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29 June 2008 @ 08:56 pm
I realize it's been a while since I've made a post. What can I say, I've been pretty busy as you can imagine.

I'll make an update in a day or two don't worry. I'm still alive. (:
 
 
17 June 2008 @ 05:26 pm
Okay, so here's the big update I'm sure all of you have been waiting for. Sorry, we've been busy!!

Alright, a recap of our trip thusfar:

Friday we came into Japan. Met up with our arranged taxi, and rode to our residence. Upon arrival, we met the residence's manager, Adam (from England). A surprise, as the old owner (in 2006), Chiaki, had apparently left. Ironically enough, Adam was just on his way out, as Sunday he was to return to England. The new owner would be Shu, a Chinese girl. Adam showed us to the closest ATM and arcade, where we took care of the necessaries before call it a night. I took David to Yoshinoya for his first meal in Japan, and as per usual, it was pretty much amazing.

Saturday I decided to take David into Shibuya to show him what Tokyo was all about. I arranged to meet up with my friend Masaru Odaware (SPEEDMOD), and he invited the whole gang. We met up with him at the old hangout, "Popolare", and then after getting ramen noodles (which were on him), he proceeded to assist us in reactivating my cell phone, and getting us train passes. Apparently we were to get a large discount if we had student ID's, so we decided to hold off on getting passes just yet.

He showed us to the new hangout, Namcoland, where we proceeded to meet up with with the rest of the gang. A lot of familiar faces, as well as new ones. It's great to be back in Japan. I pretty much playing nothing but DDR SuperNOVA 2 that day.

Afterwards, David and I got "Italian" food (hardly anything of the sort -- it's more Japanese than Italian) with KK and Jun, and they taught us a lot about Japanse coloquial terms regarding Bemani in Japan. It was all very interesting, as well as amusing. When we finished eating, we went back to Namcoland and played more games and eventually called it a night.

We had more or less spent the entire day at the acade (nearly 12 hours), and by the next day I wasn't feeling too well. SPEEDMOD invited the whole group to go get kaitensushi with us on Sunday (the next day), so of course we couldn't refuse. Prior to eating, I met some more new faces (NCMILK reminds me of Anthony, lol), and played more DDR. A very bad idea, haha, but fun nonetheless.

We got sushi in Roppongi at Roppongi Hills. It was incredible. SPEEDMOD paid for us again, he honestly is too kind. Probably the nicest guy I've ever known in my life. They then took us to the Konami building in Roppongi where David and I proceeded to Mutsuhiko Izumi's floor and ransacked his office in the middle of the night...okay, so maybe that part didn't happen, but David and I had definitely agreed that it would have been a good idea. We then went to an arcade in Roppongi, loitered around for a bit, took lots of pictures, and called it a night. I wasn't feeling too well, it was kind of late, and we had our first day of class the next day, so we said goodbye and SPEEDMOD escorted us to the train station.

The next morning, Monday, I could confirm it -- I was sick. A simple cold, but I was bed ridden. It was preeeetty shitty, so I decided to stay home. I missed my first day of class, but David was able to make it to school own his own, thanks to my amazing direction-giving abilities mind you. :3 I slept all day, and Monday never really existed for me.

Tuesday I found the energy to go to class, so I did, and it was great. My classmates are pretty cool, and there's this Korean girl in my class who's pretty much amazing. David's cass is full of English speakers, but then again, it is a beginner's class, lol. We're only in these classes for about 3 weeks, and then we're transferring into the Intensive afternoon classes (complete with kanji classes).

After class, I attempted to find Smile-kan, the local arcade I frequented last time. It took us forever (over an hour), as well as a lot of getting lost, but I did find it, and it was just as amazing as ever. We played games there for a bit, and headed back to the school at 5PM.

From there, we got shabu shabu in Shinjuku with our WLE program leaders Etsuko and Hyunmi, as well as our sempais. It was a lot of fun, although I couldn't really enjoy it because my taste buds were dead from the sickness. I did hold a very enjoyable conversation with Hyunmi, however, which made it worth it. She's actually from Korea, and moved here 15 years ago. We exchanged contact info and I'm welcome to go to her office anytime (which is actually where I am right now, lol). She's really nice and a great conversation partner.

After shabu shabu they all went to karaoke, but I had no voice left from the cold, so we decided to skip it. Plus, a few of our sempais I disagreed with (anime people...lol). I showed David around Shinjuku, gave him a look at some real life ganguros, headed into the local Don Quijote, and eventually went back to the residence. I needed my rest!

The next day, Wednesday, I'm feeling a lot better, and guess what? Looks like I got David sick! Haha, so Wednesday he stayed home while I went to class. Not much of anything happened Wednesday. I came home after class (spent maybe 20 minutes at Smile-kan doing pop'n music), saw how David was doing, and passed out. Big cities are exhausting, and Thursday came quickly.

Thursday we both went to class, went to Smile-kan afterwards, came home. Pretty sure we did the same thing Friday. We went t sleep early both days because we were still getting over being sick and needed our rest.

Saturday we woke up bright and early and headed off to Tokyo Disneyland! The trip was included within our program, so who'd turn down the offer? We made friends with a guy from Holland named Jordan (one of our sempais), and we played him in some Mario Kart DS in the foodcourt in Tomorrowland. He's pretty good, heh, but I did beat him once. :3 We rode everything worth riding, which was absolutely nothing (as usual), waited in line for hours on end, and did the typical Tokyo Disneyland experience. We were supposed to meet up with RoBo (he has an annual pass), but my phone died. :( At around 5PM there was a giant parade for Tokyo Disneyland's 25th anniversary. By this point we were pretty done and decided to leave.

From there we headed to Shibuya where we went to a pretty sweet party that I had heard about. I was skeptical at first, but it turned out to be the right idea. 10 minutes into the party, David and I are already chatting up a storm with these girls Hikaru and Mutsumi (who were both quite the lookers). They were actually both volunteers working the bar, and had just met about 10 minutes before the party. They gave us the hook up once their shift came up, and we chatted with them on and off throughout the course of the party. I arranged for us all to do karaoke after the party, and they said it sounded great. We pretty much just hung around for the rest of the night. We also met this girl Risa, who ironically, also was a volunteer working the bar. I got her contact info, and we left the party to do karaoke with Mutsumi and Hikaru afterwards.

Hikaru spoke really good English, whereas Mutsumi spoke little to none. I'm now officially Mutsumi's "sensei", if you will. David speaks little to no Japanese right now, whereas I'm quite fluent, so he mainly chatted with Hikaru, me with Mutsumi. We did karaoke for an hour, and it was a lot of fun. Mutsumi had an amazing singing voice. David and I got their phone numbers, and we headed home from there. Really good night.

Sunday, after charging my phone, I got back in touch with RoBo to find out that he had ended up going to Disneyland on Saturday anyways. I felt so bad, but he said that he had fun, so it was cool. We met up with SPEEDMOD and the gang in Shibuya at Namcoland, got money exchanged, finally got our train passes (which are AMAZING), and grabbed some First Kitchen (a Japanese fast food chain they like to pronounce as fah-kin), which was also amazing. SPEEDMOD was feeling sick and headed home, so I got in touch with RoBo and he met up with us at Namcoland. Namcoland only has 1 pop'n machine, so he invited us to go to B'z Zone in Ikebukuro to meet up with some friends of his. Sounded good, so we headed off for Ikebukuro.

A brand new subway line had just opened up on Saturday that is a direct shot from Shibuya to Ikebukuro (as well as other locations), so we decided to hop n it. It was pretty amazing -- a brand new subway line in Tokyo. Not too many people get to experience that. It was really spiffy, and smelled like new. Once in Ikebukuro, I made it a point to show David the Ikefukurou in the JR train station (it's a statue of a fukurou/owl, which is a Japanese play on words). I had gone to B'z Zone last year, but it's just as impressive everytime I go there. 3 DDR SuperNOVA 2's, 3 beatmaniaIIDX DJ TROOPERS, 3 pop'n music PARTY's, and as of tomorrow, 3 Guitar Freaks V5's, and 3 drummania V5's (all sessioned). They know what they're doing here at B'z Zone. As a matter of fact, they recently changed their name to Sports Land. Sport in Japanese is typically pronounced supootsu (スポーツ), but the katakana for Sport Land says suporutsu (スポルツ), which sounds more like Spolts than Sports when pronounced. Silly Japanese.

Before even playing any games, RoBo's friends wanted to do karaoke. They invited us, so how could we resist? We followed RoBo and his friend Seiha to an arcade in the middle of nowhere where we met up with the likes of Shiomaru. That man knows how to play pop'n music...that's for damn sure. I won't go int details, but anyone reading this who knows anything about pop'n knows about Shiomaru, so there's no need for me to explain.

We went to karaoke with them, ad David and I got pretty hungry. Thankfully the karaoke bar had a pretty sweet dinner menu, where we proceeded to order amazing food at amazing prices. Lots of amazing songs were sung (a lot of Bemani, Asaki, and Asian Kung-fu Generation), and it was a change of pace from the karaoke last night. Karaoke with 2 girls = a lot of J-Pop, with everyone caring what they sound like. Karaoke with about 8 guys (gamers/otakus no less) = a lot of loud screaming, yelling, jumping around, and getting in trouble. It was pretty incredible. I have a few pics from the karaoke on my photobucket, but nothing special.

Afterwards, we went back to Sports Land, where it turns out that EVERYONE we had just gone to karaoke with was pretty bullshit at pop'n music. Like...some of the things I saw...lol. Again, not going into detail for the reader's sake, but it was another amazing night in the lives of two poppers.

Hmm, that's about all I can think of for Sunday. We went home, went to sleep, went to class on Monday. After class Monday we went back to Smile-kan after getting amazing katsudon for lunch as usual, bumped into Shiomaru at Smile-kan (which is always nice, lol), and hung out there for a while. RoBo got in touch with me and told me he was going to head on over, so David met up with him at around 5PM while I met up with my conversation partner that I had been assigned by the school. She was really cool, her name was Maiko. She liked Death Note, Sailor Moon, The Holiday (lol), Ouendan, and DDR. We had a lot in common and made pretty good conversation. We talked for over an hour and exchanged contact information. We're meeting up again next week on Tuesday and she's going to take me around her University's campus, so that should be fun.

After I left the WLE building (which is conveniently located in the alley behind Smile-kan), I met up with David and RoBo and did lots of pop'n music. RoBo introduced me to another friend of his named Ume, who proceeded to 100K IDM EX, Rinsei EX, and cleared Contemporary Nation, Progressive Baroque, and Forklore EX on Random play, NO SPEED. It was the sickest thing I'd ever seen. Afterwards we went to go get food, talked about lots of pop'n music, learned a lot about Shiomaru (and his broken English), and eventually called it a night. Went home, passed out and...

We were late for class this morning, lol. Slept through the alarm. We passed out so hard last night. Oh well, made it to class. David just finished meeting up with his conversation partner, Kayo. She was apparently pretty cool (I dunno, ask David!), he got her contact info, and they're meeting up again on Friday. I need fooooood, I haven't eaten yet today and it's 7PM. ;o On a lighter note, I've lost so much weight since I've been here, it's amazing.

On other notes, we're going to Akihabara tomorrow to get David his phone. Tomorrow night I'm meeting up with Mutsumi again in Shibuya <3. And theeeen, I dunno. Oh, I also have a test tomorrow, but I'll ace that of course. Another big day tomorrow, as usual here in Japan!

That's all for now I think. Peace!

My Japanese photobucket can be found here:

http://s276.photobucket.com/albums/kk31/kazeisinjapan/

Pictures of my going away party, scores, Japan (thusfar), and airport pictures can be found within. Expect me to update it as more pictures as taken!

Byeee.
 
 
12 June 2008 @ 07:13 am
I've e-mailed a number of you from my Japanese cell phone, but only 1 of you ever responded. It is possible that my e-mails are going to your spam folder, so please add the following e-mail address to your contact list:

z27ac6f883tf3@t.vodafone.ne.jp

That is my mobile e-mail address and is the most convenient way to get in touch with me. Please send me e-mail so that I can add you to my address book. Also, please don't make e-mails too long, I can't receive e-mails over 1000 letters I think.

We're going to get David a cell phone this weekend too I think, and once he gets his, I'll post his contact info as well.

Until then.
 
 
12 June 2008 @ 01:27 am
YES!!!!!!!


















































I have Okuyama-sensei again this year. :3 I know someone on my friend's list who is jealous! I have him Mondays and Wednesdays -- twice as much as before (only Thursdays last time).












Also, I'm not gonna go into details, but let's just say that I'm drinking Pepsi, and it's blue.

Bigger update later. Sorry if you guys don't care too much for this one. :p We're both alive, just busy. I can't figure out how to make international phonecalls on my cell yet, but when I do, expect phonecalls. Until then, be patient!
 
 
08 June 2008 @ 09:08 am
Just letting you all know that we're here. I'd make a longer post, but David doesn't like sitting at home, lol. Always so eager. :p

Anyways, here's some contact info:

e-mail address: Kaze.PC@gmail.com
Phone Number: 81-(090)-3917-9907
Address:
3-33, Gamo-kotobukicyo,Koshigaya-city, Saitama,343-0836,JAPAN
RIFLE GAMO
202

Yes, it's the same address and phone number as last time, just a different room number. Please don't call unless it's an emergency or you're my mom (lol). Feel free to send me text messages though.

Hmm, met up with friends last night -- SPEEDMOD, Jun-G, KK. Got Yoshinoya, ramen, Italian. We're getting kaitenzushi today with them again, then starting class monday.

I'll update later, since David wants to go. Peace(^^)v.
 
 
Current Location: japan lol
 
 
 
 

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