Here and There

The story of the last two weeks. Or week? I DON'T EVEN KNOW ANYMORE.

Last purikura with Marissa and Tracy!

Please note our matching HK lense-less frames.

Saw Marissa off at Narita.

She'll miss the big bottles of Kewpie mayo!

Skytree is one word.

Chef being coy.

Lucky me!

I managed to get three unsuspecting j-boys into an izakaya!

YEAH.

Russian? strawberry shake flavored Milky Way bars.

Delicious.

Hamburg steak place in Shinjuku.

This was the healthy summer set with vegetables.

LOL healthy with a slab of butter on it.

They have this bag out front LOL.

Look an old shinkansen.

I am naturally pigeon-toed, ask my mother

about the horrendous boots I wore as a baby.

He wouldn't get out of the picture!

The only lines worth riding, to be honest.

SIX WEEKS LEFT IN THIS AMAZING PLACE. FML.

Coffee Prince Cafe + Space Izakaya

HI THAR. Just got home from Kyoto about an hour ago and here I am blogging about what I did... two weeks ago. Heh.

But for a moment let me rewind to about a month ago. Thursday nights are glorious in Japan, for that is when they air the only thing I really like watching - Himitsu no Arashi-chan. For the last few episodes the boys have been paired up and given a celebrity "date" for a day, and Sakurai and Ninomiya took some cute actress to the Coffee Prince Cafe in Shin-Okubo. Tracy and I happened to be watching and we were texting each other throughout the segment, kyaaaaa-ing and making plans to visit this glorious place.

In case you didn't already know, Coffee Prince was the title of a popular Korean drama that aired a few years back. I didn't watch it, but it was something about a girl pretending to be a boy and working at this cafe with handsome guys and she falls in love with one of them but he doesn't know she's a girl and whatever whatever whatever. The point is that this cafe is staffed by beautiful Korean boys who don't mind being gawked at.

Two whole floors~

It's across from 7-11 if you need to go find it~

2nd floor by the window.

Ignore Kevin, concentrate on the cute boy in the black blazer~

I told that one I didn't speak Japanese LOL.

Prime example of how very few Asian guys can look good with facial hair.

EDIT: Just remembered they seated four other gaijin right next to us after he cleaned the table.

The cafe is two floors of the building and you enter through the 3rd floor. The 3rd floor is where they filmed the Arashi program and where the more handsome staffers (in my opinion) work, so it's a lot busier. We opted for the 2nd floor because we didn't want to wait around. Most of the customers were girls my age, probably paying a visit for the exact same reason we were. 

The cafe menu consists of fairly overpriced coffee, waffles, and ice cream, but please don't kid yourself into thinking you'd go to this place for the food. Our coffee did come with characters drawn in syrup though:

I took the frog.

After oogling at Korean boys, we went drinking in Shinjuku. I feel like that should be the beginning of some awesome story of how one of us got arrested or deported, but really we all went home about 930pm. Our izakaya of choice was a theme izakaya and owned by the same people who run The Lock-up, but instead of jail cells we were blasted into spaaaaaceeee~

My cocktail was called an Earth.

No one ordered an Uranus.

Kevin and I looking creepy.

Tracy taking pictures of the stars in Marissa's drink.

I didn't get a photo but all the waitresses were dressed in provocative neon-colored space gear and fishnets while the guys were dressed in typical izakaya aprons. Not that I want to see most izakaya waiters in fishnets but they could've made a little bit more effort to look outer spacey.

Eventually I'll have to make some posts about GOLDEN WEEK and how EPIC it was. Seriously, I've spent so much money on train fare going places it's disgusting, but been well worth 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.

Let's play catch-up

This post shall hopefully make up for the dust gathering around this site -- it's been almost a week since I last wrote about my adventures!

So my dear friend Brian was in Tokyo last weekend. He and his buddies had already done all kinds of cultural nonsense, so we went clubbing one night and hit up an izakaya called The Lockup the next. It's a theme izakaya, made to look like a jail that Dr. Frankenstein would manage. About an hour after we sat down, they killed the lights, played "scary" music, and monsters came around banging our doors and making a fuss. I'll have to go again when Dan comes.

They make the wait staff wear jail uniforms. Cute.




The big beaker is Calpis soda, and the little tubes have orange juice, grapefruit juice,
melon liquor, and the last two I forget.






YAY PURIKURA!!!

I found Sprite Zero at the cafeteria combini last week! You can't see it, but under the "NEW!" banner in the top left corner it says, "Sexier than water." Yeah, okay. I just want to be refreshed and possibly entertained by some 90's rappers in a commercial.

Where are Redman and Method Man when you need them?

Look at what my phone can do! PICTURE FRAMES! So fun.

And finally, I succumbed to all the McDonald's advertisements on the train and had a Cheese Katsu Burger. The official Japanese website has the nice professional photos not taken by a keitai. Despite my initial hesitation of mixing katsu sauce and cheese, it was quite delicious. It would probably do well in Hawaii, since we like that kind of stuff. Next I'm gonna try the Shaka Shaka Chicken off the 100Yen menu.

Cheese in the middle!


"Saku saku" on the outside, blah blah blah I forget and I can't make it out from the picture.

Prof. Anno mentioned in politics today that the Japanese currently pay about 170yen for a liter of gas. Let's see if the journalism major can do some basic math:

1 US gallon = 3.8 liters
Current exchange rate is about $1 = 100yen

$1.70 x 3.8 = $6.46

Thus, the Japanese are paying almost $6.50 for a gallon of gas. Makes that $4 you're paying in America seem like a steal, doesn't it?

I'm in the middle of midterms and there's a typhoon going on outside, so there is nothing going on. This weekend, however, will be filled with debauchery and Mickey Mouse and gaijin-smashing because my dear friend John is in Japan. Hopefully Tokyo Disneyland will still be fun in spite of the crap weather we're having.

Dorm Party

Today the dorm manager and dorm mother threw a party for all the residents! I'm not sure why today was chosen, we've all lived here for over a month and it's Mother's Day but whatever. And at 1130am on a Sunday morning, most of the girls were in their pajamas.

They bought us all the junk food I've been craving -- KFC (they call it something like kenta in Japan, short for Kentucky), Pizza Hut, burgers and fries. I grabbed pizza without really looking at the toppings, and bit into tuna, corn, peppers, and some kind of ham.

Note the lack of SPRITE. I miss lemon-lime soda.

Dorm manager put out some beer and brought out some sort of mini-keg. He was a little tipsy by the time we started taking pictures. After we all had our fill of drinks and food, we played bingo! No pictures of it, but I got some sort of gift card or phone card.

The Americans and Australian in the back making a scene.


With the dorm mother.


Ashlie, Christina, me, Natasha, and Rakellie with the dorm manager.

About halfway through the fun, dorm manager decided that we should all introduce ourselves. Everyone was very pleased and/or amazed that the Americans spoke enough Japanese to do introductions. I always get big gaijin points for being from Hawaii. It turns out most of the other girls in the dorm are from Taiwan and they all speak Japanese very well. My language skills are still lacking but I feel like I can understand more, even if I can't speak well.

Friday night, I went with Jim and Kaori to an izakaya. It's a restaurant/drinking establishment where you go in with a bunch of friends, sit at a table on tatami mats (you get your own room if you book in advance), and order alcohol and pupus. The place we went to felt a bit classier than a bar, and it was certainly more relaxed than going to a restaurant since you're sitting on the floor getting tipsy. Jim and I told Kaori that when you eat in America, you go "NOM NOM NOM." It's only true in LOLcats, but it got a good reaction out of her.

Next weekend there's a big festival at Asakusa, so I might have even *more* pictures from the temple. Otherwise it looks to be a dreary, rainy week of school.