４月９日 Day 16: Amagi Goe

I did karaoke from 1am-5am in the morning. Why?? I still don't even know. My inner Japanese was crying out to sing some Enka I guess.

Yes, amidst the Backstreet Boys, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Iron Man, I made some time for my favorite Enka song, Ishikawa Sayuri's Amagi Goe. I sang the crap out of it-- really well. (Btw, I'm super good at being modest ;] ) I'm sure if I'm drunk/ballsy enough, I can do it again if someone asks.

Because of that sheer and utter nonsense, my day didn't officially kick off until about 2pm. We ate lunch standing up at a soba/udon place in Shinjuku train station, which was surprisingly awesome. We all wanted something quick and cheap, but got something delicious as well: hot mushroom soba. *Drool* If so many salary men weren't waiting to eat after us, I might have taken a picture. Next time...

Then after that, some friends and I went to Takebashi to go to MOMAT, the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. We weren't allowed to take pictures, so here are the jpgs of the highlights.

Gardening (Manhattan) by Oscar Oiwa. This painting was epic (probably took up the whole 10 foot wall) and it made me happy.

Shihota Chiharu: Bathroom 1999. This was basically a video installation of a girl bathing in a tub full of muddy water and covering her face with dirt. It was like The Ring. In the mud. Maybe I'll die in 7 days...

The museum was great because it had FREE college student admission. SCORE. Definitely going back there. Didn't even get to scope the gift shop.

It also had BEAUTIFUL views of the cherry blossoms, the Imperial Palace and its moat.

GORGEOUS!

I love Tokyo's twilight hour right before the sun goes down. I think that's when the city looks the most beautiful. The neon against the dusk light is unlike anything I've ever seen. Throw in the traditional historic beauty of the imperial palace and you've got something really magical.

...it's also a great escape from my messy room. It smells like unwashed laundry and plastic wrappers. Welcome back to college life!

Just realized that I haven't showered. I still have the stench of karaoke on me: cigarettes, sweat, passion and shame all rolled into one. Toodles!

４月７日 Day 14: WELCOME TO THE WORLD

I FINALLY GOT A CELL PHONE. (Sorry I look gross in this pic-- but I LOVE this phone)

What a process though. Pain in the motha-flippin' A.

It's basically common knowledge that if you're in Japan-- you NEED a cell phone. There's no way you could successfully hope to meet up with people without one. Everyone at our school was told to buy their phone in Shibuya because they spoke English. Unfortunately, that meant that all the pre-paid plans and phones sold out like hotcakes.

In an effort to avoid the wait, my friends and I went to this place called Donkey Hote (no relation to Don Quixote) which is basically a SUPER STORE. My friend Nick calls it Mecca because it literally has EVERYTHING you could ever need. Tampons, TVs, fake eyelashes, and phones galore.

Unfortunately, the phone guy didn't speak ANY English which meant that I was the de-facto translator for our group of 5 girls who needed phones. O_O I understood things like this:

"It's very important to ___________ if you want to _____, then you need to ______ and then use the _______ to ________ the ________."

MISSING ALL THE IMPORTANT PARTS.

Somehow, we were able to communicate the most basic pre-paid plan making sure that it had all the specifications my friends' phones had: unlimited texting (known here simply as me-ru)

for ¥300 a month and ¥99/minute phone calls. Needless to say, I won't be calling anyone unless it's an absolute emergency.

It was so funny how eager the guy was to talk to me though. What I DID understand made him so relieved that he didn't have to stumble through English and he sort of talked WAY to fast in anticipation of my 100% comprehension.

Other than that, we went to our school's freshman week and looked into joining some clubs. I looked all over the place for the ikebana club, but couldn't find it. The clubs were basically just roaming the main path of the campus holding big signs and passing out flyers. ZERO organization. I got a flyer for the Tea Ceremony Club and I'm hopefully going to join the Art Appreciation Club and maybe the Ikebana Club (I heard it kinda sucks the fun out of enjoying ikebana, but we'll see...).

Then we got our test results back. I'm placed in Japanese 2: 200, which is basically what it sounds like, the next major step above Beginner's Japanese. I'm not upset though because I definitely feel like it's an adequate measure of what I've learned after 4 semesters. Not enough. HA. I'm glad I placed above most of my friends though! (A simultaneously small and vain accomplishment :P)

Then we went to the greatest place on campus: the bookstore. I got some seriously hot Sophia swag.

*Note: I will never wear both of these sweats at the same time. I'm not THAT tacky. Sheesh!

４月６日 Day 13: Marking My Territory

Today, Yuko-Sensei sent me a care-package!

It had ramen, biscuts, bath soap, and all sorts of other goodies. Namely, a hanko!

Hanko are stamps. They are the official signature and mark of everyone in Japan.

Offical marks are made in red, but Yuko-sensei sent me green because my favorite color (and Japanese name) is green!

It says Midori~! :D

After opening my care package, my friends and I went to Ueno Zoo! It was a gorgeous day, 65 degrees and sunny! I haven't been to the zoo since I was a kid, so you BET I was SUPER excited!!

Everyone in Ueno was doing Hanami~!

Some animal highlights:

Red Panda

Condor

Gorilla

Tiger

Smiley elephant

GIANT ANTEATER!

Armadillo. Dude moved like a freakin' cheetah though.

HAH.

This was by far the most gorgeous day I've seen here so far. Here's for the next to come!

Yay for new friends :D

４月５日 Day 12: BREAD

Got my Alien Registration aka: Gaijin Card today.

Got some lunch before. Zaru-soba with soba-yu later. AMAZZZZZZINNNNNGGGGGG.

Then my friends and I found this AMAZING bakery in Nerima on our way back to Heiwadai!

Prepare to drool:

４月４日 Day 11: Happy Easter~!

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT AND SHOULD NOT BE VIEWED/READ/DISCUSSED IN FRONT OF CHILDREN or PEOPLE WHO DO NOT LIKE TO SEE LOTS OF PICTURES CONTAINING PHALLUSES.

Today, I went to a fertility festival, Kanamara Matsuri, in Kawasaki, it should have been called PENIS FESTIVAL because that's essentially all it was. Sculptures, foods, and shrines dedicated to the PENIS.

Now, why would I go to a place like this you ask? I propose to you this question: Why WOULDN'T I go to a penis festival? It was so uniquely Japanese and so amazingly hilarious and beyond belief! I'm so glad that I went.

About 14 of us from our dorm went together. This one guy, Nick (who's been here since September), organized it and we all came, completely unaware of what we were about to see. We met at 8am, tired and out of it, some people were still jetlagged having only gotten here on Thursday. It took us about an hour, 3 train transfers and ¥1000 to get there, but oh when we did...

The first thing we saw were these absolutely gorgeous cherry blossom trees (and hard core liquor) in full bloom. In Japanese, cherry blossom in full bloom is called Sakura Mankai. In Japan, sakura are such a huge deal that people have picnics on tarps where they sit and drink alcohol underneath the trees all day. This is called Hanami. Some spots are so coveted, that company employees are paid to stake out a spot at 8am and wait until 5pm until their coworkers finish so they can drink under the nicest sakura tree. That's what I thought this fertility festival was going to be.

We're in Japan. Guess again.

The next thing I saw were a bunch of old guys hunched over carving penises out of daikon. Can you get more Japanese than that?

Over in the distance was this massive pink penis that they paraded down the street later.

Don't get me wrong-- this was a legitimate fertility festival, not just a bunch of gratuitous phallic imagery. In the recent years, the festival has also been a way to voice AIDS awareness.

There were a lot of couples there who were trying to get pregnant. In the shrine, they had priests praying and chanting over them. There was a lot of incense present, so I didn't go too close.

I seriously doubt these kids knew what they were eating...

These kids (my friends) did. There were no shortage of penis (and vagina) pops, long sausages, and other penisy food. One thing we all noticed was the fact that we (as well as all the other gaijin tourists) were pretty much the only ones buying all the penis merchandise while all the old perverted Japanese men took THOUSANDS of photos.

My friend Jordan and I chose to be classy and bought penis and vagina bandanas.

Here are some awesome penis candles.

Penis sake.

Penis... from A Clockwork Orange!

More penis sake glasses etc.

This festival was UNBELIEVABLY crowded. I was being pushed and shoved all over the damn place like it was Tokyo rush hour or something! It was full of people of all colors. TONS of foreigners, the largest amount of black people I've EVER seen in Japan, young Japanese families with their children, and of course, old Japanese pervs with professional DSLR cameras.

I'd like to think every demographic was pretty adequately represented.

Seemed like the ero-ero (perverted) feeling followed us, because we went shopping afterwards and saw these err... pillows.

YAY JAPAN!

４月３日 Day 10: Harajuku

I have officially come to terms with the fact that I am spoiled. Today, a few friends and I went to find food around Heiwadai (our new hometown) and ended up at this sushi boat place. The sushi was NOT good. The fish wasn't as fresh and you could tell that it had gone around the carousel a few times. The only redeeming factor about the place is its price. I had 8 pieces of sushi for less than ¥400. Yum? Can't even compare it to the food I ate at Restaurant Omae!

Funny story of the meal: You see that screen above the sushi? That's how you order things you can't see on the track. It's touch screen and it cues up the sushi that you want. When we finished, we assumed we had to use that screen to pay too-- unfortunately, that wasn't the case. My gaijin friends asked a waitress to come over to us and had NO idea what to say to her. I was the most fluent Japanese person at the table and was charged with the task of asking her how to pay for our meal. After trying to ask, "How do you pay?" over and over, I showed her some money and she still didn't understand. I changed my question to, "How do you buy?" She immediately responded, "I count the dishes and give you a receipt." I understood and we paid. My friends said to me, "Wow-- I don't know what we would have done without you."

Sheesh!

After that, we headed to Harajuku to shop and people watch.

Here's Takeshita-dori, the most populous street in Harajuku. It's full of shops, crepes, young girls and effeminate guys.

It's Saturday, so you know it's crowded.

I thought it was really funny how they just got Forever 21 here. Cheap crappily-made clothes at a Korean-owned store; it's like a whole new universe for them. There's even a line to get inside!!

We saw AI, this super famous J Pop star outside of H&M (which also just got to Japan). I know her songs really well so I was stoked like no joke that we randomly saw her!

Today was a funny sort of day. We walked to Shibuya after shopping in Harajuku and went into all these Western shops like H&M and TopShop. Sort of defeats the purpose of shopping in Japan, right?? Then we ate at this ¥270/plate place. Oooh it was good. I didn't feel like I got completely ripped off either! I had yakitori (DELICIOUS) and salmon sashimi (meh). I also got to know some of the other girls at my dorm really well. This British girl Harriet took us all around Harajuku and had her friend Natasha (a Scot) join us for dinner in Shibuya. They're both so nice and they answered a lot of our newbie questions.

This adventure really made me appreciate Tokyo at night. All the neon signs and fashionable people walking around make me feel so rejuvenated and happy.

Bleh, I'm tired. I have to go to some penis/fertility festival in Kawasaki tomorrow at 8am, so I'm off to sleep! This should be interesting...