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.

karaoke and Kobe

So, gosh, I have so much to catch up on... I had a pretty cool weekend after a pretty lame week, but today (I wrote this on Sunday) I'm glad that I finally have some time to myself because... it's been a while.

This weekend, one of my host family's former host students Mary came to visit with her boyfriend, Taka. She's been doing JET for the past 3 years in Nagano. It was really great to hang out with another native speaker of English, and she brought a lot of upbeat energy to the house. We went out for karaoke (my host dad, Aika, Ryoto my younger host bro, Mary, Taka and I) and sang our hearts out. I hadn't been with my host family yet, even though I know they all really like to sing (and they're all very good, as well). Hiro, my host dad, was taught how to sing by (are you ready for this) his host dad's ex-wife in New York City, where he then had a job as a lounge singer for a short while. His favorite singer is Billy Joel. It was really a pleasure to hear him sing finally (he sang in Japanese, English, and Korean). I hear my host sister Aika singing to herself all the time, and she belted out some JPop, sometimes teaming up for a duet with Ryoto, who surprised me the most. He's 16 (almost 17 I suppose, he's pretty much the exact same age as my brother) and he sang soulful JPop ballads that will surely make any girl swoon. His English pronunciation was also excellent (his "major," I guess specialty? concentration? in high school is English, but I don't ever hear him speak it). I busted out my usual fare and kicked off with the Evangelion opening, since it's by far the nerdist song I know in Japanese. My host family likes to make fun of me for being a nerd (otaku), and I figured it doesn't get much nerdier than Eva (probably the most influential giant robot anime of the past 15 years). They had never heard me sing before and said nice things about my Japanese pronunciation. I fully stand by karaoke as a great means of improving your language skills, since you have to read fast, and also you can hear what you're supposed to sound like and mimic that to your best ability. It's pretty effective.

Sadly, I don't have any really cool PVs to share (this karaoke place, or maybe it was our song selection, wasn't so big on the official PVs).

The next day, Aika, Mary, Taka and I went to Kobe, which is a really cool city. It's not all that far from where we live (maybe an hour and a half all together, including the 20 minute walk from our house) and I would really like to spend more time there. It's very international, which is maybe the most interesting thing. We went to this cute district with lots of European-style houses that you can walk through (you have to pay to get in, though), which isn't that exciting if you've been to Europe or New England, but I can see how native Japanese people (or someone living abroad here) would get a kick out of that kind of architecture. We took a lot of great pictures, although unfortunately my camera battery was dying so I had to conserve.


Uroko House, so named because the exterior walls look like uroko (fish scales).



We ate all-you-can-eat Chinese food in China Town, which was welcome at the time because I was starving (it was about 3 PM by the time we finally ate), but towards the end I definitely started to feel a little sick, probably because I ate too much.

I took this from my cell phone since my camera battery was dying. This is Kobe Port Tower, I think it's called.


Pirate ship, I'm not sure why.

Our next stop was Merikan Park/Harborland, which is definitely another futuristic date spot. I think if there's a Ferris wheel, it automatically counts as a futuristic date spot. We took some purikura and rode the Ferris wheel and walked through the malls, which were really cute. I wish I weren't so broke right now, because I would really love to go shopping... I desperately want another pair of Japanese shoes, but they're pretty expensive and they also don't carry my size a lot of the time. I'm an LL in Japanese sizes (that's large large) despite being an average 8 in the US, and most places don't carry that size (or at least, whenever I ask they're like, no way). Harborland also had a disproportionate amount of gelato and boba (which is called "tapioca" in Japanese, you may know it as bubble tea), but I am definitely okay with that.

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

行こう、この世の果てまで

Today was extremely fulfilling. This week of school had me a little on edge, but a couple reminders and being able to sleep in allowed me to calm down. First, I just have to pass these classes as my grades don't transfer back (just the credit), so if I get an A or a B, it doesn't matter. (Although, I do have to get above a 3.0, and I do have my pride, after all.) But really, there is no reason for me to kill myself preparing for these classes when I know that I am capable enough to do what I need to get myself through and not completely stress out. That being said...

Tomorrow I have to give a speech in speaking class of around 3 minutes. I think I have to do this every week. Mine's about Drag Ball, which I'm not sure is an entirely appropriate topic, but I don't care, I'm from Oberlin. The topic is culture from your own country, lol. But so, I wrote it, I practiced it, and then I went out and played. And I'm going to practice it more tonight, but I'm not going to flip out about it, because I'm smart and goddammit, I'm worth it (that's an old SNL reference by the way, which maybe only my father will get...)

SO, today I went to karaoke with one of my speaking partners Ryoko. She's a big No Doubt fan, so naturally we sang a lot of songs from Tragic Kingdom, because that album is still good. I did my normal fare of the pillows, anime songs, and whatever English ones I could think of (notably, Snow by RHCP, and Reel Big Fish's cover of Take On Me, which was the only RBF song they had... hahaha). Their pillows selection was excellent (I did The Third Eye, この世の果てまで, and Tokyo Bambi). Either I've practiced more, or the speed of my reading comprehension really has improved since I last went with Andy and Kevin a few weeks ago in Sawtelle.

Afterwards, we took some requisite purikura. I was disappointed to discover that I can't get them on my phone because it doesn't have the Internet. But Ryoko sent me the one she had sent to her phone, here it is:

Then I headed on home, and was surprised to find that I was invited to go to the local sentou (public bath) with my host sister Aika and her friend who's staying the night. I had earlier declined their invitation since I was going out, but failed to understand that they were going later. So we went.

We rode these typical Japanese housewife bikes, which at first I had a tough time maneuvering because they're very different from my mountain bike-style bike that I ride around Oberlin on. But once I got the hang of it, it was much easier than my bike, and if it weren't for the crazy drivers on these streets that can barely squeeze a car down them, I would want to ride one of those bikes all the time (watch out, Andy!).

I'd like to take a moment to express my love for Japanese baths. They just do it right. They're super hot, and just feel awesome. There's a lot of etiquette that goes along with it, and in all the signs they have posted about what not to do, it's always a foreigner doin' it wrong. But I like the idea of a public bath on a social front. I think maybe, (maybe this is just gross stereotyping) that Americans are too self-conscious to jump at the idea of getting naked in front of their peers, and complete strangers of all ages. But you know, maybe that's not true. Anyway, I like sentou. Afterwards, Aika bought me some delicious cold milk coffee in a cute glass bottle and it tasted wonderful after that hot bath.

Then we came home and ate the fabulous dinner my host parents cooked (I'm going to do a post on food really soon) and we all talked about language. My host dad speaks very good English and so does Aika, although now she's studying Spanish. Her Spanish pronunciation is near perfect, as the sounds are almost exactly the same as Japanese, which I find fascinating. So we tried to encourage her friend to practice her English (she's enrolled in the same university of economics as my host bro Kazuma, unlike Aika who goes to Kansai Gaidai, thus is very good at English) and we spoke in Japanese, English and a little bit of Spanish. My father would be so proud.

The words of so many of my sempai echoed through my head today: studying abroad is not about studying, it's about experiencing as much of the culture as you can. And I think today I achieved that.