電Nipponbashi Street Fest電

So there's an event held in Den Den Town called Nipponbashi Street Fest. It's basically an otaku parade followed up by some photo taking. It was fun to attend though. I wish I had a costume to wear. I was feeling a bit out of place, but I think I had enough attention as a foreigner.

A Lolita Cosplay...low caliber kind.

Lolita & Kodona Cosplay of the high caliber kind ^_~

Very crowded. I love the faces I capture, sometimes.

The band comes marching!

Samurai

Entertaining balcony men!

I love this picture just because the man in the reflection makes me laugh. A lot. But then I realized upon further inspection that there is something much more important! TUXEDO KAMEN!! *Very left*

I'm not sure what this was, but later on my way home that day, I saw a picture of the same guy on the train. *shrug*

Yeah, I have no idea.

Do you likes robots?

These guys kind of seemed visual kei-esque so I took a picture.

No idea...

Gundam~

Old maid ..lol

Osaka castle!. . . just kidding. But you can jump inside :)

Gants

Paparazzi Luffy

Street Fighter~

SNAAAAAAAKE!!

One Peice Pirates

Bon Clay~! <3

Full Metal Alchemist

Somewhat familiar...

Yu-Gi-Oh.

Lol... honestly, I thought of Gino.

Rorschach!

Power Rangers... still going strong.

Repeat after me: Mecha Kawaii

Big Bunny!

Aw, c'mon now.

春Spring Break休み

It's the first day of spring break! I did not make any huge plans such as going to Okinawa or China or anything crazy like that. I just want to go back to Kyoto a few times and go to some downtown areas. I'd really love to go out and karaoke with friends, but it seems to be hard to get people to go with us. I'd like to get a sushi/sake get together going on sometime.

Today was a beautiful day! It was actually warm outside! Melody and I went to the park and I sat in the swings I wanted to play on every time I had passed them. After that, we went to the park to see if they sold ice-cream, but they didn't. We ended up going to Hirakatashi station via bus. It took a while because today was the graduation ceremony for the Japanese Students. The girls were all dressed up in Hakama and their hair done up. It was so pretty. At the station, Melody and I ate some cheap but yummy food, then we went shopping, went to the arcade, and had a parfait. It was a great way to start off summer break. Tomorrow we are going to DenDen town again for the big festival. It might rain tomorrow, but I'll stay optimistic.

Here are some pictures of my spoils.

French Toast! Nothing too great. That's not soda. I got fruit juice!

The purikura of Melody and I today.

Ultimate deliciousness~

A cute headband I got to match tomorrow's outfit~

Nail Polish~ My nails grow really long here and tend to last like that, so lets make them pretty now.

Some crazy nails for tomorrow. :p

Earrings to match

Pretty nail art. Cuuuuuute.

A new necklace for tomorrow. Ahahaha. It's so gaudy.

The cute ring I told everyone about.

The first necklace I told you all about. It broke right before my exam. :(

A cute locket! <3

Midterms! *shriek*

Oh my goodness! What a week! I have so much to do it's almost overwhelming. Next week is Midterm week and it has already begun. In my Communication class, we were assigned an 8 page paper on 4 topics. I did half of it yesterday and finished it just now. I'm pretty proud of myself. I'm terrible at getting papers to be lengthy. I'm a bit upset at the professor because he assigned us a LOT of reading material for a class during midterm week. I object and will read it during spring break after the discussion. I just can't handle that right now with everything else going on. I also have a 5-7 page paper due on Wednesday, (which basically means get it done this weekend...) on the topic of finding something portrayed as "Japanese," such as a film, and analyzing it with the topics we have talked about in class. (We can incorporate our own as well.) I'm going to head to the library tomorrow (on a Saturday!? Oh my.) and pick out a film to watch and take down lots of notes and then write all about it. Maybe it won't be so bad...

I also have Japanese exams coming up. Two writing tests and an oral test. (Somewhat similar to the situation examples we practiced with Furuhata Sensei and her teaching assistant. I hope I do alright... I've been practicing to memorize what I want to say.)

I took my camera with me today, so I took a picture of my delicious (and somewhat expensive) lunch that I had today. It made me feel really good though, so it was worth it.

Ta-da! No idea what it was called.. but it seems like a basic stir-fry type thing. I'm pretty sure the meat was chicken. :9 It was delicious. (And about $5). It came with rice, salad, and soup.

Here are some of my sumie paitnings that I have worked on lately. (I don't think these are the one's I turned in though, except for the chrysanthemums. Those I turned in.)

落RAKUGO語

I feel like my weekend disappeared really fast. Friday, I went out and bought some actual snack food, as opposed to groceries. I did buy some more milk though. I also spent the evening relaxing, for the most part, I think. I can't really recall Friday that well. I tried to make Melody's so called "Supayaki" (Fried spaghetti). It was very delicious! I put noodles (mine were short and tubed) into a pot and boiled them until they were soft. Once they were all soft, I put butter and chopped onions into a frying pan and then fried the spaghetti along with a tomato. When it was done, I added cheese and viola! "Supayaki!" It was very good and I was happy that it was. It smelled so good while I was cooking it. I should have taken a picture, but I feel weird about doing things like that.

Saturday, I woke up early and got ready to go to shinsaibashi. We did a little bit of shopping. I bought a ring that looks like a bow and a necklace to match most of my outfits that have black. (And that's a lot. . . ) They were expensive though. (~$30). I wanted to buy a brown headband with a bow on it, but it was about 20 dollars too. There is no way. . .

After shopping, we all went to a restaurant that had all you can eat pizza, pasta, and salad. It was pretty good! I'm VERY skeptical in Japan about pizza, but this place had some decent food. I even had a peach soda, which was yummy too. I went to a costume shop, again, and I wanted to buy so many things, but the thoughts I were having were:

a) This isn't going to fit in my suitcase.

b) I don't know my measurements and we can't try these on.

c) I should do this online when I'm home.

Before 3:30pm, Sarah and I left Shinsaibashi to meet up with a friend of her's host family. They were going to take us to see Rakugo! Rakugo is a type of comedy act. We have stand up comedy, they have traditional sit-down comedy. It's actually really funny, but as you are assuming, yes: I had NO idea what they were saying. The good thing was that it wasn't only rakugo performances. The first performance was a skit about two guys planning on robbing a bank. The other guy was making all kinds of mistakes with puns. It was really funny. The second skit was rakugo. . . the third skit was the best in my opinion. It made my entire night! It was these two men who played Shamisen. They played a very famous song and eventually they dueled between both shamisen and taiko drum. Here is a very close example to what I saw:

I was so happy. I might have gotten a little teary. After that magnificent performance, there was this hilarious new rakugo performance done about Godzilla. There were so many props and then the guy turned himself into MOTHzilla and got the audience involved. I was laughing so hard, even though I had no idea what he was really saying. The performance after that was another traditional rakugo story, and then they all came out on stage and played a game where they had to recite the story of Peach Boy (A traditional story) without using the sound "ta," which is impossible because the story is all in past tense, and everything is past tense is ta. Haha. It was amusing and I enjoyed it a lot. The theater was sold out. (It was a pretty small theater too).

After the performance, a small group of us ate dinner at some place off the street. I tried a gyoza set and then found my way home with a girl who was also in the seminar houses. I was dead tired, but I was afraid of losing my weekend too.

Today I woke up and did some cleaning. I have homework to do and I also made pancakes for the first time! They turned out perfect and I am so happy about it. :9 Once again, I should have taken photos. Haha.

Hinamatsuri

Today, in Japan, it is a holiday known as "hina matsuri." This is a girls festival day held on 3/3 for girls. (There is also a boys day on 5/5. Negative Japanese superstition lie on even numbers). This basically translates to Doll Festival. When girls are born in Japan, they are given a gift of many beautiful Heian (a period in Japanese history) style dolls that are displayed in tiers. They usually represent from the top, prestigious figures and under them are their servants.

Here is an example of a display.

One day, someone asked me "So, what exactly is sumie?" and I decided to take a video of me actually doing a painting in my sumi-e class. Please keep in mind that this particular painting isn't very good. I was distracted by trying to keep my camera on the painting as well as not being too noticeable about it in my class. I'm just weird like that. . .

Basically, what is happening is this:

1. First, you have to grind the sumi. This is the ink. Good sumi smells like a forest after heavy rain. I like it, some people don't. It takes a good while and a strong arm to get good ink, and it's usually the case that I don't have good ink. But I'll use what I can get.
2. You fill your palletes with water. You can paint with the sumi directly, but to get shades and to have it flow, you need water. It's much like watercolors, I assume, but then again I've never really painted with watercolors.
3. Since the subject is Plum Blossom (which is in season now), I painted a large branch with many smaller branches that the blossoms will grow from. After that, I added the blossoms and then moss and buds. It is fun -^_^-

Unfortunately, for me, my weekend activities have all been cancelled. I'm a bit bummed out about it because I was REALLY looking forwards to going out on Sunday night. I'm hoping maybe to go out for karaoke on Friday and going to shinsaibashi on Saturday. We'll see! If I don't do anything, then I'll enjoy resting I suppose. (And I do enjoy resting).