Stuff I Did Not Take Pictures of on Halloween

Everything I did this past weekend sounds good written out, but really it was fairly meh.

Saturday I went clubbing. Now, under most circumstances, this would have been awesome. You get dressed up, even MORE dressed up for Halloween, dance, talk to boys, drink a little, and end up counting down the minutes til first train. It certainly wasn't terrible, but I've had better non-holiday nights. I did take away some valuable lessons:

1. Don't go clubbing with boys.

2. Don't go to international mixers if you are a gaijin girl looking for a j-boy, because everyone there is either an English-speaking j-girl who's looking to marry a foreign man OR a shameful neckbeard foreign man.

3. Offensive costumes are OK! Blackface? No problem, there are 10 other people doing the same thing! Large weaponry? Go big or go home! Appropriating other cultures? It's an "international" mixer, duh!

Sunday was spent sleeping and eating Vietnamese food. I found this little Saigon restaurant off bento.com and I thought I'd be able to get a bowl of beef noodles reminiscent of Pho777. Walking off the elevator this place smelled legit, but I was slightly disappointed by the pho.

Tastes amazing, but thick noodles? Only a 4-page menu with less than two dozen dishes? Where's my Lazy Susan with sauces and spices? And no side dish piled high with bean sprouts and greens? The only thing that made up for these things was the Vietnamese coffee. I could use a glass right now.

On Monday I went to Disneyland for Halloween! The only way I could tell if people were Official Disney Cast Members was if they had a person dressed in safari gear with them taking photos. There were A LOT of great costumes, I kind of wish I had gotten a photo with the one Mary Poppins I saw all day. I did get a photo with a Japanese Jack Sparrow, who played the character VERY well!

First churro, cinnamon flavored~

You can't see him well but Barbosa has a stuffed monkey on his shoulder.

Best Japanese Jack Sparrow Ever.

I dragged them to It's a Small World.

They didn't mind :)

Second churro, strawberry flavored~

Curried meatball soup. DELICIOUS.

I needed the last two nights to recover from my weekend, but it's okay because I get to enjoy a national holiday tomorrow! I don't even know what we're celebrating!

BIRTHDAY POST

My birthday was last week YAY. But I haven't updated this blog for TWO weeks, so here we go~

Two weeks ago I went to my first Urawa Reds game! It was a charity game against Yamagata to raise money for those affected by the earthquake and tsunami. I went with two friends I "inherited" from the teacher I replaced back in February, and they used to teach some of the players' kids so they are BIG fans of the Reds. It was my first time to see the Saitama Stadium, where they played some World Cup games back in 2002. It is possible my brother has those very games on a VHS tape somewhere. The Reds didn't have a cheer section that day so I wasn't able to hear the slightly Engrish Urawa Reds fight song, but I still had a good time. We won the game and I gave a nice sum of money to some cute player afterward (who wasn't Genki, unfortunately).

The day after the game, I went to the Aeon Laketown mall to go explore. Apparently it is the largest mall in all of Japan, and I can believe that. I can usually conquer a mall in a day, but this one was a little overwhelming. Didn't help that I was kind of sick and and I got to experience a lovely 6.6 magnitude earthquake while I was there. I kind of thought I was going to die, or at least get stranded on the Musashino line. No photos, unfortunately, but just imagine a really nice and spacious American mall transplanted into Japan.

This past weekend, I FINALLY WENT CLUBBING OMG. Half-dragged Tracy and Marissa to my faaaaavorite club evarrrrr --- ATOM. Lots of j-boys with crazy hair, lots of good music, and lots of fake eyelashes on my face (see photo). Finished work at about 7pm, met up with the ladies at about midnight, and came home about 7am the next morning. Can't be pulling too many of those anymore, but I had a blast.

I should really buy a legal copy of Photoshop now that I can afford one.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but drunk Japanese people are HILARIOUS. We don't have to do much to stand out anywhere in Japan, since we're gaijin and all, but crazy people kept coming up to us. My favorites were a group of kickboxers with one non-kickboxer friend who kept asking us to punch them in their stomachs, because obviously they can handle it. Not sure if he wanted to be punched, but I personally made sure non-kickboxer friend wasn't left out.

I spent most of the next day sleeping and went to Gyu-Kaku later in the evening with a friend. I couldn't read the menu or anything useful, but I do know I ate a lot of really good meat and cow tongue. There were no $7 pitchers of Kirin or dipping sauce trio like we have in Hawaii (they had shoyu, oil, spicy stuff and minced garlic on the side), but IT WAS SO GOOD OMG. Too bad I didn't think about taking pictures until after I was already full. 

$30 meat platter YUMMMMM.

See the fatty meat in the shoyu? DELICIOUS.

The next day, which was this past Monday if you haven't been keeping track, I met up with Tracy and Marissa so they could take me out to dinner for my birthday. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe at the bottom of some hotel/fancy shopping mall and I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW MUCH I MISS AMERICAN FOOD. Never thought I'd ever miss nachos and barbeque chicken. Some lucky person had a birthday early during dinner and there was a big show about it, so OF COURSE I got the same treatment at the end of our dinner. I was slightly embarrassed but I thought it was very sweet of the girls to do that for me. I got an ice cream brownie sundae, a big Hard Rock photo keychain, and a 15% off coupon for the gift shop which I promptly used to buy a Hello Kitty Hard Rock cell phone strap. SUPER SUGOI.

And this past week I've been getting all kinds of boxes and packages from my family for my birthday! Here's a big photo of most of the stuff I've gotten:

I didn't even know Tokidoki made a charity shirt!!! IT'S SO AWESOME. I love it as much as Caroline loves her floppy hat and I wish I could wear it every time I look at it~

Thank you to everyone who made my birthday special~ I look forward to one more kindofnotreallybirthday thing next week with my two coworkers who had birthdays recently, too. BECAUSE I LOVE THEIR CHICKEN FACES (inside joke, don't worry about it).

Konpa!

Yesterday was the Japanese class konpa! It was a lot of fun, I'm very glad I went and I feel sorry for the people who didn't. Losers. Maka set up everything, which was nice because I detest planning events. We had two hours of nomihodai and lots of good food (which I forgot to take pictures of because I was a bit preoccupied with the nomihodai). Two out of our three senseis showed up at first, but we got the last one to come by the end of the party. HAPPY TIME.

Pictures that I'm not sure I should post because it's obvious I was drunk and not looking my best:

Claire said one of the senseis admitted to not really liking Jake (left).
But they all love Alex (right).












Everyone complains their Japanese teachers suck,
but ours are awesome.

After konpa, I met up with Ashlie and Maka took us to this mixer of international and Nihonjin students. Two girls came up to Ashlie and I, so we were speaking broken Japanese to them for a while. We left with them and three boys, one of which looked like a yakuza, and wandered around Shinjuku. One of the boys spoke fairly good English and was quoting Star Wars ("My best movie!!!") all night in a really bad accent.

Keeko, me, Ashlie, and Maki.


IDK but cute yakuza boy is not in the photo. Sad.

Ashlie and I caught some of the last trains home and called it a night.

Asakusa and Interactions with Natives

I haven't posted in a few days, but I have some interesting stories to make up for it.

Yesterday we finally made it to Asakusa! I first went to Asakusa in 2005 with Micheru and Ted-san so naturally I had to go back again. The main attraction is the temple, but the sidestreets around it and the main road leading to it are good for picking up snacks and miyage (travel souvenirs). It's kind of a tourist attraction so I expected to see a few more gaijin than normal, but I was still surprised at how many natives were there. It wasn't a particularly nice day, a little windy and drizzling, but lots of people still showed up to pray/eat/buy/etc. I found a little charm that had the typical school backpack. It was so cute but I didn't buy it... I should have.

The more I interact and observe Japanese around campus, the more I go, "DUH I knew that they did that in (Sailor Moon, Crayon Shinchan, Soko Ga Shiritai, etc)." Clubs here are hard core. If you're a member, club is practically your life. The athletic clubs practice five to six days a week and practice as if they're official school sports teams. Most of the other clubs meet two or three times a week to sing, practice, dance, or hang out. And God forbid you join two clubs, how can you split your loyalties that way?

Saniya tried to join the Saffro Family club, which is like a gospel chorus. They get together and sing a few times a week, and seemingly try to imitate African-American church choruses. If I can get the short performance video Natasha took at a meeting I'll post it. After the first practice, Saniya came back to the dorm complaining that all she did the whole time was "sit on the side with the other first years and watch the older members learn new songs." She didn't sing but five minutes, and the older club members let the first years go home after an hour and a half out of pity/mercy.

I suppose it's a form of hazing -- first years have to put up with all kinds of crap to show their dedication to the club. It's a privilege to be a member of a club, you have to prove you're worth being a member. I got an email from my Folk Song club saying something like, "We have band practice today at 5pm at Sophia. First years can bring snacks and drinks." Translated properly, that means, "Show up at 5. Bring food (minions)." I ignored the email since the people who recruited me know I'm not that good at Japanese and they usually email me in English if I need to know something. But I did think about buying some food and taking it just to show some good will. I know, I'm a terrible gaijin.

I've talked about lunch at Sophia before, but I don't think I mentioned the weird sex segregation that occurs. At lunch, the lounge where we eat is filled with almost all females. Before the lunch rush I might see a few guys come in and eat quickly, but I never see boys in that room most of the time. Saniya says she sees them go to classrooms during lunch. My big group back home is about 1-1 male-female ratio, and I hang out with whoever, whenever they're free. In Japan, I have only seen boys and girls hang out together a handful of times. It's usually a group of girls chatting or a group of boys standing around being cool. I have no insight as to why this happens at the university level. Clues, anyone?

Next time, maybe another dorm post.

Club Day

From the last post -- the lost girl made it home alright. Good thing she knows how to catch the train, though; we always lose her when we're wandering around the city.

Yesterday we spent some time at Ikebukuro. I forgot to mention on the cell phone post that we found a Don Quixote the day we got cell phones, but here are some photos anyway:

That's Tama and Saniya.

It's even more packed and random than the one in Hawaii. Don Pen is even scattered throughout the store.

I have not been keeping up with my celebrity news. Charleton Heston died? What? I saw it on one of my gossip blogs, which prompted me go to CNN.com to verifty. The headline, however, was an article on "geisha guys."

On the way to the train station today, we took a little side alley to find somewhere to eat and Natasha swears we passed one such man. He was very well dressed in a suit, had his hair dyed and styled, and was fairly good looking. "Really, really, really, ridiculously rich women pay for them," she said. I guess if I had the money I'd pay some Japanese pretty boy to keep me company.

I digress -- today was club day! We got to Sophia expecting the campus to be relatively quiet with maybe some gaijin running around. However, it was more like this:

Most of the clubs and circles on campus were actively recruiting members for the semester. It was a completely different atmosphere than Creighton's club recruiting days, where people join clubs to put it down on resumes or because they need the community service. It is to my understanding that in middle school and high school in Japan, students have to join a club or they'll be social outcasts. I suppose that mentality carries on into university.

There were sports clubs (hockey, soccer, lacrosse, soft tennis, tennis, cheerleading teams), music clubs (choir, bands, orchestras), social clubs (international friendship club, walking club), dance clubs (G-Splash street dancing, flamenco) and clubs for social causes (law, model U.N.). Most of the clubs put someone out that spoke English so it wasn't too hard to communicate. I'm told that while each group does take part in whatever they say they do, really it's just an excuse to go drinking and party.

A few clubs piqued my interest:

The Folk Music Club
- Not actually dedicated to folk music, but rather to J-Rock and American rock bands.
- Their meeting room was taken up by a four-piece band playing Japanese rock songs. In between songs I managed to talk to one girl about her taste in music. We were scrolling through my iPod and came upon one of the most awesome bands in the entire world, The Darkness, to which she said, "Ah you like The Darkness? HOLY SHIT I love them!!!" She actually said "holy shit," and it was the funniest thing ever.

Flamenco Dancing
- I think it would be pretty cool to be able to say, "Yeah I studied in Japan. I learned flamenco dancing while I was there."

Amnity Club
- Social club dedicated to hanging out with foreigners. They made it sound nicer than that but that's the gist of it.

Swimming Club
- I felt kinda bad after talking with Kentaro, the swim team representative. I like swimming, but I'd rather do water polo. I asked about it and he looked kind of sad, since he's a swim team member and not water polo. But I didn't bring a suit with me anyway, so I don't think I'll be joining either.

I'm still a bit sickly, and the other girls are catching what I have. It's going to get a bit rainy in the next few days, too. Hopefully it'll be nice by the time my birthday rolls around.

A few happy things to end the post: