so the saying says, an elephant never forgets

Yesterday was another fun day where I shirked my duties and went on an adventure to Namba with Ai and Yoshiko and their friends Mai and Asami. After the train ride into Osaka, we went to this お好み焼き okonomiyaki place that had tanuki out front. They sat us on the third floor (I don't think I will ever get over this very Japanese way of running businesses out of multiple floors, with a relatively low count of square feet [meters], but it is really cool. Limited real estate means you build UP!) and the waitress cooked our okonomiyaki for us on the table.

If you don't know what okonomiyaki is... well, people often compare it to pancakes or pizza, but I find that it is like neither of these except that it is round. The base is a batter made out of flour, eggs, cabbage, etc. and then there's other stuff in it (whatever you want, pretty much), commonly meat and green onions (I love green onions). Mine had beef in it. We had a good giggle over some of the items on the menu which actually proved to be pretty popular amongst our group, namely モチーズ (mochiizu) and ポチーズ (pochiizu) which I had to have explained to me. モチーズ is mochi and cheese, and ポチーズ is potato and cheese. So they put either mochi or potato on the bottom of the okonomiyaki. It was interesting. I guess it was good though, lol.

Then we took プリクラ because that's what you do when you're an adolescent girl in Japan and you're out with your friends. And it's awesome.

Godiva explanation to come.


For the record, I didn't write that... lol.


I think this one is really cute.


This is my cellphone wallpaper right now.

So after that, we went to Godiva, where we drank expensive chocolate drinks called chocolixir. I tried to explain what an elixir is and ended up being like, "You know, in Final Fantasy? When you get healed?" The names of the drinks were also hilarious, like Dark Chocolate Decadence, and I had to explain why the use of the word "decadence" is hysterical... I settled on, "so fancy that it's a waste" (もったいない).

We sat around talking about studying abroad, and they asked me if I'm homesick. I thought about it for a second and said no, since I've been away from home for so long now. I do miss Oberlin, though, quite a bit. Last semester, I was really ready to leave, but now of course, I miss it a lot. I had to leave LA and my family to appreciate them, and now I have to leave Oberlin and America to appreciate those. At least I have a president I'm proud of now.

This deserves a mention just because it's the subject line: I am really obsessed with the new Neko Case single, People Got A Lotta Nerve. You can download it somewhere for free legally, maybe I'll link it later. It's good though, listen to it.