After many gatherings with people have been thwarted I have decided to get a phone. Is it not nifty?
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
a taste and it is eggy!
I should be asleep. Instead, I shall post random photos of weird shit in Japan. Enjoy.
MEAT! A shirt in Harajuka.
From Hanashiki in Asakusa.
Perna should enjoy this message of wisdom from an arcade in the alleyway of awesomeness.
Me with my mega-awesome new tie. Yes, I'm happy, over a fucking tie, what of it? Fuck you. I got it in harajuku. It's metal.
more great shirts in harajuku
pink rotary phone in the bento box place
Creepy coke ad, also in the bento place.
Do you think I ever know what's really going on? this was in the subway
MEAT! A shirt in Harajuka.
From Hanashiki in Asakusa.
Perna should enjoy this message of wisdom from an arcade in the alleyway of awesomeness.
Me with my mega-awesome new tie. Yes, I'm happy, over a fucking tie, what of it? Fuck you. I got it in harajuku. It's metal.
more great shirts in harajuku
pink rotary phone in the bento box place
Creepy coke ad, also in the bento place.
Do you think I ever know what's really going on? this was in the subway
incoming post
Hey kids, sorry for the lack of posts lately. Excuses: 1) I've been busy. a) I have been avoiding spending too much time with my computer. b) I've been out having fun 2) I have lots of photos. I don't want to tell the stories without the photos. Finally found the cord.
So I'll be updating soon!
So I'll be updating soon!
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Fun and games.
Have I mentioned how much I love this country? The pictures below show some cheap purchases made. Except the 5 flavor pocky, which I won.
Suddenly, I find myself in the mood for Mongolian BBQ. Weird. Enjoy.
Cup sake
Crush pocky- Cookie
Crush pocky- almond
Grape pocky!
Five flavor Pocky fruit
5 flavor pocky black
Decorative Apple Custard
Decorative Grape
Suddenly, I find myself in the mood for Mongolian BBQ. Weird. Enjoy.
Cup sake
Crush pocky- Cookie
Crush pocky- almond
Grape pocky!
Five flavor Pocky fruit
5 flavor pocky black
Decorative Apple Custard
Decorative Grape
Monday, January 22, 2007
tori amos vs. the men from mars part 3
So once again I owe a few days worth of updates. Let's start with Sunday. On Sunday I went to a Media Cafe. More to the point, I went to one of a chain of media cafe's called "Popeye." Oooh. A wonderful link in Japanese. Great, right? It's a really weird experience. I went in, and at the desk arranged the service I want. They offer three different packages. A level is just an open computer. B level is a booth with a fucking awesome lazyboy, and a computer and what not. The C package gives a nice mini-sofa, with a computer, a ps2, a dvd player...and a little mini locker. some slippers to put on come with it as well. Here's where it gets weird (scroll down folks)...the place has some stuff you'd expect a media cafe to have. It's got munchies, drinks, books, blah blah pretty normal. Here's where it gets weird. It has a shower facility and a tanning booth. The place is also 24 hours. This is clearly meant for a 24-25 hour a day lifestyle. This is the kinda place you go to between 12-5 while the metros are closed, and you don't feel like paying $60 for a cab back to Toshima. yeah. So enough about that. Post that, I went to Namcoland and played the crane game (Taiko drum master was full). This was an example of eep strategy in action. I limited myself to 500YEN. The prize was a 4 pack of special 5 flavor pocky. It had both Goka pocky and Kurogo pocky. I know for a fact that these pocky usually go for about 200YEN+ a box. So I knew it was worth the 500YEN to try. Lo and behold, using my ninja crane game skills, I was able to win a 4 pack. In eep tradition, I gave a box to the first mädchen
Today was pretty low key. I overslept again. I really did try to wake up. No. Waking up isn't the problem Getting out of bed is the problem! I am jack's lack of motivation. I really need to start getting out of bed earlier. I should be able to easily tomorrow. I have work to do, and my first day of Japanese. I finally got out of bed, showered, and went to Lawson's for some salmon sashimi! YUM!
IP tonight was ok. The big thing tonight was going to the Alley of Awesomeness with my friends to a place Sarah and Leslie found called Doma Doma. I very much enjoyed the food here! The place was almost like a tapas place. All of the dishes were small, and low priced. Let's explore the menu a bit, shall we? From the cheese menu, we ordered several things. Leslie and I split some delicious fried Cheese Mochi (left side, 3rd picture down. the 380 yen thing). Really yummy stuff. The cheese melted right out of it. It was a nice twist on the cheese stick idea. The group of us split some nan bread with melted Gorgonzola cheese and honey. Tres yummo. In addition, Amanda and I got Doma Doma's mini pizza. I was shocked! The pizza was fucking delicious! Not bad for 490YEN. Also on the cheese menu, I got the "Doma Doma Russian Roulette." That's the item on the bottom left. Basically, it was 6 ball like items that looked like takoyaki, but were actually melted cheese filed balls. So what was with the name? Well, 5 of the balls were filled with a delicious sweet cheese. But one of the balls was filled with a super spicy melted goo. Tasty, but damn it was hot! From the egg menu, Sarah got a delicious omelette. Finally, Leslie got some fried pumpkin fritters from the fried menu (Second to bottom row, center). Delicious!
After that, we left Doma-Doma and went to our respective metro stops. They took the mita line, and I took the JR back to oji.
That's about it. I've gotta work!
hopefully more photos soon!
Today was pretty low key. I overslept again. I really did try to wake up. No. Waking up isn't the problem Getting out of bed is the problem! I am jack's lack of motivation. I really need to start getting out of bed earlier. I should be able to easily tomorrow. I have work to do, and my first day of Japanese. I finally got out of bed, showered, and went to Lawson's for some salmon sashimi! YUM!
IP tonight was ok. The big thing tonight was going to the Alley of Awesomeness with my friends to a place Sarah and Leslie found called Doma Doma. I very much enjoyed the food here! The place was almost like a tapas place. All of the dishes were small, and low priced. Let's explore the menu a bit, shall we? From the cheese menu, we ordered several things. Leslie and I split some delicious fried Cheese Mochi (left side, 3rd picture down. the 380 yen thing). Really yummy stuff. The cheese melted right out of it. It was a nice twist on the cheese stick idea. The group of us split some nan bread with melted Gorgonzola cheese and honey. Tres yummo. In addition, Amanda and I got Doma Doma's mini pizza. I was shocked! The pizza was fucking delicious! Not bad for 490YEN. Also on the cheese menu, I got the "Doma Doma Russian Roulette." That's the item on the bottom left. Basically, it was 6 ball like items that looked like takoyaki, but were actually melted cheese filed balls. So what was with the name? Well, 5 of the balls were filled with a delicious sweet cheese. But one of the balls was filled with a super spicy melted goo. Tasty, but damn it was hot! From the egg menu, Sarah got a delicious omelette. Finally, Leslie got some fried pumpkin fritters from the fried menu (Second to bottom row, center). Delicious!
After that, we left Doma-Doma and went to our respective metro stops. They took the mita line, and I took the JR back to oji.
That's about it. I've gotta work!
hopefully more photos soon!
Saturday, January 20, 2007
change of flans
So we ended up not going to goth night. Juliana, Amanda, and I met up at Azabu-juban station around 8PM. From there, we went to Shibuya, where we would have gone for goth night anyways. It seemed to be a relatively quiet night in Shibuya. We were still burned out from last night, so we decided to take it easy. So we nerded around Shibuya for a while, going to a good curry place...an Indian curry house! SO YUM! It was great to have some curry that wasn't that british-style curry for a change! LUCK-EEP! We ended up going to TAITOland (I forgot the name of the place) to play some games first. I played that Taito drum game again. It's really addictive. We then nerded over to a Sega where I played a really neat dragon ball z fighting game. After that, went out to the metro and went back home. Yeps. That's it. Time for some photos.
Amanda and Juliana ala goth.
I actually have no idea what this is an advert for.
Mmm! Pasta Cube!
Shibuya at night.
Again, I have no idea what they're selling.
Everything in Japan is uber cute, even the bus mascot.
Amanda and Juliana ala goth.
I actually have no idea what this is an advert for.
Mmm! Pasta Cube!
Shibuya at night.
Again, I have no idea what they're selling.
Everything in Japan is uber cute, even the bus mascot.
Friday, January 19, 2007
feeling like a space plane one more time tonight
So I owe you a couple night's updates eh? Let's start with a photo of another great questionable Japanese product! This was either supposed to be lychee...or skittles flavored.
Well, Thursday night Sarah, Lesley, Abby, Amanda, Juliana, and myself went to the alleyway post class to get some dinner. The alleyway area, as previously mentioned is rather groovy. From the street, all you see is a small neon gate. But as you get to the gate, you'll see a small alley like area loaded with tons of small food shops and street vendors. I haven't seen it during the day, but I'm willing to bet that it is only really alive at night. It seems Tokyo doesn't truly come to life until 10PM. The Japanese are much different than Americans in terms of their after work activities. The American mindset is Work ends, run home. In Japan, all the end work means is that you're now off the clock...but still on the job. Company members then go out for drinks/socialization with each other. As a result, the busy evening rush hour tends to be the last few trains in the evening. Sadly, I couldn't get any good pictures of the alley itself, but I managed to take a few pictures of some fun things!
As you might guess, this place involves alcohol.
Here there be frogs! RIBBIT! "Human Song Network." That sounds sinister, doesn't it? And you'd figure they'd show humans, unless those are former humans who have been turned into frogs. Either way it's a karaoke bar. We'll get more into that sorta thing later.
GIANT FUCKING EGG. I have no idea why. I don't question it. GIANT FUCKING EGG.
Moving on, we went to what I think was a Chinese place. I ordered a yummy shrimp and soba dish (yummo). We spent some time there eating our meals, drinking godawful jasmine tea, and generally being gaijin. After that we headed to our respective stations and headed home. Helpful note: The Kehin-Tohoku JR Line rocks because it runs a bit later. Rock. This will come in handy at a later episode, I'm sure.
So last night...
The story begins after Prof. Wilson's class let out. Set your clocks to 7PM tokyo time. After some false starts and other ishkabible we headed over to Roppongi (In truth it was next to Roppongi hills) to go to a venue known as the Super Deluxe. The venue was really trippy.
It was kinda like some sorta Andy Warhol-ian bar/space dream. After going down a spiral of a set of stairs, you get to the anteroom. A quick photo of one of my fellow students in the ante-room.
So yeah. Eyes everywhere. Creepy. The inside was also...interesting. Crowded as hell though. The place was packed with both law students and undergrads. We arrived during the talk from this past year's Cherry Blossom Queen. Side note: I missed drinking the Jagermeister. According to Amanda, it actually is a bit different/better in Japan. MOOF! Grr! After the Cherry Blossom Queen, we had a guest expert come in to teach us all about Sake! Very useful! very informative! we also got a list of good brands to buy and other such things! Luck-ee! Then madness transpired, as the sake tasting begun! YUM! There were 7 different bottles of good quality sake. Some of them were only so so if you ask me. They tasted like the stuff I get back in the states. However, some of the other sake was really unique. I dare say some of it had a bit of fruitocity to it. RANDOM PICTURE TIME
.
This was outside the Super Deluxe. Can anyone tell me what an "Avant-guarde women's toilet" is? And more importantly...why someone would want one?
So yeah...we were inspired to quest after that for some real good sake of our own. We navigated through Roppongi to find a way to safely cross the street and ended up at a small Sake-ya. I spoke with the clerk there as best I could and sadly he had to inform us that he didn't have any of the top sakes on the list. We did manage to get a big bottle of great sake anyways. From Roppongi we headed to...well...damned if I know. The area where Sarah lives in. Our first stop was Mos Burger for some midnight munchies. Not too shabby. The old lady working behind the counter was exceptionally nice, and did her best to deal with the sudden influx of noisy non-Japanese speaking gaijin that was our crowd. I'm actually shocked that my Japanese is starting to improve a bit. I've been able to communicate decently. I'm still no where close to the level of some of the other people but I'm better than I was.
Originally, we planned to go to Sarah's to drink drink drink, but on the way we came across a fun looking karaoke place. In a spur of the moment decision, we decided to go there. It LOOKED like it was only 400YEN a person per hour. So we opted for 3 hours. We were shown to our own private soundproof room, given a book full of English songs, and opened up our sake and began drinking. Lots of fun. Lots of good songs. Amanda and I did our best "Young One's" imitation to...uh...Cliff Richard's "Young Ones." Amanda and Lesley also each got another bottle of wine. In the end, I drank 1/5th a thing of sake and 1/2 a bottle of wine. And it had no effect. :( Disappointing.
We left the joint after paying way too much money and split up again. It was about 3AM so the trains were down for the night. I went with Lesley and Juliana back to shirokane-takanawa station by taxi (TOO MUCH $$) and we went to Juliana's place for a bit. They took her room, and I took the kitchen floor. Around 5:30, after not sleeping I realized the trains were up again so I split. Got back in around 7. So tired. Slept until 4PM. So tonight in that line...I'm going out to a goth club which runs from Midnight -5. ROCK! I'll write more tomorrow!
Well, Thursday night Sarah, Lesley, Abby, Amanda, Juliana, and myself went to the alleyway post class to get some dinner. The alleyway area, as previously mentioned is rather groovy. From the street, all you see is a small neon gate. But as you get to the gate, you'll see a small alley like area loaded with tons of small food shops and street vendors. I haven't seen it during the day, but I'm willing to bet that it is only really alive at night. It seems Tokyo doesn't truly come to life until 10PM. The Japanese are much different than Americans in terms of their after work activities. The American mindset is Work ends, run home. In Japan, all the end work means is that you're now off the clock...but still on the job. Company members then go out for drinks/socialization with each other. As a result, the busy evening rush hour tends to be the last few trains in the evening. Sadly, I couldn't get any good pictures of the alley itself, but I managed to take a few pictures of some fun things!
As you might guess, this place involves alcohol.
Here there be frogs! RIBBIT! "Human Song Network." That sounds sinister, doesn't it? And you'd figure they'd show humans, unless those are former humans who have been turned into frogs. Either way it's a karaoke bar. We'll get more into that sorta thing later.
GIANT FUCKING EGG. I have no idea why. I don't question it. GIANT FUCKING EGG.
Moving on, we went to what I think was a Chinese place. I ordered a yummy shrimp and soba dish (yummo). We spent some time there eating our meals, drinking godawful jasmine tea, and generally being gaijin. After that we headed to our respective stations and headed home. Helpful note: The Kehin-Tohoku JR Line rocks because it runs a bit later. Rock. This will come in handy at a later episode, I'm sure.
So last night...
The story begins after Prof. Wilson's class let out. Set your clocks to 7PM tokyo time. After some false starts and other ishkabible we headed over to Roppongi (In truth it was next to Roppongi hills) to go to a venue known as the Super Deluxe. The venue was really trippy.
It was kinda like some sorta Andy Warhol-ian bar/space dream. After going down a spiral of a set of stairs, you get to the anteroom. A quick photo of one of my fellow students in the ante-room.
So yeah. Eyes everywhere. Creepy. The inside was also...interesting. Crowded as hell though. The place was packed with both law students and undergrads. We arrived during the talk from this past year's Cherry Blossom Queen. Side note: I missed drinking the Jagermeister. According to Amanda, it actually is a bit different/better in Japan. MOOF! Grr! After the Cherry Blossom Queen, we had a guest expert come in to teach us all about Sake! Very useful! very informative! we also got a list of good brands to buy and other such things! Luck-ee! Then madness transpired, as the sake tasting begun! YUM! There were 7 different bottles of good quality sake. Some of them were only so so if you ask me. They tasted like the stuff I get back in the states. However, some of the other sake was really unique. I dare say some of it had a bit of fruitocity to it. RANDOM PICTURE TIME
.
This was outside the Super Deluxe. Can anyone tell me what an "Avant-guarde women's toilet" is? And more importantly...why someone would want one?
So yeah...we were inspired to quest after that for some real good sake of our own. We navigated through Roppongi to find a way to safely cross the street and ended up at a small Sake-ya. I spoke with the clerk there as best I could and sadly he had to inform us that he didn't have any of the top sakes on the list. We did manage to get a big bottle of great sake anyways. From Roppongi we headed to...well...damned if I know. The area where Sarah lives in. Our first stop was Mos Burger for some midnight munchies. Not too shabby. The old lady working behind the counter was exceptionally nice, and did her best to deal with the sudden influx of noisy non-Japanese speaking gaijin that was our crowd. I'm actually shocked that my Japanese is starting to improve a bit. I've been able to communicate decently. I'm still no where close to the level of some of the other people but I'm better than I was.
Originally, we planned to go to Sarah's to drink drink drink, but on the way we came across a fun looking karaoke place. In a spur of the moment decision, we decided to go there. It LOOKED like it was only 400YEN a person per hour. So we opted for 3 hours. We were shown to our own private soundproof room, given a book full of English songs, and opened up our sake and began drinking. Lots of fun. Lots of good songs. Amanda and I did our best "Young One's" imitation to...uh...Cliff Richard's "Young Ones." Amanda and Lesley also each got another bottle of wine. In the end, I drank 1/5th a thing of sake and 1/2 a bottle of wine. And it had no effect. :( Disappointing.
We left the joint after paying way too much money and split up again. It was about 3AM so the trains were down for the night. I went with Lesley and Juliana back to shirokane-takanawa station by taxi (TOO MUCH $$) and we went to Juliana's place for a bit. They took her room, and I took the kitchen floor. Around 5:30, after not sleeping I realized the trains were up again so I split. Got back in around 7. So tired. Slept until 4PM. So tonight in that line...I'm going out to a goth club which runs from Midnight -5. ROCK! I'll write more tomorrow!
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