Saturday, January 24, 2009

burp...!


Spotted outside a ramen joint near my uni. I find this amusing more because of the overall slogan than the actual spelling mistake.

Friday, January 23, 2009

OMG...OMG...SPAZZZZZ

So I knew that Coldplay was performing in Tokyo in Feb..but just found out that Death Cab for Cutie AND Jason Mraz are going to be in Tokyo next month tooooooo!!!!!!

oh mannnnnn...if i decide to indulge and go to all three concerts it's going to affect my trip to Thailand...have decided to leave on Feb 25th.

Coldplay- 9,000yen. Feb 11
Death Cab - 6,500yen. Feb 14
Jason Mraz - 6,800yen. Feb 23&24

Arrrrghhhhhh!!! omg, omg!!!!!!!!

(will make a decision once i have stopped spazzing out)

suggestions are welcome!

Sunday, January 18, 2009

View from my window...season2

...in Autumn.

the leaves changed to all sorts of colours at different rates. Still looking pretty nice!

Will wait for daylight and give the current view in Winter.../shudder. And no, that's not just from the cold!

The View from my Window...

...in Summer.

Unfortunately, this also came with NOISE from the crickets and cawcaws of the crows...if Autumn hadn't arrived I would have moved back home. :)
Looking out straight ahead from the fifth floor...


looking left...


...right


and finally...down!

the art of hair makery.



So one thing that amused me when I first got here were the signs, amongst many other places, outside Hair Salons.

I have since become quite desensitized to them but I found some pics I had taken in September.



Crank it up!

This pic was taken in my first week here when I was roaming around the neighborhood kaicoloing the place.

As I walked past I actually thought it was a garage but was confused when I didnt see like a workspace underneath the uplifted car...and no grease stains or anything.

So, as it turns out, that's actually a parking lot...and you crank up one car using this handle like thing and park the other one underneath it.

Now...I wonder what happens when the person on top wants to take his car away before the guy at the bottom gets back.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Awesome waffle!

So put myself under house(room) arrest this weekend because I have a test and several assignments due next week.

But couldn't take it anymore so got out of the dorm looking for a cheap and quick dinner, and settled on a sushi place in Sengawa which is a 10min bike ride away. (yes, i realised it WOULD be a real shame if i didn't eat sushi at least ONCE a week while in Japan!! and to have it as the cheap and quick dinner option is just...sigh!)

So anyway, its tradition to stop for dessert (usually in the form of ice-cream) after dinner at one of the convenience stores and since it's brrr cold i decided to look away from the cooler towards the shelf with pastries etc...was still making up my mind when Max found this AWESOME waffle..or chocoreto bergi (aka Belgium) wafuru as it reads.

I present to you: Petit a la mode


Now in case the text is not so clear this is what it says on the wrapper:

Because we make sweets which are made from selected material, the sweets are awesome. Let's have a break with our sweets.
Please choose your favorite sweets.


And the icing on the waffle so to speak was when i paid for the awesome sweet. The cashiers here have a habit of calling out how much money you have given them and today the guy called out...CHODO!!!

I actually sort of staggered out embarrassed and then realised...hang on, he was speaking in Japanese!

Choudo in Japanese means: just, right, exactly.

guess whose going to be giving shopkeepers exact change more often from now on?!!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Love this country, I do!!!

Lost: Wallet

When:
On a rainy and cold Friday afternoon on the way to my own birthday dinner.

Where: Not entirely sure >_< guesstimate is somewhere near bus station. Luckily was with two decent Japanese speakers at the time so we notified the security-like guy at the bus stand.

argh! there goes my identity aka Alien Registration Card, Health Insurance Card, bank cards etc etc. The thought of having to go through the entire process of replacing all those ID's didn't help the process of letting go.

Also said byebye to about a week and a half worth of transportation and food money. Argh!

Everyone kept saying "don't worry, its Japan, you'll get it back in no time.". Yeah right, that's always easier to believe when you're the one giving the advice and not getting it.

waited all weekend (and it was another long one at that!) but no calls from the Bus guys.

Tuesday

Checked at Koban (Police post) near bus stand and filed a lost item report. the only fun thing about that was getting to practice my very weak Japanese.

Checked again in the arvo...zilch.

After getting train ticket back to dorm, thought I'd give the station office a try...just in case.

And whaddya know! my wallet was handed in on the same day I lost it and was safely waiting for me at Tokyo station, 20mins away!!!!! I still couldn't believe it and thought my limited understanding of Japanese was confusing me. Until...

FOUND: Wallet.

Where: Tokyo Station "Lost and Found" Department...with every last cent intact. I could have reached across the counter and hugged the old guy at the desk.

I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!!!

Saturday, January 10, 2009

The makings of a coconut.

Happy Birthday to me (let's pretend I am posting this on the 8th!)



Got a coconut from Thunder. It's a running joke here because I, being a coconut, have turned out to be an expert on coconuts. I didn't think it was rocket science though to know the fact that coconut cream is extracted from the flesh and is NOT the pocket of water found inside the coconut. But I stand corrected.

Had an awesome birthday, spent the first half of the day on a Japanese class field trip. Gave mouth-to-mouth to a dummy (yay! i got some dummy action on my birthday!!) Got to put out a fake fire...with a real fire extinguisher...oh yeah!!

Cough cough...then crawled through some smoke filled corridors putting our lungs into a classmates hands who led us out...yay for her ability to read exit signs! After which I survived a simulated earthquake that was 6.0 on the Richter scale under a table with four other people from my class. wow...I'm getting dizzy...this isn't very fun anymore, make the room stop moving.

So yeah, have never been made so aware of my mortality on my birthday ever before hehe.

Got flowers from Neto!!...who needs a boyfriend when you have such awesome friends!! sigh, feels good to be loved...and half way to 50.

Quarter of a century...woohoo!!!

ps. still loving the care package from home!! Since I had gotten it early, I kept one item till the 7th at least to open (I couldn't wait any longer!!) Pure Fiji mango scent is yummy!!

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Chipper

"not all those that wander are lost"

That Tolkien guy knew what he was talking about...(although he may have been the only one who knew what he was talking about when he was speaking High Elvish) Anyway, here's to more wandering this year.

And to watching all the movies that I have wanted to..so far so good. Crossed City of Gods and Encounters at the End of the World off the list at 2 in the morning.

"the best description of hunger is a description of bread"
. yes.

Also, I hereby name my mac...Chipper, inspired by a sign sighted on the way to the station from Thunder's apartment, i shall take a pic in due course, it's on the way to school so will walk past that way many a times this year.

Also, I love pet stores, but I don't know about the lizard/snake section...I am also not an Insectarium person I have realised from yesterday's visit to the Zoo. Here's to more self-discoveries too!!

5th Wheel!

Happy New Year...love is in the air...greattt...it even sorta rhymes (/puke).

So the year started with some balloons (that were eco-friendly as i later found out...maybe to offset the damage caused by the huge bonfire in the temple grounds!!!) being released at a temple at the foot of the Tokyo Tower which also lit up to 2009 (counting backwards in Japanese after some beers and sochu was quite the challenge!) and after finally escaping the masses lined up at the temple we danced the new morning in.

Two of my closest mates at the dorm also found new interests...of the romantic kind...between the clock striking midnight and the morning of 2009. That feeling is contagious, to all except me ofcourse, so I managed to work out a plan to escape being the 5th wheel so early in the New Year and let one party go off to breakfast and then dodged the next party to take a dozey train ride home watching the sun rise over the horizon. Pwetty pwetty.

Spent some me time checking out the aminals at the zoo today. Why aminals...because animals sound too barbaric for those adorable punks I saw today. Call it my personal Engrish. Also, whoever said the birth rate in Tokyo is going down should visit a nearby park or Zoo...there were kites etc galore at the park near the dorm on New Years day...I even had a ball thrown at me, which the poor kid then had to apologize for. And then at the zoo it was more like kid-watching amongst aminals. But hearing little Japanese kids squeal out 'Konnichiwa Kuma-san' has to be one of the most adorable things one gets to hear!!! (Kuma being bear)

sigh. Here's to an awesome year!

あけましておめでとう!!!!