Weekend of meeting LJ friends, Part 2
I have no pictures from today (I just realized), but yeah, it was the second half of my "meeting my random LJ friends who also live in Japan but not in Tokyo" weekend. This time I met up with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kawaru, who I have known over LJ for around 5 years (more?) now, but had never met before. (Craig ended up on my LJ friends list because we were the only two people on LJ who listed either Osamu Kubota or Hirofumi Sasaki in our interests lists at the time.) He lives in Ebino, which is down in Miyazaki Prefecture, an area I pretty much only know of because of Yukio Tanaka and Norichika Aoki.
Anyway, today's story actually starts when I was awoken this morning by my phone ringing. I sleepily and sore-throatily answered it. Unfamiliar number called for a Japanese "Moshimoshi?"
It was the Kawaguchi police.
Now, I really wish I understood more than 50% of what they said, but essentially, it was a guy from the "seikatsu anzen ka", which I believe means "daily life safety" division, asking about my bike's bohan toroku (anti-crime registration). He meant my old bike, the one that was crushed when I got hit by a truck.
YES, this case is NEVER going to be fully over, I swear. There's always something new popping up.
See, Shiho took the bike away on Friday! I was all excited to have it out of the space, so now I can use the parking space under the stairs without having to shove my new bike in there. And I even gave her my toroku card so she could show that she had permission to get rid of it.
But, apparently that didn't work. So, if I get what they said, they want me to come down to the police station and essentially confirm to them that yes, the bike was really intended for recycling, and my neighbor took it there because we couldn't afford sodai gomi's 6000 yen charge or whatever they claimed it'd be. But, of course, I don't have my toroku paper because I gave it to Shiho. Who wasn't home this morning when I went to ask her about it, and I don't have her phone number, either. Argh. I was like "Dude, no, really, I was in an accident, the bike is wrecked, I want it to GO AWAY, what's the problem?"
What's funny is, I bet if my bike REALLY got stolen, they'd never find it and just apologize to me a lot. But because I'm trying to get rid of my old bike there's all of these layers of rules to wade through. Anyway, I guess I'll try to get down there in a day or two once I get in touch with Shiho. I left her a note tonight about the situation. I do wonder what'll happen if I don't go to the police station at all... but it seems like that's a bad idea.
So, I had to do laundry today and grocery shopping. I took my laundry over to the laundromat and threw it all in the big washer-dryer and put in 1300 yen and then left for an hour and a half. I know it's super-expensive to use the big fancy washers that both wash and dry your clothes but DAMN they're convenient that way. After that I rode down to Kura and had cheap sushi for lunch, and then went around the corner from there to Aeon and the Max Valu shopping center.
Because I was feeling kind of sick -- still sore throat and a bit of a headache -- and the medicine shop was ACTUALLY OPEN for once -- I went and got some cold medicine. It's called Contac and here's what I think is in it:
Acetaminophen 900mg
Dextromethorphan 48mg
Methylephedrine 40mg
Caffeine 75mg
and two other things that I think are an antihistimine and something else. Anyway, that's just one capsule and yet the doses are all like 3 times as much as a dose of Dayquil, which is a little weird. AND they tell you to take two at a time and it'll last for 12 hours.
Anyway, I did my other shopping, mostly getting things like soaps and shampoo and detergent and and batteries and whatnot -- AND some Yukimi Daifuku tiramisu, which I just tried and is FANTASTIC, but that's beside the point. I got back to the laundromat and was about 15 mins late for my laundry cycle but it's ok, it's not particularly crowded at 2pm on a Monday.
Here's the kicker: I got home and my dad kept calling me on the phone, and I felt kind of sick still, so I took one of the Contac capsules, and decided to just sit around and see whether it had any weird effect on me. I translated today's college/industry baseball draft (DUDE!!!! WE GOT KAZUHITO TADANO!!!!) and it seemed like aside from a vague stomachache, the medicine hadn't done anything too bad to me, and my throat felt better and my head felt less stuffy, so good.
Boy, was I wrong.
I went to the station to ride down to Shinjuku to meet up with the aforementionedkawaru, and when I was about 2/3 of the way there I suddenly felt like I was going to fall off my bike. I kept my balance, but the feeling didn't stop. I managed to get on a train and fortunately could sit on the way to Akabane, but when I transferred to the Shonan-Shinjuku line to head further south I had to stand, and I swear I kept feeling like I was just going to faint any minute. It was really weird and I sort of wondered, "If I faint, will people be angry at me or be nice to me?"
Fortunately, I didn't have to find out; I managed to make it through the ride conscious. I got to Shinjuku, found the South Exit, and then went up to a wall and leaned against it for 10 minutes until Craig showed up. Shinjuku's always funny in that you can't just play the "just look for the gaijin" game when you meet up, since there are NINETY BILLION AMERICANS in Shinjuku. So, oh well.
Craig found me, and I was just about to explain to him that I was in a weird doped-up state, when... another guy showed up, who was Craig's friend Pat, another CIR guy from the Kyushu JET program. Apparently Craig invited Pat to come to dinner with us, only he didn't tell me that, so I was a little bit confused. Either way, we ended up wandering a little bit through Shinjuku and ended up at a yakiniku place called 炭火焼肉 (I think). It was apparently kind of famous, or at least, they had been featured on a TBS show; there were pictures all over the wall of the TV appearance, and there were also numerous autographs all over another wall.
The funny thing is, for a "famous" place, the proprietor was either absentminded or deaf, because we walked in, it was empty, we yelled "SUMIMASEN???" about five times and finally a guy was like "IRASSHAI!" The place also had a funky 70's decor and the music was also all mostly 70'sish. On the other hand, the food turned out to be REALLY GOOD and they also had yaki-nasu -- eggplant -- which was awesome. So in the end it all worked out.
On the other hand I basically spent like 10 minutes completely zoning out at one point because I was all doped-up-like and Craig and Pat were talking about JET stuff, which of course I have no clue about. I forget at what point I explained that I was doped up, actually.
Pat went off after that to go sleep, and Craig and I wandered to Kabuki-cho, where we went to an arcade and played Bemani games. He played a set of Drummania and I played a Pop'n, and then we played a game of DDR together, mostly for two reasons: 1) we originally met on LJ because of Bemani/DDR interests and 2) it was the 19th of November and coming up on the 20th of November, which is a special "Bemani Day" to me. Good god, has it really been over seven years since I started playing Bemani games? Wacky. Anyway, here's the thing...
WHY THE FUCK ISN'T 20 NOVEMBER ON DDR SUPERNOVA 2?????? WHAT GIVES??????
I'm serious, this was the first game of DDR that I'd played since LAST year on the 20th of November. These days I pretty much ONLY play on the 20th of November. And I was really sad that I couldn't actually play the song "20 November"! Sheesh!
Also, I am really bad at DDR now, which should come as no surprise to anyone, given that I play once a year.
Anyway, we wandered through Shinjuku after that, and Craig got a phone call from another friend he'd wanted to hang out with tonight. So, we walked down the street and a few minutes later met up with Craig's other friend Yukiko, who had studied in Tennessee last year or something like that. She turned out to be a super-genki person probably about my age and very friendly. Despite that I think she understands English pretty well, we all spoke in Japanese. I suck at Japanese, but I mostly think I did okay.
We all went to karaoke, where I made everyone start out with 世界に一つだけの花 which I have basically decided is now ALWAYS going to be the first song I sing at any karaoke time. And we sang a whole bunch of random other stuff. Craig did a whole lot of silly country Aomori songs, and we made him do his Hirai Ken imitation on Hitomi wo Tojite (which he'd written about years ago and I always said I'd make him do it someday in person), and I sang a bunch of old DDR songs which he didn't know in Japanese (I'm not sure WHY I expect people to know all of the originals of the DDR remix covers, I just do) and we finished off the night with Seishun Amigo, the theme from Nobuta wo Produce. Woohoo. My goal is to learn the words and harmony in that song so I'd be more comfortable singing it in the future. Oh, also, I need to find someone else who can sing stuff by HY. Particularly AM11:00 or モノクロ for the harmonies. I really ought to just figure out a way to go to karaoke more often in general, but this all goes back to the "I need to find more friends" issue.
Anyway by then it was 11:30pm and I was even more tired than the night before and my throat hurt more, so we all bid farewells. I went to the train station with Yukiko and talked to her for a while. We exchanged email addresses, no idea if we'll ever actually write or hang out again, but who knows, she seems cool. Maybe if worse comes to worst we'll all hang out again when Craig comes back here someday.
Sigh, I shouldn't have spent so long writing this. Argh. On the other hand, it's now the 20th of November here in Japan. I wonder if there are ANY remaining Bemani games that have "20 November" in them? Sigh.
kawaru, who I have known over LJ for around 5 years (more?) now, but had never met before. (Craig ended up on my LJ friends list because we were the only two people on LJ who listed either Osamu Kubota or Hirofumi Sasaki in our interests lists at the time.) He lives in Ebino, which is down in Miyazaki Prefecture, an area I pretty much only know of because of Yukio Tanaka and Norichika Aoki.Anyway, today's story actually starts when I was awoken this morning by my phone ringing. I sleepily and sore-throatily answered it. Unfamiliar number called for a Japanese "Moshimoshi?"
It was the Kawaguchi police.
Now, I really wish I understood more than 50% of what they said, but essentially, it was a guy from the "seikatsu anzen ka", which I believe means "daily life safety" division, asking about my bike's bohan toroku (anti-crime registration). He meant my old bike, the one that was crushed when I got hit by a truck.
YES, this case is NEVER going to be fully over, I swear. There's always something new popping up.
See, Shiho took the bike away on Friday! I was all excited to have it out of the space, so now I can use the parking space under the stairs without having to shove my new bike in there. And I even gave her my toroku card so she could show that she had permission to get rid of it.
But, apparently that didn't work. So, if I get what they said, they want me to come down to the police station and essentially confirm to them that yes, the bike was really intended for recycling, and my neighbor took it there because we couldn't afford sodai gomi's 6000 yen charge or whatever they claimed it'd be. But, of course, I don't have my toroku paper because I gave it to Shiho. Who wasn't home this morning when I went to ask her about it, and I don't have her phone number, either. Argh. I was like "Dude, no, really, I was in an accident, the bike is wrecked, I want it to GO AWAY, what's the problem?"
What's funny is, I bet if my bike REALLY got stolen, they'd never find it and just apologize to me a lot. But because I'm trying to get rid of my old bike there's all of these layers of rules to wade through. Anyway, I guess I'll try to get down there in a day or two once I get in touch with Shiho. I left her a note tonight about the situation. I do wonder what'll happen if I don't go to the police station at all... but it seems like that's a bad idea.
So, I had to do laundry today and grocery shopping. I took my laundry over to the laundromat and threw it all in the big washer-dryer and put in 1300 yen and then left for an hour and a half. I know it's super-expensive to use the big fancy washers that both wash and dry your clothes but DAMN they're convenient that way. After that I rode down to Kura and had cheap sushi for lunch, and then went around the corner from there to Aeon and the Max Valu shopping center.
Because I was feeling kind of sick -- still sore throat and a bit of a headache -- and the medicine shop was ACTUALLY OPEN for once -- I went and got some cold medicine. It's called Contac and here's what I think is in it:
Acetaminophen 900mg
Dextromethorphan 48mg
Methylephedrine 40mg
Caffeine 75mg
and two other things that I think are an antihistimine and something else. Anyway, that's just one capsule and yet the doses are all like 3 times as much as a dose of Dayquil, which is a little weird. AND they tell you to take two at a time and it'll last for 12 hours.
Anyway, I did my other shopping, mostly getting things like soaps and shampoo and detergent and and batteries and whatnot -- AND some Yukimi Daifuku tiramisu, which I just tried and is FANTASTIC, but that's beside the point. I got back to the laundromat and was about 15 mins late for my laundry cycle but it's ok, it's not particularly crowded at 2pm on a Monday.
Here's the kicker: I got home and my dad kept calling me on the phone, and I felt kind of sick still, so I took one of the Contac capsules, and decided to just sit around and see whether it had any weird effect on me. I translated today's college/industry baseball draft (DUDE!!!! WE GOT KAZUHITO TADANO!!!!) and it seemed like aside from a vague stomachache, the medicine hadn't done anything too bad to me, and my throat felt better and my head felt less stuffy, so good.
Boy, was I wrong.
I went to the station to ride down to Shinjuku to meet up with the aforementioned
kawaru, and when I was about 2/3 of the way there I suddenly felt like I was going to fall off my bike. I kept my balance, but the feeling didn't stop. I managed to get on a train and fortunately could sit on the way to Akabane, but when I transferred to the Shonan-Shinjuku line to head further south I had to stand, and I swear I kept feeling like I was just going to faint any minute. It was really weird and I sort of wondered, "If I faint, will people be angry at me or be nice to me?"Fortunately, I didn't have to find out; I managed to make it through the ride conscious. I got to Shinjuku, found the South Exit, and then went up to a wall and leaned against it for 10 minutes until Craig showed up. Shinjuku's always funny in that you can't just play the "just look for the gaijin" game when you meet up, since there are NINETY BILLION AMERICANS in Shinjuku. So, oh well.
Craig found me, and I was just about to explain to him that I was in a weird doped-up state, when... another guy showed up, who was Craig's friend Pat, another CIR guy from the Kyushu JET program. Apparently Craig invited Pat to come to dinner with us, only he didn't tell me that, so I was a little bit confused. Either way, we ended up wandering a little bit through Shinjuku and ended up at a yakiniku place called 炭火焼肉 (I think). It was apparently kind of famous, or at least, they had been featured on a TBS show; there were pictures all over the wall of the TV appearance, and there were also numerous autographs all over another wall.
The funny thing is, for a "famous" place, the proprietor was either absentminded or deaf, because we walked in, it was empty, we yelled "SUMIMASEN???" about five times and finally a guy was like "IRASSHAI!" The place also had a funky 70's decor and the music was also all mostly 70'sish. On the other hand, the food turned out to be REALLY GOOD and they also had yaki-nasu -- eggplant -- which was awesome. So in the end it all worked out.
On the other hand I basically spent like 10 minutes completely zoning out at one point because I was all doped-up-like and Craig and Pat were talking about JET stuff, which of course I have no clue about. I forget at what point I explained that I was doped up, actually.
Pat went off after that to go sleep, and Craig and I wandered to Kabuki-cho, where we went to an arcade and played Bemani games. He played a set of Drummania and I played a Pop'n, and then we played a game of DDR together, mostly for two reasons: 1) we originally met on LJ because of Bemani/DDR interests and 2) it was the 19th of November and coming up on the 20th of November, which is a special "Bemani Day" to me. Good god, has it really been over seven years since I started playing Bemani games? Wacky. Anyway, here's the thing...
WHY THE FUCK ISN'T 20 NOVEMBER ON DDR SUPERNOVA 2?????? WHAT GIVES??????
I'm serious, this was the first game of DDR that I'd played since LAST year on the 20th of November. These days I pretty much ONLY play on the 20th of November. And I was really sad that I couldn't actually play the song "20 November"! Sheesh!
Also, I am really bad at DDR now, which should come as no surprise to anyone, given that I play once a year.
Anyway, we wandered through Shinjuku after that, and Craig got a phone call from another friend he'd wanted to hang out with tonight. So, we walked down the street and a few minutes later met up with Craig's other friend Yukiko, who had studied in Tennessee last year or something like that. She turned out to be a super-genki person probably about my age and very friendly. Despite that I think she understands English pretty well, we all spoke in Japanese. I suck at Japanese, but I mostly think I did okay.
We all went to karaoke, where I made everyone start out with 世界に一つだけの花 which I have basically decided is now ALWAYS going to be the first song I sing at any karaoke time. And we sang a whole bunch of random other stuff. Craig did a whole lot of silly country Aomori songs, and we made him do his Hirai Ken imitation on Hitomi wo Tojite (which he'd written about years ago and I always said I'd make him do it someday in person), and I sang a bunch of old DDR songs which he didn't know in Japanese (I'm not sure WHY I expect people to know all of the originals of the DDR remix covers, I just do) and we finished off the night with Seishun Amigo, the theme from Nobuta wo Produce. Woohoo. My goal is to learn the words and harmony in that song so I'd be more comfortable singing it in the future. Oh, also, I need to find someone else who can sing stuff by HY. Particularly AM11:00 or モノクロ for the harmonies. I really ought to just figure out a way to go to karaoke more often in general, but this all goes back to the "I need to find more friends" issue.
Anyway by then it was 11:30pm and I was even more tired than the night before and my throat hurt more, so we all bid farewells. I went to the train station with Yukiko and talked to her for a while. We exchanged email addresses, no idea if we'll ever actually write or hang out again, but who knows, she seems cool. Maybe if worse comes to worst we'll all hang out again when Craig comes back here someday.
Sigh, I shouldn't have spent so long writing this. Argh. On the other hand, it's now the 20th of November here in Japan. I wonder if there are ANY remaining Bemani games that have "20 November" in them? Sigh.
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Also, what does super-genki mean?
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Also I am in Tokyo again. Text plz!
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But yeah, it was great to finally meet you, Deanna. I think a good time was had by all. And you should definitely mail Yukiko sometime. She's pretty cool. And I think we should work on some songs for next time, some duets and stuff with good harmony since you're one of the few people I've met who tries to harmonize at karaoke, which is awesome.
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I was sad we don't really know any songs in common, because I pretty much always try to harmonize when possible. That's why I was going to suggest Natsuiro, or something by DCT, or a ton of HY stuff since they ALWAYS harmonize. Seriously, if you don't already know of HY I highly recommend them, especially since you're down south -- they're from Okinawa.