I was going to work on my mango right now but I'm just not in the mood...I need to clean my room 'cause there's mold, but I need to tell my advisor before I do just so that I know what I'm supposed to do to get rid of it, and then my first week of classes is tomorrow and I just want those to happen, and I also have to take out the trash for the first time tomorrow and gahh....I just wanna do nothing! ;3;
But I am gonna try cooking gyudon for the first time...but I'ma wait until later. Also I can't stop watching Game Grumps...this is probably the problem...I need somebody to kick me into wanting to finish this first chapter 'cause so far I can't get myself to do it...Like all the pages are drawn I just need to ink them and do the backgrounds and some effects...but mehhh...I dun wanna....;3;
'nway~ You guys probs don't care about that! But that's the main reason why I bet posting right now~ :D I have pretty much ignored the internet until now...or no...wait...I didn't get internet until Friday...so I think I am just at that point of needing to use the internet as much as possible until I'm bored.
Okiedokie so I shall tell you of my adventures traveling around Japan~ :D Currently I am attending a small university in Japan so my traveling was on the way there.
Lemme do this in parts~ This'll be part one: Tokyo
So first I flew over to Japan flying on an airplane by myself for the first time. Then when I got there I expected to meet with my friends who were studying abroad with me, but one of them is inept at everything and the other one accidentally booked her flight to land the next day. We had booked a small hostel where the owner would drive us to the hostel from the airport which was nice, but the hostel was super scary and uncomfortable and he didn't tell me what kind of car he was in and the instructions he gave me were basically that if I was waiting in the wrong place then he'd leave.
I didn't know if I was waiting in the right place so I went up and asked some cars after about an hour of waiting and the first person I asked yelled at me 'No! No! No! Go Away!'
But eventually the guy came and asked me if I was the correct person so I did everything right in the end. Then I went to the hostel and he kept giving me strange looks and asking about why my friend wasn't with me and how I said there was going to be two of us and where was the other person.
It was pretty awful. However I coincidentally booked the same hostel as two of the other people studying abroad with me which saved my sanity and the next day I just followed them around.
However, because the adult world is stupid and for some reason people think you know everything that you are supposed to know somehow and I know absolutely nothing about the bank or credit cards or anything 'cause nobody tells me anything and just assumes I know. I didn't know I was supposed to tell my bank about studying abroad and to get my contract changed so I couldn't get any money out of the atm.
So on my second day together with the other two people in my study abroad group we tried to meet up with all the other peeps in our group since everyone was having trouble with transportation and the inept guy can't speak japanese at all so he was completely lost, so we decided to meet at Tokyo Tower and to wait for the girl who I was supposed to be traveling with to come.
We got there in the morning and waited until about 6 pm for her to come so I was there for at least 6 hours. So Tokyo Tower is like my home now! XD
(Here is the section that sells sweets and candies, there was one tent for just Hello Kitty candies. I just took this pic 'cause I was waiting for peeps and the stuff looked cute)
Since I didn't have any money, I couldn't use the public phones, so I had to get my parents to call my bank to get this sorted out, but even if you are the parents you can't do anything to the person's account unless you are the actual person. I had to use facetime to talk to the people over the phone and had to yell into my ipad in a public area so that was an experience.
Luckily I changed my contract and was able to get money! So I got some taiyaki and a ticket to the observation tower and my friend (who turns out is afraid of heights but she still went with us) and looked at Tokyo at night~ It was beautiful and Tokyo Tower was exactly how I had seen in tv shows~ :D
(Here is a glass pane you can walk on to see down Tokyo Tower)
Although I didn't know they had a One Piece thing going on. Tokyo made me have lots of realizations about the importance of anime and manga. In America it's like that quirky thing you might see sometimes in a few select shops whereas in Japan it's EVERYWHERE. All the shrines I visited had Youkai Watch and One Piece merchandise.
We went to Akihabara briefly just to check it out and we went into a SEGA game center which was okay but super tiny without any of the games I wanted to play and it reeked of smoke. But Akihabara was very orderly despite the interiors of the buildings and there was one street that just had people walking on it and no cars.
We stayed at a manga cafe in Shinjuku which was pretteh fab. My biggest worry of all our hotels we were staying at was that we decided to stay at a manga cafe for the night and that just does not sound safe especially since none of us understood how it worked.
But it was probably my most favourite place I stayed at and it's what made me feel more comfortable in Japan. You go through a sliding door and down these stairs with a shiny white floor and glowing pink walls which felt supah funkay and then you get to a desk with peeps in nice slightly punk suits and nice hair (at least the guys did). It was already a strange experience from there.
The manga cafe I stayed at is part of a chain called Manbu. I think most of these cafes would have the same things going on. You can get either a smoking or non smoking single room. However the non smoking rooms only have chairs whereas the smoking rooms have chairs that can turn into beds. You can also get a non smoking vip room for more than 1 person, which is what my friend and I did.
Here's a picture of the vip room
Super dark! It's a small cubicle with a cushiony mat on the floor and bean bag chairs. The walls are all black and there is a dim light above each cubicle. You have your own light as well. I think my biggest complaints about this manga cafe was that it was loud (you could hear all the plumbing going on), it smelled terrible and all our clothes smelled like smoke afterwards, and you couldn't really read manga there. The lighting was too harsh so I had to moved the books all over the place just trying to read a page.
But of all the places we stayed at it had the nicest shower~ :D Immediately hot and nice pressure. Also you could buy a towel and other showering stuff which I needed 'cause I forgot them (especially a towel) and the guys who helped us in the morning all had a visual kei hairstyle which was super cool and comfortable for me. I think most people would not be comfortable if the staff at some place they are staying at have punk hairstyles, but I actually felt more comfortable with this staff than the other places I stayed at with more professional looking staff.
Professional peeps scare the crap outta me.
Then the next day my friend and I could finally do what we planned to do and accidentally woke up too early. But we got to look around Shinjuku and that was fun. Oh this is still super funny and weird but I was telling my friend about how my mom wanted me to wear a business suit in my travels (which would've been hell since it was hot and I was already dying and I was just wearing a tank top and shorts), but she suddenly started telling me this. I thought it was because I told her about how the chinese students at my college called me Snow White 'cause I fit with the chinese pale skin beauty image and that apparently I'd be ideal in China. But when I was telling my friend this I was explaining how it wouldn't work the same in Japan and just after we changed the topic to something else some guy came up to us and asked us where we were from and said we were very beautiful. Which was super awkward but really hilarious after the last conversation we were having! XD
We then ate at Tully's which is a nice chain restaurant with some of the best donuts I've ever had, but the drinks were pretty awful. All the lattes tastes like cheese...>3>
'nyway we decided to venture on our own despite have the weakest knowledge of the subways in Tokyo. We went to Harajuku
Which was quite an experience.
Oh yeah! Security broke my backpack before I even left America so this entire time I was carrying around my backpack a bag of clothes. It was super difficult walking around in Harajuku, with the sun beating down, extremely clothes to all the other shoppers, looking for a backpack. You seriously cannot windowshop here. We tried but you can't see anything since you can barely get into each shop. We eventually just decided to go to random shops and go back to the random shops for air conditioning...
But I did end up buying a backpack, which I don't have a pic of but it's super cute pink with white raindrop pattern on it!
Our experience in Harajuku was super interesting, but recently I have come to wonder what the point of Harajuku was...O.o; I bought the backpack thinking there wasn't anything like it in Japan and that it was special only to go to the mall in this small town in Japan and find the exact same backpack in one of the stores....;orz
Most of the stuff in Harajuku I saw in various other places in Japan so I am very happy we did not spend much in Harajuku.
After Harajuku we went to the Design Festa art museum which was one of the best experiences on my trip next to the manga cafe~
It was super unusual for an art museum 'cause each artist had their own tiny room and the artists were actually present so you could talk to them which was super awesome~ :3 I found some peeps on pixiv who I should be following now but I can't find their business cards...;orz
I bought a pin that was made by one artist which I KNOW is original. I also saw some stockings I should have bought but I thought I'd be spending a lot more in the other places we went to...I wish I did buy it gahh...;orz 'nyway, the place was super nice with art all over the place:
(a corner of a building at Design Festa)
Then after that with some misinformation from the internet we went to Yoyogi park looking for that one freaking blue triangle building. I know you exist in a park in Japan but I still can't find any information on this and when I search google I can't find it but I keep seeing it in random music videos that are shot in Tokyo! ;3; DUN LIE TO ME INTERNET
Because of that we got super lost and also because we didn't know how to use the subways at all.
We walked around I think Ginza completely lost going the opposite direction of every station and getting confused by people's directions. Yes we understand you told us to go straight and take a right at the bridge but what sort of bridge is this??
Also there is very few public benches in Japan, I have learned. However after walking for like 3 hours we finally did find a station and decided to just go to our hotels and forget about our other plans since we were too tired. But the place that we stopped off at that was on the way to our hotel opens up to a big area with none other than BENCHES. So that's where they all were...WHY DOES TOKYO KEEP ITS PUBLIC SEATING IN RANDOM AREAS?! ;M;
So we walked about 30 min to our capsule hotel which was in an interesting part of Shinjuku that is probably famous considering the streets were massive and there were big buildings playing live concerts of some peeps. That was a nice walk even though we were super tired.
The capsule hotel was nice and clean, but it was too professional and scary for me than the manga cafe. Though I felt a lot better when I talked to the other peeps and they were just as confused as I was. I also got to watch some tv FINALLY~ :3 But itte Q was interrupted by our meeting about what we were gonna do tomorrow....>3> Whatever I didn't like Becky anyways...
There were lots of rules at the hotel which was kinda scary and it was really loud, at least for me, but I think I was just unlucky. These two girls (I think they were a couple from the sound of their chatter) were sleeping in the box on top of mine and kept talking the entire time even though there are a like a billion signs saying 'no talking' and several people came to tell them to be quiet they'd only be quiet once they heard that the other people left who told them. Also they had plastic bags of stuff or something 'cause I kept hearing sounds of people rolling around in plastic bags.
I am just assuming from the bits of conversation I could hear over the plastic that they were doing something they didn't want their parents to hear about so maybe they are having a fling or whatever in a hotel they wouldn't hear about or something? I dunno...maybe they weren't a couple but still...they wouldn't shut-up.
'course I can sleep through anything so I still went to sleep but still.
So that's how my trip went in Tokyo~ Not very good except for Tokyo Tower, Harajuku, and Design Festa...so I'm gonna go back for various things: Ikebukuro (my friend wants me to buy her stuff and she already gave me the money for it so it's required), a hair cut, meeting with an editor
I understand the subway system a lot better now so hopefully my second experience there will be okay.
I also don't have classes on fridays so I have 4 day weekends so I can go whenever, but I'm not done with my manga so I won't go into that happens and also my hair grows out. Also there are some holidays on monday so then I'd have a 5 day weekend so maybe I will shoot for a weekend like that.
SUPER LONG POST! BUT SO MUCH TO SAY~ :D I'ma go make some gyudon and then maybe finish the rest of the days of travel unless itte q comes on in that time (which shouldn't matter to most of you guys since I think most of you are probably in the western hemisphere and are asleep around that time or waking up too early)
