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

The End of This Vacation

Next week I'm going back to school again ^_^ I'm now a third year student Japanese, and this is going to be an awesome school year. Because I'm a third year now, I'm allowed to go study abroad in Japan in March 2012. Ever since I started my Japanese study I have looked forward to it. Of course it's not a vacation, because I still have to go to school there, but just the idea that I can go to the country that is so close to my heart gives me goosebumps. When I'm in Japan I'm going to try to keep a blog as well, so I can keep everyone at home updated. Since I live in the Netherlands I'm going to make another blog written in only Dutch, and this blog will have all the updates in English.

But back to my summer vacation. I had so many fun things to do ^w^ I stayed over at friends of my parents' house for about a week. The highlight of that week for me was definitely the trip to the zoo. I really love animals, and the zoo I went to had all kinds of animals. For the Dutch people reading this blog, I went to Emmen Zoo.

This is a photo of me sitting in the mouth of a hippo near the entrance to the zoo. Luckily the weather was really nice that day (the next day it was raining a lot). First we went to the butterfly garden, and there were so many butterflies fluttering around, and really close as well, you could almost touch them. I also saw a hummingbird there, it was so cute :3

Then we went to see the sharks and other aquatic animals, like puffer fish and such. After we left that part we went to see the rest of the animals like elephants, lions, flamingos, tigers (although the only one I could see was sleeping on a high part with its back to me), hippos and all sorts of reptiles. They had this really cute gecko <3

See, isn't it cute? ^w^

The week after that Tessa, the thirteen year old daughter of those friends, came to stay over at my house (well, technically speaking my parents' house XD) and that was also fun.

But the absolute highlight of this year's summer vacation was the concert of YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz on July 26th in Amsterdam. Gackt was so awesome! Especially when they played Vanilla, the whole crowd went crazy. At one point I think I had eye contact with Chachamaru *_* Even though he is 52 (or around 52 XD) he is still really handsome ^_^ One of the staff members of the Melkweg handed out a few big posters of YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz and we could have them for free because of how long we had been sitting there (some of the people spent the night in front of the Melkweg :O I was there since 8.15 a.m.). So now it's on my door ^_^

This is the poster I got. There was also a different version, but I liked this one better. The poster above Gackt is from Dio~Distraught Overlord~ ^_^

On the 25th of August I went to Schiphol Airport together with Janneke (a friend/classmate) to welcome back Kayleigh, who came back from a study abroad in Japan (she is now a fourth year student at the same school as me). And then last Tuesday she held her birthday party since her birthday was in Japan. She also had some presents for me, Janneke, Elena and Danine. I got the August 2011 editions of Shoxx and Fool's Mate (both are Japanese music magazines) and a post card of Suzumi Shio, a Takarazuka Revue actress :D :D I keep staring at the magazines and postcard <3 Fool's Mate has Gackt on the cover, and Shoxx has SuG and ViViD on it. And even though Suzumi Shio is a woman, she looks really awesome in her role as Benvolio (Romeo & Juliet musical). Thank you Kayleigh <3

And now it's back to school next week, though I still don't have the necessary books yet, even though one of the companies I ordered at said that they would deliver at least one week before school starts again. One other book is coming from Japan, so I'm not really expecting it yet. The earliest will probably be next week if I'm lucky f^_^; But I'm really looking forward to seeing my friends/classmates again :D

Well, I think this is it for this time. Until next post!

~Marlies / マーリス