SeraphWings’s blog

After the graduation ceremony/food eating, me and Ayumi went to a "party"/mini gathering. One of her friends was moving to Kyoto so he was just throwing random drinking parties the week before. Haha. So we went :p

First, a visit to some of the KG dorms! Sooo nostalgic! ToT I wanna go baaack~ T_T
  

::sniff::

Anyway, then a couple of us went to the friend's apartment. Yay~ And we had a drinking game ^_^;; We played beer pong, but not with beer. With Chu-hi instead! ^O^ Hahaha. It's so much better than beer. Cuz beer's gross >.< So I had my first penalty drink for over-throwing the ping pong ball >.>
     

But my team won! Yay! ^O^ (yes, my face gets really red really easily when I drink >.<)
     

Then we went in for food and card games.
     
     

The other girl ended up going home early cuz she felt sick from the drinking >.> And the guys ended up falling asleep really early -_- Haha. And they were both snoring, and the music from the stereo was still on, and their pets were making noises, so it sounded like an orchestra. XD So Ayumi had me pretend to be a conductor for them. XD Hahaha.
  

And then I attempted to build a cards castle for the first time. With succes! ^O^v
  

The walk to the station the next morning. In the rain. -_- But oh how I've missed this walk past the school. T~T Somebody bring me back to two years ago, please?
     

Group shots ^_^ (ignore my weird face)
  

Just a few more ^_^

I really should post here more, but I'm just lazy and having been doing much lately :p

Spring break's almost over! Nooo~ ToT It was a nice two and a half weeks off though. Haven't done anything, really, except sleep a lot. Hehe. Keeping up with Japanese, sorta, by translating stuff every now and then. Or at least attempting to.

The cafeteria also took a break for a week or so, so I had to get food myself. T_T Yay for convenience stores! ^O^ (and yes, I blog about that too)

The last couple days I went to stay over at a friend's new apartment. It's her first time living alone so she got all lonely. Hehehe. :p And she needed someone to be there when the NTT guy went over to "install" the internet. -_- Honestly, I don't see the point in installing something on your laptop to get internet. It shouldn't be necessary, and I doubt it actually is. NTT probably just wants your info and stuff. Heh. Ah well. Not my laptop, not my internet.

Anyway, here's Ayumi's apartment/food she made. Haha. Japanese apartments are tiiiny. Good thing I like small spaces. ^_^;; It's a one room apartment. So, basically a studio in American standards. And a really small one at that. There's the front door space (where you take your shoes off), then a narrow hallway where there's the laundry washer on and "kitchen" on the right, and the bath and toilet on the left. And then it goes into the main room where she has her bed and a small table. Basically only enough for one person to live. ^_^;;

     
I was sitting in the corner of the room when I took these. Yea. That's how big it is. Where Ayumi is standing is the "kitcehn". There was a sink and one stove. That's it. Haha. Tiiiny.

     
The nabe she made the first night I was there. ^_^

I think my dorm room is bigger than her's. Haha. But she gets her own kitchen/bath and stuff. Her apartment's pretty cheap too. Waaay cheaper than my old apartment in LA >.< But then, mine was a lot bigger ^_^;;

Yes, it's been a while. Mostly because I haven't really done anything ^_^;;

But Saturday was the graduation of KG students! And I went to see Ayumi. ^_^ Although only students were allowed in the graduation hall, because there were so many students that even the family had to go to a different building, and just watch the ceremony on a big screen. -_- So I had to wait about two hours for the thing to end. ^_^;; Ah well.

Anyway, random pictures from the day!

There was food! Of course. But we were late after Ayumi's ceremony. We were waiting for her to pick up her diploma and she was going to give out souvenirs, but it took a long time so there weren't any food left by the time we got to the cafeteria. But then we ended up waiting for the next batch. Because there were about three or so ceremonies for the different types of students graduating (it's also a junior college and a grad school), they refill up the cafeteria after each one. So we just waited til the next one was over and rushed in to get food. XD Haha.

It was mostly just small sandwiches and cakes. It seems like there was a lot more (and better) food when I graduated there >.> Haha. But it's ok. We just stood around the table and ate. XD Haha.

I'll probably post more pictures after I get them from other people's cameras. ^_^;

Because I obviously need *yet another* blog. -_- Or two >.> But yes, I've started a couple more.

Conbini Life

There's this game show here that I really like right now. It's called Q-sama Pressure Study. It's awesome.

They invite celebrities who are known to be pretty smart and/or have graduated from fairly prestigious schools or have in some other way proven their intelligence to be on the show (and apparently there's also an audition you can go to and test yourself onto the show). Each week has a team of 10 people, sometimes with similar occupations; for example they'll have a team of news anchors, or a team of actors/actress, or a team of sports players. They are then tested in various subjects and they have to pass a certain number of them to win the prize, most commonly a trip to Hawaii for them all.

In the beginning round, there are 10 subjects they are tested on. The players sit at their own desks placed in a circle, with a designated starting and ending player. They are given the theme, and each have to answer a question correctly before going onto the next person. Some questions allow you to take as many guesses as necessary, and some you have to get right on the first guess. Each subject also has a time limit, something like 2 minutes for all 10 people. Others have individual time limits, around 15 seconds per person.

The second round differs from time to time, but is a group effort where one person is left out and the rest have to create hints, one at a time, and the last person has to guess what the answer is within a time frame. And then the third round goes back to the circle situation.

All the questions are really difficult, but everyone seems to be really smart and get a lot of them right. I've seen them fail certain subjects, but for the most part they pass the whole thing. Honestly, if they made a show like this in America, I'm not sure how many people would make it >.< Especially since they're all celebrities/idols/otherwise on TV and in the news somehow >.>

There are a lot of Kanji questions; some where you have to answer how to read the Kanji, some where you have to fill in the Kanji of a historical person's name, and other such difficult subjects. It's crazy. There's no way I can follow it all (or any >.<).

Yesterday was a three-hour special (though I didn't realize it >.>) and in the last part they had this crazy Kanji battle. There's this guy who is crazy good at Kanji. So good that they named him the Kanji King >.< So they had him fight against all the other contestants. They would bring out 10 people at a time, and he would have to go up against all of them, either one at a time, three at a time, or all 10 at a time. They would give a theme, such as words that have the "shou" pronunciation, and they would have to write out as many words as they can think of within 30 seconds. Whoever had the most correct words written wins that round. They brought 50 people to go against this Kanji King to see if he could defeat them all. He got through 38 people >.< But still! That's a lot! He tied with some people too. It was crazy. There's no way I can remember that many Kanji >.< What's funny though, is that almost all of these people have passed the second highest level of Kanji proficiency, and they still lost to him and got stuck forgetting words. Even the news anchors, and they're crazy good at Kanji. So I felt like it was ok for me not to know them all >.>

Anyway, in the regular episode games, there's usually an English section where they would have a list of 10 English words/phrases, and the players would each have to write the equivalent in Japanese, in whichever order they felt like (so they pick which one they think they know and try to get it right). There's also a hint given, like how each word starts with a certain sound in Japanese. Last night it was that all of them are four Kanji words. It helps me study. Haha. So here are the answers for last night's English section.

~ natural selection: 自然選択 (shizensentaku)
~ touch and go (a critical situation): 一触即発 (isshokusokuhatsu)
~ fighting alone: 孤軍奮闘 (kogunfuntou)
~ golden rule: 金科玉条 (kinkagyokujou)
~ beautiful and talented: 才色兼備 (saishokukenbi)
~ smooth sailing: 順風満帆 (junpuumanpan)
~ all of creation: 森羅万象 (shinrabanshou)
~ seen in the dark: 夜目遠目 (yometoume)
~ trial and error: 試行錯誤 (shikousakugo)
~ four seasons: 春夏秋冬 (shunkashuutou)

I took a couple videos of the Tai-chi and Chinese dance performances. About two minutes of the Tai-chi, and four and a half minutes of the Chinese dance. I didn't record the whole thing for either. It was too long >.<

Chinese New Year was actually last week, but there was a festival going on for it all week long. So I decided to go today, the last day, because I didn't feel like going all the way out to Kobe after school.

I got there around 130pm and saw the end of a group playing some Chinese music.

There was a looot of people there.

I caught a small glimpse of the lion dance. But there were too many people and I couldn't see T~T
  

So I went around and got food from street vendors instead. Yay Chinese food! It was yummy! I got all the stuff I can't get in normal Japan. Haha.
           

First was beef bun and sesame thing (I don't know English! >.<). Although instead of the normal sesame paste inside, it was red bean paste! Goodness, it was sooo awesome. XD Then I got a daikon mochi (radish paste thingy) and a bag of shrimp chips. Bwahaha! Next was an egg roll and "ham sui goku" (that's the Japanese pronunciation). It's...a fried pasty pocket thing that has meat and veggies inside. Uh...English anyone? >.> Then it was a cha siu (Chinese pronunciation. BBQ pork in English) bun. Yum! It was nice and hot. ^_^ And a momo (peach) bun for dessert! It's not really peach. Just looks like it. ^_^;;

And of course, there was duck >.>
  

And Hello Kitty buns >.<

Then I went to a couple stores. First, found body parts of stuff, in typical Japanese style XD
  

People pin cushions! I used to love these for some very strange reason that I'm not sure of myself...

And people dolls in plastic tubes. I used to have one. ^_^;;

I went back to the main courtyard area where there was a Tai-chi demonstration. First it was free-hand, then with swords, and then with fans.
                 

And then it was a group of Chinese dancers. More fans! It reminds of Chinese school when I was little >.>
        

Other random food pics:
        

And the doors/gates to Chinatown. Yes, there were only three, when there were four roads leading into it -_-;
     

And I actually *did* hear some Chinese! XD From some of the street vendors and people working for restaurants. Though most of them still aren't Chinese. I saw a guy wave off a costumer saying he doesn't understand when she asked something in Mandarin ^_^;;

I had wanted to stay longer to see the next lion dance performance, but it was a couple hours later and I didn't want to wait around that long. It was getting cold, sprinkling a tiny bit, and I would've had to watch more Tai-chi and dance stuff before they get to the lion dancing. I didn't really feel like a repeat >.> So I left ^_^;; Haha.

Overall it was a pretty good day. I'm a bit disappointed though, because it seemed like everything in Chinatown was selling the same thing. Either all the restaurants had the same food or all the stores had the same stuff. ::sigh:: Oh well. Won't be going out there a whole lot anyway, unless I get a really big craving for Chinese food and actually have someone to go with >.< But for now, just this once is enough ^_^

Last year I bought the Mugen Puchi Puchi toy. You know how some people looove popping bubble wrap? It's a great stress reliever, right? People love it so much, that Bandai decided to create a toy that replicates the feeling of popping bubble wrap. So now you have an infinite amount of bubbles to pop! It's awesome. It doesn't actually feel like bubble wrap, but after a short while it becomes just as awesome, as proven here.

The toy was so popular that Bandai decided to extend their Mugen (infinite) series. Soon after the bubble wrap toy they added the infinite pinching edamame (soybeans) toy, where you get to squeeze the beans out of the pod forever.

This week, I got one of their latest additions: infinite box opener! It's simply amazing. Most Japanese snacks that come in boxes have this perferated section in which you tear off so you can more easily open the box. It's an awesome feeling. And so now you get to tear open boxes forever! Again, it's not exactly the same feel, but it doesn't take long to get addicted to it. It feels sooo niiice. ::rip::

Mugen Peri Peri (the box opener) here.

There's also another company that created their own infinite toy, although this one doesn't make any sense to me. It's...infinitely pealing bananas... Apparently it's due to the "morning banana" diet that was going around last year. See the crazy banana with actress voice here.

So I've switched to a different class. The people in my old class were mostly from mainland China, so were all very loud and annoying during class, never paid attention and were just a huge distraction to me. Plus, we were going over stuff I had already studied from the last time I was there. And so, I switched to the class above me, and the people here are sooo much better. They're quiet during class, but we still make jokes and stuff so it's fun. And Wednesday night a bunch of us went out for BBQ dinner. ^O^

A few of the waitresses at the place were Taiwanese, so the Taiwanese students were able to talk to them about our orders, and we ended up adding on the all-you-can-drink part half off. Yay! ^O^ For some reason it ended up like a goukon, in the way in which the guys all sat on one side and the girls all sat on the other. I...don't really know how that happened >.> Haha. But anyway, pictures!

My drinks, and a toast!
     

Random group picture outside afterward!