Skinny jeans + Cake and kids

Earlier today I finally Skype'd with my mom. Yes, an entire month into my trip before we talk to each other, lol. It was fun. I think Mom really likes the webcam thing. John had surgery and couldn't be there, but he'll be okay tomorrow, so we'll talk again tomorrow. Mom's sound wasn't working on her end, but hopefully that'll get fixed soon. It's annoying to type my speech.

Today Akiko and I went to a store called g.u. because they have jeans that are super cheap. I can never find skinny jeans in the US for some reason, at least pairs that are affordable (and in my book affordable = $10 or less), but this store always has skinny and boot cut jeans for 990yen. Yeeeeaaah boyyy! They had capris that actually fit me right, too, for the same price, and I almost bought a pair, but I had to talk myself out of it. Maybe I'll be kicking myself for it later but I already have two pairs of jean capris, and even thought they don't fit as well, that's 990 yen I could be putting toward something else. So I walked out with just the one pair of skinny jeans. They fit PERFECTLY. I love them.

I also didn't know that at pretty much any clothing store (well, non-designer), if you buy jeans, they can hem them for you then and there. o_O I saw some machine with thread behind the counter and had no idea what it was, but when I paid for my jeans, a girl asked me if she should shorten them, and I was like "OMG THAT'S AWESOME" but my jeans fit perfectly as-is so I didn't need anything done. That's lovely though. Kei would definitely appreciate that. 9_9

After that, we went to a friend of Akiko's that lived close-by (the store was like a half hour from the house). They have a really big, old house. Pretty much everyone lives there - her friend, her friend's mom, her grandma, and her friend's little 2 year-old daughter. And I think maybe her aunt? Not sure. They also have 5 cats and 2 dogs, LOL. It was awesome. I never saw the dogs though. D:

When we got there, they made tea for us and gave us a slice of strawberry short cake each. This was fantastic because after breakfast, we finished off the tiramisu, and by finish it off, I mean Akiko and my mom ate relatively small pieces, and what was left was like, awkward to divide, but a HUGE piece by itself, and they made me eat it. They were like "If you think you can fit it, finish it off" so I was all "OH DARN" and ate this massive piece of tiramisu. XDDD I was so full and felt like I gained 10 pounds, but it was so good. And then we were served more cake at this house, LOL. But since it's DELISHUSS cake, I had no complaints. 8D


Mmmmmmmmmm.

Anyway, enough about my gluttony. We sat around and chit-chatted, mostly being amused by the little girl. She was so energetic but so adorable. It seems like little kids here usually stare at me and are afraid to come near me, but she was trying to climb on me and was always smiling at me. XD ♥


Akiko's friend Mayumi and her daughter Mion. That child would not sit still. XD


My camera was not wanting to take nice pictures today. They're all blurry. :( This would have been such a cute photo, too.


She likes electronics, apparently. She tried to grab my camera but I was able to get a shot mostly without her hand in the way.


One of the many cats. I don't know the name of this one, but he/she climbed up there for safety. Mion chases the cats so they like to be in safe areas. The family totally doesn't care if the cats are climbing on things. Two cats were chilling on the kitchen counter, and climbing on the fridge, lol.


This is Maron. He stayed by me pretty much the whole time. He was a big sweetie. ♥ I love his "not amused" face.

Around 4:30 we headed back home. It's been rainy all day. D: It's supposed to be sunny all week though, and warm. I hate rain. Dx It made today so cold. I can't wait until it 's warm enough to go without wearing a jacket. I want to wash this thing!

Akihabara + misc. photos

I went to Akihabara once before, but I didn't get the chance to really look around, so the other day I decided to direct my shopping for new headphones to that location. My old headphones still work (which is amazing considering how old they are), but they are on their last leg. I really needed a new pair.

I went to several electronic stores to check out their prices and selections, though everywhere seemed to be just about the same. Every store had a place to try the headphones out, but some stores had certain brands while others didn't have but a few, so I had to travel around a bit to sample all of them. I originally was going to limit myself to 4000 yen, but ended up caving in and spend just under 5000 for a pair, but they're nice. They have a fantastic sound, and they're pretty nice looking. ♥ I figure if I'm going to buy headphones, I may as well get a decent pair.



After I finally settled on this pair, I spent some time wandering around looking at different shops. I braved the creepiness and checked out some of the otaku stores, and they made me lol. They had a costume shop with maid, school girl, nurse etc. outfits and hentai merch for starters, and there were loads of general anime/manga/game stores filled with otaku. On my way back to the station, I went through a store that was filllled with figures. I wonder how well the prices compare to what people pay at cons. I saw a KH2 Sora figure that looked something like this I think, and it was about 3900 yen. About the same? Anyway, there were sooo many figures. I ventured up to a higher floor because it was labeled "Hobby Lobby Japan" so I wanted to see if it was the kind of Hobby Lobby we have in the States (though I doubted it XD). When I got off the elevator, I saw some coin machines, and one of them was a Soul Eater phone strap machine, so I was all "oooh :D" and decided to get one. Two hundred yen later (coin machines are expensive here D:), I got a Death the Kid strap!



They had this DtK one, another version where he's making an "Oh god" face, Stein (I wanted that one - so cute!), Blair, Excalibur, Soul (in his suit - also wanted this one), and I think that was it. No Maka, Black Star, or Tsubaki. XD Yet two versions of DtK. Whatever. It's cute. XD I'm just glad I didn't get Excalibur or Blair.

After I left that shop, I took some pictures of the city and headed back home.





View from the train platform.




While I'm at it, I realized I hadn't posted pictures of my cell phone, so hurr you go.


Behold my crappy phone.


At least it has a decent camera.


...I told you I brought all of my phone straps from home.


For size comparison. It's pretty small.


Completely unrelated, but I was served a scallop the other night...still in its shell. And I thought that was fabulous.



And now I'm caught up on my photos, lol.

Kamakura + more sakura

Sorry for the long gap between updates. Again, I've been busy all week and haven't had much time to upload and edit all of my photos. Over the weekend, I viewed sakura with my sister Akiko, and on Monday, half of the CIEE students (myself included) took a mandatory trip to Kamakura - Japan's previous capital. During the week I was on campus checking out the clubs. It's freshman welcome week, and all of the clubs (200+) are out advertising and roping people into joining, so it's very festive. I've been conversing with the music club (keiongakubu) and it looks like I am totally okay to join if I can secure a bass. I don't think I'll have much problem with that, so I will most likely be joining that club, which I'm pretty excited about. The people in the club seem really fun.

That's a brief description of my week. Now to put it in picture form.

Starting with the sakura.

Sunday, Akiko and I went to Omiya Park for sakura viewing. This park was bigger than the previous one, and it was WAY more crowded, as you can see. There were lots of food stands, and the atmosphere was similar to a festival. Tons of people were sitting on the grass, eating, drinking, and some were doing karaoke. O_o





This stand had neat candy.


I take too many pictures of dogs. D:




Akiko and I walked around a bit trying to figure out what to do when a little boy came up to Akiko crying. He had gotten lost and couldn't find his parents. The boy was just 4, so he was scared, lol. I don't blame him. I got lots once when I was around his age...at a festival, in fact, and it was terrifying. Especially since it was night time, lol. Anyway, we walked around a bit trying to spot his parents, but no such luck. We took him to an area where police were situated so that they could get his info and announce his position over the sound system. (Neither of us ever heard it though...) From there, we walked to a small zoo that was nearby, and admission was free that day, so we took a look around. Nothing really notable, except they had a hyena. I don't believe I've ever seen one of those in person before. Also, they had a cage with a couple of ORLY owls. They were adorable and hilarious. Their head movements are so funny. I had to take a picture.


After we ate lunch, we walked past the Hikawa shinto shrine. It was on our way to Omiya station.




Kamakura

We were originally told to meet at Sophia at 8:30, which is early enough as it is, but then at the last minute they told us to come 15 minutes earlier (not that it mattered in the end), so that was no fun. We took a train to Kamakura, which took FOREVER because we took a local train all the way there from Tokyo station.

From here, I don't remember the names of the places, so I'll just like, make this part mostly pictures, sorry. :T



I meant to take a picture of the other dog, but didn't get to. This one has its mouth open for the first Japanese syllable, "a". The other has its mouth closed for the last syllable, "n". Apparently this is the case for a lot of the gate guardian-type statues. Interesting.



The right side of the bridge is the "Minamoto" pond, which is supposed to represent prosperity since the Minamoto clan defeated the Taira. Which brings us to the other side of the bridge:

It's smaller and is supposed to suck and represent defeat, but I personally think it was prettier, and cute. Whatevs.



There was some kind of shinto ceremony going on when we walked through. No idea what kind of ceremony though.


Apparently these are supposed to be beer donations, except...the barrels don't contain anything. Talk about stingy donations, jeez.





Gate guardians.




On our way to lunch, we walked through a really narrow area that I can't even call a backstreet since no cars or even bikes, really, could fit well. It was really cute.


After lunch, our group somehow managed to get way ahead of everyone else, so we took a small detour to visit our tour guide's husband's family's shrine?





I liked the view on the way back.


Nothing of significance, just a house I thought was ADORABLE. I want it.

Next up was the giant Buddha statue.





Some school made giant sandals for the Buddha and donated it to the temple. XD


Thing was big. It's second only to the Buddha in Nara. It used to be covered in gold leaf, but obviously that didn't last. There's a small hint of it left on the cheek, but that's about it.


He was originally surrounded by lotus petals, but since they had to revamp the base, they had to get rid of most of the petals, but kept like 4. They have writing carved in them.


If you paid 20 yen, you could actually go inside the Buddha, lol. My group wanted to go in, so I went in too. It was weird.

The hole at the top is the head.


This pigeon had some weird colors. O_o Sorry, random.

Next up was Hase. It was really pretty.





I don't know what the heck this was, but I thought it looked cool.







There was another wall of those little statues. There were a ton. They're supposed to represent the unborn babies.





This thing contained all of the sutra texts and scrolls. They rotate the thing once a month.


The Tokugawa crest was on one of the poles.






There was a cave filled with these. They looked like little figures that were just thrown all over the place.

The view from the top of the hill was...the ocean!



I haven't seen the ocean in a long time, so it was refreshing (and surprising - I didn't realize Kamakura was right on the coast) to see.

Clubs

I randomly felt like dressing myself up a bit, and I thought the results were cute, so I took a picture:

I'm slowly getting the hang of this make up thing.

On Thursday, the keiongakubu was doing their public performance/advertisement, and I wanted to see it, so I got up early and just barely made it there on time. They were kind of hilarious. The first couple of groups did the norm, though in comparison to the keion from my high school, they seem to be a lot less awkward and a lot more into having fun, which is nice.





For the last song, things got ridiculous. The last song was an instrumental song that was pretty long, and like, there were two bassists. One of them had one guy (without an instrument) get on his shoulders, and he struggled to play and keep his balance, but nearly failed. After a while, get got down on the ground so the guy could get off of him, but big wtf. I should have taken a picture. Then at that end of the song, everyone basically went nuts and threw instruments and even launched themselves Yoshiki-style into the drumsets. I was like WTF ARE YOU SERIOUS? Lol'd for sure but I couldn't believe they were doing that.

I wandered around taking pictures of the area, just to capture the atmosphere.




Then I moved onto some stairs and took a couple from above.



The keion was planning to do a sakura-viewing party at 5:30, and I had a ton of time to blow, so I circled the outside of the campus.

This is the baseball area beind all the sakura. Obviously.


Across from the fields is this area. Not sure what part of the city it is, but I thought the view was neat.

I ended up talking to some keion members around 3:30 or so, and one of them took me up to the room where they were performing and handing out sign-up sheets so I could watch. I had nothing better to do. I met two girls, Hyoko?? (I couldn't hear her well;;) and Chiaki, both of which were nice. When 5-ish rolled around, we started heading outside and to the area with the sakura. We started to get situated, but then remembered that they needed to go get all the freshmen that were planning to attend from the front gate, so we went back for them. There I saw that another CIEE student was amongst the crowd, and he is planning on joining as a drummer. He seems pretty cool, and understands my wanting to focus on Japanese and not so much English (though I don't mind being friends). I think he feels the same way, so I'm not too worried about us falling back on each other with English. After we gathered all the new students, we went back up to the sakura area and chilled. Eventually, sempai brought along snacks and drinks, and we all spent the evening chatting about origins, favorite bands, and the parts we want to play. Everyone seems like a lot of fun, and they're really welcoming. I've never hung out with a bunch of Japanese guys like that before though, so it was a little awkward. I'm not used to that personality, and the girls tend to talk more politely and cleanly, so they were hard to understand. x_x Fail. But that's another goal for me. Everyone always talks to me slower than usual, so when everyone was talking normally, I had a hard time keeping up, but I did okay. It will just take getting used to. Anyway, pictures.


These three guys came over and sat down with us not long before I took this. I was originally trying to take a picture of the entire group (see below), but as soon as I took out my camera, they both posed like that, lol, so I took their picture. I don't know their names though. D:


I was at the end, so this is basically the entire group. Tons of people. This club houses more than 100 members regularly. @_@ Christ.


These are the two I was sitting with originally. Never got their names either.;;; The girl on the right was sooo quiet though. I could hardly hear her most of the time.


She was nice though, and offered to have our picture taken together, and thus. Don't mind my goofy face.

The party was a lot of fun, and it was nice to get a feel for the kinds of people that are in that club. I feel a little less scared to join as one of the only two foreign kids, lol.

That's about all I have. Classes start on Monday, so I'll be spending the weekend figuring out what to take, because lol, I'm totally not even registered for classes yet. This school is weird. I'll also be registering for my fall classes at IU. @_@