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Hirakata, Osaka: October 06, Monday Nothing much. Went to class. Class ended. Went home. Ate dinner, did homework, went to sleep. Hirakata, Osaka: October 07, Tuesday Nothing much. Went to class. Class ended. Skipped the Manga Union meeting because we (Huey and I) had a meeting with the Interpreter Guide Club for the Osaka trip on Monday. There, I discovered two of my classmates going along as well. Funny coincidence: in Japanese, I get called 'Rin' (because name name romanizes as derin or darin). There's another girl in the group called 'Ringo,' and another called 'RinRin.' O_o Hiroko didn't come to the meeting, though. We eventually parted ways and went on home. Huey and I chatted for some time to Gotenyama station, then parted ways. Hirakata, Osaka: October 08, Wednesday During Popular Media and Culture, we watched a movie the entire class period called Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen), about Hiroshima in WWII. It was very good-- throughout the class, you could hear people sniffle at various scenes. After classes, I went to Hester-sensei's showing of GO, a movie about a Zainichi. It was *VERY* good. After not watching any movies or anime or whatnot since before coming to Japan, this had been an odd few days. On Saturday or Sunday, I also finally got around to watching Tokyo Godfathers, a Christmas story anime by Kon Satoshi about three homeless people. That sounds like a setup for some tragic sap, but it was more like... well... Kon Satoshi's other stuff. Some of it's almost painfully raw reality, and some of it's funny, and some of it's poignantly sweet. It's not as abstract as some of his other stuff (Paprika, Perfect Blue, Paranoia Agent), but it's still definitely got that trippy psychological edge. For those of who you don't know who the Zainichi are, they are the Koreans living in Japan as permanent residents but not citizens, that make up 1% of its population (at least, last I heard). The movie GO was about a North Korean Zainichi who left his North Korean school and became South Korean. Named Sugihara, it's in part a love story-- as is reiterated a few times, deliberately-- and in part a family story, but mostly a story of identity. It is excellent. ♥ Hirakata, Osaka: October 09, Thursday Classes were okay. I skipped club again to go to Kappa Sushi with Huey, Robbie, Amy, Valerja and Diana. It was tastily excellent-- you could order something if you didn't see it, and it would come out to you on a shinkansen (bullet train) track above the conveyer belt. Very nifty. Once we arrived, I told Huey about what, exactly, kappa were. She was quite disgusted, and of course gave the classic "I'M EATING!" retort. Fun stuff. :D Hirakata, Osaka: October 10, Friday Had the usual coffee break with Huey, Robbie, Amy, Ashley and Becca. Class was okay. After class, I skedaddled off to go and get my alien registration card (which is now in my possession, YAY!). Then I went home. This was like, the first time in weeks I'd gone home early. @_@ It was a peaceful afternoon and evening. I reread some RPs (Shoes, HandsClean, Veyfu), played some Spider Solitaire, and didn't do homework. ^_^ Then I went to sleep. Hirakata, Osaka: October 11, Saturday Huey and I met up and went to Kyoto for the umpteenth time. Not that I'm complaining-- I like Kyoto. This time, we went to Honenin Temple and the Philosopher's Walk. There were random teddy bears everywhere. O_o; Odd. Lunch was sandwiches and Calpis, sitting on a bench by the river along the Walk. That was nice. *_* At first, Huey was disappointed by the walk not feeling very 'philosophical.' Shortly after she made that statement, however, the other people on the trail slimmed down to only a stray couple walking by here and there, and it was peaceful and nice. So she recanted the remark. Afterward, we rushed off to meet with Robbie, Amy, Ashley and Yui for karaoke. Several unexpected additions happened: Ann tagged along with her friend Hiroshi (who is studying Korean), and two other Japanese guys who were friends of Robbie's came along, as well as Robbie's and Amy's friend Becca. Also, the place we were going to turned out to not only be karaoke, but also billiards, an internet cafe, and a manga reading room. We were there for three hours, which cost each person 1000 yen (about $10) plus another 200 yen if it was your first time there to set up a membership, and that included unlimited free drinks. So I had melon soda, and Huey had hot cocoa. XD We did karaoke first. Some of the songs we sang were "Reflection" from Mulan (Huey and I sang that one), "Eyes on Me" from Final Fantasy 8 (Huey and Ann sang that one), "White Reflection" (Ann and I sang that one), "We Gotta Power" from Dragonball Z (the final song, which Ry... uh... Ryogo? sang, and I pitched in because I knew it), "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne (which Robbie and Becca had the mics for, but the whole room was singing), and a bunch more. Karaoke went on for almost two and a half hours, and the rest of the time was spent dispersed throughout the game room. Hirakata, Osaka: October 12, Sunday Huey and Brittany and I met up to go to Nijou Castle (二条城, nijoujou), which was gorgeous and awesome. *_* One of the coolest aspects of the place was that when you walk around inside, the floor squeaks-- but the type of squeaking, especially with so many people walking along, sounds like nightingales! And that is deliberate: it was set up as a deterrent to keep intruders (would-be assassins and the like) away, or signal to those inside the house if such an intruder had entered. Very, very cool. The rooms were so nice, with their wall paintings of tigers and dragons and birds and trees~ Afterward, we went to the Kyoto International Manga Museum. There were two things I wanted: to see a kamishibai performance, and to read Gegege no Kitaro. I got one of the two: there happened to be a kamishibai performance going on, which I managed to get in on! Of course it was primarily children and their parents, or elderly people, because kamishibai is a dying tradition from the post-war days, but I learned about it in class and wanted to see one. *_* We watched some Ogan Bat in class, and the story being told that particular time was Momotarou. They also had a historical archive of the history of manga, starting from the Choujuu Giga by Toba (scrolls of types of people being depicted as animals-- like politicians and monks; Toba himself was a bishop) and going up through modern-day Shounen Jump. *_* Between the archive, looking at a few other galleries, seeing the books and classrooms of an old school, and the kamishibai performance, I never got around to looking for Gegege no Kitaro. T_T Unfortunately. Afterward, we went to a market to get a cheap lunch for some basic nutrition purposes, as all three of us were sick, and then we headed off. Brittany came home with me so she could use my COPICs. Originally the plan was that she'd use my markers in exchange for paper, because she had their paper size here and I didn't, but I ended up acquiring my own paper. Apparently, that meant she was still using my expensive markers. >_> But I couldn't remember if I promised her that she could use them anyway, or if she was just jumping to conclusions on her own, so I let it go. The problem was that my host mother thought she was having dinner with us. I had told her that Brittany was having dinner at her own house, but the grammar turned out to be ambiguous-- it could mean either "We're returning home without eating" or "She's returning to her own home without eating with us" so I meant it one way, and Okaasan interpreted it the other way. That in and of itself might not have been too problematic because it was a misunderstanding, but Brittany ended up staying until it was almost 7 PM, despite that she wanted me to show her to the station and she KNEW dinner was at 7. >_> So that became more problematic. In the end, I drew her a map and she headed out. Somehow, however, right at the main road where I clearly told her to turn right because of the direction she should be headed, she turned left instead and ended up down near City Hall. >_> But there was a bus going to Kuzuha Mall (where she lives), so she caught that instead and went home. Hirakata, Osaka: October 13, Monday Gah. I keep coughing and I'm starving, so this part will be short. At 2, I met up with Huey, Hiroko, Hiroko's friend Nami, Ringo, RinRin, Manami, Sam from my Japanese class, Dan from New York, Alex, and a few other people to go on the Osaka trip. We went to Shinsaibashi first, where some people got food and some people got drinks but we mostly just looked around at all the shops. We did get purikura, though-- about time! It's my first time here. T_T; Everybody else had done purikura at some point except me. -.-; The difference between purikura (which stands for 'Print Club' and is often just called 'sticker pictures' in the U.S.... at least in my area) in America and purikura in Japan is that Japan is way, way, WAY fancier. There are these pens attached to screens, and you can write and draw all over the pictures before printing them, or stamp little pre-installed pics onto them. So that was fun. Afterward, we headed off to the Umeda Sky Building. We had a Kansai-Ben quiz, which resulted in a there-way tie between Sam, myself and somebody I don't know. As the tiebreaker, we played jankenpon. Sam won, so he got first prize (which turned out to be a folding fan and chopsticks). The other guy and I tied for second place, then, so Nami held up two bags-- a little pink one, and one with multicoloured flowers. Fortunately for me, the guy instantly cried out for the pink one. Well-- I got the best prize, hands down. His was a Spiderman pendant holding a stick of takoyaki, while mine was a deck of playing cards with words in Kansai-ben written on them. *_* Wicked-keen! Then we went up to the sky building's top floor, as it was nightfall, and got to look out at all of Osaka in the starlit night sky. At 7:05, they opened up the Lumi Deck. Straight from the little pamphlet: On the Rooftop of the Floating Garden Observatory, a place especially for lovers. The light on the floor goes through various changes when you sit down on the center bench. Sit down on the bench, hold each other's hands tightly, and touch the dome on the right and left. The hearts of the loving couple will be projected. Basically, there's a red bench. A pair of people (unfortunately and absolutely RIDICULOUSLY, it's limited to a male-and-female couple) go and sit on the red bench. They hold hands and each touch one of the metal protrusions on either side of them. The light tiles below them will then light up to one of four degrees: a simple pink and white heart directly around the bench, a pink heart with smaller white and red hearts spiraling around them, a pink heart outlined in red that says LOVE, and the max-- a red heart that has other colours flashing around it, and a white (I love HTML) goes across the bottom like a one-directional marquee. Huey and Alex were pressured to do it because everybody apparently thinks they're dating. I just laughed and laughed, since Huey's got a crush back home, and Alex is gay. XD And even funnier? They go the max degree of LOVE. Ahahahaha. Good times. So we got home two hours later than scheduled... it was pretty fun. Post a comment in response: |
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