Cold Day

It rained and rained all of Sunday night and into yesterday morning, so we didn't make any plans until it had stopped in the afternoon. I used my morning time to organize my room a bit, work on Fafsa, and actually study a little bit of kanji! Then we all met downstairs (Me, Greg, Jen, Dan, and our new friend Hunter) to try and find some lunch. All that rain made it super cold outside, so I was super glad I had bought that new coat the day before! I still felt like I needed gloves and a scarf though!

We walked up to the station area and down towards the mall where Greg and I had gotten ramen and pillows before, because Greg planned on finally breaking down and buying some socks, despite his particular sock standards. We walked a pretty good ways down that street trying to find a nice-looking place and happened across a little mom and pop ramen shop (hahaa...) and decided on it! It was super warm inside and the price was reasonable (although I somehow keep ending up ordering the same, happyaku en dish as everyone else despite my continued efforts to get the smaller/simpler/cheaper dish...) and the people seemed nice. The best part was that they gave us the little glasses of cold water instead of hot tea, and there was a water cooler in the corner for refills! I have a feeling we'll be going back there at some point. I got plain ol' ramen and it was sooo good, way better than the stuff from the mall =)



After that, Jen and Dan departed for a place Dan knew about near a U.S. military base where foreigners can buy prepaid phones. Our group made a stop for Hunter to get photos taken for the gaijin card, and I spotted a pretty good-sized AU store, which is the company that makes the phone that Sada gave me from her trip to Japan so I could just reactivate it instead of getting a whole new phone, so I decided to go in and give it a shot at least. The lady I talked to was super nice and helpful even though I didn't understand most of what she was saying. I filled out an entire form for a phone plan before saying I was only going to be there for four months, at which point she said oh...well a prepaid phone is probably going to be cheaper than getting a plan for this one then! Doh! I say I filled out the whole form, but, embarrassingly, neither Greg, Hunter, nor I could remember the postal code or phone number for DK House, or Teresa or Dan's phone numbers! Oof.

After we switched to pre-paid mode, she showed me how the phone Sada gave me would "become" this new tiny phone she had. I'm not sure what that meant, but I think maybe it would be an exchange? Or she would move any content and numbers to the new phone? I picked the cheapest plan, which looked like 3,300 yen (about$33) a month, but I couldn't really read it fast enough to see how many minutes or texts a month that is. I don't figure I'll be using it too much anyway so I'm not too worried about that, but I'll try and check the AU site and see what it can tell me.

Anyway, she said it would take a bit to get it set up, so she gave me a little card and said to come back in an hour, so we went on back to the aforementioned mall. Turns out there are two more stories to that mall, for a total of four stories! The third floor is mostly baby stuff and electronics, but the fourth floor has the following cool things:

• A great view of the city
• School supplies
• Snacks of all kinds!

We did so much shopping around in Shinjuku, but this mall really had everything we needed all along, haha. We probably got things like scissors and a blow dryer for cheaper in the city though, so it was worth it in the end. But if we need anything from now on, we definitely know where to go! I wonder if they have any member discounts...

When we got back to DK House I quickly got the DK House contact information, Teresa's number, and a few other important-seeming documents and trucked it back to the AU store, which turns out to actually be preettty far away. Unfortunately, the lady decided that just my passport and the things in it weren't enough for her to be able to give me a cell phone, and that she needed something else, like the gaijin card. I was so close! I tried giving her my American driver's license, but that was a no go. Then I showed her the ISIC card, you know, the one that seems really important and amazing for foreigners to have and you have to have it before you study abroad? She stared at it for a looong time and then asked something to the effect of "What on earth is this card I wonder?" And the "world of discounts" provided by the card include a grand total of 2 hotels, 2 performing arts theaters and 1 restaurant in ALL of Tokyo. (And about 15 museums, but those are an indulgance.) We're all pretty bitter about that card now, haha.

After my long journey to and from the phone shop, I was tuckered out and decided to give in to a little 5:00pm short nap. I woke up about an hour later I'd say and checked to see if anyone was around, but nobody was online and I was still groggy so I laid back down. Two hours later, I'm awakened by Greg knocking on my door. "First of all," he says, "It's like almost 8:00, so you've been asleep for like three hours.." Dangit >_< haha. Second of all, he and Hunter decided they wanted to find this gaming club he heard about only two stops away from our station that had a super cheap deal for all-you-can-play gaming. I had kind of a bad feeling about it but decided to say yes anyway.

When we got to the station, there was a neat sort of stand where you can put money into a vending machine and choose the meal you want, and then it gives you a ticket that you give to the cooks and they prepare it for you. We decided that was about as cheap and good as we'd be able to find, and it was a unique experience, so I got curry soba noodles and the two guys got udon. I think I'm discovering that I prefer rice to noodles, and definitely when it comes to curry, but it was still pretty good (and there was unlimited water again!!!). It was suuuper hot though and I got some on my pretty new cream coat T__T Just another reason for me to abhor the Japanese custom of slurping as showing a sign of delicious noodles or whatever, it's silly and unnecessary, especially when places don't have any napkins out for use. Bah humbug.

After our meal, it was time to head out on our journey for the JJ Club 100. Now I'm not gonna say how it happened, but we ended up walking a good 30-45 minutes in the complete opposite direction out of the station. We asked some Jr. High kids if they had heard of the place we were headed, but they hadn't. Finally we ended up asking the worker at the Sunkus store, who also didn't know, so we just asked him how to get to the nearest station. Unfortunately, all I remembered from the name of the station we had come from was "Urawa", so that's where he directed us. We finally got to the station and on the train before we realized it was not the station we had arrived at, but one further down the line! We had walked reeally really far. While we never got to the gaming club that night, it turned out being a nice and entertaining stroll with friends =)

Fashion Day

Today we went to Harajuku! Dan and Jen met up there this morning while Greg and I were only just getting the wheels turning, so they said we could try and meet them at the Harajuku station at 1pm. Harajuku, from what I understand, is sort of a sub-culture hub with a focus on craazy fashions. It's kind of well-known for those who are into anime or Japanese rock music.

Anyway, once we got going (which was kind of late in the game, thanks to me and my slow goings this morning), we decided to get lunch at the money-devouring festival again. I got a chicken kabob that was pretty good (but 500 yen oh my gooosh >_< ), and Greg got some ridiculous squid legs or something, I don't even know. Quit eating weird things Greg. He got some more takoyaki after that and I got another ChocoBanana from our vendor friend who remembered me from yesterday! We ate our new foods on the way to the station and lamented the lack of trash cans (we didn't find any suitable ones until we were inside the station!!) and the difficulty of separating trash into its appropriate bin (more on that in a later post).

We had a little train confusion on the way, but we did make it to Harajuku. Unfortunately, it was almost 2:00 so Dan and Jen were nowhere to be found, so we just explored on our own. First we saw what I can only assume was the well-known bridge where people dress up in crazy goth/lolita outfits and stand around and tourists take photos of them, cause that's what was happening. I was surprised how small the bridge was though, and how not really that far-out the outfits were. I felt like I could out-crazy dress those kids if I wanted to. Come on, kids.

We didn't spend long there and instead started looking for Takeshita street, where I knew there was a big hyaku-en store called Daiso. Turns out that's where aallll the clothing stores are crammed into as well. It was kind of a winding street with shops on both sides and people absolutely everywhere. We described the first steps down that street as "diving in" because you just kinda had to fall into the flow of people going in and out. We picked up a few fun things at the Daiso and then had a nice time browsing all the different crazy clothing stores. Greg continued his eternal pursuit for the perfect socks, but concluded that Japan might not be the best place to find socks for size 14 feet. One highlight of my shopping day was that I bought an umbrella from a store called Shazbot.We felt like we had seen about all we wanted of Harajuku and it was starting to rain, but I still wanted a sort of rain/wind/why-is-it-still-cold-in-springtime jacket, so we started back from the beginning of the street to try and find one. There were even more people than before, so it was a task to try and even get into the street, but I found a store pretty quickly that had a nice selection of coats like I wanted! I found a light yellow windbreaker material one that caught my eye right away, because I'm starting to really love that color, but it was kind of flimsy for $50. With a little more browsing and trying on, I found a lovely and classy cream colored jacket of the same style! I still had to deliberate a while on which one to get, but in the end it had to be the cream one. Oh, and much thanks to Greg for holding my stuff/saying "that one looks good"/not saying "just pick one already."

Dan and Jen had mentioned planning on going to Yoyogi garden for flower viewing near Harajuku, but since it was so much later than they had talked about and we had little or no chance of actually meeting up with them, AND it was starting to rain for serious, we decided to head on home. Getting into Harajuku was easy, but trying to get out was ridiculous! We got our train tickets and then stood in a slowly-moving line for about 20 minutes as tons of people tried to get in the station but even more tried to get out to Harajuku! Craziness! Finally we got on a train (after having to let a full one go on) and made it back to home sweet Nishikawaguchi. With the rain and the cold, we decided to get some 7-11 takeout for dinner instead of planning on walking back out to the station later. After a lot of searching, Greg won first prize by finding some spaghetti plates for cheap. He got regular and I got super cheese I guess. They even heated them up for us before we left! One more stop at the Shop 99 so I could give in and get some ugly cheap slippers of my own instead of continuing to borrow DK's, and we were on our way home for serious.

We ate our lovely spaghetti dinners down in the communal kitchen, and after a while an American-looking guy came in and sat down on the couch. We struck up a conversation with him and he came over and sat with us while we ate! His name is Hunter and he's from Texas and will be going to Sophia as well! I think he said he's a Theatre and Japanese major. What a combination! He just got here two days ago and hasn't been out much yet, so whatever we do tomorrow I think we'll definitely see if he wants to come with! I'm sure we'll start meeting some actual Japanese people soon enough, but for now it's interesting to meet other Americans or international students as well =)

The rest of the night has been blogging, trying to get FAFSA done before the deadline, putting away clothes and things, and sorting trash. Haha...that last one doesn't sound so good. Oh, and of course there was the part where I had myself convinced that because 1) I couldn't find my key card for the front door, and 2) I remembered feeling like someone had taken something out of my back pocket on one of the packed trains today or yesterday (though I couldn't find that anything was missing), that my key card had been stolen and I would have to explain it to Uzuki-san and pay for a new one. Turns out I had put it in a zippered case in my purse for safe keeping. Dur.
Harajuku put Greg down for the count.

Now I am quite sleepy and I think I'll head to bed. I'll plan on adding photos to this post tomorrow, though not too many I'm afraid! *yawn* Goodnight!

Sensory Overload Day

(Warning! This post is high in text, pictures, and emotions! Also, it was written yesterday, about yesterday.)

Today was an interesting day. We woke up this morning to find a festival of sorts was happening right behind our dorm in the cherry blossom-lined walkway right behind DK House! We had been seeing tarps laid out there all week, but we weren't sure what they were for. Turns out, it's how people stake out their spot for hanami (flower viewing), where they bring lots of food, and even cook some there, to have a big picnic and enjoy the flowers! As if that wasn't neat enough to see, the entire pathway (a good two or three blocks long) had food vendors set up along the left side! It was so interesting yesterday morning hearing the sounds and smelling the smells of the festival.

We decided we definitely had to go check it out, and walked the length of the vendors first to see what they had to offer. On our way back, Greg and Jen picked up some food items that I still have no idea what they were, but they were kind of a batter with a bunch of items like roasted corn and other vegetables, fried into a mini pancake-like thing with sauce. I had a bite and it was pretty good! I absolutely had to have some candy from the candy stall. For some reason, I didn't take a picture of that one, but I think maybe Greg or Jen has one. The main item was little star-shaped candy called konpeito. I had seen konpeito in anime and such before and I've always wanted to try it because it looks so sweet and delicious! It's basically like America's rock candy, only in tiny clusters that are a lot easier to eat. They had a few different sizes but I mostly stuck to tiny and small. You could put any candy you wanted in the bag, but it was all 100 yen per gram, so that wasn't exactly the best deal.. I ended up with a tiny tiny bag of candy for 250 yen, after a discount from the nice candy vendor =) It was totally worth it though, I'm enjoying it so much!

Next, we split the cost for 6 takoyaki. Tako is Japanese for octopus, and takoyaki is octopus dumplings. They fill up a half-sphere frying pan thing with a batter and put in the octopus and other items, and then roll the mix as it fries to make the round shape. I don't think anyone at home would believe that I would ever eat anything like this, so Greg filmed it for me =)
The taste was pretty good, although there is some spice I kept tasting in the festival food that was new to me and I'm not sure I liked or not. The octopus was interesting, it was very tough and chewy. Overall it was a nice and filling snack. We picked up some vending machine drinks to go with our meals. I opted for some cute Natchan apple juice which was very appley and good. After that was the best part.... ChocoBananas! We scouted out all of the chocobanana stands and decided the first one was best. It's basically just a peeled banana on a stick, dipped in either chocolate, strawberry chocolate, or green tea chocolate, and then decorated with sprinkles (and in our case, topped with a koala cookie!). The chocolate wasn't quite as chocolatey as I was expecting, but it was still delicious and fun to eat!After we were all festival'd out, we took the train to Shinjuku to shop and meet up with Teresa. Downtown Shinjuku is another Times Square-esque location, with tall buildings and flashy ads. First we ventured into a gigantic multistory store called Don Quixote. I'd never seen anything like it! Everything was just completely packed to the walls and ceilings, and the aisles were really only big enough for one person, and yet the place was still crammed with young people shopping.

We still had some hyaku-en (100 yen store) shopping to do, so we went to one at the top of the Prince Hotel and picked up some random needed items. After that, we got completely distracted at a 5-story arcade across the street. Greg rocked some Taiko Drum Master, while Jen and I were overjoyed to find an old neglected Typing of the Dead game! We got pretty far until a boss monster asked us questions in Japanese and we had to type in the correct answer. Totally lame. Before we knew it, it was time to meet Teresa! We ended up just taking her straight back to the arcade though, so nothing really changed. We all went up to the purikura (photo stickers) floor and had a blast taking awesome photos! If I get access to a scanner sometime I might scan and post them.Once we were tired of spending too much money on video games (which didn't take long), we ventured out to see more of Shinjuku. We did a lot of wandering around, browsed a few more hyaku-en shops, and eventually decided to eat at the Yoshinoya. I tried the butadori this time (pork over rice) and it was delicious! Japanese portions are kind of nice for me because I can get the cheap small version and still eat enough, since I usually don't finish meals at home. I tried to order miso soup as well, but the waiter heard mizu instead, so I got water. I wouldn't have been able to finish the miso though, and the water was a really nice change from tea, so I guess that waiter knew what he was doing better than I did.

We did some more wandering after dinner and walked through some more....interesting parts of town. I won't say shady, because they looked mostly the same, just with fewer people and more ads for host bars (surprisingly few for hostess bars, or maybe they just don't advertise the hostesses the same way they do the hosts..). At this point, Shinjuku was starting to wear me a little thin. I think it was partly due to the fact that we had gone to Shibuya just a few days before, but I really didn't like being in or seeing so much of a city that was devoted entirely to entertainment and consumer culture. The only big city I've spent any time in in the U.S. is New York City, and the only real entertainment-focused area I really noticed was Times Square. Times Square, however, seems like more of a strip of entertainment with a few theaters and such off to the sides, while Shibuya and Shinjuku are entire cities with nothing but stores and pachinko parlors. If you walk long enough through Times Square, you eventually find a newspaper or TV company, or some other establishment whose presence isn't entirely devoted to instant consumption. If you walk long enough through Shinjuku, you eventually find a love hotel. I know there are cities in Tokyo more like New York, with different kinds of businesses and offices, I'm just not used to seeing an entire entertainment/shopping district the likes of Shinjuku or Shibuya.

I think just seeing so many indulging in the lifestyle of being serviced by these kinds of districts just really bothered me. Imagining girls who work in the office all week and then go to Don Quixote in search of the next accessories they can add to their collection, to wear out to a club or bar or karaoke in the city. I start to imagine this is the bulk of their existence, it's the meaning they're creating in their lives, and that's the extent of it: buying pretty things, having fun, looking good. I'm sure there's more to all of them, but somehow these cities just reek with that feeling. So friends, if I was a little quite last night, that's my explanation =)
And yet, in the middle of all this self-indulgent, consumerist bustle, something magical happened. When we got back to Shinjuku station, we noticed that there were musicians setting up and performing in a pavilion at the bottom of the stairs to the station. After watching a girl singing with guitar backups, we started to move along and saw a young Japanese man with some luggage, about to set up a performance area. First he put on some fast-paced music through a speaker and set down a black hat, a glass ball, and a drinking glass on the ground in front of him. Then he roped off the area with some thick rope, placing a diabolo at each corner. By the time he was all set up, we were really curious and interested in what his performance would be, so we were sitting pretty close to his stage. He began by changing the music to something dramatic and then did a routine with the glass ball, making it appear to be weightless or stationary in mid air, which was really entertaining. He fed off the applause of the audience and encouraged us to clap more whenever he felt it was needed. Even when part of a trick went wrong, he would quickly save it and request even more applause.

After a few hat-catching tricks, he did some fork-bending, including one trick where Jen had to hold the two middle prongs of the fork while he twisted the rest. Our favorite trick was when he started shaking the fork back and forth, and one of the prongs separated from the rest. Then, with some more shaking, all four prongs separated and fanned out, then he separated the top of the fork from the rest. His final act was diabolo! I was really excited because I've been interested in diabolo since I started watching Kaleido Star, and I've even tried to pick it up a few times on my own without much luck. He did some of the coolest tricks I've ever seen, including a lot I had never seen before, and his performance had so much energy. He knew how to play the crowd and it was mesmerizing to watch. At the end of the show, he gave a moving speech which seemed to be about how he had come this far just doing his best as one person, and he hoped to pass on those feelings, and if we felt those feelings too, to donate some money of course. I absolutely had to get a photo with him, so we took one of just me and him, and then a group photo. After that, he offered the bent pieces of fork to us, and I got the top part while Greg got the bottom.

Every now and then I see a performance like that that just blows me away and makes me very emotional. I remember how I, ridiculously, thought the musical Starlight Express was so cool and entertaining that I cried six times during the performance, I tear up most every time I watch Cirque du Soleil, Kaleido Star made me cry in the first episode, and I know the same thing has happened on several different occasions with different things. Last night's performance was one of those times. I don't think the rest of the group had quite the same reaction, but I just couldn't get over the energy he had, and how passionate he seemed to be about it. And it was a great performance on top of that. I definitely could've cried afterwards, and it made me all smiley for quite a while afterwards.

After that, we wandered some more through a store in the station and down to another district, and then back up into that store for sitting (I bought a $10 blowdryer somewhere in all that... it smells like burning when I use it, haha). We split up our purikura from earlier and just enjoyed having a seat. Then we went back down to the station and headed our separate ways. It was a looonng day and I think we all slept good! Sorry for the long and somewhat emotional/philosophical post... blame Shinjuku! Haha. I'm well aware that America is a highly consumer-oriented country, no doubt about it, I'm just not used to it being quite so concentrated and populated.

Relaxing Day

Today we decided to relax. Well, Greg and I did. Jen was already gone with Dan to see the campus and run errands this morning once we were up and functioning =) I slept in till about 11:00 which was woonderfulll. Our lovely 3 piece futon sets are the best! I slept on towels as pillows but that was fine. When I woke up, I had been having a complex dream, so I had a few seconds where I wasn't sure where I was at all. I think that's an interesting feeling, so somehow even when the back of my mind started to figure things out, I tried to keep that unsure feeling for a few more moments.

It took a long time to get moving this morning, or rather, there was too much to do so it was hard to get myself to stop doing that and go get a shower. I unpacked pretty much all my stuff and got some of it put away, and then got too hungry to keep doing that and decided to get a shower. After Greg and I were both ready to go, we decided to head out towards the station to get some lunch. Unfortunately we ended up really confused as to where we were, because we found ourselves at the Yaoka Marketplace (the store that had the McDonald's from yesterday), which we were pretty certain was on the other side of town. We decided to stop and get some groceries while we were there anyway. I got some water and a good-looking orange drink, two chocolate-based snacks, some rice crackers, and some croissants that were on sale! We decided we need some snacks in our rooms, and definitely some drinks. Somehow Japanese people don't seem to drink much at restaurants, but then there are vending machines everywhere on the streets. I got a big bottle of water, but I'm afraid it'll be gone soon. (We found it for cheaper at the Shop 99 though!)
After our directional mishap, we decided to go back home with our stuff and try again. This time we took a street we knew and ended up at the station area. We went farther on a street that we hadn't been down yet to try and find a place to eat and saw an Itoyokado department store, AKA the type of store we carried our bedding home from last night, a good 30 minutes from our area. I said to Greg "We're going in here." I was sure we'd find the exact same bedding and feel ridiculous, but we didn't! There were other 3 piece sets for about the same price, but none of them were as good-looking as the ones we bought, so we felt justified. We also bought pillows while we were there! Greg found a nice flannel one and I found a fuzzy one that looks just like my bed set! Most of them had this weird bead stuff inside for some reason....
After browsing the store a little longer and making fun of shirts written in English, we went back downstairs and saw that they had a little ramen place inside the store, kind of food-court style, so we thought we might as well eat that! I accidentally ordered a ramen set, which I thought was just the thing I had been looking at (a bowl of ramen), but it costs more and comes with a mound of rice. That was kind of a bummer because I couldn't eat it all and I paid extra, but now I've learned to say no to sets, unless you know you want extra stuff. Greg got a melon soda which is a bright green drink. I remembered seeing it on Sailor Moon all the time and I was tempted to ask for some, but he paid so much for so little, I didn't want to take any. I'll definitely have to have some while I'm here though! =)

Since we had completed our objectives, we headed back to the DK House with a quick stop at the Shop 99 store. We were hoping it would be a regular 100yen store, but it was mostly groceries. We did find that all the groceries were much cheaper there than they had been at the Yaoko Marketplace, and it was closer to our apartment. Greg got some soap and we went back home. Jen still wasn't back so we just took care of little things we needed to do. Then when Jen got back around 5 something, we all started blogging... and didn't stop until about 9:00 when we realized how hungry we were. We met up in Greg's room and lamented the fact that we had to leave and go out in the cold to get food, but we're the sannin darnit, so we headed for the station area.

After passing several drunk salarymen, we found a place called Sukiya. It seems to be the same kind of fast food type place as Yoshinoya, but it serves curry and donburi (items over rice). We all ordered curry with an egg on it for 440 yen each! The service was awesome, one guy came out with our trays, the other with something else, and then he rolled up the check and put it in its little container with a flourish. It hopped back out somehow and he had to do it again, and he did it and said the same thing the exact same way, it was like a performance. It really reminded me of Mary Poppins when they're inside the drawing, and Mary and Bert go to get tea or whatever and all the penguin waiters start running out, haha.

We took an uneventful trip home (stopping once to find that our Itoyokado store is only open til 10:00pm, not 11:00pm, so Jen couldn't get a pillow) and now here I am blogging about the day =) Oh, on another note, today we kept noticing that on all of the signs for our city, Warabi City, there was this weird rabbit mascot. We kept seeing them and wondering about it, until Greg finally noticed today that one of the signs said it was a wallaby. That seemed even weirder! Then about 3 hours later, it hit me that the mascot was a wallaby because we're in Warabi City. Duh. Crazy Japanese.

Since I didn't really take any pictures today, here are some photos I took of the sakura trees right from my balcony! This is what I wake up to in the morning, folks =)

Jam-Packed Day!

This is a catch-up post for Thursday, March 27th, our second day in Japan.

So after an uncomfortable night's sleep, I got up around 8:30, cleaned up a bit, and went downstairs to meet Jen and wait for our luggage. We waited in the freezing cold lobby until about 11, then decided to go up to my room, eat some cookies, and warm up. Before we went back down we went to visit Greg, who had been up for too many hours with no watch or sense of the passage of time. When we came back downstairs, our luggage had magically arrived!! Hooraaay, thanks Black Cat! Jen and I got showers and dressed, and then we all headed out for our first day of exploring! First we headed towards the city hall building (basically) to get our gaijin cards (alien registration), but on the way there we found a nice grocery store with a McDonald's inside and decided to make that our first lunch, haha. Jen and Greg got the Teritama burger, which is a teriyaki burger with an egg on top (we called it the Japanese Gusburger), but I played it safe with a double cheeseburger set. I did try a bite of Greg's sandwich and some of the Qoo drink he bought though.

Along the way on our trip, Jen and I made several stops at post offices and banks, trying to get someone, anyone to cash our traveler's checks. We asked in Japanese and everything, but everyone looked at them like they were some relic from the past, and could only tell us "Try a bank," or "Try a different bank." We moved on to city hall, and Jen and I registered for our gaijin cards, while Greg only half registered before we had to get him some photos taken for the card. They directed us to a cheap photo booth outside a department store a fair walk away, so we went! Greg got his photos, and we browsed the store for bedding. We all found a 3 piece bed set that we really liked in nice colors and on sale, so we decided to keep it in mind for after we shopped around. After browsing the Fashion Recycle STOMP store for a while, we returned to city hall and got Greg registered for his card. The nice city hall people also couldn't tell us where to take a traveler's check. Who knew it would be so much trouble!Favorite photo so far.

After all of that, we went to Warabi station and took a train into Shibuya to meet Dan. Aside from a bit of confusion when our train went backwards and took us back about three stops, we made it there just fine. Downtown Shibuya looks a lot like Times square, only every street after the first, bright billboard part, is still jam-packed with little shops and arcades and pachinko stores (they're REALLY big on pachinko here, it's a type of gambling game). There were tons of young people there and it seemed to be the cool place to hang out. First, Jen and I found a big Mizuho bank that would finally take our traveler's checks! The exchange rate was something like 97, it could've been worse. We were just happy to find somewhere to exchange them! Next We went around to a few stores and tried to find bedding and other household items at Tokyou Hands, but it was all overpriced and not very cute, so we didn't stay long.For dinner, Dan took us to a kaitenzushi place (sushi that is made fresh and comes out on a plate that goes around the restaurant, where you take a plate and they add up how many you ate at the end). This place was jam packed and all about speed. You had to finish within 20-30 minutes, but if you ate 7 plates, you could stay as long as you wanted. I'm notorious for eating slower than everyone around me, so this place wasn't too fun for me, hah. I managed to eat 6 plates, but I was starting to feel not so great by that time. I did have a funny cultural mishap there though. I saw the girl next to me get some water from a faucet at the table, which I then tried to do but couldn't really get it working, so she showed me how. Then they pointed out, hey, you're supposed to put this tea packet in it, and I was like "Oh cool! Hey Greg, you're supposed to put this tea packet in it," at which point I was trying to tear the packet open, so the Japanese couple starts yelling "Aaah! Sono mama de, sono mama de" which basically meant, as it is, don't tear it open it's a bag of tea you idiot. I guess that wasn't a cultural mishap so much as an I-don't-ever-drink-tea-and-forget-how-tea-works mishap, but it was still pretty cute and that couple was nice =)Greg decided it would be a good idea to eat these tiny octopi/squid/things you shouldn't eat

After that I think we bought Greg the kanji dictionary game for DS and then browsed a Sega arcade. I dropped 100 yen (about $1) on a win-some-candy game, but I didn't win any candy. Lame. The purikura (cool photo booth) section was girls only, or as we English speakers would apparently better understand it, "Female Limitation."

We were all pretty beat after that and knew we absolutely needed to get our bedding, so we all hopped on the train back to Warabi. This is where things started to get interesting. We walked the good 20 minute walk from Warabi Station to the department store where we saw the bedding earlier, picked out some other things we needed, and took our bedding to the cash register. This bedding was huge and came in a ridiculously huge package. There wasn't a non-awkward way to carry it. The plus side was that it was on sale twice over, so we ended up paying about $70 for the three piece set (a foam futon pad, a softer futon, and then a big comforter) which was a great deal. But then we had to carry it home, hadn't we?

We had gotten a great map from Uzuki-san, and thought we had a pretty good route home figured out, but we ended up getting lost three times. I say lost, but it was more like.. we knew what area we were in but not the exact street or direction. After asking the nice men who worked at the Shell station, a nice lady who came out of her house when she saw us on the street corner, and the nice worker at the 99 store, we finally got on the right road and made it home. I'm still not sure what made us look at that bedding and decide "Yeah, we can carry that home." I guess it was the same thing that lead us to build a fort out of a ping-pong table, no questions asked. It's just that sannin, can-do attitude. Or it might have been the daunting prospect of trying to get a taxi and the strong desire not to pay for one combined. No matter, we made it home with Uzuki-san watching us awkwardly as we brought in our large packages, probably thinking "Why didn't these crazy Americans just rent bedding from here?"
So after a way too long day with swollen achy feet, we all enjoyed a soft and warm night's sleep on our new, well-earned futons! Jen and I got pink and cream while Greg got blue and some other colors I don't remember. That's all for Thursday's wrap-up, expect a re-cap of today (Friday) sometime tonight perhaps!

First post catch-up!

It's finally my first post! It's been a whirlwind of activity and exhaustion since we arrive in Japan, so I haven't really had any time to blog yet! I'll start by catching up on the beginning of the journey:

Monday, March 24th:
I packed my bags, said my goodbyes, and flew from St. Louis to Washington D.C. to meet up with Jen and Greg, my plane/residence/Sophia friends! Together we form the sannin, a legendary trio of scholars and adventurers the likes of which are unmatched in all of Japan. Jen came and picked me up and we hung out at her place until Greg arrived! We went and got dinner with some of Jen's family and then set up camp in Jen's basement. We all decided it would be a good idea to make a fort to keep out any possible invaders, so we did. We covered the ping-pong table with some blankets and reinforced the back with a couch cushion. The floor was constructed of comforters and pillows. It was actually extremely comfortable and cozy and we all slept quite well in preparation for our journey ahead.


Tuesday, March 25th:
Jen's parents drove us to the airport and we tried to get our boarding passes. There was a bit of a problem with our information, but the nice airport man fixed it for us. Then we had to play a little musical luggage while we transferred items from Greg's suitcase to ours in order to get his bags under 50lbs and save him the overweight fee. Ironically, both Jen's and my suitcase ended up weight more than Greg's. With Phase 1 complete, we moved on through security, Phase 2, with no problems at all. We found Teresa waiting for us at the gate, our fellow plane partner (though she upgraded to the next class).
The wait for boaring passed quickly as we chit-chatted, and before we knew it we were on our 14 hour flight! I sat in the middle of a 5-seat row with some men on my left, and Greg and Jen on my right. Time passed surprisingly fast on the plane, and we all slept surprisingly little (not by choice). Greg and I watched Elizabeth: The Golden Age on the screen on the back of the seats. We both thought it was pretty good, and an artsy, pretty movie to watch. Then I thought I'd put another movie on and try to sleep, but I ended up becoming way too engrossed in the movie to sleep at all. It was Becoming Jane with Anne Hathaway. I super liked it, I laughed, I cried (on the plane T_T) and while my feelings about the main characters' relationship has changed a bit, I still think I could watch it a few more times and still not be tired of it =)

Aside from all that, the sannin talked, ate the airline meals, went and visited Teresa, and occasionally got up to look out the window. Next thing we knew, we were in Japan! Jen's boyfriend Dan, who has been at Sophia half a year now, came to meet us. We got through customs and got our bags with no problem, and then Jen, Teresa, and I had the Kuroneko (Black Cat) service deliver our luggage to our residence. It was a little stressful, and since we found out a little too late that we wouldn't get them til the next morning, we were left with whatever clothes etc. was in our carry-ons, but it was definitely worth that inconvenience and the cost considering how much stuff we had and how far we were away from home. We took a train from inside the airport (Narita Airport) to Nishi Kawaguchi Station (I think we had a transfer once, and parted ways with Teresa somewhere in there as she went to stay at her hostel). I was just staring out the window taking it all in. Everything looks so different here! My first views of Japan! It was exciting, but I was also pretty worn out from the flight.
It was dark by the time we reached our neighborhood, but Dan managed to get us to the DK House! We checked in with Mr. Uzuki and he gave us the grand tour. We have a kitchen/common room with TV and computers, toilets and laundry on every floor, a small meeting room, a nice lobby, and the first floor has the boys and girls shower rooms. If we understood correctly, we switch sides each week because one of the shower rooms has a sauna, so boys and girls take turns (this week is boys, aw man). As for rooms, I'm on the second floor, Jen is on the third, and Greg is on the fourth. All of our rooms are right off the stairway, so that's super convenient! We also have the most beautiful view of a pathway covered by cherry blossoms right outside out balconies! I can hardly believe it, it's so perfect! There are people walking through there and having picnics all day, it's really nice. At night there are lanterns lining the walkway that are lit up too!

After we got settled, Dan took us back towards the station and we had Gyuudon (beef over rice) at a sort of Japanese fast food chain called Yoshinoya. It was cheap and delicious! Then we went back home and crashed for the night. Well... sort of. We had planned on going to buy bedding that night, but by the time it was all said and done there just wasn't time and we were all too exhausted. That night would be the first real test of the sannin. Our beds by themselves are just wooden boxes (sort of like the ones at UVA), but we all figured we were tired enough that we could just put some clothes on them and be fine to sleep. After layering clothes on my body to fight the coldness of my room at the time, I only had enough clothes with me to make a pillow. I laid down and wasn't too uncomfortable and managed to sleep about two hours. After that, I woke up and was just too cold to go back to sleep. I was wearing a total of three long sleeve shirts, plus a camisole, a sweater and a jacket, my jeans, and three pairs of socks, and I had actually taken down one of the curtains in my room to use as a blanket.... I've heard that Japanese buildings are very poorly insulated and I definitely believe it. All the rooms have an air conditioner inside but I hadn't really figured out much about it. I did notice that the maximum temperature was 30 degrees Celsius, which is definitely not cold air, so I started messing with the controls and looking online for help. After a while I got my Aircon to put out some warm air and I was finally able to get some more comfortable sleep, though only in 2-3 hour shifts. Jen had also figured out her heater that night, but poor Greg slept in the cold =(



I'll update about yesterday (Thursday, March 27th) in the next post!