カラオケ！ Karaoke!

3/29--

KARAOKE!!!! First time I’ve ever done it! Well, besides sing star. But this was the real deal! We went to downtown Nagoya and we got udon for lunch om nom nom. Made a new friend named Holly today. She’s from Great Britain woooh! Anyways, before we got our sing on, we went to a store called Anicentral, or something like that. So much manga and other crazy merchandise!!! When I was in the Final Fantasy section, I couldn’t help but be a little fan girl :P


Moogle phone charm! :D

Then it was karaoke time!!! The place was cute.



We got a whole room to ourselves for about 3 ½ hours. It cost each person about 10 bucks, and there were 7 of us. Karaoke is expensive huh!? But it was a total blast and so worth it!


Our own private room!

We sang so many great songs, from Journey to Backstreet Boys, to Spice Girls, to Hanson Brothers, to Kesha, to Cake, to well, you name it. What a great time indeed! I think I’ve lost a little bit of my voice. So I will rest tons tonight! Afterwards we got curry for dinner. Yup curry again. This stuff is everywhere and its gooooooood! We found a store called 3 Coin. Everything there is 315 yen or less. So roughly 4 bucks or less. I got me some smoking hott sunglasses. Oh right! I also saw this amazingly cute clock, and I tried to ask if they had any left. Boy was that rough. I can never figure out what to say! But of course after I walk away, I figure out what to say. After that, it was back home! And then to top the night off…the wonderful Kristen skyped me!!! Yyayayayyaya! <3


Purdy at night!

ZOO!

3/27- -

Its Sunday and me, Sarah, Kris, and my new friend Kohsuke went to the Higashiyama Zoo today!!! It was a blast! It was nice and sunny! A little too windy, but hey that wasn’t bad until nighttime came around.

Yes Cincinnati Zoo is rated pretty high on the American Zoo list, but this Zoo was a whole other feel and it was great! At this zoo, you could get so close to the animals. Sometimes I didn’t even need to use my zoom on my camera! This Zoo had a really big variety of animals. There was also a garden and a GIANT greenhouse full of beautiful plants and flowers. This Zoo is absolutely ginormous!! There’s even a little mini theme park in it!

Hahahah no idea, but yes they had squirrels at this zoo.

These polar bears were adorable!!! They danced for us!

Besides the Zoo, we also went to the sky tower. Its basically a HUGE tower where you can go all the way up to the top and see the view. Its an amazing view. You can just see forever. I love looking out at the mountains. I knew Japan had mountains, but I didn’t know that they had this many. I love looking out as far as I can and trying to imagine what else is out there.

Escalator to the top of the hill to go up to the sky tower

Sky Tower

LENS FLARE!!!! But such a pretty view!

3/23-3/24- PLACEMENT TEST …..SO MUCH AGONY. That is all.

I get a Cellphone!!!!

3/21--

Went to Sakae today. The main reason was to go to the mac store. Leah’s computer was being a fart and I had to get 2 keys replaced. It was really funny cause, even though I’m thousands of miles from the Kenwood Apple Store, the style of the one here was exactly the same. Only difference was this store had 2 floors, and whenever something special happened, everyone clapped. Yup, lots of random clapping.

Under ground mall

After that, it was a trip to try to find a bank that would take travelers checks and exchange them for cash. Since this Monday happened to be a holiday, that was a little more difficult to find. But we succeeded. Ended up in a Citibank, with giant touch screens everywhere!!! Then we went to Softbank, and I got my cell phone!!! HAHAHHA YAYYAYA!!! It’s super awesome and cute! Its really cool to exchange numbers. It’s done by infrared. So you just hold your phones up to one another and bam. We all call it phone sex..haha..So we had delicious curry for dinner, and then called it a day.

Tonkatsu and curry! OMG SO GOOD

Yup a giant ferris wheel! They're everywhere here!

Nagoya Tower

My cellphone! Cute yes!!! I'm always changing the charms :P

Nagoya Castle

3/19--

Today was great. Almost overslept again though!!! あさねぼする！！We went to downtown Nagoya and Nagoya Castle. It was so nice, the school paid for this trip. So bus, subway, and castle tickets were no cost to us students! I felt pretty confident in my Japanese today. Had lots of different conversations. It wasn’t the best Japanese, but it got the job done :P First stop was the Castle. It was ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL! I’ve seen pictures of it before, but in person, it is just truly stunning!

I even tired something new, green tea ice cream…it was interesting, but in a good way.

The cool part about this trip was we got to go inside the castle! Of course its been remodeled and set up for people to go through, but it was still really cool! I loved the architecture and the art.

On the highest floor was a souvenir shop. I got myself and awesome cell phone charm, oohh ya. After that we were a little rushed and I didn’t get to see all I wanted, so a group of us are going to have to go back. Then it was back to the train.

Souvenirs!!!!

View from the top!

We got lunch underground in a ramen shop. Real ramen is amazing by the way. Just wow, the instant stuff is nothing like this. The real thing is soooo much better. SOOO MUCH BETTER!

After lunch, our group had free time. So we walked around the mall. I saw some awesome boots. And now I really want to go shoe shopping!

Across the street is a store called Big Camera, it's a HUGE electronics store. You name it, they have it, 7 floors worth, plus a basement. We were all looking at electronic dictionaries, and boy were they expensive there!!! So instead a group of us wandered off. We found the gameboy 3D-DS….ya its not that great.

Big Camera

From there we went to the very bottom and did picapura (I think that's what its called). This is the things you always see in anime’s and junk, the photo booths that do all the crazy pictures. Its funny cause they automatically make your eyes bigger, so naturally mine are ginormous! It was definitely fun though. We then tried our luck on the crane machines. Leah was the only one who won anything :P I tried, but failed…..anyways……..

After that long and exciting day, we hoped back on the train and headed home.

Downtown Nagoya

Orientation can be Painful T__T

3/18--

Wooo wee…super boring orientation today. I started off the day bad anyways by sleeping through my alarm clock, but anyways… The room was so HOT and everyone kept falling asleep. Today we talked about school conduct and attendance and how to pick classes. Lunch at the little cafeteria, got curry tonkatsu….I’m so addicted to that stuff. Then it was back for safety orientation. It was about natural disasters, robbery prevention, don’t do drugs, don’t join the yakuza blah blah. A police officer spoke to us about bicycle safety. He drew diagrams and everything. Then there was some cherry blossom festival info. This one went past the time it was supposed to end, so that made it just a bit more painful :P That was pretty much all today. Tomorrow should be fun though! We will see. Its kinda sad again cause more people are getting sent home. Now I’m just waiting to see if UC is gonna pull us out. So far they say we are ok, but who knows how long that's gonna last. >.<

Since 1993...hahahahahahah really??? hhahah!!!

Our Strabucks-esque drinks..we needed the caffeine man!!!!


*posted at 6:02 am.....thats a lie...its Sunday April 3rd at 10:10 pm!!! dun dun duuuuuun!

Entrance Ceremony

3/17--

Today was a fun day. Got to sleep in a bit, woke up at 10 instead of 8. Yay!!! Today was the induction ceremony. After some speeches and getting up and sitting down, up and down, and bowing, we were welcomed into the university as students.

Afterwards the fun came. There was a welcome party. TONS OF FREE FOOD. Which we were able to bring back to iHouse and have for dinner. Yay! Free lunch and dinner. I was brave and tried some fried squid…not bad, tasted a little like fishy chicken?? Lol. Anyways it was fun cause I met more people! Plus there were some presentations that showed us what kinds of clubs there were that you could join. Cheerleading club, jazz club, movie club, alcapello club, orchestra club, tea ceremony club, kendo club, and rap club. Yes…rap club. After all the presentations, it was more mingling and foooooood. Then it was back to iHouse relax and play pokemanz! Yay pokemanz!!!!! A good day!