My daily blogging has fall to the wayside, but I’m making the excuse that it isn’t the new year yet.

Two fantastic things happened today. The first is that Kevin and I signed the rental agreement to move into our new huge loft on Friday. The second is that after we were done, we walked out of the manager’s office to find the first real snow sticking on the ground. After we had a delicious dinner, we went out to have some fun. I took a few pictures.

I’m excited to move in to the new place. It’s going to be amazing, and we’re going to get kitties soon.

Sunday, Chloe and I took a trip over to Takeshiba and Odaiba. It takes about an hour from where we live, even when we hopped onto the special rapid.

As always, click to enlarge photo.

Sitting in Mitaka waiting for the special rapid to come. Our adventure was rainy.


Takashiba pier.


Takashiba pier.


I have no idea what this was, but it looks hella cool.


Rainbow Bridge from afar.


We took the train over to Odaiba Seaside Park. We found some public “art.”


More public art.


Despite the slight drizzle, people came to the beach to play volleyball.


Fish were jumping out of the water, thinking the rain was bugs.






For some reason, there was a small scale Statue of Liberty by the beach…


Awesome graffiti.


Things you should not do at the park! Such as:


Do not partake in dangerous activities, GOLF, skating, etc.


Ms. Liberty again.


There was this huge yacht party going on, which we later discovered was for a wedding.


Outside the “Captain Santa Museum” … we did not go in.


Creepy…


Mr. Sunny Man is one of Captain Santa’s favorite words.


Rainbow Bridge again.


The polar bears cry because YOU CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING.


IT’S A TRAP! DO A BARREL ROLL!


That kid is totally KAMEHAMEHA-ing the photographer. Chloe and I also got our picture with the creepy things called “Moncchichi” …


I have no idea what it is, but it points to the big ferris wheel.


The big ferris wheel! It cost 9 bucks. You do one complete rotation in 16 minutes.

The view from the top of the ferris wheel:









After the ferris wheel, Chloe and I did tons of purikura (I’ll post later) and went to Starbucks. Dude, TI CHI!! (inside joke) I WAS SO HAPPY!! Though, I asked for a shot of vanilla, and she didn’t seem to understand me. Regardless, it was a yummy happy time.


Ferris wheel lights up at dusk.


Rainbow bridge that is not Rainbowy. You have no idea how disappointed we were. Today, I found out why it wasn’t rainbow-y: The colored lights run off of solar power, and it was cloudy 80% of the day.


We went back to Seaside Mall to buy goldfish (the first place I saw goldfish!!) and eat some dinner, which was…


MONSTER BURGER!!


Bread chicken bread, bread ham bread, bread burger bread. Honestly, it wasn’t nearly as big as my friend talked it up to be. It didn’t even fill me up. But it was still delicious. The fries were REALLY good.


On the way back home… I can’t remember which station this was.. I think Kanda?

As soon as we got back to our town, there was a HUGEEEEEEEEEEEE thunderstorm going on. Pouring rain, lots of wind, TONS of lightning and thunder. It was thrilling, and made both of us SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY. We ran to the dollar store to pick up an umbrella for Chloe (she had left hers in Odaiba). We also bought a little plastic container to keep our goldfish in. We each bought two goldfish, and one died for each of us. Sad day, cuz it was the one we picked out too. Oh well.

Tomorrow we’re going to a pet store to find a better home for our fishies. It’s really nice to have a living thing in my room. Makes me miss my cute little fishies at home.

Sorry I haven’t written lately. I’ve been just lounging around mostly and have been too distracted to write.

Let’s see here…

Thursday we received our results for our placement test. Of course, ALL THE AMERICANS were placed into the lowest class - D class. We got our textbooks and was dismissed. Fun.

Friday, Chris, Asuka, another girl named Yuuka, and I went to see the Tokyo Tower. Here it is! Plus views from the observation deck.

In the bottom level of the observation deck, you could “look down!”

Stairs for GO UP! The second picture was taken at Roppangi Hills.

We walked around Roppangi for a little bit. The idea was to let time pass so we could see how awesome Tokyo is at night. Unfortunately, I had to go to a dorm party - which ended up being yummy and fun. Before I left for the party, we once again did PURIKURA!!

I made some new friends at the dorm welcome party, most of whom are also gaijin (foreigners). Several girls around me were Chinese, and another girl I made friends with is from Korea.

I won something at a bingo game (so did everyone in the dorm) that I have yet to redeem. I think it’s a sort of Febreeze-like thing. *shrug*

Saturday, I journeyed to Ikebukuro to see OLIVIA! She was having a mini-live at a place there, to promote some new game I think. She played 3 songs - one of which I knew, the other two are off her new single coming out TOMORROW (4/15). She has a fantastic singing voice, and she’s small and absolutely GORGEOUS in person.

Here’s a song she played that I really enjoy:

Sunday, I went to Kichijoji and bought a couple of bags. I spent the rest of the day lounging around.

Monday was the first day of class. We have three sensei (teachers). Monday was Oka-sensei. She’s this cute, tiny little lady that’s maybe in her late 40s. She refused to write any kanji on the board, which made us sad. But she was fun nonetheless.

Today we had Ozaki-sensei. She wrote on the board in kanji, and she taught us a few new works - some of the zodiac symbols, and other miscellaneous words. So far she’s my favorite.

Mostly what we’ve been doing in class is very much review, though I find myself highly intimidated because of my lack of speaking and listening skills. Seriously, it’s embarrassing to go through two years of Japanese and NOT have these VERY IMPORTANT skills. WTF.

And Dad, as for the boyfriend question, the answer is no. Kevin and I are going to stick with each other for a while.

P.S. I’ve been putting pictures HERE when I get some interesting ones. Maybe eventually one day I’ll put them up on FLICKR too.

For your viewing pleasure:

Also, pictures:

Sakura tree at my school.

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Early Friday morning, me, Chris, Cindy, and two other American girls went to the bank bright and early to set up our bank accounts. During the our first orientation, we were given a slip of paper fill out to open the bank account. Well, we did it wrong, and all of us had to write it again. Then, out of the four of us, two of us (myself included) managed to do it right, while the other two had to do the entire form all over, AGAIN. After several tries, we finally managed to submit our paperwork, but by time that was done, we had to rush out of there to make it to our placement test.

All the Bekka students were placed into a room. Before the instructors handed out the test, they said (in Japanese of course) if you don’t know ANY Japanese, just write your name on the paper and turn it in. Haha.

We were given the test, which was EXACTLY the same as the placement test we were forced to take back in November. I discovered I didn’t know anything more this time than I did last time. How sad.

After the written portion, we had to go upstairs to do an interview. The interview wasn’t so bad – we were shown some pictures and asked what they were. “What is this?” Asked in Japanese. “Describe it” (I’m guessing?). “Where is this?” “What is the date?” so on and so forth.

I stumbled through it, getting some right without ease, and struggling with others. I felt embarrassed, having taken 2 years of Japanese and not even being able to say the word “short” (as opposed to long).

After we were done, we took a little break before heading back to the bank. Evidently my name was too long for my check book, so I had to provide a nickname. Haha. Once that was done, we went over to Softbank to look at cellphones.

I picked out two phones I liked, and of course they both were the most expensive phones – one costing just over $900. NO JOKE. Feeling extremely turned off by how expensive the phones were, we told them we had to think about it, then promptly went over to Docomo.

None of their phones got even close to being $900. Hell, I picked out one of their most expensive phones, and it wasn’t nearly as much as the one I wanted at Softbank.

It took about 3 hours to get everything together, because Cindy had to translate things for us. But everything was done, we have two year contracts that we’re going to break at the end of the year (maybe). Our phones are 3G, which means they should work anywhere in the world. I just really hope that when it comes time to go back to America, I can get my phone unlocked and use another cell phone company.

My phone [Link for Stats in Japanese]:

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