To Kinokuniya

Yesterday was Dan's day off from school, so we decided we'd go back to Shinjuku. Really good thing too, since I was itching to go out somewhere, even if it's just to walk around and see what there is to see or just go look at the shiny electronics and accessories in Bic Camera.

There was a surprising chill in the air yesterday. I wanted to wear my new dress and furry vest from Cecil McBee, but it wasn't quite THAT cold enough. I ended up wearing my other one-piece from Cecil McBee, the one with the Engrish, and some leggings. Also wore these boots for the first time I bought a while ago. Unfortunately I was dumb enough not to wear socks and got some blisters on the back of my right heel.

So yeah, Shinjuku. We sought out Kinokuniya, a very large Japanese bookstore branch (it even has a few stores in America). While we knew vaguely where we could find it, we weren't sure for sure so we started wandering around.

We saw a Taito arcade and decided to stop in there first, but didn't really see anything we'd want to try getting from the UFO catchers, Daniel did end up playing one arcade game and I managed to rest my aching feet for a little bit. After that we left and looked for the bookstore some more. After checking out a map, we finally found our way and made it.

I looked at a map for the bookstore and figured what we wanted would be on the seventh floor, so we headed to the elevators. I was surprised that they actually have people running the elevators and telling you what's on each floor as you go. We made it to the seventh floor and started looking around.

I saw a surprising amount of studying materials for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. It took me forever to figure out that there was a sign saying that we have to ask for the application form at the register though, silly me. Daniel was surprised to find that they stocked the textbook he needs for his Japanese class. He said he thought they wouldn't have so many foreign books, and they indeed did have quite a bunch of them. So, he ended up getting that and I got the application form together with the JLPT official guide book since it had a practice exam inside. I think I might go back and get the other practice books later. There was also a book about how to get a job in Japan for international exchange students, so I'll probably pick that up as well sometime in the future.

After that, we were hungry so we headed to a place called Old New York Pasta.

We got a four cheese pizza, which surprisingly had no tomato sauce. Oh, and it had chicken. What?? I ordered cheese, not cheese and chicken...but it didn't matter since the pizza was really good. It didn't last very long before we devoured the entire thing.

Afterwards we headed to the train station and headed home. However, despite my aching feet we had one last stop: The new store that's like a CVS called Drug Papas was having a super special opening sale and everything in the store was 20% off!＼(゜□゜)／ The store wasn't supposed to have its grand opening until Saturday, so we hurried in and started buying like crazy. I managed to get a good cheap nail polish remover, and a bunch of cheap cotton puffs, amongst other things...

...like Natchan! apple juice! I'm trying to stay off apple juice, but the logo is just so cute...I can't resist it!! You can see the nail polish remover and the cotton puffs in the picture too lol And yes, that is my ironing board...we have no proper table to do homework on or write on, so we've been using the ironing board.


Anyway, everything was cheap, we were intending to buy a lot thinking we'd just charge it to the credit card. We even found Bounty paper towels and Listerine. I even found a box of 34 tampons. It took me forever to find though, since they were hidden on a small portion of the top shelf and surrounded by a whole aisle of a bajillion brands of pads.

The line was super huge and snaked around the whole store. And then we got to the front of the line, and there was a sign that said that credit cards can't be used until Tuesday. (￣□￣;)!! So we paid for the whole thing in cash, which wasn't too much luckily since everything was discounted... I managed to get one of their point cards though, but even the point card can't be used until Monday! I guess this means that their opening sale is going to last all weekend.

By the way, the building for Drug Papas was nothing the first day we got here. Absolutely nothing, just ground. But they built it and made it into a working store so quickly! Just one month!! Watching their progress day by day was really interesting.

So we headed home and I took the non-listening portion of the practice exam in the official guide book. I got 24 out of 31 questions right, which is a 77% which means I passed that portion. Yay! I looked over the ones I got wrong again and nearly all of them were stupid mistakes since I started getting tired/lazy and I should have known better. But there's still a lot of vocabulary I need to study (over 2000 words still) and still a lot of grammar I need to go through. Also I haven't even tackled any listening yet.

Someone said that they try to read a half hour a day of Japanese printed things, so I think I might go to BookOff and buy a used novel. I should probably also try to watch those stupid talk shows for at least an hour a day to tune my hearing too.

Today I'll probably do laundry and make more flashcards. Gonna try to do at least 20 grammar points today.