Last weekend in Osaka

On Saturday, Andy and I met up with Ryoko, Koppun, Kana, and Maho for our last rendezvous in Namba. We went to karaoke at Jankara, which was half off because high schoolers were banned from entering due to swine flu. I'm not sure if this was because they didn't want kids going out, or because they didn't want them to spread the flu, or both, or what. The downside is that we were limited to 2 hours (you must understand that the Japanese go to karaoke for absurdly long amounts of time, especially if your group is on the bigger side). So we went in, we sang and sang, and then when our 2 hours were up, what do you think we did? We went to a different Jankara, which you could see immediately upon exiting the Jankara we were in.

There was an hour wait however, so we took some purikura in the meantime.

It's kind of funny how the brightness/contrast in purikura does not deal well with white people's skin. Either you look really washed out or really tan, or in the case of this one, really red.

The video of the day once again came from Maho, and it is this one.

It's great going to karaoke with Japanese kids, because they pick new songs which have the music videos to go along with them.

After we had finally gotten our fill of singing (or did we?), we went to this Mexican restaurant that Andy had found in an English-language Osaka-area magazine. We had been dying to go to this place, because the photos and the review indicated that it would be incredible. And BOY, was it ever! It was super authentic, which surprised me a little bit, and absolutely delicious. We had tacos, a quesadilla, nachos, enchiladas, and some kind of egg and chorizo dish. It was so freaking good. We had really good times. My Japanese friends described me and Andy as ぺらぺら fluent, and that always feels great. We discussed kanji. I decided on the kanji for my entire name. My first name I knew from some language table at Oberlin where some people picked some out for me. They are...

詩絵奈

The first (shi) means poetry, the second (e) drawing, and the last (na) is in girl's names a lot, and also places like Nara. It's pretty cute.

薔薇

My middle name is Rose, so I can go for a direct translation. "Rose" in Japanese is bara and you don't see it in kanji very often because it's really complicated. Japanese don't have middle names though.

水私

And my last name, which in Spanish means "water" and "I," I picked the kanji for "water" and "I." Ahaha.

Anyway. It was really wonderful, and I will miss them. Koppun is studying abroad in America starting in this summer, so hopefully we can rendezvous at some point. The others have another year to go before they'll go abroad, but I have high hopes.

The next day, Andy and I went to Universal Studios Japan, which was pretty cool. The best ride was the roller coaster, entitled Hollywood Dreams: The Ride, which is pretty funny considering I'm from Hollywood, and the Universal Studios in Hollywood doesn't have this ride. But it was a great coaster. We also got to go on Back to the Future, which doesn't exist in America anymore, and I have to say it wasn't as good in Japanese. But still nostalgic. Jaws was terrifying, Jurassic Park was still cool, and the Spider-man ride was pretty sweet although it kind of gave me a headache. It was half ride half 3D movie... ask me about it sometime.

The weirdest thing though, is that USJ is really trying to be Tokyo Disneyland. There was an uncanny amount of similarly themed attractions, like Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Arabian Nights (aka Aladdin), Cinderella.. I'm not kidding. That was pretty much all their electrical parade (sound familiar?) consisted of. And I guess licensing rights are different around the world, since USJ also had Peanuts. And no Nickelodeon, which was sorely missed. They also had this 4D Sesame Street movie, which was pretty cute, very faithful and in simple enough Japanese for us to understand. We ate dinner at a casual Italian restaurant, which felt familiar, even if the pizza I ate was curry-sausage-and-potato flavored.

Universal Studios was never my favorite amusement park, and I wasn't really that keen on going until we ended up at Citywalk by chance that one time and I was looking at the roller coaster from the outside.

It was a really great last weekend. I don't believe that I'm really going home.

Adventures in Osaka

Andy and I had some crazy times in Osaka during Golden Week. It was interesting to suddenly turn into a tourist after living here since late January. But that did mean that I got to take Andy to my favorite spots, and discover some new ones.

On our most action-packed day, we went to check out the Osamu Tezuka Museum in Takarazuka (which I made a post about over here). Tezuka is the creator of Astro Boy, etc, aka one of the most influential manga-ka ever. The museum was really cute, and inspiring. It reminded me how when I was in 1st and 2nd grade, the thing I wanted the most in this world was to be a cartoonist.


That's Astro Boy's hand and footprints, btw. He's a small dude.

From Takarazuka, we went to Namba, which has the iconic neon sign Glico man view of Osaka.



We went to karaoke on a whim and had a grand ole time. Big Echo has a fabulous 飲み放題.

The next day, we had a picnic in 大阪城公園 Osaka Castle Park featuring food we bought at the supermarket and bakery by my station. Here I am with cheese.






Guess why I'm smiling.



One more for the road:

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.

休みの日！

So today was a holiday (National Foundation Day--I just looked it up) which means I went shopping with my host sister, Aika, in the trendy areas of Umeda and Namba. We had a lot of fun and bought a lot of cool things! We also took プリクラ of course. Now I'm going to show them all off! I also put a picture of my cell phone in a post a couple ones back.



It's winter sale time... やばい。


This was from this 300 yen store that sold jewelry that looks really fancy. I was entranced by the little crocheted balls.


Okay sorry this is MySpace-y, but showcased in this picture are the above necklace, this adorable heart-shaped tartan hair clip, and my wool dress I bought at Kyoto Station for 980 yen.

I also bought a pair of fancy tights that are a light blue/turquoise and do that fancy lace thing that I don't really know how to describe, but look super cool layered on top of solid tights. They were only 117 yen so I had to buy them.

プリクラ！ I swear I will never get tired of this.

Yeah we badass. The other ones are all really cute too, but I can't put them on the Internet until I have access to a scanner, which will probably be back at home.

Also, funny story: this afternoon, before Aika and I left, we were hanging around the kitchen and I hear her humming Aqua Timez' Velonica, which is the current Bleach opening. I slyly go, "Aqua Timez?" which resulted in a hilarious conversation between the two of us and Kazuma, who likes to make gentle fun of me for being a nerd since I know a lot of obscure references. (Pretty much everyone I meet is always going なぜ知ってる！ "Why do you know that!") I do a pretty good impression of the Aqua Timez lead singer, too.

Only two more days of classes and then it's the weekend! :D