Tokyo!

First off let me say that I am tired as all get out. This was a long but fun weekend, and I have a feeling that this following week will be just as full and scattered with auditions, Thanksgiving, and mid-year seminars all falling in line. I also need to finally get that progress report of things I’m doing outside of work posted. I’ve been making slow progress as of late, but that’s a mixture of laziness, fatigue and plain no time.

Friday November 20th
After work (Koshino Jr. High) and nearly dieing from carbon dioxide poisoning and fumes, I went to Kelli’s birthday dinner at Satoshi’s in Toyama city. I had heard a lot about this Indian restaurant from my other friends so I was excited this was the place she decided to hold her party. Funny enough I was the first to arrive at the restaurant followed soon after by Debbie and Rupa. Being that it was rather cold waiting outside for the rest of the party AND the birthday girl we decided to wait inside for others to come. It wasn’t too long after that more people came and finally the birthday girl and her boy Matt. The group was around twenty people, and it took a seeming long time to get the food. Perhaps it was simply because I was hungry and wanted to eat, or that we were indeed a large party and were not the only customers the staff had to wait on. I had Tandori chicken and two plates of Nan. Nan is soo flippin tasty.. *has small flashback memory of that soft butter goodness* ahem! >.> ;;; There were a lot of people there I don’t get to see on a normal basis so it was good to catch up with them. It’s also during these times where I talk to some of my beautiful and retardedly talented peers that even though measured by some I have done a lot with my life; I have so much room for more. I need to put in the working effort for the ~awesome~ I want to be. So far I’ve managed to obtain most that I have with relative ease, but not all. Needless to say I don’t like to NOT be capable of something, and I’m already a C+ / B- student at many things, but I’m not an A student in much if anything at all. Need to change that. I’d like to be a master at a few things by the time I hit thirty however cocky that may seem. AND I DIGRESS since when has this been a blog about my = feelings = ? XD
It wasn’t to long that everyone was finished eating and floating around the table mingling with each other. Several of us it seems will try out for the talent show. I believe I have found the song I will sing, but the monologue is a different story. Any suggestions? I need one by this coming Saturday (28th). Around 10 something everyone gathered their things and began the slow walk to the cashier to pay their tabs and leave. It was funny because we were the last group to leave the restaurant, and had the owners not looked like they wanted to kill us for still being there I’m sure we all would have stayed there until we had to take our respective trains/cars/bikes home.

Saturday November 21st
Soooo After staying up too late the night before doing a little bit of nothing I woke up and gathered my things to head to the train station to catch the Shinkansen to Tokyo. I met Yasmin on the train and we headed off to Tokyo. We were both fairly tired, and after a short time of talking and a transfer we slept the trip over and arrived in Tokyo around 2pm. After that we hopped on the train to the Tokyo Disney Resort area where the new Cirque theater was built. ( Also a big shout to Yasmin for being the navigator of trip. I would have made it somehow on my own but she made things go rather smooth. I suppose that’s what studying Japanese as a major in college will do for you.) We still had a few hours before the show so we walked around the area and found a restaurant called Kua’aina. A Hawaiian burger joint in the food court area around the resort. Now… all I have to say is I nearly cried at this meal. It was large and tasty and defiantly a slice of what a hardy American burger meal would be like. That and I had real bacon! The Japanese aren’t up on the bacon thing…to them bacon is barley cooked Canadian ham. If there is no crispy crunch when you bite into it, it ain’t bacon damnit!
Once this meal was over we took a look at the Tokyo Disney store. Needless to say all the Christmas decorations were up (much like the entire area) and there were quite a large number of people in there. I spotted a display of Disney Princess mannequins and they were scary as all hell. It was at this moment I figure then was as good a time as any to exit the Disney Store and head towards the theater. A couple dozen pictures later tickets were retrieved and we were seated in the theater. The theater is truly a piece of art. It was so wonderfully and intricately made. Everything between the lighting, the floor design, the yards and yards of glowing royal blue fabric that draped over the stage EVERYTHING! The show was breath taking and I truly didn’t want it to end. The basic story was about “Zed, the central larger-than-life character represents all of humanity in all its guises, from wisdom to folly, from discovery to adventure. Zed grows as he discovers the world on his journey of initiation. Through this undertaking, the people of the sky and the people of the earth are trying to connect with each other; through Zed, they come together.
It was truly a wonderful show and I urge those who have never seen a Cirque Du Soleil show to go see one in the future. I have even decided that I would make an effort to see one of their touring shows they are holding here in Japan early next year. Once the show was over we headed to our hostel, checked in, put away some of our luggage/belongings then went back out to the Shinjuku area for a quick dinner. There we went to this pasta/ramen place. It was basically a restaurant that served Ramen but in Italian tomato based sauces. I even had gyoza filled with cheese instead of vegetables or pork. Once dinner was over we returned to our hostel and rested till the next day.

Sunday November 22nd

Waking up with a considerable amount of sleep we dressed and headed for Ikebukuro and the sunshine city mall. We were to meet Yasmine’s friend there. Today was the look at anime merch and manga/doujinchi day. After grabbing lunch at this Chinese restaurant inside the mall the three of us hit the street directly across from the mall. It was a block full of stores that carried anime related items though from what I saw the majority of the things sold in each store were manga of some kind. The one/two downfalls of this reality is no matter how much I might want to read something I am not proficient in Japanese to read any of the manga there. This aspect kinda sucks considering that the other two girls with me are college grads in Japanese and can read almost everything. Along with that they hold a slight unhealthy doujinchi obsession. XD I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to be so into something. I admit I do really like things but it stops there for the most part. Moving on through the stores I saw some anime merch that was pretty cool. Kuroshitsuji things and Fullmetal Alchemist things were appealing but throughout the entire time we were shopping I didn’t buy anything. Half of it was I just didn’t really want it or the increasing headache. Looking though shelves and shelves of manga that I can’t read though trying to on top of being part of conversations I could not participate in because of my lack of knowledge on all things doujinchi I formed a quite a headache. No worries though, this didn’t stop my fun. I just trucked along grabbed some Starbucks when it was all over and the three of us waited at the station to meet my friend. Mika whom I met in college moved back to Japan a few years ago and since I was near where she lives now we made plans for her to come out and see me. It was great seeing her and she truly is as beautiful as she has ever been. Three years is a long time not to see someone and I was very happy to see her. Once she joined our little group it was off to two hours of Karaoke. Both Yasmine’s friend and mine were both impressed with Yasmine and I’s singing ability. I especially liked our duet to 525,600 minutes from RENT. I played the guy part and that was fun! When our two hours were up Yasmine’s friend had to leave and now that it was three of us we went to dinner. It was a rather long wait for a mediocre place but we ate and talked amongst ourselves. Then Mika had to leave. I promised I’d see her again in the near future and we parted ways. With that the two of us lingered a bit and then went back to the hostel. After dropping off our stuff we relaxed in the common room. Then a group of gaijins came up and made a large group on the other side of the room, and eventually one of them invited us over to join the group. It was amusing watching them acting but it wasn’t long that Yasmine headed off for bed. I decided to stay up and hang with this large group. They even invited me along to go with a few of them to Ruppongi (which is known as the club district) to hang out and go dancing. When we got there we basically walked up the strip. The clubs were all owned by Africans which no offense to my own roots was kinda weird. However we went in and out of clubs staying long enough to dance a few songs in the first one, and me to snag one of the waiters (pretty cute) and dance with him. We left after an hour or so and had no luck with a good bar until around 3am in the morning. We settled here and danced. It was overall pretty fun though the group had a few members which under the influence of liquor were far less cool then when they were sober. The crew I went with were from all over the place; Paolo (NY), Drew(WI), two girls (Australia and Ohio), Cav (VA) and Chris( CN), and were on a pretty sweet program. 11 countries in 3 months is a good deal though it did pull 30k to do it. After all was said and done, I returned back to the hostel around 5:30 am and decided that some sleep was better than no sleep, and passed out for a 3 hour nap.

Monday November 23rd
So I woke up and took a shower. Today was the day to hit up Harajuku, and meet up with Valerie and her friend to try this café called Café Edelstein. Now apparently everyone had been here several times before and thought this was a good place to take me. The concept behind Café Edelstein is a prestigious all boy school off on a lush hilltop whose opened there halls for fellow sister school students, potential students, philanthropists and for those interested in entering their school for a delicious meal. In short they are all in school boy uniform (Specially made for their school) and a student meets you at the door. Welcomes you in (and some can even speak some English) and then set you at a table and wait on you. You can talk to them and they have whole back stories and lives under this guise of Café Edelstein. If I could speak good Japanese I would have asked many questions, especially to the 2nensei who met us at the door. He was ridiculously attractive. At the end of it they handed us two leather bound books. One was full with daily journal entries of all the members in the school. Some had specific doodles and such which made it easier to tell what entries belonged to which student. The other book was for us to record our time there in their records. It was an interesting experience and one I wouldn’t mind undertaking again. After this we left had a bite a Wendy’s (cause the portions are small at Café Edelstein and I only had cake anyway) and shopped around the area. We hit the famous street in Harajuku where all the shops are and looked around. I ended up not buying anything except for fancy fake lashes and food. I randomly ran into Bandou with the Georgia kids in tow. I talked with them for a few minutes longer and continued shopping until it was time to head to the station and head back home to Toyama.

P.S. Sorry this is soo backdated. Side note though; I did manage to eat Burger King in Tokyo! My first time in nearly four months and it was good!!