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!

Weekend July 13-14

Weekend
Ramen Museum
Saturday, we headed for Yokohama for some trip planning in August... We went into some random university's library and got kicked out... haha s'alright. At least we have our night bus tickets booked. After that, we headed for the Ramen museum since it wasn't too far... It was pretty cool, could've been bigger. Inside the ramen museum was a recreation of... old school japan I guess. It seemed like we were outside on the streets at night with many ramen shops around. We didn't try the ramen though, they were a bit expensive. One of our travelling buddies has an authentic ramen shop near his apartment so we decided to eat there instead. Before we went we thought we would check out a garden at some station.. but turns out it was closed.. :( The ramen was really salty as warned by my friend, we had many cups of cold and refreshing water afterwards. It was great actually! The soup was really rich and I don't think I've had such great ramen before! =D

The guys that made the awesome ramen

Odawara Castle
On Thursday, we went to see Odawara Castle. It wasn’t what we
expected, wasn’t as grand as we thought it would be… The trip was a
bit expensive too. Oh well. Haha. Got a few pictures and lounged
around on the bench things on the top floor of the castle for
approximately 1 hr to get our money’s worth. XD Again, I marveled at
all of the cute souvenirs you can purchase – special souvenir hello
kitty pens are available at every touristy spot you can think of in
Japan. They’re quite expensive though – averages to about 7 – 8 bucks
CAD per piece. We all got ourselves 100 yen ice cream instead. There
were a few shrines and other spots in the area but we didn’t really
feel like seeing them so we headed for Shibuya, Tokyo – a 76 min train
ride worth 1400yen. This castle certainly punched a hole in our
wallets.

Odawara Castle

Tokyo
Compared to the quiet, serene, foresty area of Odawara, Shibuya was
its complete opposite. Crowded, loud, buildings at every corner, sales
people yelling in your ears, advertisers, and flashing lights. It was
around 5pm when we arrived and everyone has just gotten off work. We
had no idea what to do so we walked around and window shopped mostly.
We visited Shibuya 109 a huge department store filled with clothes
shops for women and girls. It’s not uncommon to see sales employees
dressed extravagantly in the specialized type clothing of the shop
that they work in. It’s also not uncommon to see them yelling into
cones to amplify their voices to advertise their shop. I noticed that
this one sales girl was nearly losing her voice. But she still kept
going! This reminds me of the lunch lady at my cafeteria at work. She
would say the same phrase over and over again (arigatou gozaimashita
onegaiitashimasu!!!) with the same enthusiasm everyday at lunch,
pausing only to help another employee having trouble with returning
their plates… I admire her, to some extent. Haha…
We were all getting tired I guess, we didn’t have a normal lunch, just
made a quick stop at the convenience store in Odawara before heading
to Tokyo. After walking around a bit we had a quick dinner at …
Yoshinoya I think. It is one of the very common and popular Japanese
chain restaurants that sell relatively cheap meals. It’s typical for a
Japanese restaurant to be crowded and small. We sat the the counter
and the employees were in front of us quickly preparing meals as
customers come in every minute to get their dinner.
After dinner we felt unsatisfied at how little we accomplished that
day so we decided to head for some karaoke. Karaoke is everywhere in
Japan. It’s probably more common than Starbucks here. Groups with more
than 5 people have discount and it’s 300 yen per half hour, that’s
around 4 CAD. We stayed for about 1.5 hrs and left satisfied.. I
think. Although I think we could’ve stayed a bit longer. One of the
conclusions I made ages ago and just confirmed again last night is I
cannot sing unfortunately. It was fun nevertheless. Headed home on a
crowded train and fell into a deep sleep.

Hustle and bustle in the world's busiest intersection

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