“Kisetsu wa watashi dake nokoshite

Taisetsu na hito subete yukun da ne”

–mi; aishiteru

“Amayadori no tochuu itsumade mo

Koushite wa irarenai

Jibun nurete mo kamawanai

I want to fly well…”

–yui; skyline

“It’s time to try defying gravity

I think I’ll try defying gravity

And you cannot pull me down”

–wicked ost; defying gravity

IT IS 2010~! *shock* And what better way to start off the year than with some music~

Ah, also.

Another year has gone by, holy crap – so quick. O:

（＊＾_＾）ノ　あけましておめでとう。きっと願いや望みが叶うよ！今年もよろしくね～

At the Inari Shrine - where people wrote down their wishes!

The lyrics above… I’ve been listening to Japanese songs with the intent of deciphering the syllables and meaning – YUI IS HARD because her voice is sometimes breathy and I cannot make out the sounds quite that well. However, her lyrics are the most interesting! Plus, I gain the most useful vocabulary from it.

I’M OBVIOUSLY STUDYING HARD. ._.

It seems like I cannot go on any trip without having some extremely stupid things happening at the same time. And when I say ‘extremely’ and ‘stupid’ this time, I really DO mean ‘extremely’ and ‘stupid’.

On another note, our first lunch - HA-MA-MU-RA

But to be honest, I think it was because I’ve been feeling funny before the trip that I’ve laughed until I cried so many times. By funny, I think I meant stressed, so this trip was sort of like great in that way – I did nothing but laugh my ass off and just enjoy stuff. And like, feel tired, but yeah.

The Kyoto trip was from the 28th to the 30th. I think this was planned in a big rush – on another note, my English is beginning its exponential decrease downhill, and this is made certain by the fact that I cannot even understand myself half the time when I speak – anyway, trip planned pretty much last minute and had absolutely no idea where to go at all. I knew about Kinkakuji, did not have any interest in Ginkakuji and did not think that going to random shrines and temples was a good idea for a two day trip.

I think I also vaguely knew about the shrine with 1000 Torii gates – Taisha Inari shrine. The gates have an interesting story to them;  apparently ‘Inari’ was a god in the form of a fox who bestowed good fortune towards gift offerer’s businesses. However, I’m pretty sure I got some fact wrong there, so don’t go repeating my words, kay. ^^”

By the evening of the 27th after some research, I had five places in mind to visit – Kinkakuji, Arashiyama something or other, the Gion district, Kiyomizu-dera and Taisha Inari Shrine.  In Kyoto they also had the International-something-or-other Museum and I really, really, REALLY wanted to visit this place… but they closed for the New Years break from the 28th. THE DAY WE GOT TO KYOTO. What unfortunate timing. AHDJAFHSJD— *smashes a few broomsticks and whatnot*

And that was all. I was apparently made unofficially in charge of this trip by Leon and Sara but I did not have any transport knowledge, nor order of visiting plans – I THINK I WAS GOING TO WING THIS TRIP. D:

So like, thank god there happened to be other Kanazawa program kids on this trip.

I didn’t know this fact until the actual morning though when we were catching the JR Highway bus to Kyoto.

But anyway, before that it was piss raining like shit. My host mother offered me a lift halfway to the station (because I had to catch a train from my place to Kanazawa Station, though I have no idea why a halfway lift… ._.) which I was thankful for – imagine dragging yourself and your suitcase to the station: a ten minute walk and up hills with rain. Phew.

At the station I spent some time wandering around, and doing that for some time, I sort of happened to catch sight of familiar people and it made me stop and think for a while. It was a pretty big surprise because I know our group had at first planned on going to Kyoto with them, but them backed out because of crappy dorm rooms and date clashes. I think we had intended on going back to our host families for New Years or something. Anyway, the familiar group of people – it turns out that they were boarding the same bus as us and HOLY CRAP, THIS WAS GOOD NEWS.

Because like, the bigger the group, the more racket we make, right? :3

The other group consisted of Josh (as OFFICIAL appointed leader. He became the ‘leader’ for our group as well, lmao), Amanda, Carrie, Rowan, Ben and Olivia.

When I met up with them and after expressing my surprise at their – um, how to say – existence at the station at this specific time, I went to the nearby convenience store because they also sold magazines and manga there. I had meant to go and get a magazine or something to read, and almost did but at the last minute remembered that I feel nauseous if I read on moving vehicles so returned to the group empty handed.

Heading back, there were only Leon and Josh standing with the bags – everyone else had gone on a German Bakery run and it was because of this run that we, the ones left behind, began to seriously worry about being actually missing the bus.

But it was okay – they made it back on time and we shuffled into line to show the driver our bus tickets and stow away our luggages… and this is where the failure begins.

The first one involved bird shit, the second, oreos. The third one, I think, was a malfunctioning laptop, another was someone’s unfortunate fortunes and the last and most impressionable blunder involved JR ticket holders.

“Maguro maguro” is the magic word for a character from a manga I read. Today my host parents decided to watch a show on TV called Maguro.

It was about catching fish. AND IN JAPAN, FISH IS BIG. Both size wise and popularity wise.

I’ve seen shows where people got giant crabs and chopped it up, got some “sauce” stuff from somewhere inside the crab and dipped a raw bits of the flesh into said sauce and ate it yelling out, “UMAAAAI~” and other very similar shows involving other various sea creatures. But tonight’s Maguro… left the biggest impression, I guess, on me.

To start from the beginning, tonight’s dinner was a daikon + carrot dish, a sort of soup with the ABSOLUTE BEST mochi-tofu-like thing in it and… a serving of small fishes. I don’t know how it was cooked and to be honest, do not really care.

There is no limit to the daringness of the Japanese when it comes to their fishes. And it is a little hard to grapple their customs(?) in regards to fish. With tonight’s serving, the fishes were pretty tiny – length of a finger and a half and the width of the same proportions. I was going to try and pick the bones out, but my host mother stopped me saying that we at the whole fish like that. She then pointed at the tail and said, “We don’t eat that.”

I sighed a little then, I think.

But then I asked about the head. She replied, “It’s soft so we eat it.”

Oh shit…

I don’t even eat fish most of the time at home, so I thought it was a fair effort me eating all those raw fishes, quids and stuff… but I don’t think I can handle eating the head of something. EVEN IF IT WAS SMALL AND APPARENTLY SOFT. D’x

Well, I ate it anyway washing the fact that the was a fish head in my mouth down with OODLES of rice. Rice is yummy.

But seriously, the Japanese can handle anything for fish. My host parents love their seafood and most of the shows they watch involve people eating rare and expensive seafood a lot of the time.

Maguro involved fish for… maguro. We saw the whole process, and the show had some touching story behind the fisherman’s lives and amazement at giant fish catches.

I think there was one fish that was well over 200kgs being hauled up by four men. =S

What was shocking to me was the fact the in the fishing process, while attempting to pull up the giant maguro, one of the fisherman goes to grab a spear thing and stabs the thing. All this blood comes gushing out (AND THERE IS A LOT OF IT) and they keep heave-ho-ing it. I THINK THEY STAB IT ANOTHER TIME BECAUSE IT IS NOT DEAD ENOUGH AND THEN… and then…

My host mother turns to me and says, “Wahh, this one will be expensive – OOOOO yen!”

And there is blood gushing out in rivers from this thing and like, some fisherman pressing his thumb down into the eyes of the maguro… and she comments on how big and expensive it’ll be.

THEY SURE CAN HANDLE A LOT. D’:

I admit though, I am getting quite used to eating buri sashimi – raw yellowtail, I think it is.

Still… that show was terrifying to watch.

P.S. HERE IS AN INTERESTING ARTICLE. :D :D

Please excuse any typos. Lazy/busy today.

I still have to write about the Noto Trip. I’ll probably do that after the test…it was something I think I’ll want to have recorded down.

Also, if you have not listened to Setsuna (song above) DO SO. IT IS A SONG FULL OF <3.

But anyway. SNOW. It’s been snowing for the past few days. The first day that it snowed, it was nice3. It was cold, I had woken up, my windows were closed becuase I think the night before, there was thunder and rain and noisy sleety rain. I did not even realise that morning until after breakfast when my host mother told me to look outside. It was such a surprise!

And it was so very pretty~!

The first snow I saw. 「初雪」

That was my first impression of snow.Today is the third or perhaps fourth day of snow and I DON’T THINK I CAN LIVE LIKE THIS.

When I walk to the train station, a trip which takes abotu 10 minutes, I am like a walking snowman by the time I reach there. Everyone else at the station seems to be relatively okay – by that I mean, dry – and I wonder how in the world they do that.

Must be some sort fo special ninja skill; ninjutsu, the answer for everything.

I am enlightened.

But yeah, snow is nice, but in roder for the cars to run through roads and stuff, they need to get rid of the snow. They have two options here. oen  is to have some sort fo tractor some and shovel away all the snow. The other they have is to melt the snow away.

Guess which one Japan goes for?

Melting.

So basically, they have little sprinklers – well little most of the time – which leak out water which will in turn make the snow some sort fo melted thing and like if it is melting from the top of a hill, all the water is like a freaking river running into you.

One of the roads I walk on to the station goes up a steep slope. It sure was fun to trudge through all that water. Think of what we consider heavy rain in Melbourne, times it by three, and iagine how much water is left on the roads after that.

That is how much water therwe was running towards me. Oh joy.

Though to be honest, if I was not trudging through rivers and blizzardy snow storms it really is very nice. Standing outside this morning would have been really nice. The snow was little, light and soft.

FWOOOM SHOOM. Soft snow. *blizzardy sounds*

.

Snow really is soft! I’ve never been anywhere when the snow fell like that before!

My host monther also mentioned that is has now snowed this hard for a number of years.

So maybe… HOPEFULLY this shit storm thing will… sort fo die down a little. The ideal situation is that it snows at night, is deathly cold in the morning so he snow does not begin to melt and no wind. BEST TRUDGING TO SCHOOL EVER THAT WOULD BE.

Also, becuase of the snow, I do not have the option to ride a bike to the station anymore. So that means… less sleeping in for me. aNd if the weather is extremely bad, I have toleave earier than I usually would by foot anyway becuase walking through inches of snow/wind is hard and I think it takes more time.

And interesting fact I learnt was that if there is thunder around, it means that there will after that be a big lot of snow falling down… THIS IS COOL WEATHER… WHEN YOU ARE INSIDE A BUILDING. :D :D

Thinking about thunder and stuff now, I should have asked the calligraphy sensei to write out ‘enrai’, distant thunder out for me. I think that word may be even cooler. O:

Just then, I watched a Japanese TV show about a dog called Charo. It was in English with Japanese subtitles… I read along and could understand it! Lately I’ve been wondering if my Japanese is actually improving or not, but… it probably is if I am reading along to subtitles right? Even if the show is aimed for little kids.

ALSO, THIS TV… IS ON MY PHONE. ON THE FREAKING PHONE. <3

Today not much happened. Went to class… studied last minute – I mean, revised last minute – was sort of paying attention in class… missed about half of the only discussion we had in class… it was something about eating kangaroo and camels? I do not remember.

After that we went to classroom 8 just because it is what we always do – I did not bring my laptop with me that day because apparently half the group was to be going to decorate chopsticks with gold leaf (Kanazawa is apparently the largest producer of this thing… it’s pretty cool) and the other half was to go and try their hand at calligraphy. Next week, the groups are going to do the activity they missed out on. I was in the calligraphy group today.

Today, again, the internet was fail. Since yesterday, the nets would start to work relatively decently for maybe five minutes then for the next hour or so, IT’D JUST DIE. There was one point where only MSN would work but the browser would not. Go figure. T_T

We have the 26th December to the 5th of January for break. I had wanted to travel but considered not doing so because of the expenses. But I checked my cash yesterday, and I probably can squeeze it in. I hope. ._.

There is a group going to Kyoto around the 29th to the 1st and I had planned on following them – for that meant that I could go on a trip at a (probably) relatively low cost while not having to plan this shit (this was the best bit), but then one of the other 7/8 girls was not too keen on the very cheap hotel dorm room that the other students had decided to book, so somehow I ended up saying something along the lines of, “OKAY, SO LET’S GO KYOTO TOGETHER, YAY.”

And the snow was so clean and perfect before. nb: It was not me.

The hotel that had been booked was ¥2500 per night and they had planned on renting out a suuuuper nice place for New Years Eve. That last bit sounded like fun, and I was looking forward to that but my initial plan had been to go on the 26th and come back for New Years with the Host family. Oh yeah. That was how I ended up saying that I would go with the other girl separate from the others for a trip, LOL.

The 29th did not work too well for me.

So somehow, we got a group of me, Sarah and Leon for this trip to Kyoto. AND OH GOD, PLANNING. The one thing I was so keen on avoiding… I HAD TO DO IT NOW. I really looked forward to it, oh yes.

After class today, and after raging at the nets for not working, the three of us trekked down to the third floor offices to get sensei to help us book tickets for the bus and accommodation. We had sort of expected it to be all done and stuff around that time, but we got told to come back after our excursion. We might hope for too much sometimes. ._.

Our meeting time for the excursion was 1:30 so during that time, I headed down to Leon to the station so that he could send off a parcel/letting thing to Sammi and because I wanted to buy some gloves. For some strange, strange reason, people tend to think I am Japanese. I’ve been asked things like, “Oh, so you are not Japanese?” or having people start talking to me really quickly and then they just pause and stop for a while when I give them that foreign blank stare… just because I look Asian.  The lady at the post office seemed to think so as well… how awkward. I could not remember the word for ‘customs’, haha.

So 1:30. We were off to Calligraphy. Accompanying us was Seki-sensei which is a rare thing because usually the one who takes us to places are Yoshida-sensei (if he was here in Japan), Imai-sensei or Morita-sensei. But it was good. We got to talk to her some… and she learnt that is was not a good idea to copy Borg and say, “Oh yeahhh.” Though it was quite funny when she first said it, asking what it meant saying that because she imitated that (specific) tone quite well.

She had taken us on the wrong bus, which was not quite a bad thing because well, it was not headed in the completely opposite direction – we just had to walk a little. It was raining pretty hard so we got out umbrellas out and we saw during one part of the walk, some sleet/snow/ice thing on the edge of the footpath. It was so nice and soft and white… I HAD TO WALK IN IT. Hence, like, destroying the whiteness and prettiness of it. Shame, shame.

Calligraphy was surprisingly fun. One of the 5/6 guys, Kokfai was pretty unhappy about the excursion because he apparently had a lot to do (I think the 5/6 people have projects due tomorrow) but everyone else was just sort of meh. But I think most of us enjoyed it more than expected. It is hard to explain why it was so fun. Writing kanji in a specific way with brushes that absolutely refuse to obey you, and ink that leaves random blotches on you pages and even clothing is not all that appealing sounding. BUT IT WAS FUN.

We started off practicing two standard strokes – the horizontal and the vertical line strokes. After that we began writing words. The calligraphy sensei had written out a number of pages as examples and we proceeded to grab some and attempt to copy her very, very pretty calligraphy.

It was like, small on the page, but it was in the centre, nicely proportioned and somehow just drew your attention to the word… or maybe rather, made you see the word as a whole. I found with my calligraphy, the parts of the kanji were unevenly proportioned and so in some cases the top would be bigger than the bottom and it was not as neat and stuff. Well, the sensei had obviously been practicing for ages… I should have taken one of her writings. IT WAS SO NICE.

The words we got to write were: yume, sora, yuki, kumo, ai, tomo and some other stuff I cannot remember. We were allowed to make our own special requests and so I asked her to write down “eien” which is a really cool sounding word (I love the sound of it!) and well, it was a big challenge to try and copy this thing down. What made this word harder that the other ones was that one:  there were two characters to eien, so that means not only did we have to proportion the word very nicely, we had to make sure it was nicely positioned on the page and stuff, and two: THE FREAKING FLICK.

Which one is mine, and which is senseis? :3

Flicks in calligraphy are hard as. There was the flick that finished off eien, and in ai, there was the kokoro flick which no one could get. In tomo, there was also a flick of sorts, but since that one was a four stroke character, it was harder to make look bad.

It was interesting how everyone had their own style of calligraphy. Some people had a tendency to keep their brush somewhat dry and so their strokes were nice and clean. Some people had thin small characters. Others had symmetrical ones. One was a sort of messy brush style which was quite beautiful… I forgot to compliment her on it. >.>

After calligraphy, we took a group photo with the sensei (WE ALWAYS DO xD) and then had a bit of bumming around time at the place. We were allowed to use the tea and coffee facilities at the place and so I made myself a cup of mocha thingy. It was very yummy! Only one other person made herself a cup of something – the others didn’t because apparently IT WAS TOO MUCH EFFORT TO CLEAN UP THEIR CUPS AFTERWARDS. =/

We got back to Rifare around 4:30 and went to ask Morita-sensei about the travel stuff. It took us an hour to get it sorted out. Firstly, was the pricing too much? Secondly, which bus to take? What would be most convenient? What did we want to do? How long did we want to stay?

TOO. MANY. FREAKING. DECISIONS. DHAKJJHAKJFSK—

So after about half an hour of wishy washy ‘I don’t knows’, we decided to just do it. SO LIKE, WE ARE NOW GOING TO KYOTO FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS. After having everything booked and all, we went into the library and used the internet for a bit until about 5:45 then packed up and left to go to the station.

And that was basically my day.

Oh, wait. One more thing. MY UMBRELLA GOT STOLEN… AGAIN. This is the second time it has happened. What up with people stealing umbrellas in Japan… and why the hell mine!? :<

Also Sukiya… IS DELICIOUS.

Yummy~ :D :D :D

I’m pretty sure everyone has one of though . I’m pretty sure though, even with all the shit and the stupid mistakes I made before, today has been a pretty unlucky day.

I’ll probably look back in a weeks time and laugh about it though. Because that is just how things go.

Those with Facebook may have seen the uh, status updated AJ very kindly put up for me. I was on Facebook after class in Classroom 8 just dawdling (around on the net) because we had a meeting for the Noto Trip at around 1pm. AJ had twisted my laptop around to face him (he was sitting next to me) and began typing something. I was interested to see what he would type, so let him do it. Iguess I have not learnt my lesson from previous Facebook status hijacks…

I read out the words as he typed. As he got to the word pregnant, which I had begun to read as “pre-something or other” it sort of just clicked and I froze. I did not realise he has clicked the button to post it until someone else called him over to them and he left. Had a look at my screen– FDSHFSKHAHFKD.

The net was slow there for some reason at that time, and so the time between me seeing that fact he’d clicked the button and the time it took to appear was agonising. Well, fine. That was overly dramatic, but it was not pleasant. I decided though, that it would be fine. I could delete the status right? So when it did appear, I went to click the button for my profile.

GEE, THE NETS SURE CHOSE A NICE TIME TO SCREW UP.

Thanks IFIE.

So for about 5 minutes, I sat there spamming the F5 button and trying other numerous ways to refresh the damn page. IT WOULD NOT FFFFFFFFFFFFFASDFJSFJSJKDSJ–

By the time the nets got working again, I had about 6 comments. I have this weird… policy of not deleting status updates if it has comments. So as aggravating as the fact that people on my friends list now probably think I’ve gotten pregnant or something, I could not bring myself to get rid of the damn thing.

I mean, PEOPLE WOULD NOT REALLY CARE… RIGHT?

And uh, they had better things to do than check Facebook… right!?

Well, I Ieft with a group of people after the very short meeting to go to Utsunomiya, a bookstore down around Tatemachi which apparently sold the Dictionary to Intermediate and the Dictionary to Advanced Japanese Grammar.

Came back to Rifare around 4:30pm and did the only thing I seemed to do there – turn on my laptop and check Facebook.

…why the hell were there so many damn notifications!? :<

I could not tell which people were serious with their “WHATS!?” and which were not… so I just gave up after a while. ._.

AJ… prepare to die. (Damn, I need to learn that Yakuza phrase for “Prepare to die”, so I can use it. T_T)

During that conversation, Leon had said something about “being the biggest whore” and at that moment the carton of one litre green tea a was playing with sprayed me… well, I was squeezing the carton and had stuck a straw through the top of it. T_T

Other little things that happened were that in my rush to leave the house I had forgotten my glasses. A fact I did not realise until I was halfway to the station on the bike, going at a moderately speedy pace and wondering why in the world I could not see that far. And it was okay at that time, but I was a little worried riding home because at that time, it usually is dark by then.

Second thing that happened was that I realised as I reached Hokutetsu Kanazawa Station, I did not have my train pass on me. Meaning I’d have to pay another 6 or so dollars for today’s transport. Awesome. Public transport in Japan is crazy pricey. And in Kanazawa, things such as daily passes do not exist. At least in Tokyo, we could get Daily Metro Passes.

The third thing that went wrong (which I do not actually really care about) was during class. We were to make sentences with various grammar points for homework… I was sort of in a daze or something and I read the wrong grammar point sentence. The teacher, Fukuda-sensei looked at me and was like, “Wait, what?”. I think I got a couple of funny looked from classmates as well. But I found this mildly embarrassing and somewhat funny. So as I said, I do not care about this.

I drank a litre of green tea today. One milk carton size was 100 yen, which was a good price. This I bought in the first break we had… no wait, it was the second break. The first break I had gotten “FamiChicken” which was just as greasy as it was tasty. During the second break which was 20 minutes (the first is 10), I got the tea. But then me and Sara felt like Danishes. And the German Bakery down at the station (I am beginning to substitute this word with “eki”… =/) sells the best cinnamon Danish twists. So we did a quick run for these epic Danishes. Just so you know it was a literal run as well. WE ACTUALLY RAN.

This was worth it. We just made it back to class on time. And after that run, I felt much more awake meaning I’d be less prone to making silly mistakes during class.

I do remember laughing until I cried when Fukuda-sensei asked me a question… it involved: ‘rabu rabu’ and one of James’ rather tasteless jokes about a certain class member’s mother… I am quite ashamed to have laughed. >.>

The walk to Tatemachi for the books was rather good. The search for the books was also successful (YAY!) and I finally found the tankoubon for Dengeki Daisy – which by the way is my second most recommended shoujo manga… it’s not deep or insightful pure shoujo. But it is made out of pure awesome violence, emotion and awesome drawings…

This is next on my to-buy-list.

Actually, the next to-buy for me is probably Bessatsu Margaret – I want the calendar that comes with it. Why? Because it’ll probably feature Kimi ni Todoke on one of the months. :3

I decided not to buy the tankoubon yet and tried to help Leon make a decision about which letter paper and envelopes to buy. It was actually quite funny how much trouble this was. He had weighed the pros and cons of each colour (this at least had been narrowed down to blue, pink or green). Some other papers I thought was nice had lines that were too big and so would look like “24 point” writing. One was too thin. Did the envelopes and paper have to match?

DID NOT THINK SO MUCH THOUGHT WENT INTO THIS KIND OF STUFF.

But it was fun, hahaha. ^^”

On our way back from Tatemachi to Rifare, for some reason I was again in a daze. And I was walking a little ahead of the group. We crossed one road when the green man showed and there was a sort of mini one way road which we had to cross right after that. I kept walking and well… it is common knowledge that you stop look both ways and then cross right?

I sort of just kept walking without the crossing. I wasn’t consciously looking where I was going either, but there was one point where I was one third way across the road and then I don’t really know what happened, but I became aware of two things. One: the people across the road on the other side were just standing there. Waiting. The second was that people were calling out my name.

It think at that time I had turned to look at the people calling my name and then sort of saw some vehicle still coming this way. Somehow everything clicked into place and I bolted for the other side of the street. I think I was laughing when I did this. I also think I got weird stares. I think a couple of the others on the other side of the road had a good laugh as well.

But thinking about it now, I’m not too sure how to react to this kind of thing. I mean, how do you react? ._.

Anyway, last thing for the day that is remotely interesting. Earlier in one of the other posts, I mentioned that upon arriving in Narita Airport we had rented some mobile phones. A couple of the other kids here had gotten from SoftBank a cheap prepaid phone. It was flip, quite thin and very, very light. It was, altogether with the credit about 120 dollars apparently and well, I’d be saving A LOT of money if I had gotten these phones. Only the thing we were not really sure about was would we be able to return these phones without being charged for the other days we had put down we wanted the phones for. I think I’ve saved a couple of hundred dollars with this.

Back at Rifare we struggled to find the Sky Cellular website and when we did find it, it was all in Japanese. I used rikai.com and Leon used Google Translate… but like, it made almost no sense. Around 5pm, Morita-sensei (I think that was her name) came in to talk to another student about something, and so be asked her about whether she knew if we could cancel contracts or not.

She ended up taking the number of the rental company and going down to the 3rd floor office to call them and ask. I do not know what happened, but holy hat, WE GOT OUT CANCELLELATION APPROVED.

This is I think, a good thing. At least I can keep the phone when I get back to Australia. Also, Younha is so much better Korean than Japanese. That is all.

So, like, I fear for my life in three ways here in Kanazawa.

The first involves pedestrian action and roads, the second involves stairs and the third one is related to the Ring.

I’m sort of kidding I guess, but there is a small TV in my room. I thought it’d be nice to watch some Japanese shows in here once in a while. So I plugged it in and found the ON button. This house is usually rather silent and it is an old house on old land. The first thing that the TV came up with was static… and while it was impossible for anything remotely scary to happen here, I could not sleep very well that night.

And that, is one, with the Ring.

The second once involving stairs is the staircase leading up to the second floor up to where my room was. I typed the first two sentences up about a week ago, and I’ve left it as is until now. The steps are very narrow – there is a lot of height to cover over a small area of floor. Because of this, the distance between each step is also high. At night, there is a light in the hallway they leave on so that no one falls down to their peril and such. In Japan, it gets dark at about 4:30 right now. Imagine having to turn on the lights at this time of… day! Inconceivable!

Anyway, this was a bit of a danger to me when I did not know how to turn the lights in the hallway on. I did not realise that this would be a problem until one day, I came home, had to go upstairs and it was COMPLETELY dark, stairs and up.  Sometimes, because I’m scared of tripping up the stairs, I’ll sort of use my hands, and do a sort of half crawl thing up the stairs. You know, to balance myself.

What was another problem was that at that time, I did not know that in order to turn the lights in my room on, I had to have the hallway lights on. Don’t know why, don’t want to think too hard about why. I just know. So like, that first time I climbed up the stairs in the dark (because I was lazy) and went into my room (where my lights would not turn on akjdaklfjlsjfsl—) WAS A SORT OF SHOCK OF SORTS.

Pedestrian action… is freaking hilarious. It is okay in the downtown area of Kanazawa and the business district near the station, but towards the more rural-ish areas there are a lack of footpaths and so we walk on the roads! :D :D

It was damn scary walking on the road the first day – NOT TO MENTION I GOT LOST FOR HALF AN HOUR ON THE FIRST DAY AS WELL, HAHAHAHA… yeah. ._.

Now I’ve taken to biking it to the station because it is so much quicker but like… bikes don’t go on the footpath if there are any you know. Expect like, on really busy town roads. I am too afraid to ride on the roads those times.

Actually, last Saturday rode the bike from home to SATI. My host mother had shown me this place on my second day in Kanazawa. It is so amazing. I wish I lived closer to it. Apparently one of the other girls, Sara, lives really close to it, which means so would Leon I think, and I envy them so much for it.

It has possible every basic necessity you could wish for!

The first floor has a supermarket, lots of small eat in food stores, a McDonalds and a clothing store. The second floor has a clothing store… pots and pans and other random things. Actually, I was there today and they gift washing detergent. THEY GIFT WASHING DETERGENT. All wrapped up in a gift bag and stuff. I wish I didn’t miss this photo opportunity but by the time I realised I wanted a photo we were already at the pots and pans section. Oh, they also sold mini stoves with takoyaki hot plates. On this floor, there was also a 100 yen store.

The third floor of SATI… I don’t remember what was there, but I’m sure it would have been amazing as well! ^^

I know that from the first day until Kanazawa I wanted to record down a lot. Now, either from laziness, genuine busyness or something else unrelated, I obviously have not gotten this done. I think last night I wanted to record down the… rather strange dinner I got. I mean, in a way, Japanese dinners are random and sort of like, all these dishes thrown together. Everything is in it’s own plate/bowl and I’m used to eating from one or two bowls at most. Here, I have lots of tiny dishes – and each dish has its own thing. There is one bowl for rice, one for the soup, one for another side dish, another for a meat dish or something… it’s so… strange. It feels like I am playing a game when I eat. One from here, a little form here… I ACTUALLY DO NOT GET IT. @@

Anyway, the dish from last night was strange in that I was not given rice (the staple dish! *gasp*), but I got given a couple of small fishes… with roe (which was REALLY not something I would have wanted to eat, and will try my best to avoid eating again), some nikuman, and a bowl of meat. My host mother did not ask me if I was able to eat the fish eggs, but asked me several times if I was okay with raw egg – because that was what you dipped the meat into. I would have thought fish eggs were the more rare delicacy here!! O: O:

Or maybe I am prejudiced against fishes and seafood in general. I mean, sashimi is okay… in small doses. My host mother has cut up ‘buri’ (I think it is yellowtail?) several time already and I quite like it, so I can’t be that prejudiced but… I do not know where I am going with this, crap. ==”

Anyway, what I have also found out is that soy sauce cannot solve everything. This was quite saddening because I was so very sure it did. But soy sauce and mochi (REAL FRESH HAND GRINDED MOCHI! <3) do not mix too well. Such a shame. However, it was definitely much better than the daikon and something strange and sort of spicy mixture which was the second option for dipping. Mochi, I have think, it best served sweet. The third and fourth toppings were sweet things. I don’t remember quite properly what the third one was, but it was a mixture of something yellowish grounded and sugar. It tasted like nuts and was quite nice. The last one was red beans. It was fresh red beans…

*mind explodes from yumminess*

1, 168 words. I’ve cut down some. :D

Two minutes before this classroom closes – once we get kicked out we’ll move into the library. The people left behind in this classroom are me, Leon, Sra (7&8) and Chi Tat and Cynthia (5&6). Oh well, I’ll just continue this once I get to the library.

I think I’ve left it at a difficult spot last time for Harajuku. I don’t know where to begin now – the rest of the Harajuku trip was relatively I’m beginning to forget the formatting of these posts as well – and yes, I am keeping this to a format. =/

Anyway, let’s assume that the fabulousness of the toy store has been fully and satisfactorily described by me in the last rushed post. There is so much I think that I wanted to write about – little insignificant things, little funny things, but I’m having trouble remembering them now. To be fair, it’s been more than a week – my memory has never been the best. Hence, from Kanazawa onwards, the posts will be different, more condensed and they won’t be separated journal style by days. In fact, I think by now, I’ve forgotten what happened on what day.

Also, I’ll have to think of proper post title. GREAT. MORE WORK FOR ME. But I have decided to keep a record of what happened here, and so I will.

I also wonder how the posts have changed over time. I think they have gotten less systematic, perhaps. But I wouldn’t know. I don’t proofread. Proofreading is actually something really scary to me for some reason. I dislike, and that is a problem GIVEN THAT MOST OF MY ASSESSMENTS ARE ESSAYS. ._.

I’m waiting for my mp3 to charge. I’m hoping it will. My laptop says it does not recognise the device… I’m not sure if that is a bad thing or a terrible thing. Q_Q

Also, Ai Otsuka live acoustics are <3.

ANYWAY.

Enough babble.

Harajuku -> Shibuya -> Ueno Station -> FINISHED TOKYO. That is my aim for post 4. Do not really want to get up to a post 5. I will certainly go over 9000 words this post… :3

Aren't they just adorable? :3

Oh the poor thing. Aftermath of murder. D':

I think after the 6^th or so level, we began to tire of the cuteness and toys. In those six levels, we encountered GIANT pocky boxes worth ¥1000, onigiri playing cards, plushies, plushies and more plushies. AND OH YES, THE FIND OF THE DAY: Yumeiro Patissiere goods.

This was simultaneously a surprise and the funniest thing I’ve encountered all day. It was hilarious. I could not stop laughing.

Actually, it was the second most funniest thing ever.

No – I just checked. It WAS the funniest thing all day. I just made the mistake of getting my days mixed up – our elevators fail from a few days ago… yeah. Got a little lost there. ._.

But that elevator thing beats everything we’ve done in Tokyo. Freaking classic moment. I still laugh about it now. xD

The Yumeiro Patissiere goods were not all that amazing. Just little novelty toys for young girls. It was more the fact that we had been walking around this level and there was a section with lots of miniature toy cakes and I saw a poster or something which resembled the Yumeiro Patissiere logo. So a little excited I took a closer look. Unfortunately at that time, it was not what I thought. I was actually quite disappointed about that. So when I actually saw something that resembled Yumeiro and actually WAS Yumeiro… I LAUGHED OUT VERY LOUD.

I wish I could bring everyone with me to this store – I think there would have been at least one thing everyone would have found to their liking…

After leaving Kiddy World, we took a short break at a bench before heading off for dinner. Well, they were not really benches, but a bar where people sat. It did not look like a sitting place at all. I would have never guessed! I think it was at this time that I got a call from my parents and they were saying that I should not eat dinner too late, ahahah… the night before at Tokyo dome, I’m pretty sure we had dinner at around 10pm…. ^^”

For dinner, we thought to head down to Ueno and see what they had there. However, to get there, we had to get to Shibuya Station (which was a nice, safe and hassle free trip) and we somehow ended up looking for places to eat at Shibuya. I think it was because we either decided to explore some of Shibuya as we had planned or because there were so many lights there that we asserted that good dinner could be found here.

Either way, we walked around many many places looking, unsuccessfully, for a place to eat. I think I mentioned wanting to eat sushi and so we searched for sushi stores. Sushi was expensive – not so surprisingly. We mananged to find a place that did not tell us to spend ¥5000 or so on their raw fishes and it was soooooo nice! I had my tamago sushi. In fact, I had two plates of them. I LOVE EGG. Omnomnomnomnom~ I also tried other assorted fishes but they did not compare to the egg. *_*

Basically the place was a basement restaurant and we were going to go in to have a look, but they roped us in because we were gaijin and hence easy to freak out and manipulate. We headed down and while looking that the sushi heard the waitress from inside say “2 customers”. Oh dear… because of that, we felt obliged to go in. And the place was quite full. But it was such a nice place. Not pretty or homely – it was quite shiny and plastic in a sense, but it was very comfy in a strange sense. Perhaps because we sat around a sushi train going around and the sushi train was surrounding the sushi chefs. (YES, THERE WERE MORE THAN ONE. NOT A TYPO.) It was a very close environment. I would go there again because not only was it nice, the sushi was not too bad either. It was my first sushi in Japan so no matter whether it was actually good or not – nostalgia~ :3

After eating the sushi – which filled us up quite well we headed down to a convenience store for Leon to buy his corndog and then headed to Ueno Station.

We came quite early and thought it’d be a good idea with all our failures to try and find out where the train actually departed from before time. With our luck, if we did not do that… OH DEAR. JUST… OH DEAR.

The find was not really a struggle – it was hard, but we were smart enough by then to ask the station people for directions. And the old man spoke to us in Japanese – AND AND AND! We understood enough to find our way to platform 16! I think, looking back on it now, it was helping us in Japanese. Like, I do not understand now how it would, but living or well, running around like idiots at a place does help. Things that did not make sense to us then now make sense to us now and the Tokyo Metro lines really were interesting. A couple of days ago I would not have thought this. I would have just thought of it as a circumstance where we won a little in Japanese. :D :D

It turns out that on our ticket in the background, ‘Japan Rails’ was printed on it. We ran around the place trying to figure out what the hell kind of platforms trains would go from and assumed Japan Rails was only for Shinkansen… NOW BOTH YOU AND I KNOW BETTER, RIGHT?

To kill time, we dropped by the convenience store and bought some snacks for the trip. My first convenience store onigiri and melon pan~ :3

Melon pannnnnn~

Getting past the platforms for JR is the same as with the Metro system… also, there was the same awkwardness getting my luggage through the barrier – MORESO HERE BECAUSE IT WAS SUCH A BUSY PLACE.

It was interesting getting on the train. On the outside it was the biggest tank piece of lunk I’ve seen – inside it was obviously old, but comfortable enough. Except getting in there, me and Leon realised we had a problem. We were carrying luggage quite large in size – I was dragging around two. They had those things at the top to put luggage in, but our biggest suitcases weighed about 20kgs+ each… IT ACTUALLY MIGHT KILL SOMEONE UP THERE (we both got aisle seats so we were safe but really, accidentally killing a random Japanese man was not really on our to do list). We did not know what to do then. Leon went of searching again and after about five minutes came back and announced he may have done something illegal.

……

……………….

…he did wha—

………………..

………

…kay. Doesn’t sound like too bad a plan.

There was space at the back of the last seats in the carriage there were not in use and SO WHY NOT PUT THEM TO USE RIGHT. Well, admittedly, I was freaking out about the illegalness of this as well when I mimicked his actions with the suitcase, but after seeing other people store their luggage in other obscure spots—-

I am hearing emergency sirens… I wonder what is wrong… oh yeah, Japanese fire trucks are tiny!

Anyhow, after seeing people put their luggage in obscure places, we relaxed a little, because it obviously could not be bad right?

Right.

The train ride was relatively uneventful. I had stayed up for the first part of that night to record down what happened in the past days instead of sleeping because the window seat next to mine was empty which meant another passenger would be getting on at a later stop. I thought it’d be awkward for them to try and get through over my sleeping form.

What was funny about the passenger next to me was that he came in a normal suit and after dropping off his things he went to the bathroom and changed into sleepwear. THAT IS DEDICATION, I THINK. To his sleep anyway. Or like, proper clothing at the appropriate times?

Sleeping on the train was like sleeping on the plane – extremely difficult at first because it is hard to find the right position to sleep in, but once you are knocked out, you are dead. :D

We arrived Kanazawa around, if memory serves me well, around 6:30.

First impressions?

HOLY CRAP, IT WAS COLD. FREEZING. THERE WAS PRACTICALLY ICE IN THE AIR.

Welcome to Kanazawa.

Fine, I lied a little. Kanazawa is not THAT cold. Yet.

Music: Ai Otsuka – Planetarium (live acoustic)

Location: MY JUST CLEANED AND REORGANISED ROOM. BANZAI. O:

So, dinner is around 6:30, and well… CAN I TYPE UP ONE HALF OF A DAY IN 15 MINS? I don’t think so. Let’s give it a try anyway.

After Takeshita Street, where Sarah and her boyfriend left then to go do something (Meet someone maybe? I forgot what they said…. ._.), we walked around ramdom large streets of Harajuku… actually, we also walked through Harajuku Street where the oh-so-very-fearsome store display of alien being and Spiderman was spotted. We both took photos with it – it was that much of a novelty. Though to be honest, I thought it was a kind of disgusting invitation into the store. Uh, does not suit my taste I suppose.

Leon had mentioned some Hello Kitty store that he went to last time he came to Japan, and so I think we went off in search for that. We could see no Hello Kitty world, land or anything that was similar to a Hello Kitty store. We found instead, a GIANT toy store called Kiddy Land. It was, if I remember correctly, six floors. What was most fascinating about this store was the display they had out front of the Disney characters tap tap tapping to some music. It was pretty cool. I was pretty amazed, and took a video of it… obviously very intrigued by this kind of stuff – in Kanazawa a few days ago, I came across a self playing miniature piano. The corresponding keys to the notes were played (ie. They were actually pressed down) but no one was sitting there playing it. What an amazing machine! Now to stick it in a haunted building… :3

Anyway, what was cool about this store was that each level was organised by the kind of character good there were. One level was Snoopy and Peanuts stuff, another was Disney. There was one level also that was for Hello Kitty and Sanrio products. THUS, THE MYSTERY OF THE ELUSIVE HELLO KITTY LAND WAS SOLVED. It was in fact a whole level inside a store, which made it seem like its own store.

This store… it was a toy store and the first thing I think of when I think of toys is trucks, fire engines and Barbie dolls. But this store was awesome – beyond awesome. There are plushies that I will buy and take home from there – about fifteen Australian dollars – <333333333 AND IT WAS ALL SO CUTE AND BLOBBY.

AND IT'S SO CUTE AND BLOBBY~ :3

KAY. DINNER TIME. LOOKS LIKE THERE WILL BE A PART FOUR.

…BANZAI? O:

So on this morning, I ended up talking to one of my roommates at the hostel. She was sneezing quite badly and I asked her if she was sick. She said no, and that it was probably her allergies just acting up. However, it is winter here and obviously that means no random flying bits of pollen to attack us poor sufferers with. This was a little strange, but I did not think too deeply into it. She was still sneezing somewhat badly, so I offered her a tablet. For some reason, my parents insisted I carry some allergy medication. I have not used any as of yet – and I do not know why… after all, it is winter here in Japan.

Somehow the conversation turned one way where I discovered that she was from Melbourne as well. WHAT A COINCIDENCE! She was a landscape architecture student doing her Masters and was here for something university related with a bunch of other people. I don’t think I made a friend though because I don’t even know her name.

Anyway, what was trippy about this encounter was that her accent was recognisable, but in a foreign environment it took me a while to connect the feeling that I should have understood something that was so very simple with the fact that she was from the same country.

A little while after that, me and Leon checked out of the place and headed to the station. We survived the (deadly and oh so very lethal) elevator ride and crossed roads safely. However, we spent a bit longer searching for the station than we anticipated because we wanted to use the entrance with the elevator (we were NOT going to drag our luggage up all those stairs again… @@). We had walked right past it because it was tucked away at the corner of a building.

Apart from looking like a total fool dragging two suitcases through and trying to put the ticket through the barrier at the same time (as at the barriers, there is always some police-y kind of guy manning his station and he sees all… *gasp* O:), everything worked out relatively fine there.

We got to the station… and oh shit. This was where we failed epically with the lockers. Finding some was not the hard task. Neither was putting our stuff in them. It was when we tried to test our keys that we screwed up real bad. The thing with the lockers was that they were for one use only. “Ichinichi ikkai”. Unfortunately, we did not read the sign properly and it did not have a translation in English. Admittedly, I suppose it was our laziness. So to test out our keys after renting the locker, we stuck it in, turned the lock both pretty much one after the other and then tried turning it back to lock… it did not work.

It was an attempt to turn, and we were stopped midway… meaning the locker would not let us lock it.

Asdfsdkfjdfklk.

*crycrycry*

Defeated, we tried to look for other lockers which would accept bills as we did not have enough ¥100 yen coins left. Failed. The only lockers that accepted them were full. So in the end, I bought a drink and used the change from that to buy the same locker again.

During that time, I managed to figure out how to call Sarah on her mobile phone – Leon was running around looking for lockers while I looked after our luggage. He had been running around for a while and standing there with so many suitcases, I felt quite awkward. So like I began to play with my phone. However, just pressing up and down buttons listlessly gets quite boring really after a while and then I remembered that I had failed multiple times in calling Sarah with this phone over the last two days.

She was apparently on her normal number with international roaming turned on. This confused the heck out of me. With the phones we rented, weneeded to enter certain numbers in before dialling. I did not know how to work this. At all. I still do not quite get it, but I figure that I can play around with my phone a little and get it to work if I ever need to call internationally again.

I decided to give it another go calling her. I was so surprised when I heard the dial tone! It felt like such an accomplishment also – I tried and failed on the day of Akihabara, tried and probably failed in SMS, so Facebooked her instead later the night before.

Hence, 100x the satisfaction, I guess?

But I got through this time, and she was in Harajuku for the day. So ditching our plans to walk aimlessly around Ginza and Shibuya, we headed to Shibuya station and managed to get one of the Station guards to explain to us in Japanese (!!) how to walk to Harajuku. There was not Metro line to Harajuku – it was only JR. We had trouble finding the exit because it was different to the ones in the stations that we have been to. Actually, Shibuya Station was amazing – like a maze, with so many shops… it was quite the landmark.

When we did find the exit, we managed to walk to Harajuku without getting lost. Sarah was apparently in front of Harajuku station on the opposite side of the road. We got to the station, but could not see her. And well, she and her boyfriend, Martin would have been relatively easy to recognise, right? Being tall, and not Japanese, right? We could not see them, but there was another entrance for Harajuku which was where we found them. (I had no idea there were two and was sort of… panicking at that time.)

Walking towards them, Leon decided to wave his arms around to try and get their attention but they did not see us. Or well, his arms waving frantically. It was funny seeing him wave his arms around like that because I’m pretty sure a couple of Japanese people paused to look for a second. (The power of gaijin! :3) Though whether this was because I wanted to make sure he was not waving to them or because it was just funny, I don’t know. Eventually, he decided to stop waving, and while we were waiting at the traffic lights across the road in front of them, Sarah saw us and waved. I could not help it but I actually burst out laughing.

We went to Takeshita Street to shop and get crepes. There were so many crepe shops to choose from! And looking at the crepes, I had so much trouble deciding. Cheesecake or ice cream? Chocolate or strawberry? Strawberry or caramel? Etc. etc.

いちごケーキ生クリーム　<3

What was more amazing about the crepes from Harajuku was not the variety or the taste – it was how quick the made them! At Melbourne Central and Box Hill, they take like 5 minutes to take your order because of the line, and then another 5 minutes to make your order. With the crepes here, it was basically, order, start conversation, get your crepe handed to you. YOU HAVE ONLY BEGUN CONVERSATION AND YOU GET TO EAT. THAT IS FREAKING AMAZING.

So the purpose of this trip was for Sarah to get herself some kick ass boots, Leon to buy gifts (and fake glasses~) for Sammi and for me to… BUY ALL I COULD. (Which I couldn’t do by the way. T_T)

The stores there were suuuper impressive! Freaking crowded, so colourful and specials everywhere! It would have been disastrous for my wallet… had I not felt I already spent enough the day before in Akihabara.

Would... you go into this store?

Next up, will be the tales of toy stores, dinner and Ueno stations.

I COULD NOT GO SLEEP.

And this was the problem.

*crycry*

I like my sleep.

I don’t know what the point of this post was. It’s like 5 minutes before class, we have our first kanji vocab test today… and apparently we are going shopping after class~ <3