The day of my actual birthday was really wonderful. I woke up late/early (late because class started at 11 instead of 9, early because I woke up before my alarm) and opened the tiny package my family had sent me. It contained a singing card with robots on it that sang Domo Arigatou Mr. Roboto which made me simultaneously crack up and want to cry at the same time. I can't wait to see them all so very soon. I was also relieved because the rain had stopped, and they don't run roller coasters in the rain.
After my one class that day, I met up with Andy and we went to Hirakata Park, which is a local theme park only one train stop away from Kansai Gaidai. You can see it from the train, and it always looks closed because nobody is ever there, so I thought it might be worth checking out. There were indeed very few people there, and we went on the good rides twice. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I only took pictures of the Ferris wheel, because it is giant and rainbow.
I like to interpret "circus" as a direct object here.
That night, we went to Toriki for dinner, which is where all the cool kids from Kansai Gaidai go to drink but for some reason I had never been there. It is a yakitori chain where everything costs 280 yen. Ai, Asami, and Mai came, and also fellow Californian Andrew, and we ate a lot of food and drank a little bit. I had invited a ton of people who ended up not being able to come, but in the end it was fine, since it would have been difficult to manage a big group of people. Afterward we had ice cream at 31 (which is what the Japanese call Baskin-Robbins/31 Flavors, and I am afraid I will never be able to switch back--actually they call it saati-wan). Throughout the day, I received many lovely e-mail and Facebook greetings, and felt very lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life. And now I am 21, at long last! What a strange feeling that is.
Yesterday, I went with Ai and friends to the Sora Cafe in Hirakata for lunch. It was really cute. It's almost open-air (sora means sky), but not quite because Japan's weather isn't that nice. But they do a really nice job of incorporating the space with an outside feeling despite the fact that you're on the 6th floor. You get a set lunch with a kind of Japanese-Western fusion going on which comes with a ton of food and all the fruit juice and iced tea or coffee you can drink. They also have a 200 yen discount (about 1/3 off) on 2 desserts-of-the-day, so for all that food (and fruit juice!) it was really a pretty good deal. We had a good time talking about school and language and music. The Japanese students at Kansai Gaidai start classes in a week and a half, so they're all in a tizzy over the last traces of their spring break (which is like our summer break, so they're all about to become 2nd years after being off since the beginning of February). They're taking a trip to Korea beforehand though, so hopefully they won't get hit by that missle. Honestly, North Korea, what are you thinking?
I'm going to Takarazuka on Sunday (!!!) so look out for a post about that. And next weekend I'm going back to Hiroshima to meet up with Andy and his mom, who's joining him for part of his biking journey. Fun things!
P.S. Chris said it seems like all I talk about is food and Ferris wheels. This is probably true, isn't it?
Ugh, I am so tired!! I had fun tonight though. I've been slacking a little on my documentation of fun things that I'm doing... so I'll take this moment to catch up a little.
I've been to karaoke 2 more times, once with Ryoko and her friends Kana and Mahoko, and also a fellow exchange student (and Californian) Andrew (he's Ryoko's other Speaking Partner as well, by coincidence). Andrew and I had a pretty good time doing various ridiculous duets, including but not limited to Britney Spears' Toxic, My Heart Will Go On, and A Whole New World. It was definitely fun to have another native English speaker around for the ride.
Here's the プリクラ to prove it happened:
This one cracks me up, although some weird digital glitch happened and Ryoko's face got all distorted, so she stuck a flower over it (I think she did this from her cell phone? Crazy).
This was the PV of the night, care of Mahoko. I really enjoy the SNES motif and the multiple costume changes.
Hey, did you know YouTube lets you choose your video control bar when embedding videos now? I chose blue to match my blog!
And then today, I went out with my other Japanese crew (Ai and her friends Asami and Misato) and switched off English and Japanese every other song. I rocked Pat Benetar's Heartbreaker, which I have been searching for. I also got to do Sublime's Same in the End, which came as a great surprise to me because they only had 2 Sublime songs (the other being What I Got, I was looking for Santeria) and that one is not that well known. Asami won the best song choice though when she pulled out Queen's Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy. I was in the middle of singing Say It Ain't So when she queued it up, I stopped and went I LOVE THAT SONG!!! We were happy because no one ever knows that one, Japanese or American, and it's one of my personal favorites. I also got to do the pillows' Century Creepers which I had been wanting to try out. I can't hit the very lowest lines but it was otherwise a success. I closed with Life Is Like A Boat, because nobody knows who I really am.
I seem to have started a tradition of always doing the pillows' The Third Eye for my first song. I really like that song.
Have your プリクラ:
I think the effects they do on the eyes make me look kind of like an alien. Not to mention the skin color thing.
Prompt: karaoke, obviously. I gave it my all. And Misato drew us some nice microphones.
PV of the night was this one, from Misato. Possibly the most female-empowering PV I've ever seen? It's also really weird, but enjoyable! I picked pink this time! ALSO, I can't seem to find the official PV anywhere on the Internets, so this isn't the original, it's some random person singing, but the important part is the video. This girl sounds cute though.
A note on Japanese PVs: It is of note that Japanese music videos are not called music videos, they are called promotional videos, or PVs for short. To the native English speaker and liberal arts student that I am, this would suggest to me that these videos are not about making art surrounding other art, they are about promoting a product to be consumed. And certainly, not all Western music videos are intended as works of art, and certainly a cool music video helps you sell a song, but I'd like to preserve artists' integrity a little bit, wouldn't you?
Okay, and I want to leave you with one more PV, because I love this song (fans of Bleach will recognize it), and I had never seen this PV before and it's so cute. (See Andy, I told you this was a happy song.)
Ugh this girl is adorable. And look at her play that piano!
Okay, I think that's enough from me for tonight, I do have some homework I should be doing. ALSO THIS IS THE LAST WEEK OF CLASSES BEFORE SPRING BREAK YES!!!!
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.
