went to my first matsuri ever! between my three dorm mates and myself, finished off yaki dango, takoyaki, croquettes, taiyaki, yakisoba and fried chicken wings.

was very fun, though different from what i expected. i imagined a collected group of stores, huddled in a field or some sort of open space. what i saw was streets being closed off and stores lined up close to the pavements, while in the middle huge floats with musicians and a mascot for each of the city's districts were hand pulled by huge groups of people (actually, mostly little kids trying to feel important).

unfortunately, not many people in yukatas as autumn is approaching, but was still very crowded and lively. the "float showdowns", as i term them, were the best part. i very much like the fox mascots.

on my way home from a short shopping trip today, saw a drunk woman in a kimono simultaneously staggering and swigging beer at the side of the road, after which she dumped the empty can unceremoniously onto the ground and swayed away. suspect i'm starting to gain something of a japanese mindset, as what shocked me more was the blatant littering.

there are some things cheaper in japan after all.
i got ( these )
for just 130 yen.

School is killing me. Also Japanese keyboards. (All the punctuation marks have been rearranged, and very often I can't find the "@" sign.)

I keep on seeing celebrities at school, and even when I don't know they're celebrities people point them out to me. The one I noticed right off the bat was Jimmy Mackey (because of my short-lived Johnny's craze). Fukuhara Ai (national table tennis player) is in my dormitory, and someone yelled during lunch that JyongRi was a really famous singer. Unfortunately, the most famous and popular Saitou-kun has yet to appear, but apparently you can tell where he is just by the mobs of girls.

Slacking off in Information Processing right now. A guy from Romania just came to the front to introduce himself (when everyone else did it sitting down), and he stared some Chinese guy into shock. Very visual-kei, like a more creepy and more blonde (if that's possible) Gackt.

My mum came by to visit, and I spent the past week bringing her around.

Visited Harajuku, but only had time for the Takeshita-doori area. At any rate, it's insanely crowded on holidays, and I'm probably only going to attempt it again on a school day.

Random thoughts:
The single Daiso there is so out of place, although it does have a wealth of really cute 100 yen disney merchandise.
The public toilet there was the dirtiest I've seen since arriving here. Not as bad as Singapore's worst, but there was a faint smell, and the floor was covered with dry litter.
There's this major obsession with crepes. I saw at least three different stores on Takeshita-doori alone.

I tried a strawberry cream crepe at Shinjuku, and it wasn't half bad. Just slightly weird, because it comes rolled up in a piece of paper, while I'm used to having it sit nicely on a plate.

Spent Thurday and Friday at Tokyo DisneyLand and DisneySea!

( disneylove~ )

It's only been three days, and I'm already reaping the benefits of being in an international school.

( more photos~ )

( dorm photo post! )

More later, when the rest of my room is fit to be seen.

Went to Ikebukurou for an Italian lunch with Kyu-san, and then major electronics shopping at Akihabara.

And - Akiba is absolutely amazing. Everything there is so cheap, and I actually managed to bargain down some prices. Because two of the Ishimaru stores there were closing down, they were selling a set of the Sony Cybershot T20 and a 1GB memory card at 26800 yen. Unfortunately, they only had it in silver, which neither of us wanted, so we crossed the street to the other Ishimaru store, and told the salesperson about the set. He offered us the same deal for 26000 yen. Kyu-san got the black one, and we went on in search of a pink one for me. Wandered into another store, further down the street, and after I told him about the 26000 yen set, he immediately quoted me 25800 yen. And what makes this so amazing? If I bought this in Singapore, I'd have paid the equivalent of 46070 yen.

We asked the nice salesperson about Maid Cafes in the area too. Strangely enough, he didn't even raise an eyebrow, just calmly led us across the street to get a map on which he circled a couple of the more popular ones. (I'm really not sure how this reflects on otaku culture.) We didn't go in the end because we were too tired, but we'll probably drop by again next week. Prices are surprisingly reasonable - 500 yen for a drink and 1000 for a set lunch. (Jan-chan, are you jealous?)

Day One. Or actually Day Two, but due to certain technological problems, was unable to access anything vaguely resembling a communications device.

Arrived early in the morning yesterday, feeling totally strung out. (Note to self, and also to other people thinking of visiting Japan: SIA beats JAL any day. Trust me.) The person who came to pick me up totally blew me away by using a whole string of Japanese the moment I asked if he was from my dorm, dealing the final blow to my already addled brain. After which I wasted two hours of my life stoning at the airport while waiting for another Thai guy whose flight got delayed. The strange thing is, Narita is really quiet and people-less and small. I mean, Terminal One and Two of Narita put together is smaller than just Terminal One of Changi, and has something like 20% of the activity. I mean, I've been to Changi Airport at 4 in the morning before, and there is way more people there than when I was at Narita at 9AM.

The lack of English is really kind of a brutal shock. I mean, I remember what it was like from the last time I visited, but I really expected our guides to be able to at least be semi-fluent? But it's not the case at all. Especially the older people, because they use more polite (ie. more complicated) forms, and I can't even begin explaining how confused I am when speaking with my dorm manager. (This morning, she told me two guys were coming, and I thought she meant they were going to stay at our dorm. And since we're a girls-only dorm, I was like, huh? And then another girl checked with her, and she actually meant two guys were coming to pick us up to go to school. >_<)

Anyway, my room is much bigger than I imagined, and really comfortable. Plus, the fabulous thing is that for foreign students, utility fees are fixed, so we can use as much air-conditioning/heating/water/internet/telephone as we want. The absolutely annoying thing is that all the plugs here are two prong, something that I didn't know about. (Stupid laptop manufacturer that assured me my laptop is totally international.) So I went two entire days without a computer, which utterly killed me dead.

On the bright side, I stay entertained by making a whole new bunch of friends - mostly Chinese and a couple of Koreans, one Indian, one Indonesian, one Thai. On the not so bright side, my brain has finally failed to function while I attempted to simultaneously speak English, Mandarin, Japanese, a bit of Cantonese, and read some Korean.

No photos for now, but will be shopping for a digital camera sometime this weekend! I did visit Ikebukurou today to buy some electronics stuff, and then Seiyu in Tokorozawa to buy household items, so I'm pretty much all set and comfortable. Will immediately embark on a shopping frenzy with my brand new dorm mates when I recover from all that heavy carrying.