Happy Valentine's Day

Hey Guys! Time to let you all in on the magic world of Manda's Japanese Valentine's Day! You see Valentine's Day is celebrated in Japan, but since this is Japan they can't make things simple so get ready for some confusion. Valentine's Day is today (Feb. 14) and if you're a girl and have a crush on a guy you go ahead and give him some chocolate. Not chocolate or sweets you buy in the store mind you, oh no chocolates you make. At Kiddyland (also known as the place with Hello Kitty stuff galore or where Manda spends most of her time and money) they sell little kits with pans, cake mix, frosting mix, etc. to make these things at home. Another important note is that Japanese kitchens do NOT include an oven. They have a toaster, toaster oven, a fish cooker and microwave, but nothing like an oven. So these little kits are for little cakes for toaster ovens, which takes me way back to my easy-bake oven days. Anyway once the said girl makes and gives her cakes/sweets to her crush the story doesn't stop there. Oh no, a month and a day later on March 15 is White Day. White Day is the day that if the boy likes the girl he gives her a gift of sweets in return.

This is how it's supposed to work, but there's variations on this and basically Valentine's day is just like it is at home with friends giving friends gifts, people going on dates and the rest of us sitting on the couch watching Walker Texas Ranger reruns on the superdrama channel at the dorm (it's the only English channel aside from CNN). What's funny is that you're supposed to give back to the person who got you something on Valentine's Day three times the amount when you give them something on White Day. This means that some people decide to give gifts on Valentine's Day for the sole purpose of getting more candy on White Day. There was only one example of this time, which was this crazy Japanese girl named Mayumi. She sat on our couch and asked us frank questions, such as turning to Drew and asking her if she's a lesbian. Then asking her again later and the next day. Drew is totally not a lesbian, but she can't live this down. It's too funny. Anyway, she was on the prowl trying to give out as much candy as she could so she could get more on White Day (she explained this to Tracey, that's how we know her true motivation) This lead to a game of cat and mouse on campus of Erica and I trying to avoid her for fear of getting caught and being forced to give candy on White Day just because she wanted us to, not because we wanted to. Thankfully it was 5:30pm and we were done with all our classes when we went down to the foreign students' mailboxes when low and behold Mayumi was waiting. Thankfully for me she didn't remember my name and didn't have a gift for me, but Erica wasn't so lucky. The other twist here is that Erica got candy from her Teachers all day but being vegan she can't any of the chocolate if it isn't black because of the milk. Drew reaped the benefits of being with her off and on today and getting to eat all her candy.

How did I spend my Valentine's Day? Pretty tired, I was up late on Valentine's Day Eve because I all of a sudden had some sort of maternal instinct kick in. I biked to Hirakata-shi to save the 440yen in bus fare and I figured I needed the exercise. Once downtown I got supplies to make a cake for Alex and some little Tiramisus for the girls, yarn for Drew's present, and to drop off my registration for my alien card. On the way back I stopped at a market that was selling vegetables super cheap. I'd bought some curry packets before except I didn't have the veggies you need to make curry for curry rice (You make curry like a stew and put it over some white rice, I loved it at home stay). This market was selling most vegetables for 100yen a piece or so I thought. I tried to pick out two carrots when they explained it was 100yen a basket for the carrots! Everything looked fresh and in the end tasted wonderful. I was able to get 1/3 a daikon (HUGE white radish), a head of lettuce, three carrots and 9 small potatoes for 380yen (like $3.50). It was awesome and cheap since I only had 1000 yen on me! :) I got home exhausted and cooked up two pots of the two different types of curry, sweet and medium. I had to read the instructions and realized once I got home that I'd misread the ingredients already. I didn't need the daikon or lettuce, but I needed onions. ;___; I totally screwed up and was worried I couldn't make it up without the onions and I knew the closest store was closed (it closes at like 6, it was 6:30pm) and plus I was tired. While I was debating on my mishap my Dutch roommate Myrthe was around and after hearing my problem gave me two small onions which worked perfectly! I was making two pots since I didn't know how to make small portions and so I was making it for the whole flat and so Myrthe got an extra helping and an IOU for some onions. After much chaos of boiling water, cutting veggies, getting the Japanese rice cooker to work, translating instructions, swearing and getting the curry to thicken I had two pots of curry enough rice and a few hungry roommates willing to try my cooking.

Everyone survived and actually really liked it! Success on many levels and if I can find the packets at an Asian market in the states I can officially add another item to my ever expanding culinary repertoir: grilled cheese, tacos, scrambled eggs, shake and bake, and now curry rice. ;) My adventures in the kitchen didn't end there. I stayed up in the hopes that my roommates would go to bed, but Drew and Tracey stayed up until 1am and I just gave in and started on their Valentine's Tiramisu while they were awake. The instructions were far more confusing, but I got most of the way through ti with no problem. Until it came time to start assembling and I realized my little pack didn't come with the clear plastic strips that you make into cones and set in the little tray making a cup to put the tiramisu parts in so it looks pretty and perfect when you're done. So I resorted to using our clear glass cups and started on the whipped cream. Here I misread the instructions and added the egg whites and sugar BEFORE I whipped the cream, which made it not whip at all. Thankfully I had enough cream and egg whites to start again, but no sugar. I whipped it up and then tried adding some of the previous unwhippable cream so I could get it semi-sweet. It worked out pretty good and the end results looked edible. Plus the little bits I tried were good so I put them in the fridge made up little valentine's labels with their names and a note and went to bed at 3am. I wanted to get up at 8 and set them out on the table for them to find that morning, but my alarm went off and I was to tired to get up so when I did get up at 10AM only Myrthe got to see the final product. Later that night though everyone ate them for dessert and said they were really good. Yeay again! I know what you're thinking, Erica can't eat that because she's vegan, which is true. To fix that little problem I got her a handkerchief with her favorite character (relax bear or Rillkuma in Japanese) and put a bar of black chocolate in there.



After going to bed at 3, I got up to a super rainy day and a vocab quiz. I biked to school holding my umbrella (mad bike skills and now I live in a neighborhood so biking isn't as dangerous as before Mom and Dad) and aced the quiz. From Japanese class at noon I had everyone of my classes in a row, after Japanese it was Struggle for Justice where we built our imaginary nation's laws, Japan and it's World and then Death in East Asian thought which ended at 5:30pm. I got to bike home in a little drizzle and chat with Erica. Once I got home I did some homework, cleaned up, and reheated some curry. The only thing else that's excitement is that our garbage didn't get emptied by the cleaning ladies for a few days so it smelled BAD and made the whole flat smell awful. Erica's solution was to take the bag out and put it the hallway. I've been on edge all night fearing Okaasan's inevitable arrival to give us crap, while Erica looks forward to the challenge and Tracey just wants some drama because she's bored. These are the people I live with.

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's been a stressful couple of days

This weekend happily is a three day weekend because Monday is a day off too thanks to them founding Japan on Feb 11 660 BC, yep BC. Anyway I didn't make to grand of plans for this weekend so when Erica wanted to go shopping for shoes and a flightsuit at this trendy mall called Hep5 in Osaka I went along for the ride. Plus it gave me a convient excuse to hang out with Alex, and well shoes were involved. :) Hep5 is one of the bigger shopping malls in Osaka and has a HUGE ferris wheel on top of the building. Making the building itself not hard to find since it's a block from the station. Right? Yeah Erica and I screwed that one up too thinking that this sign on top of a hotel was the ferris wheel and walked 10 minutes in the completely wrong direction. Thankfully people in Japan give good directions and we found our way back.

Hep5 is also cool because at the ground level there's a big open area where they have two giant sculptures of sperm whales (a mommy and baby) suspended from the ceiling, except they're bright red.

We wandered around a great many of the floors only to find that everything was very expensive and very much present Japanese fashion. Note: I probably couldn't fit into it and it'd look super dumb, I'll post examples later. Trust me, I tried some "large" shirts on and well, that ain't happening. Thankfully I have enough clothes with me, so I won't go naked anytime soon.

Back to our mission, we didn't find the flightsuit, we didn't find shoes, but we did find socks and a huge Disney store. Although we could've found more, but the mall closed at 9pm and we got there around 8-8:30 due to school getting out late and us getting lost. So we ventured up to the restaurant floors that didn't close until 11 and tried to find a place Erica could eat at (she's the vegan one). No problem though there were plenty of pasta places and we settled on a cute one near the front so we could people watch too. In the end the people watching was great but the food was really really bad. We could put our fingers on it, but there was this weird tang to everything. Not very yummy, plus the chicken in mine wasn't really chicken breast I think it was the various parts. Also not so yummy.

To make up for the bad food and little shopping I convinced Erica to journey to the 8th and 9th floors to play video games and do purikura (print club, those stick photo booths) and she agreed. Here's the thing, I ALWAYS want to do purikura I love it. In Japan every arcade has at least 4-6 of the machines with different borders, backgrounds, lighting, stamps, etc. and they're so much fun to do and the pictures always turn out great. We settled on one that had cool ghosts and stuff so I promise I'll scan them soon and post them. As we divided them up a nice lady worker came over and told us we'd have to leave since it was already 11 and the whole building was closing. We snatched up our stuff, headed out and got on the train. I said goodbye to Erica at Yodoyabashi since she wanted to head home and I was on my way to Tenoji to see Alex when he got off of work. It was right after we said goodbye that I realized that I didn't have my frog purse. In Japan I only use one wallet I put both credit cards, Kansai ID and my money (in this case a newly pulled out 20000yen, $200). I had a train card, but only with 500 yen so I didn't even know if I could get off the train without my wallet! I was glad that in this case I was going to Tenoji where Alex would be waiting right outside the gates in case I needed more money he could lean over the turnstyle thing (they're more like gates here) and lend me the money so I could get out of the train station. I didn't need it though, I had just enough. I kept texting Erica to see if she had my wallet by mistake, but she didn't, which meant I stupidly left it at purikura. Hep 5 doesn't open until 11 and I had a sushi thing at 11 so I couldn't go all the way there and back to Hirakata to make it for sushi.

I worried about my wallet the whole night and even during the sushi rolling party the next day. I tried calling and using my crappy Japanese skills to talk to the lost and found dept. of Hep5 at around 8am, but after a while I couldn't understand and had to give up. They knew I was missing a wallet and I described it, but I think they were trying to tell me that they couldn't look for it until the building opened. So after much stress Erica came with me back to the mall (yeah I had to drag her kicking and screaming) and the game room had my wallet! With all my money inside!!

I love Japan! Now it's Sunday and we're all heading to Nara to play with fuzzy deer!

I think I was missed

I know it's ironic that when I didn't have internet I updated far more frequently than now when I have internet all the time. The past two weeks here in Japan have gone by so fast. I'm having a great time and school is picking up. I dropped Reading and Writing and added another English class, Japan and It's World to 1860. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that, but oh well. Today was my death day, not just because I had death class, but because I had class from 12 to 5:30 all in a row, no breaks, all subjects. I survived and tomorrow I just have Japanese, which I need to go to the language lab to hear the assignment to do. I'm probably going to get to bed in an hour so I can get up early and get that done before class.

Aside from school the big excitement is that I have officially been to a club and I've been twice. It's okay I'm so glad that I have Alex and Erica to hang out with because the way clubs work here is tricky. You see there are bars around campus, but if we wanted something that was bigger than a bar the size of a bread box we have to head into Osaka. It's easy to get into the city I used to hop on the train right in front of my house, but now I have to get on at Hirakata Shi with is a five minute bus ride away from the Seminar house. It isn't a huge deal everyone goes in a big group when we go. Anyway the last bus to the seminar house is at 10:30pm and the last trains go at midnight. This isn't conducive to going to a club and heading home at 2 or 3 am. So what most people do is go in groups and stay at the club until 5 or 6am when the trains start up again. If you get super tired you can rent a room at a karaoke bar for 2000 yen (20 bucks) an hour, which isn't awful if you split it five ways. Or you can take a nap in one of the big comfy internet cafes. There are also places in Tokyo I've heard about that are like lounges where you can read all the manga (books) you want and they have comfy chairs or cots, but I haven't seen them here.

Anyway I never went before because I was at homestay, plus the idea of being out ALL night sounds like a pain. Here's where Erica and Alex come in. Erica hates clubs but she goes because everyone goes and it's a good time either way. She also can't stay up until 5am and neither can I, enter Alex to solve this problem. Alex (who I'll talk more about later) lives in Osaka because he works for NOVA a company that has English teaching schools across Japan and has his own apartment in Osaka. We know him because he's a good friend of Erica's from home (Rhode Island) and he lets us crash at his place when the three of us get bored at the club. Erica gets the vinyl couch and Alex sacrifices a mat from his three-four layered stack of futon mats (lucky bastard, if you remember me struggling with my TWO at homestay). Anyway I get a mat from him and we all hang out at his apartment playing old Final Fantasy games on the Super Famicom (Japanese SNES) until we fall asleep.
We've done this for the past two Fridays and every week Erica and I sit on the couch as people start making plans to go to Pure (yes that's really the name of the club) and promise we'll be going somewhere else. But there's no where else we know of that's as good or that anyone else is going to so we go off with Tracey, Drew, etc. and we have a good time. Pure has a pretty good set up, it's in Osaka a few blocks from Namba station and is next to location its next to a Karaoke bar (good for the afore mentioned reasons) and has a convenient (conbini) across the street, which is an added bonus if you get hungry. The layout is even cooler. You go down stairs, show your ID (for me my Kansai ID works because it has my birthday with the word birthday written next to it in Japanese) and then go to the window to pay you 1500 yen (15 dollars approx) and you get an arm band and a cup. This means you can go in and out of the club and you get unlimited drinks as long as you keep bringing back your cup. It's a sweet deal coming from the land of $6 cocktails on Nantucket.

Then you go past the little counter and through a GIANT WOODEN DOOR that would make Bilbo proud. The ceiling in the little hall way leading up to the door is low, even for me. Once you get into the club itself you're greeted with the dulcet tones of loud hip-hop and rap music. Trust me past this point things start making less and less sense. All the music is English and LOUD and there's a dance floor, but right to your left is the bar where all the staff speaks English and some of them are even Gaijin (foreigners) along with most of the clientell, which is a major reason Erica and I want to find a new place since we can hang out with Americans any damn time. Either way there are some Japanese folks and they're a hell of a lot of fun. There's a locker room where you can pay 300 yen to lock up your coats, purses, etc. I recommend taking out your cigarettes because you can light up anywhere in the club, which is awesome just for the novelty of it. Outside the coat room there's a little room across from the bar where you can play pool. This room also has a bookshelf that slides to the side Scooby Doo style to reveal a staircase that goes up to the VIP room. The VIP room sits on top of the locker/pool rooms and has glass windows letting anyone down by the bar able to look up at you like a giant fish bowl. It's a neat design and I can't do it justice with words. Anyway continuing straight past the bar there's a place for tables and straight head is the bathroom and if you go right there's the dance floor. We spend most of our time near the bar, in the pool room or in the hobbit hole. The hobbit hole is this little area where they've made a cave out of concrete and put a little table in there. It's tiny and I have a ton of pictures of us in there. On top of the hobbit hole is a stair case so that the stripper-esque dancers can go up on and dance on. You can't tell when you're in the hobbit hole, and when you're outside the dancers are just amazing. I just can't get over the fact that they get PAID to dance in the club up there for atmosphere. Yes guys, there are pictures of this on flickr. No Mom they don't get naked and NO I haven't gone up there, it's employees only and they are hiring.

Our first trip to Pure (at least my first trip) had me and Erica hiding in the hobbit hole from the loud music and sipping on our girly drinks. The entrance is a little below the floor so you have to step down into it so we were at about knee level and saw these cute Japanese girls in construction boots that were seriously boots. They went up to their knees! I thought they were so cool that I snapped a picture from our hideout. I wasn't secret squirel enough and they saw the flash and came to see what was up. They sat down with big smiles on their faces and we explained how much we loved their shoes and we chatted away for a good half hour. Alex showed up from work at some point and it was the first time I'd seen him since I left in November. So everyone was so happy to meet one another and we really hit it off with them here's a picture of Erica and the two girls (Aiko and Natsumi):

Aiko is in school to become a hairdresser and Natsumi is an English major at a college in Osaka (I couldn't remember the name) They were so nice and gave us suggestions on where to shop, etc. Erica got their cellphone addresses and we still text them back and forth. Heck we saw and hung out with them for a majority of the time we were at Pure this past Friday too! I love making random friends :) I still text Yuri (the girl I met when I got lost on the train) and I might get to go see her house in Kyoto!

The club is fun, it gives us an adventure. I'm going to leave my post here because I have to get up early tomorrow, but more on my other adventures later!

I know it's ironic that when I didn't have internet I updated far more frequently than now when I have internet all the time. The past two weeks here in Japan have gone by so fast. I'm having a great time and school is picking up. I dropped Reading and Writing and added another English class, Japan and It's World to 1860. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that, but oh well. Today was my death day, not just because I had death class, but because I had class from 12 to 5:30 all in a row, no breaks, all subjects. I survived and tomorrow I just have Japanese, which I need to go to the language lab to hear the assignment to do. I'm probably going to get to bed in an hour so I can get up early and get that done before class.

Aside from school the big excitement is that I have officially been to a club and I've been twice. It's okay I'm so glad that I have Alex and Erica to hang out with because the way clubs work here is tricky. You see there are bars around campus, but if we wanted something that was bigger than a bar the size of a bread box we have to head into Osaka. It's easy to get into the city I used to hop on the train right in front of my house, but now I have to get on at Hirakata Shi with is a five minute bus ride away from the Seminar house. It isn't a huge deal everyone goes in a big group when we go. Anyway the last bus to the seminar house is at 10:30pm and the last trains go at midnight. This isn't conducive to going to a club and heading home at 2 or 3 am. So what most people do is go in groups and stay at the club until 5 or 6am when the trains start up again. If you get super tired you can rent a room at a karaoke bar for 2000 yen (20 bucks) an hour, which isn't awful if you split it five ways. Or you can take a nap in one of the big comfy internet cafes. There are also places in Tokyo I've heard about that are like lounges where you can read all the manga (books) you want and they have comfy chairs or cots, but I haven't seen them here.

Anyway I never went before because I was at homestay, plus the idea of being out ALL night sounds like a pain. Here's where Erica and Alex come in. Erica hates clubs but she goes because everyone goes and it's a good time either way. She also can't stay up until 5am and neither can I, enter Alex to solve this problem. Alex (who I'll talk more about later) lives in Osaka because he works for NOVA a company that has English teaching schools across Japan and has his own apartment in Osaka. We know him because he's a good friend of Erica's from home (Rhode Island) and he lets us crash at his place when the three of us get bored at the club. Erica gets the vinyl couch and Alex sacrifices a mat from his three-four layered stack of futon mats (lucky bastard, if you remember me struggling with my TWO at homestay). Anyway I get a mat from him and we all hang out at his apartment playing old Final Fantasy games on the Super Famicom (Japanese SNES) until we fall asleep.
We've done this for the past two Fridays and every week Erica and I sit on the couch as people start making plans to go to Pure (yes that's really the name of the club) and promise we'll be going somewhere else. But there's no where else we know of that's as good or that anyone else is going to so we go off with Tracey, Drew, etc. and we have a good time. Pure has a pretty good set up, it's in Osaka a few blocks from Namba station and is next to location its next to a Karaoke bar (good for the afore mentioned reasons) and has a convieint (conbini) across the street, which is an added bonus if you get hungry. The layout is even cooler. You go down stairs, show your ID (for me my Kansai ID works because it has my birthday with the word birthday written next to it in Japanese) and then go to the window to pay you 1500 yen (15 dollars approx) and you get an arm band and a cup. This means you can go in and out of the club and you get unlimited drinks as long as you keep bringing back your cup. It's a sweet deal coming from the land of $6 cocktails on Nantucket.

Then you go past the little counter and through a GIANT WOODEN DOOR that would make Bilbo proud. The ceiling in the little hall way leading up to the door is low, even for me. Once you get into the club itself you're greeted with the dulcet tones of loud hip-hop and rap music. Trust me past this point things start making less and less sense. All the music is English and LOUD and there's a dance floor, but right to your left is the bar where all the staff speaks English and some of them are even Gaijin (foreigners) along with most of the clientell, which is a major reason Erica and I want to find a new place since we can hang out with Americans any damn time. Eitherway there are some Japanese folks and they're a hell of a lot of fun. There's a locker room where you can pay 300 yen to lock up your coats, purses, etc. I recommend taking out your cigarettes because you can light up anywhere in the club, which is awesome just for the novelty of it.

Another exciting Friday Night

I'm sorry I'm a week behind in all of this! Tonight I have a bit of a lull before more excitement. I'm in the flat waiting for Erica's second phase of hair dye to finish dying and so we can rinse and run out to Osaka. She went from kinda blonde to totally blonde then to black with a pink streak. And I helped!

No I didn't dye my hair although the pink was tempting. :) Well we're running out the door to go meet our Kansai mates and the two girls we met last week. I promise more pictures later and more of a post.