Typhoon Roke

天気: Typhoon,　強い風,　たくさん雨
feeling: ちょっと怖い

今日遊びたいですが、台風ロケ来ます。ロケはとてもつよくて、こわいです。
雨も部屋に入っています。どうしようかな？
この朝じゅう一時頃起きて、パンを食べて、それから日本語をべんきょうしています。
明日も休みます、そうしていい天気がほしい。
来週の休みghibli museumに行きたい。
もう四ヶ月、日本語を改善しませんですから、毎日勉強しなければなりません。
十二月までに日本語を上手くなりたい。
カナダのともだちにあいたいよ！ひさしぶりです。

先週東京ゲームショに行きました。ゲームはちょっとわからないですが、とても楽しかったよ！
たくさんきれいなcosplayを見て、新しいカメラをかいますから、たくさん写真をとりました。

あまり女性をみませんが、たくさん男性いるよ！
これ、見て!見て!

Ikebukuro, supervisor's place, life. 1 month anniversary in Japan lol

Weather: humid and hot

Well, days are moving along. Really quickly. I don't know where the time goes. I'm wondering if I'm being productive at work... Everything's a blur @_@. After I get back from japanese lessons, work or some event after work, I'm pooped, make dinner, pig out, internet, shower, and that's it! Weekends I go out but they go by really quickly too. :( I've been here for a month now, wahoo, it's my 1 month anniversary with Japan commemorating our first meeting. :)


It's what happens when I leave my blog for a while, I forget what I want to say. It's probably not too interesting anyways. Ikebukuro. Not bad. It's called Sunshine city but unforutnately it was raining that day. Still okay. We went up Sunshine 60, a building that has 60 levels. I loved the elevator ride up to the top floor. It was like we were in some mini planetarium! moving at... 600m/s or something like that @_@ forgot. Walked around, did some sightseeing. We also went to Namjatown, an amusement part in a shopping center. It was amazing. I could spend the whole day there ( i think) There's a lot to see and do especially if you speak japanese, there's all these areas you can go to and solve some puzzle... Saw some people going around to stations and doing other various activities. Went into this haunted house for 600 yen. Not sure if it was worth it but it was a new experience anyhow. Different from the type of haunted houses you see in Fright night. You go around with this scary skull like thing, take pictures at stations and you walk through dark hallways... Things pop up at you.. Much less scarier than the ones at fright night actually. XD There was also this area for desserts and another area with GYOZA tons and tons of gyoza everywhere. Apparently that's where all the top gyoza chefs make their gyoza. haha pretty neat. Both Namjatown and Sunshine 60 is a good place for couples to hang out ;). We went back to sunshine 60 at night to see the night view and there were soo many couples. We even spotted a couple making out on one of the couches with heart pillows... Moving on..
At night we were hungry, the guys wanted to check out an izakaya, found one we wanted to go, waited 40 min but they didn't give us a table (while the other people did, was it because our group was big? but stilll!) We left pissed and found a nice okonmiyaki place nearby. The waitress was kind and we had free vanilla icecream :D.

On sunday I was invited to my supervisor's place. His wife made us some good food and I learned how to play a popular game called Hanafuda. My supervisor remembered how much I loved matcha so he even got matcha warabi for us all to eat. How kind. Too kind. How can I repay him :( Oh good thing i bought that ice wine from the liquor store downtown before I arrived. They really liked the ice wine. The bottle was wayy too small though. There were 6 of us and all of us only had like... two gulps of it. eh.

The end. I feel exhausted. I didn't have a good sleep last night, couldn't fall asleep and slept around 2 ish... woke up at 5:30am thinking it was 5:30PM.. I was like "omg f** I missed a whole days of work" I think this is a symptom of post traumatic stress disorder from sleeping in and being 2 hrs late for work two weeks ago...

I was going to add photos but blogspot wont let me. Oh well. I guess I'll have to live with a chunk of text.

Kyoto, Harajuku, Kamakura

お久しぶりです！！！！
It's been a while! I've been busy exploring Japan... After work I'm normally tired or it's already really late. I stay after work sometimes to play a "valleyball" and on Tuesdays I go for Japanese lessons from 6 - 7:30pm. Sooo I get back at 8, eat, shower and it's already time to sleeepp!! (and some facebook.. haha)

Japanese lessons - they're great, wish there was maybe at least 2 classes a week but oh well. The sensei's really nice, and it's good conversational practice. There's about 5 or less people the last two times I went... It varies. sometimes people don't come. But yeahh I didn't do my homework last week but borrowed my friend's which had the answers XD so I just answered questions that day with his answers lol. But no more! because I bought the textbook which was 2600 freaking yen. agh. This book better be helpful.. and I better read it and make good use of it =_=. I just got my reimbursement money though. So I took out 100 bucks and went to the grocery store and bought myself some treats!!!!! wahahha! I wanted to buy everything but I restricted myself. So that's where all my money goes!! Anyway I have decided to blog about what matcha things I find and buy. :D Because I love matcha! all things matcha!!!! I'll see if I get tired of it after 7 months..

Also, I don't know why I'm so bad with directions... why am I so directionally challenged?  I got lost going to my japanese class yesterday too... Made a wrong turn, but found it in the end. At least it didnt take me an hour to find this time. Yeah... And when I was coming back from Kyoto, I had to bus back alone from shinyokohama station... I had trouble understanding the station attendant... and he sounded annoyed cus I didn't understand what he was saying... so I ended up asking this old guy and he brought me to a station that I knew (he was going to the same station). :) so Daijoubu!!!! I really need to get used to it though, one of these days I'm going to go shopping alone, far away from my own station.. and I better know how to get back. *sigh*

Kyoto:
So I went there for an Open House, where I walk around and talk with researchers about their research. Haha. You know, one of those poster sessions. The topics were pretty interesting, and I knew what some of them were actually talking about because I learned them in school! 8D yey. and some of that psychology material came up too. Yeahhh, only catch about this trip was I have to make a presentation about it tomorrow. Anyway, as you may or may not know, Kyoto is THE place for matcha things!!! I wasn't there for long but my supervisor fufilled my wish of having matcha icecream there. We went to this well known restaurant/cafe and had a nice meal with matcha chocolate, matcha ice cream, and matcha jelly. It was deeelicous! Also it was my first time riding the shinkansen so it was pretty exciting for me. It felt like I was on the plane! Too bad I didn't get a window seat... Also Kyoto is the place to see Maiko and maybe Geisha :D There's this street my supervisor brought me to and told me that if we're lucky we might see Maiko-san. haha.. We didn't but what I did see were lots of photographers. Im pretty sure they were searching for Maiko-san too!! But the street was kinda old fashioned and nice. I took a video but it didn't turn out as nice as I wanted it to be.. Also, my supervisor really wanted to eat at a restaurant by the river side.. so we did!! There were two types of set meals.. One was 60 CAD, the other set was >30 CAD. I of course got the latter and my supervisor the former.. He was one happy kid =/ haha. It was a nice experience. Most of the food was fish related and pretty delicious.



omiyage
Love omiyage! In Japan, they have a tradition of giving coworkers etc, a gift from somewhere if they went some place far... (I think). Yeah, so for example, my supervisor, another coworker and I went to Kyoto so we pitched in to get omiyage for the rest of our team. Omiyage is most often food items. We brought back (more like my other coworker..) green tea pocky and matcha flavoured dango!!! Can't wait to go back in August.. The manager of our group, I don't know where he went but he gave each of us a longgggggggg shinkansen chocolate cookies thingies.. ahhh so good. It's sooo cute too.




Harajuku, Kamakura
Sooo Saturday! Went to tokyo again - this time Harajuku, fashion district! There were sooo many clothing storesss I wanted to shop soo bad but I didn't get my money yet and all of us were pretty close to being broke haha... So just went window shopping... In the morning wholy crap.. It was raining cats and dogs!!!!!!! I was using an umbrella but it's useless!!! It's so windy the rain rains sideways anyways! why not just run outside without anything! I was soaked... but dried up quickly surprisingly.. Maybe because it was humid.. Oh that day we also went to see the imperial palace.. It actually wasn't that cool. But next time we'll actually go in. Didnt go on cus there was a fee and one of us had to leave... Yeahh.

                          Kamakura - Daibutsu!
Ohhh and one of my friend knew a Japanese friend who knew another friend who was performing at some place in tokyo.. so we went. It was pretty awesome. 500 yen for a drink and entrance because we knew someone.. otherwise it's 3500 yen. At first I thought it was weird.. the woman was singing about fish and meat.. it was pretty hilarious... Then after her, there was this huggee group of people who came up to the stage and sang various ENGLISH songs, such as Where's the Love. I filmed a few of them.. not sure if I should post, dont even have a video editor.. =/ heh.

Kamakura, was great! There's so much to see... temples everywhere and the great Daibutsu!! I got to wash my money.. apparently if you wash your money there, it doubles... pretty neat experience. Also there was a lot of holy water hand washing haha.. WE're probably going to go again.. not enough time in one day to see everything...

Harajuku!

Mini-concert

Matcha cookies I bought today, they're pretty goooodd

Other junk food I bought from the supermarket in celebration of my salary and reimbursement money

Caramel corn - vanilla flavoured, RAMUNE drink 88 yen!, coffee jelly 98 yen!

Tonight's dinner, broccoli, other veggies, udon, canned eel(?).
I found worms in my broccoli, I was grossed out... but of course I only had the ones without the worms!

Yummy, coffee jelly. Same price and packaging as the pudding I had the first week. Both are good, depends on my mood