Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Bacon. Bacon Bacon.

Oi, I haven't written for awhile. How the heck is everyone? Have you had your See's Candies dose for the day?

Huff Puff, what has happened? Ah! Well, Kirsty and I finally confronted (complained to) Asato about all of the issues in our apartments. Since day 1 of moving into this apartment, there's been a strange...odor...that you catch a wiff of once in awhile. I thought it had something to do with the sink, since there's no garbage disposal. Maybe some food particles get stuck and rot and be all smelly out of spite of being left there. Recently, I had realized that the odor was coming more from the washing machine pipes than anywhere else though.

Kirsty and I had been shopping around at Daiso when she mentioned The Odor. "Wait, your apartment has it too?!" It was then that we decided to go to the office to get it taken care of and also because other utilities started to poop out on us. Kirsty's doorbell never worked, one of the lights in her apartment was out, the porch light was out (Making it seem like you were in a horror movie every night, desperately trying to unlock your door before a masked villain came to take you away), and my refrigerator has been leaking for 3+ weeks. Yes, it has still been running. Yes, I have to catch it everyday in order to make lunch.

Since it was Friday, we wouldn't be able to get help until Monday, which wasn't a big deal. It just amazed me how fast they actually took care of things when they were contacted. They came out right away on Monday. Since they fixed Kirsty's doorbell, I can now ring the heck out of it in order to wake her up instead of knocking. HAHA. Maybe she'll get ready faster now so I don't have to wait outside for her anymore. XD
The repair guy didn't know what was wrong with my refrigerator so they just adjusted the temperature. I came home to find it was still leaking, so I'll have to let them know.

At least The Odor is gone. Grant had given me a candle that I was storing near that area, hoping it would block it out. It didn't work out too well. X__x

Anyhoo, it's awesome to have all of those repairs done and to know that they will come out and fix it ASAP. =^.^=

Grant and I were craving fro yo like pregnant Rebecca Donaldson was craving watermelon.
Get the woman some watermelon, Uncle Jesse.
Grant had looked up and found a Fro Yo place near his apartment in Shinjuku. It was located in the Korean part of town:
 Fro Yo!
 Yeah, this place was creepy as when Full House randomly had Papouli die.
I'll never understand that.
We checked the place out, got a weird vibe, saw that they only had canned corn-syrupy-fruit toppings, and busted it out of there.

Instead, we went to Grant's place to make some "real food". And possibly go to Shibuya to get some real fro yo later in the night. XD
Grant received a care package from his family a few days ago and he shared the glory with me. ^___^
Real Monkey PB! Real Bread!
 Real Bacon!
 Heck yes, we combine the three.
 Grant was super excited cooking the real bacon. It smelled like real bacon!
After one bite, it was like
Seriously. Amazing.

The rest of the afternoon, we played on our 3DSs and they headed to Shibuya for some Fro Yo.
The Christmas decorations are starting to pop up now.
We also found this shop after walking to Harajuku after Fro Yo:
So much pink in that store. I couldn't go in, haha. It looked kind of like a less mature Victoria's Secret.

After hanging out with Grant, I came home and the gas...container? The gas machine thing was blinking red. I thought "Has it always been blinking like that?" I shrugged it off, went inside, and decided to have a good 'ol cup 'o tea. But the burner wasn't working. There was this little pathetic puff of fire and then nothing. Ah, so the red light meant something T___T. I went outside with the book light that Mr. and Mrs. Mark gave me to check out the gas things to see if I could find anything that was wrong. It was then I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. lolol.

I asked Kirsty if she was having the same problems. She checked and her gas wasn't working either, nor was the hot water. We decided to mad call Asato (this poor woman...) and she didn't answer her phone any of the 20 times.
We decided to check if the light of the student's living downstairs was blinking too. It wasn't. Ugh.
We went back upstairs and realized there was a paper that is always attached to everyone's gas...thing. What do I even call this thing? A gas thing. That's pretty good, I think.
From what we could read, it said something about a red light and how to stop it. Okay! So, this was normal. Kind of. That's good, right?
Luckily, Kirsty has a sister that's been living here for a few years now, so Kirsty used our last lifeline and phoned her to make sure. I mean, this was gas we were dealing with. Danggerrrr XD
Her sister had the same thing happening with her gas thing. She said that since there was a bigger earthquake, it happens for safety reasons. Japan is so cool.
So, she helped us figure out what to do and after a few minutes, we were back inside, each making tea.

In the morning, I decided to go running and venturing around. It's amazing what you can find when you're on a run. With all of the excitement of new ground, you don't realize how far you're going. I ended up running 8 miles. XD I still can't decide if I'm a long or short distance runner.

This was at school the next day on the way to class:
I looked around me to see where Beth was hiding.

Yesterday, Grant and I got to hang out again ^____^. He shared more PB with me! He even saved the butt of the bread loaf for me. THE BEST PART. He said he doesn't like them, so I felt better for taking his real bread. XD

But first, we explored the basement of a department store that was pretty much a huge fancy food court. There were so many delicious looking cakes. I wish I could have taken a picture of them, but I couldn't sneak a picture in. I saw a girl look at me, getting ready to pounce with a "NO PICTURES" remark, so I stopped.
But before then, here are some of the chocolates that were there:
Mannn, these aren't the impressive sweets. I wish I would have just taken the risk...
Maybe another time! They also had a crazy expensive grocery store and Grant found some dragonfruit, each with their own names, like David Bowie and Dark Star.
Sorry for my finger. haha. x___X

It seemed kind of morbid to have this Christmas decal by the meat hanging:
Well, it is kind of like the Chesire Cat.

After, we went to the more reasonably priced grocery store to pick up some sushi for dinner ^__^.
I still crave Fujiyama...

It was pretty good, but then I kept eating teaspoonfuls of Grant's Monkey PB. He was looking at something online at the time and I was thinking to myself "I bet he can hear me eating this peanut butter." (Just like MoMo and her hollow mouth, lolol) He called later called it 'normal Kat background noise' XD. lololol.

Oh yeah. Earlier in the day, I had taken a few pictures outside. I wanted to capture a bit of Fall before all of the leaves were gone.
The Chamber of Secrets also leads to Japan:
 I love walking down this pathway with all of the trees overhead and leaves on the ground:
 I also took Maywynd outside to get some pictures of her as a bear.
Yay, that's all for now. I, um, apparently am going to be a in a Regatta boat race on Sunday held by Seijo. I'm in a team with Evan, Tom, and Yuka XD. This is so random, I love it.
This is exactly how I'm picturing it's going to be:
Ahoy.

That's all for now. Bye bye =^.^=


Friday, November 23, 2012

Thanksgiving Chicken

Is it sad that all I could think about when I wrote that title was the movie "Chicken Run"?
I've never even seen the movie. Thanksgiving was pretty great. Grant came over and we cooked probably the healthiest Thanksgiving dinner I've ever eaten.
Chicken with eggs, onions, chives, and cut up sweet potato. Oh, and spiced up green beans. It was actually pretty darn awesome. ^___^
Grant bought us Dessert!:
It's Belgium chocolate. I thought it was pretty good and am still eating the remains of it XD. Grant thought it tasted like a candle.
I like eating candles.

Yesterday, he came over to search for a 3DS game because he bought a 3DS too. It's a really pretty shade of blue.
Sorry, I had to.

Haha, we went around town for a bit. It was a typical day in Japan.
And we found another new Haagen Dazs flavor! This is a monthly occurence here. Pick it up, America.
Mascarpone Strawberry? Looks fabO___O!

It was the perfect rainy day to have an excuse to sit inside and play games all afternoon. It definitely is starting to feel like the Christmas season.
After gaming for awhile, I had to go meet up with Kazuya for kickboxing. AwwwWWww YeaAaaHh.

Earlier in the week, he had told me it was a National Holiday and there wouldn't be any classes held, which was fine, but I didn't realize the gym would be closing early too. He told me I could save my 10 time tickets for another day if I felt like the session would be too short. Since I was already there and so ready to be punching the heck out a bag like a pissed off Bubbles against the enemies who beat up her Powerpuff sisters,
I asked if I could just pay for one session for tonight and then the 10 time ticket. Kazuya said probably not =/. Still though, I wanted to know how to get to the place for future visits, so he showed me the way. =^.^=

When we got there, we had a little more than a half an hour. He talked to the manager working and he said that I could train there for free for the night! So. Awesome. I just had to help clean up a little after, which I had planned to ask to do anyways. XD
I was able to do my favorite kind of exercise - Punching/kicking combinations on focus pads that Kazuya held.

It was a pretty good session. I definitely have a lot to improve on. And 10 sessions to do so, wahaha. Something that was kind of a bummer was that I would need to buy my own gloves, leg guards, and wraps. I have wraps at home, but I needed them for last night, so I bought some there. Hopefully, I can find cheaper gloves and leg guards than the ones they sold there by the next session .___. But it's totally worth it. ^___^ Man, I love kickboxing. I'm not sure about fights yet, though. ^___^'

After cleaning up, we stopped in a few shops along the way to the station. One had a ton of collectibles. Apparently, from what I got from what the shop owner was saying to us, was that a lot of the stuff is very rare. "Maniacs"/serious collectors can't even find the items and/or have never seen them before.
I didn't take as many pictures as I would like, but the shop owner was right there and I'm guessing since this stuff is "rare" that he wouldn't want me to be taking pictures. Everything was so expensive too, it was kind of ridiculous. Then again, I haven't seen most of it before. The whole store was covered in collectibles, there was no wall to be seen. There was almost no floor to be seen either O___O. Shelves and drawers, and baskets and tables filled with stuff. Woof!

Then, Kazuya and I stopped in a gaming store and look what I found:
Maple Story! It's only 1-player, but still. I kind of wished I would have picked it up. Oh, and guess what else they had? The Animal Crossing 3DS for the original price T____T. I almost headbutted the glass case it was in. WHATEVER. I ALREADY PAID OFF MY FIRST HOUSE EXPANSION. And got to experience Thanksgiving!

Omg, I found out how to take pictures off of your 3DS to put on your computer. Technology, man.
You can take pictures while playing a game ^___^.
Okay, so here's the thing. I realized I was dressed like a Pilgrim on Thanksgiving after standing next to the turkey. I honestly did not plan that. lolol.
[Edit] I knew Beth would point out that I was dressed up more like a Native American than a Pilgrim...
I JUST WANTED TO BE MORE LIKE Lana Del Rey.

 And the turkey was like Girrrlll, plz.
And I was like, "Turkeeyyy, gimme something good to eat."
 And he didn't so I mocked him.

This was from a day earlier:
I made a friend! They gave me medicine when I had a bee sting. Then, I got another bee sting 3 minutes later.
I like how half my blog posts are Animal Crossing shots now because this is what my life is. lolol.

Oh yeah, and another awesome feature of the 3DS is the AR Cards it comes with.
Look, the characters are on my homework. You put the cards on a surface and the 3DS reads them and the characters pop up right in front of your eyes. Well, on the 3DS screen at least. You can move them around and even defeat monsters and stuff. Pretty darn awesome. Nintendo, you've done it again.

Grant got a care package from his family yesterday with precooked bacon, apple butter, REAL bread, cinnamon raisin monkey PB, and more. He's sharing it with me today and we are going to have a feast. ^___^ Wahaha. I'm so excited.

Speaking of Monkey PB, I forgot to write about the chocolate Monkey PB incident. By Grant's place, there's a store that sold the Chocolate Dreams monkey PB, but it's only half the size and nearly $7. I asked if we could just, you know, check it out again, see how it's doing. When we found it, we saw that it had expired this month. The thing is, is that the Monkey PB usually expires about 2 years later, which means that jar had been probably sitting there for 2 years. Oh gosh. How could no one pick this up?
Sweet mother of chocolatey goodness. Even that monkey is dreaming about it.

So I decided to test my Japanese skills and ask a manager if I could possibly buy it for cheaper. When I found the manager, he was very surprised and went to go check if they had more. He said they didn't and that it would be bad to eat. He probably would have gotten into trouble if he sold it to me and I got sick off of it T__T.
SO HE TOOK IT AWAY.
NooOOOo, Dark Chocolate Dreams. =[[[ So for now, I'm just having plain dreams.

*le sigh* 

Oh, these are pretty important to post from Thanksgiving (in America):
And Shawn joined us:
Time for some bacon. 

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Virtual Life and Gaijins vs. Burgers

That's right. I ordered the Animal Crossing DS from Amazon Japan. ^____^ I couldn't help myself! I was like Twitch from "Holes."
Except instead of obsessing over a fancy car and stealing it, I was glued to Amazon, saw a darn good price and pounced on it (fully paid).

And nothing like this happened as a result:
You want to watch Holes now, don't you? I feel like Lauren's going to and then Shawn's going to rediscover his love for the movie.

Instead, this happened:
HAPPINESS. I'm all sweaty because I had just gone on a run. I had woken up and got to video chat with MoMo, Lauren, and Bethy for a bit. I was going to take another rest day, but decided the weather was too nice to waste and kind of just kept on running. I ended up running more than 5 miles. lololol. And I discovered a park! ^___^ More Maywynd picture opportunities.

Yeah, so I had ordered the 3DS a day before it came, so I didn't think it would be the package that I had missed. I ran to the post office after going for a run (lolwut), picked up this mysterious package, and opened it right outside. Bam. There it was in my hands. "Who sent me this?!," was my first thought.
The night before, I had checked the sender on the slip that says I missed the package and it was a Japanese name and they sent it to "Kat." I thought, "Who knows to call me Kat that lives in Japan and knows my address?" Apparently, I hadn't looked at the name right on Amazon, and it actually did end up being the seller I had bought from. Silly Kat. Well, I now know that Japan has crazy fast shipping. I also now know that Yamamoto Shogo is a famous baseball player in Japan because he has the same name of the sender that I googled. lololol.
Let's all take a moment to admire that form.
Truly amazing.
Anyways! I was so excited while walking home and was still confused as to who sent it to me (it was I who sent it to...me...I...myself..ugh) that I missed a turn and got lost for a bit, but found my way back soon after. Sort of. Hahaha. ^___^'

So, this game is amazing. It's even more awesome that I understand a good amount of what they're saying, as it's in Japanese. Here's a few shots for you:
Nook is still as fancy as ever.
 Of course I get stung on the first day:
 NOOOO, PINK LLAMA.
 Some new things I really like:
-You can change your socks
-The characters have a more human body
-More accessories!
-There are longer dresses you can wear
-You can customize and design the outside of your house
-You go around town and pick the exact place you want to put your house
-You can learn how to swim (though I am not sure how yet)
-When you swim, you can dive and catch other creatures (There's a whole different slot list for those creatures, besides the bug and fish slots.)
-The 3D is actually pretty awesome

The list shall keep growing, I'm sure. I've been playing this quite a lot and don't feel guilty about it, which is really rare when I play video games these days. I think it's because it's in Japanese and I'm learning a good amount of vocabulary, practicing reading, and understanding grammar a bit better. It's so nice to be excited about a game again. I feel like I'm in high school again, being excited to be able to relax and come home to play Animal Crossing. Where's my beefaroni at? Oh gosh...
What was I thinking...

Speaking of insane food, yesterday after class, some of my classmates wanted to go to Burger King to try the same "black burger Bi-king challenge" that Grant tried. You know me and watching people eat copious amounts of food.
Adam will always be my hero.

So naturally, I had to go watch.
We arrived at the destination. Contestants: Daan, Wendy, Tom, and Evan. Me, Kirsty, and Mitchell went for support. And so-
 
it begun. 

*ding, ding*
First round:

Tom's second round.
  Evan and Daan's second round and Mitchell's french fry-eating support.:
Evan: "You see this? I don't even want to eat this. It's like a baby's head."

This is actually Tom's 4th round. He was upset because he was skipped a few times and started hitting the "food wall" after waiting a long time. Sad service! But only 4 people were working and they were running around everywhere. They'll probably be relieved when this offer is over XD.
 He really did not want to eat this.
 BUT HE HAD TO. MAN, MAN, MAN! Well, More like Bi-king! (pronounced like Viking)
 And the results:
Evan - 2 burgers, 2 fries, 2 drinks
Daan - 2 burgers, 2 onion rings, 2 drinks
Tom - 4 burgers, 1 fries, 2 drinks
Wendy with Kirsty's help - 2 drinks, 1 fries, 1 onion rings, 1.5 drinks

They were planning on going clothes shopping, since we were in Shinjuku, but after eating all of that food, they decided to postpone that plan. lolol. Tom's hair was all messy at the end and I said he looked like a wreck. He was hurt. I'M SO MEAN. ^___^'

Today was pretty simple. I paid rent and my health insurance bill ^____^. Very exciting stuff. Haha. Here is something you probably won't see most places in the US:
That yellow guy is a safety helmet for earthquakes. Pretty slick!
lolol, slick? Kat, really?

As of yesterday, Tom's coins are all still on the balcony. I asked Yuuki why that might be and he said because people probably think it's a trick. I wonder if they would still think it's a trick if Tom put down a 500 yen coin. Oh man.

And here I am all adorable in Animal Crossing as a Bear (and in a tent).
I'm so happy that it's still November and mushroom season. I love that furniture set. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving so Grant and I will be hanging out and cooking a meal together ^___^.
I hope it's like the Gilmore Girl's Thanksgiving celebration.
Wait, that's 4 Thanksgiving meals in one day. Nevermind. All I want is Robin's homemade apple pie, man.