Ok, so when we last left our baka heroine, she was in an internet cafe in Shibuya... where she promptly managed to leave her USB stick before meeting up with ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alibash, so she runs to the Busiest Starbucks In The World, finds Krispy, and says "WE HAVE TO GO BACK TO THE INTERNET CAFE OMFG".
So they do, and the USB stick is still there. Yay.
Okay, so Krispy and I went to a place called "Sweets Paradise" for dinner. It is pretty much exactly what it sounds like -- I mean, there is REAL food too, a lot of pasta and some curry rice and occasionally some sandwiches and some EXTREMELY POPULAR BAKED POTATOES -- we know they are popular because a big bell rang and they made an announcement like "baked potatoes are out! daininki get them RIGHT NOW or be square!" or something to that effect. But the rest of the place is just a big buffet full of cakes, mousse, tiramisu, cheesecake, desserts, jello, fruits, and of course a big softserve ice cream bar. Yum. This place is 1480 yen for all-you-can-eat for 90 minutes normally, though since it was busy as hell yesterday it was only 70 minutes.
The funny part is, you'd expect a tabehodai cake place to be full of fat people... but not this place, it was full of your typical young trendy Shibuya Japanese skinny perfect-appearance girls, mostly. Gorging themselves on these huge cakes full of icing and cream and chocolate and making me wonder exactly who the hell this entire country has sold its soul to so the women look like this. (Although to be fair, I'm sure that it's just that most people spend like 40% of their day working, 20% of the day sleeping, 10% of the day drinking beer, 10% of the day standing on trains and walking/biking to/from stations, and then the other 20% of the day putting on makeup and doing their hair. And I don't just mean the women, though I'm actually astounded by some of the women's bathrooms I see in the newer malls here which are basically like 4 bathroom stalls and then like three rooms full of makeup tables.)
Anyway, the upshot is, it was really great to hang out with Krispy again. We talked about all sorts of crazy "boy am I a dumbass" kind of things and it's really nice to have old friends around to talk with like that.
Krispy had somewhere else to go at 8:30, so I headed home to Akabane. I actually did the "running into Daiso 5 minutes before they close" thing again, this time to get some boxes for my shelves, in my desperate attempt to organize my room better.
And then... well, I wanted to get some drinks and snacks to have when people would come over for playing Settlers of Catan. Only problem is, if I bought them at the bottom of the hill I'd have to lug them up to the top of the hill.
So despite having promised many friends I wasn't going to go around riding my bike onto big crowded unknown roads in the late nighttime anymore, I headed out to basically go ride westwards until I found a supermarket. I rode out past the big Olympics Sports training complex, and kept going until I hit Road 17 and Motohasunuma station, which is on the Toei Mita line and is actually NOT that far from here, I should time it but the bike ride was definitely less than 10 minutes. There are a very few select times where it would actually be more convenient for me to take that line -- particularly, the Tokyo Dome would be just one line, and so would Jimbocho. There might be some other times I'm forgetting.
I found a small grocery right by that subway stop, then just rode around for a long time instead of going in. There is ONE major advantage of doing this at night -- you can more easily spot what might be interesting things or stores off the main roads, because THEY HAVE LIGHTS. That's how I eventually found a 24-hour Yamasa grocery, so I went in there. They had an interesting selection of import foods but a pretty lousy selection of drinks, and some fairly terrible prices on some normal stuff but great prices on other things. I dunno. I get the feeling things might be slightly more expensive in Tokyo than they were in Saitama in general, sadly :(
Anyway, while riding my bike along random roads in a place I'd never been before in the night, I just felt very free and very happy, kind of like when I first got my bike and rode around Saitama looking for new and interesting things. This is one of the things I will most miss about my time in Japan, someday. I LOVE riding my bicycle around random places. LOVE it. I feel like I can't do this in America because of various things like hills, criminals, cars, distance, etc...
So, yeah. Came home, should have cleaned my room a lot more than I did, but instead I only worked on it a little and went to sleep a bit earlier than usual. Getting stuck under the kotatsu again is dangerous.
I woke up this morning and then cleaned as much as I could for an hour. Ended up shoving a bunch of things into boxes and into the closet. Hehe.
Met up with Hiroko, Haruyuki, and Tatsuya (ex-students of mine, we played Settlers of Catan in one of our classes for a few weeks in a row last winter) at the station at 1pm, and we walked back up here for our little Catan party. I showed everyone around the house and they were like "Deanna, you live alone here? This house is meant for an entire family..."
Yeah, I'm a big dumb waste-of-space American. Oh well.
Oh yeah, and me worrying about having enough drinks and snacks was apparently stupid because they all brought drinks and snacks. Hiroko brought cakes and cookies and big an-pan, Haru brought chips and chocolate, and Tatsuya brought taiyaki. (And once he discovered that there was a liquor store one block away he excused himself to go acquire some beer. Also, the taiyaki was red bean AND custard-filled, thus proving that as usual, Tatsuya brings the best snacks, since custard taiyaki is one of my favorite. snacks. ever.)
Hiroko brought B'z CDs so we listened to those while playing Catan.
We played two games, and I won them both. I was really aggressive in the first game... though basically at one point I hit the groove where you just totally keep getting more stuff which leads to more stuff. And nobody bought dev cards at all. Second game... Haru actually made the initial placements all 3-off, so space was bizarre. I didn't even have an 8, only a 6... ended up winning this one by getting largest army and longest road and a lot of dev cards. I had like 5 points on the board and 6 points off. (Yes, you read that right. I actually won the second game about 10 minutes before I realized I won it. I thought about this a bit later and I wonder... in games like that, if someone wins but doesn't declare it, the game might not end because of the lack of space and whatnot? Maybe? I don't know. With experienced players it wouldn't be that big a deal but with casual players it's a bit different.)
It was around 6pm by then, so we all walked back to the station together. Honestly, I don't know how to be a good host here in Japan but I figured that walking people back to the station seemed like part of what everyone always does for me (even though I'm pretty sure everyone knew how to get back). They told me to please email when I get back to Japan in the spring and we'll have another board games day. I hope it happens!!
I got dinner at Heiroku because I hadn't been there on a weekday in a while. But the old dude who I usually avoid was actually behind the counter, BUT I did see that Kanno was there, but he didn't acknowledge me (maybe doesn't recognize me with the haircut, heh). No incidents though, aside from me asking for hamachi and Old Dude telling me "it's winter now, we don't have hamachi anymore, is buri okay with you?" and I'm like "yeah, it's fine." Turns out they had a weekend special so maguro and salmon and shimeaji were all 100 yen per plate, wish I'd known earlier, it ended today. Alas.
Oh yeah, I went clothes shopping a bit, or more like... jacket shopping. Which is dumb, I have a perfectly great jacket, it's lightweight and comfortable and infinitely warm, but VERY unstylish. I hate how Japan makes me think things like that, like "this jacket is awesome but it looks really bad, I should buy a new one". Sigh. I think I want a long black jacket, not a trenchcoat but... I tried on a few jackets at Uniqlo and then at Ito Yokado (funny how I want to type "Fred Meyer" instead of "Ito Yokado") and I think that I'm not going to find anything that makes me really happy... might as well wait it out till I get back to America and don't have to care about whether I have a stylish jacket. Maybe.
Watching Ainori as I write this (was watching SMAPxSMAP). Funny how the guys are bawling like "omg kosuke's leaving" but nothing from the actual two... anyway... man the reply was total Kosuke bastard-ness still, with the straight face "oh, I don't wanna go back unless I feel 100% and.. and.. 100% I love you. BUT WAIT A MINUTE. If we're going back to Japan, I want you to marry me." And she's like "OMFG WHAT", and then like "ok," then like "OMFG THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING!!!" but then whatever, they kiss, and they're going back to Japan together. And thus finally the Kosuke and his 100% inability to fall in love is OVER woooooo but I swear when those two get back, and real life hits (her dad's gonna be like "he's 22?!?!" and his family's gonna be like "she's 30?!!?!?") we'll see what really happens. HAHAHAHA and Goya's like "ok we're all cryinhg too much, let's have a toast" and gets out some drinks. hahahaha. Oh man what a bunch of crybabies!
Staff: "Are you guys really going to get married?"
Him: "Yeah."
Her: "...yeah."
Hmm, and off to Jordan they go. Where everyone is like "omfg isn't this gonna be dangerous?" until they get there and are like "Wait this country is ok, it has KFC and Starbucks."
You know, I came home intending to get some writing done, then was gonna go to McDonald's and upload whatever, but instead I don't know where the last 5 hours went (it's 2am now as I type)... I played some games on my laptop I guess and wrote some emails on my cellphone but really I was just goofing off, which sucks, because I need to do some real stuff tomorrow, I think.
I wonder why having no internet attached to the computer makes my writing LESS productive. It should be the opposite. Maybe it feels like there's no particular deadline (it's not like I'm gonna be able to post things immediately) so I don't really keep any writing tempo going. Hrm.
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Today I went to the immigration office in Shinagawa to get my re-entry permit. It took about 25 minutes total. That was nuts.
Now I am posting for a second, I'll be back later to actually edit this I think.
alibash, so she runs to the Busiest Starbucks In The World, finds Krispy, and says "WE HAVE TO GO BACK TO THE INTERNET CAFE OMFG".So they do, and the USB stick is still there. Yay.
Okay, so Krispy and I went to a place called "Sweets Paradise" for dinner. It is pretty much exactly what it sounds like -- I mean, there is REAL food too, a lot of pasta and some curry rice and occasionally some sandwiches and some EXTREMELY POPULAR BAKED POTATOES -- we know they are popular because a big bell rang and they made an announcement like "baked potatoes are out! daininki get them RIGHT NOW or be square!" or something to that effect. But the rest of the place is just a big buffet full of cakes, mousse, tiramisu, cheesecake, desserts, jello, fruits, and of course a big softserve ice cream bar. Yum. This place is 1480 yen for all-you-can-eat for 90 minutes normally, though since it was busy as hell yesterday it was only 70 minutes.
The funny part is, you'd expect a tabehodai cake place to be full of fat people... but not this place, it was full of your typical young trendy Shibuya Japanese skinny perfect-appearance girls, mostly. Gorging themselves on these huge cakes full of icing and cream and chocolate and making me wonder exactly who the hell this entire country has sold its soul to so the women look like this. (Although to be fair, I'm sure that it's just that most people spend like 40% of their day working, 20% of the day sleeping, 10% of the day drinking beer, 10% of the day standing on trains and walking/biking to/from stations, and then the other 20% of the day putting on makeup and doing their hair. And I don't just mean the women, though I'm actually astounded by some of the women's bathrooms I see in the newer malls here which are basically like 4 bathroom stalls and then like three rooms full of makeup tables.)
Anyway, the upshot is, it was really great to hang out with Krispy again. We talked about all sorts of crazy "boy am I a dumbass" kind of things and it's really nice to have old friends around to talk with like that.
Krispy had somewhere else to go at 8:30, so I headed home to Akabane. I actually did the "running into Daiso 5 minutes before they close" thing again, this time to get some boxes for my shelves, in my desperate attempt to organize my room better.
And then... well, I wanted to get some drinks and snacks to have when people would come over for playing Settlers of Catan. Only problem is, if I bought them at the bottom of the hill I'd have to lug them up to the top of the hill.
So despite having promised many friends I wasn't going to go around riding my bike onto big crowded unknown roads in the late nighttime anymore, I headed out to basically go ride westwards until I found a supermarket. I rode out past the big Olympics Sports training complex, and kept going until I hit Road 17 and Motohasunuma station, which is on the Toei Mita line and is actually NOT that far from here, I should time it but the bike ride was definitely less than 10 minutes. There are a very few select times where it would actually be more convenient for me to take that line -- particularly, the Tokyo Dome would be just one line, and so would Jimbocho. There might be some other times I'm forgetting.
I found a small grocery right by that subway stop, then just rode around for a long time instead of going in. There is ONE major advantage of doing this at night -- you can more easily spot what might be interesting things or stores off the main roads, because THEY HAVE LIGHTS. That's how I eventually found a 24-hour Yamasa grocery, so I went in there. They had an interesting selection of import foods but a pretty lousy selection of drinks, and some fairly terrible prices on some normal stuff but great prices on other things. I dunno. I get the feeling things might be slightly more expensive in Tokyo than they were in Saitama in general, sadly :(
Anyway, while riding my bike along random roads in a place I'd never been before in the night, I just felt very free and very happy, kind of like when I first got my bike and rode around Saitama looking for new and interesting things. This is one of the things I will most miss about my time in Japan, someday. I LOVE riding my bicycle around random places. LOVE it. I feel like I can't do this in America because of various things like hills, criminals, cars, distance, etc...
So, yeah. Came home, should have cleaned my room a lot more than I did, but instead I only worked on it a little and went to sleep a bit earlier than usual. Getting stuck under the kotatsu again is dangerous.
I woke up this morning and then cleaned as much as I could for an hour. Ended up shoving a bunch of things into boxes and into the closet. Hehe.
Met up with Hiroko, Haruyuki, and Tatsuya (ex-students of mine, we played Settlers of Catan in one of our classes for a few weeks in a row last winter) at the station at 1pm, and we walked back up here for our little Catan party. I showed everyone around the house and they were like "Deanna, you live alone here? This house is meant for an entire family..."
Yeah, I'm a big dumb waste-of-space American. Oh well.
Oh yeah, and me worrying about having enough drinks and snacks was apparently stupid because they all brought drinks and snacks. Hiroko brought cakes and cookies and big an-pan, Haru brought chips and chocolate, and Tatsuya brought taiyaki. (And once he discovered that there was a liquor store one block away he excused himself to go acquire some beer. Also, the taiyaki was red bean AND custard-filled, thus proving that as usual, Tatsuya brings the best snacks, since custard taiyaki is one of my favorite. snacks. ever.)
Hiroko brought B'z CDs so we listened to those while playing Catan.
We played two games, and I won them both. I was really aggressive in the first game... though basically at one point I hit the groove where you just totally keep getting more stuff which leads to more stuff. And nobody bought dev cards at all. Second game... Haru actually made the initial placements all 3-off, so space was bizarre. I didn't even have an 8, only a 6... ended up winning this one by getting largest army and longest road and a lot of dev cards. I had like 5 points on the board and 6 points off. (Yes, you read that right. I actually won the second game about 10 minutes before I realized I won it. I thought about this a bit later and I wonder... in games like that, if someone wins but doesn't declare it, the game might not end because of the lack of space and whatnot? Maybe? I don't know. With experienced players it wouldn't be that big a deal but with casual players it's a bit different.)
It was around 6pm by then, so we all walked back to the station together. Honestly, I don't know how to be a good host here in Japan but I figured that walking people back to the station seemed like part of what everyone always does for me (even though I'm pretty sure everyone knew how to get back). They told me to please email when I get back to Japan in the spring and we'll have another board games day. I hope it happens!!
I got dinner at Heiroku because I hadn't been there on a weekday in a while. But the old dude who I usually avoid was actually behind the counter, BUT I did see that Kanno was there, but he didn't acknowledge me (maybe doesn't recognize me with the haircut, heh). No incidents though, aside from me asking for hamachi and Old Dude telling me "it's winter now, we don't have hamachi anymore, is buri okay with you?" and I'm like "yeah, it's fine." Turns out they had a weekend special so maguro and salmon and shimeaji were all 100 yen per plate, wish I'd known earlier, it ended today. Alas.
Oh yeah, I went clothes shopping a bit, or more like... jacket shopping. Which is dumb, I have a perfectly great jacket, it's lightweight and comfortable and infinitely warm, but VERY unstylish. I hate how Japan makes me think things like that, like "this jacket is awesome but it looks really bad, I should buy a new one". Sigh. I think I want a long black jacket, not a trenchcoat but... I tried on a few jackets at Uniqlo and then at Ito Yokado (funny how I want to type "Fred Meyer" instead of "Ito Yokado") and I think that I'm not going to find anything that makes me really happy... might as well wait it out till I get back to America and don't have to care about whether I have a stylish jacket. Maybe.
Watching Ainori as I write this (was watching SMAPxSMAP). Funny how the guys are bawling like "omg kosuke's leaving" but nothing from the actual two... anyway... man the reply was total Kosuke bastard-ness still, with the straight face "oh, I don't wanna go back unless I feel 100% and.. and.. 100% I love you. BUT WAIT A MINUTE. If we're going back to Japan, I want you to marry me." And she's like "OMFG WHAT", and then like "ok," then like "OMFG THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING!!!" but then whatever, they kiss, and they're going back to Japan together. And thus finally the Kosuke and his 100% inability to fall in love is OVER woooooo but I swear when those two get back, and real life hits (her dad's gonna be like "he's 22?!?!" and his family's gonna be like "she's 30?!!?!?") we'll see what really happens. HAHAHAHA and Goya's like "ok we're all cryinhg too much, let's have a toast" and gets out some drinks. hahahaha. Oh man what a bunch of crybabies!
Staff: "Are you guys really going to get married?"
Him: "Yeah."
Her: "...yeah."
Hmm, and off to Jordan they go. Where everyone is like "omfg isn't this gonna be dangerous?" until they get there and are like "Wait this country is ok, it has KFC and Starbucks."
You know, I came home intending to get some writing done, then was gonna go to McDonald's and upload whatever, but instead I don't know where the last 5 hours went (it's 2am now as I type)... I played some games on my laptop I guess and wrote some emails on my cellphone but really I was just goofing off, which sucks, because I need to do some real stuff tomorrow, I think.
I wonder why having no internet attached to the computer makes my writing LESS productive. It should be the opposite. Maybe it feels like there's no particular deadline (it's not like I'm gonna be able to post things immediately) so I don't really keep any writing tempo going. Hrm.
-------------
Today I went to the immigration office in Shinagawa to get my re-entry permit. It took about 25 minutes total. That was nuts.
Now I am posting for a second, I'll be back later to actually edit this I think.
