I'm going home tomorrow for the summer holidays (August). So I'll do I quick update of the stuff I did this week before I go to bed.
Today I asked my homestay mum to teach me how to make sushi (again) so that I can make it myself at home and maybe have a sushi party *wink*. Here's a picture: "It's so beautiful *tear*"
Anyway on Saturday I went to see the Harry Potter movie (English with Japanese subtitles). Japanese people are fans of the movie but hardly any of them have read the books. Therefore they weren't as emotional as the fans from back home "My life is over!!!" Also probably because of the translations they didn't find some of the jokes as funny so i'm going to watch it one more time when I go home.
Outside of the cinema/ game center I saw a giant 'Relax Bear' AKA 'Relakkuma'. (Judging from the picture, it looks like I wasn't ready for the shot.)
Harajuku is known for having people in costumes (cosplayers) and people who dance and play music however I hadn't seen anyone so far until last Sunday. In my geography lesson my teacher told me about different parks in Tokyo, one being in Harajuku.
So instead of going down Takeshita Dori (famous shopping street) I went the other direction to a place called 'Yoyogi Park' and suddenly I saw it: Groups of middle aged guys with elvis hair dancing to 50's music with leather jackets on in the boiling hot sun. It's about time!!
This is another group
Tekeshita Dori
next to Takeshita Dori
Meiji Jingu Bridge
Random green guys advertising something. This guy was nice enough to pose for me.
I fell out of the habit of writing my blog, probably because I kept falling asleep after school. So I'll write a few entries to catch up.
A few weeks ago I went to Shibuya, which is another fashion town for young adults and it's also popular with foreigners. I have a game called 'The World Ends With You', whose settings are based in shibuya therefore I knew were a few of the places were, not to mention that I came here 2 years ago so I didn't get lost (this time).
This cross walk is the busiest cross work in the world where 10 000's of people cross every day. This picture wasn't even peak hour. They video bellow shows when it's the busiest.
On one side of the crossing is suspposedly the busiest Starbucks in the world (the sign is kind of hard to see from this angle)
Where I got a delicious 'Mocha Frappuccino', (there is always a green tea flavoured something here).
On the other side of the crossing is the 'Hachiko' statue. The story of Hachiko is famous, it's about a dog that waited for his master for years even after he died, (There's even a movie about him).
On the other side of the station is a Moai staue, according to to wikipedia it was given to Tokyo in the 80's as a pressant for being the capital for a 100 year, the previous being Kyoto.
The next place I went to was the 109 building 'ichi maru kyu' in Japanese. It has about 9 floors packed full of women's clothing stores. Most of the things there were targeted towards people in their 20-30's. I just walked around and looked at the stores since everything was really expensive.
Besides 109, there were lots of shopping malls and high fashion shops everywhere.
My teacher told me that there are 4 levels of fashion. The first is Harajuku (my favourite) which is for high schoolers, the next is Shibuya (20's), after that is Omotesando (30's+) and the last is Ginza which is for rich people who love brand named items.
The next place I went to was 'Tower Records' a famous music store with all types of music. There I bought some Japanese music (mostly music I heard in movies and TV shows). Unfortunatuly every music store I've been to has expensive CD's.
I didn't go anywhere else after that since 1. I spent too much money and 2. I was starting to get heat stroke from staying out in the sun too much. Here's another picture from outside the train station.
Now that I think about it I did pretty good this time. Last time (2 years ago) my friends and I ended up getting lost in the shady, love hotel area.
Finally exam hell is over, yay!!! (It probably wasn't too bad, but as you all know I'm allergic to studying.) Anyway I think I’ve gotten a little bit of amnesia from all the sleepless nights so don't expect too much from this entry.
Last Sunday I went to Ikebukuro to see the new Buddha movie, which is based on Osamu Tezuka's books. However when I got there the movie wasn't showing *shakes fist* so I had no choice but to see the Basara movie.
The good news was my Japanese is finally good enough to order a popcorn combo set :D
they had the Buddha box, but not the movie
Caramell popcorn
free movie picture
Despite how cool the poster looks, the movie itself was pretty disappointing. It turns out that Basara is actually a game and the movie was just commercial garbage in order to make money from the fan base.
Story recap:
The bad guy (white hair) says "RAW!!! Revenge!!!! I'll kill you all!!! Blablabla..." then he fights a bunch of random guys. One of the main characters (blue guy) is a samurai, gangster with an exhaust pipe and bike handles attached to his horse, who fights even more random people. Then he gets all of his gangster friends and makes an army and goes out to fight the bad guys and there was a giant cooking pot in the middle of the battle field which made no sense what so ever.
As for the climax... It was so boring that I fell asleep in it. By the time I woke up, the credits were rolling with random army guys dancing in the background, kind of like this:
