Snap Snap. Date night in Pictures.

I took a short trip to Akihabara during the day (It was PACKED. Thanks Comiket) I agreed to go meet Chibi after he finished work. So a good wait on the Ginza line took me down to Gaienmai station (Close to Harajuku) where I was to wait for 8pm. I arrived there at about 7:45, so I took a few minutes to linger around the area (not that exciting...) while I waited. The boy arrived at about 8:10 and propmtly dragged me off to Takeshita dori, walking up from the bottom and crossing up onto the main shopping area from the Laforet side. We went to take purikura first before anything else, wanting to get there before the place closed (no need to rush in the end, it was open until 11pm ^^;; ) I'll scan them and upload them when I do the rest of the ones I took on the trip! After that, we headed up towards the subway station and to a cute little Izakaya. I've never come across these computers before (we always had a server at other Izakaya) but Chibi dutifully explained what was where. All we needed to do was press what we wanted and someone brought it over. (We need more of these in the UK!) Beer, Ray fish, Chicken and Tuna fish. (Yummy) It was a cute, chilled night, but I voted to go back to the hostel instead of spend the night in Sagamihara (Down near Machida), because I had plans for the next day. It was really bizarre sitting on an empty train platform at almost midnight...spooky....

Summer memories 2012

Following my friend Ali over at VIVA☆DREAMER this post is about 'Summer Memories'! 

I have to say, this summer has been one of the best I've had. This year so many exciting things have happened and been put in motion, with more to come yet too! It's hard to list exactly what I enjoyed the most, but most of them circled around those first two weeks in August.

1. Seeing a side to Japan I've never experienced thanks to the Boys and Ku.
2. 飲み会! and the friends that we made through them.
3. Hanabi! Watching fireworks and sitting in a park eating festival Yakisoba with friends.
4. Neputa! Wearing Yukata and seeing the floats and Taiko in Hirosaki and Aomori. Amazing.
5. Getting to work with a Japanese band. Kiryu's manager is terrifying. 
5. Finally getting things sorted out for next year and the big move!

 Overall I've had an amazing summer, and now heading into September even more exciting things are to come. I have the final stage of my ECC interviews at the end of the month and I'm busy studying for my test! Wish me luck!

Friend date.

On the 9th I had set a date with a friend of mine before I even arrived in Tokyo. Meeting at 1:30pm by the Takeshita Dori entrance of Harajuku station! Just that morning I'd arrived back in Tokyo on the night bus, so suffering from lack of sleep I dragged myself up and out to go and meet 'Jellyfish'. He'd spent the morning telling me it was too hot, so I eventually told him just to wear something easy and cool which turned out to be a Jinbe. Cute. We met up at the right time, walked down Takeshita dori before deciding it was way too hot and way too crowded, it only took him a moment to suggest going back to the station and crossing over to Meiji jingu shrine.

Under the shelter of the trees and away from all the people it was much much cooler, but the noise from the cicada was almost deafening in some places! (We don't get them in the UK). Wandering around..boys will be boys, and 'Jellyfish' insisted on poking at every single bug we came across, even the spiders......I've never seen such huge blue and black butterflies either than in Meiji Jingu! It wasn't a very exciting day to report on, but I thought I would add it in. We spent an hour or so wandering around the shrine and the surrounding park, talking and swapping the dictionary back and forth when we got stuck, we went and sat down on some grassy area and chilled out with the skyscrapers towering in the background. I always find going to these places in the middle of Tokyo a surreal experience.

After our walk we hopped the Yamanote line down to Yoyogi and went for another small wander before 'Jellyfish' decided he was hungry and we stopped off in McDonalds. Teriyaki burger ftw. Having to catch the Shinkansen to Akita tomorrow, and me needing to catch up on sleep and deal with Kiryu photos, we didn't stay out too late, instead deciding to part ways at around 6pm.

10th August - Gaienmae fireworks!

What happens in Tokyo....

So...after two consecutive nights of drinking, one at random Izakaya and the other at The Lock Up (after which we crammed 8 of us into a purikura booth) we joined some friends for a house party in some back-end suburb in Tokyo. It was beyond fun...and definitely eventful! I don't think any of us expected it, but it was hella fun. We had drunken fireworks at about 3am in the kids play area across the parking lot, but who cares, everything is a good idea when you've consumed your body weight in alcohol!

 




Somehow the amount of alcohol consumed doesn't affect your ability to play guitar.....strange that. The boys were amusing and I spent a lot of my free time in Tokyo hanging out with them, we went to the Hanabi at Gaienmae on the 10th and had a group of 8 of us there which was nice, spent the evening hanging around with food stalls and beer a-plenty! 

Stay tuned for the next installment!

Plasticzooms / Style Band Tokyo.

Sorry for not blogging much recently, but all I've been doing is working! Nothing exciting at all. 
 
My Japan trip is creeping steadily closer, and one piece of good news on that is that I managed to score a ticket to see Plasticzooms after a brief talk with one of their members over twitter. He was the one who dealt with my overseas order when I wanted a shirt, and he's beyond nice. So rather than be an in-depth entry about something, this is just a quick one to let you all know that I haven't DIED.
 
Plus. If anyone is in Tokyo on this date and wants to come hang, COME TO THIS EVENT. It's not just Plasticzooms, an it promises to be amazing!

代官山　UNIT 

■OPEN/START 13:30/14:00
■ADV/DOOR ¥3,000/¥3,500(+1Drink)

STYLE BAND TOKYO 5th Anniversary Party
[Bo Ningen 来日公演ツアーファイナル！]

[LIVE ACT]
Bo Ningen
PLASTICZOOMS
世界的なバンド
ZZZ’s
moja
HATENOHATE
and more„„

[DJs]
TOMO(STYLE BAND TOKYO)
SUMIRE(TWEE GRRRLS CLUB)
HMS CONTROL / SAM & MARK(TOKYO INDIE)
APU(AFTERDARK)
U-HEY(BLACK NEON PARTY)
si oux(VIVE VAGINA)
TOMMY(BOY)
IAN MARTIN(Call and Response)
wizzjones
Judy(Throw that beat!)
Foujita(Less and More)
and more„,

Exciting news and new beginnings

I don't know how many of you follow me on twitter, but you might see the odd mentions of JES sometimes, likewise suggestions of moving. I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about it on here before now, simply because things were still so undecided, but now more is planned and I feel like I can actually do a decent post about it !

Next year I'll be moving to Japan.

It could be as early as March or as late as July depending on which position I decide to take up.

I have a meeting/interview with the school I'll be going to in Sendai in August while I'm on holiday, but I could be placed in one of several locations throughout Tohoku, their schools are located in Aomori, Goshogawara, Akita, Kitakami, Furukawa, Ishinomaki, Sendai, Fukushima, Koriyama, Shirakawa, Aiizu, Niigata, Joetsu, Yamagata and Yonezawa. My Visa will be processed over Christmas too!



The company is small as far as Eikaiwa go, but after hunting for months for information on various employers, they came out as one of the best, treating staff much better than larger organisations such as BERLITZ and ECC. So far from my emails back and forth with them, they seem better than I could have hoped. I have a reason to be nervous about my holiday too now, I'll take the Shinkansen down to Sendai from Hirosaki on Thursday 2nd of August and have my interview! I might go to find little hearts while I'm down there, depends how it goes for time seeing as it's a 2 hour train ride (Thank god for my Japan Rail pass, it's going to really get a workout!).

I invested in a smart suit dress the other day, my first piece of seriously smart clothing! I feel so grown up haha! I'm now working on slowly downsizing my things, and it feels really odd to have to throw out things I would have kept before, simply because I know there won't be any point in taking them with me.

It's sad but exciting at the same time.

A new beginning.

Mt Iwaki. Located in western Aomori. This might be my view!

Japan 2012 #3

This is just going to be a small spam of places I plan to stop off at while I'm in Tokyo. Either by myself or not, I don't really mind! I realize some of these are really geeky, some just a little bit weird, but I've always wanted to go and this time I'm determined to do so!


Number one!
@Homecafe


We all know about maid cafe! @homecafe is the largest in Akihabara, sporting several locations of varied type, they are also foreigner friendly, some of their locations hosting english speaking maids! Worry not about being refused entry for not being Japanese at any of their cafes.


Number two!
Taito Akihabara


Out of all the arcades I went to on previous visits to Japan, I found the Taito ones to be the most entertaining, namely because I'm easily amused by simple games and they have some good UFO machines!


Number Three!
The Trump Room

How cool is this for nightlife? Trump room is one of Tokyo's more interesting bars/venues, they do a lot of strange nights, but I've been told its an experience just for the decor of the place! I know it definitely looks like somewhere I would LOVE to go!


Number Four!
Ice cream city in Sunshine city (Ikebukuro)


Located in the infamous Namja town, Ice cream city promises some of the most bizarre and disgusting ice cream flavours you could ever imagine. E.g. 'snake' icecream, 'octopus' icecream and 'salad' ice cream. I promise to video my adventure here, feel free to nominate the grossest one you can think of and I'll try it with video evidence.


Number five!
Himuro Mansion


Anyone into ghost stories?
I'm a lover of horror and morbid tales, so the Himuro mansion tale has always been one of my favourite. No one knows it's exact location though, but it's still somewhere I would loooove to visit.
"According to urban legend, lying just beyond the city of Tokyo is one of the most haunted locations in all of Japan. The mansion is said to have been home to one of the most gruesome murders in modern Japanese history. Local lore has it that for generations, the Himuro family had participated in a strange, twisted Shinto ritual known as “The Strangling Ritual” in order to seal off bad karma from within the Earth, every half century or so. Many weird happenings have been reported in and near the old mansion; including apparitions of those who once lived there, bloody handprints and sprays of blood, which mysteriously appear on the walls.Sometimes, a small girl in a kimono is seen in one of the windows. To add to the mansion’s mystery, no one knows the significance of the vast tunnels the run underneath."

That's all for now on the places to visit post, but I'll come up with some more for you guys in another!

Japan 2012 #2

So this is going to be my second post about heading to Japan in the summer, more things are set in stone now so I thought I would share.



This trip is going to be a lot more interesting than my last, simply for the fact that I'm going to be getting chance to travel and experience some of the summer festivals in the north of the country. The time I managed to get off work actually falls on a really good time period, even though it's earlier than I first planned to travel, but the first week of August is festival season in Aomori! For those who don't know, Aomori prefecture is the very north before you cross to Hokkaido. At this time of year they have a lot of snow, but in the summer it's still as warm as ever. (Thankfully not as hot as Tokyo, but only by a few degrees!)


As you can see it's a distance from Tokyo. I'll be taking the bullet train the day that I land in Japan. First I'll have to travel from Narita into Tokyo itself and get the train from the central or Ueno station. It's a trip right to the end of the Tohoku line to Aomori city itself and then a regular train out to where I will be staying. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep on both the plane and the bullet train, if not I'll be super jetlagged when I arrive!

After then I'll be staying north until the friday, then back to Tokyo for 10 days until I fly home.

Once in Tokyo I'd like to see a band or two, shopping obviously, and then a few things like Namja town and Sunshine city, The Lockup ect ect. Recommend me your favourite places to go and I'll be sure to check them out !


For those who wanted to find out more about the bullet train here's some information pages which I found useful. I've used the bullet train before to travel south to Hiroshima and Osaka, but not everyone knows how to use it! I can recommend getting a 'JRP - Japan Rail Pass' if you plan to take any kind of long journey by train, it can make things a LOT cheaper.

Shinkansen Guide

Official JR Site (timetables ect ect, all in english)

JRP information and purchase (UK)

Suica card (Like the London Oyster)

Japan 2012

So today was the day where I finally banked the cash I'd been saving, and then went ahead and booked my flights to Japan for this year! It's been a while since I've been back there (this will be my third visit) and I'm really looking forwards to it. Lots of things have happened over the past few months, and I only decided this week that I was really going to go for it. I'm really glad I have now, and I just need to make sure to keep saving hard between now and then!

I'll be going for the 30th July - 13th August and it's going to be HOT.

Living in Wales we don't get much hot weather, so my summer clothes are almost non-existent, I'm going to have to invest in a couple of outfits I can take, then I can stock up on nice clothes while I'm out there. I plan to spend at least a week in Tokyo itself, and then for a few days I'll be traveling up to Hirosaki to stay with a friend of mine! So I'll get to see a new part of Japan which I've not been to before. My other trips involved Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Nara, Hakone and Tokyo and a few other places, so it will be really nice to travel north and see somewhere different.

Is anyone else planning on visiting Tokyo this year?