We had fun desu

I spent my new years period with Gareth, Mirabel, Sarah and Japan. We had so much fun doing stuff like partying, eating, seeing stuff, playing Nintendo and hanging. New Years Eve was spent making cocktails with many types of alcohol including an Irish tonic called "Buckfast", predicting fortunes and going to a countdown party followed by karaoke. We somehow ended up coming home at 5.30am.

Time flies when you're having fun desu!

Putting our shoes back on in the agari kamachi (or what is the area called where you take on and off your shoes anyone?) I really hate doing this because I'm lazy.

Waiting in the lift for me to stop effing about.

I took a photo of Gareth taking a photo of us - lol!

This is one of my all time favourite photos - The Super Mario Brothers "duck jump". If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry. And if you do, hilarious right??

Just so happy about life in general!!

HAPPY...

...NEW YEAR!!!

YAY!!!

YAY!!!

YAY!!!

uh - YAY!!!

It's Daisuke!!! He just kept being there whenever I turned around so he got his photo taken. And now he's seared into my long term memory banks.

Desperately Seeking Dianne Keaton.



Sarah-san made some pals.



Making a public spectacle of myself on the dfloor.



I got accosted by some people who didn't believe my hair was real.
We're having fun desu.



Can I take your coat?



Can WE take your coat?



Umm...things go a bit blurry here.



The combini where I think we spent an hour or so. I asked the guy in the background what he studied. "Raw" he said. I looked at him like what the hell did you just say? Sarah kindly translated for me - "law". I'm an idiot.



WE WANT EVERYTHING



Sarahs impression of a salaryman.



Umm...



Oh, hai! Fancy meeting you here.



Dunno - let's just go to Karaoke already...



Singing something grand.



These two were singing some R Kelly beautifully.

Cellphone pics are the new Polaroids

On Friday went out for lunch with Glenn to an all-you-can-eat meat restaurant. It's Brazilian, and the waiters come around with meat on huge skewers and shave off bits onto a place. They annoyingly say to everyone "it's elephant" or "it's alligator" when they cut the meat onto your plate - yeah, yeah, yeah just give me the meat.(We didn't laugh). All cuts of beef, chicken and pig were included. Steaks too, plus a buffet of salad, rice and stew. All for the equivalent of $9 (if you class 1000 yen as $10. Literal NZ dollars it's a bit more). Anyhow, it's enough meat to make you turn vegetarian. I think I got a headache from all the meat. But I gotta say, I've felt amazing ever since I went there. This vegetarian diet I've been keeping has been a cost saving exercise and I like it; but nothing makes you feel as good as a nice cut of meat.

It was a beautiful day, so after lunch we went to walk off the meat and have a look around Sannomiya.

Took this at a hyakuen - 100 yen shop.
The sleepy owl that I bought Emily was there!!! I love them!!



Alice in Wonderland: is the chair big, or is Glenn small...?



The tiniest Christmas tree I've ever seen...



A tree...dressed like Santa.



I just couldn't resist this shot. The sky was stunning, so blue and clear. Kobe is truly beautiful.



This owl is REAL.



Look at how amazing this bird is. You can see where those ornaments come from.
It's actually pretty sad. He was for sale in a shop similar to the Warehouse. Hardware, bulk food, cheap clothes and shoes and pets in really small, hot enclosures.



A huge beetle. There were also snakes and massive tuatara-esque lizards for sale. Plus fish, rabbits, chinchillas, dogs etc. The snakes were in tiny little plastic boxes about the size of that beetles box, and they were pressed up against the lids - so I decided against taking a pic out of fear.



And this guy wanted to take my picture, and then I wanted to take his so we got one of those shots where we're BOTH taking a photo of each other!! Hilarious!!

Included this because Sarah and I hung out on Saturday night and did Karaoke. We realised we both have a very similar musical vein, and we did an excellent rendition of this song - she was Billy I was the female back up. Other songs and groups included Faith No More - Epic, Stone Roses - I Wanna Be Adored, Madonna - La Isla Bonita, LOADS of Cranberries for Irish's sake, token U2 although neither of our hearts were in it, Who - My Generation, Damned - New Rose, Ramones, Smiths, Notorius B.I.G and more. The rap bit at the end of Eyes Without a Face was fun. I love the guitar riff at the end. We decided that Billy Idol is underrated.

Japan - Day Five

A photo free entry today, just wanted to document what I've been up to as it was a semi-eventful day yesterday. I had a job interview back in Namba which was scary because I had to give a demo lesson to two tutors. My lesson was targeted at young children so it was kind of embarrassing hamming it up to two Japanese adults. They were good about it anyway, and in a weeks time we'll find out if I have a job! I hopefully have some work on Tuesday assisting a friend of my uncles who is a teacher.

Apart from the job interview, one funny thing I noticed was in the toilets - I pushed a button thinking it was the flusher; it was the SOUND of a flusher but it didn't actually do anything. I soon worked out it was for women who wanted their excrement sounds to be modest :-/ found the flusher in the end. Another thing of note, most bathrooms don't have paper towels or hand driers; people carry around their own towels for this!

I've been watching a little bit of Japanese TV. It's quite intense, not the relaxing mind numbing experience I am used to. There are beer ads 24/7, and I saw one today for a company called Kirin in which a man is showing beer to a class of children...
I was watching the news as well - the presenter actually bows to the camera while seated before he starts his newsread.

My uncle took me out for dinner last night and introduced me to a guy called Robin who is married to a Japanese lady. He is German and informed me he used to be in a semi successful 90' rap group called "Hoerzu". He's the tall one with the glasses by the way. Here's the video:





Everyone's famous in Japan!

I also was introduced to a Japanese girl called Azusa Tougo. Cool name. She wants to show me around etc, so that's really nice.

I have a new cellphone too, it can receive email and cmail - I don't think they call it text here. The number is 08061557939, and email is darlenebrown@ezweb.ne.jp incase you want it. It has a good camera, internet, tv, music etc but all that stuff is in nihongoo so I can't read it. It costs to use anyway so at this stage it's off limits!

After dinner Azusa, Glenn (my uncle) and I did Karaoke. It was so cool, great song selection - Smiths, Ramones etc. I did a great rendition of Blitzkrieg Bop. I was introduced to "chuhi" I think that's how you spell it, that's the Japanese version of alcopops so I'm told. It's flavoured soju- with flavours like lime, orange and grapefruit. Not as sweet as Cruisers so I tried them and feel fine!

That's about it for now, blog soon.