♪JSA KARAOKE NIGHT♪

Hi guys, this is Akira Ogiso, an officer of JSA Career Team. How did you spend your last weekend?!

We JSA had Karaoke night on last Friday! We went to a Karaoke club, Mari's which is in 2nd floor of Japan town. At this place, we had our own private room in which to sing. It costs only $20 per person with one drink and all you can sing. Mari's usually won't offer this kind of reasonable option, but we tried to negotiate with them to hold a fascinating, social event for everyone!

As you can see, Mari's has a huge and cozy private room. It also has a cool stage for a singer to be in front of the audiences!

They seemed to be really enjoying!

I couldn't join with them this night because I was busy with my research paper...

However, I do love to go to Karaoke. Whenever I go back to Japan, I hang out with a couple of my best friends to sing together.

I know going to Karaoke on weekend is not that common in western culture, but this is how Asians spend the day off. If you live in Japan, you will be asked to go to Karaoke after school with your classmates or after work with your colleagues. You might also go with your families on the weekend.

Besides, if you come to Japan, there are thousands of Karaoke clubs everywhere in the cities. Karaoke is one of the Japanese cultures!

Our 1st Karaoke night was really successful!!! For those of you who couldn't come this night, please join us next time! We would continue to organize fancy events for everyone to have a great time together. Do not miss them!!!!!

Thank you,
Akira Ogiso
Vice Pres. of JSA Career Team

Sunday brunch:)

Hi guys! I am Mari Aso from Jsa Career team.

I would like to introduce a nice place to have brunch .It's worth to visit this place especially for who loves to try different kind of teas!!!This place is called Yerba Buena Gardens and you can find the place at  730 Howard StreetSan Francisco, CA 94103

I recommend you to choose outdoor seats when the weather is really good like today :)












In this tea lounge, you can choose different kind of  White/Green/Oolong/Herbal/Pu-ear tea .
I chose the Golden Phoenix tea which has strong  floral aroma and I love it!

With the delicious tea, I also tried smoked Salmon Quiche and Platter of tea sweets (Cookies,brownies,coconut pudding and green tea mousse. I especially like the combination of Green tea mousse and the handmade cookies. If you have a chance to try this platter, try to dip the cookies to green tea mousse. It taste more rich and delicious!

Inside the tea lounge, you can purchase some teas and also tea pots.This place is always busy, typically on the weekends!!

Near by this tea lounge, you can find some cherry blossom too. It's perfect to have all these great tea ,food, weather and flowers on Sunday noon:):) If you have chance to go downtown, try to visit this place!!
 

Hope you all having a great weekend :) Our officers will keep update more such as their life in SF or the upcoming event for JSA..etc. So, don't miss the next post !!

Spring is HERE!!

Hello Everybody!

I hope you all are having a great start with the Spring Semester of 2012. I apologize for the gap between this post and the previous post, but I'll try to keep everyone updated from now on. February is almost ending and classes will have midterms in a week or two. I wish everyone good luck studying and nailing that midterm!


Here's some update on what's going on in JSA:

We'll be having our first General Meeting this semester next Wednesday (February 29th) 2:00 ~ 3:30pm at Rosa Parks D. At the General Meeting, we'll discuss further detail about upcoming events this semester and we would love to hear feedback on our past JSA events or suggestions for what kind of events you'd like to attend. We'll be happy to hear from you!

Terribly sorry for the trouble. There's been a mishap and the General Meeting would be delayed until the beginning of March. We'll definitely keep an update and let everyone know as soon as possible. Again, sorry for the inconvenience.


Sincerely,
     Yueyu Kanno
     Vice Pres. of JSA

SOUND MIXING TOUR

Hi lads.

Thank you to those of you who came at HALLOWEEN PARTY 2011 last sunday!
I hope you all had fun!

My name is Yusuke "Vash" Okada, and today I would like to talk a bit about my major, BECA.
A lot of you probably have not heard this major I assume. It stands for Broadcasting and Electronic communication arts. What students in this department basically do is 'making TV/Radio programs and Music'.
I am focusing on the audio production emphasis, and actually today was my midterm sound mixing day. SO, I would like to take you guys to a small tour of the SFSU music studio.

It is located in the basement of creative arts building, the room # is CA 40. Today my sound buddies and I mixed a song of semi-professional spanish band called "Sergio y Tierra"

Here is the broad that we use for the sound mix. Look how many buttons and faders there are... Trust me, they all have a specific job to do. This band is a 4 piece band, which means they have Vocal, Guitar, Bass, and Drums..But in the sound mix, because the sound of each instrument is recorded using several mics, we got about 20 different sound tracks to mix.

The effect boxes and cable connections. Each instrument needs specific effects, so we have to connect all sound signals right!

We monitor the sound by using the software in the computer, and record the song on to this old-school looking tape! A mixture of the latest and old-fashioned technology!

The whole mixing session took about an hour. 

I would have liked to take some more pics tho, like I said, It was during the midterm...so, this is the end of the tour.

Luckily this was the last midterm for the semester!

Good Luck to those of you who still have more midterms coming up! 

Thanksgiving break is almost there, so hang on!!

in a bit. 

Vash

The Awesome Places in SF

Hey, guys.

I’m Daisuke Nemoto. I am a member of the JSA career team. I’m not good writer, so you don’t care if you find some grammar mistakes.

Today, I am going to show you guys the places I visited on the weekend. I attended my friend’s engagement party at The Place of Fine Arts in San Francisco. It was originally built for the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition.

I love walking around with seeing beautiful architectures and ducks in the pond.  Also, here is the great place to relax; everybody takes a nap on the lawn. I recommend you visiting the place to get away from it all. The Palace of Fine Arts Theatre has convenient access to public transportation. We are accessible by San Francisco Muni buses #30, #43, #28, and #29. Muni bus lines #22, #41, and #45 also stop in the vicinity.

Anyways, these pictures are at the Place of Fine Arts.

The picture is while doing the cake cut. She looks so happy.

After the party, I had a dinner at SF Japan town. You know YakiniQ is the all you can eat Korean BBQ. The price is reasonable for $20 each person. Very nice foods, nice music, and friendly staffs make you happy for sure. You just keep in mind YakiniQ is always packed to capacity at a dinnertime, so you had better to sign up early. 

Every week!? the JSA officers are supposed to upload the blog. Hopefully you enjoy reading. Who's next?

East Bay Punk's Not Dead

Hi guys!

This is Akira Ogiso. I’m an officer of JSA Career Team.

            Today I’d like to show you guys one of the hottest clubs in Bay Area. For those of you who are native English speaker, club is a place where it serves drinks and snacks with playing different kinds of music, and the bands can play a gig as well. For those of you who are native Japanese speaker, club means a nightclub where people dance while DJs are playing Hip Hop and R&B. So, do NOT consider me as a nightclubbing guy!! I am a PUNK rocker!!
            Well first of all, I have one question. How come people today don’t know how to listen to the rock music?! Whenever I go to a music concert, I see many people are just standing and watching the bands. Of course it depends on what kind of music they play, but if you go to a punk rock show, there is no reason not to be calm. Wanna mosh, stage dive, and stage surf? Come to the 924 Gilman Street right now!!!
            924 Gilman Street is an all-age, not for profit, collectively organized legendary music club which is located in the West Berkeley area of Berkeley, CA about a mile and a half west of the North Berkeley BART station.

There are four main rules for patrons:
1) No Drugs 2) No Alcohol 3) No Violence 4) No Racism

There is a gig at least once in a week usually on Friday night or weekend. Most of the bands are independent and underground. So, if you are really sick of those commercialized MTV sellout rock bands, Gilman is the place where you can find the real punk bands. I mean ‘‘REAL’’ punk spirit bands!!!

I usually go there once in two weeks to check some hot, local indie bands. You might be scare of these spiky hair punks wearing a crazy leather jacket if you come to Gilman. I also dress like them to go to the show.

But they are all nice and kind, so do not hesitate to talk to them! LOL
Gilman has a lot of awesome graphics everywhere on the wall.

This is the hottest bathroom I’ve ever seen in my life!

These cool flyers inform you what bands are coming. I always collect them to decorate my room like Gilman.

             

             Honestly, my primary reason to study abroad to the US is to see the Gilman punk scene. When I was in high school, I was crazy about Green Day and Rancid (Of course I still love them, and finally I was able to go to Rancid show in SF!). They inspired me to be punk, and I really wanted to visit their hometown, which is Barkley CA. They were used to play at Gilman around 90’s when they were still unknown. NOFX, Bad Religion, The Offspring, AFI, and many famous punk bands today were used to have a gig at Gilman as well.

            So why not coming to Gilman? The pit might be little bit dangerous for the punk beginner. You will be sweat a lot, get injure, and sometimes bleed. However, you can get rid of tons of stress from busy school days for sure!!!!!

The Life of International Students

What's up!

I'm Nobu Momoi. I'm a sub-leader of the JSA Career Team. The mission of the Career Team is to help Japanese international students at SFSU find a job in Japanese companies in Japan as well as in the US based Japanese companies. We also help them get prepared for job hunting by holding various events.

Since I’m in the Career Team, I’d like to share with you folks the techniques that I acquired from the countless job recruiting professionals in the United States…. Well, I guess it’s going to be too boring, and I’m too lazy to write about it. Let’s not do it lol

Instead of writing about the dull stuff, I’ll write about typical international student’s (me) one day schedule, which those who will begin or just started to attend an American college are probably most interested.

I wake up at 6am every day. The first thing I do to start my day is to take a shower. After taking a shower, I check the messages from SFSU’s online learning site over a cup of coffee. I usually cook pretty heavy breakfast and eat quickly while checking emails and Facebook. I have a class at 11am, so I usually study at home before my class. Often times the thing I do in the morning are proofreading my essays and other assignments that include lots of calculations. I can do those homework better when I still have a fresh brain.

Since I live pretty close to school as other international students do, and I have a bike, I leave for school 7 minutes before my class. My morning class is English for multilingual students where I enjoy chatting with my classmates from all over the world. This class is my favorite in this semester. And communicating with the people from many different backgrounds is one of the most fun things you can experience in San Francisco. San Francisco has an extremely rich diversity, so you can meet with many different people by just staying at one city! You only need to know English to experience this because most people speak English!

After my English class, I often have some group meetings of my finance classes where we discuss homework assignments and group presentations. My other class starts at 7pm, so I stay in the library or other study rooms on campus to study. My evening class finishes around 9:30pm. After I come back home around 10pm, I review some of the class materials I just learned on the day and go to bed before midnight.

Did you get some ideas about how the life of international students is like? You probably thought being a college student in the US is tough. Yes, it is tough sometimes, but there is a lot of fun at the same time. And we can do this because of weekend parties! So if you’re hesitating to come to an American college, don’t! Just come and have fun! Maybe next time I’ll write about the weekend parties.