sun. I will post a video of my apartment once I get my own internet.

Then we went had to run a few errands. The electronics store blew my mind. That is all.

Later in the evening we walked to a festival that was going on, with traditional music and women dancing around a large drum that was being played. Pretty cool, and on the way back Toru and I discussed how Jay Cutler can succeed this year. Awesome.

First Day in Japan

Steve Perkins — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 01:44:57 +0000

Most of my posts will be few and far between until I get set up with internet of my own, which will hopefully happen this upcoming week. For now I:m using the internet at my host families house for brief periods here and there. Also, I can:t find the apostrophe on this keyboard, so colon it is.

My first day started off without too much of a sense of nervousness, I was used to being around people speaking different languages. Even being one of about four white people on the plane didn:t phase me. It wasn:t until interaction with Japanese that I really realized how differenct, and tough this is going to be.

On the plane I put on the included headphones and turned on the movies on the screen on the chair in front of me. About a minute later the stewardess, Eba, said sorry, a bunch of words I didn:t understand and then nearly forced the remote from my hands as I took the headphones off. Noooo idea why as I looked and nearly everyone else on the plane had theirs on. A half hour later I tried again and was in the clear.

Upon landing, Karen and I got our bags and headed for the exit in hopes that there would be people waiting for us. Two gentlemen holding *kofu board of education* signs were waiting and helped us with our bags. (I can:t find the quotation marks at the moment). Matsuda and Tamura were very nice but spoke little english. On the bus ride we had lots of forms to fill out.

The airport is about 80 miles from Kofu City but it took 4 hours because you have to go through Tokyo and it was during rush hour. There wasn:t a ton of conversation but my go to subject has been sports thus far.

They knew that I had played and coached soccer so we were able to put together a decent conversation. Luckily I knew a little bit about the Japanese homerun king Sadaharu Oh, so that was helpful.

Once we got into Kofu we stopped at a high school so that Tameru could quickly make copies of our passports and then we waited for our host families. After a few minutes a Toyota Prius came for me. Toru Nonogaki is the son in my host family. He picked me up and we were on our way.

Upon arrival at Toru:s house I was introduced to his mom Etsuko and his aunt ikue. They also live with etsuko:s mom but she is very old and has alzheimers. Once I put my stuff in my room. I was given my first traditional Japanese dinner.

It started with miso soup, though the only thing I recognized in it was mushrooms. Then I had a slab of some fish, skin and all. I also had egg, white rice with fish eggs, green tea, and natto. Everything was good until the natto.

Natto is fermented soybeans. It is served in a little plastic case not unlike a lunchable container, only with two compartments, one large and one small. In the large part are the beans, which look very similar to baked white beans. In the other container is soy sauce. Toru told me to put the soy sauce in the beans and start mixing it. Though the beans look solid in the container, they are anything but. As I stirred the beans began to take on the consistency of melted cheese, only this wasn:t cheese, it was old beans. The goo began to stick to the chopsticks and anything else it would touch. My first day and I figure I:m already going to throw up. I tried a little bit; the flavor was weird and the texture was awful. They told me not to worry because most people don:t even try it and lots of Japanese hate it.

After dinner I went to bed. Crazy first day.

How to Get in Touch with Me

Steve Perkins — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 09:21:34 +0000

OK, so I’ve spent countless hours geeking out trying to get my communication methods set up to be as easy and as cheap as possible for my friends and family to get in touch with me, as well as making it cheap for me to call home. Here’s what I’ve got.

My email is still SPerk15@comcast.net . I’m thinking this will be my go to for most things.

My Skype name is SPerk15 so if you are on your computer this is probably the best option.

If you want to call me dial the same number you are used to calling. I now have it set up to forward my 630 number to a skype virtual number that is also a 630 area code. So this will not in any way cost anyone long distance, you are simply dialing my normal number and it just gets forwarded to skype. If I have skype open on my phone or computer I’ll answer; if not I have skype voicemail set up.

Texting: This is the one that has proven the most difficult. I don’t know how someone can text my skype and the call forwarding I figured out doesn’t forward texts. So I wouldn’t get a text to my cell number unless I put my sim card in which will result in big time roaming charges; maybe I’ll do that once every two months. Sooo…I just had Nick and Joe tell me about TextNow for iphone. I got set up and if you send a text to SPerk15@textnow.me it will show up as a text in the app. This is the only way I can cheaply send texts where people can reply…though to a weird email. Skype I can text for 11 cents a text but no one can send me a text back.

Anyways, uber long not fun post but this is the way to do it.

2010 Fantasy Football Draft Order Selection

Steve Perkins — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:33:34 +0000

We’re that geeky we record it. In my defense we have to make sure it’s not rigged. Enjoy.

I Love This…

Steve Perkins — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 01:11:48 +0000

Yoda Voicing Tom Tom….great!

BIG Dilemma….

Steve Perkins — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:08:58 +0000

Where does the billfold go? I just made the switch from costanza sized wallet to billfold because I realized that most of what was in my wallet I would not need in Japan. As cool as having my blockbuster and GNC card on me at all times, it isn’t.

I’m completely aware that to 98 percent of the population of the world this may not seem like any sort of problem to worry about, much less blog about, but this is pretty big for me. Yes it is in the minutia of my life when compared to other things, but this is still a change that has never happened before and that I am unaccustomed to.

One question that I have is where you carry the billfold. Does it stay in the back pocket or does it move to the front? I feel like it is supossed to be in the front but that messes up the feng shui of my pant pocket predicament. My situation is always wallet back right, phone front right, and keys/change front left. Adding the billfold to either front pocket makes the front pocket too bulky. I also can’t put my keys in the same pocket as my phone at the risk of scratching it.

I guess if this is my big current dilemma then life is pretty good.