Monday, January 31, 2011

More about college


Hey everybody, sorry for not posting for a few days. I just finished finals this Friday. Got totally murdered on my Python Programming/ numerical analysis final. I ended up answering 2 out of 10 questions. This semester I took a bunch of classes on technology and internet and I think I might want to end up working in the IT field. I took one class where we learned the basics of the binary system, logic gates, flip-flop switches, and other digital technologies. The professor who teaches the class has 4 PhD's and loves himself more than anyone I've ever met. The topic for the final report was how we grew and how we became motivated through taking his class. No knowledge of the subject matter was necessary to write the report at all. I'm really glad to be done with this semester on one hand, but on the other I'm one step closer to finishing college.

Going back to visit my family in Florida in a week. This week I'm gonna stock up on presents for my homies back home. Getting some Pokemon cards for my little brothers. I was thinking about getting them Pokemon black and white version but they wouldn't be able to read it so it might be a waste.

Going back to the questions people asked in my last post, Japanese people generally believe Japanese girls to be the easiest in the world but I'd have to kindly disagree. If you're the kind of dude who hits on any girls in a ten mile radius of you, then you'll probably have a lot of luck with Japanese girls. If you prefer going for girls you know have an interest in you then you might not get any Japanese girls at all. Girls here, for the most part, are submissive. They want a guy who will take care of them, make important decisions for them, and do just about everything for them. In exchange, the Japanese girl will act fragile and less intelligent than she really is because this is considered womanly and cute. Cheating is rampant in Japan. Much of the popularity of love hotels (hotels you can rent for a couple of hours) is for people to have a nice safe place to cheat.

More about my college. My college has a pretty good reputation in Japan and one of the major advantages of going to a school with such a reputation is that the school goes to great lengths to maintain this reputation. My favorite example of this is the police officer retained by the school for the sole purpose of preventing its students from facing any consequences. Basically if the newspaper headline says, "Waseda students arrested for drunkenly smashing window in red light district," the schools reputation will suffer damage amounting to far more than the cost of keeping a PR representative cop on payroll. So whenever a student does something dumb like damage property and is then arrested, the school police officer negotiates a way for everything to blow over with minimal consequences.

That's all for this time. I'm gonna go back to working on music now that I have some free time, feel free to ask me any questions in the comments and I will answer them in the next post.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Going to College/ University overseas

This post I decided to tell you about college life in Tokyo.


I'm currently studying at Waseda University School of International Liberal Studies. Waseda is a private school with about 50,000 students graduate and undergraduate. Recently, starting with my department there has been an effort to offer classes in english. As a matter of fact, besides required Japanese language courses, all of my classes are in english. The quality of education is pretty good although the teachers implement a confucian style of teaching. This means that the student shuts up and listens to the wise elder to the degree of not pointing out mistakes. Tuition is around 15,000$ a year depending on the exchange rate, but many students from abroad receive scholarships. Students from around the world come here to get masters degrees and doctorates. Most of the foreign students are from other asian countries.

College life in Japan is only a little different from the states. Social life in Japan revolves around alcohol. The drinking age is 20 but if you have a college ID no bar will turn you down. People here tend to be pretty socially awkward so alcohol is almost like a pillar of social interaction that allows a temporary escape from the restraining social rules of politeness and rank. Most people join a club or circle (saakuru) which forms around a certain shared interest or hobby and then goes out drinking every time they finish that activity. Tennis circles are the most notorious for rampant alcoholism. I often wonder how a sport with such a demand for coordination ended up with such an alcoholic reputation.

That's all for now, I'll probably make a series of posts about college here so if you have anything you'd like to know leave a question in the comments section and I'll do my best to tell you about it.

Some more pictures





These are some old ones I took. The first three are skyscraper district in Shinjuku. The last one is a temple in Gokokuji near where I live.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Some pictures of Shinjuku

Hey there.

Went for a midnight walk to Shinjuku two days ago to snap some pics to use as a background for the blog. Here are a few more.




Sunday, January 23, 2011

Here's a short demo.

This is the main bassline from a song I'm currently working on. Would love some constructive criticism. Especially if you know how to mix, I could use your advice.

Tripstep(Main Bassline) by ForStaar

Welcome to my blog

Just getting everything set to begin with, a lot more coming your way soon. ForStaar is my musical stage name so I can publish my craft to the web anonymously. If you want to know where I got the name, listen to Patton Oswalt's joke; Great Food Is Cooked by Psychos. Right Here

I'm 19 and studying in Tokyo right now. I'm from the States. I started making music in Fruity Loops about three years ago. Since then I've started playing the guitar. I'm working on a debut EP of around 5 tracks mainly to get as much constructive criticism as possible. The genres that I'm aiming for are; Progressive Rock, Electronic, Dubstep, Psychedelic, Hip Hop, and Chiptune. Hoping to mix it up in new and creative ways.

Gonna try to keep this blog updated with fragments of music, photos of Tokyo, stories, Japanese lessons, maybe some music lessons too, although I'm still a beginner when it comes to music.

Welcome and enjoy your stay.

PS: Thanks for the heads up, I think the link is fixed.