Saturday 12/4: Okonomiyaki~ \o/
Apr. 14th, 2008 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tammaiyaSomeone is singing loudly and it is PISSING ME OFF. Welcome to the world of thin dorm walls. << Maybe I should turn my ipod on, oi. But back to Saturday.
Alright, my plan, you may recall, was to stay home on the weekend and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. My feet hurt. I was tired. Me and the internet were hanging out. Yada.
But at about midday, I thought, hey, I should call![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
woodstock_21 since I have her mobile number now! And Liz was like, hey, yeah, we're going to Shinjuku this afternoon to visit the huge Kinokuniya, want to meet up?
Me: Well, I WAS going to stay home and veg. *lazy, still in pjs*
Me: ..... *looks at watch*
Me: I'll email you in a few hours? :D?
So in the end I did decide to go, threw stuff into my backpack, and started heading off towards the station. I left like half an hour or so before I needed to, but in the end that turned out about right because I ran into Dawn (from Scotland) on my way out of uni and we discovered a mutual love of fandom/livejournal. *waves* Hi Dawn! XD
As for lunch-- I ate nutella on bread before I left. Japan is big on bakeries and pastry sweets and stuff, but not so much on actual BREAD (reflected in the fact that their loaves are SHORT, like, half the length or less of what I personally would call a loaf of bread). The bread I had was a little stale tasting. I'll have to see if I can find something a little nicer/fresher. And then I grabbed a nikuman from the combini next to the station to eat before my train got there. Sue me, I like nikuman.
On that note, my meals here are so changable. Sometimes they're tiny, and sometimes they're enormous. Breakfast is getting a little more predictable now I have the cereal-- although, one, I have to buy a proper size spoon, because I went to the hyakkin before the supermarket and I didn't have cereal in mind when I bought eating utensils, and two, I think next time I'll get the special K without the strawberries. They're a bit bizarre.
Back to Shinjuku, though. We agreed to meet up at the South exit near the Lumine sign-- I got there quite a bit earlier though, so I wandered off to look at the Odakyuu building next door for a bit. Also, I took a photo of one of the skyscrapers which had an enormous picture of Yankumi advertising Gokusen 3 on the side, for hilarity value.
You can't really see it's her, but she's wearing a red tracksuit. XD
Oh, while I'm at it.
South exit of Shinjuku, where I was waiting. (Btw, there are like 6 exits to Shinjuku station and they come out quite far apart, so you have to be careful where you exit from.)
Liz was with one of her friends from uni, Lauren, who is originally from Chicago and was really nice. I'm glad I met her. :D We headed first to Kinokuniya, which is like, 8 floors, no kidding (and there are TWO in Shinjuku!) We spent all our time on the floor with the English books because we were there for the purpose of acquiring textbooks-- in my case, for the ANU kanji test which I got an email this morning saying has been CANCELLED FOR 2008 STUDENTS FDJSHLKFJDSLKFJDS what the FUCK?! Sensei-tachi are lucky I like collecting kanji books, is all I can say. >O (There'll be more ranting on this later, when it occurs in proper chronological fashion.)
I was amused by the English manga, but I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the fact that English language books (like Discworld, Diana Wynne Jones, etc) are cheaper in Japan than they are at home. ><;
On the other hand, Harry Potter 7 hasn't come out in Japanese yet, so there you go.
Photo of Kinokuniya! With bonus Liz and Lauren. (Lizzie is closest, Lauren is facing away.)
Liz was in Shinjuku to meet up with her family, who were flying in and expecting to get to their hotel at 8pm, so we had some time to kill and decided to find a cafe for sweets-eating. We wandered around quite a bit; Shinjuku is apparently very light on for such places compared to Ikebukuro.
That reminds me, I need to buy Tokyo Babylon in Japanese.
... er, sorry, what? Right, um, BACK TO THE POINT. XD;
There was one parfait place that looked yummy and which I took a photo of the plastic food display, because seriously, EXCELLENT, but it was unfortunately full. Still, I'll let you all drool at the photo.
Eventually we found a cheesecake shop, where I had a very nice strawberry tiramisu short... bread? cake? something? It's just "short" in Japanese, so whatever, but it was nice. Although wrapped in plastic, which, what? Seriously, Japan? XDDD
Once we were done with cheesecake, we walked to the trainstation and parted ways. Liz was going to meet her family, and Lauren went to catch the train home, but I'd seen an okonomiyaki shop while we were walking around looking for sweets and I was DETERMINED to eat there. I also figured that I may as well try looking for a coat, mark two.
My first stop ended up being neither of these, however, because on my way back from the station I went past a huge electronics store, and... I just can't help it. It's like gravity. Even in Australia, where these days I know I'm not going to find anything interesting because everything I want is from Japan, I see a game shop and I'm drawn like a polarised magnet. Which is how I ended up with game guides for FFIV and FFIII DS. I KNOW, I KNOW. MY LACK OF WILLPOWER, LET ME SHOW YOU IT. << But they were less than 3000 yen together! D: (I also got a pen chamber for my DS touchpen to turn it into a fullsize pen. It was like 250 yen, and I've gotten hand cramps using the pen too much before so I consider it a useful purchase.)
I continued my wandering, and ended up finding the GAP store, in a multistorey building with a bunch of other western brandname stores. Unfortunately for me, unlike Zara, they seemed to be catering for Japanese people and had only small sizes. >< There was one knee length denim coat that was an almost, but it was tight across the back when I lifted my arms, so I know I wouldn't wear it. I looked at the other shops, too, but no go. Even without taking my height/broad shoulders/bust size into account, there just weren't a lot of coats.
After that, it was back to searching for dinner, and I DID manage to find that Okonomiyaki place. I'm kind of like a cat, in that way; sooner or later, I tend to meander back to where I've come from. My sense of direction isn't ALWAYS the best, but generally if I go somewhere I can find my way back. Often I can even go there again. So I found both the western clothes shops and the okonomiyaki, after some wandering around for a bit. I did try to check my GPS on my phone at one point, but I got bored and gave up when I realised that it wasn't really helpful or easy to use.
As for the okonomiyaki, it was an interesting experience. I have eaten it before, unlike takoyaki, but never at a store-- once or twice at the boys' grammar fete when Shiori's family cooked it, and once when I cooked it myself at home. It's a very different thing to go into a Japanese style room with individual hotplates and be given the ingredients to make it yourself. I was a little baffled, frankly, but I was sitting next to a table of guys from Kyoto. They saw that I was having a little trouble figuring out what to do and told me when to flip it and then helped me add the sauces to it. It was delicious. ♥ The guys were really nice, too. The one I was talking to the most was 23 and was working for a company, and he was really surprised when I said I was only 21. Apparently he thought I must have been older than him because I was so... ladylike? Something like that. Sometimes translation fails me. Perhaps he was hitting on me, I don't know. XD I was sitting seiza, which, I know I complained about my ankles when I did that the other day, but I didn't have the room to sit in any other way that made it less awkward and the cushions made seiza not hurt.
Anyway, the guy was fun to talk to-- very surprised that Gundam Wing and Neon Genesis had reached the west, which I found hilarious, because they're two of the ones that have been dubbed the longest. We traded mobiles, which I usually don't do but he was nice. And he offered to show me around Kyoto. :D (Proof of niceness, he emailed me later that evening to ask if I got home safely. Awww, how chivalrous. XD)
After I left the okonomiyaki place, the goal was to head back to the station, but on my way I got sort of accosted by this guy who... I guess I assume was from Africa? He was negro and his accented English suggested he wasn't from America or Europe (or Australia, but I know for sure he wasn't from there because he was talking about travelling there), and he was talking about Japan in a way that suggested he was living there for work. He asked me if I knew the way to this English pub, which I didn't, and then ended up talking to me about Australia for a while. He asked me for my phone number. Turning into a bad habit? I'm pretty bad at saying no, though. And he seemed pretty nice and genuinely interested in going to Sydney this winter (Australian winter, I mean), so anyway.
Once I got to Shinjuku station I ran around it for a while feeling hideously lost as a I tried to find an ATM. It took me long enough to FIND one, but then when I did it wasn't an international ATM. >< And let me tell you, that place is motherfucking HUGE. I suspect it of being sport stadium huge, for real. Eventually I gave up on the ATM (and cursed when I realised I'd missed VS ARASHI, which Becky had made me curious about) and trudged off find the platform for Chuuou Rapid line, which was like, easier said than done, because I'd ended up on the other side of the massive stadium in my search for an ATM. Aaaaaugh.
Anyway, eventually I got home, totally exhausted, at around midnight. It was 10pm or so when I left Shinjuku, and the trains to Tama aren't as frequent late at night. (God, I know I'm spoiled by Japan when I whine about having to wait 10-20 minutes for public transport. XD) I actually met the Russian girls, Dina and Mariet, on the Tamagawa train, and we walked back to the dorm together. They'd been out shopping at Kichijouji, and gave me sweet stuff. <3 There are definitely pluses to living in a dorm community.
Then I got home and, after not that long, my laptop died. I sent an email to my parents to inform them, played a little FFIII, and crashed. I'd fully intended to NOT MOVE on Sunday, but it looked like those plans were, once more, in for revision...
Oh yeah, two random interesting cultural moments which I noticed a while ago but forgot to mention:
1. Traffic lights. If you're a pedestrian, you don't press the button unless you're elderly or disabled. The lights change fairly regularly, but from what I've heard I think if you press the button they change almost immediately. (I haven't tried it.)
2. Automatic doors. Some of them are the same as in Australia, but several times-- including at our co-op on campus-- I've encountered automatic doors where you press a button on the door and it slides open and then closes itself. Quite a smart idea when you've got lots of people walking past sensors all the time, I guess, especially when it's colder.
Alright, my plan, you may recall, was to stay home on the weekend and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. My feet hurt. I was tired. Me and the internet were hanging out. Yada.
But at about midday, I thought, hey, I should call
woodstock_21 since I have her mobile number now! And Liz was like, hey, yeah, we're going to Shinjuku this afternoon to visit the huge Kinokuniya, want to meet up?Me: Well, I WAS going to stay home and veg. *lazy, still in pjs*
Me: ..... *looks at watch*
Me: I'll email you in a few hours? :D?
So in the end I did decide to go, threw stuff into my backpack, and started heading off towards the station. I left like half an hour or so before I needed to, but in the end that turned out about right because I ran into Dawn (from Scotland) on my way out of uni and we discovered a mutual love of fandom/livejournal. *waves* Hi Dawn! XD
As for lunch-- I ate nutella on bread before I left. Japan is big on bakeries and pastry sweets and stuff, but not so much on actual BREAD (reflected in the fact that their loaves are SHORT, like, half the length or less of what I personally would call a loaf of bread). The bread I had was a little stale tasting. I'll have to see if I can find something a little nicer/fresher. And then I grabbed a nikuman from the combini next to the station to eat before my train got there. Sue me, I like nikuman.
On that note, my meals here are so changable. Sometimes they're tiny, and sometimes they're enormous. Breakfast is getting a little more predictable now I have the cereal-- although, one, I have to buy a proper size spoon, because I went to the hyakkin before the supermarket and I didn't have cereal in mind when I bought eating utensils, and two, I think next time I'll get the special K without the strawberries. They're a bit bizarre.
Back to Shinjuku, though. We agreed to meet up at the South exit near the Lumine sign-- I got there quite a bit earlier though, so I wandered off to look at the Odakyuu building next door for a bit. Also, I took a photo of one of the skyscrapers which had an enormous picture of Yankumi advertising Gokusen 3 on the side, for hilarity value.
You can't really see it's her, but she's wearing a red tracksuit. XD
Oh, while I'm at it.
South exit of Shinjuku, where I was waiting. (Btw, there are like 6 exits to Shinjuku station and they come out quite far apart, so you have to be careful where you exit from.)
Liz was with one of her friends from uni, Lauren, who is originally from Chicago and was really nice. I'm glad I met her. :D We headed first to Kinokuniya, which is like, 8 floors, no kidding (and there are TWO in Shinjuku!) We spent all our time on the floor with the English books because we were there for the purpose of acquiring textbooks-- in my case, for the ANU kanji test which I got an email this morning saying has been CANCELLED FOR 2008 STUDENTS FDJSHLKFJDSLKFJDS what the FUCK?! Sensei-tachi are lucky I like collecting kanji books, is all I can say. >O (There'll be more ranting on this later, when it occurs in proper chronological fashion.)
I was amused by the English manga, but I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the fact that English language books (like Discworld, Diana Wynne Jones, etc) are cheaper in Japan than they are at home. ><;
On the other hand, Harry Potter 7 hasn't come out in Japanese yet, so there you go.
Photo of Kinokuniya! With bonus Liz and Lauren. (Lizzie is closest, Lauren is facing away.)
Liz was in Shinjuku to meet up with her family, who were flying in and expecting to get to their hotel at 8pm, so we had some time to kill and decided to find a cafe for sweets-eating. We wandered around quite a bit; Shinjuku is apparently very light on for such places compared to Ikebukuro.
That reminds me, I need to buy Tokyo Babylon in Japanese.
... er, sorry, what? Right, um, BACK TO THE POINT. XD;
There was one parfait place that looked yummy and which I took a photo of the plastic food display, because seriously, EXCELLENT, but it was unfortunately full. Still, I'll let you all drool at the photo.
Eventually we found a cheesecake shop, where I had a very nice strawberry tiramisu short... bread? cake? something? It's just "short" in Japanese, so whatever, but it was nice. Although wrapped in plastic, which, what? Seriously, Japan? XDDD
Once we were done with cheesecake, we walked to the trainstation and parted ways. Liz was going to meet her family, and Lauren went to catch the train home, but I'd seen an okonomiyaki shop while we were walking around looking for sweets and I was DETERMINED to eat there. I also figured that I may as well try looking for a coat, mark two.
My first stop ended up being neither of these, however, because on my way back from the station I went past a huge electronics store, and... I just can't help it. It's like gravity. Even in Australia, where these days I know I'm not going to find anything interesting because everything I want is from Japan, I see a game shop and I'm drawn like a polarised magnet. Which is how I ended up with game guides for FFIV and FFIII DS. I KNOW, I KNOW. MY LACK OF WILLPOWER, LET ME SHOW YOU IT. << But they were less than 3000 yen together! D: (I also got a pen chamber for my DS touchpen to turn it into a fullsize pen. It was like 250 yen, and I've gotten hand cramps using the pen too much before so I consider it a useful purchase.)
I continued my wandering, and ended up finding the GAP store, in a multistorey building with a bunch of other western brandname stores. Unfortunately for me, unlike Zara, they seemed to be catering for Japanese people and had only small sizes. >< There was one knee length denim coat that was an almost, but it was tight across the back when I lifted my arms, so I know I wouldn't wear it. I looked at the other shops, too, but no go. Even without taking my height/broad shoulders/bust size into account, there just weren't a lot of coats.
After that, it was back to searching for dinner, and I DID manage to find that Okonomiyaki place. I'm kind of like a cat, in that way; sooner or later, I tend to meander back to where I've come from. My sense of direction isn't ALWAYS the best, but generally if I go somewhere I can find my way back. Often I can even go there again. So I found both the western clothes shops and the okonomiyaki, after some wandering around for a bit. I did try to check my GPS on my phone at one point, but I got bored and gave up when I realised that it wasn't really helpful or easy to use.
As for the okonomiyaki, it was an interesting experience. I have eaten it before, unlike takoyaki, but never at a store-- once or twice at the boys' grammar fete when Shiori's family cooked it, and once when I cooked it myself at home. It's a very different thing to go into a Japanese style room with individual hotplates and be given the ingredients to make it yourself. I was a little baffled, frankly, but I was sitting next to a table of guys from Kyoto. They saw that I was having a little trouble figuring out what to do and told me when to flip it and then helped me add the sauces to it. It was delicious. ♥ The guys were really nice, too. The one I was talking to the most was 23 and was working for a company, and he was really surprised when I said I was only 21. Apparently he thought I must have been older than him because I was so... ladylike? Something like that. Sometimes translation fails me. Perhaps he was hitting on me, I don't know. XD I was sitting seiza, which, I know I complained about my ankles when I did that the other day, but I didn't have the room to sit in any other way that made it less awkward and the cushions made seiza not hurt.
Anyway, the guy was fun to talk to-- very surprised that Gundam Wing and Neon Genesis had reached the west, which I found hilarious, because they're two of the ones that have been dubbed the longest. We traded mobiles, which I usually don't do but he was nice. And he offered to show me around Kyoto. :D (Proof of niceness, he emailed me later that evening to ask if I got home safely. Awww, how chivalrous. XD)
After I left the okonomiyaki place, the goal was to head back to the station, but on my way I got sort of accosted by this guy who... I guess I assume was from Africa? He was negro and his accented English suggested he wasn't from America or Europe (or Australia, but I know for sure he wasn't from there because he was talking about travelling there), and he was talking about Japan in a way that suggested he was living there for work. He asked me if I knew the way to this English pub, which I didn't, and then ended up talking to me about Australia for a while. He asked me for my phone number. Turning into a bad habit? I'm pretty bad at saying no, though. And he seemed pretty nice and genuinely interested in going to Sydney this winter (Australian winter, I mean), so anyway.
Once I got to Shinjuku station I ran around it for a while feeling hideously lost as a I tried to find an ATM. It took me long enough to FIND one, but then when I did it wasn't an international ATM. >< And let me tell you, that place is motherfucking HUGE. I suspect it of being sport stadium huge, for real. Eventually I gave up on the ATM (and cursed when I realised I'd missed VS ARASHI, which Becky had made me curious about) and trudged off find the platform for Chuuou Rapid line, which was like, easier said than done, because I'd ended up on the other side of the massive stadium in my search for an ATM. Aaaaaugh.
Anyway, eventually I got home, totally exhausted, at around midnight. It was 10pm or so when I left Shinjuku, and the trains to Tama aren't as frequent late at night. (God, I know I'm spoiled by Japan when I whine about having to wait 10-20 minutes for public transport. XD) I actually met the Russian girls, Dina and Mariet, on the Tamagawa train, and we walked back to the dorm together. They'd been out shopping at Kichijouji, and gave me sweet stuff. <3 There are definitely pluses to living in a dorm community.
Then I got home and, after not that long, my laptop died. I sent an email to my parents to inform them, played a little FFIII, and crashed. I'd fully intended to NOT MOVE on Sunday, but it looked like those plans were, once more, in for revision...
Oh yeah, two random interesting cultural moments which I noticed a while ago but forgot to mention:
1. Traffic lights. If you're a pedestrian, you don't press the button unless you're elderly or disabled. The lights change fairly regularly, but from what I've heard I think if you press the button they change almost immediately. (I haven't tried it.)
2. Automatic doors. Some of them are the same as in Australia, but several times-- including at our co-op on campus-- I've encountered automatic doors where you press a button on the door and it slides open and then closes itself. Quite a smart idea when you've got lots of people walking past sensors all the time, I guess, especially when it's colder.
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Date: 2008-04-18 01:10 am (UTC)I still need to go on a proper bookstore excursions. Although I have admittedly loitered in a few in Musashi Sakai the other day. << (They have game books and copious amounts of manga even in small bookshops! I am charmed. Although my wallet is alarmed. Why so much temptation?)