I guess the Lord must be in New York City
Well, it was an exciting weekend. The good: hanging out in NYC and almost successfully pretending it was Tokyo The bad: the japanese proficiency test. The ugly: [comment deleted] The general: I really liked New York, although I can't imagine living there. It's a cool city, I don't think I really have been able to appreciate it until recently.
We got in around midnight on Friday night, found the hotel pretty easily (I swear the driving time from the tunnel was like 5 minutes) and parked, and went inside... then realized, "hey, it's 12:30am but this city has stuff going on," so we walked around the Times Square area until around 2am. We went into Broadway City, an arcade down on 42nd, and it was sort of scary - we were the only white people in there. They have DDR 5th mix though, and it had a huge crowd around it. Er, so anyway, we walked around mostly, I don't remember actually going in anywhere that first evening except the arcade. It was cool to see NYPD officers around everywhere, like 3-4 to a block... made me feel safe to walk around.
Saturday, Li called at like 8am and woke us up. We were supposed to meet him at Book-Off at 11am, although we got there more like 11:20 or so. (Our hotel was at 8th and 48th, and Book-Off is at 5th and 41st. Book-Off was a disappointment compared to the ones in Japan... well, to me at least. They did have tons of manga for $1 or $2 per issue, which made Carl happy, but their CDs were really expensive, like $30 or $15... as opposed to the rates of around Y750-1250 ($6-10) in Japan with cheap CDs running around $2. Blah. I did pick up a CD or two, but it wasn't quite as satisfying as when I literally went on a spree in the Japanese Book-Offs... oh well.
After Book-Off we went to get lunch. I had looked up a place with kaiten sushi, but everyone thought it looked sort of blah, so we went a block further to Katsuhama. I got katsu curry, and that was happy since it was the second time since my Japan trip that I got to have katsu curry (the other time, I cooked it at home). Japanese curry is great, although since I haven't been eating indian food lately, my nose was running and all, since the curry was a little strong. I thought it was good though.
Katsuhama was right near Rockefeller Center, so we went there next. First we went to Kinokuniya - I wish we could have stayed there longer. I always was feeling rushed in the Japanese bookstores, really. I picked out a few CDs, and got two prep books for the Japanese Proficiency Test, and looked through some manga, and the calendars, and they had a Harry Potter display so I bought the first Harry Potter book, hardcover, in Japanese, for like $28. Expensive, but it should be fun to try to read. Rockefeller Center also had the ice rink and the christmas tree, but most importantly, the new Pokemon store! Whee! I don't even really know much about Pokemon, but we went in there and bought some stuff anyway. It was kinda scary but cool.
We sort of were thinking of going to the World Trade Center ground zero to see the wreckage, but I wanted to drop off my stuff at the hotel if we were doing that (books and CDs are heavy) and all. After we did that, we went by TKTS to see if we could get tickets to something that evening, but the line was like two hours long, so we decided not to bother. Sometime we have to come back and try to order tickets to something in advance. Anyway, we stopped at a cafe and played Mhing for a while, and then went back to Broadway City. The DDR machine wasn't quite as crowded, so I bought a game card, and got in line, and a bit later Carl and I got to play. New York DDR players seem to go for "style" but they mostly do easier songs, even if they do trick or maniac. We were sort of lame though - in my head I'm wishing I did songs like Shooting Star and Dive instead of Odoru Ponpokorin and Super Star. Oh well. They also had a Pump It Up machine there, and Carl had never played, so we played that... we did Mambo No. 5, Take on Me, and Beethoven's Virus. We did well enough to get a fourth song, but I forget what it was. There was a Korean guy basically dominating the machine for the entire time except when we played... nobody else was playing at all. But it was fun anyway. After that, we went to the Sanrio store which is right next to the arcade. It's soooooooooooo cute! Then, rather than going down south to the wreckage we ended up just walking to Asahiya books (which is right by Grand Central Station), and I got some more CDs there and a L'arc en Ciel poster (whee!).
I had this great idea that we should go to the Empire State Building, since I'd never been there, and nobody else was really suggesting much of anything. (Can you tell that I mostly dominated what happened during the day? Except the choice not to get kaiten sushi, I think most of what we did was stuff I wanted to do.) So we got dinner first... we went back to the kaiten place but they were closing (at 7pm despite the sign saying 9:30), the bastards, so we started weaving around the neighborhood looking for another place.
We made it down to 44th street and I said "hmm, there's a Japanese restaurant, Chikubu" randomly, and there was a oldish lady in a kimono in the doorway who beckoned us in, so we went in. Well, it turns out that this place was FABULOUS. If you are in NYC and want amazingly good Japanese food, go to 12 East 44th street. You won't be disappointed. Anyway, it was funny, when we sat down, Carl asked where the bathroom was in Japanese. The waitress, after he got up to go there, remarked to another lady "nihongo ga jouzu desu ne!" ("he is good at speaking Japanese!") and I butted in by saying in Japanese "we're taking the Japanese proficiency test tomorrow, and have been studying very hard," and they started asking about the test, and whether there was conversation practice needed for it, and stuff like that, and if we wanted a Japanese menu, etc, etc. It was funny because the waitress asked me what I wanted to drink in Japanese and I asked for tea and water, and then she said the same to Roman and he just was like, "Huh??" Li also ordered in Japanese (after all, he got through third year) and then Carl got back and we had to explain to him why we were suddenly all talking in Japanese, but it was pretty neat anyway. The food was soooooooo good. I had tempura and some tuna and salmon rolls, and they were just fantabulous, I can't even begin to go into how good it all was. Roman and Li got the sushi/sashimi special (it was like $35 is why I didn't get it) and Carl got something I forget what it was called but it turned out to be a sampler, so it had sushi and tempura and cooked salmon and sashimi and spinach and stuff. MMmmm, it looked really good too. Everything was fabulous and wonderful and good tea and dessert and all, even if it ended up being really expensive, it was worth it. Roman had gotten sake, too, and he asked about what kind it was and we had Carl write down the kanji and I was mean and embarrassed him by saying how good he was at kanji and even showing the waitress like "kirei, ne?". He seems to have forgiven me, though. As we left they thanked us and wished us good luck on the exam and all. Whee!
So we went to the Empire State building. They check your ID at the door now, and put you through metal detectors and all. Shrug. It was windy as hell, and most of us didn't have jackets, so we didn't stay up there very long, or at least not outdoors. It was neat though. From the floor you can look out from, you can see sooooooo far, and you can see the WTC area. It's lit up very brightly - it looks like a ballpark, actually, if you didn't know what it actually is. So, that was cool. I don't know what you usually do up there, but we took a few pictures and hung out and went back down. I guess now I've been up the CN Tower, Tokyo Tower, and Empire State building in the past year or so. (I went up the WTC when I was a kid, too, but that's a long time ago.)
After that we said goodbye to Li because it was like 11pm and he had to get a train to go back home. We walked all the way back to our hotel in the cold without jackets because we're dumb, stopping only at the Sanrio store so I could buy the Hello Kitty stickers and grab bag I'd seen earlier. Yay for Sanrio! That is such a cool store, that and the Pokemon store. This also added a lot to pretending it was Tokyo, see. I mean, Times Square looks a lot like, say, Ueno or Shibuya or one of the lit up districts, and the view from the Empire State was a lot like the view from the Tokyo Tower... and the NYC subway is almost as exciting as the Tokyo subway... and so on. Whee!
So we went back and I took the vocab and grammar parts of the 1999 proficiency test that I'd bought at Kinokuniya. I passed both, though I forget the exact scores, I think they were in the 70s. (You need 60 to pass.) In the morning I took the listening part and it was really hard but I still got a 68 or so.
I wish I could say the same for the real test. Ugh. So we were almost late except that we managed to catch the right subway just as it was leaving, and took it to Columbia and ran across campus, and then I sat down in the wrong seat in the room and then got up and then got up again to go to a left-handed desk anyway and... ugh ugh ugh. The vocab part was fine, my kanji skills are quite good, and the grammar part was long but I think I did ok on it.
The listening part was AWFUL.
I came out of that section just knowing, utterly knowing, that I had failed. It wasn't even really my fault - the tape was REALLY tough to hear, and people kept asking them to adjust the treble and the volume and all. A lot of people were saying how tough it was to make out words on the tape, too. Sigh. I have to hope that I did well enough on the other parts to make up for my abysmal listening score, but somehow I doubt it. Ugh. Well, I won't know until February, so I might as well not think about it. In the meantime I should continue studying Japanese anyway and maybe take the test again next year.
After the test we came back to the hotel, met up with Roman who'd been wandering around the upper west side apparently, and got on our way out of town. The signs on the PA turnpike are getting weirder, now in addition to "Peace, love, and Turnpike" they also have "The road to success is always under construction. At least we're in good company." We got home around 2am. We stopped by the Shady House for a few minutes to say goodbye to Andrew (not![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ssaiscps but another one) who is ironically moving back to New York tomorrow.
Sorry about grammatical errors in this, I'm trying to get out the whole weekend as fast as possible...
We got in around midnight on Friday night, found the hotel pretty easily (I swear the driving time from the tunnel was like 5 minutes) and parked, and went inside... then realized, "hey, it's 12:30am but this city has stuff going on," so we walked around the Times Square area until around 2am. We went into Broadway City, an arcade down on 42nd, and it was sort of scary - we were the only white people in there. They have DDR 5th mix though, and it had a huge crowd around it. Er, so anyway, we walked around mostly, I don't remember actually going in anywhere that first evening except the arcade. It was cool to see NYPD officers around everywhere, like 3-4 to a block... made me feel safe to walk around.
Saturday, Li called at like 8am and woke us up. We were supposed to meet him at Book-Off at 11am, although we got there more like 11:20 or so. (Our hotel was at 8th and 48th, and Book-Off is at 5th and 41st. Book-Off was a disappointment compared to the ones in Japan... well, to me at least. They did have tons of manga for $1 or $2 per issue, which made Carl happy, but their CDs were really expensive, like $30 or $15... as opposed to the rates of around Y750-1250 ($6-10) in Japan with cheap CDs running around $2. Blah. I did pick up a CD or two, but it wasn't quite as satisfying as when I literally went on a spree in the Japanese Book-Offs... oh well.
After Book-Off we went to get lunch. I had looked up a place with kaiten sushi, but everyone thought it looked sort of blah, so we went a block further to Katsuhama. I got katsu curry, and that was happy since it was the second time since my Japan trip that I got to have katsu curry (the other time, I cooked it at home). Japanese curry is great, although since I haven't been eating indian food lately, my nose was running and all, since the curry was a little strong. I thought it was good though.
Katsuhama was right near Rockefeller Center, so we went there next. First we went to Kinokuniya - I wish we could have stayed there longer. I always was feeling rushed in the Japanese bookstores, really. I picked out a few CDs, and got two prep books for the Japanese Proficiency Test, and looked through some manga, and the calendars, and they had a Harry Potter display so I bought the first Harry Potter book, hardcover, in Japanese, for like $28. Expensive, but it should be fun to try to read. Rockefeller Center also had the ice rink and the christmas tree, but most importantly, the new Pokemon store! Whee! I don't even really know much about Pokemon, but we went in there and bought some stuff anyway. It was kinda scary but cool.
We sort of were thinking of going to the World Trade Center ground zero to see the wreckage, but I wanted to drop off my stuff at the hotel if we were doing that (books and CDs are heavy) and all. After we did that, we went by TKTS to see if we could get tickets to something that evening, but the line was like two hours long, so we decided not to bother. Sometime we have to come back and try to order tickets to something in advance. Anyway, we stopped at a cafe and played Mhing for a while, and then went back to Broadway City. The DDR machine wasn't quite as crowded, so I bought a game card, and got in line, and a bit later Carl and I got to play. New York DDR players seem to go for "style" but they mostly do easier songs, even if they do trick or maniac. We were sort of lame though - in my head I'm wishing I did songs like Shooting Star and Dive instead of Odoru Ponpokorin and Super Star. Oh well. They also had a Pump It Up machine there, and Carl had never played, so we played that... we did Mambo No. 5, Take on Me, and Beethoven's Virus. We did well enough to get a fourth song, but I forget what it was. There was a Korean guy basically dominating the machine for the entire time except when we played... nobody else was playing at all. But it was fun anyway. After that, we went to the Sanrio store which is right next to the arcade. It's soooooooooooo cute! Then, rather than going down south to the wreckage we ended up just walking to Asahiya books (which is right by Grand Central Station), and I got some more CDs there and a L'arc en Ciel poster (whee!).
I had this great idea that we should go to the Empire State Building, since I'd never been there, and nobody else was really suggesting much of anything. (Can you tell that I mostly dominated what happened during the day? Except the choice not to get kaiten sushi, I think most of what we did was stuff I wanted to do.) So we got dinner first... we went back to the kaiten place but they were closing (at 7pm despite the sign saying 9:30), the bastards, so we started weaving around the neighborhood looking for another place.
We made it down to 44th street and I said "hmm, there's a Japanese restaurant, Chikubu" randomly, and there was a oldish lady in a kimono in the doorway who beckoned us in, so we went in. Well, it turns out that this place was FABULOUS. If you are in NYC and want amazingly good Japanese food, go to 12 East 44th street. You won't be disappointed. Anyway, it was funny, when we sat down, Carl asked where the bathroom was in Japanese. The waitress, after he got up to go there, remarked to another lady "nihongo ga jouzu desu ne!" ("he is good at speaking Japanese!") and I butted in by saying in Japanese "we're taking the Japanese proficiency test tomorrow, and have been studying very hard," and they started asking about the test, and whether there was conversation practice needed for it, and stuff like that, and if we wanted a Japanese menu, etc, etc. It was funny because the waitress asked me what I wanted to drink in Japanese and I asked for tea and water, and then she said the same to Roman and he just was like, "Huh??" Li also ordered in Japanese (after all, he got through third year) and then Carl got back and we had to explain to him why we were suddenly all talking in Japanese, but it was pretty neat anyway. The food was soooooooo good. I had tempura and some tuna and salmon rolls, and they were just fantabulous, I can't even begin to go into how good it all was. Roman and Li got the sushi/sashimi special (it was like $35 is why I didn't get it) and Carl got something I forget what it was called but it turned out to be a sampler, so it had sushi and tempura and cooked salmon and sashimi and spinach and stuff. MMmmm, it looked really good too. Everything was fabulous and wonderful and good tea and dessert and all, even if it ended up being really expensive, it was worth it. Roman had gotten sake, too, and he asked about what kind it was and we had Carl write down the kanji and I was mean and embarrassed him by saying how good he was at kanji and even showing the waitress like "kirei, ne?". He seems to have forgiven me, though. As we left they thanked us and wished us good luck on the exam and all. Whee!
So we went to the Empire State building. They check your ID at the door now, and put you through metal detectors and all. Shrug. It was windy as hell, and most of us didn't have jackets, so we didn't stay up there very long, or at least not outdoors. It was neat though. From the floor you can look out from, you can see sooooooo far, and you can see the WTC area. It's lit up very brightly - it looks like a ballpark, actually, if you didn't know what it actually is. So, that was cool. I don't know what you usually do up there, but we took a few pictures and hung out and went back down. I guess now I've been up the CN Tower, Tokyo Tower, and Empire State building in the past year or so. (I went up the WTC when I was a kid, too, but that's a long time ago.)
After that we said goodbye to Li because it was like 11pm and he had to get a train to go back home. We walked all the way back to our hotel in the cold without jackets because we're dumb, stopping only at the Sanrio store so I could buy the Hello Kitty stickers and grab bag I'd seen earlier. Yay for Sanrio! That is such a cool store, that and the Pokemon store. This also added a lot to pretending it was Tokyo, see. I mean, Times Square looks a lot like, say, Ueno or Shibuya or one of the lit up districts, and the view from the Empire State was a lot like the view from the Tokyo Tower... and the NYC subway is almost as exciting as the Tokyo subway... and so on. Whee!
So we went back and I took the vocab and grammar parts of the 1999 proficiency test that I'd bought at Kinokuniya. I passed both, though I forget the exact scores, I think they were in the 70s. (You need 60 to pass.) In the morning I took the listening part and it was really hard but I still got a 68 or so.
I wish I could say the same for the real test. Ugh. So we were almost late except that we managed to catch the right subway just as it was leaving, and took it to Columbia and ran across campus, and then I sat down in the wrong seat in the room and then got up and then got up again to go to a left-handed desk anyway and... ugh ugh ugh. The vocab part was fine, my kanji skills are quite good, and the grammar part was long but I think I did ok on it.
The listening part was AWFUL.
I came out of that section just knowing, utterly knowing, that I had failed. It wasn't even really my fault - the tape was REALLY tough to hear, and people kept asking them to adjust the treble and the volume and all. A lot of people were saying how tough it was to make out words on the tape, too. Sigh. I have to hope that I did well enough on the other parts to make up for my abysmal listening score, but somehow I doubt it. Ugh. Well, I won't know until February, so I might as well not think about it. In the meantime I should continue studying Japanese anyway and maybe take the test again next year.
After the test we came back to the hotel, met up with Roman who'd been wandering around the upper west side apparently, and got on our way out of town. The signs on the PA turnpike are getting weirder, now in addition to "Peace, love, and Turnpike" they also have "The road to success is always under construction. At least we're in good company." We got home around 2am. We stopped by the Shady House for a few minutes to say goodbye to Andrew (not
ssaiscps but another one) who is ironically moving back to New York tomorrow.Sorry about grammatical errors in this, I'm trying to get out the whole weekend as fast as possible...
no subject
I think you should write it again in Japanese.