20th post: you goitre be kidding

So, if you know me, you know I'm pretty sickly.  I have chronic fatigue and asthma and when I was getting x-rayed for my Japan visa, they found a giant goitre behind my breastbone that has wrapped around my windpipe.  Goitre – most glamorous sickness ever.  The doctor's at home said it shouldn't grow too fast and I'd be okay to come to Japan, so we delayed the operation to have it removed until after I get back.

I guess it was always going to be a bit of a struggle, the course load here is heavier than at home, and whereas at home you can just faff off a day or two if you're feeling crap, they don't really like that here.

Anyway, so after Aomori, I started feeling pretty crap and couldn't go to school for a couple of weeks, except for a day here and there.  I didn't really want to go to the doctor because I figured there's not really anything they can do, I have the best possible treatment plan for the CFS as my specialist is one of the best in the world, and my goitre just needs pulling out, which can wait til I get home.  In the end though, I couldn't avoid it any longer.

My uni has a doctor's clinic, so one day after class I went in.  It's a little bit different than at home.  Firstly, I only had to wait about 5 minutes before the nurse called me in.  My teachers had said that the staff there spoke English, but they didn't really.  Luckily, the speech I'd written for the Japanese speech contest was about how I had learned to live with having a chronic illness through the power of Arashi, so I knew how to say my symptoms and stuff in Japanese, but some bits were confusing and we both had to use our electronic dictionaries and at one point I drew an awesome picture of my goitre strangling me.  The nurse took my temperature and heart rate and all that kind of stuff before I went to see the doctor - my heart rate was really fast, which I've actually noticed of a night when trying to sleep it's been banging like a taisho drum.  Anyway, the nurse was really lovely.

She took me into the doctor then.  The doctor was quite nice too but she didn't speak any English, and the nurse kind of tried to translate a bit but she had to keep going off and doing nursey stuff, and the doctor was just firing all these medical terms at me in really fast Japanese, so I didn't really have much idea what was going on.  I got that she wasn't sure if I was sick from my goitre or my CFS, so she decided I should go to the hospital where they could do tests and also spoke English.  She wrote me a referral letter and the nice nurse printed out maps and things of how to get there.

I could only go between 8-11am, so that Friday I set out.  I met up with Liam at Tsukiji because he'd offered to come with me, and it's lucky he did because the map the nurse had given me didn't really match up with the map at the station and I'd have gotten totally lost!

The administration system at the hospital was very impressive.  You go to the “first time visit” desk and give them your referral letter and fill out a form, which comes in loads of different languages.  Then you take a number and the girl calls you up and gives you a little slip with what desk to go to and an ATM card thing, which I didn’t understand the purpose of at that point.  All of the different sections of the hospital have numbered counters so they’re easy to find. 

I had to go to section 10, which was emergency and general medical.  The girl there spoke very good English and was lovely.  I had to take my temperature and blood pressure with this weird blood pressure machine that looked as if it was going to cut off my arm.  It gives you a handy little print out to give back to the girl.  Then you sit and wait for a doctor to call you into a little cubicle.

From the get-go, my doctor was a bit of a douche.  He asked me what was wrong and I told him, then he said “which one of these symptoms would you like me to treat?”.  Does that even make sense?  No, no it doesn’t.  Please treat the cause and not the symptoms, doctor-san!  Shouldn’t that be one of the first things you learn at doctor school?  So I told him I wanted to know if it was the CFS or the goitre that was making me sick and what he thought I should do, considering I’m here on exchange and hadn’t been able to go to school.  He looked a little bemused, I was hoping it was just a language barrier thing, but in hindsight I realise it’s because he was an idiot.

Anyway, he wrote out this bit of paper with a bunch of numbers and hard kanjis, which was the different sections I had to go to and the tests I had to have there, then I had to go back to him an hour after I’d finished the tests.

So I went to the first section for the blood and wee test.  The system for this is really nifty, you put your ATM card thing into a machine and it prints you out this slip of paper,  which not only says your number in the queue but also tells the nurses what you need done.  It was incredibly simple.  When my number came up, I went into this little room, where there were all these little desks of nurses taking blood.  The nurse was so good, I didn’t even feel the needle at all!  It was amazing!  Then she gives you the wee jar and you go into the loo next door – I was a bit worried I’d have to walk around the hospital with it, but they have a little window next to the sinks in the toilet where you pass it through.  Handy!

Then I had to have an ECG, which I’d never had done before.  It was the same process with the ATM card thing, and then you have to go into this room and get your kit off.  It was a bit weird.  The nurse was really nice but she puts these weird clamp things around your wrists and ankles and these little suckers on your chest, and you can feel these tiny little electric shocks from them.  I didn’t much fancy it.

After that was the chest x-ray.  That was a bit confusing because he kept telling me to do all these different poses in Japanese, which I couldn’t understand so he had to arrange my limbs into weird spots for me.  Also, I got when I had to suck in my breath but he kept not telling me when I was allowed to breathe out again.

Anyway, after the tests, Liam and I went to the hospital cafeteria for lunch.  I was starving because I hadn’t eaten on account of not knowing what tests I’d have to do and if it would be okay to eat first.  I had an oyakodon which had some NQR chicken in it but was otherwise okay.  Poor Liam, he had to just sit around waiting all day, can’t have been much fun.

Then it was time to go back to Dr Douchey.  He had the chest x-ray up on the screen and it looked kind of like this:

(not my actual chest x-ray, but one I got off the internets and photoshopped how my goitre looked over the top)

Goitre-chan has grown a lot since I saw it last!  Before it was just a tiny little bump that you could hardly see and they had to do all these other weird sort of scans and things on me to tell what it was!

So the doctor, he asked me something in Japanese about cancer, which I assumed was “do you have it” but am not sure, because honestly as the doctor why was he asking me?  But I said no, because the thyroid specialist said there was only a teeny tiny chance that it was and they can’t tell until it’s removed anyway.  Then the doctor said “well in that case, there’s nothing wrong with you”.  He said it in English, so there wasn’t even a chance I misunderstood, he actually said that.  I asked him if he was kidding and he said he wasn’t.  I pointed to the x-ray and asked him if he really thought that was nothing.  He said my blood tests were all normal, except that my white blood cells were down, so I should just put up with it and go back to school.  I told him that there was this massive foreign mass in my chest cavity that is pushing on all my internal organs and restricted my breathing, how was that nothing?  He said “there is nothing wrong, it’s all in your imagination”.

By that point, I was pretty angry.  I told him to give me my test results so that I could take them to a competent doctor, then I thanked him for wasting my entire day and walked out.  Apparently this kind of thing is quite common with male Japanese doctors, I’ve read a lot of blogs where people have had serious illnesses and the doctors have just told them it’s stress or whatever and done nothing for them, so I shouldn’t be surprised but I was just so incredibly angry at him.  Like, what if I was some shy Japanese girl who just took him at his word, until my goitre strangled me to death?  And he’s basically saying that the five or six doctors I’m seeing in Melbourne are making stuff up?  I wish I’d have had my umbrella with me so I could’ve clocked him over the head with it!

Anyway, so then we had to wait an hour so they could burn a CD with my x-ray on it.  I don’t know why it took an hour and it was kind of pointless because you need some sort of weird Japanese medical software to view it.

At the end, you have to put your ATM card into this machine and it tells you how much you have to pay.  I had to pay 7000 yen.  This didn’t seem right, so I asked the girl, because I have medical insurance.  She said it was from the tests and the x-ray CD and from seeing the douchebag doctor, you get 70% of it off from the insurance but still have to pay the rest, so it would’ve been a fortune if not for the insurance.  I have Rikkyo medical insurance too, so I have to take in all this stuff to uni to get my 7000 yen back.

I emailed my doctor in Melbourne with the test results and whatnot and in the end decided the best thing to do is to go home early and have the operation ASAP.  It’s kind of sad because it’s not that long until the end of semester and I’d studied so hard until I got sick.  My teachers at Rikkyo have all been lovely, I got an email from my Japanese culture teacher the other day saying how she also has a chronic illness so she understands, and because I’ve been doing my best up until now, she knows that from here on I can keep on doing my best as well.  The lady from the international office looked as if she was going to cry and hug me when I went in to sign the form to say I was withdrawing, and she said how it was so sad because my teachers are always saying how hard I study and stuff.  I thought that was really sweet.  Everyone has been so nice, which helps seeing as how I feel like a massive failure at life.

So now I need to sort out all my crap and pack and whatnot, and in a week I’m heading home.  The up-side of this is that in 8 days I will be with my dog, and really that’s the main thing.

Oh, and I had to pull out of the Japanese speech comp and I totes bet I would’ve won!

19th post: adventures in pops, both j & k

Lately I've been too sick to have many adventures, but I've been trying to do as much as I can when possible.  A few weeks ago, we thought that maybe meat would perk me up a bit, so we headed over to Shin-Okubo for some Korean BBQ.  It was cheap and very delicious as usual, and afterwards we went to Happy Time for frozen yoghurt and fun times.

The lady who sells make-up at Happy Time was like "long time no see" and asked if Lynne had already left Japan.  She said to say hi, so hi Lynne.  All the boys who work at Happy Time are very cute, especially this one who looks like the other guy from You're Beautiful... Shin Woo?  Well, in my head he looks like him.  He is very shy and adorable, when I was paying for my fro-yo, he held onto my hand and asked what country I was from in a very shy and adorable voice.  Maybe he is not actually shy and adorable but a total player, in which case he is doing a good job.  Anyway, the crazy old make-up ajumma kept sending him over to practice his English on us.  He said "people are here, they are not Japanese", as if he was conferring this massive secret on us, then was super shocked that we'd realised they were Korean.  It was very cute.  I love him a little bit.

There were all these pamphlets and guys standing around trying to get people to go to the live k-pop house upstairs from Happy Time.  Here is a sample of the pamphlet.

We thought it was free, so we were like okay, why not.  The show was due to start at 8, so at 8 we headed upstairs, but this cute little chubby guy said it wasn't time yet.  We went outside and there was this weird line system where you had to line up and guys who were dressed in military style coats chatted to you, then you were shown upstairs in pairs.  Once we were upstairs, it was actually 1000 yen to get in!  But you got a free drink as well, which you could choose off a list.  They were supposed to be cocktails but mine just tasted like a melon soda.

The whole club had a very surreal atmosphere, a bit like a David Lynch movie.  You got seated at these tables in pairs and then the band members brought over your drink.  There were only nine tables

and the stage was actually bigger than the floor space and there was no way to leave once you were seated.  The chubby dude who had told us to come back later and this other guy who looked a bit like Mizushima Hiro, only not as hot, chatted for a while and then the chubby dude sang.  He had an amazing voice!  One of the audience members was his mum and she said he did really well.  Then Mizushima Hiro guy sang, he did like a jazzy number and kept making Kathryn do audience participation, which was amusing.  He was nervous because we spoke English and he sang a song in English but he didn't think his accent was very good.  He was pretty good though and very charismatic.  They did two songs each, and then they chatted for a while because the main act still weren't ready.  

The main act - ie the guys in the pamphlet, were called Sin (pronounced Shin).  The dude in the middle had blonde hair and was the gayest thing I have ever seen in my entire life.  Like, you'd need to invent new words to describe his gayness because they simply don't exist yet.  The dude on the left, Rai-Z looked like he was drugged up to the eyeballs and just like stared into space most of the time, except for sometimes he would randomly laugh and one time he tried to breakdance but failed.  Ken was okay but he played the saxophone, which kind of clashed badly with the backing tape they were singing to.  Blonde and very gay Aika talked a lot, and he directed it all at this yakuza-looking guy sitting in the front, who I reckon might've been a producer or maybe sponsor or something, or at least Aika thought so.  He talked about how he is in the same agency as Kara (very popular Korean girl band) and... other shows they'd played and other stuff that I kind of tuned out because he talked a long time.  They did like five songs but all I can really remember is the FT Island cover and this original song of theirs that was supposed to get the crowd riled up and involved the crowd yelling stuff out only nobody really did.  It was very awks.  But kind of hilarious.  There was one girl with a Sin penlight though.  She really loved Aika.

After the show we kind of wanted to get the hell out of there, but we were waylaid by this chick who I think was the manager of Sin and thought we were like bigwig record execs or something.  She took us over to the bar and gave us her business card and told us about their upcoming shows.  She introduced us to Ken, who looked much taller and better looking off stage - maybe because the other two weren't dragging him down?  We tried to leave again but chubby guy and Mizushima Hiro guy caught us by the door.  We told them they were very good and stuff as we were backing out, but then I couldn't get the door open so it was all incredibly awkward!

That is my story of when Happy Time turns into awkward and surreal time!

Last weekend was Arashi's waku waku gakkou.  That means like "exciting school".  They are doing that instead of having a concert this year, they say to save power but I think more like because they are overworked and on the verge of nervous collapse.  We didn't get tickets in the ballot system, so we acquired them elsewhere for an exorbitant price that was still like a tenth of what concert tickets would've cost us.  Anyway, we'd been planning our concert outfits for like a year, so at least we got to wear them!

Kathryn's t-shirt says "Sakurai" because her favourite is Sakurai Sho and her accessories are red because Sho is the red member of Arashi.  Mine says "Ninomiya" and my accessories are yellow for the same reason.  The t-shirts are in the style that Arashi wore for the Pika**nchi photobook in 2002, and we were also wearing appropriately colour-coded skirts and tights.  I wish we'd taken full length pictures of our outfits because they were super cute, everyone said so.

This is where we were sitting.  The concept of "Waku waku gakkou" is that each of Arashi is a sensei and they teach you valuable life lessons.  Most of the stuff they did was in that bit in the middle, so they were far away from everyone, but there were big screens around the top.  They did some things around the outside, like Ninomiya-sensei made everyone run a relay race and Sakurai-sensei made them collect buckets of water from little pools and take them up to the middle while Jun showered a mannequin version of himself so we could all learn the importance of water conservation.  I'm not sure what the point behind Nino's was, except that he likes to annoy people.  His yellow hair was very vivid and makes him look like the living dead.

In Aiba-chan-sensei's class, he made people do a quiz about sushi and then made sushi for Arashi to eat.  I was very hungry at this point and wanted to eat Aiba-sensei's sushi, not even in a metaphorical and possibly dirty way either.  Jun-kun-sensei's was kind of boring, it was about this chick giving birth, it was like a home birth and he sat with the woman while she was in labour.  There is no way I'd let Matsumoto Jun watch me in a state like that!  Sho looked very shocked by the video, I don't think he realised where babies came from up to that point.

They had portraits of what the senseis would look like in like 20 years time, but the pic didn't come out well.  Leader-sensei had a pointy beard, he looked like Mr Miyagi from the Karate Kid.  His lesson was the best, it was about always showing a smile and how laughing makes your brain think it's happy. He made all of Arashi laugh to see who had the best smile but the smile-meter thing wasn't working.  He made Sho go down the end and ding this bell and say things he'd failed at recently so we could all laugh about them, and then they all had to do a silly dance.  Then he sang this song he'd made up, which was like "egao wa ichiban daiji na, egao wa ichiban suteki na" (smiling is the most important, smiling is the best) and on the na bits he'd do this funny face and dance, it was seriously the most hilarious thing I've ever seen in my life.  There was more to the song but I don't remember it because I thought my brain was going to explode from laughing.  It was worth the ticket price just for that.

After the lessons, Arashi sang "Furusato" and then went around the dome on carts so they could wave to everyone.  Honestly, they could've just done that for the three hours, that's what the people really want.

It was bedlam getting out, so we ducked down this little side street to get to the station, as there were lots of food places and we thought the trains wouldn't be so crowded if we ate first.  There was this restaurant that was playing Arashi songs, and they had a special Arashi menu!

The stuff on the menu was all puns on like Arashi songs or member's names, and they had pictures with funny little Arashi-related jokes written beside them.  I stole one of the photocopies because it was hilarious.  It was genius of them because within like five minutes the whole place was packed with people coming from the waku waku gakkou.

This is Kathryn with the menu and her drink which is called "Wild at Heart" after Arashi's recent song.  It was very yummy, it had like violet essence or something in it.  Actually, it might've been the "Face Down", because we thought with a name like that, you wouldn't want to drink too many.

These are the "Gantz balls".  We were a bit worried about the black sauce stuff but they were actually quite delicious.

This is the Lucky (fry) Seven (kakki fry)... bit of a stretch that one, maybe.  Plus there's only five of them.

This is the Sakurai Sho Lon Bau.  It was yum, or as Sakurai Sho would say "MAXIMUM umai".

The girls next to us had Kaibutsu salad, but I don't really get the pun with that, there weren't like monsters in it or anything.  They were very sweet and loved Jun.

So, even if I'm too sick to do anything else while I'm here, at least I got to see Arashi once.  And, you know, up and coming k-pop band Sin!

18th post: touristing

Because Lynne was here visiting, it gave me a chance to do some touristing.  It was very good to get out of the city and see some sites (sights? Both I guess), because the daily grind of Tokyo is very depressing.

First up, we went to Kamakura.  I think everyone else who has ever been to Japan has been to Kamakura but me, so I really wanted to go.  The giant Buddha in Kamakura was buried in the earth for hundreds of years but then there was a tsunami (an old tsunami, not the one last year) and he was uncovered!  Isn't that awesome!  I wonder what other cool stuff is buried in the ground that we don't know about!

He was a bit creepy and looked like he was going to start shooting lasers out his eyes, so I went inside his belly for a look.  This picture is taken from his belly up into his head.  There doesn't seem to be any laser-making equipment, but who knows!!!  The Buddha has mysterious powers!

This guy is also a famous tourist attraction in Japan.  I don't get it, myself, but I do like that vitamin C drink!  We have a very similar picture on our fridge but we definitely acquired it by legitimate means and not stealing it off the vending machine means or any other means that would have me deported.

After seeing Daibutsu-kun and DaiSho-kun, we headed to the beach.  There were lots of windsurfers and surfer-surfers even though there wasn't proper waves, apparently that's normal here.  On a clear day, you're supposed to be able to see Mt Fuji from the beach at Kamakura, but even though it was clear and we tried really hard, we couldn't see it.  I decided I would be Mt Fuji so Lynne could have an authentic seeing Mt Fuji Japan experience.  I am not quite as symmetrical as the actual mountain though.

This is actually the only Mt Fuji we saw in Kamakura.

But we also saw this cat, which was awesome, and apparently also a sort of old Japanese arms.

After we left Kamakura, we were going to go and see Mt Fuji for realz, but on the train we decided we were too tired and headed back to Tokes instead.  We had to change trains at Tokyo station though, so we took Lynne to see the Imperial Palace, and we could see Tokyo Tower through some buildings.  I didn't take photos of that though, maybe because my camera was flat or maybe because I'd seen it before.  I am so jaded!

For the rest of the week I had to go to school and study like a good student while Kathryn and Lynne had fun Tokyo adventures, but then that weekend we headed off to Aomori!  I felt a bit bad for Lynne while we were in Tokyo because all the things that excite you when you first come here are no longer exciting for Kathryn and I so it was hard to be enthusiastic, but Aomori was fresh and exciting!

Because we had our JR East special pass, we firstly took the bullet train to Utsunomiya because it is the gyoza capital of Japan!  These guys were there to greet us at the station, like good little tourism ambassadors.

Then we went and ate loads of gyoza.  This guy was my best friend.  Then I ate him.

After Utsunomiya, we had a two hour stopover in Sendai.  We asked the people at the station what the best thing to do was, and they gave us lots of instructions.  In the end though, we decided to just go on the Loople bus, because then we could see all the sites without getting off our bums, and also because it was called the Loople and that really amused us.  At first we couldn't all sit together because the Loople is very popular, so I took a photo of Lynne sitting on my head!

We saw many lovely sites of Sendai and the people were all very lovely, then we got on the super fastest sort of Shinkansen and went to Aomori.  In Aomori, we were greeted by this guy!

Aomori is a very beautiful city, surrounded by mountains and ocean.  It is famous for its apples and also ramen.  I ate an apple but it wasn't as good as apples at home, the apple juice was amazing though.

The first night, we went to this little izakaya for dinner where there was this funny guy working who said he was Japanese Johnny Depp.  He didn't look anything like Johnny Depp though.  There was this other guy in there with a string of chicks and he kept being amazed at how good our english is.  Japanese Johnny Depp was watching Music Station so we got to see Arashi sing their new song, and had an amusing conversation about how bad Nino looks with his yellow hair.

I am not sure what I am doing in this photo.  There is a giant A building, so maybe I was impersonating it?  Lynne and I went up the A building to see the view.  On a clear day you can see Hokkaido from there, but we didn't see it.  We got a free 100 yen drink though!

The next day we went to the famous art gallery where lots of works by Yoshimoto Nara are exhibited. He is my favourite artist.  You weren't allowed to take photos of the art, so I took a photo of the flower which is strong from growing amongst the weeds.

The only thing you were allowed to take a photo of was the giant dog sculpture.  How did he make this sculpture?  It blows my mind!  It is bigger than the giant Buddha!!!

After that we went to look at Jomon town, which is where the Japanese people lived a long time ago after they came over from Korea and before they learned how to do shopping.  It was very pretty here, I think the Jomons picked a good spot.

This is what the people looked like in the Jomon period.  (Confused donuts apparently!)

After that we went to this seafood market place where you paid for a bowl of rice and then got all these tickets and you could go around all the stalls and get different things put in your bowl and pay for them with your tickets.  See that scallop there on the left side?  It was the best thing I have ever eaten.  It made me cry it was so delicious.  Every time I think about eating that scallop, I almost cry again.  It was a very moving experience for me.

That night we went for a walk along the beach.  It was very beautiful with the sunset and all, and then we uncovered a North Korean infiltration plot.  It was an high tension action packed adventure!

After saving the world, we went and had curry ramen.  This was more difficult than you'd think, as a lot of the ramen places were shut, and this one that was open the lady was a bit creepy and didn't have curry ramen so we left and found this place where the lady was very nice and watching the Aiba drama where he solves crimes with the help of a cat.  This would've been nearly the most delicious thing I've ever eaten except that I'd already eaten the scallop.  It was incredibly good though.

Then this creepy old drunk guy came in and acted like he was going to talk to us and ask us where we came from and then say "kangaroo!  koala!" like people do here, so we quickly left and went back to the hotel to watch Arashi.

Every August (I think) in Aomori, they have this massive festival with these big floats.  The floats are like guys fighting demons and stuff and it keeps the bad spirits away for the year.  The floats are amazing, so when we went to the float museum, I took lots of pictures, though the amazingness doesn't really come through.

Then we got back on the train and went to Morioka.  Morioka has a loople as well, though it wasn't called the loople, it was called the den den mushi.  You had to get off the den den mushi to see most of the sights, so we ended up doing basically the whole town by foot.  There were some awesome sights though!  Here you see a cherry tree that has grown through a big rock!  It's a symbol of perseverance and stuff.

We also stumbled on a random festival.  I don't know what the festival was for and it was kind of low key affair, they didn't even stop the traffic for it!  But we got to see lots of pretty portable shrines and guys wearing those g-string wrap belt things like sumos wear.  I don't know what they're called.

Then we went to the castle grounds, which were also very beautiful.  There is no castle there anymore, but I don't know why.

Next stop on the den den mushi was the devil hands!  There are these rocks, right, and apparently this demon guy came out one time and caused lots of havoc, so they made him go away and he had to put his handprints in these rocks to seal his promise that he would go away and not cause any more havoc.  We couldn't see the handprints though, and neither could the nice family from Hokkaido who we met.  You have to put coins in the cracks of the rocks - I guess to keep the demon away?  I put in 1 yen, because I don't really believe in the demon.

After doing everything possible to do in Morioka, we got on the bullet train back.  I had a delicious bento.  It wasn't really a bullet train, it was more like a stops at all stations and is full of stinky meathead guys with cabbage ears train.

We made it back to Tokyo station and to the right platform with only three minutes to spare for Lynne to catch the last Narita express out to the airport!  Lucky!!!  These guys were waiting to tell us good job and welcome back.

After that, Kathryn went to Kochi and had many wonderous adventures for the week.  I had many sleepy adventures sleeping in her bed and it was awesome.  I have actually been quite sick since then, so sleeping was good.  When Kathryn got back from Kochi, she still had a day left on her JR pass, so we decided to split the cost of my ticket and do the full circuit of the Boso Peninsula in Chiba.

First up we went to Kisarazu (nyan) for coffee.  It was early in the morning and we got to see lots of dodgy dealings out the coffee shop window.  If you have seen the drama Kisarazu Cats Eye, you will remember lots of dodgy dealings in that - apparently they are not fiction.  If you haven't seen it, you should watch it because it is very good.  Anyway, there was this blonde guy who got handed off by this dodgy man to a guy in a fancy car and exchanged for papers of some sort, and this other bogan girl got in a different fancy car for five minutes and then jumped out to run for the pachinko parlour.  It was fun times for all.

After coffee, we decided to go to the cat town from Murakami's 1Q84.  If you haven't read it, you should because it's a very good book.  Anyway, in the book there's this story the guy has read that's about this guy who gets off at the wrong stop of the train and gets stuck in this town where there's no people.  He can't leave because there's no trains and every night these cats come out and take over the town.  Even when he decides he wants to leave he still can't.  The guy in the book has this dad whose in a home on the Boso Peninsula in Chiba, and when his dad is dying he goes there and it's just like the cat town in the story.  Only metaphorically, obviously.  Anyway, so we went to cat town and it was actually more like the literal cat town than the metaphorical!  There were no people!  Well there were a few, but they were very creepy!  I thought we were going to be stuck there and they'd eat our brains!  The ocean was pretty though.

When we got back to the station, we had to wait like 50 minutes for the next train, so we sat outside and watched the cab drivers napping in their cabs.  Part of me feels like it's still in cat town.

Because we were doing the full circuit of the peninsula, we went along the east coast and got to see lots of the ocean.  It was the real ocean, not just Tokyo Bay.  We started getting hungry, as there was no food to be had in cat town, and we got to this station where they advertised delicious steak and lobster dinners!  Yay, food!  So we got off the train there to look for food in Lobster Town.  There was no lobster!  No lobster anywhere!  Only some mean kids who tried to take photos of us for being foreigners.  I cannot convey my disappointment at No Lobster Town adequately through words.  Or pictures, because I didn't take any, but it was a giant disappointment and now I hate that No Lobster Town.  I got some of my feelings out through interpretive dance once we got back to the station though.

We headed back to Chiba city, because one time we stayed there and had this awesome Mt Fuji hotpot. We kind of wanted either lobster or yakiniku, but there was no lobster and the yakiniku was super expensive, so we went back to the Mt Fuji hotpot place.  The Mt Fuji hotpot was full of chicken entrails though, so we got food on sticks and mochi potato cheeseball things and other yummy stuff.  Take that No Lobster Town!

Anyway, since we came back to Tokes, I have been too sick to do very much at all.  At least I got to do some fun touristing though!

17th post: birthday

So, Saturday was my birthday.  I can no longer say I am in my early 30s, I think.

I got breakfast and presents in bed from my sisters, which was awesome.  Kathryn gave me a yellow satchel bag that I'd been looking at in Harajuku, and Lynne gave me this really pretty notebook and matching pencil case from Sri Lanka - nice score, me!

We decided to go to the baseball during the day, because it was on near where we were booked for dinner, out in Chiba.  We had to get the tickets from the machine at the 7-11, which we thought would be a nightmare like so many other things we've tried to get tickets for in this country, but it was surprisingly easy.  It took a long time on the train, and we stopped for a coffee in Suidobashi, but eventually made it and met up with Liam at the train station.

The game was Chiba Marines vs Tokyo Giants.  I have decided that Chiba Marines are my team because they have very cool chants, and you can get these balloons and when someone gets a home run everyone lets off their balloons in the air.  Lynne got clocked in the back of the head with a stray balloon, but apart from that there were no major incidents.  We had good seats, considering they were the only ones left when we bought the tickets, they were in the top stand but in the front row between third base and the home plate.  (LOL, I sound like I know stuff!)  It was a very hot day, so Kathryn and I went to buy merchandise to protect us from the sun.  I bought a fan because it was the cheapest thing and you can not only fan yourself but also block the sun with it.  The game itself wasn't as exciting as the other one we went to because the Marines had a massive lead, but it was an awesome atmosphere with the big crowd and warm day.  There was this adorable little boy sitting along from us and he was very upset and crying at one point, but then we made funny faces at each other and he cheered up.  We had to leave by 4 to get back to the station to meet Kirsty, and luckily the game finished just in time.  Yay, Marines!  Yay, cute stationery set from Swimmer that Kirsty gave me for my birthday!  It has teeny tiny scissors!!!

Why would a person go all the way to Chiba for dinner, you may ask.  And I would tell you, because it is where the world-famous Chinese restaurant of the Aiba family is.  It was awesome, because we had a booking we got to bypass all the girls lining up outside.  Last time I went we had to line up for three hours to get in and I was starving by the time I finally ate.  It's really bad too because when you're in the line you can see all the people inside eating delicious foods.  But none of that for us this time!  We got shown to a private room at the back, which was good but didn't have as much atmosphere as sitting in the main part of the restaurant.  We ordered lots of food: mabo tofu, sweet & sour pork, gyoza (x2), some veggie thing, and then because our rice was late and we'd eaten nearly everything by the time we got it, we had to order a second helping of mabo tofu, and then I had frozen strawberries filled with condensed milk stuff for dessert.  Oh man, it was so delicious.  I would eat there every day of my life if I could, even if it wasn't the restaurant of Aiba Masaki's family!  Sometimes if you're very lucky, Aiba's mum is your waitress, but as Aiba was on tv all night Saturday, she was upstairs watching him.  Well, she might've been watching Korean dramas, but she wasn't working and the lights were on in their lounge room.  We didn't get to see Aiba's dog or his monkey either, but it was still good to go and see the fanarts and eat delicious food.  You can write messages in a book for him as well, but I had written everything I wanted to say last time, so I didn't.

After that we headed back to the big smoke.  It took a while and we were all very sleepy on the train, but karaoke perked us up.  Lynne had the Japan experience of sneaking cheap booze into karaoke so you don't have to pay inflated prices, and we sang a very eclectic mix of songs.  Mum, I filmed us singing The Rose for you, but I got my buttons on my phone mixed up and cut off the good bit.  It's still very heart-rending though.  I'm not going to post it on facebook because I can't work out how, and also I don't think the world is yet ready for it.

It was a very big day, so I was pretty much done and ready for bed after karaoke and was home by 11. This is because I am no longer young and my feeble old person body can no longer handle late nights.  When we got home, we had a notice in the letterbox to say they'd tried to deliver my present from Mum!  (Okay, well they'd tried the day before but we hadn't checked the letterbox.)  Much to my surprise, when I called the next day, they said they'd deliver it that afternoon.  On a Sunday!  So I got my present full of Australian goodies like colgate toothpaste and cadbury chocolate and snakes alive and proper tampons and mostly importantly JARLSBURG CHEESE!  Probably none of those things are actually Australian, hey.  But still, they are very awesome and I am eating the last of my chocolate now.

So all in all, it was a very good birthday and I intend to do it again next year.  Though, probably in Australia with a parma and chips instead of Japan with Chinese food.

16th post: hisashiburi

It's been so long since I posted that I'm not sure I can remember everything, but I'll give it a go anyway.

Last week we had midterm exams, so the first half of the week was review lessons.  After school Tuesday, Kathryn and I decided to go to Shibuya to get our Arashi fanclub memberships sorted out at the Johnny's office.  This was incredibly painful.  After getting through all the dozers shambling through the Shibs, the girl was very rude and said she couldn't help us, contrary to information on the website.  We were very angry and disheartened, so we had pizza.  That didn't cheer us up so we went to karaoke and sang k-pop songs.  Well, the one k-pop song we know, but it cheered us up a lot.

You know how everyone hanging around Shibuya thinks they're so mecha kakkoii?  Well we saw this guy outside the station, right:

He thinks he's so super cool with his leather jacket and guitar, right.  But he is wearing PINK CROCS.  I rest my case.  (I also got super sprung taking this photo, as you can probably deduce from how the guy is looking directly at me.)

On the train home we decided to stop off at Shin Okubo for BBQ.  I love niku, it always makes me happy.  I made up a little song about niku because niku is my best friend.

The next day I was sick and stayed in bed all day, then Thursday and Friday I had exams.  I did good on my exams except for the essay writing one where I wrote about fish by accident.  I still got a B for it though, so maybe my teacher just really likes fish.

When Kathryn and I went to the Edo Museum we got this handy little book for 2000 yen that is full of vouchers to places in Tokyo like museums and art galleries so we can get in for free.  One of these places was Ueno Zoo.  Yay, panda!

I bought a panda backpack because I have not had a handy small bag, but every time I wear it, people seem to think it's okay to just randomly start patting it!  WTH, don't stroke my panda, peoples!!!  The zoo was very fun, as you probably saw from my 200 or so photos on facebook.  After that we went wandering around the back alleys of Ueno and found this little izakaya where we had yummy snacks and beers.  We made lots of friends, like the old lady who sneakily paid off half our bill and the old man who talked to us a lot about Japanese economics, or possibly the WW2 war strategies, we're not sure.  Then these guys came and sat with us and tried to make us drink hoppy sets, so we left after a polite amount of time and came back home to karaoke.  Good times!

Saturday I had to go to the safety seminar with my school people.  I wanted to sleep but it was compulsory and it ended up being kind of fun.  We got to put out fake fires and had to escape from a fake burning house, and then had to go through this earthquake simulation thing.  The old lady who was running it was incredibly hilarious.  Then we had to watch this incredibly depressing video about last year's earthquake, which was incredibly depressing, as you'd expect.

Then I had to go meet Kathryn coz we got free baseball tickets through our real estate agency.  There were like about 10 other people, most of whom were quite nice except for the douchey guy sitting in front of us who was trying to hit on these two girls by telling them about cricket.  He stopped talking to us after we corrected him because he didn't know jack.  He nearly got hit in the head with a baseball and killed, that was kind of funny.

The game was very close and went to like three extra innings, it was just like in Rookies where every game was a matter of life and death and they got to the final innings with two outs and bases loaded and the underdog guy who always struck out hit a home run.  Well, I don't know if he was an underdog but it was still pretty exciting.  They do lots of cool chants, so even though I was going for the buffalos I kept doing the Go Go Swallows chant coz it was fun.

After the baseball we tried to buy tickets for the Jang Geun Suk concert from Lawsons.  The Lawsons man was incredibly unhelpful and the ticket machine thing was very confusing so now I hate Lawsons as well as Johnny's.

Sunday we went to Asakusa for the Sanja matsuri, where they take the three big portable shrines out of the temple and carry them around the neighbourhood for luck, then bring them back.  We went a few years ago and it was very fun, but this time it wasn't as much fun.  There was still yummy food on sticks though!  We had some food at this izakaya and this very drunk and dumb girl took my panda and fondled it and I didn't think she would give it back.  She didn't realise pandas were bears.  Or that they were from China.  Or much of anything, really.  Then these two girls came along who we'd met the week before at the Asagaya nomiya thing (they remembered us as Nino and Sakurai, lol) so they came and sat with us, and once they got chatting to the bear girl, I took my panda and ran.

We kind of saw one shrine come in, and some geishas, but missed most of the festivities on account of they were wherever we weren't.  We gave up and headed home.

On the way home we were starving so we went to Hard Rock Cafe at Ueno station and bought lots of awesome food like mashed potato and mac & cheese.  I had never been to Hard Rock Cafe before and while it was kind of lame and overpriced, the food was super awesome.

After my big weekend, I was way too sick to go to school, so I stayed home and slept and did homework.  Tuesday, Lynne got here!  I met her and Kathryn at Sugamo and we went for coffee, then headed back to the hood.  Lynne made herself at home on the subway.

Lynne was very impressed with her futon.  Hers is way more comfy than mine, even though it is exactly the same.  We are totally going to swap them after she leaves!

We took her to Gutso and she was very impressed with the corn & mayo pizza and Mt Fuji of chips, though as you will note from the photo it isn't a Mt Fuji anymore, more like a Mt Ossa.

That night we went to Akabane for dinner at the 280 yen izakaya and ate lost of deep fried food with cheese in it.  It was awesome.  Then we went to karaoke.  Lynne didn't sing because she was trying to get wi-fi on her ipad, but she said that we are much better singers than we used to be.  We have video of her saying it if anyone wants proof.

I was still very tired on Wednesday and wasn't sure I'd make it through class but I really wanted to know what happened next in Totoro, so I held out.  When I got home Kathryn and Lynne were still out seeing the sights of Harajuku and Shibuya, so I got lots of homework done.  I can't remember what we did Wednesday night and Kathryn won't tell me because she just had to tell Lynne when Lynne was updating her blog, so we'll all just have to live with the mystery, I guess.  It might've been the night I changed my flight home, actually, so yay to that.

Thursday I didn't go to school and slept til 6pm because I was very sick.  Sleeping is awesome.  Then I made awesome curry rice for everyone and we watched Arashi and also ate lots of those Lotte crispy chocolate almonds.  Good times.

Today we went for more wacky sister adventures in Shin Okubo.  Lynne was very amused at everyone sleeping on the train so she decided to impersonate them.

There is this place in Shin Okubo called Happy Time, and it really is.  There's a street stall at the front that sells these little pancake things with cheese in the middle, then inside they have these help yourself frozen yoghurt machines and you can put your own toppings and things on it like m&ms and oreos, etc, and you get charged by the weight.  They also have crepes and things, and they are always playing k-pop videos and there is also a section that sells beauty products.  And the waiters are all hot Korean guys.  It really makes for a happy time.  This nutso old lady who was selling cosmetics kept putting stuff on our faces, it really made our eyes less puffy though!  We told her we were sisters but she thought Lynne was our mum on account of Lynne is so tanned from India, and I was obviously the youngest because I was kawaii chibi chibi.  Kathryn and Lynne had half-eaten their fro-yo parfaits by the time I took this photo:

Lynne won a water filter system in a lucky dip, but it was very big and she is a travelling hippie so she swapped it for a chocolate.  I think the girl was kind of relieved because it would've been complicated to organise it all in Japanese.  We were also relieved as we think it was some sort of swindle.  Still amusing though.

Then we went to the Korean idol/beauty products shops so I could get my 300 yen idol socks.  The girl was very sweet in the shop, she kept trying to make Kathryn buy all this Hyun Bin stuff because she likes Secret Garden, and these two old ladies were so happy that I liked Jang Geun Suk that they kept finding merchandise and giving us to buy, like water bottles and keychains and stuff.  It was so hilarious.  The cute salesgirl told us the JGS calendar was on sale and showed us the price on a calculator, then she said "this is money" and was super embarrassed.  It was so cute.  She was very happy I'm studying in Japan because she is too, and then she said "I am Korean".  I wanted to take her home and keep her, she was so cute.  Anyway, idol socks are awesome but kind of weird because they're very small so JGS kind of has a bit of a boofhead when he's on my feet.

Lynne found a novel way to get a seat on the Yamanote line by going through all the teams in the AFL and singing their club songs.  Note how the guy beside her is backing away.

There is this really cheap massage place where we change trains, 2980 yen for an hour, so we went and got awesome massages on the way home.  We were a bit woozy-headed on the subway, but decided to stop off and have okonomiyaki so that we didn't have to leave the house again once we got home.

It was really freaking delicious.  We got one with cheese and then a monja with corn and mochi.  Mochi monja!!!

We ate it all.  It was awesome.