Tina in Japan

Totally gonna go try to see it this weekend

http://i.gizmodo.com/5284821/tokyos-life+sized-gundam-is-just-about-finished

GEEKED OUT <3

May has been most busiest month here in Japan hands down. Around the end of May I almost literally konked out of being so tired from it all. But it has been lots of great times. Will have posts ahead.

Honestly it’s also easier to load pictures on facebook than it is here XD;  facebook image loading is so much faster and you don’t have to resize the photos before putting it up. But I will try my best to put more galleries on this thing since there are people who do not have facebook, and should not feel obligated to get one =p.

I have compied a “to do list before leaving Japan” thing  that I haven’t done yet that I want to accomplish or would like to keep in mind to accomplish.

-Eat Fugu?
- go to Joypolis (Sega amusement park), could happen this weekend!
- Eat more sushi and ramen, I feel since I’ve been here I haven’t been eating those two dishes as much as wanted.
- Homestay ( already filled the app. for that, so that should be underway)
- Kabuki Theater( planned to see in July, all set and ready)
- Comiket 76, 75 was awesome, would love to go 76.
- go to Nikko, heard it’s gorgeous.
- try Pachinko, reserved for August so in case I was to get addicted I would have no choice but to stop haha
- go to Disney Sea, only been to Disney Land, better try Disney Sea since Japan is the only place that has it.
- Ride the Shinkansen at least once
- Go to either Okinawa or Hokkaido before leaving, one of those two for sure.

I love how in Japan, you see something as simple as like say, a cat sleeping on a tree, a group if not hordes of people crowd around that tree to take pictures of the cat(s) sleeping like the paparazzi. What’s great is that this has happened more than just a few times since I’ve been here. Kind of makes me feel happy to know I’m not the only one around that’s easily amused by these things.

When Yilan and I were walking in Ueno Park during the Sakura Festival there were these really cute cats in a pack of three sleeping on one of the Sakura tree branch. It was a huugge crowd of people just wanting to take a picture of them sleeping with their cellphones and cameras. It actually took me a while to just get to the front to take a picture myself! It was indeed really cute though, it was worth it =P

Here you can see some of the other cameras and cellphones before I was able to get a pic of just the cats lol.

So tonight was the Welcome Party held by 105 from the Ryugakusei Center. The whole shindig where you drink, eat, talk, meet new people, etc. I met this guy from Serbia ( i THINK it was Serbia) and the first thing he said was ” hey are you that girl who posted those pictures on your blog?” and then I was puzzled and asked him to elaborate.

He mentions the post about the dormitory room, one of the first entries I posted when I moved here, and he said he was really happy to have seen pictures of the Dorm before to have moved in. I asked him if he remembers the site name and said “it was tinainjapan.com I believe.” lol.  He said that when he searched on Yokohama National University Rooming or whatever my blog was one of the first results. Hooly moly, small world indeed.

Today was the last session for Calligraphy for “COOL Japan”. I’m was a bit sad, I had a lot of fun and I really liked the sensei. Also hit me that it meant 6 weeks has already passed since I’ve been here in Japan. Time is flying by incredibly fast.

The past two lessons we picked our favorite Kanji to practice writing that we put on a t-shirt/cloth/or shikishi art board. I picked “GyuuNyuu” which is Milk. I didn’t want to do anything with a particular deep meaning like ” faith”, “power”, “love”, various elements, you know the whole sha-bang. So I chose Milk cause Milk does a body good. Oh wait, that may be deep.

Here is my shikishi. Crappy Calligraphy, I didn’t like my Nyuu but I kinda like my Gyuu. Since there was some space I asked the Sensei if it was appropiate to draw a doodle or a design on the shikishi and she said it was fine. I drew cows next to “Gyuu”. It worked.

Was randomly out near the bathrooms of the 1st floor outside of classes . Drawn during break one day. The cows have been on there for over a week. I’ve drawn more cows on it since. This is the most up to date picture. XD;

The spiders here are huge and create very impressive webs. I’ve seen ones at school that would expand over 10 feet or more from tree across to another tree above a pathway. I can never get a good picture of it. The spiders at school are colorful too with red,green, and yellow marks on it.

Then there are the grasshopper(?)/mantis(?)

I saw this big guy on the way home from classes. One of those floor blocks is about the size of my hand. To give you an idea of the size.