UBER POST covering over a week of STUFF.

[tammaiya]

The ironic thing about blogging is, the more you have to say, generally the less time you have to say it in. Which is my roundabout way of saying that, in the week I have not updated, I've been fairly busy and I'm going to attempt to fill it in, but I'm not really sure how that'll go.

Before I begin, though, some random observations;

1. Japan, I hate to tell you this, but. BREAD: UR DOIN IT WRONG. It's a bit like that with all western foods— spaghetti here just isn't the way it is back home, and for some reason you can only buy it thin— but particularly bread. I miss fresh cooked loaves. On the other hand, Japan does western confectionaries better than we do, so it probably balances out.

2. I'm probably speaking too soon, but it's been a lot easier than I thought it would be to adjust to living overseas and away from home. I miss my dog a little sometimes and it's annoying not to be able to buy shoes or clothes here, but even having to cook and clean for myself isn't so bad. It's nice to have this level of freedom. And it's hard to feel lonely when I have so many friends here and online and back home that I can talk to whenever I want. Obviously I'm not SUPER perky right now, what with being sick, but... well, it's not like I don't get sick at home all the time anyway, really. ^^;

3. It seems that perhaps only apricot poodles exist here? O.o; I did see a black one once... but every other time I've seen a poodle, in RL or on tv, it has been apricot. And people have been surprised when I've said my poodle is black (in a "whoa, really? Those EXIST?" kind of way) so I am left with that conclusion!

4. Fresh fruit and vegetables go off here REALLY QUICKLY, and I am at a loss to explain it. Like, I buy a bunch of mikan, and after several days one of them was covered in mould. The bean sprouts went off ridiculously quickly. I just. What? I'd assume it's because there's more moisture in the air in Japan, but surely that doesn't explain why vegetables in my fridge go off so fast?

Anyway, back to recaps. I had this vague urge to check out Kinokuniya on Sunday (not yesterday, the week before), so I booked it out to Shinjuku. It was already about 5pm by the time I got there, but this city really doesn't ever sleep so that wasn't too inconvenient. What was more inconvenient was that I was sitting on the train right about when I wanted to eat lunch (if you recall from my post earlier that day I didn't get up until like 1pm) so I was starving when I got to Shinjuku and I had to find myself lunch. Which, okay, is not HARD, there's tons of food places, but I had an attack of the pickiness and ended up wandering around for ages before I gave up and ate at this chain obviously aimed at men, because it was stools at a bar, all the other clientele were male, and I'm vaguely sure that the drink they served there was watered down beer. Maybe. Or maybe it was just funny-coloured water. When I say "watered down" I mean, if that was beer, it was like 2% beer. XD (This isn't a complaint. I hate beer.)

It was okay. Not great. Over-spiced. I could have had something better if I'd just been less indecisive and picky in the first place, but there you go.

Lunch done, I spent a very long, very boring time walking around being lost looking for a Kinokuniya. There are two, and you wouldn't think it'd be that hard, but turns out neither of them were in the areas I'd been walking around the most. I've got a fairly good grasp on particular areas of Shinjuku, but it's a big place, and I ended up wandering around futilely for at least an hour before I went back to the station, checked my phone for a street address for Kinokuniya, checked the map to figure out where the district was, and took the south-east exit. And then I still had to ask for directions from one of the guys handing out tissues. XD

(Oh yeah, at some point in all this wafting around I saw some girls dressed up and asked if I could take a photo for overseas friends who were interested in Tokyo fashion. They obviously thought I was amusingly weird, but they indulged me, so here, guys, have a photo:

)

After ALL THAT, I was rather disappointed. It was the Kinokuniya I hadn't been to before, and it was smaller than the one I went to with woodstock_21. (Keep in mind that it was still 7 or 8 floors, though.) And it didn't even have any manga. Or not any manga not translated into English, which I find kind of ironic. XD; The English book section was pretty small, compared to the other Kino, and I couldn't really be stuffed figuring out the way the Japanese book section was organised, so, disheartened, I decided to eat one of those ridiculous strawberry parfaits (see previous Saturday's entry) and go to a manga café to catch up on Ouran and maybe Tsubasa.

In my attempt to find the parfait place, I actually found a manga café first. The organisation system kind of made sense— it was split into genre and then author— but it still bewildered me a little. I found Ouran eventually, but I have no idea if Tsubasa was there at all. I found CLAMP under both shoujo and shounen, but while this yielded CCS and Holic, I didn't see Tsubasa. That was okay, though, I was pretty flat out catching up on Ouran, since I was four volumes behind.

I hadn't meant to stay at the manga café more than an hour but it was past 9pm by the time I left and I was like, CRAP, NEED DINNER. STILL WANT PARFAIT. BUT HAVE TO GO HOME. But as luck would have it I managed to find it without too much detour on my way back to the station, so I had spaghetti and ridiculous strawberry parfait and all was good. <3 (Although I was reminded that the reason I never have strawberry sundaes and such is that the strawberry sauce makes me feel kinda ill. If/when I have another parfait anywhere, it will DEFINITELY be chocolate.)

Have a photo of the ridiculous parfait!



And then I went home, the end.

I don't have terribly much to say about Monday, because on Mondays I have three periods and I'm quite busy with class... First class is integrated Japanese, second period, where we were going through the main text about this theory this Japanese philosopher, Watsuji Tetsurou, came up with about how climate affects mentality. Almost everyone disagree completely with the theory, particularly those of us in the Australian/American bloc because the theory didn't account for our countries at all. XD; (Also, it was all very poetic, but completely unscientific. Like: Japanese people have these traits. Japanese climate has these features. LET'S FIND A LINK!)

Straight after integrated, there's an hour long lunch period, and then I have kanji, which is a little sadistic. I like kanji, but man, that's a lot of kanji per week. X_x; Plus I wasn't aware we had to study the kanji for the unit before the class, so I only got 32/50 on the first test. (I probably didn't do that much better on today's either, since I was sick and only got halfway through studying for them last night.) The kanji class is a little... I don't know, like, we don't really learn kanji IN the class. It's more like, quiz, review, exercises, non-assessed quiz, review, redo said quiz... etc. Wouldn't it be more fair to do all the other stuff BEFORE the assessed quiz? <<; Oh well.

Dawn and I went back to my room and did a bit of study in our free period, and then we went to religion, which is where FANDOM TAUGHT ME EVERYTHING I KNOW~ comes into it. Basically, we were learning about women shamans— Amaterasu, the sun goddess, Himiko, the shaman queen from the 3rd C, and a woman called Nakayama Miki who founded a new shamanistic religion at the end of Edo. Of course, the reason I knew who Himiko was was from playing Okami... XD; But more than that, at one point we started talking about the sacred mountains of Japan, and we were supposed to name the two other than Fuji.

intergal: ... Wait, what's that mountain Sorata's from?
tammaiya: fjdsklfs OMG YOU'RE RIGHT! ... augh mental blank!
intergal: ... Kou... za?
Both: KOUYA-SAN!

That's right, people, manga and video games are TOTALLY EDUCATIONAL! Really!

We then learned about the himehiko system, which aside from being interesting made me realise that CLAMP had totally based Hokuto and Subaru's relationship off it. Basically it's a traditional system of brother-sister joint rule, where the sister protects the brother spiritually. There's this old belief that the sister is sacred— and it has to be the sister, not the wife— and there's a possibility that that's why so many traditional rites have to be performed by women, often more specifically the emperor's sister.

(... Should I also point out something I just remembered when I was typing that— the Sumeragi kanji is one of the kanji for emperor?)

So yes. That was the highlight of my Monday. Although Shukudai-kun was also pretty good, but that possibly doesn't count, since it airs at midnight.

Tuesday I didn't do too much. I had a grammar class second period— and got lots of homework, because we don't have classes on Tuesdays for two weeks. Tomorrow is Green Day (like Arbour Day? Australia doesn't have anything like it that's a public holiday, but I vaguely recall America having something like that. It used to be the Emperor's birthday during Showa era, but the current Emperor's birthday is December 23), and next week is Golden Week. I don't precisely remember what Tuesday is... Monday is Kids' Day, other than that I forget.

My other class, after lunch, was ukiyo-e, where we learned about how the prints are made. It was interesting, and a lot of painstaking effort; I might go into more detail some other time, but for now I'll leave it at that.

That afternoon there was an attempt to vacuum my room, but the floor five vacuum cleaner didn't work, so I got fed up and went off to Musashi Sakai to do some grocery shopping. Exciting times. XD Grocery shopping is always such an expensive endeavour, but I guess at least this time wasn't as painful.

Wednesday was an epic day of epic-ness. Seriously, I couldn't stop describing everything as epic. I took an epic nap, and then I cleaned my room in a totally epic way that involved dish-washing and vacuuming (with the 3rd floor vacuum, my floor doesn't have its own) and rearranging of shelves "although unfortunately not clothes washing, and also unfortunately hasn't lasted). I also totally failed to hand in a form that was due because after my nap I forgot about it until it was too late. ^

Oh, and I had class first period. Which is only important insofar as it relates to the fact that I felt like crap and it was the direct cause for the epic two and a half hour nap I took as soon as it finished.

Once I woke up I had lunch, after which I spent some time with Becky trying to figure out how the hell FFIII's job system actually works in terms of HP and levelling up. Then I cleaned (epically!), which left me feeling pretty tired and I whined about it, but then I made dinner (EPIC dinner). I'd bought ingredients the day before with this specifically in mind— I wanted beef stew, dammit. So I made it using tomato and garlic paste, okonomi sauce, soy sauce, onion, eggplant, carrot, beef stock dissolved in water, and, of course, beef. And it was really SUPER DELICIOUS. It's a little messy to clean up and I have to go to Musashi Sakai for the tomato paste (and the beef, but I made it on Sunday without meat and I think it's just as good) but it's really worth it.

And after all that I stayed up late figuring out a way to rig mognet on my FFIII game. Which truly deserves to be called epic, because this was the process involved:

Kattaiya : I searched the internet for some kind of help, but all the people looking to trade codes on Japanese message boards were from like, 2006.
Kattaiya : so then I was like, fuck it! there has to be a cheat! somewhere, somehow! the boot cart I'm playing on also supports cheats and has its own database, so I checked that-- max HP, max gold, something else, nothing about mognet. not useful. (well, useful, but I don't want cheats like that. I wouldn't be cheating on mognet either if I had a choice.)
Kattaiya : so I googled, and I totally found a Japanese game code for getting all the letters. the problem was, this code wasn't in the database, so how could I use it?
Kattaiya : what followed was several hours of me googling around to find out how to add cheats to the m3 ds real, trying to find a program that would create said cheat files, finding a program that created .dat files, googling to find out FFIII's serial code, plugging the code and other relevant details into the program, trying to find a program that would convert .dat to one of the compatible file types...
Kattaiya : then I checked the folder of the program and it had a sample .xml file, so I stole the code from there and adapted it to my own nefarious purposes. And it totally worked. *beam*

... In conclusion: yes, I really AM that much of a geek, oh my god. XD;

I slept in on Thursday, because I'd been up quite late in my attempt to rig mognet. When I eventually got up, I didn't really do very much. Really. I think, aside from handing in that form I forgot on Wednesday, all I did was sit around playing FFIII and talk to people online. Mari and Jen both came online, which was nice. I went out to the cafeteria at around 6 to meet up with intergal to study, although in the end we didn't study very much because there were lots of other people around. XD It was fun, though. Which reminds me, I have to buy a ticket for the party in Shibuya on Thursday. Assuming I'm better by then... I'm a lot better today than I was yesterday, but I still wouldn't go out partying. Hm.

Then I went back to my room, played FFIII some more and eventually did some homework, later than I should have. Uh, yeah, that's pretty much it for Thursday. XD

ETA because I forgot about it, but I was actually intending to go to Shinjuku and talk to the real estate agent on Thursday, but I ended up wandering around Fuchuu instead. I was vaguely trying to find one of the other bakeries in the area that I'd seen from the train, but instead I found a supermarket which has chicken and detergent and stuff! Hooray! And a bedding shop. Which was closed at the time. I also encountered a bunch of small children walking home from school; a small girl was looking at me funny, so I asked her what was wrong, then her friends looked at me funny, so I told them not to make weird faces at me. XD; I talked to them for a little while we were walking in the same direction. I don't think they saw many caucasians; they obviously thought I was really weird but kind of interesting, heh.

... I also discovered another really good fruit shop which was like, RIGHT NEXT to the station, only in the opposite direction where I never go. This is why you should always look around properly, guys.

The 25th of April is ANZAC Day in Australia (and presumably NZ?), which I informed multiple people of while I was here. Because we're a foreign studies university there's a big emphasis on cultural exchange, and I figure, whatever, people from the northern hemisphere (ie most of the world, and everyone I know at uni bar Rachel) don't know enough about Australia. SHARING IS CARING. Or something.

I didn't mention it earlier, but on Wednesday or Thursday Saito-sensei (my academic advisor) emailed me to ask if I was interested in taking up an English tutoring position for 2000 yen an hour at a tutoring school called Lingua House which is in this area and run by the students at my uni. I said I was, and Mochizuki-sensei, who is the teacher who works with the Lingua House, emailed me back to ask if I could come for an interview Friday 4.30pm.

My Friday actually ended up being really busy, because I had a bunch of forms I needed to submit. One of them needed signatures from the academic advisors for the ISEP course and the Japanese language courses. I hadn't realised, but I was supposed to get those at lunch time on previous days that week, so intergal helped me run around and find the ISEP advisor. By that time it was the end of lunch, though, and I'd kind of decided to at least try making that undergrad course on reading Edo-era texts, so I split for the undergrad building. The class was interesting. Very hard, but interesting. Basically we got a photocopy of the text written out in the original TOTALLY MESSY calligraphy, then a typed up sheet of the text, and then what it says in modern Japanese. I think if I put some work in, I'll be able to do it to at least a certain extent, but I totally put "audit only" on my academic outline submission because I'm crazy, but I'm not crazy enough to want to take that exam. XD

So the result of that is that not only am I taking 2 classes (3 hours) more than necessary, not only is 1 of those classes in the undergrad department, but it's a class that even native Japanese students think is hard. XD; Sometimes I wonder about my decision-making processes.

After that I had some time before my interview, so I went back to the dorm and talked to my parents for a bit (it was a public holiday in Australia, so they were home) and emailed my makeshift CV to Mochizuki-sensei. I then went to the interview, which was mostly just a chat. I spoke to both Mochizuki-sensei and Terence, a Singaporean PhD student who works at Lingua House. The upshot is that I'll be teaching two half hour classes on Saturday mornings, Yui-chan (who's four) from 10-10.30, and Tamaki-chan (14) from 10.40-11.10. I also got invited to dinner at the Lingua House that evening, and I'd intended to go to the TOFSIA (club for exchange between Japanese and international students here at TUFS) welcome party that night, but I wasn't going to turn down free home-cooked Chinese.

(Oh yeah, sensei's office was on the seventh floor so I took a photo of campus from the balcony:

)

So Mochizuki-sensei drove me to Lingua House, which is about 15 minutes walk from my dorm, and I went upstairs to the living/kitchen area (it was built as a residential house by Mochizuki-sensei's father) where I talked to everyone and ate dinner, and it was really nice. There are other tutoring jobs that pay more and I might take one later as a second job if I have time, but I'm really glad I took this job, because everyone is really friendly and welcoming and it really did feel kind of like a second home, which Mochizuki-sensei told me to treat it as. AND I GOT TO CUDDLE A POODLE PUPPY. The manager/treasurer has a 3-month-old toy poodle and I got to cuddle it and it was so adorable, oh my god. <3

I'm not starting tutoring until May 10— next Saturday is part of Golden Week— but I agreed to come by the next morning and sit in on Yui-chan's lesson. "Tamaki-chan had had her lesson on Friday night; I met her briefly and got her textbook from Angela, a Chinese-Canadian exchange student who's also working at Lingua House)

I got up in time on Saturday morning and went down to the carpark to meet Mochizuki-sensei, who was giving me a lift again. Unfortunately, right from the outside it was miserable, cold, cloudy day. (That later rained.) I had fun at Lingua House, though. Yui-chan is totally adorable— really quiet, but really bright. Terrence was the one teaching the lesson, but I participated a little and I got her to sing along to the song on the counting CD so I felt pretty good about that.

After Yui's lesson, I stayed around until about midday talking to Kayako, the receptionist who will help me with my Japanese if I need it. I didn't bring any of my textbooks with me, though, so we just sat and chatted, which was fun. She's really nice, I like her. At one point I noticed the Peter Rabbit books and pointed them out, saying I read them when I was a child. Kayako said she'd never read it before and pulled one off the shelf and started reading through with my help. She said her English wasn't very good, but I was really impressed, especially since she doesn't study it— she studies French.

After that, I came home long enough to eat lunch and watch VS ARASHI, and then departed for the train station to catch a train to Shinjuku, where I stopped off at the Nippon Travel Agency (haha, I did some work for them back in Australia) to ask about travelling around Japan in August. It wasn't all that useful; I at least know how long it takes to get to Nagasaki and a ballpark figure for the price, but usually you'd expect a travel agent to make more suggestions and things. She would only respond to questions I asked, she didn't give any advice or offer opinions or anything. O.o; But I did get some pamphlets out of it. Not sure how helpful they'll be, but I can look at them at least.

From Shinjuku, I caught the Saikyou line to Ikebukuro, which is the next stop so it was pretty quick although I was surprised that it didn't come more regularly (I had to wait, like, a whole ten minutes! Travesty! XD). Once there, I promptly proceeded to get lost trying to find the owl statue in the station like the special and competent individual I am. I asked a group of three girls for directions, which was when I realised I didn't actually know the Japanese word for owl, oh my god, FAIL, SELF, but I eventually managed to make myself understood by a combination of roundabout explanation and interpretive dance. (I now know the word is "fukuro", hence having an owl statue at "Ikebukuro" -> *facepalm* GO ME.) They were really nice and helpful and went with me to help me find where I was going— we actually went the wrong way at first "to a tiny little owl statue on one of the pillars) and the other girls were like, what, that's TINY, that can't be right! to the girl who'd led us that way, and then they asked at one of the help desks for me.

Eventually this led to arrival at the right owl statue, where I met cienna and ontogenesis. :D Thus began our trip around the doujin shops of Ikebukuro, and my realisation that Ikebukuro is where Tokyo keeps ALL its gay porn. No, seriously. I was kind of wondering where all the yaoi manga was, but the answer? IKEBUKURO. You can barely move without tripping over the stuff. XD

First shop we went to, I bought the first Saiunkoku novel because... it was there, and I'm sure it's other places too but not quite so easy to find, and I've been meaning to get the novels for a while but the postage was too much back in Australia. I also got the catalogue for day 2 of Super Comic City, which is this Sunday. I kind of wanted to go to day 1, which is when they have all the game doujins, but that catalogue was sold out.

The second place we went to was a basement doujin shop which had heaps of stuff, but the organisation was a little confusing. That was where I got the Holic and Hikago doujins from, and I also got the X Infinity artbook. <3 They had the Newtype with Fuuma and Kamui on the cover too, but it cost over 5000 yen, so I was like... no, I think I shall refrain.

The place after that was really big and had two floors, with all the older stuff on the top floor. I loitered around on the ground floor for a bit, particularly in the Tales of the Abyss section (where I got 2 GuyxLuke and 1 JadexDist) but also taking a curious glance at the FMA and Reborn sections. "I haven't even read Reborn. *glares at Becky*)

Once I got upstairs, I sort of loitered some more around the Final Fantasy/Tales section— didn't find any FFIV doujin, and there didn't seem to be any more Jade x Dist that I could find (seriously, what is up with all the Jade x Guy?), but ontogenesis located an X doujin— unusual because of how old the fandom is— so I got that. <3

Oh, by the way, I didn't mention, but it started to rain when I was on the way to Shinjuku. Thankfully I'd checked the weather forecast before I left so I'd taken my umbrella, but uuuugh. ~_~ I was reminded because it had been raining on and off while we were in Ikebukuro, and it wasn't raining when we went from the third doujin shop to Animate— where I wasn't intending to buy anything, but the cover of this month's BeBoy had Kurashina-sensei on the front! And I've been waiting for MONTHS for more of that! And... okay, fine, I just have no willpower, whatever, but I got the May BeBoy. *coughs*

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, it wasn't raining on the way to Animate, but it started again on the way from Animate to Sunshine 60.

Which reminds me— I totally ate Mexican food in the building Seishirou blew up! :D? (ontogenesis suggested, after they took forever to bring the coffee, that perhaps it was because he'd eaten there and gotten peeved by the lack of service. XD)

I still haven't properly explored Sunshine 60— it was late so we didn't go to the aquarium and it was cloudy so we didn't go to the observatory deck, but! Another day! I did take a photo of Sunshine 60 from the outside, though, because jesus, I felt dwarfed. It's over 60 floors "hence the name) and is ENORMOUS. Do you reckon CLAMP chose the kekkai based on height? I mean, between Sunshine 60, Tokyo Town and the Government Metropolitan Office... >>

But like I was saying. Sunshine 60:



Anyway, yes. It was fun. And I saw an even BETTER looking parfait place which had parfaits based on the zodiac, and I am determined that one day I will go back there and eat Leo because it was ridiculously chocolaty and I WANTS IT, PRECIOUSSSS.

But it was late, like I said, so we walked back to the station and said our goodbyes, and I caught the train back to Shinjuku— where I once again left the station instead of transferring straight away, this time to go to the 24h international bank (the international ATM at Ikebukuro station was closed. yes, ATMs close here.)— and then home. Where I stayed up far later than I should have perusing my goodies and telling Becky about VS ARASHI.

But. Anyway. intergal and I were considering going into Fuchuu on Sunday, but I was beginning to feel the stirrings of zombie death plague— I had been feeling a little like I was coming down with something since earlier that week after I'd had a bath and the air was cool; it probably wasn't helped by getting up early or going out in the cold rainy weather, and it DEFINITELY wasn't helped by staying up late. So instead I slept in and stayed indoors, finishing FFIII and lounging around a lot, then I did several hours of kanji until I was sick of it and wanted it to die, watched Avatar on youtube, remembered that I hadn't written out a points for a draft speech for Japanese yet, cursed, did so, and tried to go to sleep.

It's hard to know where Sunday ends and Monday begins for the purpose of this, because "tried" is the operative word in that sentence: I got absolutely no sleep whatsoever. I gave up even trying at around 7.30 am, but I was still determined to go to class... and I made it through 2nd and 3rd period, but the break before my class in 5th period ended me. I took a nap and didn't wake up until 10 minutes after the class had already started, and it would have just been disruptive to go to class by then, not to mention I still felt like I was dying from plague. I guess 2/3 ain't bad, especially when I felt like my throat was an exploding ball of pain, but I still feel bad about missing the class on religions. intergal, can I copy your notes? ;___;

I felt better briefly at lunch, because the kariage soba made my throat stop hurting and I could actually talk and it was like a ~miracle~ (a useful one, since not only was I sitting with my friends, I ran into Kaori and chatted to her about several things including going out to get my health insurance on Wednesday— although we might not have time to do that now, since it looks like we'll be going to get my visa first \o/), but that didn't last long. Although I still felt better in the evening than I did during my classes, and I managed to haul myself off to the cafeteria to eat early dinner at 6.30pm. I was motivated by the desire to not have to cook for myself, I'll admit. XD; I hung out a bit with intergal, Debbie and intergal's tutor Yuka for a while, but I figured in the interests of not getting sicker I should skulk back to my lair and curl up in bed, which I did (on the way there, I note quickly, I discovered a memo from the immigration bureau in my mail, so it seems my visa is ready), and then I watched episode probably 4 of Soul Eater and started reading the manga on Becky's recommendation. It's cute, if occasionally a bit violent and panty-flash-tastic; I totally recommend it too.

I also watched Shukudai-kun—

(immediately preceding this,

Me: Becky, there's this guy who looks exactly like Sho on the news.
Becky: Is it NEWS ZERO?
Me: ... you mean it actually IS Sho?)

— which was again hilarious, and you might get a recap later if I can be bothered. For now I will just refer vaguely to the fact that Nino was wearing pastel pink jeans and Sho was wearing a bright pink t-shirt, and leave you all with that mental image. XD

After that I crashed and got actual sleep, which is why I feel less like zombie death today.

I kind of wanted to go to a lunch party at work, but I didn't wake up until it was already starting, and I felt better but still germy and not really like dragging my carcass outside, so I left a message on Mochizuki-sensei's phone apologising. Oh, today's a public holiday, by the way; I don't remember if I mentioned that, but it's Green Day, so instead of classes I've been lounging around in bed. I should do my laundry and some shopping— more tissues, milk, coke, tomato paste, fruit, etc etc, not to mention I haven't bought bedding yet and April will VERY SOON be over, although the bedding place is almost certainly not open today... but I haven't quite mustered the energy to get dressed and go out yet.

Guh.

I should add, though, that even though I'm whinging a lot and I really felt pretty bad yesterday, I am still able to take an objective step backwards and remind myself that really, I've been a LOT sicker and it's not that bad in the grand scheme of things. I was a lot sicker four weeks ago, even, when I had to delay my flight. So, you know. C'est la vie?

(but seriously, if Santa wants to give me an immune system for next Christmas, I will TOTALLY NOT COMPLAIN.)

Addendum: I totally did my laundry. \o/! But I haven't done any grocery shopping, and I'm out of tissues. >> Crap.

On a totally random sidenote, does anyone here in Japan want to go see Wicked! with me? Guys? Bueller?

Comments

[sakanagi.livejournal.com]

Ooh. Japan clearly needs to export its parfait shops to the rest of the world, for great justice.

CLAMP had totally based Hokuto and Subaru's relationship off it

That is so very, very cool. I'm also a tad disappointed it wasn't original, but then again, it's hard to find a story which is.

I totally ate Mexican food in the building Seishirou blew up! :D? ontogenesis suggested, after they took forever to bring the coffee, that perhaps it was because he'd eaten there and gotten peeved by the lack of service. XD)

XDDD!

And yes, April the 25th is ANZAC day in NZ too.

[tammaiya.livejournal.com]

Well, the story of Tokyo Babylon is still original-- it's just the concept of a male being spiritually protected by his sister is a traditional shinto thing, and considering how much CLAMP like incorporating Japanese traditions and mythology into their work, it's almost certain that the idea of a set of male/female twins where the girl, while less conventionally powerful, ultimately protects the boy (particularly given the spell she cast on Seishirou), was inspired by himehiko.

I thought so, it wouldn't make much sense otherwise. ^^

[beckerbell.livejournal.com]

but also taking a curious glance at the FMA and Reborn sections. "I haven't even read Reborn. *glares at Becky*)

I don't know why you try to resist me on these things, I just want you to be happy and to share with you. *beams tenderly*

And I continue to love these posts, they're such a great look at Japan and your experiences there. I'm sure they're time-consuming to keep writing up, but I'm glad you've been detailing so much--little things like the talk about the parfaits or the grocery shopping is something I rarely get to read about being in Japan, at least not in such a fun way. ♥

[tammaiya.livejournal.com]

Sigh. You are a terrible, terrible person. With, with TENTACLES! That rope me into every fandom ever! *eyes*

... haha gay camera ad icon. SEE, THE FACT I RECOGNISE IT JUST PROVES MY POINT!

Sometimes it's the little details that are the most fun, I think? And they're a little time-consuming, but I can work on them while I do other stuff on the computer mostly and I like to have this stuff written down, so, you know. ♥ I'm just glad people find them interesting enough to read even though they're so long.

[tammaiya.livejournal.com]

I know, I love bread. D:

Thanks!

[choffman.livejournal.com]

C'est la vie. ;3 I'm of the opinion that if you're going to use it, don't mangle it.

Also, you'll be hard pressed to find anything but white bread in Japan, though it does actually exist. Try going to the Seibu Ikebukuro (you can't miss it, it's in the station) and finding a bakery.

[tammaiya.livejournal.com]

XD; Thanks, I always mess that one up. *fixes* I should know better since I did French as a kid, but oh well.

Is it any good? I did find rye bread in the bakery section of the supermarket, but it was a bit cardboardy, and even all the white bread in the bakeries doesn't look that great.

[ontogenesis.livejournal.com]

There's wheat bread in my local grocery store. And have you tried the foreign food stores? There's one below the Kinokuniya in Shinjuku.

[chin-chin-kun.livejournal.com]

it's been a lot easier than I thought it would be to adjust to living overseas and away from home.

*raises hand* Happened to me too. When we first migrated in America, I thought I would be homesick very soon, but surprisingly I got used to living here in America pretty well.

[tammaiya.livejournal.com]

*curious* Where did you live before America?

[chin-chin-kun.livejournal.com]

I was born and raised in the Philippines. I was 15 when we migrated and it's been four years since.

[tammaiya.livejournal.com]

It's more than okay! I love comments, even if I'm a little slow responding to them. I'm glad my game blog actually helped someone out. ♥

And... yeah, I'm a total geeky fangirl and proud of the fact. XD Nice to meet you!

[tammaiya.livejournal.com]

Me too~ ♥ they are DELICIOUS.

Also, long time no see, you! I miss you! Are you not getting regular internet access? You should email me. D:

Oh, asking on my brother's behalf: how much does stuff close down in Tokyo around New Year?