Eastern Adventures Unrelated to the Hall I Occupy at Oberlin College

みんなさん、お元気ですか。

To start, happy hecka belated new year. o_o;; My new year in tokyo was partially uneventful, because I am a huuuge n00b & didn't know how anything worked, so basically I ended up around shibuya (?) where festival food was eaten, crowds were watched, freezing off of extremeties occurred, and a new year was rung in as I returned to the apartment. There didn't seem to be any of the anticipated fireworks, but everyone at Tokyo Tower like. released a balloon into the sky, assumedly carrying with it their dreams for the new year!

I am baaaaack from my adventure in Aomori&Hokkaido, which are both in the northhhh of Japan. Aomori is more or less at the tip of the main island I guess, and Hokkaido is the island above that. We stayed in Hakodate, and it was beautiful. I've found that they don't really salt roads in Japan, and I love that! Snow salts completely ruin the experience of snow for me and make the roads look unpleasantly dirty. Good riddance!

But yes, HAKODATE. Highlights:

-sleeping on the ferry ride
-Living across from a Lawson (best conbini, in my opinion)
-Being in a nice hotel
-going into the local temple and having the sweet old man there at the time tell us excitedly about everything.
-understanding some of what said sweet old man said.
-seeing a Russian Orthodox Church
-Seeing the Greek Catholic church from the hill of the Russian Orthodox Church.
-The views in general
-lights at the harbor at night
-eating in a santa themed restaurant, and then getting DELICIOUSSSSS OMG shake and fries there the next day.
-sleeping on the bus ride back

and of course

VISITING AN ONSEN. It was indoors, and lacked the masses of old people I expected to find. Actually, it was basically empty. Just the girl I was staying with (who only spent a few minutes in the bath because of the temperature). I was happy, obviously. Imagine your perfect relaxing hot bath, but larger and with the water coming out of a bronze lion's head. I miss the ridiculously hot bath, now that I remember it. it was sooo perfect for a short period of time. Haha. Uhmmm.

Hakodate is a beautiful city. I wish I could go to Yuki Matsuri (The Snow Festival) in February. ): it looks like a blaaaaast!

All in all, Hakodate is/was spectacular.

Lately, I haven't been up to very much. Uhmmm let's see. This week, I went to Shibuya, Akihabara & Harajuku. Shibuya was pretty gross/scary. At least, the downtown part is. It's like New York City more or less, and NYC is probably one of my least favourite places on earth. HOWEVER, I found a good magazine shop there and alssoooo, successfully crossed a scramble (but not the scramble. maybe I'll find it & make it happen.) AND ALSO, however, the outersuburbs are gorgeousss! There was this wonderful shop I found called Tsubakico that sold delightful and reasonably priced hand-made trinkets & rare dolls. :^) I'll visit once more before I go, definitely. The housing beyond that was what I like to call "The Shibuya Tangle." It's a bunch of wide alleyways, pretty lights and dead-end roads. Being lost in it while trying to find downtown Shibuya was pretty great when I didn't get paranoid about killers. Ahhhhhh! But, yes. All of the architecture in the tangle was terribly unique. Sarah's boyfriend says it's because that's where all of the people with money live, and that in Japan if you have money to buy a house, you might as well tear the ones you're moving into down and build your own. Amirite? Great, great thinking!

Akihabara was noooot like Densha Otoko. Since it wasn't exactly the bee's knees, here are the highlights:
-Short metro ride from my place to Akihabara
-cheap-ish store with great stuff was located
-Evangelion Interface Headset hairclips were obtained, as well as an Axis Powers Hetalia Russian figurine (OMG, THESE ARE LIKE TWO OF MY FAVOURITE SHOWS EVER *FOAMS* KOLKOLKOLKOLKOLKOLKOL...)
-Interesting escalator that looks like spacetube was ridden
-More Hetalia figures were purchased in a 9-pack (!!)
-Music-box renditions of some of Joe Hisaishi's compositions for Miyazaki films were heard (I look forward to obtaining this music in the fu-chyaaaa)
-Gigi!!! (The cat from Kiki's delivery service)
-I got 6 reeeeeally good singles for 1000en.
-Really good pastries were eaten.

And nowwww, Harajuku! Harajuku is bizasically Tokyo's ~fashion center~ as it's where all of the crazily dressed people go to parade, it's by one of Tokyo's most famous dept. stores, etc etc, and is another tangle of alleyways, except that in this tangle, there are shops and not houses. I got a really good gift for someone in my first few moments there. :^D Will not say who or what. Should I do an afterthefact post with pictures of everyone & their gifts?

Anyway, I will let the pictures posted later speak for themselves, but it's everything you could imagine shopping in Asia to be like. Narrow roads, crowded streets--throngs of people EVERYWHERE, a lot more booth/boutique stand-styled businesses. Also, African hustlers getting into fights. Lolwat. Pretty much, everything you need fashionwise could be found on the streets of Harajuku (past the gate right across from the train). I even saw a wedding in passing! The H&M and Forever21 were soooooo incredibly crowded. They had to have security at the door of each (particularly F21) controlling the crowd and trying to disperse it effectively. Crowd-wise, I'd equate it to Walmart on Black Friday, yeah?

But the best was definitely Laforet Harajuku. This is where I spent my money--quality goods, range of prices from cheapie cheap to designer madness. But there were also a lot of sales, and I walked away with two great sweaters because of that. :^) One is by a label affiliated to furfur (which is like A FAVEEEE) and the other is by a local brand I'd never heard of. Harajuku is very pretty at night, and there's still a lot for me to explore. I've also got to see some shrines, Omotesando hills, Koenji and the Oriental Bazaar (which is like, the biggest place to get souveniers. I'm assuming it's reasonable or else so many people wouldn't mention it). Ah! Also, Tokyo Tower & the palace!! )): MUST.

I leave in like 10 days for Kyoto/Hiroshima. I'm only at 500 cranes though, so basically, 100 cranes a day from now on. Owww, I guess it needs to be done. ); I need to get more paper, if that's the case... But I'm really looking forward to all of the culture and history thar a place like Tokyo can't offer me (at least, not so readily).

To close, here's one of my favourite songs of the moment to close things out. SHIINA, HIIIIII, I'M SORRY I MISSED YOUR CONCERT, BUT I'M TOTALLY CONSIDERING COMING BACK TO JAPAN TO CATCH THE END OF YOUR TOUR, EXCEPT I HAVE FINALS THAT WEEK. ;_________; WHY IS TOKYO JIHEN SUCH A PERFECT BAND?

*runs away*



P.S. next post is pretty much ALL PICTURES. Be excited, because it's going to KILL ME to try and upload them all.

P.P.S.

Word of the day: おすすめ　－ recommendation. Typically found on signboards outside of restaurants & cafes.

Song of the day - 見つめていたい (Mitsumeteitai) - by flumpool. I will translate this as either "It hurts to see you," or "I want to see you." Someone who knows Nihongo, help me out? Oh, and go watch the video on their site: http://flumpool.jp -- all of their other songs/videos are great too, so you won't be disappointed!

Peace out, girlscouts!