Bowling, Drinking, Eating, YAY

October 25, 2010

 

Today me, Josephine, Alexandra, Jeongun, Margot, Ken, and Mael hung out with my good buddy Yusuke.

Yusuke was actually the first Handai friend Josephine and I made since we got here. He was the one who we randomly invited karaoke cause we thought he was also an exchange student XD

At first I was planning on inviting the usual guys to go bowling with us, but they all turned out to be busy. I called Yusuke, and he encouraged me to invite random people. orz so in a desperate act to find people I called Ken, who (at that point in time) was a guy I had been flirting with recently. Soo I invited him. Then we picked up Margot and Mael as we were leaving the international office, called Jeongon and Alexandra as we were walking to the station, and by now we had a pretty big group. :)

Through rock paper scissors are teams were divided as:

Team A: Josephine, Alexandra, Margot, and Ken

Team B: Yusuke, Mael, Jeongon, and Me

 Everyone was pretty bad at bowling, but we all got better by the third game :)

 Ken was really good at coaching his team mates. :D

 (most of) the girls!

 the boys!

 Mysteriously enough, all the bowling racks said "American" on them...

 Kabam!

 Yusuke took us to this bomb okonomiyaki/ume-shu restaurant.

 Eco-friendly, but more importantly... THAT WHALE IS FLYING.

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 Random Halloween pastries were being sold in some bakery. =)

 This was taken at a party that my Bioethics professor threw. Izakaya, Beer, Food, and... KARAOKE.

 Made a lot of friends. I'm so happy that I went to this party/that this party was even planned! It really got the international students mingling with other Japanese students.

And my wonderful Bioethics professor. He sang the last number and danced quite a bit. . . To the extent that my Kohai from UW was openly wanting him. It didn't exactly help that there's a rumor that he dated an OUSSEP girl from last year. orz

10/23-10/24 Hiroshima and Miyajima

It's hard to update my blog after so many events, but what can I do? Being in front of the computer for so long is bad anyway, right? :)


Couple weeks ago my exchange program took the gang to Hiroshima by bus. It was extremely crowded, but we somehow managed to fit all 56 students plus 3 teachers on this bus.

One of the many pictures taken on this trip of people sleeping on the bus.

In total it took about four or five hours to drive to Hiroshima. After that we arrived at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (広島平和記念量感) where suddenly my bioethics professor, Setoyama, appeared on the bus. Apparently the bus slowed down for like.. ten seconds so he could jump on and be our Hiroshima guide since he grew up in the area.

I didn't take very many pictures in the museum cause it somehow felt disrespectful, but there were a lot of people (especially from my program) taking pictures. But here's some from the Peace Park:

That evening we went to a youth hostel that was up on this gigantic hill and looked like it was in the middle of no where. I experienced my first public shower room with my flat mate Josephine and Alexandra. It was kind of weird at first and there were a bunch of middle school students in the shower before us. When we walked in I was half expecting it to be this way, but for Josephine and Alexandra it was utter shock. At some point I said, "screw it" and went into the shower by myself while the other two girls waited outside. After some time they sucked it up and joined me though. =) The plan after that was to join the boys in buying some booze, but they left without us to join the teachers and go explore the downtown area... So after having run down the hill in hopes of catching everyone, we had to make that same journey back up. Josephine and I shook it off and just bought some beers back at the youth hostel. It was the first time we drank together and she was amazed at how fast I get drunk. Ehee. Our group gradually got bigger and bigger as the Korean students were slowly coming back from the convenience store. We played a few drinking games and everyone was already pretty drunk by the time the other half of the class came back. We ended up being super noisy that night. Back in my room that I was sharing with like.. 8 other girls I think I was the last one to jump into bed, but was the first to wake up that morning. XD


 The next day we all went to Miyajima, bright and early!

 There were a lot of deer, not nearly as much as Nara though is what I heard.

 You must cleanse yourself before going into a shrine.

 I got another おみくじ (fortune telling). Got the same result as last time. General luck. =)

 This is actually at a temple near by Itsukushima Shrine. If you walk up the steps while brushing your hand past all these sutras, you get good luck of some sort.

Found this at the souvenir shop in Miyajima... My work back in Seattle is following me...

Time Warp to:

October 22, 2010

Went to the Jidai Matsuri in Kyoto. It wasn't as big as everyone thought it would be, but still pretty cool. People were dressed up in different dress from the periods of Japan, most notably was the Heian period.

We were kind of on a time crunch cause my buddies and I had class in the morning.. So right after class we got on the next train to Kyoto. XD But later that evening there was a welcome party of exchange students. So I guess it's kind of good that the festival wasn't super busy/entertaining.

Techonology!

Realized I didn't really update on my gadgets and what not.

I got a phone from softbank about... 3 weeks ago? Osaka U had this "contract party" specifically for softbank where the hard device is free but the model you get is first come, first serve. Choosing strictly on color, I ended up getting one of the good ones.

Some features that I can remember off the top of my head:

   - Widget function, much like the iPhone.
   - Touch screen/widget slide function
   - Japanese-English, English-Japanese dictionary
   - Reversible screen
   - 10 mp Camera


Also purchased a rice cooker! After a month and a half of being here I finally bought one, haha.

It's the same model as my buddy Heather (the one who lent me her bike for the year) only her's is a lime green. It was pretty cheap for a new rice cooker, around 4,900 yen. I've been looking at this one for a while at the Saty shopping center near my apartment for a while and when I finally bought it, it ended up being the last one on the shelf. <3

Sorry for the late update, but there's been so much that's happened recently! I'll probably have to do another few blog entries. For now though here are some photos of random things around my school:

 An elephant key chain someone left behind on campus. I put it here in case anyone wanted it, but it was still in that general area for a week. =/

Pikachu happily warning children of danger. There are some other signs that say "ちかん" and for the longest time I had no idea what the sign or the word meant (the sign had lots of magnifying glasses and some witch/devil thing) until I looked it up... Apparently it's a warning sign to beware of molesters...

Yakarazuka

I want to watch this.

Bento!

As I'm starting to get back into the flow of organized schedules and school work, I'm also working on my diet. I've actually been eating breakfast almost every day now. But I guess I'm using a lot more energy everyday that something in the morning before class has become quite the necessity. Today I made a small bento of rice, tamagoyaki, and pan-fried sausage. For tomorrow I prepared boiled sausage (to look like octopus!), kabocha (pumpkin), and rice. I hope by the end of my time here I'll be a bento master. People in my program have started telling me that I'll become a great house wife though. BLEH.

Kotatsu and Concerts~

Monday was a holiday so the housing administration escorted students living in the apartments to a few stores that are known for selling cheap furniture. c: Josephine and I bought a little kotatsu~ <3

 This is Andrej, he's a Swedish man in a Gundam.. that specializes in massage.

 The admini surprised us by treating us to lunch after our shopping spree! D:

Later in the day, Josephine and I made plans with John to go see his guitar teacher's band that happened to be touring in Japan that weekend. So, here are some pictures of Umeda!

 HEP 5 Ferris Wheel

 Booze and Boogie, that's all you need. =)

 Wat.

The band we were there for was called Jaded Heart, but the head lining band, Doro was also really good

 The venue.

 John's guitar teacher, Peter.

 At the end of the show all the bands that played got up on stage and did a big number for the crowd... plus a sex doll.

On the way back to the station we saw THAT.