One Last Visit to School

The day after Harajuku, if I remember right we spent the day first going to the post office to mail our stuff off. I managed to successfully ask the kind lady, whom I had become a bit acquainted with because of my shopping serivce, if we could borrow a dollee cart and the post office allowed us to for free. We ended up mailing around 10ish boxes (I think), nearly all of them were shipped by boat. By now my boyfriend has received the contents of our apartment, but unfortunately it took two months to reach us. Two months of waiting with no status update on the post office website. We were so afraid our stuff was lost, but so happy when it all arrived over the course of a few days.

It was so sad to see such an empty apartment after though. I think we spent the rest of the day around town. I remember we went to BookOff one last time and then went to the other side of town at some point to the recycle shop. I bought a Juriano Jurrie onepiece (which, because I have a butt, will have to be worn as a top) and Cecil McBee top. I was tempted to buy a Cecil McBee winter coat I saw there but decided against it in the end. Kiiind of regret that, though I have no idea how that would have fit into my suitcase! I barely got everything to fit int there as it was.

Daniel bought some clothes for himself and also bought one of the Yakuza games from the used and new game shop that was connected to the recycle shop. When we got home though, we realized that it was the wrong one! I went back by myself to see if I could get the proper one. The lady at the counter was very nice and refunded the money for the game. On the way back I ran into the ladies who work at the post office returning home from work and we chatted a bit before I got home.

Despite having paid for a full month's rent, we got kicked out of our apartment a day earlier than we expected. Originally we were going to get our apartment checked out the morning before we left but instead they had to check us out on that Saturday due to the amount of people who were leaving. Luckily for us the guy who checked us out said he could get us a reservation at one of their hostels in Ikebukuro. He was even nice enough to take our bags to the hostel for us aftr he finished his checkouts for the day. This was a great relief considering our plan was to go to Shinjuku, ditch our stuff in coin lockers, and then head to the airport to spend the night there.

Keys taken away, we headed to the university I had attended. I still had the photocopied copy of Chuushingura I had borrowed from my professor, so I needed to drop that off before we left. We got to the school without any major bird attacks, I told campus security I was going to drop off the book and leave, and went in. Dropped the book off, and I took these final pictures of my school before we left.

The last thing we did before we left Yotsuya was give the homeless man who sits next to my school daily all of our change. It was mostly one and five yen coins, but hopefully there was enough in there for him to buy a few meals.

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

The beautiful view from downstairs, just outside of my apartment.

The past few days it's been so rainy and yucky. It even snowed recently too! This is quite unfortunate, considering we just recently had a day when it was 20C out and all of the trees and flowers seemed to be wanting to come to life. A nearby cherry blossom tree (or maybe it's a peach blossom?) seems to be wanting to blossom as well. It's strange though, considering it's so chilly out these days but the convenience stores are starting to play songs about cherry blossoms. I guess they must start doing that everywhere at the beginning of March or something. It looks like it might warm up for Sunday though, which is good since I'll be meeting up with everyone from Nogyaru that day. I'm looking forward to it, but guess this means I won't be able to buy new shoes quite yet. At least I've got my rain boots for the rainy days so my socks don't get soaked from those holes. I just hope it warms up quickly enough that I can pull out my sandals again!

At the very least, today today is sunny, so I can get some laundry done.

I've noticed that this vacation I've been slacking quite a bit on my Japanese studies. Why does this always happen to me during my breaks? Even though I have so much time I just don't feel like opening Anki and doing it. I guess I should just reset my sentence deck for now and start from the beginning, especially since I'm sure that there's so many reviews that I'd never work up the urge to make them all up.

I Hate Conversations Over the Phone

I reserved a set from a shop called MA*RS for a customer of mine. Today the call came to tell me it was in, however it ended up being a rather frustrating phone call for me. For one thing, she talked very, very fast. I assumed it was a call from the MA*RS shop before I picked up the phone, so I tried to listen as best as I could, however when she got to her question I could not understand it because of her speed.

I've noticed that I've had this same problem before when I've received calls before. Is it just that they speak very quickly over the phone in order to spit all of the introduction, explanation, and questioning as fast as possible, or that without being able to see them face-to-face that I have trouble following what they're saying? I guess it's probably a mixture of both.

In any case, the first time I asked her to repeat herself she said, "You don't understand Japanese don't you?" Second time, "You really don't understand Japanese after all, do you?" She probably just didn't realize how fast she was speaking at all, but saying this directly to me was just kind of annoying.

In any case, I finally understood her final question on the third try: Can you come to the store today? I asked if I could go tomorrow instead, so guess I will be heading to Shinjuku after I head to the post office. After staying inside yesterday and today I kind of have the itch to head out to go somewhere anyway.

Recently

Nearly a month has passed by now since a few of the happenings I want to write about, but I suppose for now I'll just update about what I've been up to. I've been mostly focusing on my shopping service and I think it's starting to go pretty well. I've been getting quite a few customers and now even a repeat one. It's fun to go shopping for people! But I guess because of that it leaves me a bit worn out and I haven't really had much inspiration for blogging.

Shopping hasn't been the only thing I've been doing for my shopping service. I went to a CD signing event yesterday for a customer. It was such a nightmare for me. When I got there, there were so many girls lined up to get their CDs signed they had said that lining up was temporarily closed. However that didn't stop a bunch of a girls from jumping in whenever there were gaps. I admit, I jumped in with one group of those girls. Even though I did this though, the total wait was at least two hours. When I finally got into the room where the band was autographing on the top floor of the shopping mall, I didn't realize that we could only get the autograph of the dude that was on the CD label. Not to mention, I didn't even know who was actually on the CD's label in the first place! So I just got into the line as the vocalist because he had brown hair. However turns out that there was another dude with brown hair, and he was the one on the CD. How embarrassing it was to wait all the way through the vocalist's line and then have to go wait in the guitarist's line, which was the longest! That sucked so much. I must have looked so pissed off by the time I got to where the guitarist was sitting. All I could think of to say was "yoroshiku onegaishimasu" (please take care of me) and "arigatou gozaimashita" (thank you very much). He probably thought that was all I knew how to say anyway. He had a sort of mixed look on his face when he looked at me and only said "Hai!" (Okay!) to me as he handed back the CD.

I have to say though, he looked a lot different in real life compared to the photoshopped picture of him on the CD. Up close he looked like a regular Tokyoite: really skinny with a ton of hair products in his hair. I bet if I had touched his hair it would've been a bit crunchy.

I was rather shocked by the whole thing though, since the girls there were so dressed up! I wish I had my camera with me because some of those girls looked incredible. I was also really surprised by the range of different fashion styles there. There must of been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of girls dressed up in their very best and most expensive clothes and accessories, lined up with the mindset as if they were on a pilgrimage to a holy land to meet the messiah or something. They all must have all carried expensive gifts for their idols as well, because I noticed that in the room outside of the signing the boxes for gifts for each individual member of the band was overflowing. They all must have left chocolates as well since tomorrow is Valentine's Day.

I must admit though, unless it's for a singer/band that I like, I don't think I'll do this kind of thing again. I was completely drained by the time I left that place and practically near tears when I was on the train. By the time I got home I was so exhausted I found it hard just to use my chopsticks to eat dinner. Soon after I ended up passing out in the middle of doing something. I was not a happy camper last night.

Speaking of food, the past few nights I've managed to experiment a bit. The night before last I tried this cheese carbenera pasta. I wasn't such a fan but that's probably because it got cold really fast. Probably tastes better hot. Last night I really wanted some rice, so I got a bento that had hamburg with cheese on it. I figured I hadn't tried eating hamburg for a while, so I should give it a try. To my surprise, it was pretty good.

It actually snowed here last Thursday and Friday! I managed to get two of my shoes completely soaked before I took out my rain boots. I'm glad my skinny jeans can fit in them.

As far as a regular job goes though, I never heard back from that one store. However, I saw that a nearby convenience store was hiring, but when I finally had the courage to ask about it the manager wasn't in so she told me to call later. Well I'm not so good when it comes to calling, so I went back instead only to find that the sign was gone!! I was pretty shocked and went in the next day. The same old lady was working there and I asked her about it and she said they were still hiring but the manager only comes in after 5 so I should come back then. So I did that night and this time I actually asked. There were two guys working there, but the manager wasn't in so one of the guys called the manager up. Turns out that I had just missed the deadline for applying this month, but they'll hire again at the beginning of next month. I can't believe I had just missed it!

Daniel has been away the past few days doing touristy stuff his school had organized. It's been a bit strange being here all by myself, but he'll come back today. Can't wait to see his pictures! I wish I could have joined along, but hopefully we can do a bit of sightseeing across Japan before we leave.

Now that I think about it, we've been in Japan for six months now. Wow, it's gone by so quickly!

Sorry for these long posts that are just walls of text. Hopefully my next few posts will have some pictures!

Yakiimo & Chicken

Video courteous of Daniel. You know you are in Japan when, similar to the fashion in which the ice cream truck drives by with its own music, a truck with a man singing about yakiimo (baked sweet potatoes) drives by in your neighborhood. They drive at a crawl, and you can hear the song for quite a while as they go through your little section of town. Just like little kids go running for the ice cream truck in the United States, people here make frantic dashes for the yakiimo truck.

In other news, I've taken quite a leap of faith today in my dinner tonight.

It looks like chicken in ketchup? You can never be so sure when you're me whether it'll be safe to eat or not.

So I got myself a chocolate donut just in case I didn't like the chicken part and only ate the rice. It tasted surprisingly good. Which is good, since I managed to finish eating it. The donut was okay for a packaged donut.

I'm so glad that chopstick packages come with toothpicks though. So handy whenever food gets stuck in your teeth. Even in restaurants they have cups filled with toothpicks at every table. Too bad American restaurants don't do this too.

Happy New Year!

It's a bit late, but Happy New Year!

On New Year's Eve we went to Zojoji Temple.

Zojoji Temple is right next to the famous Tokyo Tower. It was so close we felt like we could touch it! My goodness it was so crowded, but even more surprising was the amount of foreigners there. There were food vendors all over the place together with really long lines. We went inside the temple as you can see in the picture above first.

Inside was a gorgeous gold Buddhist display along with a long offering box in front of it. Many people were throwing coins in and praying.

Outside and around the back of the temple, I managed to snap a picture of myself in front of Tokyo Tower.

Back behind the temple we found some pretty interesting things. The sign above includes a poem about cherry blossoms.

In a second temple they had another similar display along with souvenirs to be bought.

Why did we choose Zojoji Temple? To see them release 3,000 balloons at midnight! Unfortunately we didn't notice the line soon enough, so we couldn't get a chance to get one of the balloons to release. I suppose that's not such a bad thing though, considering by the time we were done exploring the temple grounds we decided we were both tired and had headaches and it would be better to went home early since we still had at least three hours before midnight. We stopped by Gusto for dinner since we were starving and dying to eat something warm. I got 'chicken Cesar salad' and different kinds of hot dogs and sausages.

At home we ended up watching this enka and singing competition on TV. The New Year programs weren't quite like the ones we're used to in America. No ball dropping, no fireworks, no seeing what other people were doing around the world. Then again, we were one of the first places to welcome the new year. It was a bit disappointing. We were hoping they would show the balloon display on TV, but they didn't have that either.

Now I'm already back at school, which started back up on Thursday (the 6th). Just a month left to go before the fall semester finishes! Can't wait for spring vacation to start.

Saturday

Well this'll be the first Saturday I've been on my own. Daniel's off at a tour with his school of Ikebukuro and Akihabara. So I've been doing laundry, but I just ran out of clips so I guess I'll stop now and do studying or something.

Here's a picture of my nails done with the nail cocktail polish. I didn't put the jewels on yet, probably will today?

I got a message from a friend who was on exchange to my school when I was a freshman in Massachusetts today!! I hope we can meet up this weekend. I haven't seen her in so long!

...and that's about the excitement I have for now. Oh, I made a Twitter..

...oh, apparently Daniel just got home.

It Has Happened.

Out of detergent so I headed to Drug Papas. I asked for help in Japanese, explained in situation in Japanese. All the responses I got back were in English. My Japanese was perfect except for the fact that I don't know the word for detergent, and yet I all of her responses were in English, as if I didn't know any Japanese. This makes me :(. I'm sure she thought she was being helpful, but...no! :( Or maybe she was just in denial?

It's amazing how even though it's in the 80s today everyone's already pulled out their fall wardrobe. I only saw like one person wearing shorts. Granted, I was wearing half-pants since all my shirts are hanging to dry right now, but still. It's hot out!

Note to Self:

Never open door when it rings if I am not expecting a delivery from mom or from Pizza Hut ever again. Yet another Jehovah's Witness came by, and this time I was by myself. I attempted the same tactics that Dan used by failed and she said she wanted to stop by again and talk to me some more orz

I guess that it's true that we white people appear older to Japanese because she was surprised when I gave her the excuse that I'd be busy with school.

She even gave me a book entitled "What does the Bible Really Teach?"...



In other news, I've been taking showers early in the day/morning, but I think I'll be switching to night so I can braid my hair before I go to sleep and wake up with natural wavy hair. Guess I'll get some hair spray to keep it in though.

Ugh, there's been some annoying baby that's been crying on and off all morning and early afternoon. Make it stoooop.

Books~

Monday I stayed inside and did laundry and study. Was pretty bored throughout the day. Today I had cabin fever, and needed to get out and do stuff...! But Daniel needed his own stay inside day, so I headed out into the local neighborhood on my own. Since I've been wanting a light novel to read, my first stop was the local bookstore. Hooray for them taking credit cards though~ Even Kinokuniya didn't accept my Amex.

I got the first novel in the Hakushaku to Yousei series. I've been wanting this one~ I also picked up the book I spotted in Kinokuniya that looked really interesting: Nihonjin no shiranai nihongo (Japanese That Japanese People Don't Know). It's about the experiences of a teacher of Japanese. I've read about a quarter of it already, and it's really funny. I think I'd want to check out the drama too.

Otherwise, I hit up the local grocery to buy some margarine and then to Lawson 100 to buy other necessary food.

I also decided I wanted to try out this gum since Majolica Majorca is said to be the company who designs it!? Majolica Majorca is a popular cosmetic brand here...lol. The flavor is "peach magic" though I haven't tried it yet. I hope it doesn't melt like the American gum I brought with me did...Sucks to be in a different country without your favorite gum. :(

Also, it seems we got someone else's bill from Softbank. The name is a kanji I can't read, but it was probably the previous tenant of our apartment. I ended up taking it to the local Softbank store and asking the person who works there about it, and she said it was probably sent to me by mistake and I should probably call the English Softbank customer service...naaaah.

I ended up grabbing McDonalds for us for dinner. At least I can take comfort in knowing there's a place where I can get a meal that reminds me of home just 10-15 minutes away. :x

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.

Mikoshi

So, we were just chilling in our apartment. We heard some whistles and shouts coming from nearby, but we thought it was the elementary school since it's just the next street over. So, we thought it was nothing. But then I left our bedroom to go to the bathroom and the shouting gets really really loud. I thought it was some kid marathon or something so I say "Are they right outside of our apartment?" and unlock the door and head outside.

What do I see?? zomg it's the people carrying mikoshi (which are kinda like portable shrines for gods)!

And there's so many of them! I'm surprised we didn't realize they were in front of our house sooner.

It sure is easy to start going sideways on those things. Each time they get sideways they stop and realign themselves with someone cheering them on while they do so.

After they realigned themselves, they kept on going.

But then I realized that wasn't the end of it.

A bigger mikoshi was coming! 

This one was held up mostly by dudes. There was surprisingly at least 3 foreigners holding that thing up too! And it was then that I decided I'll take a video!

Thanks to Daniel for fixing the beginning~

It's September Now

Last night we noticed that it was quiet outside. The sound of the cicadas that characterizes summer was missing. Also, there was a very cool wind blowing last night. Today I don't hear their singing either. I guess this means that summer is going to end soon.

Tuesday we attempted to get our foreign registration card, but we were hungry so we stopped for ramen first, but then we were too late and decided we'd get it Thursday.

Also, I got a telegram from Sabina, which was really cool. I didn't know they still did stuff like that.

Yesterday I did laundry and then headed off to Ikebukuro to get a yukata. I ended up buying this one! I can't wait to wear it out, though I need to find myself a good hair accessory to wear with it. I also discovered what an amazing place Ikebukuro station is. It has 2 shopping malls just connected to it! One is Ikebukuro PARCO and the other is Lumine. I'll probably go to PARCO for all of my shopping needs from now on.

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.