料理作る

(cooking food)

today i decided i'd try my hand at cooking. after classes i went out with two girls (australian and canadian [but she hates to be called canadian. she's quebecian so i call her that {and she loves me for it XD}]) to the super market nearby and asked them to help me find food to cook. i walked around like a little lost puppy following the girls around. i had huge eyes and was just in complete fear. i think at times i shook from total nervousness. this is such a huge deal for me, but i want to cook and to learn how to cook so that way i'm not completely useless when i go back to the states.

so, my apologizes with the lack of pictures and videos. photobucket will not upload my pictures and it seems the videos are being a hassle as well. tomorrow, after my first placement test, unless i go exploring some more (which i probably won't do until later), i'll do my best to fix what's going on.

all right, so i finally had my first meal that I made. the rice...well it got a little burnt- NOT TERRIBLY! and one of the girls threw a spice into the rice before it was done so it's all nice. plus the soy sauce adds a nice touch. the meat i made is really good. and i made it even better with a sesame seed sauce that we bought.

so all in all, my first REAL made meal could've been horrible, but it was actually pretty decent. YAY FOR ME!

here's a picture SHOWING PROOF I ACTUALLY COOKED!












MY RICE AND MY MEAT! YEAH!!!!! i feel so amazingly accomplished!
ok, now to go study for tomorrow's test. hope i get into intermediate high...but i doubt it XD

～星子☆

カラオケ！！！

so tonight i got an unexpected visit from my friend, yui, who goes to the same school as me and lives not too far away. we met the previous year when she attended my school back in the states. i was REALLY excited to see her. i thought she would be coming to visit the following day, but when she learned where i was, she came over.

we all decided we'd go to karaoke and a lot more people joined us than i thought. it soon turned in a really giant deal and poor yui had to drive more people than she intended. she was super sweet and said it was ok and since the karaoke bar was only 5 minutes away by car, she didn't mind.

we get there and we're told no outside drinks and food. so what do we do? THE GOOD OLD FASHIONED WESTERN WAY OF DOING THINGS! shove them in your purses and smuggle 'em in! >D
even the british were doing it, so us americans were totally cool with it. yui thought it was hysterical.

this place was amazing! it had so many english and japanese songs. singing your own song...sucks. don't do it unless you're drunk and you KNOW you're going to sing horribly. well there were cameras, so we didn't bring out the booze. we just brought out the chips and cookies and sang. we got free non-alcoholic beverages, though. because of this we all sang in a group. we sang a lot of english songs like wanna be, girlfriend, everytime we touch, pretty fly (for a white guy), and a shit ton others. we also did a lot of japanese songs like... (you all at state university will know this one) THE CONBINI STORE SONG!
(for those who don't know, a conbini is a convenient store that's open 24 hours a day and has really cheap stuff that's very convenient to have whenever. they're amazing. YOU CAN BUY A SINGLE EGG AT THEM as well as concert tickets there)

i have a lot of videos, but i'll only be putting one up. that would be...the every time you touch song! i put the camera on the t.v. and recorded the entire song. it was amazing.

the next post will definitely have the link to the remaining photos from my trip to nagoya as well as the video. LOOK FORWARD TO IT!

ok, it's almost 1 am. much love!

～星子☆

名古屋市

that's nagoya city for those who can't read japanese.

all right, well this day is a long one and the most amazing one i've had in japan, save for the first day. the day before, a friend i made here and i went shopping because i realized i didn't have nearly enough clothes. what was i thinking...? so i stopped by a clothing place and bought some SUPER CUTE clothes. not too bad. then we adventured to go eat out at a new place. holy hell we were really lost. it was an adventure to test our skills and i managed to get most of it. i got a good meal and paid my way so, all turned out all right. saturday turned out to be the only break of a day i got. luckily i got the internet and skype working, though.

so today (for me, sunday) the entire dorm went to nagoya city. first we took a bus to the train station and then the train to another train and then landed smack dab in the coolest train station i've ever been to in my life. THERE WAS WATER ON THE ROOF! there was a see-through roof above an outdoors-y station (it was half inside and half outside) with water on top of the roof that made the entire place feel just so awesome. and best of all...this place was SUPER CLEAN! it was awesome.

so we were given an hour and a half to explore and eat and the like. one of the japanese girls suggested this one place to eat that was close by. i went in and picked this omlette, rice, tomato thing. holy mother of God if that wasn't the most DELICIOUS thing i've ever had in my life. i could NOT stop eating. i actually finished my plate for the first time in....EVER! and i even had room for ice cream (WHY ARE THE JAPANESE AGAINST CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM?! it's all vanilla damnit)! soooooo good and it REALLY filled me up!

there was a haunted house in town, but we were told we couldn't go in as we had no more time. so i bought a little bouncy ball :3
we then got back on the train and made our way to nagoya castle. wow....just...wow.... there really is no explaining this castle other than it was like i stepped back in time. i was amazed at how stunning the entire area was. most was left in tact, but most...was changed to toursit attraction stuff. still, it was amazing. i felt bad that...well...thanks to ww2 an entire section of the castle had burned to almost nothing so i gave all my loose change to help rebuild it. YES! XD

lots of walking and history flowed by. i was sooooo tired of the walking and those stairs scared me shitless. i bought some people some gifts and even got myself a fan. i've decided that every place i go, i'm going to buy a fan of some sort. this isn't an unfolding type, it's a plain, flat one, but it says nagoya city on it. :3

once done there, hopped back on the train and ended up in the middle of nagoya city. the large mass of gaijin (foreigners) and i walked to the biggest electronic store i've ever seen. it was 5 massive stories of pure electronics. i rushed inside to buy myself an electronic dictionary and got the best kind. can turn into an english menu and you write whatever kanji you see so that it'll translate it for you. comes in handy for just walking around on the street and all.

by this time...i was dying. the heat and my feet were killing me! luckily, time was up and we headed back. but by now, i was starving. so of few of my new friends and i stopped at the italian resturant nearby and had some dinner to top off the evening. it was such an amazing day and while my back and feet are reeling from the sheer torture i just put them through, my camera and my head are full of amazing memories.

i've uploaded a lot of my pictures from my time on my facebook if anyone hasn't seen them yet. however, there's a lot of inside nagoya castle i didn't put up. i didn't really want to take up an entire album for just the inside. so i've uploaded all the pictures to my photobucket account. i'll post the link later today for you all. it's about 11:30 PM my time and i'm exhausted. (plus, the downloading to photobucket is taking forever).

see you tomorrow!

～星子☆