Pee. S -

P.S. - I forgot to mention that Uchihara Mall is where I got to see some crazy toilets! Take a look. The traditional toilet is definitely lacking. Modern toilets are where it's at! And yes, the store above's name is actually "Alphabet's alphabet".

Shopping Heaven

Ok, so on the 16th, I didn't do very much. I just relaxed at Barry's place. I did go to Jusco to buy food and some alcohol to bring to karaoke later that night. Karaoke was actually no fun at all. I don't think I sang anything, or if I did it was only like half a song. I wasn't drunk, no one else was drinking and the alcohol I did have tasted like crap. Completely horrible crap. It was weird and zero fun. But, I still had to pay an equal portion of the total cost, so next time I'm gonna hog the mic whether I feel like singing or not. :p The karaoke place was super awesome though. Very pretty and clean. And the most awesome song catalog imaginable!

Today, I discovered Uchihara Mall. And I fell in love. Ahhh. On the way there, I wasn't totally sure if I was boarding the right train, so on the platform I saw these two younger girls and asked them if it was the right one. They helped me. Luckily, it was the right one. Then I got on the train and sat for a few minutes and then one of the 2 girls came over and sat with me. She asked if I wanted to try some famous candy and then she wanted to talk with me in English so she sat with me until my stop. Her other friend was too shy to come over. It was a cool experience.
Anyway, back to the mall. It was so great. I spent so much. Hahaha. They had some awesome stores. But I think the most awesome part of the whole mall was the food court area. I can't even call it a food court. It was more of a restaurant alley or something. All very nice places that were totally enclosed and each had something different to offer. I know I have good pics of some of these places. I chose to eat at one called "Rakeru" because their specialty was omuraisu, or omelette rice. I wanted to try this because I had watched "Kimi wa Petto" before coming to Japan and omuraisu played an important part in that drama. The one I ordered was like a massive omelette stuffed with seasoned rice, rolled up and covered in a brown gravy and mushrooms. It may sound weird, but it was beyond delicious. My mouth is watering right now.

Continuation

May 10,2010

So yeah... I know I stopped updating because I got really busy towards the end of my trip, but I wrote my entries in a travel journal and will upload them here now. Better late than never, right? :) I'm motivated again. Let me tell you why.

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

I can't wait to learn more about blogging. I've liked it so far, hopefully I'll love it soon. :)

Yesterday!

I had so much fun yesterday! After some crazy email tag, it was decided that I was going back to Tokyo to meet Hiroshi, someone I'd met in Switzerland when I was an exchange student! So, I took the train to Mito and then I wanted to get there fast, so I asked the ticket helper guy and he got me the fastest ticket to Ueno. The train was called like, the Super Limited Express Hitachi or something like that. Hehe. The train was so nice! Padded, comfy seats that even reclined a bit. And a person with a drink/snack cart came down the aisles. Probably the nicest thing was that you can buy reserved seats, so instead of having to scramble and look for space, you have an assigned seat only for you. Instead of taking 2 hours to get to Ueno it took just about 1 hour. And it was nice because there were no stops between Mito and Ueno, it was direct. So I got to Ueno at 3:34PM and then headed to the pay phones. I called Hiroshi and I was able to meet up with him within 5 mins. I recognized him as soon as I saw him. It's funny how people change, but stay the same. I hadn't seen him in about 10 years, I think.

Anyway, we started out by going to Asakusa shrine. It's beautiful. So many people, so many souvenirs. I really liked it. I got some good pics.

Then after that we walked a bit, then somehow Akihabara was mentioned and we decided to go there. So another train ride and we were there. It looked so cool. That's where all the electronics stores and anime stuff is. We looked at a few stores as we walked and then we saw Rajio Kaikan. We went in there and looked at electronic dictionaries since I'd wanted one for awhile. Then we went upstairs and saw different areas. One had all these little anime figurines. Some were cute, some where disturbing. I didn't wanna go up and stare, but I swear one of the figurines was doing something super obscene. I was probably right. Then we were going down one hallway and there were these huge glass cases full of revolvers. It was sooo weird! Some of them were enormous! Then we went out and went to another store. We looked at dictionaries again and at cds and things like that. I didn't see anything I wanted so we left. We kept seeing the girls dressed in French maid outfits advertising the maid cafes standing in the streets. For anyone who doesn't know what a maid cafe is, it's a small cafe that serves drinks and food, but the waitresses basically call you master and act really subservient and speak super, super politely. It's strange, yes, but interesting. I think the girls will hang out and talk and flirt a lot with tables of guys. At least that's what it seemed like. But they didn't hang out with us too much since Hiroshi and I were together. We did get kind of a shock though... the prices are insane! For non-alcoholic drinks like coke, melon soda, etc the price is 600 yen (over $6). For an alcoholic drink, the price is 1500 yen (over $15). Hahaha. So we didn't even look at food. We decided to have one drink and go. And we decided to get a picture with one of the girls even though that cost another $5. Something neat that you can do there is make a dvd. You can pick one of three anime scenes and basically try your hand at being a voice actor. They had mic stands set up in the middle of the room so I think you had to do it in front of everyone. Which would be embarassing.

So then we left and went back to Rajio Kaikan where I bought my dictionary! It's so exciting. I can draw kanji on it and it'll tell me what it means! Awesome. But the manual's entirely in Japanese as well as the menu, so it'll take some time for me to figure out how to really use it. Haha.

Ok so then we went back to Ueno to try to find a restaurant. It had started raining quite a bit, thank god Hiroshi had an umbrella. So we walked for a bit and then found a place that I thought looked king of boring, but I agreed to go inside. I'm glad I did because it was really nice and the food was good and pretty cheap! It was called Negishi. I had a chicken dinner. I don't really know how the grilled chicken was seasoned, but it was nice. It came with barley rice, tororo(this kind of gruelly, sticky, cold yam mixture which tastes really good despite its description), ox tail soup, and a small portion of greens. Everything was good. Hiroshi was laughing at me though because I still haven't quite mastered the art of eating with chopsticks. :P I thought I was doing pretty good, dammit! :) I had a glass of nice red wine too and this cold tea which was soooo good. I don't know what kind it was though. :( Hiroshi had the same dinner set as mine except instead of chicken he ordered beef tongue. Ugh. He insisted it was good, though! He refused any alcohol because he says he's weak and goes red after one drink. Hahaha. Japanese people are so cute. I found out something shocking. He said he'd never been to a club before. Ever. So he'd never gone dancing. I still can't believe it. So I convinced him to go to a club next weekend. Should be fun! Then by the time we were done at the restaurant it was after 9 so we had to go home. He had work and I had to sleep. Lol.

The train home was so confusing! I was walking through the cars trying to find mine after I'd asked like 2 different people. Then the train ended. I had to walk outside and then it looked like there was another train in front. So weird!! So I asked another girl, but thankfully she spoke English and she said that yeah, you do have to get out and go on the other "train". I still don't know if it was 2 trains or just looked like 2 trains. That was soooo bizarre. I eventually found my seat and everything was ok. Barry had to pick me up from Mito station because I got there at about 11pm and the last train to Naka was at 10:30pm plus it was raining and soo cold! So I bought a drink from McDonald's and waited there. Then it was back to the apartment and I didn't stay up too much longer. I was too tired.

I'm watching my Koda dvds right now. They're great. Before that I watched the True Blood season premiere. It was really good, but surprising! So much is different from the book already. And some of Eric's raw fury was unleashed. So exciting!

Wow

Ok, let's go back to Friday. I took a nap in the late afternoon and woke up around 7pm. Then Barry and I drove to Mito station to meet his friend Kiel. We picked him up and drove to an Izakaya. We sat around eating and drinking for a few hours. It was a nice little place. His friend is really cool. British, so he has a great accent and is really funny. He's very adventurous food-wise. He ordered horse. Thinly sliced pieces of raw horse. Bleh! And when I laughed at a bunch of the stuff on the menu that sounded worse than eating my own vomit, he told us that he'd tried them. Egh!

Anyway, after that we drove around and walked through a back street area and looked at some different pubs. Nothing was really busy, for some reason. We also went up all these stairs and found this really awesome little shrine. It was super cool. Because it was late at night, I couldn't ring the bell or anything. I was sad. I'll have to go to another shrine soon.

After that we went to a pub called the Drunken Duck. It wasn't overly busy, but it was ok. We had a few drinks there. Except for poor Barry because he was driving. :) I think we stayed there for an hour or two. It was kind of relaxing. Then after that we decided to head home because we had an early morning the next day.

Ok now yesterday (Saturday) was insane. So insane. I woke up at 9am to go to Japanese class with Barry. Then after that he dropped me off at the Jusco by his house so I could buy a truckload of bandaids. Unfortunately my leather ballet flats had destroyed my feet the day before and I was in for a lot more walking. And I had to wear heels that night too. So I got my stuff, bought a chicken katsu lunch and went to the apartment. I spent the next few hours getting ready. This was difficult because I had to make sure I was ready to go walking around Tokyo and then to the club after. I couldn't really bring much with me. All I brought was a bag with my heels and my ipod for the train ride. Ok, so we went to catch the 3:38pm train and we missed it by like 5 minutes. Then, we caught the 4:06pm train to Mito station and met Barry's friend Kiel. From there we got on the train to Ueno station. That was about a 2 hour ride. It really wasn't that boring. So that was good. Then we went to Ebisu station and then took the Hibiya line to Kamiyacho station. From there we walked to Tokyo Tower. It was so pretty. By then it was about 7:30pm and already dark. It was nice to see the tower lit up. It's a total knock-off of the Eiffel Tower except it's apparently 13 inches taller. So now I can feel like I went sightseeing in France as well. The cost to get in was 820 yen. The view from inside was gorgeous. I took lots of pictures and video. The mascot they had was really weird. There's 2 actually. Two weird pink, pointy-headed brothers dressed in like beach wear. I found some weird shit in the gift shop. Boob-shaped pudding, anyone?

After that we went to Shinjuku for a little bit, but we decided to kind of scrap it and then we went to Shibuya. We went to a place called The Lockup. Ever since I saw Barry's pics of it on Facebook I wanted to go. It's sooo awesome!!! You go downstairs and then the door looks all creepy. You walk in through this cavern-like area and see this guy in an electric chair. When you step on a certain spot he starts shaking and moaning. Then you walk more and this barrel thing pops open with a really loud noise. Then you see an alien body lying in a case in a cage. Then you continue down the hallway until you get to the area where the hostess is. She sends you to the waiting area. Then she talked to us in such a perky, cute way, but we couldn't understand part of it. But it didn't matter because she was so cute. Lol. And all the staff are dressed in costume. The hostess was dressed as a sexy cop. There were others too. Some were dressed in striped prisoner outfits. Lol. Me and Kiel got handcuffed and led by her to our cell. You literally sit in a cell to eat and drink. Haha. It was brown and looked dirty and stuff. So awesome. And it had bars on the door. The menu was awesome. Wish I took pics of it. The drinks came in test tubes and flasks and capsules. We ordered a bunch of food and drinks. Soon after we got there, the lights went completely out except for one black light above us. So it was almost pitch black and then a light kind of was flickering/flashing on outside the cell in the hallway. The whole place looked like a cavern. All the walls looked like rock. There were probably like 20+ cells. This place was huge compared to what you thought it'd be. Anyway, the lights were flashing and then audio started of this scary guy talking and this lady kind of being afraid. Then like death metal music started playing. It was so crazy. Can you tell how much I loved this place?? That continued for a looong time. Then I could hear chains rattling closer and closer. Then this guy dressed up as Michael Myers pops into our cell and goes right up to Barry's camera and into our faces. Then he poses with Kiel for a picture and starts rubbing his man-boob. Hahaha. Then he leaned forward like he was gonna grab me and I just laughed harder. Then he made his exit. I have all of this on video, but I'm not sure I can post it here. I'll try again. The music and audio continued for awhile after that. Overall the whole thing lasted like 10 mins or so. Then the lights came back on and everything went back to normal. I wish something like that existed in Winnipeg. You have no idea. This is where my camera died, unfortunately.

Ok, so I should mention that walking around Shibuya was amazing. The streets are amazing. The people are amazing. Tokyo people are so styling, it's not even funny. The clothes, the hair, the makeup, the crazy-ass fake nails. I'm in love, I think. After the Lock-Up we went to a place called Club Atom that we had gotten discount cards handed to us in the street for. Barry and Kiel had already been there and liked it. We went in, put our stuff in a locker and paid cover. Mine was 1000 yen and theirs was 2000 yen with the discount. That includes one drink. That's roughly 10 and 20 dollars (a little more). The drinks were not so good. Well, my big problem was that rye wasn't even on the menu. I ordered a cuba libre first because that was my best option. Then I asked about rye and they said yes. However, as soon as I saw the plain bottle that had a big burgundy label exclaiming simply "Rye", I got suspicious. It was soooo gross. Eventually I finished it and moved on. But that's not important. When we first walked in it was amazing. The place was absolutely packed. It was already about 12 or 12:30am, I think. People were pushing and you could barely move. There were 3 floors. The bottom floor looked like a cave. There were green lasers and video screens and trance music. I really liked it. The main floor was all white and not very exciting looking, but it was where all the action was happening. It was also techno, but it had club mixes of popular songs, too. But not like your latest top 40. Just recognizable song pieces. They played Confusion from Blade and I just about died. The top floor was hip hop and we didn't really bother with it. It was too full anyway. I didn't mind, though I would've liked to have danced to Koda Kumi if they played her.

We started out by hanging out on the lower level. Just kind of chilling, drinking, watching. I wonder how long it takes the Japanese guys there to get ready. Almost all of them looked like they walked out of magazines. Crazy hair and everything. The girls were so dressed up too. Not like Winnipeg at all. So impressive. Anyway, then we went and mostly hung out on the main floor. We managed to get on the dance floor and start dancing. We had to watch out for the other white people (guys) because they were soooo sweaty. And kind of stinky! Ew. There were female dancers on mini-stages on the sides of the dance floor. The main ones were just wearing skirts and sequined bra tops. Nothing too risque. There was a main stage at the front of the dance floor where the many different djs that night did their stuff. Everyone watched the dj because it was like a show, seriously. When DJ Ozawa was on, the ToyBoy dancers took over from the girls. These well-developed Japanese guys wearing small and incredibly interesting Samurai outfits got on the mini-stages, one on each. The outfits were sparkly red and consisted of a headpiece, kind of like shoulder armor and some kind of short, skirt-like bottom cover and boots. But it wasn't a skirt. It was small. Very small. And the top stuck out in an interesting way. Anyway, that was their entire outfit. They were totally shaking it and they looked great. Finally, finally there were guys doing what girls are always doing. The one by us was really fun to watch. Haha. Then, they totally took off their skirt-thing and danced around in sparkly red thongs. Hahahahaha. Good times. Sadly, they had to leave after awhile and the stages reverted to their former female occupants. I didn't think the dance floor could get more packed, but it did. To the point where I could pretty much only move up and down. And I felt like I was grinding with the person ahead of me and behind me. It was weird. Then the guy behind me did start trying that out. And it was creepy, so I left. Haha. I went for a walk to the hip-hop level, but it was still busy and they were only playing A-kon. So then I went to the lower level and went to wait in line for the bathroom. Then, a guy started talking to me in line. So we got booted out of the line by security and I talked to him instead. He wasn't Japanese, but Brazilian. Of course. But I like Brazilians, they're suuuper nice. So I talked to him and his friend for awhile. It was super weird because he couldn't speak English like at all. So the whole time we were speaking Japanese with a little Spanish mixed in. I ended up hanging out with him for the rest of the night because he was so charmingly Brazilian. He's a Muay Thai instructor. Crazy! And his name was Gleicon! Crazy! Anyway, the bar closed and I went outside to meet up with Barry and Kiel again just in front of the place. It was 5:30am and it was totally light outside. Wow. I didn't even do that in Vegas. That bar kicked Vegas' ass. I was in severe pain due to my shoes, so I changed into sandals and was still in pain. I think I was actually limping. So we went to McDonald's. There were so many people passed out and sleeping at the tables. It was so funny. From there we went home. I tried to sleep on the train and I did a little. But I kept doing the head-bob and one time my head flew backwards and smacked into the wall. Ouch. Plus I felt retarded. Then once we were back at the apartment I checked my email, ate something finally and then passed out at about 10:30am. I got up at about 5:30 pm.

Now it's 7:18 and Barry's making yakisoba for dinner. I think we're just going to rent a movie because nobody's up for more partying yet. It's still recovery time. Brutal. But so worth it. (More pics to come)

Need sleep...

Holy crap. I've been up for over 24 hours. I shit you not. I am so tired right now because we went partying in Tokyo last night. Once I get some sleep, I'll update. :)

*Sigh*

I just got back now from a somewhat stressful day. I decided to go to Mito today. By train. I only had a rough idea of how to use the train. Although Barry was kind enough to draw me a map to the platform and write a few instructions. Oh, and the entire day's train schedule between Naka and Mito. That helped a lot. But still, I managed to get lost on the way to the platform. I totally overshot it and then walked all over the place. Then I went back and eventually found it, but just as I was getting to the tracks, the red lights started flashing and the safety things went down so I couldn't get to the platform and I missed the train. I had to wait an hour for the next one. I felt so retarded. Then I caught it and things were ok. No problems getting to Mito. But once I was there I had no idea what to do. I walked around the mall area where the station is, but that was boring. So I just started walking up and down the street. That got old real fast because my shoes were cutting into me and I was in severe pain. So I only stopped at 7 Eleven to get some weird stuff. Pics to follow. Then I headed straight back to the station and I stopped at a really pretty French Patisserie called Cozy Corner. I bought some fancy jelly stuff and some shuu kuriimu (cream puffs). I'm living out my drama fantasies, I swear. I keep seeing Riiko and Namikiri on tv. If you don't know what that means, go to mysoju.com and watch all of Absolute Boyfriend. Anyway, I bought my ticket and arrived on time for the 4:15 train like Barry had written down. Of course, I wasn't satisfied because I'm retarded so I decided to double check. I asked the security guy and he said it wasn't the train to Naka! Even though it totally was. So I had to wait half an hour for the next one, which I was sure would be fine. But since I'm retarded I decided to double check again. This time I went upstairs and asked somewhat with real authority. He confirmed it was ok so I went back down and caught it. No problems after that. Now I'm here. I just ate a kurokke pan, which is like bread with the filling being fried potato croquettes. Kind of weird. I bought it at 7-11. I also bought green tea flavored coke there, but I haven't tried it yet. OH! And I saw that food thing that I "won" from the ufo game last night... It was about 10 cents... and 7-11 is usually overpriced, right? What a kick in the ass. Tonight should be good. Don't know what we're doing for sure. Either karaoke, pub, or game centre. Or some combination of those. :)

Last Night

Last night I went to a place called Hard Off, which is a used goods store. There wasn't anything too good there. There were tons of Louis Vuitton and Chanel purses, but they were still like 3 or 400 dollars (Sorry Mom). Then we went to a place called Book Off. Yes, it's a used book store. I bought a few different books. Prices were great. Tons of books were around a dollar. However, the ones I bought were a little more, with the exception of the first Nana manga. Then after that we went to a game centre. It was really funny. There was like 1 other girl there besides me. The games looked pretty neat, but I didn't want to have anyone watch me try to play because everyone there seemed to be a professional. We then went across the parking lot to the pachinko building! So I tried pachinko for the first time. I didn't win anything. Haha. But it was fun anyway. After that we went to another game centre, this one was much bigger and nicer. I have no luck with gaming. I couldn't win anything from the ufo catchers until I went to this candy one and managed to knock one thing down. Ten dollars and I got some kind of food item that probably costs like 25 cents. I forgot to mention that I tried some ufo catchers at the last game centre. One was called UFO Colon. Fantastic.

More...

I just got back from Drug Terashima. Again on tv they're talking about otamajakushi (the land fish) and it's so funny. Right now someone's saying that maybe they're connected to UFOs. Haha. Anyway, at the store just now I saw some weird stuff, but I forgot to mention that at the grocery store 2 peaches cost $8. But at the store I was just at now, you can apparently buy 4 litres of whiskey for $27.

Shopping

So last night, after eating, we went to Wonder Goo (yeah, I know) at about 10:30pm or so. I ended up spending like $70 on Koda Kumi cds. Lol. If I didn't buy the used ones I would've probably been looking at like over $200 for the same ones. Crazy!! But I bought the deluxe edition cd/dvd combos! So I have lots to watch/listen to.

Anyway, today I slept in and I'm not jetlagged at all now. I went to the Jusco right by Barry's apartment to go grocery shopping. Haha, right now on tv they're talking about these fish they're finding slithering around on the ground (no water) and the X-Files instrumental is playing in the background, haha. Anyway, grocery shopping was so cool. You can buy single beers from the refrigerated section. And the food is so cool. I bought a premade lunch and a beer for myself. I bought a lot of other stuff too. Then I had to pay, so I did. But I didn't have a bag so I had to ask someone where I could get one. I actually had to speak a little Japanese. It's still so awkward. Haha. But I could understand the answer, so it was ok. Now I'm going to go out again!

Layover

Right now it's 11:10am Vancouver time. I'm sitting in the airport. I have to wait until about 1:30 before my plane boards. Ugh. I've already been waiting since about 9am. The plane ride was good, though. I slept through most of it. Nobody bothered me! It was nice. The Vancouver airport makes me realize how crappy ours is. This place is gorgeous and large and interesting.

I wanted to continue watching the Japanese drama I'd started at home, but I don't think that's happening. Something questionable looking started happening so I stopped it because I don't want people thinking I'm some kind of perv.