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.

PVとプリクラ

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!!!!