This is what I have found out so far.

7:23am
6/16

Kotaro is my tomdachi nihonjin ichiban (best japanese friend).

He has been explaining different Japanese customs to me, and boy can he knock back the beer. When he wanted me to drink with him in the morning (14th) he drank two tall boys by 10am. I had a normal beer because I was still reeling from the first night.
One of our first journeys was to the grocery store. Again not as crazy as I thought. A lot less produce and a lot more fish products were the main difference. Liquor is much cheaper, but beer seems to be about the same if not more expensive. A surprising amount of english is on packaging, but I think it's like how in America we have our salsas and tortillas and what not. While they are mexican words, we (Americans) still know what they are, and even find them "exotic" which I imagine is how the Japanese feel about the American words.
I was looking for siracha sauce at the supermarket and there was none to be found. Apparently Japanese people are not super fond of spicy food which was a shock to me. I guess I am used to Texan-ized Japanese food. Oh yeah, and there are no baggers (at least at the supermarket we went to) they give you some bags when you check out and there is a little area in which people bag up their groceries.
The gas stations are cool. All kinds of ramen and soba noodles. Trying to decipher what exactly is in the package is somewhat difficult, but the msg in everything makes it taste ok. Everyone so far has been super nice. We constantly get looks from the natives.
There was a welcoming BBQ for us on Saturday. Some students and the English teacher, Steve, gave us a tour of the college. Interesting things I noticed: for the cafeterias, you buy a ticket in a vending machine and take it to the counter where they then make your food. Then you must go and wash out your own bowl. I know, crazy having to do your own dishes. After the tour we headed over to meet the rest of the English club and have some BBQ. Oh and by BBQ I mean they brought Mc Donalds burgers. They were also grilling hot dogs and burgers and what a sight that was. I'm sure grilling is not as popular as it is in America because watching these kids try to cook hot dogs and burgers using chopsticks to flip them was hilarious. The girls are much less reserved than the guys, who always seem to have a pseudo "tough guy" persona going on. I told some people we were going to have a party that night, half expecting some people to come. Later on I went and bought a boombox for the party. The electronic store, now that was a trip. Every kind of electronic everything you could want. The underwater digital cameras blew my mind as well as the fact that there is a huge market for the Minidisc audio format here. It never really caught on here in the states, but I guess the small size is the appealing part here in Japan. When I got back to the house, there were already people here, it wasn't even dark yet. I started setting up stuff and testing my new Japanese boombox. More people showed up and I was hoping for a nice little dance party. While I had fun, it would appear that most of my roommates are not down to party as much as I thought they would be. The Japanese students who came over had a great time. They brought all this food and sake, and even cleaned up after themselves. Unheard of at an American party.
Even the trash is crazy here, everything is sorted by whether or not it burns. We have 3 trash cans at the house.