Hey all,
Well, today is Friday and I'm leaving on Sunday. There's only two days left in Japan. I can't believe it!
Today we are going to Kyoto for the last time. Ryan(friend from Colby) is up visiting us from his program in Nagasaki and we'll show him around. But its raining, its already late in the day, so I don't expect to hit up more than one temple (probably Fushimi Inari). And we'll have our last ramen and karaoke at Kyoto Eki.
Tomorrow Okaasan wants to go to a museum & movie & shopping, so that'll be a full day. I'm just worried because i haven't really packed yet! That's not good...today i'm going to try and ship something out but its pretty small.
So, let's continue from where I left off yeseterday:
Things I will miss about Japan:
5. The clean, fast bus system. You can always count on them. As a matter of fact, all the safe, fast transportation here. Its great!
6. Conbinis. That is to say, convenience stores. There are so many here, and they all are cheap with lots of stuff. There's a conbini store culture here, where people can live off these stores. You can do it, I've done it.
7. Japanese TV. It is just too much. The absolute trashiness of it somehow becomes attractive after watching it for a while. But there's only so much I can take of celebrities sampling local dishes and saying "Oishii!" or talking about current events or participating in stupid contests and making fools of themselves (because those three things alone comprise approximately 73% of all Japanese TV). And of course there's the J-doramas, the news, and then educational programs and anime. That's about it.
8. Anime culture, of course. It will just be sad to leave a place where many many people like the same stuff I do, and where its really easy to watch anime or to get anime-related goods. Thats one thing I will miss very much.
9. Being less than an hour away from interesting sights and interesting things to do. I've never lived this close to a big city where there is lots of stuff to do. I mean, Colby is in the middle of NOWHERE and Glastonbury is not that much better. I will definitely miss that.
10. Prettiness. Japan is pretty. It is full of pretty things, and it is kept very clean. They all recycle to a degree that Americans do not understand, and the janitors here are very serious about thier work. Policemen and bus drivers wear white gloves, and of course many people wear the surgical masks. It is just so clean here, it will be hard to adjust to American again.
Well folks, thats it for now. I don't anticipate having time to update again before I leave on Sunday, so - here's Kim, signing off from Japan. I'll catch you on the flip side!
As always, comments are appreciated.
PS - Please do keep checking this blog, as when I return to America I will continue to make posts and pictures that I didnt have time to before. Check it out!
Thanks for your patronage this semester!
Hey all,
Well I thought I was going to be able to update on Tuesday, but that didn't come to pass as I was not feeling so well and thus didn't go to school. But on Wednesday I felt better and went to Denden Town with Haley and Shin.
First Shin wanted to take some pictures so we went to those PuriKura machines (read: those mechanical booths where you walk in and get pictures taken with people) at an arcade. Man, those things are LIGHTYEARS beyond what we have in America. Everything works with touch computer screens. First, you put in 400 yen (bout $3.50), then you can scan in a background if you have something special in mind. If you don't, you get to choose 6 backgrounds/picture styles (like french fries, Pocky, circus, teddy bears, etc) and that's all BEFORE you go into the booth. Then you go in, and you get only one try for each of the backgrounds and then choose the ones that you like the most. Then you go back out to another booth where you get to edit the images as you see fit. With the stylus you can draw on the images in a variety of colors and styles, you can put preselected sayings in Japanese (like, "Friends Forever!" type thing) or a date stamp. You can add sparklies in many varieties, and little icons of hearts or bears or food or anything, really. It is just amazing. The machine gives you about 5 mins to do this, and then you can choose how many and what size pictures you want to print out. Then it prints them, and there's a little table with scissors for you to cut them up with. Truly spectacular.
After we did that, Haley and I decided to visit DenDen Town for the last time *sniff* . Shin came with us, but only for an hour or so because she had alot of stuff to do before leaving for Taiwan (lucky girl! From Japan, an all-expense paid trip to Taiwain for three days is in the range of $300. So cheap!) so we said our goodbyes.
To make a long story short, Haley and I accomplished all our goals for Denden Town. We found the stores we wanted and bought what we wanted (thanks to a last minute money transfer from Dad, I was able to go out and buy something that I really wanted). So, we were both happy.
Now here's the short story made long:
~~~~~~Begin Otaku-speak~~~~~~~
Ok so for my last time in Denden town, I wanted no regrets! We started with a figure store, the one the Death Note had been in last time. I FINALLY caved in and bought a Giroro keychain. I looked at the big Miina figurine, but of course it was 4500 yen.
Here's a picture:
Of course it looks JUST LIKE the one that Densha Otoko had, so I wanted it but that's just too expensive. So I settled on getting the small Gashapon version. Still looks good ( I hope).
So, then we saw the famous MANDARAKE store (we visited its biggest outlet in Akihabara, of which this one was just a mere shadow). I have never seen such narrow aisles in my life. BUT! It was in this store that I saw the Athrun figure that I have been wanting for nearly two years. It was the going for the cheapest that I've ever seen in Mandarake, probably because its a figure of a guy and not many guys will buy those. It was priced at about $16.50, which is SUCH A DEAL because I've seen it for $40 + shipping on Ebay. Even in all the other stores in Denden town it was at least ten dollars more expensive. So, I went ahead and got it, and now I have it, yay! Definitely my best purchase of the day, and maybe in Japan (but plastic ramen, i mean come on...).
AFter that we stopped by Osaka Gundams (yes, a store devoted entirely to Gundams)which was AWESOME. They had a 6 ft Gundam model right in the middle of the store, and one the second level they had made it to look like a giant Gundam hand was crashing thru the wall. Too bad you coudlnt' take pictures, because it was SOO COOL.
So I must have had amazing luck that day, because you could get pencil boards with Gundam characters on them, but they were all wrapped up so you couldn't tell which one you were getting. I really wanted a certain two of them, so I picked at random and, guess what! I GOT THEM! Even the super rare one that I wanted, I got! Fortune must have been smiling on me that day. (But not Haley. Even when I picked for her when she was buying KKM plushies, she still got Conrad. Too bad). Ha HA ha .
Then we went to a doujin shop that I hadn't been to before, and it was like...omg so big with so much stuff. I got Haley to buy her first doujin! And of course I bought some too....And on the CD floor there was a CD of Chemistry's song that was used for the last GSD opening theme, so I got that too. Then, on to Animate!
Animate was, and still is, the best anime store around. I got a Haruhi mousepad and John's present (John, your souvenir will be three-fold). Then we went to the CD floor and of course, guess what day it happened to be? That's right, the hatsubai (opening day) of the Motteke! Sera Fuku~ CD! (Lucky Star op). They were blasting it all thru the store and even on the same floor from different locations, while of course still replaying the OP on a small TV in front of the counter. Simply amazing. Well, I decided to do my part and parcel to make it #1 on the Oricon chart, so I went ahead and bought it. That felt good! Oricon #1 wo Mezase!
So then, we left Animate and wandered around, looking at the cosplay shop for the last time, and the figure shop that had the Kyon figure that I desperately wanted. We found it! And both Haley and I wanted it, so I finally did something good and bought it for Haley as a birthday present, since when it was her birthday I didn't have enough money to get her one. So that was great and now we have a matching set of chibi Kyons. Can life GET any better?
Finaly we found this figure shop that Haley was wanting to find, and she bought an L plushie that i pointed out to her and I got something else for John. Then we bid a tearful farewell to Denden town *sniff* Gooodbye~~~~~
~~~~~~End Otaku-speak~~~~~~~
But getting home sure was a bother. We were both so tired that we must have been spacing out because we missed our stop and had to ride the Osaka Loop around again. Darn! As a result, we were late for dinner. This was the night I told Okaasan that I would bring Haley over for dinner, and we were late. Not a good thing. But Okaasan didn't seem angry. She had made mochi for dinner, so we ate mochi for dinner. All kinds - cheese mochi, soysauce + seaweed mochi, adzuki mochi, and daifuku! And then she helped Haley put on one of her kimonos and we took pictures. Then Haley left and Mayu-chan and I watched Rozen Maiden. Yup.
So I'm kina hurrying cause I gotta go soon, but tomorrow Ryan (friend from Colby) is gonna visit us on our last day! So we decided that Kyoto is a good place to show him around and for us to end our Japan semester on a very Japan-like note. In Kyoto we will go see two temples that we've been wanting to see, probably eat ramen, and do karaoke. My last excursion in Japan~\
Probably on Saturday I will spend most of hte day with my host family and make sure I am packed. Then it's the long plane flight on Monday. Too soon, too soon.
Things I will miss about Japan:
1. Being able to leave your stuff anytime, anywhere without fear of people touching it (I seriously left my computer and backpack sitting in the lounge for hours and no one disturbed it at all)
2. Ramen.
3. Being bowed to by people and made to feel like you are really important when buying something at a store.
4. Being called "Ojousama" by a policeman (!)
More to come.
I will update at least once more, stay tuned!
As always, comments are appreciated
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Hey all,
Well I'll make this a short post, since tomorrow's will be longer. This weekend was the graduation ceremony. Everyone walked up on to the stage, got their little diploma holders (the diploma wasn't even inside them) and there were some hackneyed speeches about how important this experience will be to the rest of our lives, a song by the a capella group (Sam was in it!) and that was about it. Oh, and the food. In fact, my host family only came for the food. You see, I thought we were going to go to the ceremony together, which is why when they said they were leaving at a certain time, I made sure I was ready by that time. Only later I found out that if I left at that time, then I would miss half the ceremony and only get there in time for the food, which is what they were planning to do. But by the time I realized this, it was too late. So I missed half the ceremony, but only the boring roll-call part, so it was ok. But stil...
All that put aside, the food was certainly worth it, some of the best I've had in Japan. After we finished eating, my host family left and I went to the lounge to hang out with Haley and Shin. We changed out of our formal clothes (the dress code was formal, which ran the gamut from dresses to kimonos to turbans to monk outfits) and just chilled for a while, waiting. This is because Haley and I were invited to Kim's (yes, there were FIVE Kims beside me) birthday party, which happened to be at a karaoke place. This other Kim and I are hardly the best of frends, but hey, an all night karaoke party? Who can pass that up?
So, Haley and I met up with everyone at the station and had a quick dinner at a nearby restaurant, at which I didn't order anything cause I'm running out of money. Then we went to the place, called Jumbo Karaoke. We got a really big room for 15 people (cause that's how many we were) and started singing! Of course, I immediately brought out the sheet i had prepared beforehand of karaoke songs and began ordering them up.
I sang all anime songs, of course, which a surprising number of people knew. I'm not used to people being anime fans. But poor Kim must have felt out of the loop because she doesn't watch anime at all. But I stayed all night! Till my voice was dead and gone.
I think though, that people who talk while other people are singing are being rude, and also people who have bad voices that sing (unwanted) with other people are also being rude. I was doing this really cool song when someone who couldnt' sing a tune had to join in and mess me all up. I hate that. But yeah, other than that it was cool. I can say I've done an all nighter.
Unfortunatley, during that night Sam had to leave. It was a sad goodbye, but I know I'll see here soon, being as she lives in my hometown.
Today I went to to the Touji flea market, but seeing as they're about to kick me out of the computer lab, I'll update you on that tomorrow.
Tata for now!
As always, comments are appreciated.
