Birthday and Golden Week

05 May 2012

It's been a while since the last time I wrote something, so I figured, let's put up another one ;)

Exactly one week ago I had my 22nd birthday, and it happened to coincide with a school-planned bus tour and a party hosted by the ryuugakusei ouen family after that. We went to visit a museum about the history of the most important buildings in Matsumoto. After that we went to place where they make miso, the most important ingredient of the Japanese miso soup. We could also taste miso soup ourselves, but it's one of the few Japanese foods I don't like, so I opted out XD

Even before I went to Japan I figured it would be a memorable 22nd birthday, and it was. Only not for the reasons I thought. Because around 12 o'clock that night we were brought to the hospital by Sato-sensei, because Manon had a very bad migraine and needed stronger medicine than she had with her. Luckily the hospital could provide her with painkillers that worked and we went home again. Let's just hope that will be the last time I see a Japanese hospital from the inside...

Now for something else. As some of you might know it was Golden Week in Japan the last week. Because there are a few holidays close to eachother most Japanese have a free week and use it to take a short vacation. Because we still had to go to school on Tuesday and Wednesday we couldn't do that, but we made a last minute decision to go to a Takarazuka show in Tokyo.

There are 4 different seat ranks in  the theater; SS, S, A and B, SS being the best and B the "worst". Because Manon and I didn't want to pay as much we decided to go for the A seat while Janneke and Jolene bought an S seat ticket. We also rented opera glasses for 500 yen so we still got to see quite a bit of detail ^_^
The show we went to was Tsukigumi's "Don Carlos/Shining Rythm!" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk_Zw9BvbZw).

Of course, when one's in Tokyo one also does some shopping. When we arrived in Shinjuku by bus from Matsumoto, we took the subway to Harajuku, now as the fasion district of Tokyo. There's a street there called Takeshita-dori, and they sell Gothic Lolita, punk etc. One of my favorite shops there has to be Closet Child, which sell second-hand clothing, assesories and cds. I bought a shirt there from which I think is h.Naoto, a famous Japanese punk designer. I also bought a pair of shoes at the Bodyline store <3

Later that evening we went to Akihabara to check out some cd stores, and I bought one of the cds I've been wanting for a while (Toxic from the GazettE, in case anyone is wondering ^_^).

The day after was the musical which started at 11 and ended at 2. Of course we couldn't resist to buy some merchendise at the Quatre Rêves and Takarazuka An where they sell second-hand Takarazuka merch. At 9 in the evening our bus left for Matsumoto again where we arrived a little after midnight. It was a really awesome 2 day vacation ^_^

Until next time, またね！

~Marlies / マーリス

Japan

31 March 2012

Two days ago I finally arrived in Japan. After a flight of roughly 11 hour me and my friend arrived at Narita airport. I tried sleeping on the plane, and I succeeded in sleeping for two whole hours XD so I ended up watching a few movies and an episode of NCIS.

When we arrived at Narita airport we went to pick up our luggage, and mine appeared very quickly, unlike the one from my friend. Then we had to figure out how to get to our hostel in Tokyo. So I asked a kind lady at the ticket counter, and told her we need to take the Keisei line to Aoto station, and she gave us the correct tickets ^_^ It was the first time I spoke Japanese outside of school so I was really happy that she understood me~

So after an hour we finally arrived at Aoto and then came another problem. We needed to get to Honjo-Azumabashi, but we couldn't find it anywhere on the train map. So after standing there for a couple of minutes looking clueless, a helpfull Japanese station employee came over to us and asked us what we needed. He told us we had to get a ticket for 350 yen and the we had to go to platform one. Luckily for us the train just arrived when we got to platform one, so we didn't have to wait. It was a fairly short train ride (5 minutes I think) and then came the biggest challenge: there weren't any escalators.... So we had to drag our heavy luggage up 5 stairs... But we managed to do that and arrived at the Asakusa Smile hostel in one piece ;) we didn't really do a lot except a trip to the conbini/100 yen lawson for next day's breakfast, and meeting another friend who is also staying at the same hostel.

On the second day we decided to go to Uneo park and Akihabara. Although we didn't plan on it we also went to Ueno zoo, where we spent most of the day. I made a lot of photos there but since my laptop is refusing to connect to the wifi at the hostel I can't post any (this is being typed on my ipod XD). But hopefully once I arrive in Matsumoto I will be able to post them ^_^ after Ueno zoo we went to Akihabara in search for a Denshi Jisho, an electronic dictionary. Finally I found one from Casio in a spiffy red-ish color for 27.800 yen. Because the shop I bought it from has a point system I got 10% of the buyig price in points, and I bought a nice pouch for it (and I still have 1300 points left). On the way back to the metro station I got handed various flyers from maid cafes, and that was pretty fun. I even got one that has cute guys on it instead of girls :3 But now I now why Akihabara is also called the geek district. There are a lot of anime shops and related stuff there, mostly aimed at guys XD

When we got back to our hostel we ate s

ome cup noodles as dinner and pretty much relaxed all night because our feet hurt from all the walking we did.

Today, on the third day, we are going to do some shopping at the Takarazuka shop and in Shinjuku ^_^

またね！

~Marlies / マーリス