Anyway, I'd show you the video right now, except it's uploading on my phone right now, and my internet is about as slow as a snail with a shell two sized too big, so I'll have to placate you for the moment with...
...Pictures, yay! You KNEW I had to be doing something these past two weeks, didn't you? So I'll start from the beginning-ish. I didn't actually do too well in taking too many pictures in the beginning, though, so just hold tight until I get to the picture place.
So, I get to Japan, and of course I'm exhausted from the long trip, but on the way to where I was staying, I had to take a rush hour train. This meant... people! And everyone getting smushed into the train! And people I didn't know touching me! And me thinking "AH! THERE'S GOING TO BE A CHIKAN* HERE AND I'M GOING TO BE ATTACKED!" Seriously, it was the most packed train I've been on to date, and I had to do it with all my luggage and while I was tired and when I had just been reading articles about chikan when I was at home. Fortunately, I was not attacked, and I doubt it would have happened with Keita standing right by me anyway. But hey, I wasn't exactly in my best condition anyway.
One of the first things that I did was go to Obirin a few days into the trip so I could see my friends from that school (they had studied abroad at UNT). On the third day of that, we all went bowling.
Let me tell you a little bit about bowling, friends. I suck at it. Really really bad. Bowling hates me, and I hate bowling, and we have a mutual agreement to stay away from each other as much as possible. But with the Japanese, there seems to be two things that you always do: karaoke and bowling. And since all my friends are too embarrassed to go karaoke, I get to go bowling.
"Oh, it won't be so bad!" thinks I. I WAS WRONG YOU GUYS. I STILL SUCK. Like, I most definitely got the lowest score. It was pitiful.
Anyway, pictures!
Here we are, bowling. That's Yuki on the left and Keita on the right.
Keita makes various poses as he bowls.
...and another.
And another.
Yeah, you laugh, but he beat everyone by a mile. ....this must be his secret weapon to throw the rest of us off track because we're laughing so hard.
Yay everyone! Left to right, back to front, there's Eri, Yuki, Keita, Futta and Honami.
About halfway through, they came and gave us these. I'm not sure why. But anyway, yay, free trinkets!
Eri is probably laughing at me, because my ball is already heading for the gutter. Or maybe she's laughing because I'm so bad at this that I'm bowling with a basketball.
(I kid. It was actually really a bowling ball. Probably.)
Futta's like "Yeah. Nailed it."
Afterwards we went to eat and then did some purikura. If you don't know what purikura is... I'm sorry. It's awesome. You go and stand in this huge photo booth with your friends that has a touch screen inside, and you choose backgrounds for your pictures, and pose in various ways while they take pictures. After that, you go outside and to the side of the booth where you can decorate your pictures on another touch screen with a bunch of decorations, and stamps and different kinds of "inks" that you can draw with. Then it prints your pictures, and you divide them between you
It says "Texas Members" and "Caitlin, welcome to Japan".
I'll spare you the other picture I have of that, since I look silly. Or maybe I'm sparing myself. Either way!
A few days later Keita took me to a store. And there I took a few pictures.
In America, you eat M&Ms. In Japan, M&Ms EAT YOU. I mean, seriously, look at those things! It's creepy!
(You might want to move the little ones away from the screen for the next one.)
Thank you Japan. Now we know.
After that, Keita and I went to see Yuma in Yokohama. I wanted to see everyone, BUT EVERYONE IS ALWAYS DOING SOMETHING IN JAPAN. Seriously, you have to book in advance!
YAY CREPES! Japan likes crepes. I like crepes. I think we're going to get along juuuuuust fine, Japan. Juuuust fine.
And here I am, playing a drum game that's pretty much like DDR, except with Japanese drums (I pretty much rocked at it... even if I lost every time, haha).
OH MY GOSH YOU GUYS, JAPANESE ARCADES ARE AWESOME! They have huge games that you can like, get inside a machine and it has three screens around you and you're like, controlling your own gundam thing! And like, these things where you put cards down on a screen and you control your own team of fighters on the screen in front of you by moving your cards! And like, big shooting games and like... JUST AWESOME. WHY DO WE NOT HAVE THIS IN AMERICA?!?!
And then we went on a boat!
And it was freaking hot out. And humid. And I thought I was going to DIE.
Here I am, half dead.
(I'm on a BOAT.)
Next we went to this international store thingy. And it was fun. And Keita bought a Star Wars mask, because he is 5 years old.
I am very scared. He is scary. I will soon be carried off to the empire or something. Aaaaaah.
And look what Yuma found!
Naked babies! Kyupi naked babies!
Shout out to Rachel who loves Kyupi more than life itself! And by "loves kyupi more than life itself" I mean she likes this kind of Japanese mayo on her sandwhich.
And then... More purikura!
It says "Texas. Love lo~ve!"
At the top it says "Cute!" and then "What is this?!"
That would be Keita in the mask. Because he likes Star Wars and because he is a dork. BUT IF YOU IFNORE THE BOTTOM PART then it's a really cute picture in the top left corner. IGNORE MY BOYFRIEND, OKAY YOU GUYS?
Another day I went up to Obirin again and look who I ran into!!
I bet you guys at school remember these people! It was so wonderful to get to see so many people again!
Me and Ai both have curly hair!<3
Izuho is still short, but I think she's graduated from looking like she's in 3rd grade to maybe almost ready to go into middle school. <3
They weren't paying attention. So I pounced.
Some of the boys.
And then we went to eat food! Because food is good, and we were starved!
And then.... I moved into my dorm. Blablabla, we'll get to that later.
Anyway, my new roommate and I decided to brave the trains by ourselves, and where did we decide to go? Asakusa! Two train transfers, because we are BOSSES like that.
We're almost there now!
The gate! And past the gate we find....!
It was 7:00 and everyone was closing. We were then fail.
BOO ASAKUSA! WHAT IF WE NEED TO COME BUY SOUVENIRS AFTER 7:00?! What then?!
We make the best of it, though. This is my wonderful roommate, Carly, by the way.
And then we decide we want to go eat.
But we just find expensive food. And these fish. SWIM FISHIES, SWIM! Because you are a delicacy in Japan and you will soon be consumed! Even if you ARE really cute.
While we were wandering around looking pointlessly for price-range food, we find handprints in the ground.
I find my hand twin right away.
Somewhere out there is my hand twin.... WE WERE SEPARATED AT BIRTH, BUT I WILL FIND YOU!!!
Roommate also finds a kitten or two. We watch as it waits for the traffic to slow down so that it can cross the road to disappear into a crack between the shops on the other side.
We then come to today, when I got to bored that I decided to go drink some coffee by myself. The barista was really nice, and could speak English. He knew I was from Toyo university because... well, I was white, and right across from our dorms, haha. He told me his coffee was the best in Tokyo, so I overcame my shyness and asked him for a cappuccino in Japanese.
He made me a bunny.<3<3 All was right with the world. And then I went to look for the big grocery store. And I failed. So I had to go to a small one that didn't really have all I needed... but hey, at least I could eat tonight.
On the way I found the place where hobos shop apparently. Man, Japan really DOES have everything!!
Finally, children, we have my introducing my room after I got home and tidied up a bit.
And there you have it! [I'll put up a longer video I took tomorrow, after it finished uploading from my phone]
--Caitlin
P.S. So it occured to me that there are probably a lot missing from these pictures that you'd like to see. I have one friend in particular who really wants to see all sorts of pictures. So if there's something that you want pictures of, like my dorm, what the grocery store looks like, what the streets look like, or what my city looks like, leave a comment (you don't have to have an account for that) and tell me what you want, and I'll see what I can't do, since I have gobs of free time before school starts.
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*Chikan: molester; Basically, in this case, it refers to guys who like to take advantage of the close quarters of the train to touch unsuspecting girls, and take advantage of the culture, which is not draw attention to yourself. Unfortunately, this makes a lot of girls just put up with it without saying anything.
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