Monday Majik
Monday was sort of fun, or at least it all worked out to be fun in the end. The main point is that I saw the Saiyuuki Movie at the MOVIX theater in Ario, and 1) seeing the "late" showing, ie after 8pm, is CHEAPER than seeing earlier shows, 2) I could actually understand 90% of the movie, which means either it was simple Japanese or I am getting better at listening, and 3) It was really good! Go see it if you can! I think you sort of needed to see the dorama to at least be a little familiar with the auxiliary characters (mostly Ling Ling and the God character) and with the general structure and the inside jokes, but overall it was still a lot of fun. Katori Shingo rules. :)
Anyway.
I did some chores around here in the morning, including writing LJ entries for the weekend and finishing marking homework, and by the time I left the apartment it was already 1pm! I was supposed to meet up with![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hanataro at 2:30pm at Ikebukuro, and already worried I might not hit that time.
First thing I did was get lunch, anyway -- I went back to the tonkatsu place near Warabi station. I was there once, about 2 weeks ago, but the lady who runs the place saw me and actually said "Welcome back", and when I told her "Oh, I already decided, I would like the tonkatsu teishoku", she said "It was good last time wasn't it? Okay!" And sure enough, it was good again, very good. I don't usually have time to go to that place but I think I will try to make a point to stop by every 2 weeks or so, since they are very nice there and the food is awesome. (Also, the lunch special is teishoku for 840 yen.)
I had to stop by Akabane for a bit after that since I had a bag of work clothes and the homeworks to drop off. For whatever reason, when I came by, Duane was leaving, and Sachi was really surprised to see both of us. I explained that I'd be back later and had to go catch a train, though, and pretty much threw my stuff down and left. I should have probably changed into my nice work shoes rather than my sneakers, but oh well.
(I was dressed in the shirt I bought at Ito Yokado, the Japanese-style one, and I thought I actually looked reasonably okay but my sneakers probably sort of ruined the outfit, heh)
I got to Ikebukuro at 2:28pm and ran up to the Beck's, but then I got a phone mail from L saying that he was running late, so I ended up getting a "raspberry skoosh" or whatever they called it, which was essentially a very strong raspberry lemonade, and I sat around reading my LJ friends list and stuff on my cellphone until he showed up. L is another GEOS teacher out in another part of Saitama who I had started reading the journal of due to the eikaiwa community; this was my first time meeting him. He started working about a month before I did, and his school also has no manager. L is short and thin like a Japanese guy and I am sort of jealous because it must be easy for him to find clothes here, and to not look so huge compared to everyone.
We went to Shinjuku, and for once in my lifetime I didn't get lost. We stopped by Yellow Submarine, and looked at D&D stuff and board games and dice. I got the most awesome dice ever -- better than Kanji d6's -- they're kanji d10's AND kana d10's! So cool! I also got, I am ashamed to admit, these Daisuke Matsuzaka "Dice-K" d6's which essentially have a bunch of K's as the spots, with a K18 on the 1 spot. At first I saw them and was like "wtf" but then saw the little sign explaining what they were and was just like "uh... uhh... holy crap." I tried to explain to L what the hell they are, but he has no idea whatsoever about sports or baseball or anything. On the other hand the store clerks were like "Holy crap, listen to her," and so I asked them in Japanese if I could take a picture of the display, explaining that back home people would really love to see something like this, and so they let me take one, probably because I actually bought stuff. I dunno. Anyway, this is the Dice-K dice display:
We stopped at Starbucks too, and then in some various stores, and then we went to the monster Kinokuniya, and it was actually open! This place is HUGE -- 8 stories high. I'd never been in more than the first level or two. The 7th floor is English books and stuff for studying ESL and for the JLPT and all that kind of good stuff. I saw several magazines and whatnot that I think I could maybe buy if I need to for my students, though books are very expensive -- a paperback copy of Hamlet, for example, was like $14, though the same book would be about $5 in the USA. Or Harry Potter Book 7? That was $35. No joke. BUT the good thing is there was a ton of JLPT study materials, so whenever I decide to get cracking on that for next year, I will have plenty of things to work with...
L went home after that and I went to the Tokyo Dome, ostensibly to look for September copies of baseball monthlies and to see if there was any new merchandise at the store. Nothing caught me at the store, but I went to Yamashita and bought some more baseball cards and looked through an issue of a magazine called "Baseball ai", which is essentially a "pictures of cute baseball players" magazine for women. I wasn't interested in this month's issue, but I may keep an eye out for it in the future for posters and whatnot, heh. Oh, the other neat thing is that the Industrial League Baseball Championship is going on for the next week or two at the Tokyo Dome! So there were ninety billion people there, and lots of displays about past tournaments, with pictures of the really good players, including guys like Hisashi Takeda and Masaru Takeda, and Eishin Soyogi, and Youhei Kaneko, and Takahiro Aoki and Daisuke Kusano and... sadly, it didn't QUITE go far back enough to have Ogasawara or some of that generation, but hey. It was cool either way.
I took the Namboku line up to Akabane just to see where the hell it lets out. The verdict is that it'd be stupid for me to use it to get to/from the Tokyo Dome if I ever was going to go straight from GEOS, because it's like a 8-10 minute walk from GEOS, AND it takes a lot longer to get there than the Marunouchi/Saikyo combination would. On the other hand, now I know where the stop is, I guess. It might be useful for other things? I went back to GEOS and said hi to Sachi and sorted some of my Sprint lessons for this week and set out a bunch of things for my Mill B class and whatnot.
And then I headed back out home to get my bike and go to Ario again!
This time, I got there in time to have omurice in the food court. Yes, of course I got it with demiglace sauce, and yes of course it was good, and yes of course I am the Dinner Queen! I even took a picture of the omurice on my cellphone and sent it to Carl just as a joke. (We watched the dorama Lunch Queen together a while back, and one of the main plot points was how the main character just LOVES omurice with demiglace sauce, see. And er, if you don't know what omurice is, it's basically "omelette-rice" -- fried rice in the middle with a scrambled egg cooked around it, with some sort of sauce on top. Very tasty, and often considered such a "common" food that it's hard to get anywhere because people assume you'll just make it at home if you're going to eat it at all, I think)
Then I went up to the movie theater and saw Saiyuuki: The Movie! As I mentioned, apparently normally one adult ticket to a movie is 1800 yen there -- and it's all reserved seating -- but the 9:30pm showing was 1200 yen because it's the "late night special". Man, that is awesome, although I obviously can't go to movies except Saturday/Sunday/Monday nights, I can still ride my bike down there and all. There were only 4 people in the theater, too.
The movie itself was great. Like most episodes of the dorama, it involved Sanzou and the gang (Hakkai, Gojou, and Gokuu) wandering through the desert until they reached some completely random place which has nothing to do with them fulfilling their quest to get to Tenjiku. This time it was a city where (Carl will appreciate this) these two bad spirits, Ginkaku and Kinkaku, had come in and turned the King and Queen into turtles. So the princess Reimi wanted Sanzou to help change them back, which of course she couldn't do, so they went on a quest to find an item which would defeat the evil spirits. Except that (hmm spoilers) it turns out the princess had actually promised the item to the evil spirits in return for changing back her parents. Ling Ling discovered that plot while trying to rob the castle, heh, and she told everyone else, but Gokuu had promised to help Reimi get the item, and he has to keep promises, so he went over the mountain with her to the snowy land and they found the hut of Reimi's grandfather, who had the magic item. In the meantime, the rest of the party decided maybe they should go find Gokuu. Sanzou stayed behind at the city, and Hakkai and Gojou went off... and then Ginkaku came and caught Sanzou's spirit in this weird bottle trap. So everyone shows up at the grandfather's hut, and Reimi runs off with the item... which is immediately taken by Ginkaku. Gokuu says "NO WAY" and thus ensues a gigantic chase and battle scene which was more amusing than effective, of course, this being Saiyuuki. Eventually Gokuu gets the item, but Ginkaku threatens to burn the bottle containing Sanzou, so they trade bottle for item.
Ginkaku uses the item to seize the kingdom magically from Reimi's family, and everything gets dark and awful. When the whole party gets back to town they essentially are nearly killed by the locals -- until Sanzou and the grandfather step in and go "What kind of morons are you? Fight for your freedom, dammit!" and thus there are more fight scenes. MORE AND MORE FIGHT SCENES, until Gokuu finally succeeds in killing Ginkaku. Kinkaku hits everyone with a ton of blades and ostensibly kills Gokuu, except that Gokuu is immortal, so after a while he gets up and painfully pulls out all the blades and goes out and fights Ginkaku and eventually defeats him too (though Ginkaku first asks Gokuu to "become his little brother and rule the land together", and Gokuu is like "dude wtf? What's the point of having power if everyone is unhappy?"), and they have to defeat this dragon spirit as well for some reason I didn't catch, and that undoes the spells and Reimi's parents change back from being turtles and everyone lives happily ever after! Or at least until the next movie with all the crazy fight scenes and whatnot. The ending song was "Around the World" by Monkey Majik, just like it was for the TV show. I stayed for the whole credits but alas, all they had was a panning shot of the four characters walking through the desert, nothing special.
But yeah, it was pretty neat going to see a Japanese movie in a Japanese movie theater. I totally have to do that again sometime!
I went home after that, and that's really the end of the story for yesterday.
Now it is the work week again and I am off to GEOS. I may finally get my alien registration card either today or tomorrow, if I am lucky.
Anyway.
I did some chores around here in the morning, including writing LJ entries for the weekend and finishing marking homework, and by the time I left the apartment it was already 1pm! I was supposed to meet up with
hanataro at 2:30pm at Ikebukuro, and already worried I might not hit that time.First thing I did was get lunch, anyway -- I went back to the tonkatsu place near Warabi station. I was there once, about 2 weeks ago, but the lady who runs the place saw me and actually said "Welcome back", and when I told her "Oh, I already decided, I would like the tonkatsu teishoku", she said "It was good last time wasn't it? Okay!" And sure enough, it was good again, very good. I don't usually have time to go to that place but I think I will try to make a point to stop by every 2 weeks or so, since they are very nice there and the food is awesome. (Also, the lunch special is teishoku for 840 yen.)
I had to stop by Akabane for a bit after that since I had a bag of work clothes and the homeworks to drop off. For whatever reason, when I came by, Duane was leaving, and Sachi was really surprised to see both of us. I explained that I'd be back later and had to go catch a train, though, and pretty much threw my stuff down and left. I should have probably changed into my nice work shoes rather than my sneakers, but oh well.
(I was dressed in the shirt I bought at Ito Yokado, the Japanese-style one, and I thought I actually looked reasonably okay but my sneakers probably sort of ruined the outfit, heh)
I got to Ikebukuro at 2:28pm and ran up to the Beck's, but then I got a phone mail from L saying that he was running late, so I ended up getting a "raspberry skoosh" or whatever they called it, which was essentially a very strong raspberry lemonade, and I sat around reading my LJ friends list and stuff on my cellphone until he showed up. L is another GEOS teacher out in another part of Saitama who I had started reading the journal of due to the eikaiwa community; this was my first time meeting him. He started working about a month before I did, and his school also has no manager. L is short and thin like a Japanese guy and I am sort of jealous because it must be easy for him to find clothes here, and to not look so huge compared to everyone.
We went to Shinjuku, and for once in my lifetime I didn't get lost. We stopped by Yellow Submarine, and looked at D&D stuff and board games and dice. I got the most awesome dice ever -- better than Kanji d6's -- they're kanji d10's AND kana d10's! So cool! I also got, I am ashamed to admit, these Daisuke Matsuzaka "Dice-K" d6's which essentially have a bunch of K's as the spots, with a K18 on the 1 spot. At first I saw them and was like "wtf" but then saw the little sign explaining what they were and was just like "uh... uhh... holy crap." I tried to explain to L what the hell they are, but he has no idea whatsoever about sports or baseball or anything. On the other hand the store clerks were like "Holy crap, listen to her," and so I asked them in Japanese if I could take a picture of the display, explaining that back home people would really love to see something like this, and so they let me take one, probably because I actually bought stuff. I dunno. Anyway, this is the Dice-K dice display:
We stopped at Starbucks too, and then in some various stores, and then we went to the monster Kinokuniya, and it was actually open! This place is HUGE -- 8 stories high. I'd never been in more than the first level or two. The 7th floor is English books and stuff for studying ESL and for the JLPT and all that kind of good stuff. I saw several magazines and whatnot that I think I could maybe buy if I need to for my students, though books are very expensive -- a paperback copy of Hamlet, for example, was like $14, though the same book would be about $5 in the USA. Or Harry Potter Book 7? That was $35. No joke. BUT the good thing is there was a ton of JLPT study materials, so whenever I decide to get cracking on that for next year, I will have plenty of things to work with...
L went home after that and I went to the Tokyo Dome, ostensibly to look for September copies of baseball monthlies and to see if there was any new merchandise at the store. Nothing caught me at the store, but I went to Yamashita and bought some more baseball cards and looked through an issue of a magazine called "Baseball ai", which is essentially a "pictures of cute baseball players" magazine for women. I wasn't interested in this month's issue, but I may keep an eye out for it in the future for posters and whatnot, heh. Oh, the other neat thing is that the Industrial League Baseball Championship is going on for the next week or two at the Tokyo Dome! So there were ninety billion people there, and lots of displays about past tournaments, with pictures of the really good players, including guys like Hisashi Takeda and Masaru Takeda, and Eishin Soyogi, and Youhei Kaneko, and Takahiro Aoki and Daisuke Kusano and... sadly, it didn't QUITE go far back enough to have Ogasawara or some of that generation, but hey. It was cool either way.
I took the Namboku line up to Akabane just to see where the hell it lets out. The verdict is that it'd be stupid for me to use it to get to/from the Tokyo Dome if I ever was going to go straight from GEOS, because it's like a 8-10 minute walk from GEOS, AND it takes a lot longer to get there than the Marunouchi/Saikyo combination would. On the other hand, now I know where the stop is, I guess. It might be useful for other things? I went back to GEOS and said hi to Sachi and sorted some of my Sprint lessons for this week and set out a bunch of things for my Mill B class and whatnot.
And then I headed back out home to get my bike and go to Ario again!
This time, I got there in time to have omurice in the food court. Yes, of course I got it with demiglace sauce, and yes of course it was good, and yes of course I am the Dinner Queen! I even took a picture of the omurice on my cellphone and sent it to Carl just as a joke. (We watched the dorama Lunch Queen together a while back, and one of the main plot points was how the main character just LOVES omurice with demiglace sauce, see. And er, if you don't know what omurice is, it's basically "omelette-rice" -- fried rice in the middle with a scrambled egg cooked around it, with some sort of sauce on top. Very tasty, and often considered such a "common" food that it's hard to get anywhere because people assume you'll just make it at home if you're going to eat it at all, I think)
Then I went up to the movie theater and saw Saiyuuki: The Movie! As I mentioned, apparently normally one adult ticket to a movie is 1800 yen there -- and it's all reserved seating -- but the 9:30pm showing was 1200 yen because it's the "late night special". Man, that is awesome, although I obviously can't go to movies except Saturday/Sunday/Monday nights, I can still ride my bike down there and all. There were only 4 people in the theater, too.
The movie itself was great. Like most episodes of the dorama, it involved Sanzou and the gang (Hakkai, Gojou, and Gokuu) wandering through the desert until they reached some completely random place which has nothing to do with them fulfilling their quest to get to Tenjiku. This time it was a city where (Carl will appreciate this) these two bad spirits, Ginkaku and Kinkaku, had come in and turned the King and Queen into turtles. So the princess Reimi wanted Sanzou to help change them back, which of course she couldn't do, so they went on a quest to find an item which would defeat the evil spirits. Except that (hmm spoilers) it turns out the princess had actually promised the item to the evil spirits in return for changing back her parents. Ling Ling discovered that plot while trying to rob the castle, heh, and she told everyone else, but Gokuu had promised to help Reimi get the item, and he has to keep promises, so he went over the mountain with her to the snowy land and they found the hut of Reimi's grandfather, who had the magic item. In the meantime, the rest of the party decided maybe they should go find Gokuu. Sanzou stayed behind at the city, and Hakkai and Gojou went off... and then Ginkaku came and caught Sanzou's spirit in this weird bottle trap. So everyone shows up at the grandfather's hut, and Reimi runs off with the item... which is immediately taken by Ginkaku. Gokuu says "NO WAY" and thus ensues a gigantic chase and battle scene which was more amusing than effective, of course, this being Saiyuuki. Eventually Gokuu gets the item, but Ginkaku threatens to burn the bottle containing Sanzou, so they trade bottle for item.
Ginkaku uses the item to seize the kingdom magically from Reimi's family, and everything gets dark and awful. When the whole party gets back to town they essentially are nearly killed by the locals -- until Sanzou and the grandfather step in and go "What kind of morons are you? Fight for your freedom, dammit!" and thus there are more fight scenes. MORE AND MORE FIGHT SCENES, until Gokuu finally succeeds in killing Ginkaku. Kinkaku hits everyone with a ton of blades and ostensibly kills Gokuu, except that Gokuu is immortal, so after a while he gets up and painfully pulls out all the blades and goes out and fights Ginkaku and eventually defeats him too (though Ginkaku first asks Gokuu to "become his little brother and rule the land together", and Gokuu is like "dude wtf? What's the point of having power if everyone is unhappy?"), and they have to defeat this dragon spirit as well for some reason I didn't catch, and that undoes the spells and Reimi's parents change back from being turtles and everyone lives happily ever after! Or at least until the next movie with all the crazy fight scenes and whatnot. The ending song was "Around the World" by Monkey Majik, just like it was for the TV show. I stayed for the whole credits but alas, all they had was a panning shot of the four characters walking through the desert, nothing special.
But yeah, it was pretty neat going to see a Japanese movie in a Japanese movie theater. I totally have to do that again sometime!
I went home after that, and that's really the end of the story for yesterday.
Now it is the work week again and I am off to GEOS. I may finally get my alien registration card either today or tomorrow, if I am lucky.
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