Steak

Yesterday was really uneventful. Like, really. I got up, showered, went to Lawson 100, made myself a ham and cheese sandwich. I guess I drank too much apple juice or something, because I ended up feeling so tired I didn't want to do laundry or anything. So I stayed in all day, except when Dan came home. e had a long day at school, so we went to Cafe Gusto because he didn't feel like walking any further to a conbini to pick up food (the restaurant is a lot closer than any place to actually buy food).

I got a beef steak and melon soda. Surprisingly, Fanta is the maker of the melon soda and I'm pretty sure it's the same kind sold at Mister Donut too. I got special "domi" sauce with it, which tasted exactly like tomato soup according to Dan. I guess he's right...who would have thought that dipping steak in tomato soup would taste good?

Farewell~

So last night was the farewell party for Nicole since she's going back to America. Unfortunately, we got there really really late (like a half hour late x.X) but she still met up with us at the station so we could find the gyuudon place that we ate at before. I got the same Tokyo gyuudon as I ordered before the last time we went to Ueno. After we ate, we headed over to a bar that Brian recommended to Nicole where we all decided to get the free drinks for an hour and a half plan. Once we got to our room, I ended up ordering ramune sour. It's amazing that they make such a thing, and it was good too. Plus it had a lot more alcohol than that Tropical Sunrise did at Watami! I was surprised. I must have had four or five of them by the time our hour and a half was up.

Japanese karaoke works a bit differently than it does in America. For one thing, we're in our own private room so it's only our party, as you can see in the picture above.

We use this little device to find and select the song(s) we want to seen. There's two of them, so other people are putting in their songs to the queue at the same time. You can see my ramune sour on the right there. 8D

One of the girls who had been on exchange last year at my school in Massachusetts took this for us :)

The first song that I sung was Inside Fishbowl by Koda Kumi, and I think it really surprised everyone since they weren't expecting me to be able to speak any Japanese, let alone sing a Japanese song. They were telling me how good my pronunciation was, which was nice~ I also sung Want Me Want Me by Amuro Namie, which received some amusing actions from everyone who hadn't heard the song before.


After our hour and a half was up, we went downstairs and started chatting for a bit, trying to figure out what to do next. We ended up going upstairs for some more karaoke. However, all of the native Japanese speakers took off and it was Nicole, one of her friends, and us.

I ended up singing a bunch of songs, including Heavy Rotation by AKB48, which is amazing since I've never even heard the song in full before! Unfortunately our time was eventually up, and we headed home.

But first I took this picture of this bowl with magical chopsticks that fly up and down.

We said our goodbyes at the train station. I'm going to miss Nicole. She was sooooo helpful to us and I'm so thankful to her! ;w;

Yesterday

So yesterday for lunch we headed to Lawson 100 to buy food to eat, and along the way we saw the local denkiyasan (electronic store) and popped inside to see how much his TVs were. Well, lucky we did so! He actually had an old Panasonic TV from 2001 that does analog (although analog is going to be turned off in February, Sakura House gave us a crappy old TV and we can't get a digital tuner for it...yet). And the best part? He sold it to us for 3,000 yen! What a difference compared to the 30,000 yen we might have spent on a newer TV at Bic Camera. Yeah~ We can actually see dark places while we play games.

Yesterday the newest issue of Aria came out! I can't believe what a magazine junkie it looks like I've become...I promise I won't buy so many from now on! orz But so, Daniel and I headed to Ikebukuro to retrace the steps Nicole and I made before on our way to Animate.

I saw this sign at the train station for a Hello Kitty theme park. I kinda really wanna go.

So yeah, Animate. In case you can't tell, it's a store that's like 9 floors of anime, manga, and video game goods.

And here's a side view of the building. I'm kind of surprised they still have the Aria sign up.

And since my mom wanted me to pose in front of stuff, I took a picture posing in front of the building. Afterwards, we went in and I got my issue of Aria.

And I also got this as a gift with Aria, which is something that can only be received if you had bought it at Aria. It's so cool, I'm totally keeping this.

After going through each of the floors, we ran across the street to the entrance to Sunshine City to take pictures with Ultraman!

Daniel took a picture with him too after I asked him a few times if he wanted to, since he seemed hesitant at first! Haha.

After that, we headed on back to the train station. Before we headed home though I stopped at Fashion BeBe to buy myself a new Totoro handkerchief-towel. Since they were so cheap still, I snagged a few others so I can use them in rotation.

Even though I've never actually seen Totoro, they are just so cute!! T-T

After that, we headed home. We played Donkey Kong together that evening. However, some of the levels just kept screwing us over, so eventually we gave up and played one of the games in Kirby Superstar instead. Yay for old-school games~

One more thing about Friday...

I forgot to mention, since Friday the Cecil McBee autumn catalog came out, I picked it up at Seven-Eleven when we stopped by there to take some cash out.

The cover is just so sexy, and I love a love of the stuff inside. One thing I can't believe they're bringing out though are fur overalls...

It also came with this bag, which i also reversible so you can have the leopard print on the outside.

Also, while we were in Yotsuya I got a leaflet that was advertising that you could get a cut, perm, and color for 10,500. I hope they're still having it when I have a chance to get my hair done.

Yotsuya

Friday was not a very good day for us. We went to Yotsuya to visit my school.

This is a shot of the opposite direction from my school, where there's a busy city-like center.

Shot of some billboards and stuff. And luckily for me, my school is just a five minute walk from the station. It's also a pretty short train ride, although I have to jump lines once.

Instead of taking the direct route to the main gate, we kinda took a roundabout way and passed through a road that takes us to the back entrance. On the left you can see a sign for a church.

Here's the main gate to my school.

And then it was at this spot that bad things started happening. A huge bird in a tree took a ginormous crap on Dan. He was not very happy, and ended up using my Totoro handkerchief-towel to wipe himself off. Yeah, I ended up throwing it away. Not gonna wipe sweat off my face with a towel that's been covered in bird poo!

After walking through the main campus of the school (which was just buildings so it wasn't too impressive) we left and headed to a restaurant called Jonathan's. I didn't take a picture, but I ended up getting steak with what I think was called Damascus sauce since I'm really not a fan of the garlic sauce Japanese just love to put on their steaks.

After that, we headed to Shinjuku to go check out TVs at Bic Camera since the one that Sakura House gave us sucks and is impossible to play games with. They were all super expensive and fancy, so I told Dan let's check out a used shop first. Though unfortunately we didn't really get to do that. On the way back through Shinjuku station, I ended up slipping on the stairs and twisting my ankle in a weird way. I had done it earlier too on the stairs at our aparment, so my ankle felt like it was throbbing and it was not happy.

After a stop at a Sunkus, we ended up going straight home and staying in for the rest of the night.

Pizza

Today we got an advertisement for a pizza place called Pizza-LA today. We've kinda been looking at it all day and decided an hour ago we could really go for a pizza. Since we didn't feel like calling and ordering over the phone, we found out that Pizza Hut has online ordering and did it there. So we ordered what we thought would be a BBQ chicken pizza. Ordering process was kind of weird though, since I had to actually confirm my order through a link sent me to my email address and I wasn't sure if I understood how exactly to put my address in. Luckily I got it right since a half hour later our doorbell rung! Yay~

The box! As you can see we got an L size.

Aaaaand inside. We weren't expecting the sausages! And the BBQ chicken tasted like hamburg. But it was still super delicious. (≧∀≦)

Oh, did I also mention we had beer and ice cream delivered with it too?

Laundry Day

Today I decided I wanted to clean all my clothes. So I just did laundry. I didn't manage to wash everything before the sun set though, but there's always tomorrow.

But I noticed something amazing: the clothes I've bought here in Japan don't go all stiff while they dry! They're perfect. All of my American clothes feel so ick and hard when I take them off and I have to wear them for a bit before they'll feel normal again.

So amazing that Japanese clothes can withstand it... T_T

Though, I haven't washed my new jeans yet. So I'll find out if Japanese jeans are amazing too when it comes to hanging them up to dry in the sun tomorrow.

Sunshine City

Well, about 40 minutes after my last post yesterday I headed to the above-ground station (we usually take the subway) to hop onto the Seibu-Ikebukuro line so I could meet up with Nicole!

At the station, I managed to see the Galaxy Express train!

Unfortunately, since we both had already done some running around that day (me with going to Shinjuku and her on her BL hunt in Ikebukuro), we weren't up for too much more.

Though, I did manage to check out the Sanrio store a bit closer this time. Didn't buy anything though, so we headed off to a store called Animate instead. As it's name might imply, it was 8 floors of anime, manga, goods, video games, and everything in between. There was so much stuff. @_@

I got myself the first issue of a brand new shoujo magazine called Aria.

Since I bought it at Animate, I got this really pretty folder.

Inside it had a special sheet with the autographs and drawings by all the authors in the magazine. I've only managed to read the first three chapters in here (2 chapters and a oneshot), and I've enjoyed them all so far. Issue 2 will be coming out on Saturday, so can't wait to go pick it up!

After Animate, we headed over to Sunshine City again to get food...except we weren't really hungry. At first we got drinks at a place I think was called Dippin' Dan just so we could sit down, and then after browsing through Uniqlo for a bit everything started closing so we headed up to one of the upper floors to grab some food. We checkd out what all of the restaurants had to had and settled on a place called Ducky Duck.

Hard to see the logo, but it was pretty cute. I wasn't too hungry still (I had eaten a ham and cheese sandwich before I left and a bag of lightly salted potato chips) so I ordered some cake!

It was called Chiffon Symphony or something like that. I can't quite remember anymore. It was good, but not as good as the cake I had at Shibuya.

We decided to call it a night after that and headed home our separate ways.

Cecil McBee

We went to Shinjuku today. Daniel bought his commuter pass and then we headed to a shopping mall called Lumine to go to Cecil McBee. After some confusion as to what floor exactly it was on, we found it. Their Shinjuku store is nice and really bright, especially when compared to their Shibuya 109 one. That one's just really dark.

Anyway, I made my way to the cash register, managed to explain the situation (although I realize I made one grammar mistake), and I showed him the receipt and he made a stamp card for me. Yay, no trouble at all! The card's gold and shiny. I was proud I managed to 'fluently' handle the explanation though. Much better than my Japanese from yesterday.

Point Cards

So, Japan just looooooves their point cards. The people at Bic Camera were actually nice enough to ask if we had a point card or wanted to make one. After a few purchases, yeah, we decided we wanted to get a point card there. I also went out of my way to get a point card at Mister Donut, despite the one mishap I had where I forgot to give my point card and she didn't ask me. But whatever it was only 9 points.

I was poking around Cecil McBee's website, and I just realize that they ALSO have a point card. Well, first you need to fill out a stamp card, then you get the member's card. According to their website, I should be half way to earning a member's card. Rage! No one asked me if I wanted to make a stamp card or not, which I would have definitely said YES to.

From now on, no matter where I go, I'm going to ask if they have a point card and then say I want to make one. I'm also going to go ask the Cecil McBee in Shinjuku (which is where we'll be headed later) if I can use my receipt from yesterday to make a point card. If they refuse, I guess it's time to gaijin smash my way through and be a pushy foreigner...

Shopping♪

Todaaaay I dragged Dan with me to Shibuya 109. The sales were still going on, so I couldn't miss out!!

I also tried on fake lashes for the first time today. It took me forever to figure out though, and I especially couldn't get the right eye one on. But I did it in the end. Yay! I discovered the eyeliner I bought kinda sucks though. It's not as black as I'd like it to be.

But so we headed off to Shibuya and I got to wear my new sandals. :D When we got off we decided we were hungry and we stopped at a restaurant in a building I think was called "Gourmet Town" or something and we went up to the top floor to eat at a place called Nin'niku.

It kinda had more of a Mexican feel and design to it? Except...it served Japanese and Korean food and no Mexican food. Kinda weird.

My First Real Conversation

Well, today I have really just been staying in, but I decided a few hours ago I'd go out and wander around a little. I decided I'd go conbini hopping to see if I could find the magazines I wanted. After I left the second to last conbini I went to (I think it was a Family Mart), some dude tracked me down. And then I had my first real conversation with a Japanese person since I've been here.

Basically he asked me if I could speak Japanese, then went on about how his company is all dudes and he doesn't get to meet girls often, and I was so cute he thought he'd take his chance. And then I told him I had a boyfriend and he told me he still wants to go drinking with me as he walked away in the opposite direction.

O...kay.

But I quickly stopped by the Lawson 100 on the way home and got us some cup noodles, bread, melon pan, and cola. And now I eat ramen. nom.

Ueno

Yesterday Nicole took us to Ueno to show us some super cheap places to buy clothes and things. I guess Ueno is actually historically known as being where the black market was in Tokyo, so of course there were a lot of cheap vendors! But I can't believe I forgot my camera...I was so mad. Dan let me use the camera on his phone, but it's just not the same. *sob*

In any case, we looked around for some bags and Daniel found himself a cheap school bag he was happy with, which looks really Japanese especially since he put a cute little charm on it of a Nintendo character. We looked around a bit more, and then Nicole brought us to a store called ABAB, which is a huge mall with floors and floors of shoes and other girly fashionable things. She took us down to the basement first since it was the floor with makeup and tons and tons and tons of fake lashes.

I ended up buying Fairy eye lashes from a brand called Diamond Lash and a new black liquid liner. Afterwards, Nicole brought us back upstairs to look for shoes~

I ended up getting this pair, but man it sure left a blister on my right foot, even though they fit the left foot perfectly. Stupid feet that are different sizes!! I'll have to start carrying bandaids with me or something. In any case, I learned that I'm actually a large in Japanese shoe sizes. I would've never thought that though, considering how tiny my feet are compared to most Americans.

After shopping around ABAB a bit more, we decided we were ready for food and headed over to what Nicole told us was a well-known place to order gyuudon, which is beef on top of rice. It was pretty good, although I couldn't finish my bowl. I finished all the meat and half of the rice though.

It was kinda funny though, while we walked through Ueno so many people tried to advertise to us in English. One dude who was trying to advertise the pachinko parlor tried yelling "Evangelion!!" at us, to which we turned and laughed. Nicole says that she normally doesn't get so many people trying to talk to her in English. Makes me kind of think f my experiences in Shibuya 109, where people would just keep advertising to me in Japanese (although one chick actually asked if I spoke Japanese or not...should've said no LOL).

We headed over to Shinjuku to get a few basic and cheap things from a store called Uniqlo. I had totally forgotten to bring any tanktops with me, so I got a bunch of those.

Buying these things was a bit frustrating though. For one, I was stupid and tried on a black one first so I could figure out my size. That was such a huge mistake! I should've grabbed white. This type of thing wouldn't actually be an issue for Japanese people because they use aerosol deodorant. Beyond the color, I had some other issues in the bust size. The medium fit me just fine body wise, but not so much elsewhere. In any case, I ended up just getting mediums.

After Uniqlo, we headed over to Tokyu Hands so I could buy a cute notebook. I ended up getting a few more things than I thought I'd come out with though, they were just too cute.

 A Mickey Mouse notebook~

A pig notebook with really cute Engrish on it.

A super cute pencil with pictures of bears and a cute bunny hanging off it.

And I found my new planner for next year! It's just soooo cute!!

After Tokyu Hands we headed home. Daniel went to bed early, although I stayed up a little bit longer.

Yet Another Food Post

So, food expires really fast here. Like, really really fast. That ham I bought a few days ago? I just realized it expired yesterday. I had also bought yogurt a few days ago, and I just realized that it expires today. So I open it to see if it's bad, and I'm greeted with something so entirely different from what I'm used to from Yoplait yogurt or whatever brand that is I get...





Not my yogurt, but you get the point. On top of that, I can't tell if it's still ok to eat or not, and trash day was today. I don't want nasty rotting yogurt in my trash can for a week...I guess I have no choice but to close my eyes and eat it? X.X

Watami

After lunch and my rigorous fashion study, Daniel eventually came home and after some relaxation time we got ready to go out to what we thought would be karaoke.

Now, I know this picture is kinda sorta really gross, but this is a picture I took of a cicada that was in the hallway from our apartment. It's the bug that sings so loudly and all the time and is the sound that you think of when you think of the way a Japanese summer sounds. Isn't it big?

We met up with Nicole and a few of her friends, including a new acquaintance of hers who is a magician, in front of the famous statue of a dog called Hachiko. I wanted to take a picture of it, but there were so many people just hanging all over it I didn't.

After we tried to go to one bar, the magician said that he knew a cheaper and better place called Watami that he has a discount at. So we followed him and up the elevator by a Softbank store we went.

It was...something else. So, Watami is a Japanese bar. In order to enter the Japanese bar, you have to take your shoes off and go barefoot or socked. Unfortunately there weren't enough lockers for our shoes, so we just stuck them in bags and went in to our room. When I saw the table and the sitting cushions by it, I thoguht we were supposed to sit seiza (on your knees), though since I was a foreigner I just intended to sit crossed legged anyway. But luckily there was a opening underneath for us to just stick our legs in.

The night ended up consisting of ordering drink after drink (I think I got myself four or five Tropical Sunrises) and appetizers that were shared amongst everyone in our party as well. I think Daniel and I lapped everyone once or twice as far as drinks go though. Unfortunately there really wasn't enough in a Tropical Sunrise to get drunk off of, even though I managed to drink all of them pretty quickly. All I ended up getting was a nice little buzz and I was completely sober by the time we were walking home.

Didn't take many pictures, but we did manage to take the picture above, which is Daniel making that face, me, and Nicole... The most amazing thing about this picture though is how the magician managed to disappear from it! He was there in the picture one second, and then the next he's just...not in the picture at all. @_@

Also, the bathrooms were also Japanese style...ish. There were bathroom sandals we had to wear in. But man, I'm still not really sure about proper Japanese bathroom etiquette...is it okay to sit on the toilet?? They look clean... I also can't figure out how the hell to use the soap dispenser.

It was kind of amazing when we were leaving, because Shibuya was just so bright that it seemed like daytime! Nicole and a few others were talking about karaoke, but we decided we were tired so Daniel and I headed home. When we switched trains at Aoyama-icchoume, we decided to stop and take a bathroom break...which frightened me. I saw two stalls open, and I checked the first which was a Western toilet but decided I'd rather be in the further one...until I realized that toilet was a Japanese toilet, meaning it was on the floor! I had no clue how to tackle that monster. So I used the Western one. Also, there was no soap dispenser in this bathroom to try to figure out and also nothing to dry your hands with, so I had to use my Totoro towel handkerchief. Either that or wipe them on my pants, which weren't the cleanest things at that point either.

The Japanese public restroom is a very scary thing to me.