The Overly Long Catch-up Post

Ahah, I shouldn’t make promises to myself about regular updates on this blog… it just makes me feel guilty when I forget to write anything for a while…

So, my last post was waaaaay back in November. Since then, a lot has happened (obviously), including a visit back to England for Christmas. I think I mentioned in my last post that I was trying to write a novel. November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, and it's a challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month. I actually managed to complete it, for the first time, although the end result was pretty dire. Still, I now know what I want it to be like, and there will no doubt be updates as I try to beat my ideas into some sort of coherent shape.

Anyways, my year in Japan is over, and I am finally back in England (actually, I’ve been back for a month), and I even have a summer job! So, quick recap of the last few months in Japan: I went to language classes, it was dull, especially when the sensei split me and Ohannah up and put us in different sections. This was definitely not inspired in any way by our penchant for sitting next to each other and having entire conversations in my notebook… I had an awesome lecturer for Religion in Japan, who may have been my favourite lecturer of my entire university career, which may have also lead to me figuring out what I want to write my dissertation on!

The Japanese school year begins in April, so in February we said goodbye to the Japanese 4^th years, and then on the 2^nd April we welcomed the new first years. They were all awesome, and got really involved in Global House and I miss them all :(

My birthday in April was a bit of a failday, although my unitmates gave me the cutest cake ever, and I got other tasty foods. Like rainbow pancakes!

Super cute cake, right? One of the nicest tasting ones I've ever eaten too!

In May, I went to Kyoto and Nara with Hannah, which was my parent’s birthday present to me, and I got to play with the wild-but-almost-tame deer. The bruise on my side from where one of them bit me for not feeding it fast enough only lasted a couple of days… we also couch surfed for the second night, which was awesome – the guy who owns the house doesn’t live there, but he lets couch surfers stay there for free for as long as there is space available. There are little thank you messages to him written all over the walls – was really very awesome!

This was my favourite deer. He let me pet him for ages

Couch Surfing - Seriously these were all over all the walls. There were even some on the ceiling when people ran out of room.

Back in Tokyo, I managed to pass Japanese! Though it was a very close thing… strangely enough, the day after my last exam was the first day I felt like I can do this language thing. The last week in Japan, I was chatting with random people in shops etc like I can actually speak Japanese or something! Crazy, I know!

After exams we only had a week before we got kicked out of the dorms and I had to come home, but we definitely made the most of it, doing a lot of the things we had been planning. For example me and Hannah went to Ikebukuro for the day, cosplaying as Shizuo and Izaya from Durarara (an anime set in Ikebukuro). Cosplaying in public is kinda not something people do in Japan, but by this point I didn't really care if I shocked the random Japanese passersby with being unJapanese. Something I learned very early on is that no matter how hard I try, I would never be thought of as anything other than a foreigner and you have a lot more fun if you don't try to pretend to be something you're not. So yeah, cosplaying in public. Was awesome.

What you can't see is the friends of that Japanese school girl  who were staring at us and proclaiming how 'kakkoi' (cool) we were :P

Anyways, the being able to speak Japanese thing was quite helpful when it came to getting to the airport. Some people reading this who were around on Facebook at that time might remember the panic I managed to work myself into. I meant to put up the whole saga earlier, but I was so relieved to actually be home that I forgot. Sooo, I will try to keep it brief!

My flight was going to be at 9.45 am from Narita airport. This meant I would have to get there by 8.45 at the very latest. It takes two hours to travel from the university I was in to the airport. However, the first part of the journey had to be done by bus, bike or walking. Needless to say, with the amount of stuff I was bringing home, bus was the only option. Problem number 1 – the first bus was going to be far too late – 7.30 or 8am or something. There was no way I would be able to take it and still get there in time. Problem number 2 – I did not have the money to get a hotel room for the night or something in a place that would be closer to the airport.

With my typical genius, I therefore decided to go to Narita airport the night before and stay overnight in the building. I checked the website (albeit briefly), and couldn’t find anything about the time they opened/closed, so I assumed that they would be open all night, like Stanstead in London and, I presume, London Heathrow.

My friend Hannah had very kindly offered to help me get all my stuff onto the train that would take me direct to Narita, so off we set. Problem number 3 – we were leaving at the same time as one of the last parties in Tsuru – the social room of the dorm, and so of course, everyone wanted to say goodbye, hug me and all that – what can I say, I’m awesome and everyone loves me! This wasn’t technically a problem, except that it made me a bit later than I had planned and caused more problems later.

So! We got to the bus stop, having missed the bus I wanted to get, but with another one only 15 minutes wait away. It was at this point that my archery bag decided that it hated me and that the zip was going to break. I fixed it up with pin badges and started sewing it shut when the bus arrived. We got on the bus with minimal difficulties, and then soon we were at Musashi-sakai station, the closest one to our university. Hannah had agreed to help me to Nippori station, where I would change on to my final train of the journey. I used the hour long train ride to Nippori to finish sewing my archery bag back together. We arrived at Nippori, and I realised that I hadn’t remembered to check the route to the airport before I had left. Nevermind! I had done this journey before, and there were easy to follow signs all around! So, we went to the platform that said it would take me to Narita, and Hannah helped me onto the train. Right, the time at this point was about 11.30pm, so I was aware this was probably the last train, and that it might not actually go all the way to Narita. It didn’t, but there was another one that did, and I managed to do that change surprisingly easily with all my stuff. I arrived at Narita station at about 1am. Problem number 4 – Narita station and Narita Airport are NOT THE SAME PLACE. If I had arrived an hour earlier, I would have been able to get a train from there to the airport, but having been delayed, the next train was going to be at 6am.

No worries! I thought, I’ll sit outside the station and wait until then. I am a strong independent female who can cope even when I make stupid mistakes! Needless to say, I had been sat on my suitcase for less than a minute when I started to cry. What can I say? It was late, I was tired, I wanted to get home, and I was annoyed at myself. Plus, my arms hurt from lugging heavy bags around.

Thinking back, the expressions on the faces of the Japanese people hurrying by were priceless. They clearly had no idea what to make of this strange foreign girl crying her eyes out at about 1.30am by a station, surrounded by suitcases.

It actually wasn’t long before this random old guy came up and asked me what was wrong. Bearing in mind all the conversations I had that night were in Japanese, I feel quite proud of myself. I managed to explain the mistake I had made that that I just wanted to get to the airport, but the trains wouldn’t start until 6am. Bless him, he tried really hard to calm me down and stop me from crying, and then offered to pay for me to have a taxi ride to the airport. He said he wouldn’t be able to give me more than 3000yen – about £25, because he needed the rest of the cash he had on him to get home. The taxi driver we spoke to said that the taxi would be 4000yen, but I did at least have 1000, although I think only just, so I would be able to do it.

Off we set, with me having thanked the old guy profusely. While in the taxi, me and the driver chatted about why I had been in Japan and how I had got myself into this stupid mess. Part way there, he said something like ‘you do know that the airport is closed at night, yes?’ Behold! Problem number 5 raised its head. A bit panicked I asked if there was a McDonalds or similar fast food place nearby that I could wait in. He said there was a gyudon (beef ricebowl) place. He took me there, with a brief detour to a hotel to show me where I could get a free shuttlebus to the airport at about 5.30am. It was about a 5 minute walk up the road from the gyudon place, which he took me back to. In the end, he only charged 3000 for the ride, and then gave me 1000yen, telling me to get myself something to eat and take care.

So yeah. I got to the airport, via the shuttlebus the next morning (I was able to access the hotel wifi from the pavement outside it, and so freaked out on FB until people helped calm me down)

The rest of the story is fairly dull, interspersed with me being VERY ANGRY AT LUFTHANSA, and a really nice lady giving me a lift in a motor trolley thing across Frankfurt airport.

If anyone needed proof that human beings can be amazing, kind and just generally awesome, I think I found it in spades over that 36 hour travelling period.

AND I’M DONE! Further blog updates may include, but not be limited to: The trials and tribulations of searching for and then acquiring a summer job, the joys of LARP and the amazing people I’ve met there, my attempts to continue my novel/clothes designing/nyan cat plushie making.

Peace out :P

Finally here, after a arduous three week delay

Hello! So, you may have noticed that I haven't really posted anything for... a while. I think it's about three weeks.  While I'd like to blame this solely on being incredibly busy, sadly that just isn't the case. Not to say I haven't been very busy, but there have been evenings with me sat in my room when I totally could have written this, and just...didn't. Partly because I have a very short attention span, so concentrating for the hour or so necessary to write, edit and add photos to one of these can be a little taxing to my dominant childish side.

Also, every time I thought 'Hmm, I should probably write that blog entry now' I would remember something I had taken photos of recently, and that I had not yet uploaded said photos to my computer. I was therefore faced with the choice of leaving out the event, and having to explain why in a future blog, going through the arduous task of retrieving the cable to transfer photos from camera to computer from its usual hiding place (in plain sight, right next to my computer) and then wasting maybe even five of my oh so precious minutes transferring the photos... or putting off writing all together until I'd gotten round to sorting out photos at some mystical future point in time. I really do like making life difficult for my future self, whilst grumbling that past-me clearly had no consideration for others, or foresight.

So yes, lots to catch up on, because I know you have all missed my wonderfully dry witty comments on society, and my delightful Tokyo antics.

To begin with, I know I left some of you hanging with my last comment from the previous post - a tantalising glimpse at a weekend that I was very excited about. I know there are some who have been dying to know what happened, and what had made me so excited - it's alright, you don't need to hide your anticipation, you're with friends now. So, the weekend started off with the Canada House Ball on the Friday. This was a party held by Canada House, which is one of the all-male dorms on campus. They had dressed the place up to look like a club, and there was an outside area as well, where the performances happened. Now, I was running a little low on money at this point, and so had resigned myself to not buying any drinks whilst there. But then a pre-party party happened in one of the units in Global House... Anyway, when the Global House group arrived, I'm fairly sure we made the whole party about ten times livelier. From what I could see, people were talking when we arrived, but no one was dancing, except us. Now, there are about sixty people in Global House, and whilst not all of them went to the Ball, enough did to make it a very successful dorm invasion.

The Ball was awesome, and the performance by Smooth Steppers (the ICU dance club who are all made of pure, solidified awesome) was incredible, but I get tired of dancing quickly, and after bothering as many of my friends who I could find, I decided to call it a night.

Saturday was basically just filled with me lazing the day away in my room. Nothing particularly awesome happened that day.

Sunday, however, was one of the best days, possibly of my whole life. Now, I really like a certain type of Japanese music called 'Visual Kei'. It's very unique to Japan. Basically the idea is, that the bands don't just provide music to please your ears, but a complete aesthetic experience. Basically, this means they dress up in awesome costumes and act very over-dramatically on stage which, as those of you who know me well will understand, is something I fully support, on stage and off stage.

On that Sunday, there was a music festival, called the V-Rock Festival. It was a little way out of Tokyo, so meant an early start. I went with two of my friends, who also like V-Kei. This was the first and only music festival I have been to, and was AWESOME! All my favourite bands were there. In fact, most of the really famous ones were there. Name dropping time for anyone who knows Japanese bands, or wants to look some up: The artist GACKT, the bands Versailles Philharmonic Quintet, Golden Bomber, Ali Project, Girugamesh (which should have been Gilgamesh, but turns out they didn't do enough research into the proper spelling of characters in Mesopotamian mythology. Honestly, some people...), Mucc, SuG, Matenrou Opera... I'll stop there, because there were almost thirty acts. It was impossible to see all of them, but luckily none of my favourites clashed with each other - my favourites being GACKT, Versailles and Golden Bomber.

Wooo, look, a sign!

Golden Bomber is a recent interest for me - I only found out about them about two weeks before the festival. They are unique amongst V-Kei bands in that they don't even pretend that they play their music live. In fact, although it is written by them, they openly admit it was recorded by professional musicians, although I believe the singer sometimes sings live. They are the first, and only, 'air' V-Kei band. I think they are satirising bands who mime on stage rather than playing live, but they also seem to just be messing about. The live show I saw included someone doing a 'guitar solo' - which for them equated to speed eating corn on the cob, and someone having a shower on stage, because he felt the venue was a bit too warm. I almost hurt myself laughing, and was very surprised by the amount of the Japanese I could understand.

So, moving on from pretty Japanese rock stars, to the following weekend. Now, in most high school anime, and in Japanese TV dramas set in high schools, at some point there is a 'cultural festival', where each class and each club has a cafe, or food stall, or performance to attract attention to them, or raise money. Turns out universities have them too, and that was what the last weekend in October consisted of. It was absolutely awesome, and there were far more types of tasty food on offer than I could afford or manage to eat, but I tried a few. I was also helping out with a cosplay cafe, the costume for which arrived the day before the festival, thanks to my awesome parents.

Wandering around in cosplay in Japan is very different to in England. It's less intimidating here, although that might just have been because there were other people in weirder outfits running around. I would probably feel pretty out of place wandering into a supermarket on a normal day dressed like that. I had a couple of people ask if I was dressed as Alice in Wonderland, for an early Halloween celebration, which I actually hadn't thought of using the costume for, so that was fun.

Personification of Belarus, or Alice in Wonderland?
Who knows, but I certainly didn't see any rabbits that day...

And on to last weekend - I'm almost there! Thanks for staying with me on this! In Tokyo, there is a place called Ikebukuro, in Ikebukuro there is a shopping centre thing called Sunshine City, and in Sunshine City is a place called Namja Town (I suddenly feel like I'm writing a children's book...). I'm still not sure what to define Namja Town as, even though I have been there. It is a bit like a theme park, without any rides, but with lots of food. This is a theme I seem to have noticed in Japan - the cultural festival was all about the food booths, with maybe one game booth, and one garage sale type booth, unlike in England where those would be the norm.

We had barely left the station, when we had to make an emergency stop off at a Japanese bank. The reason for this was that I was very low on cash, but luckily had some English money. The on-campus post office had refused to change it, as the £20 note I had wasn't in their book of 'recognised English currency'. The picture of a £20 that they had is in fact one that is now out of circulation, and although I tried to explain this to them, there was no way they would believe me, so I had to brave the bank. Situations like this are what restore my faith in being able to cope in this country. I may get bored in Japanese class, and struggle to remember the vocab, but I can walk into a Japanese bank and, with no help from anyone else, understand what I am being told, and walk out with my purpose accomplished, having changed my money, and therefore being able to afford a train ticket back home.

Back to Namja town. You pay 300 yen to get in - which is about £2.50 at the moment. Inside it is pretty much a maze. The official guide book admits such and warns parents to keep their children near them. Currently, possibly due to Halloween, there is a ghost hunting theme, with games you can play involving searching for ghosts with sensor things (the 'ghosts' are in fact carefully 'hidden' electric devices that probably do something like bounce the signal back at you). The walls are full of posters that look like they could have come from America or England during one of the World Wars.

Whatever the Namderbirds are, they are apparently here to protect us. Yay?

Whilst there are food places scattered liberally around, the main ones are concentrated into 'savoury' and 'sweet'. My idea of going straight to Ice-cream City was vetoed by the people I was with, so instead we went to Gyoza Town. Gyoza are very tasty dumplings, which weren't nearly as expensive as I expected. There was also a rogue sweet shop that I expect was only let in because it fitted with the traditional theme of that specific area, but it had very cheap, very tasty sweets, so I will forgive them for trespassing into the domain of the savoury.

Then to Icecream City, where I actually didn't have any ice-cream, although I definitely plan to next time I go. I did, however, take pictures of some of the odder flavours they were selling, including garlic flavour, cheese flavour, sunflower flavour, eel flavour and, my personal favourite, mysterious fruit and chocolate flavour (no really, that was its official name...)

Apparently Dracula endorses the Garlic ice-cream.
Also, wasabi ice-cream (the green label)? Really? Isn't there enough despair in the world already?

Right next to the land of ice-creamy wonderment was a large arcade, which contained the real reason for us going there. One of my friends is fairly obsessed with a game series called 'Persona'. The fourth game is currently being made into an anime, which she had got me watching. In this arcade was a Persona 4 themed purikura (sticker pictures) booth. It was a touch more expensive than normal purikura, and you didn't get to decorate your pictures afterwards, but we all agreed it was worth it. I then beat one of my friends at air hockey.

The only other thing of interest that has happened is not Japan related at all. November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, where people worldwide are challenged to write 50,000 words of the novel they have bubbling away in the back of their head. I have been trying to complete this for three years - with a new story idea each time, and although I have fallen a bit behind, I really want to finish it this year. Finals are next week though, so things may get a little stressful over here in Camp Hazel, and due to that and my recent track record, don't expect regular updates of this blog. But there again, you never know. I do delight in being unpredictable after all...