Mobile: クリスマスタイム

日本でのクリスマスタイム！
Christmastime in Japan

江戸東京博物館

I went to the Edo Tokyo Museum today!


I was supposed to go with Melissa, but she accidentally overslept, so I ended up just looking around by myself. It's a huge museum. I wish I was there with someone so we could take pictures of using some of the hands-on things they had there. (There were rooms you could go in, bikes and other vehicles you could sit in, that kind of thing.) It's a very thorough museum. It goes from the beginnings of Edo, covers all aspects of life (economy, international communication, arts, etc.) and goes up until the Tokyo Olympics.


It took me 2 hours to get through it, though near the end I wasn't looking at everything. I wish I had gone before my Japanese Civilization midterm. It might have helped me remember stuff. Overall though, it was nice to look at all the stuff.


I didn't go see the special exhibit since the museum was closing. I think it was something about pottery, but I'm not sure since the title was in kanji that I couldn't read. I was a little disappointed that I didn't wait until December because they'll be having a special exhibit on Hokusai. Though it's only 440 yen or so to get in, I could always go back. =)

ただいま！

I'm back!

...and with a brand new MacBook! (Though I would have much rather just kept my old one. I was way more used to it.) Anyway, let's recap what's been going on...

On the 21st, I went to Sunshine City in Higashi-Ikebukuro for the first time. It's basically just a ton of shopping, but I did find a really good grocery specialty store. They have those truffles they sell at Trader Joe's and a bunch of interesting imported foods. I also found a Lupicia! Lupicia is my favorite tea company. They have a ton of stores in Japan, but only one in the U.S., in San Francisco. So after getting some Sirocco tea, nougat, and dried veggies, I was quite pleased. =)

Since my computer was broken, I spent a lot of time (finally) doing some non-school related reading. I finished "What is the What" by Dave Eggers. Highly recommended. I couldn't put it down after I got back into it. I also read "Out" by Natsuo Kirino (in 2 days!). That is one of the most disturbing books I've probably ever read, with the exception of a few scenes in Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" and a story called "Red Hair" by another Japanese author. I don't know what it is about Japanese authors. They write a lot of perverse stuff. Anyway, I'm looking to start "Survivor" by Chuck Palahniuk. After that, I'm out of English books.


The 25th was a fun day. Hank came in from Kyoto, so I met up with him and Vinodh in Harajuku where we did a bunch of shopping (Above: Harajuku Uniqlo UT Store) and ended out the evening with an hour of karaoke. That, however, was not the end of the night. So-ky and Busby were throwing a Thanksgiving dinner since we all missed it. So I bought a pudding-cake-fruit-dessert and made my way back to good ol' Kameido. Anjee had also come in from Kyoto, so it was nice to see her. I must say, for a bunch of exchange students, we put together a pretty good dinner. Salad, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie (that was amazing, none of us expected pumpkin pie), chicken, stir fried veggies, mac and cheese, Japanese fried chicken, apples, mini-cheesecakes, fruit-pudding-cake-desert, and two other kinds of tarts. (Basically, every girl brought or made a dessert. haha.) Are you impressed? I was impressed.


Besides that, I've been running back and forth from here to Ginza to get my new computer. Ginza is kind of like New York. The department store next to the Apple Store was basically made into a big Louis Vuitton box, and it has the nicest Dotour Cafe I've seen yet. (Dotour Cafe's are everywhere.) Anyway, the Apple Store. It was crazy that they had so many bilingual people. According to one employee, about 1/3 of the people that work there are bilingual. (It really threw me off when the one white employee came up to me and was like, "keigo keigo keigo".) I was thinking that if I had been more into computers, it would have been kind of fun to work in that store. There's these two automatic glass elevators that just look neat.


As far as school goes, I'm mid-midterms. And I got an 82 on my Japanese midterm. Boo. I'm no good at particles and remembering verb tenses in grammar patterns.

Mobile: 晩ご飯

Dinner

自分で作ったカレー！
Curry I made myself!

Mobile: イライラ

3ヶ月半。
日本に住んでることにかかわらず、日常生活はまだ複雑だよ。留学生の友達と話したのは外国人のことばかりだ。
日系人なので私の場合は普通の外国人と違う。外国人はいろいろないい特徴があって、日本人との付き合いはもっと簡単だと思う。(例えば、格好が良い。）私には…
外国人点：１
それは？ 日本語が話せないこと。
とにかく、みんな楽しいThanksgivingを…！

Irritated

Three and a half months.
Despite living in Japan, everyday life is still confusing. The only thing my exchange student friends and I talk about is being foreigners. Since I"m Japanese-American my situation is different from a regular foreigner. There are a lot of good points to being a foreigner and I think it's easier to just go out with Japanese people. (For example, they look 'cool.') As for me...
Foreigner Points: 1
What is it? Not being able to speak Japanese.
Anyway, everyone have a fun Thanksgiving!

Mobile: アップルブルース

昨日、iBookを壊れてしまった。今日、銀座のGenius Barに行った。5日間ぐらいコンピューターがないけど無料で直すって。音楽や写真などなくなるので少しカナシイ。

直したまで、携帯電話のメールアドレスで連絡してね！

Apple Blues

Yesterday, I broke my iBook. Today, I went to the Genius Bar in Ginza. I won't have a computer for about 5 days, but they said they could fix it for free. I'll lose things like my music and pictures, so that's kinda sad. Until they fix it, contact me on my cell phone email!

"エビとのコラボ！"

...ってか、旅愛のみ会！

("Collaboration with shrimp!"...or, travel club drinking party!)

So this week, my Japanese midterm owned me. Really, I didn't know we'd have so many questions to answer on the reading, so I didn't divide my time up well...anyway, we'll see how that goes. A lot of people didn't finish.

The good news, as stated before, today was my first nomikai with travel club. I've now discovered that the later it is and the more tired I am, the less Japanese I'm able to understand and use. I think I only understood like..half the conversation. But despite that, the food (at Salsa Cabana) was good and it was fun to mostly listen. Everyone is really nice, even if I can't talk to them that well. It's weird to be the only who doesn't understand everything that's going on, but it's a comfortable atmosphere. Rina tells me that after a while, you get to know people and it becomes like a family. =D And the shrimp thing? That was, I think, my favorite thing anyone said all night. Keisuke (I'm trying really hard with names, it's embarassing I can't remember them all.) got this chocolate/ice cream crepe thing on his shrimp and said that. XD Japanese people also do not know how to drink tequila. The salt and the limes and oh, the confusion. Hahaha. It was all fun though. Whoo.

It's gotten really cold all of a sudden. Had to bust out my biggest jacket. I really think I need to go shopping for long sleeves and coats/sweaters/jackets. I was not expecting it to switch so suddenly.

Mobile: 犬

Dog!

カラオケの外で見た犬です！

The dog we saw outside karaoke!

soundsreal

Nothing too exciting has been going on lately. I bought new headphones since my old iPod ones broke. No more in-ear headphones for me. I ended up with some (affordable) audio-technica ones. My old ones must have been really messed up, because everything I listen to now sounds so much better. (Some stuff I've never listened to except on my laptop speakers or with those bad headphones, so I'm sort of amazed.) I also have another blog just for fun. Mostly it's just to practice Japanese and it's probably full of mistakes. XD It's about music stuff, but feel free to check it out.

新ブログは音楽中心です。
日本語で書こうと思って、作りました！
別に日本に留学する一年間に関しないけど是非読んで下さい！
間違いだらけですけどよろしく。

LOTTE BLACK

LOTTE BLACK = crackchocolate.

I've been having a pretty awesome week. Let me count the ways:

1. Vietnam is a GO!
2. I just got paid!
3. I owned my literature essay in the face (relatively, for not doing all the reading)
4. I discovered some great dark chocolate.
5. Yuhki is coming to Tokyo this weekend!

So about that crackchocolate. That's my new name for LOTTE BLACK since I was doing fine when I got home. I was tired. Then I drank some juice, ate an apple, and ate some chocolate. After the choclate I just became really hyper. Ask Yuhki. He had to put up with my insane instant messages. I'm not one hundered percent sure it's the chocolate that's got me all crazy, but this mood is just strange. Whee~ (I promise I didn't ingest anything mind altering or illegal. I promise.)

Ilove/hateJapan.

ベトナム大使館、代々木八幡宮、明治神宮

Today I went on a hunt to find the Embassy of Vietnam. Definitely not as easy as I thought it would be. It's in a sort of apartment/resiential area, so I kept thinking I was in the wrong place. Anyway, I was able to get my visa, good for one month of tourism. XD I also booked my flights, so I'll be leaving on December 23rd, leaving on December 30th, and arriving back in Tokyo on December 31st. I had a little bit of a panic attack when I found out that the flight to VN I was going to book was filled after I'd already booked the domestic flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Da Nang, but I was able to find an even better set of tickets, so it worked out well. =)


Besides that whole bit of organizing and arranging, I stopped at the Yoyogi-hachiman shrine that was on the way to the embassy. (See above.) It was really small, but people really go to it since I saw about 5 people there. On the way back to Heiwadai, I also stopped at Meiji Jingu, which I'd been overlooking on all my trips to Harajuku.


Meiji Jingu has one of the biggest (if not the biggest) wooden gate in Japan. There were also a bunch of sake barrels stacked up like a wall next to the path leading to the shrine. I'm not exactly sure what it was there for, but it looked cool. XD I took a picture of the sign..maybe one of these days I can figure out the purpose of it. One of my favorite things at Meiji Jingu is the tree where everyone places the votives they've written their wishes on. There are sooo many of them in so many different languages. (I saw Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese, French, German, I think it was Arabic...and a bunch that I couldn't really identify.) It's kind of cool to see so many wishes and hopes all in one place.


I didn't write one myself. Maybe I'll go back one day and do one. I was going to, but I didn't know what I wanted to write. There were some families taking their 7, 5, and 3 year olds to temple for the Japanese 七五三 (7,5,3) thing. It was really cute to see them all dressed up and trying not to step on the middle of the gate when they walked in. (You're suppposed to step over it, not on it.) That's all for now!

not quite homesick

I was talking to another girl who lives in my apartment and I realized that living here doesn't really feel like real life. It's definitely not as much work as before. I don't have a real job like I did at the Testing Center, and the classes aren't that great either. I mean, the teachers definitely know what they're talking about, but two of my teachers [who teach in English] are really bad at speaking. Besides that, I wrote a crappy essay on some readings I barely did and got a 'B'. It's like school and work got a whole lot easier and being social got a whole lot harder. Sounds dumb right? But when you're sitting at a club meeting where you're the only non-native Japanese speaker trying to understand the next event that's going on, it kind of takes you back to when you were little and you wanted to hang out with the big kids even though you didn't know what they were talking about. Ah, but I try. I try.

All that stuff aside, it is a lot of fun. There's no shortage of places to go, things to see, or things to try. Sometimes I feel like I'm having too much fun and not being serious enough about my studies or spending too much money or whatever else. I've just never had so much free time before. It's almost like being homesick, but I think it's actually just twisting up my lifestyle. Oh, Japan. What am I going to do?

ソフィア際!

Sophia Festival!

I met Nobuko at school today so we could to go the school festival together. There were a lot of people there, so it was kind of crazy, but a lot of fun. I had some ジャージャー麺 (jaa jaa men, Chinese noodles) and some Jijimi (Korean pancake). I saw Eun-jeong and So-hee at the Jijimi booth since they're both in the Korean Exchange Student Club. The jijimi flipping was kind of impressive. Haha. Anyway, after that, I went to Bldg. 9 to find Tom since he said he was going to be dressed up like a schoolgirl all day. When I got to the room it said: コスプレ＆ゲイBar (Cosplay & Gay Bar). Then Nobuko and I looked in and there were a bunch of guys (basketball players, hahaha) dressed as girls, sitting at little makeshift cafe-like tables talking to people who paid for little snacks. Hahahahaha. It was like one of those things you see on those Japanese dramas. Some of them were really pretty too! And the ones with make up actually had good makeup. It was sorta scary in a funny way.


After that, we went to the stage to watch G-Splash, Sophia's best dance team. They were amazing~! If you look them up on Youtube, they're there. We also ran into Wendy and Melissa, so we watched the Mr. Sophia Contest together. Wendy was rooting for contestant four, who was on the basketball team. (Five contestants total, one of them was even a foreigner.) They did questions and answers, self-promotion, and marriage proposals. (I know, it sounds absolutely ridiculous, but it was fun to watch.) We were all rooting for number four, but number three had the best proposal. He picked Kobukuro's "永遠にともに" for background music. It was something along the lines of, "We've had a lot of good times and hard times, haven't we? Shouldn't we end this kind of relationship? [insert audience confusion and "へぇー？"] Marry me.” [insert audience understanding and "あぁー！"] Anyway, Wendy took all of our voting papers and voted for number four. XD

Before they announced the winner, JONTE performed. He's another Korean singer crossing over into the Japanese market, so I thought I wouldn't like him, but daaang, he can really sing. (And he actually isn't crossing over, I just found out, he's a 在日韓国人-- Korean person born in Japan.) He sang his first single, "ゆれる." Afterwards, as expected, number four walked away named Mr. Sophia 2007. Hahahaha.

I went to Starbucks with Wendy and Nobuko after that, but Wendy had to go home. The rest of the night was spent at karaoke with Nobuko, where we discovered that the only songs we can both sing are Hamasaki Ayumi songs since we have different taste in English and Japanese music. XD What a fun day. =D

Tokyo Disneyland

I decided I still wanted to go to Disneyland, especially since we have W-F off because of the Sophia Festival. So a few friends and I decided to go. Thus...


I just got back from Tokyo Disneyland! It was so much fun! I went with Hannah, Monique, Melissa, and Nobuko. We met at the park at 8:30. The main street and castle look quite different, but it's actually a lot less stressful and crazy than the Anaheim one.


We started out with Pirates of the Carribean, which is very similar to the American one. (Voice overs and recordings in Japanese are kind of hilarious. XD) After that, Melissa explained that one of the attractions in Disneyland and DisneySea are the popcorn flavors, which are made available on different dates in certain lands. I decided I wanted to try some of them and got curry flavored popcorn in Westernland (American equivalent = Frontierland). We followed that up with the Jungle Cruise. Japanese skippers are actually quite energetic, which was not what I was expecting. It's more of a cheezy, over the top funny than a sarcastic, monotone funny. We finished up Westernland with Big Thunder Mountain.


Next was Fantasyland, where we went on the Haunted Mansion, which was decked out with Nightmare Before Christmas. It's a little less impressive than the American one, though the mansion itself looks pretty cool. Then we went on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (白雪姫と七人のこびと), which was also about the same. I tried some of Hannah and Nobuko's Chocolate flavored popcorn and also bougt the Honey flavor popcorn, which was absolutely delicious. (Really, the best popcorn I've ever had.)

After eating lunch, we went on AstroBlasters and went on to Space Mountain, which for some reason doesn't have any music. It was a little more eerie that way. Then we watched the Christmas Parade. (Yeah, Christmas already.) There was Soda flavored popcorn here, but it smelled funny so we passed it up. Instead, we had honey-lemon churros, which were yummy. (I think I have a thing for honey now.)


For dinner, Melissa and I went to The Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall (the others opted for something a little less pricey). We had to eat there, the atmosphere was just too amazing. It was made to look like a mix between the flower garden and the rose garden in Alice in Wonderland. There are playing card statues around, and you have to walk through the doorknob's mouth to enter the restaurant. There are big flower lights, and almost all the windows are stained glass, most of them with hearts on them. Very cool. =) (The chicken was delicious too.) I wish they had that in Anaheim. After that, Melissa and I went to Pooh's Honey Hunt.


Oh, Pooh's Honey Hunt. It's my absolute favorite Disney ride, ever. Basically, you walk into a gigantic Pooh storybook and get into a honey pot. Then you're off into the story, seeing scenes of all Pooh's adventures. The coolest thing about it is that even though you're in a huge room and can see the other honey pots, you have absolutely no idea which way you're going or where you're going to turn because there is no track. There's no track! (Jerry told me it's done by GPS.) There's also animation added in the backgrtounds for movement, and some cool effects with mirrors and puffs of wind. You also get to bounce with Tigger, which had me and Melissa laughing our heads off. Yes, basically the best Disney ride.

We headed to the Tea Party after that, where the lady said, "お誕生日じゃない日おめでとう！" ("Happy Unbirthday!") I forgot how dizzy those cups make me. The Dream Lights parade started while we were on it, but we were able to get off and rush to watch the majority of it. The light parade was really pretty. It had a few newer things like Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo that looked really good. We met back with everyone else, then Nobuko and I went on the Castle Carosel. We finished by watching the fireworks. (They were a lot less than stellar if you compare them to the 50th Anniversary ones in the U.S.) Then we did some shopping on Main Street. (Actually, in between rides, we went shopping, so we hit most of the stores in the vicinity we were in. Haha.) I restrained myself from buying any Disney headgear. It was so hard, especially since so many people were wearing them, and they were really warm. (Mickey earmuffs or hats, character ear and hat clips, headbands, etc.)


Overall, definitely a fun trip. =D Next on the hit list? DisneySea! Heehee.

Mobile:Disney Station

舞浜に到着して、びっくりした。東京ディズニーランドの電車だよ！
After arriving at Maihama, I was surprised. There's a Tokyo Disneyland Train!