Tennou Heika Banzai!!

Yay for no class on the emperor’s birthday!!

To celebrate, I slept in until noon and then went to Jusco, where I got a very odd stare from the girl next to me in line when this was handed over by the store staff:

I preordered this about a month ago after deliberating for a while between W and Shinkenger (ended up going for Shinkenger because the toys looked better). Unfortunately, the cake is 3100 yen (about $34 USD), so I couldn’t buy both W and Shinkenger.

So, let’s look and see how it turned out:

Very nice box. I’m rather amused how the strawberries come in a separate box, protected by bubble wrap. God forbid you should have un-bubble wrap protected strawberries.

It’s so cuuute! It might have gotten a little damaged in the transit home (bus travel is not easy on cakes). Normally I’d say the looks don’t matter, but since this is a plain boring white cake, I’m going to go with “looks matter” this time.

Also in the box was:

It’s quite small, and not particularly detailed, but it’s not bad.

On tasting the cake, it wasn’t too bad. The cream was quite rich, and the cake itself, while fairly tasteless, had a nice texture and the filling had some orange pieces, which lent themselves to the overall flavor. Probably not worth 34 bucks, but I promised myself I’d get one when I got to Japan and damned if I’m going to let weird looks stop me.

(Also, I put the plastic bag into an opaque bag so no one could see it >.> no sense looking weirder than I already do)

Nothing else particularly of interest. Classes continue as normal, sadly, even on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (I have no classes on Friday anyway, but it’s the principle of the matter.) No one really has anything planned, so maybe I’ll head out to Tokyo or perhaps just to Iias and see a movie.

On Monday night I had nabe with my next-door neighbor, a Chinese girl that’s been living in Japan for about 3 years now, so she’s practically fluent. I was having a bit of a difficult time speaking. I can understand pretty well, just phrasing my sentences takes me time and I can’t just spit it out like I can with English. We went to the grocery store and got ingredients, including kimchi stock for the soup, some type of mushrooms I’ve never seen before (but tasted pretty good), a prepackaged nabe mix, and some beef and pork. Nothing really tastes quite as good as meat freshly cooked two seconds before you pop it into your mouth. So good. We talked about various subjects and discovered that we both adore the anime Lovely Complex. If I can wrangle it, I’d like to find the musical one of the voice actors is in, but it’s a bit old, and the file was pretty large, so it might be impossible unless I get someone from home to send it.

I would like to note that I have been in Japan almost 4 months and have since collected 8 new Gackt posters. I may need to devote an entire wall to Gackt when I return home.

Pizza Pizza

I just couldn’t take it anymore today. I broke. It didn’t help a friend linked me yesterday to the website.

I ordered delivery pizza.

Thursdays are honestly my worst day, due to no less than four classes taking up 5 periods of the day. Kanji started insufferably early with a quiz that I did fairly okay (despite forgetting the word for “clinical thermometer” which is a stupid word anyway >.< I’m trying to justify it to myself, don’t argue with a tired person). I had studied a good 3 hours until late the previous night, so I wasn’t really feeling at my best, plus my stomach decided to rebel a bit and be queasy. I think I did okay though…

After that I grabbed a hot lemon tea from the vending machine (god I love Japanese vending machines) and went off to Japanese, which was pretty much the same as every other day. I usually end up sitting next to this Chinese guy that likes to do either homework or read or write or something besides pay attention in class (can’t blame him, really) so when it’s time for partner-ing bits, he likes to zone out, and I tend to let him…just easier that way. Also, he gets tripped up by English words in common usage in Japanese (barbecue, steak, camping, etc), which I can’t really blame him for, as it seems to be a problem with most students from non-English using countries. But the Chinese automatically can write and understand most of the kanji, so I’m not forgiving them after that annoying quiz.

Went to the little cafe type place for lunch, had yakisando (basically a panini), which they give you four of, including lettuce, cheese and ham, potato salad, egg salad, and tuna. Yummm. I also bought a chocolate chip scone (also yumm) and a blueberry bagel, which I will refrain from buying again, as it didn’t really taste like blueberry or bagel.

Then Modern Asia B, where we covered more about Thailand. If I was particularly interested in Thailand, that would be great, but I can’t really bring myself to care…

And lastly, International Relations, which I can’t believe is so freaking long. I can only take the teacher in small doses, otherwise I begin to start watching the clock frantically.

So after this long day, starting at 8:00 and ending at 6:00 (those of you with a steady job are probably scoffing at me), I came back to my room and decided I didn’t want to make dinner.

So I found the link a friend had given me to Pizza-la, one of the few chain pizzerias that deliver using an online service. After a little messing around with the address and deciding food choices, I bought a large 36 cm cheese pizza with an apple turnover and “fried potatoes” for 1890 yen (I wasn’t going to get the turnover, but that made the order less than 1800 yen, which apparently you need for delivery). Not the best pizza in the world, but I was hungry and hadn’t had pizza in over two months, which I think is a crime for a college student.

 

Also, they canceled Dollhouse *goes off to cry in a corner*

I hate Fox.

In which I am excessively grateful for being able to say absolutely nothing at all.

So for the second time, my rear bike tire got a flat, leaving me very annoyed and a very long way away from the Jusco repair center.

Being a lazy person that didn’t want to walk the damn bike the whole probably 1-2 hour trip there, I instead decided to google map “bicycle” and see what I could find. There was actually a fairly close place about a ten minute walk from my dorm, so today I went out to find it. I am soooooooo glad I looked up the words for “repair” and “flat tire” because I had to use them both in the conversation.

Then came the scary part.

I was just kinda watching the guy do his thing, taking out the inner tube to replace it, when the older woman inside called for me to come in and have tea.

Those of you with no experience in such matters, this is akin to being invited to high tea with the queen. The Japanese are increeeediblyyyyy formal with giving and accepting food/tea, and comes with all sorts of little formalities and sayings that, if omitted, can cause tremendous unvoiced hostility.

I have never been more thankful in my life for the tradition of “aisatsu”, which basically tells people you’re listening without having to add anything to the conversation. I smiled and nodded and occasionally took sips of tea, all the while kinda zoning out on what she was saying (she had an accent I couldn’t really understand, but it was something about her son, I think) and hoping that the other guy would finish with my bike soon.

Also, I suck at peeling oranges. I hope there isn’t some sort of formality with peeling those because otherwise I broke it.

Regardless, at the end of maybe 10 minutes (it felt longer), I was called out to the front to get my bike, which he fixed beautifully, pumped air into my other tire as well, and it only cost 10 bucks. I’ll probably go there if this happens again, but damn was that scary.

On the bright side, there was a small nursery close by, so I’ll probably head there sooner or later to get some sort of plant to take care of. I kinda miss my huge coleus from last year (which has probably died by now…)

Went to an Indian restaurant for dinner with the Japanese speaking group. Yumm, tandoori chicken, garlic naan and mango lassi. Spicy without being overbearingly so. A couple of the Japanese were dying of the heat of the curry XD Can’t take real curry, only their Japanese imitation.

RIGHT!

Okay, okay, I admit, I suck at keeping things updated.

This is why I don’t own fish, I forget things unless they’re constantly bugging me (i.e. cats meowing and following me begging for food)

Whoops, it’s been almost  a month >.>

Just start smacking me every time you want me to update, that’ll work faster.

 

Sooo, yeah.

There was the school festival a while back, which was pretty fun. I’d always read about school festivals in manga, so it was pretty cool to visit one for the first time. It was mostly food stalls and very, very pushy sales people. I think all Japanese are practically born salesmen, they can shout loudly for long periods of time without getting bored out of their skulls.

I decided to explore the library about two weeks ago, and I was very happy to find a whole slew of mythology/folklore books that were out of print in America. Not only was almost the entirety of the color Fairy Books by Andrew Lang, but I found a very small book of Ainu myths (the Ainu are the native people of Hokkaido that have since almost all merged into regular Japanese), regrettably in Japanese, but that just gives me a mini project to work on.

There was also Tokyo Disneyland a week before Halloween. Wow was it crowded. There was a three hour wait for Haunted Mansion and the Winnie the Pooh ride along with a slew of other rides. Pirates, by contrast, was 40 minutes and Star Tours was about half an hour. Huh. I’m used to more fast/tall roller coasters, so even Space Mountain was a little tame. Star Tours was quite fun though, since the last time I went on that ride, I hadn’t seen the movies yet. Also, C-3PO spoke in Japanese. O_o yeah… quite amusing. It didn’t sound much like Anthony Daniels though.

Basically all I’ve been doing is class and homework and some extra projects on the side, so not much time/money for really fun stuff. Also, exams are coming up >.> so that’s more time cooped up.

If there’s something you want to hear about in particular (class, living, rent, cheese, whatever), just drop me a line and I can mention it. (BTW, Tammy, thanks for the bay leaves, though I haven’t had a cockroach problem since, I think the one just wanted to get out of the typhoon, though why it picked my room in particular, I don’t know)

Yeah, just digitally poke me if you think it’s been too long since I’ve updated. XD I become a lazy bum if I think no one’s paying attention.

My, it’s a blustery day outside.

Soooo, updates. Yay. (I swear, I’m going to start doing this daily instead of weekly)

I biked to Jusco last Saturday, which takes roughly 30-45 minutes by bike, so definitely too long to walk. Ichinoya’s pretty nicely situated when it comes to classes, but you have to catch the bus to Tsukuba Center because otherwise it’s just a pain in the butt. I managed to get my bike fixed there, which fortunately was free. Let me tell you, the last thing I wanted to hear from the repair guys was “impossible,” which they said at one point, then told me they couldn’t do it, then said it’d cost 60-70 dollars, and then all they really needed was to straighten the pedal and it worked okay. Hallelujah.

I managed to wipe my computer and reinstall most everything after buying the external for about $140. It’s a Buffalo 1TB external. I’ve never heard of the brand before, but it’s working fine so far *knock on wood*. I really want to just get a new laptop, but I think I’ll save that for next summer, I can just keep stuff on the external for now. Unfortunately the webcam now decided not to work, so I’m going to have to buy a new one of those, but at least they’re fairly cheap.

Mostly I’ve been just going to classes and doing homework recently. Unfortunately, a college student’s life is not particularly adventurous in any country, so I’ll just explain what’s been going on recently.

No there is too much. Let me sum up. </random princess bride reference>

After getting my bike fixed, me and a very very large group of gaijin (with 2 Japanese) took a 45 minute bike ride to Tsuchiura to see the fireworks display. The sidewalks were, how shall I put it, crap. Most of the time we had to ride single file, and several times there was maybe a couple inches between the road, me and a very long drop. When we finally got there we had to “hide” our bikes in the bushes (I say hide, because we weren’t supposed to park there, but there were a ton of other bikes there as well, so I’m going to just assume the police didn’t particularly care), and walk quite a bit away from the bikes in order to find a place for everyone to sit. Gravity unfortunately works just as well in Japan as in America, because we kept slowly sliding down the slope we had managed to snag. Once the traffic had cleared out we were able to grab a seat on the concrete, which was uncomfortable, but at least there were no spiders and gravity wasn’t nearly pulling us into the couple on the ground in front of us.

There was a lot of carnival-type food there, stuff I’d never seen before. There was not a lot of deep-fried food, which honestly I consider a blessing. Most of the food there was stuff I would eat on a daily basis (okay, maybe not daily, but at least my intestines wouldn’t cry out for relief from the clogging). I ate some takoyaki, which is a bit of octopus cooked into a ball of dough and then flavored with various spices. It was pretty good actually, not fishy at all. I also bought a candy apple, and it was yummmmmy

The fireworks were kinda interesting, but really really long. It was over 2 hours of start-stop fireworks, as opposed to the 30-45 minute shows I’m used to. There were the screamer fireworks I haven’t seen in the US in quite a few years, and also a few fireworks had actual shapes like mushrooms or faces, which was pretty intriguing.

Yesterday was a good day though. It had been raining the day before and that morning and I was getting pretty tired of nothing but dreary drizzling skies. And then in my Japanese class, the teacher told us: “There’s a typhoon coming tomorrow. The vice president of the university will take a look at the weather report and tell us whether or not classes will be canceled tomorrow.” I was like “Whut? Seriously? They cancel school for that? I take back everything I just said about wanting sun. RAIN ALL YOU WANT, BLOW WIND BLOW!”

There was no class today due to typhoon. XD

Last night however, was incredibly gross. Laura and I were playing around on my laptop, watching youtube videos and messing around.

Laura and me: Wheee!

Cockroach: Hi there

Laura and me: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It just randomly wandered into my room. Fortunately it went into the box I keep my recyclables in, so there was a frantic bit of recycling and me tossing it out of the box faaaaaaaaaaaar away from the dorm door. Ew. Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew. I will be very happy if I never have to do that again.

I don’t feel like putting up pictures today, so I’ll probably do it tomorrow. I’ll try to smack myself to getting to putting more posts up. I swear I’ll get into the swing of it eventually >.>

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGG

I want you all to know that I intended to post here 2 days ago.

And then my computer went *hiccup*

And now I have no internet because the driver decided to stop working and not reinstall.

I SPECIFICALLY WIPED THE SYSTEM BEFORE I CAME SO THIS WOULDN’T HAPPEN

So now I either need to buy a ton of CDs to backup my data, or just give in and get a stupid external drive. I’m leaning towards the external since this keeps happening.

Also, I ran into one of the metal staples sticking out of the road before intersections. So now my bike needs to be fixed too, but I don’t want to bike all the way to Jusco today on a bum bike when it’s raining (which is a helluva adventure, let me tell you, biking while holding an umbrella while also trying to balance on a bike that has a wonky pedal.)

This all happened after I figured out my finances and tried to budget so I wouldn’t have to use my credit card and could just live off of JASSO without any outside assistance, especially since the dollar has fallen down to 90 yen.

Yeah…I’m going to need some more money in my US account.  *sigh* I was hoping there wouldn’t be any more unforseen expenses…

God this is a depressing post.

I’m a horrible liar

“Oh, I’ll update tomorrow” I say as I don’t post for a week.

Last Wednesday was uneventful, Thursday’s major mention is that someone decided it’d be a good idea to change the room for the one class I wanted to take, causing something akin to “Search the whole building and then go ask someone to call up the office to see where the hell I’m supposed to go” to occur. Friday there was class and Jusco.

Saturday there was AWESOME.

I’m a bit of a nut and my inner child is a 5 year old boy that is not so much an inner child but more of one that starts tugging on my sleeve every time it sees something slightly shiny. Therefore, I was incredibly ecstatic to see the live Samurai Sentai Shinkenger show at Iias mall (it’s spelled like that, but pronnounced “ee-ay-ah-su”). I woke up bright and early to go get tickets but was mildly delayed by bus and train stuff. There were only two shows with 300 tickets apiece, but I managed to get #293 for the second show. Talk about cutting it close. I wandered around for a bit until the first show started. I was kinda on the outskirts of the show, taking a ton of pictures, so most people probably thought I just randomly wandered in and was now taking pictures of “those crazy Japanese”.

And then the second show I sat in the area for ticket holders. Yeah…20 year old Caucasian female surrounded by Japanese parents escorting their 4-6 year old children, mostly boys. I stuck out like a clown making balloon animals  at a funeral. Next time I need to steal a little kid so I don’t stick out so much.

Saturday we went to Tokyo to see the Imperial Gardens. They were quite impressive, and very well tended for. I didn’t see many plants I recognized, but it was still so green and pretty. There were huuuuuuge swans lounging around the water. We managed to run into a wedding party as well. The bride’s dress was very pretty, but both of us couldn’t help but wondering how much they dropped on that wedding in order to hold it at the gardens.

Next, we hopped on the train into Harajuku, where the Meiji shrine is located. It’s the place where the Emperor Meiji is buried, and dear god are there a lot of tourists there. It was incredibly weird. I’ve gotten so used to seeing only Japanese faces the vast amount of sudden Caucasian-ness was slightly disconcerting. The shrine itself is incredibly pretty and well-cared for. There were several miko (shrine priestess) around and we even managed to run into another wedding ceremony. The bride was wearing the incredibly formal traditional kimono, complete with the heavy 10 pound wig. I’m amazed she could stand up, but she looked pretty happy.

We looked around Harajuku for a little bit before going to Ueno, where we bought some dinner and ate it in Ueno Park, where I got bit by at least 5 bugs in the space of 15 minutes. Rrrg. This cat randomly came up to me while I wasn’t paying attention (it was probably the smell of the cheap sushi) and just stood there, waiting for a hand out. I threw him some chicken because I was kinda full and I didn’t want fleas to add to my large collection of bug bites. Turns out he wasn’t the only stray around. There were at least 10 that I could see, and all were fairly well fed. It looks like their begging is paying off.

We then wandered into a shop where Laura bought KH2 when it came out a couple years back. It was pretty interesting, and we ended up spending about an hour in there.

Monday we stayed at home. It was dark and overcast, and neither of us really wanted to go out after that long weekend.

Yesterday was Akihabara again. This time I got to stay the whole day there. Yay! We first went to a little shrine that I had been looking for, and took a couple pictures. Then I went into the Try Amusement Tower, which was featured on the show GameCenter CX. Unfortunately, that episode is 5 years old, so it didn’t really look the same. Regardless, I found a DDR machine, and subsequently rocked it to several of my favorites. Up a couple floors was a retro gaming part. I played a couple rounds of Galaga (My playing skills have degenerated since I stopped going to the orthodontist with the N64 in the waiting room) and then Street Fighter 2, where I got killed by an annoying CPU spamming of the hadouken button.

I then wandered around the shops. Laura got bored (I believe she said “torturous” which is clothes shopping for me, but to each his own) and went off to Ikubukuro. I stayed in the shops and continued looking around. I really shouldn’t wander around Akiba by myself. I get distracted by all the shiny. There was an unopened box of the mecha collection of Sazer X for under $30. I managed to convince myself not to get it, but if I see it next time, I may not be able to restrain myself because that is just such an awesome deal.

Ate a teriyaki burger at Mos Burger again (I swear those things are addictive). Wandered back to the station after getting lost for a bit, and then we went home.

Today I am staying home and catching up on important stuff. Like posting. And studying. And possibly grocery shopping.

*speechless*

I’ve got to start updating more often >.<

Sunday had an early start, grabbing the Tsukuba Express on its 45 minute journey straight into what I shall now dub “heaven” – a.k.a. Akihabara.

Where do I start?

We went straight from the station to (okay, a Starbucks, but after that) Kotobukiya, a famous shop in Akiba. It has 5 floors of pure awesome. We started from the bottom and worked our way upwards. I can’t think of any other way to describe it but in convention terms. The biggest con I’ve ever gone to is Ohayocon. If I took the dealer’s room from there and then multiplied it by 5, it might equal the sheer amount of otaku goods for sale, but would still probably come short. There were figures, keychains, toys, plushies, wallets, jewelry, bags, manga, photobooks, and even life sized figures. I’m sure I looked like a nut because my mouth kept gaping wide open (also because I was looking at the Kamen Rider stuff, but whatever.) There were so many figures, and the manga section was at least as big as the first floor of my house, if not bigger. I kept getting distracted by shiny things and didn’t even notice the time going by. I bought probably too much, but the vast bulk of my purchase was a new camera, which I shall upload pictures from tomorrow. Unfortunately, it only has Japanese installed on it, so I’m going to just have to learn as I go. It was a fairly good deal though, and with 12 megapixels, the quality is quite excellent.

We probably spent 2 or 3 hours just in that store alone. Laura wanted to leave to go somewhere else, (otaku overload, I think), though I would be happy to just explore Akiba for the rest of my life. Before we went though, I noticed that I recognized the area we were in. And then I found it. There’s a certain area in Akiba that has a small bridge over a river, which is right in front of the main drag. It is a major setting of the dramas Akihabara@DEEP and Densha Otoko, two of my favorite shows. I’d seen that place so many times, it was kinda weird seeing it in real life, because it felt like I’d been there before. I’ll post the pictures later, I’m sure other people will remember the place I’m talking about.

After a brief realization that we did not know what particular stop Tokyo Tower was at, and subsequent asking of the information desk, we got off the train at Hamasomethingorother. There was, and we had no idea of this until we got there, the Tokyo Pokemon Center there. Not like in the game where they heal your Pokemon, but a decently-sized retail shop of Pokemon goodies for every occasion. Laura bought the new game that had come out the previous day and I bought a Vulpix cell phone charm and a Mudkip figure (because I liek Mudkips).

It was about a 20 minute walk from there to Tokyo Tower. It’s a good thing it’s so recognizable because otherwise we might’ve gotten lost. Yes, I did the Kabuto hand gesture and there are pictures. We paid about 8 bucks to go up to the observation deck at sunset, which was incredibly pretty. There’s such an amazing view from up there. Next time for sure, we’re going to the upper deck which is about 100 or so more feet up. We took our first purika up there (ouch, 500 yen) which turned out pretty good, only we had no idea how it worked at first and there was a timer. >.> There are actually quite a few shops and such in the base of the tower, but Laura wanted to go to the Square Enix shop, so we decided to save them for another time.

To get to the Square Enix shop, we needed to go to Shinjuku and walk about 15 minutes, but the instructions said we could take the Keio line and get there with only a 5 minute walk. We decided for that, as neither of us really wanted to walk much more, but when we got off at Shibuya station, there wasn’t any apparent line change, so we decided to just stay in Shibuya for a while.

Wow. That is all I have to say. We saw the famous statue of Hachiko, and I had a minor geek out over the Shibuya 109 building, which we went in for a minute, but I felt too tragically un-hip (and un-rich) to continue looking over the clothes. The coolest part was probably the crosswalk, which runs through the entire intersection. Once the crosswalk sign is lit up, you may go across the street in any direction you want. Straight, sideways, backwards, diagonal, figure eight, it doesn’t matter, the whole intersection is your domain. The whole of it was just so big and bright and we couldn’t decide where to go. We ended up looking through the Adidas store quickly and then rummaging though 7 floors of Loft, which is the most awesome stationary store in the world. It makes Office Max look like a 7-11 in comparison. There are pens, paper, stickers, watches, jewelry, furniture, decorations, and all sorts of stuff that now I’m kinda wondering what they were doing in a stationary store.

After Shibuya we went back by train (about 30 minutes) to Akihabara. I sat next to this guy who struck up a conversation with me when he realized we were American. Apparently he’s a Navy guy from Texas stationed somewhere I don’t remember. He was interested to hear that we were from “the North.” I get the feeling he doesn’t see many Northern people in the Military.

Rushing back to the Tsukuba Express line (TX for short), Laura and I managed to figure out (okay, the instructions were in English, but it still counts as figuring out) how to get a PASMO card, which you load up with cash and then just swipe it Den-O style across the turnstile to ride the train. Again, minor geek out. Next time I’m totally saying “Henshin.”

Monday there was class. Fairly routine. Went out for curry that night, drank about 8 glasses of water because I ordered it a bit too spicy, and bought two donuts from Mister Donut. I was disappointed in the taste – I’m not buying a donut in Japan again… it tasted pretty bland and not like sugary fried dough at all. The local cats that hang out by the garbage house seem to now know it’s me that’s feeding them, so when I came back, they practically mobbed me for food. I left my donuts in the bike basket, so it’s a good thing when I came down to get them, I had the cat treats because one came within 6 inches of me because he knew I had food. They kinda settled a bit and chowed down after that. I’m calling them: Mommy (calico), Daddy (tabby), Orenji (orange kitten 1), Yuzu (orange kitten 2), Kahuda (tabby), and Mikkusu (weird calico/tabby sort of mix).

Today as well, it was pretty much routine class. I managed to make garlic and cucumber yogurt to put on the naan I bought, though through a misjudgement of how strong the garlic powder and fresh garlic clove I put in, it tastes so strongly of garlic I can feel my taste buds crying out in pain. Fortuntately, I love garlic, although I think it’s a judgment of how used I am to the flavor when I can still taste it in my mouth 4 hours after I’ve eaten it… I clearly need to eat this stuff before I go to the dentist.

Pictures tomorrow, after class.

Cue Hallelujah chorus

Yeah, I need to stop putting off writing in here. >.>

Saturday and Sunday passed without much incident. Saturday we went to the big mall (called Ieyasu, I think) a bit away by train, and spent a long amount of time in there. I’m definitely going to have to go back, because not only was there a huge electronics store, but also a Toys ‘R’ Us (which I spent far too much time in, seeing as I’m an adult >.<), an amazing book store, an arcade, a movie theater and a ton of clothes stores. Oh, and a Ghibli store that I must go back to. They had a 3 foot Jiji for about 450 dollars that is ever so tempting, but I’d probably have to buy it a seat on the plane back -_-;;

First was Toys ‘R’ Us, which I did not actually buy anything from. This may be due to the fact that I had no money at the time, but it could also be because I’ve decided to pace myself (of course, now that I’ve said this, I’m going to end up not controlling myself at all in Akihabara). There were a ton of awesome toys, a Gundam section, coloring books, and some Pokemon toys that Laura bought. At the electronics store, she bought an electronic dictionary, which is actually better than mine, so I’m considering getting a better one when my scholarship money comes in. I got a hub and a package of tissues. People keep handing them to me. I get that they’re supposed to be a small, inexpensive way of drawing your attention, but I can’t help feeling what they’re really saying is “WIPE YOUR NOSE GAIJIN!”

Wandered around for a bit. Laura and I went separate ways because she wanted to look at clothes and I wanted to look at anything other than clothes. There was the Ghibli store, as I mentioned before, clothes stores, Claires, for some odd reason, and some other places that escape my mind at the moment. Oh, and Bad Ass Coffee. I’m not describing it, that was, in fact, the name of the store.

There was an interesting store that had all sorts of odds and ends that I think I’m going to have to call a “novelty shop” though it really wasn’t. They had a bunch of American and Japanese items in one big mishmosh, so I’m not quite sure what to call it. I’m going to have to go back there, because they also had a ton of weird stuff.

The bookstore was amazing. I’m used to, at most, one large shelf of manga at the Borders at home. Two would make my jaw drop. I saw no less than 6 shelves, each twice the size of the Border’s shelf, top to bottom full of manga I’d never even heard of before. When I was first getting into manga, I read everything I could find because there wasn’t that much to read, so I read everything. This place had more than I could read in 5 years, (my slow Japanese reading notwithstanding). If I’m getting this worked up over a bookstore that’s basically in the suburbs of Tokyo, I’m going to faint when I get to Akihabara.

The arcade was not exactly what I pictured it. There were a lot of crane games, some with prizes I would never even think of putting in. There was ice cream, candy, figurines, more candy, snacks, toys, plushies and so much more. I absolutely suck at crane games, so I didn’t try them, but I did manage to find the one Ganbaride machine in the whole place, which made me incredibly happy because I really want to play it and I couldn’t find one at Tsukuba Center. I only had enough money to buy one card (Kamen Rider Stronger), but I’m just glad I now know where it is. There were pachinko machines, Time Crisis 3 and 4, and these absolutely amazing full immersion games where you can pilot a Gundam. Again, I didn’t have enough money, and they were about 5 bucks per play, but I’m going to try it later anyway, even though I know I’ll die within 5 minutes.

That about wraps up Saturday. Sunday I did nothing. Which was incredibly nice after running all around the city for the past few days.

Monday I went to Japanese Education and Intro to Japanese …something or other. I’d look it up but my backpack’s across the room and I don’t want to get up. Both interesting, but I’m not sure I’ll continue with Japanese Education, as I only took it to see how it was. That night we went to some little shop for dinner where I had Katsudon (fried pork on rice with egg and other stuff), which was very good.

Tuesday there was Linguistic Anthropology, which I have to drop now that I have my Japanese classes, and Intro to Japanese…bah, I forget this one too. I’m dropping that one as well, partially because the teacher says “okay” once every 10 seconds (yes, I counted), but mostly because I’ve basically done that class already, and my other teacher did it better. For dinner, we went to get Okonomiyaki, which has been called “Japanese pancake” but it’s really nothing like a pancake. It’s shredded cabbage, egg, base and other ingredients (I had shrimp). It’s really cool because they just hand you the bowl of ingredients, you stir it up and then you get to cook it on the griddle on the table. Mine was quite yummy. There was some sort of brown sauce (what’s it made of? …brown) which went pretty well with it, and surprisingly, mayonnaise adds a richness to the flavor, something I did not think it would do.

Wednesday I finally managed to get my stupid bank card after the post office decided that they couldn’t push it through my mail slot, so I had to go to Tsukuba Center and pick it up. After a couple minutes of whispering, Laura and I finally figured out (I say figured out, but really we were just pushing random buttons hoping it wouldn’t kill my account) that the bank transfer went through and I now have moolah to spare. Hallelujah. We got lunch at Tsukuba Center again. I had a Teriyaki Burger at Mos Burger again because it is just so amazingly good. At Jusco, I managed to get another shelf and a couple of other big things. We quickly hoofed it over to the International Student Center to find out our placement test results for Japanese. I got into Level 400 kanji and Japanese. Laura got 500. I suppose I could probably move up, but I think I’ll stay at this level because we’re going over things I had problems with before, and I’m okay with reviewing a bit beforehand.

After that, I bought my books and a bus pass, so I may now go to Tsukuba Center whenever I please without worrying about my poor butt bruises and balancing a large bag in my bike basket. Then, it was onto the second-hand shop, where I bought a minifridge, a rice cooker and a television for fairly cheap, although I need to clean out the rice cooker badly. The fridge isn’t too bad. I can plug it in tonight, as apparently it still uses freon (dude, I though that was illegal) and so it got mixed up in moving, so you have to wait 24 hours. Yay! I may now actually have perishable food and be able to wake up to fresh made rice! (also, I can watch Japanese dramas XD whoo-hoo!)

I got to make pasta for dinner. It was quite yummy though the Japanese apparently don’t know the meaning of “flavor” when it comes to pre-prepared spice packets, as the thing said it was enough for the whole amount of pasta. It lied. I put in more basil and pepper, but I definitely need more spices. Maybe there’s a specialty store around here? I haven’t been able to find Oregano, and it looks like the most exotic spices they have here are Indian ones, which theoretically speaking, is only across the pond.

I had my kanji and Japanese classes today, with more classes in an hour. It looks like Thursday’s going to be my busy day, though the rest of the days aren’t too bad. We plan on grabbing probably the last of the big stuff needed at Jusco on Friday, Saturday will be back to Ieyasu mall and then Sunday… Sunday is Akihabara ^_____^ I can’t wait.

Must…Chicken Dance

Hmm, so starting from yesterday:

Professor didn’t come to class. He didn’t come to any of his other classes, so we have assumed that he is either exempt from the first day of class because he is a gaijin, or he’s dead. One of the two. Ended up going to Jusco again whereupon I realized in the checkout line that I had forgotten my wallet in my backpack. Whoops. I borrowed some money and bought my stuff, which included two little packets of cat treats, because I can’t help myself. They are absolutely adorable and if I don’t feed them then I’m going to end up petting them, which is nasty since they have bugs and fleas and live in the garbage (no, I’m not kidding). I left a handful by the garbage house on my way to the bath this evening, and when I came back later today it was gone, so I’m hoping the kittens got to eat something decent. They’re so cuteeeee…. I want to take them into my room…

Woke up this morning first to my alarm clock and then to an earthquake. Not a big one, it just kinda felt like someone was shaking the bed. That makes 3 this week. I’m not too badly freaked out by them, but if there is a big one, you can be sure I’m hiding under my metal desk.

Took the Japanese placement test this afternoon. I wanted to either kill myself or the guy who made the test or perhaps Noda-sensei for not creating a better textbook. Ours mostly focuses on speaking, so while I have a pretty good one, I know about 200-ish kanji and assorted words and phrases, it’s almost completely useless for everyday stuff. Also, since everything in our textbook is written in her linguist romaji, we are incredibly slow readers and usually I have to mouth stuff to myself. Everything was timed, so quite a few times I would click at the last second, but it would’ve already registered a null answer for that question, and then I accidentally end up clicking on an answer for the next question but I have no idea if it’s the right one or not >.> For quite a few of the questions involving kanji, I wanted to make an educated guess, but towards the end it was just kinda like “Do I know any of these? Nope. Ehhh, click this one, 1 in 4 chance of getting it right.”

Went out for dinner with a bunch of the other exchange students, which probably upset the shopkeepers of the ramen shop we visited. 12 people, mostly gaijin, yeah, that’s a little nerve-wracking. I ordered the Miso Ramen, because I’ve only ever had the instant variety. OMG it was good. Flavorful and savory and yum. I tried to slurp it, since that’s polite in Japan. I’m not sure if I succeeded too well, but at least I wasn’t silent.

We ended up going as a group of 18 to karaoke, which was amazingly fun. There was a good mix of Japanese and English songs, so most everyone could join in. I sang Linda Linda by The Blue Hearts, Missing by Ellegarden, Jesus by Gackt and Aishiteru by Base Ball Bear, all of which were Japanese (though granted, with a bit of occasional English). I think we utterly butchered A Whole New World XD

Some more futzing around and then returning to the dorms. There’s talk of maybe going to Tokyo this weekend…I really want to go.