So Japan has this sauce they use for tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet. Link for moe info, but oh man. This stuff is some of my favorite Japanese food) that's ridiculously tasty. It ranges in consistency from syrupy with the consistency of like, gravy, to viscous and runny like Worcestershire sauce, and is absolutely delicious. Growing up, I knew it as "the tonkatsu sauce" and later as "the bulldog sauce" since the brand we often bought was Bulldog. I thought it was a weird name, but whatever, not like companies don't have weird names sometimes... and I mean, siracha sauce has a giant rooster on the front.
For the longest time while I was in Japan there was this stuff labeled ウースターソース（uusutaa sousu - pronounced kind of like "Woostaaa sauce") that I thought was oyster sauce. Ha. So wrong on that account. I was stupidly buying import Worcestershire sauce when really, it was sitting there staring me in the face. Apparently, "Worcestershire" is too hard to katakana-ize, so it just changes into "uustaa" sauce.
To digress a little, other words have gotten similar "too hard to katakana-ize treatments. There are a couple of words in Japanese for all-you-can-eat style eateries. One of them is 「食べ放題」(tabehoudai)「ブーフェ」(buufeh) and「バイキング」(baiking/viking). So tabehoudai translates as something like "all you can eat,"
buufeh is obviously from buffet... and then there's viking. We were like wtf? when my friends and I first saw it. It turns out that originally, it comes from the Scandinavian term, "smorgasbord" (supposedly, the English use of the word, as well as buffets themselves also come from this after a World Fair event that used it to showcase Swedish food) however, this proved too difficult to say, so it was changed into the easier to say, "viking." Since, you know, vikings, Scandinavia... it totally made sense. Actually, I'd be really interested in seeing if there's anything explaining that connection, or if people back then were really just like "oh hm, what else is Scandinavian? Hmmm... VIKINGS. Vikings totally ate a lot too, so let's call our all you can eat thing a viking!" Facepalm.
Anyways, back to woostaa sauce. I get emails and stuff from the Huffington Post and New York Times whenever they run food articles, so one came up for how they found the original recipe for Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce in a skip that detailed what exactly went into the "spices" and "seasoning" on the ingredients label (spoiler: it's not vegetarian friendly). Things that include stuff like lemons, pickles, and anchovies. While the recipe didn't include how to make it, nor how much sauce it yielded, it was still a more complete picture of what went into the sauce since even the manufacturers often spoke in code, or didn't know the entirety of the recipe.
One of the code words they happened to use was "bulldog" or "bulldog clip" - and while I have no idea what that actually means, I have a huge hunch that those code words are the source of the childhood tonkatsu sauce I grew up with. I saw that article and went "OH MY GOD IT ALL MAKES SENSE." Apparently though, the Japanese worcestershire sauce uses pureed apples as a base though? But yeah, that's where that logo comes from (I think).
A little bit more on this Japanese Woostaa sauce: it was originally thought of as the Western equivalent of soy sauce, which is why it appears EVERYWHERE in Japan (not just at tonkatsu restaurants, but especially there too). I think it's also used in hambagu (hamburger steaks/patties) and other things... I guess kind of in the way Worcestershire sauce is actually used lol (I use it in meatballs. Nom.) Japanese cooking uses soy sauce as a flavoring, so during the later Meiji and Taisho periods (~1868 to 1926) when Japan was rapidly Westernizing in the name of modernization, Japanese chefs, when making Western foods, would use Worcestershire sauce as flavoring for like, everything (essentially, the same way they would use soy sauce for Japanese foods). That's the period when there was a huge influx of Western influence on everything in Japanese culture, from food to fashion to ways of thinking and the emergence of new "moga" modern girls who fashioned themselves off of western women (think the 20s) and read Western thinkers. The popularization of Western food is generally traced to this period, though other foods (mostly either Dutch based or Iberian) were around in the Japan from the 16th and 17th centuries. Also, lots of the Westerners in Japan at that time didn't actually come from their native countries, but were transplants from China - hence the huge British presence.
Seriously though, if you've never tried tonkatsu, it's a pretty awesome dish. Pork cutlets are breaded and then fried until crispy golden brown, and then served with tonkatsu sauce. The sauce, if you go to nicer tonkatsu specialty restaurants, is all house made, and you can grind a little bit of sesame seed into it. Delicious stuff. I'm getting ridiculously hungry thinking about it. I miss tonkatsu so much...
Tonkatsu restaurants also usually serve meals with cabbage salads and a bowl of rice, both of which you can usually refill for free - hooray, all you can eat cabbage (actually, the dressing is pretty tasty... so I usually eat a bunch of this haha). Good tonkatsu is moist inside, but has a crispy outside. Some places put cheese inside, or roll thin slices of pork around other things such as asparagus. So delicious.
...and now I really crave tonkatsu. Man, this is the problem with studying food sometimes. You get bad cravings for things when you have a bunch of food still in the refrigerator, or for food that is literally thousands of miles away...
Hint hint, parents, whom I know totally read this. Can we have tonkatsu for dinner sometime? Please? lol. Maybe I can convince my brother to make it sometime...
Sources:
Schlesinger, Fay. "Original Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Recipe Found in Skip" Mail Online. November 2009. Accessed 16 December 2012. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1224736/Original-Lea-Perrins-Worcestershire-Sauce-recipe-skip.html
Ishige, Naomichi. The History and Culture of Japanese Food. London: Kegan Paul, 2001.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Sunday, December 16, 2012
History Haikus
Somehow, I have managed to survive the first quarter of graduate school. Taking twenty units was super dumb, but somehow I managed to meet a lot of awesome people, have fun, and generally stay somewhat-sane, even if I did practically shut myself in my room for the last two weeks of school.
But it's all over now! Hooray! That's the good thing about quarters I guess. Before you know it, it's over.
Speaking of over, one of my neighbor boys is graduating this quarter, so he's moving out tomorrow. So sad! His program was only 4 quarters (only!), so he's departing. It's a shame though, because he was super chill; totally not what I expected from a guy in Pike haha. Maybe I judge people just a little based on those things. But D was super sweet, and part of our neighbor dinners :) Also made amazing stuffed bellpeppers. Funny, how despite only knowing the boys next door for a quarter, I feel like, actually comfortable with them. Really, we lucked out. It'll be interesting to see who moves in next door...
But yes, so, for my history class (Modern Japanese history), since we had to memorize when certain major events were (I was told we were just supposed to know generally important things, and I guess I've never really thought of dates as important), I created some haiku to help me remember lol.
Hooray for history haikus! Especially since it turned out I didn't really need to remember them after all. Sigh.
(On the effects of the cold war)
1-9-4-7
Key to economic rise
re- all the old things!
(on the Hibiya Riots)
Hibiya riot
Angry in 1905
government target
(on Mori Arinori)
champion of wives
no basic human morals
no more concubines
(on the New Constitution)
1-9-4-7
Controversial number 9
right to unionize
(on the reasons for the Japanese economic miracle)
zaibatsu leaders
Lucky Korean War boom
Dodge Line deflation
(on salariimen)
emerged in Taisho
Salary Man family
70s real life
(on the Rice Riots)
In 1918
Wartime inflation of rice
bottom-up riot
hooray for history!
But it's all over now! Hooray! That's the good thing about quarters I guess. Before you know it, it's over.
Speaking of over, one of my neighbor boys is graduating this quarter, so he's moving out tomorrow. So sad! His program was only 4 quarters (only!), so he's departing. It's a shame though, because he was super chill; totally not what I expected from a guy in Pike haha. Maybe I judge people just a little based on those things. But D was super sweet, and part of our neighbor dinners :) Also made amazing stuffed bellpeppers. Funny, how despite only knowing the boys next door for a quarter, I feel like, actually comfortable with them. Really, we lucked out. It'll be interesting to see who moves in next door...
But yes, so, for my history class (Modern Japanese history), since we had to memorize when certain major events were (I was told we were just supposed to know generally important things, and I guess I've never really thought of dates as important), I created some haiku to help me remember lol.
Hooray for history haikus! Especially since it turned out I didn't really need to remember them after all. Sigh.
(On the effects of the cold war)
1-9-4-7
Key to economic rise
re- all the old things!
(on the Hibiya Riots)
Hibiya riot
Angry in 1905
government target
(on Mori Arinori)
champion of wives
no basic human morals
no more concubines
(on the New Constitution)
1-9-4-7
Controversial number 9
right to unionize
(on the reasons for the Japanese economic miracle)
zaibatsu leaders
Lucky Korean War boom
Dodge Line deflation
(on salariimen)
emerged in Taisho
Salary Man family
70s real life
(on the Rice Riots)
In 1918
Wartime inflation of rice
bottom-up riot
hooray for history!
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Ice Ice Baby
Before today, the only ice hockey I had seen consisted of The Mighty Ducks 1 and 2. Never been to a game, since, growing up in California where it doesn't actually snow... there aren't too many professional teams (though, I do remember there were teams at the ice skating rink I used to visit as a child in Berkeley). We have one in northern california - the San Jose sharks (who apparently used to play at the Cow Palace).
I had no idea there was another league outside the NHL. Apparently there is - the ECHL. And apparently San Francisco just got a team: the Bulls. And apparently, my parents had purchased tickets to go to the game... so to avoid what happened with the football game last time, where my family went without me and I was just kind of stuck, I said yes, I'd go (despite this looming amount of work for school that keeps on staring at me, that I'm still procrastinating on as I write)
Ice hockey, it turns out, is a lot more interesting to watch than certain other sports for the whole game, especially when the players fight or take a fall. There were some pretty spectacular falls tonight too. Plus, it's only three periods long! I'm totally okay with this. I actually found it hard to sneak in a little bit of reading when I could, because there was always something going on, and the puck was always moving back and forth, so it never really got boring to watch.
It seems so... angry and violent though. Near the end of the third period, one of the players ripped off his helmet and gloves and started punching one of the other players. It took a lot longer for the refs to pull them apart than in other sports.
Speaking of refs... ice hockey is not a sport I would like to ref. I think I'd rather ref any other sport, even if I could skate really well (which I can't). The moves I saw the refs pull, and the jumps, and near misses (and some hits) the refs were subject to... yeah. Seemed kinda dangerous.
But overall, that wasn't too bad. Kinda fun, actually, despite not knowing what was going on most of the time and not being able to keep track of where the heck the stupid puck was.
*
Also, recently it was thanksgiving... my first one back in the states in two years! HOORAY, AMERICAN FOOD. I'm thankful for turkey and stuffing and thanksgiving food! Except we had thanksgiving in NorCal this year (which, for a while, we had thanksgiving in San Diego because that's where I was going to school and stuff) so we had a Chinese thanksgiving with the extended family. My siblings came back home too, so it was really nice to see them again, despite wanting to kill my brother several times (he still has this magic way of pushing my buttons just the right way. I guess that's the job of brothers...). He's so frustrating sometimes! lol. But I am really glad I got the chance to see them again, even if the butt did forget to bring the rice cooker back up for me.
Chinese thanksgiving means Chinese sticky rice stuffing with the mushroom and sausage stuff and turkey, potato salad, rolls, cranberry sauce, gravy, and deviled eggs. Oh, and party punch (which is a combination of sorbet and 7 up, no alcohol involved), and pies. But no regular stuffing, and no mashed potatoes. NO MASHED POTATOES OR STUFFING. I was actually kind of sad. Ironically, I've had those the past two years, and it was the turkey that was always lacking (though, my first year we *did* have turkey and my second year in Japan we had the best chicken I've ever eaten). Seriously. Those two things are my favorite parts of thanksgiving. ...AND WE DIDN'T HAVE THEM. SUPER SAD FACE. Chinese sticky rice stuffing is also pretty good, but it's like they combined the mashed potatoes and stuffing and made it Asian by turning it into rice.
I know what I'm making for dinner over the next few days...
This thanksgiving, also, will forever be remembered as the infamous thanksgiving where our uncle maybe tried to kill us (or at least make us sick) by putting out rancid butter. Like seriously, when we went to the adults asking if they noticed something funny about the butter, my uncle was like, "Oh yeah, that butter's kinda old..." So old, apparently, that both the taste and texture changed. It tasted like mizithera cheese to me (and Parmesan to my cousin, and blue cheese to my brother), and had the texture of crisco. It probably wasn't wise of me or my brother to actually continue to eat it once we put it on our rolls... I'm not sure how much he ate (he spread it all around the outside of his roll), but I had put it on half my roll and kept eating it to make sure it was really kind of strange tasting with a weird texture.
Shoulda trusted my taste buds when they said "WOAAAAAAAAH SOMETHING IS OFF." I'm not sure if it's the cause, but I got a little sick the day after, and I'm blaming it on the butter because my brother felt a little not well too, though for not as long. Maybe I ate more butter? I had no idea butter could actually go bad like that though. -_-
I'm not ready for thanksgiving break to end. D: I NEED MORE TIME. I don't know what happened to all the- oh wait. Yes I do. I went to Disneyland for two days, then driving up and down took basically two days (though I did get a lot of reading done during those days), and then thanksgiving happened, and then the day after we went wine tasting which took all day, and then my uncle had a birthday party I didn't find out about until the day before thanksgiving and we went to the hockey game, and now, somehow, impossibly, we're at Sunday, with school - week 9 - starting Monday. WEEK NINE. WHERE DID THE QUARTER GO?! Seriously.
Next quarter, I'm taking less classes. D:
I had no idea there was another league outside the NHL. Apparently there is - the ECHL. And apparently San Francisco just got a team: the Bulls. And apparently, my parents had purchased tickets to go to the game... so to avoid what happened with the football game last time, where my family went without me and I was just kind of stuck, I said yes, I'd go (despite this looming amount of work for school that keeps on staring at me, that I'm still procrastinating on as I write)
Ice hockey, it turns out, is a lot more interesting to watch than certain other sports for the whole game, especially when the players fight or take a fall. There were some pretty spectacular falls tonight too. Plus, it's only three periods long! I'm totally okay with this. I actually found it hard to sneak in a little bit of reading when I could, because there was always something going on, and the puck was always moving back and forth, so it never really got boring to watch.
It seems so... angry and violent though. Near the end of the third period, one of the players ripped off his helmet and gloves and started punching one of the other players. It took a lot longer for the refs to pull them apart than in other sports.
Speaking of refs... ice hockey is not a sport I would like to ref. I think I'd rather ref any other sport, even if I could skate really well (which I can't). The moves I saw the refs pull, and the jumps, and near misses (and some hits) the refs were subject to... yeah. Seemed kinda dangerous.
But overall, that wasn't too bad. Kinda fun, actually, despite not knowing what was going on most of the time and not being able to keep track of where the heck the stupid puck was.
*
Also, recently it was thanksgiving... my first one back in the states in two years! HOORAY, AMERICAN FOOD. I'm thankful for turkey and stuffing and thanksgiving food! Except we had thanksgiving in NorCal this year (which, for a while, we had thanksgiving in San Diego because that's where I was going to school and stuff) so we had a Chinese thanksgiving with the extended family. My siblings came back home too, so it was really nice to see them again, despite wanting to kill my brother several times (he still has this magic way of pushing my buttons just the right way. I guess that's the job of brothers...). He's so frustrating sometimes! lol. But I am really glad I got the chance to see them again, even if the butt did forget to bring the rice cooker back up for me.
Chinese thanksgiving means Chinese sticky rice stuffing with the mushroom and sausage stuff and turkey, potato salad, rolls, cranberry sauce, gravy, and deviled eggs. Oh, and party punch (which is a combination of sorbet and 7 up, no alcohol involved), and pies. But no regular stuffing, and no mashed potatoes. NO MASHED POTATOES OR STUFFING. I was actually kind of sad. Ironically, I've had those the past two years, and it was the turkey that was always lacking (though, my first year we *did* have turkey and my second year in Japan we had the best chicken I've ever eaten). Seriously. Those two things are my favorite parts of thanksgiving. ...AND WE DIDN'T HAVE THEM. SUPER SAD FACE. Chinese sticky rice stuffing is also pretty good, but it's like they combined the mashed potatoes and stuffing and made it Asian by turning it into rice.
I know what I'm making for dinner over the next few days...
This thanksgiving, also, will forever be remembered as the infamous thanksgiving where our uncle maybe tried to kill us (or at least make us sick) by putting out rancid butter. Like seriously, when we went to the adults asking if they noticed something funny about the butter, my uncle was like, "Oh yeah, that butter's kinda old..." So old, apparently, that both the taste and texture changed. It tasted like mizithera cheese to me (and Parmesan to my cousin, and blue cheese to my brother), and had the texture of crisco. It probably wasn't wise of me or my brother to actually continue to eat it once we put it on our rolls... I'm not sure how much he ate (he spread it all around the outside of his roll), but I had put it on half my roll and kept eating it to make sure it was really kind of strange tasting with a weird texture.
Shoulda trusted my taste buds when they said "WOAAAAAAAAH SOMETHING IS OFF." I'm not sure if it's the cause, but I got a little sick the day after, and I'm blaming it on the butter because my brother felt a little not well too, though for not as long. Maybe I ate more butter? I had no idea butter could actually go bad like that though. -_-
I'm not ready for thanksgiving break to end. D: I NEED MORE TIME. I don't know what happened to all the- oh wait. Yes I do. I went to Disneyland for two days, then driving up and down took basically two days (though I did get a lot of reading done during those days), and then thanksgiving happened, and then the day after we went wine tasting which took all day, and then my uncle had a birthday party I didn't find out about until the day before thanksgiving and we went to the hockey game, and now, somehow, impossibly, we're at Sunday, with school - week 9 - starting Monday. WEEK NINE. WHERE DID THE QUARTER GO?! Seriously.
Next quarter, I'm taking less classes. D:
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Undergrad evolved into... GRAD STUDENT (give your grad student a nickname?)
Guess who has a midterm and a precis (ie, glorified book and article report) due tomorrow and yet is writing a blog post? THIS GIRL.
Occasionally, I question my judgement, but usually it works out alright in the end.
I'm taking twenty units (5 courses) this quarter AND I'm trying to be part of the dragonboat team. That's another one of those "hm I'm not sure if this was a super good idea" kind of things, but I guess we'll see how that goes as well...
Mostly, I think it's a matter of efficient time management and not slacking off, ie, wasting time on the Internet. Which, coming from my background of like, ALWAYS being connected and using facebook for work, is really hard to do haha. But what else can you do but your best?
Grad school is pretty different than undergrad so far, despite me taking a lot of undergrad courses. The amount of free food and free alcohol (or Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverages) is kind of staggering. I mean, just wow. And then there's the dining halls.
I went to Arrillaga Hall today for the first time. Oh my god. The undergrads here. I don't understand how they lose weight. It's probably a really good thing UCSD didn't actually do this endless lunch style (though it does force you to eat on specific schedules and not, say, at 9:30 pm) because I would have gained so much weight. The food in the dining halls are really really really good! I think my jaw dropped when I went in today haha. They had these dishes that were plated super nice and fancy (they even used a dish towel to wipe the edges of the dish so that it looked restaurant quality presentable) and a whole bunch of awesomely delicious foods. One of the other dining halls has Viet sandwiches and (okay) pho. It really... spoils you, I think. Cause wow. I don't know how kids here stay skinny. Probably by not eating actually that much, and by getting used to it. I need to not eat all the delicious looking things in site when I go...
Classes wise, it's really interesting, because they really expect a lot out of grad students. I mean, we already did the undergrad thing, yeah, but we're expected to have transcended to the next level and be able to use a whole new moveset. It's like we're pokemon, kind of. You work as an undergrad, accumulating experience points (aka units) and new skills (UNDERGRAD wants to learn ALL NIGHTER. Delete WRITE A REFLECTIVE PAPER to learn ALL NIGHTER?) Some of these pokemon go on after graduation and do awesome things, like learn new skills via TMs (or jobs) and don't ever want (or need) to evolve. Or maybe they're like Eevee where they can evolve into a plethora of different things with different skill sets or what have you.
However, there are more special evolutions! After reaching a certain level (graduation) if you have the right conditions (no job in the workforce, good GPA, good application, needs more specialized skill set) your UNDERGRAD can evolve into GRAD STUDENT. From here, there are two different routes GRAD STUDENT can take.
In the first path, GRAD STUDENT will go on to complete a masters program, and then, upon enough experience points, will eventually evolve into INDUSTRY PERSON. They'll have a job, hopefully. They're probably things like computer scientists, business people, law people, etc.
The second path requires accumulating a lot more experience points (units - often, for the humanities and social sciences types through READING A LOT) and also using a special stone called DISSERTATION. Somehow and somewhere down the line, these GRAD STUDENTS though special trading events between schools (usually) can evolve into their final form, PROFESSOR.
Clearly, I am overthinking this, especially when I should be writing about other academic-related things like how Chinese people thought rocks were the most loyal thing in the world. That's why there are so many rocks in Chinese gardens (like, those big huge rocks that are often really old). There was an old story about how this one rock actually came to have something of a spirit and personality, because it was able to choose who its master would be and did things like puff up small clouds to become beautiful for only its master. Then when its master died, rather than belong to someone else, it actually decided to commit suicide by shattering itself into a thousand shards. ...this is the abridged version that I gleaned from my readings, but I thought it was kind of interesting how these inanimate objects could really come to embody real feelings, emotions, and virtues to the point of fantastical stories.
I complain, but really, I've been having a lot of fun at grad school, as evident by my lack of posting and getting pictures up from the last bit of my stay in Japan. I swear eventually I get around to that... (probably right when all the papers are due hahaha). Classes are really small, but campus is really big. I think my smallest class has like... five of us total in it (and we're all from the same department!) while the biggest lecture has maybe 30 at most? AT MOST. WHAT IS THIS MADNESS. I'm used to lectures being like... at least 40 or something. It's kind of unsettling.
...I suppose though, UCSD has like, twice the number of students or something. 24,000 or something? Stanford has ~14,000, but undergrads (aka, people I'd probably have classes with) only make up 6,000. The other 8,000 are graduate students who are taking more specialized things, so the chances of taking classes with them... well, apart from humanities/social science folk (which I'm sure are in the minority) are fairly small.
Oh, I don't know why that reminded me, but! One of the awesome things Stanford did was throw a party at the Cantor Arts Center, which is the local museum/art gallery on campus. It was an interesting kind of concept. They had a bunch of student performances, artistic performances, and they opened the Arts Center up for a scavenger hunt where you had to get the name of nine pieces of art. A clever trick to get students to walk all around the arts center, exposing them to a wide range of art from around the world.
Actually though, the Cantor Arts Center is AMAZING. I would totally pay to get into there (students are free though, yay!). The amount of art that it has there is really astounding, as well as the types of works they have there. They had these really creepy masks from I think the polynesian or Alaskan areas... I swear they were watching us. So. Creepy.
Occasionally, I question my judgement, but usually it works out alright in the end.
I'm taking twenty units (5 courses) this quarter AND I'm trying to be part of the dragonboat team. That's another one of those "hm I'm not sure if this was a super good idea" kind of things, but I guess we'll see how that goes as well...
Mostly, I think it's a matter of efficient time management and not slacking off, ie, wasting time on the Internet. Which, coming from my background of like, ALWAYS being connected and using facebook for work, is really hard to do haha. But what else can you do but your best?
Grad school is pretty different than undergrad so far, despite me taking a lot of undergrad courses. The amount of free food and free alcohol (or Equally Attractive Non-Alcoholic Beverages) is kind of staggering. I mean, just wow. And then there's the dining halls.
I went to Arrillaga Hall today for the first time. Oh my god. The undergrads here. I don't understand how they lose weight. It's probably a really good thing UCSD didn't actually do this endless lunch style (though it does force you to eat on specific schedules and not, say, at 9:30 pm) because I would have gained so much weight. The food in the dining halls are really really really good! I think my jaw dropped when I went in today haha. They had these dishes that were plated super nice and fancy (they even used a dish towel to wipe the edges of the dish so that it looked restaurant quality presentable) and a whole bunch of awesomely delicious foods. One of the other dining halls has Viet sandwiches and (okay) pho. It really... spoils you, I think. Cause wow. I don't know how kids here stay skinny. Probably by not eating actually that much, and by getting used to it. I need to not eat all the delicious looking things in site when I go...
Classes wise, it's really interesting, because they really expect a lot out of grad students. I mean, we already did the undergrad thing, yeah, but we're expected to have transcended to the next level and be able to use a whole new moveset. It's like we're pokemon, kind of. You work as an undergrad, accumulating experience points (aka units) and new skills (UNDERGRAD wants to learn ALL NIGHTER. Delete WRITE A REFLECTIVE PAPER to learn ALL NIGHTER?) Some of these pokemon go on after graduation and do awesome things, like learn new skills via TMs (or jobs) and don't ever want (or need) to evolve. Or maybe they're like Eevee where they can evolve into a plethora of different things with different skill sets or what have you.
However, there are more special evolutions! After reaching a certain level (graduation) if you have the right conditions (no job in the workforce, good GPA, good application, needs more specialized skill set) your UNDERGRAD can evolve into GRAD STUDENT. From here, there are two different routes GRAD STUDENT can take.
In the first path, GRAD STUDENT will go on to complete a masters program, and then, upon enough experience points, will eventually evolve into INDUSTRY PERSON. They'll have a job, hopefully. They're probably things like computer scientists, business people, law people, etc.
The second path requires accumulating a lot more experience points (units - often, for the humanities and social sciences types through READING A LOT) and also using a special stone called DISSERTATION. Somehow and somewhere down the line, these GRAD STUDENTS though special trading events between schools (usually) can evolve into their final form, PROFESSOR.
Clearly, I am overthinking this, especially when I should be writing about other academic-related things like how Chinese people thought rocks were the most loyal thing in the world. That's why there are so many rocks in Chinese gardens (like, those big huge rocks that are often really old). There was an old story about how this one rock actually came to have something of a spirit and personality, because it was able to choose who its master would be and did things like puff up small clouds to become beautiful for only its master. Then when its master died, rather than belong to someone else, it actually decided to commit suicide by shattering itself into a thousand shards. ...this is the abridged version that I gleaned from my readings, but I thought it was kind of interesting how these inanimate objects could really come to embody real feelings, emotions, and virtues to the point of fantastical stories.
I complain, but really, I've been having a lot of fun at grad school, as evident by my lack of posting and getting pictures up from the last bit of my stay in Japan. I swear eventually I get around to that... (probably right when all the papers are due hahaha). Classes are really small, but campus is really big. I think my smallest class has like... five of us total in it (and we're all from the same department!) while the biggest lecture has maybe 30 at most? AT MOST. WHAT IS THIS MADNESS. I'm used to lectures being like... at least 40 or something. It's kind of unsettling.
...I suppose though, UCSD has like, twice the number of students or something. 24,000 or something? Stanford has ~14,000, but undergrads (aka, people I'd probably have classes with) only make up 6,000. The other 8,000 are graduate students who are taking more specialized things, so the chances of taking classes with them... well, apart from humanities/social science folk (which I'm sure are in the minority) are fairly small.
Oh, I don't know why that reminded me, but! One of the awesome things Stanford did was throw a party at the Cantor Arts Center, which is the local museum/art gallery on campus. It was an interesting kind of concept. They had a bunch of student performances, artistic performances, and they opened the Arts Center up for a scavenger hunt where you had to get the name of nine pieces of art. A clever trick to get students to walk all around the arts center, exposing them to a wide range of art from around the world.
Actually though, the Cantor Arts Center is AMAZING. I would totally pay to get into there (students are free though, yay!). The amount of art that it has there is really astounding, as well as the types of works they have there. They had these really creepy masks from I think the polynesian or Alaskan areas... I swear they were watching us. So. Creepy.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
451
That's how high up you can go in the Tokyo Sky Tree, out of 600something kilometers. That's about 280 up miles 1479 feet/.28 miles (451 km, I mean).
EDIT: I don't do units. ._. As my sister points out, at 280 miles up, you probably wouldn't have enough breathable air.
I went up expecting just another tower kind of view, since I've seen a couple and usually it just ends up being cityscape. And when I saw pictures other people took, it was like "well I guess that's okay."
Really though, it's something that needs to be experienced.
I went up there on my last full day in Japan, and spent the night with a spectacular view of the Sky Tree. Really, it was quite a perfect last day that I had, which makes up for the slightly-rushed-ahhhh-lunch-hour-stress I felt as I was going to the airport on the 25th haha.
We got up there - by we, I mean my Japanese-cousin-(maybe)-on-my-mom's-side-who-did-a-homestay-With-us-in-'94 Iori and her four year old (who, while adorable, made me realize that I do not want children any time soon) - it was about 6 pmish and not quite sunset. But wow. You could see buildings for miles and miles, just nonstop as far as the horizon extended. Tokyo tower, surrounded by tall (lols) buildings, seemed almost puny. I think Iori mentioned that Tokyo Tower is about half the size of sky tree (which is still pretty large). Of in the distance, amidst a crowd of people taking pictures, you could see Mt. Fuji as well, making for quite a nice view. they also had digital maps of the area which displayed time-lapse videos as well as maps (with names and train lines) and 360 panoramic views.
The opening theme for Game of Thrones (if you haven't seen it, you should, it's quite excellent) was playing in my head the whole time during the day. I suppose it was a little appropriate.
By the time we finished walking around the regular level - at a mere 350 m - the sun was well on its way to setting, and then we went to the upper deck (cost an extra 1,000 yen though). The upper deck kind of spirals up around the tower, so you're constantly going up. You can actually notice a difference though; I didn't think it would matter much but the buildings are noticeably smaller. All the city lights were just coming on as well, shining like small gems out in the distance. It was absolutely beautiful to walk around, watching as the sky got darker and the land got brighter.
Honestly though, the Tokyo night view beats the pants off the daytime cityscape, in my opinion (though as Iori pointed out, you can't see Fuji, so my solution is that twilight is the best because the lights are coming on, but you get this awesome silhouette of Mt. Fuji). But there are just so many lights, and the bridges are lit and colored, and we even saw fireworks way off in the distance.
It looked like a giant sea of stars, all bright and twinkly. Just... so many lights. You could see Tokyo Tower off in the distance near some other buildings, but from that far up they all looked like small toothpicks. Poor Tokyo Tower.
Oh, it's worth mentioning that while we actually went up to the Sky Tree Observation deck around 6ish, we actually had to come to the Sky Tree much earlier. They were handing out reservation slips for times that you could come buy a ticket - kind of like a fastpass (think Disney) but where you still have to buy a ticket. But you go for a time when you can buy said ticket, and you need one ticket per person who's going to go up; you can't just send one person to buy them all (though you *can* send one person to get your "fastpass" ticket reservation time cards, just make sure they get enough) since you'll be going straight up to the observation deck from the line. The line is just the start of your "standing in line" experience. Actually, once you get it, you go through a small security area, and then up some magnificent elevators (they're also all twinkly! Ours had a phoenix on it). That actually was maybe a 10-15 minute wait, so not too bad. Actually, once we were inside, standing in line wasn't all that bad because they had giant TV screens with "scenes" from around Tokyo (they were animated, in a kind of giant-Where's-Waldo?-world-sense). But they also explained certain cultural things about the Tokyo area, or general Japanese culture things (in English) so it was actually pretty interesting to wait in line! ...or maybe I'm just nerdy.
No, actually, I'm really nerdy. Tokyo Sky Tree got me the final two prefectures I needed to tag in the 3DS's streetpass game (they're this thing where you can wirelessly swap information via your "Mii" character, including, if you choose, what country and state/prefecture/province/area you're from). So exciting.
Anyways anyways. I think we got our reservation slips around 1 or 2 pm, and the time we could enter the line to buy our tickets was 5:30-6. Paired with the extra 100ish meters, it makes for the perfect time to go up, since you get the day view, the bonus sunset view, *and* the night view. And it's not like there's nothing to do around the sky tree. I think it's one of the HUGEST shopping/etc. areas I've visited! I'm pretty sure you could wander around the whole day and still not see everything there is to see there (excluding the Sky Tree).
First, it's called Sky Tree Town (I think? Or Sky Town. I forget) . Second, it has a planetarium (!) and AND AND AND AN AQUARIUM. Actually, the aquarium, on its own, is actually one of the coolest aquariums I've been to, despite definitely not being the largest, nor having the most amount of exhibits. But the presentation of the different wildlife - including the penguins, which normally, I'm not really that excited to look at because EVERY aquarium in Japan has penguins, no joke - were aesthetically pleasing and informative. The tanks were absolutely gorgeous.
The planetarium was also pretty spectacular. I think it was a little misleading; by planetarium, they mostly meant 40 - 60 minute IMAX shows about space and stars, two of which looked like they were made specifically for the enjoyment of small children (though with Japan and its cute characters, who knows). There was one more that looked interesting, and it only showed at night (maybe that was the actual planetarium part). The one we went to see the morning I left Japan was about how the sky looked during the Edo period, which was kinda interesting, but was unfortunately all in Japanese so maybe I fell asleep during part of it.
Other than those two, Sky Tree has a staggering 7 or 8 (I forget if the top floor had things; I don't think it did?) floors of stuff, plus there were shops on B3 and B1 (I don't know about B2?). Granted, floors 6 and 7 were food, but still. Loads of stuff. There was a plastic food shop I have huge regrets about not having enough time to look into, but I was getting a little worried about canceling my cell phone and making my bus to the airport. I thought I would be able to get lunch quickly. Ha! LUNCH CROWDS, YOU HAVE WON THAT ROUND.
That being said, lunch did go somewhat quickly because I went to an "Edo style" standing sushi bar. It probably didn't help that I went and bought the only purse I bought in Japan. I COULDN'T HELP IT. It had tessellations of Winnie the Pooh. How could I not buy something like this? LOOKIT HOW CUTE THE TESSELLATIONS ARE.
Jump back to the night before though - my last night in Tokyo and in Japan (for now anyways). Thanks to Iori, we were able to snag a room at the Tobu Levant Tokyo Hotel (which markets itself as the closest large hotel to Narita) so I didn't have to worry about going all the way back to Chigasaki and then back out to Narita, which was nice. I was able to catch a bus instead (though it probably took just as long). Ta-Q-bin services, which let you send your luggage on ahead to the airport, is a godsend (I had two large checked pieces).
The hotel though. Oh my goodness.
I'm not really used to staying in hotels, let alone nice ones. I think the majority of people my age will concur; hotels are kind of expensive. Recently, I've sprung for business hotels, which are nice, but still rather austere, or for budget ryokan - the Japanese style inns, which are still pretty darn nice (but beds are nicer, after having slept on a futon for two years). The Tobu Levant? Oh. My. God.
This was a *nice* hotel.
And on top of that, our room was the "Sorakara-chan" (Sky Tree's mascot) room. I was just told before that "there might be something with Sorakara-chan in it.
Yeah. This was the door to our room.
Then when we opened the door, we were greeted to this:
EVERYTHING had Sorakara-chan on it. And that wasn't even the end of it. It was that classic, "but wait, there's more!" Literally. The room had a small room annexed to it.
I think the dogs and the penguin thing were also other mascots. Probably. As my cousin pointed out, the weird penguin with the star on it is a girl, because she has high heels on.
Oh, I should mention the name of the mascot. Sorakara-chan, for those of you who don't speak Japanese, means something like "from the sky"-chan (chan is a kind of cute prefix for small kids or girls). Considering that she's the mascot for the Sky Tree, it's actually pretty appropriate (and cute. Can't forget cute).
But I mean holy smokes. Cra-zy. Crazy crazy crazy. There were so many... character themed things. Even in the bathroom, there were character things. The towels had little pictures on them and stuff. We had the most amazing view of the Sky tree from our bedroom windows, which were also gigantic. So you could go to sleep and see the Sky tree.
This is why my last night in Tokyo, despite my new 4 year old friend being kinda tired and cranky (yet still having enough energy to power an iPhone for a day and a half), was really freaking awesome. I couldn't have asked for a better "last" experience.
*
I've kind of been in this daze ever since I returned home, and as in daze, I mean like, I haven't really done much (did visit one friend) in the almost week I've been back home. I didn't adjust my clocks until yesterday, so I spent most of yesterday (thursday) thinking it was today (friday). Oh, I reactivated my phone and joined a gym. The gym has pretty much been my number one accomplishment the past few days. I did see the Expendables 2 (that was fun). That, and I've logged a probably ridiculous amount of video game hours in, since upon my return home, there have been three games I've been trying to juggle: Epic Mickey, which is indeed epic; Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance aka Kingdom Hearts 3D which I've been waiting for since I pre-ordered in while in Japan; and The World Ends With You, which I've been trying to freaking finish but I lost the game when my DS was probably stolen. Note, two of these games involve Disney, while two involve SquareEnix. Kingdom Hearts, has *both* Disney AND The World Ends With You characters (so it's kind of like getting my fix for all three but not really?)
I've also kind of been thinking about what to do with this blog, now that I've returned home. I think I'm going to keep writing in it? Hopefully I'll be not-lazy and finish writing about my extended monthish of traveling in Japan and bumming at people's houses. That's my goal. I uploaded over 2,000 pictures last night so I think I kind of... have a lot ahead of me hahaha. But yeah.
Just because I'm back in the US doesn't mean that the adventure has stopped. :) Rather, it has simply changed locations. It's cliche, yes, but life is an adventure, no?
Watch out world (and Mexican food) cause here I come!
EDIT: I don't do units. ._. As my sister points out, at 280 miles up, you probably wouldn't have enough breathable air.
 |
| I suppose that's tall. |
I went up expecting just another tower kind of view, since I've seen a couple and usually it just ends up being cityscape. And when I saw pictures other people took, it was like "well I guess that's okay."
Really though, it's something that needs to be experienced.
I went up there on my last full day in Japan, and spent the night with a spectacular view of the Sky Tree. Really, it was quite a perfect last day that I had, which makes up for the slightly-rushed-ahhhh-lunch-hour-stress I felt as I was going to the airport on the 25th haha.
We got up there - by we, I mean my Japanese-cousin-(maybe)-on-my-mom's-side-who-did-a-homestay-With-us-in-'94 Iori and her four year old (who, while adorable, made me realize that I do not want children any time soon) - it was about 6 pmish and not quite sunset. But wow. You could see buildings for miles and miles, just nonstop as far as the horizon extended. Tokyo tower, surrounded by tall (lols) buildings, seemed almost puny. I think Iori mentioned that Tokyo Tower is about half the size of sky tree (which is still pretty large). Of in the distance, amidst a crowd of people taking pictures, you could see Mt. Fuji as well, making for quite a nice view. they also had digital maps of the area which displayed time-lapse videos as well as maps (with names and train lines) and 360 panoramic views.
 |
| Looooook Mt. Fuji! |
By the time we finished walking around the regular level - at a mere 350 m - the sun was well on its way to setting, and then we went to the upper deck (cost an extra 1,000 yen though). The upper deck kind of spirals up around the tower, so you're constantly going up. You can actually notice a difference though; I didn't think it would matter much but the buildings are noticeably smaller. All the city lights were just coming on as well, shining like small gems out in the distance. It was absolutely beautiful to walk around, watching as the sky got darker and the land got brighter.
Honestly though, the Tokyo night view beats the pants off the daytime cityscape, in my opinion (though as Iori pointed out, you can't see Fuji, so my solution is that twilight is the best because the lights are coming on, but you get this awesome silhouette of Mt. Fuji). But there are just so many lights, and the bridges are lit and colored, and we even saw fireworks way off in the distance.
It looked like a giant sea of stars, all bright and twinkly. Just... so many lights. You could see Tokyo Tower off in the distance near some other buildings, but from that far up they all looked like small toothpicks. Poor Tokyo Tower.
 |
| That small red thing is Tokyo Tower at dusk. |
No, actually, I'm really nerdy. Tokyo Sky Tree got me the final two prefectures I needed to tag in the 3DS's streetpass game (they're this thing where you can wirelessly swap information via your "Mii" character, including, if you choose, what country and state/prefecture/province/area you're from). So exciting.
 |
| sunset |
 |
| penguiiiiins (in the nicest penguin exhibit I've seen) |
The planetarium was also pretty spectacular. I think it was a little misleading; by planetarium, they mostly meant 40 - 60 minute IMAX shows about space and stars, two of which looked like they were made specifically for the enjoyment of small children (though with Japan and its cute characters, who knows). There was one more that looked interesting, and it only showed at night (maybe that was the actual planetarium part). The one we went to see the morning I left Japan was about how the sky looked during the Edo period, which was kinda interesting, but was unfortunately all in Japanese so maybe I fell asleep during part of it.
Other than those two, Sky Tree has a staggering 7 or 8 (I forget if the top floor had things; I don't think it did?) floors of stuff, plus there were shops on B3 and B1 (I don't know about B2?). Granted, floors 6 and 7 were food, but still. Loads of stuff. There was a plastic food shop I have huge regrets about not having enough time to look into, but I was getting a little worried about canceling my cell phone and making my bus to the airport. I thought I would be able to get lunch quickly. Ha! LUNCH CROWDS, YOU HAVE WON THAT ROUND.
 |
| My willpower crumbled like a delicious pie crust |
Jump back to the night before though - my last night in Tokyo and in Japan (for now anyways). Thanks to Iori, we were able to snag a room at the Tobu Levant Tokyo Hotel (which markets itself as the closest large hotel to Narita) so I didn't have to worry about going all the way back to Chigasaki and then back out to Narita, which was nice. I was able to catch a bus instead (though it probably took just as long). Ta-Q-bin services, which let you send your luggage on ahead to the airport, is a godsend (I had two large checked pieces).
The hotel though. Oh my goodness.
I'm not really used to staying in hotels, let alone nice ones. I think the majority of people my age will concur; hotels are kind of expensive. Recently, I've sprung for business hotels, which are nice, but still rather austere, or for budget ryokan - the Japanese style inns, which are still pretty darn nice (but beds are nicer, after having slept on a futon for two years). The Tobu Levant? Oh. My. God.
This was a *nice* hotel.
And on top of that, our room was the "Sorakara-chan" (Sky Tree's mascot) room. I was just told before that "there might be something with Sorakara-chan in it.
Yeah. This was the door to our room.
 |
| This was the first sign something was up. |
 |
| The ceiling area. |
 |
| Oh. My. God. |
 |
| EVEN THE BEDS. |
 |
| You walk past the beds and turn to the left and BAM. Holy cow. |
 |
| This was our view from the window. FROM THE WINDOW. |
Oh, I should mention the name of the mascot. Sorakara-chan, for those of you who don't speak Japanese, means something like "from the sky"-chan (chan is a kind of cute prefix for small kids or girls). Considering that she's the mascot for the Sky Tree, it's actually pretty appropriate (and cute. Can't forget cute).
But I mean holy smokes. Cra-zy. Crazy crazy crazy. There were so many... character themed things. Even in the bathroom, there were character things. The towels had little pictures on them and stuff. We had the most amazing view of the Sky tree from our bedroom windows, which were also gigantic. So you could go to sleep and see the Sky tree.
This is why my last night in Tokyo, despite my new 4 year old friend being kinda tired and cranky (yet still having enough energy to power an iPhone for a day and a half), was really freaking awesome. I couldn't have asked for a better "last" experience.
*
I've kind of been in this daze ever since I returned home, and as in daze, I mean like, I haven't really done much (did visit one friend) in the almost week I've been back home. I didn't adjust my clocks until yesterday, so I spent most of yesterday (thursday) thinking it was today (friday). Oh, I reactivated my phone and joined a gym. The gym has pretty much been my number one accomplishment the past few days. I did see the Expendables 2 (that was fun). That, and I've logged a probably ridiculous amount of video game hours in, since upon my return home, there have been three games I've been trying to juggle: Epic Mickey, which is indeed epic; Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance aka Kingdom Hearts 3D which I've been waiting for since I pre-ordered in while in Japan; and The World Ends With You, which I've been trying to freaking finish but I lost the game when my DS was probably stolen. Note, two of these games involve Disney, while two involve SquareEnix. Kingdom Hearts, has *both* Disney AND The World Ends With You characters (so it's kind of like getting my fix for all three but not really?)
I've also kind of been thinking about what to do with this blog, now that I've returned home. I think I'm going to keep writing in it? Hopefully I'll be not-lazy and finish writing about my extended monthish of traveling in Japan and bumming at people's houses. That's my goal. I uploaded over 2,000 pictures last night so I think I kind of... have a lot ahead of me hahaha. But yeah.
Just because I'm back in the US doesn't mean that the adventure has stopped. :) Rather, it has simply changed locations. It's cliche, yes, but life is an adventure, no?
Watch out world (and Mexican food) cause here I come!
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Sakuragi-cho, Yokohama
...stupid blog service, not backing up my last draft. It was all written and everything, and I was having problems publishing. I thought that it had auto-backed up... but apparently I was wrong. Sigh. All last night's hard work gone. I thought I had saved it to my c&p clipboard, but I had accidently overwritten it with my united milage plus number. -_-;
Oh well, what can you do.
Yesterday I spent the day in Sakuragi-cho, Yokohama, because my friend had won an auction for two pre-showing tickets of Rurouni Kenshin, a live action movie based off a manga/anime series. It's pretty old (ie, mostly my generation or older know about it) but it's a fun series about a former assassin turned wandering samurai who does good to atone for all the people he killed. The main character is this dude named Himura Kenshin, and he's played by Takeru Sato (who also was in one of my favorite dramas, Mei-chan no Shitsuji aka, Mei-chan's Butler).
I was super excited to see the movie before I left, since it meant that I wouldn't have to rush around trying to worry about seeing the movie before I leave in two days (omg). There was a mention of maybe a cast member appearing, but we weren't really pegging our hopes on that.
But then, at 3:10, they announced that we were having a guest visitor. We were still pessimistic, that it would be like one of the side characters.
But no. Freaking Takeru Sato and the producer walked out on the stage, and part of my inside exploded into fangirly goodness. He's so. Freaking. Cute. Takeru, not the producer.
Sadly, we weren't able to actually get his autograph or anything, since he was up on stage the whole time and they started the movie right after, nor were we able to take pictures of him since I'm pretty sure we would have gotten kicked out. But oh. My. God. WE GOT TO SEE THE REAL TAKERU SATO LIVE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~ ^_________________^
Kay, enough fangirling for now. :)
Sakuragi-cho also is home to the instant noodle ramen museum. So I mean, that was an obvious, must go to place before I left. It's pretty cool, with part of it being a museum complete with all the instant ramen Nissin ever made since its inception (complete with a huge amount of flavors from your basic chicken to cheese curry to BBQ flavored ramen, PLUS instant spaghetti which actually looked pretty good) along with an interesting animated movie (with English audio options!) about the history of instant ramen and how Momofuku Ando, its creator, came up with the idea for both than and for cup noodles (apparently, it's because Americans suck {or used to suck} at using chopsticks and eating from bowls, so they switched it to a cup with a fork). Really, it's a super interesting place.
On the third floor though, they have a place where you can make your own cup ramen by adding in flavors and so on, as well as an actual "ramen factory" where you can make the noodles themselves. Oh. My. God. Sadly, you need to sign up for a specific time slot for those, and all the time slots we could attend were full (and the factory was completely sold out). Oh well. Next time.
I also caved into buying a book about the history of ramen. It's all in Japanese. So help me god, I will learn enough Japanese to be able to read that book by the end of this academic year. But I mean, it's about the research Momofuku Ando did on the history of ramen. HOW ON EARTH COULD I RESIST BUYING SOMETHING LIKE THIS? The answer was, I couldn't, and yeah, now I'm paying to ship it back home lol.
That area is really pretty though, and I wish I had spent more time there. At night too, they light up a bunch of things and it's really really pretty. Stupidly, I forgot to bring my camera with me though. Need to get better about that...
We found this amazing American place called Bobby's or Bubby's or something like that that had American foods (Mashed Potatoes? YES PLEASE) along with sweet sweet pies. Oh my god. Pies.
My friend thought I wasn't serious about getting pies after dinner. To be fair, I'm not overly fond of sweet things, nor do I have an especially large sweet tooth. I can usually resist things like ice cream easier than I can, say, a super delicious steak. Mm, steak.
But pie? Especially banana cream, strawberry, or a good fruit pie? I CRUMBLE LIKE A PIE CRUST. This place also had a banana mocha pie (omfg?!) which they were sold out of (nooooooo) and then they sold out of the banana pie (extra NOOOOOOOOOOOO), but their apple pie and the crust were really tasty. Still kind of sad about the banana pie though. Still really want the banana mocha. They said the chocolate pudding was their most famous but yeah... I love fruit pies more.
Soon though. Soon the tasty pies shall be MINE. Japan has really nice cakes and sweets and parfaits, but I've missed the wonderfulness that are things like peach crumbles and banana cream pies.
Two and a half more days.
Holy cow.
Oh well, what can you do.
Yesterday I spent the day in Sakuragi-cho, Yokohama, because my friend had won an auction for two pre-showing tickets of Rurouni Kenshin, a live action movie based off a manga/anime series. It's pretty old (ie, mostly my generation or older know about it) but it's a fun series about a former assassin turned wandering samurai who does good to atone for all the people he killed. The main character is this dude named Himura Kenshin, and he's played by Takeru Sato (who also was in one of my favorite dramas, Mei-chan no Shitsuji aka, Mei-chan's Butler).
I was super excited to see the movie before I left, since it meant that I wouldn't have to rush around trying to worry about seeing the movie before I leave in two days (omg). There was a mention of maybe a cast member appearing, but we weren't really pegging our hopes on that.
But then, at 3:10, they announced that we were having a guest visitor. We were still pessimistic, that it would be like one of the side characters.
But no. Freaking Takeru Sato and the producer walked out on the stage, and part of my inside exploded into fangirly goodness. He's so. Freaking. Cute. Takeru, not the producer.
Sadly, we weren't able to actually get his autograph or anything, since he was up on stage the whole time and they started the movie right after, nor were we able to take pictures of him since I'm pretty sure we would have gotten kicked out. But oh. My. God. WE GOT TO SEE THE REAL TAKERU SATO LIVE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~ ^_________________^
Kay, enough fangirling for now. :)
Sakuragi-cho also is home to the instant noodle ramen museum. So I mean, that was an obvious, must go to place before I left. It's pretty cool, with part of it being a museum complete with all the instant ramen Nissin ever made since its inception (complete with a huge amount of flavors from your basic chicken to cheese curry to BBQ flavored ramen, PLUS instant spaghetti which actually looked pretty good) along with an interesting animated movie (with English audio options!) about the history of instant ramen and how Momofuku Ando, its creator, came up with the idea for both than and for cup noodles (apparently, it's because Americans suck {or used to suck} at using chopsticks and eating from bowls, so they switched it to a cup with a fork). Really, it's a super interesting place.
On the third floor though, they have a place where you can make your own cup ramen by adding in flavors and so on, as well as an actual "ramen factory" where you can make the noodles themselves. Oh. My. God. Sadly, you need to sign up for a specific time slot for those, and all the time slots we could attend were full (and the factory was completely sold out). Oh well. Next time.
I also caved into buying a book about the history of ramen. It's all in Japanese. So help me god, I will learn enough Japanese to be able to read that book by the end of this academic year. But I mean, it's about the research Momofuku Ando did on the history of ramen. HOW ON EARTH COULD I RESIST BUYING SOMETHING LIKE THIS? The answer was, I couldn't, and yeah, now I'm paying to ship it back home lol.
That area is really pretty though, and I wish I had spent more time there. At night too, they light up a bunch of things and it's really really pretty. Stupidly, I forgot to bring my camera with me though. Need to get better about that...
We found this amazing American place called Bobby's or Bubby's or something like that that had American foods (Mashed Potatoes? YES PLEASE) along with sweet sweet pies. Oh my god. Pies.
My friend thought I wasn't serious about getting pies after dinner. To be fair, I'm not overly fond of sweet things, nor do I have an especially large sweet tooth. I can usually resist things like ice cream easier than I can, say, a super delicious steak. Mm, steak.
But pie? Especially banana cream, strawberry, or a good fruit pie? I CRUMBLE LIKE A PIE CRUST. This place also had a banana mocha pie (omfg?!) which they were sold out of (nooooooo) and then they sold out of the banana pie (extra NOOOOOOOOOOOO), but their apple pie and the crust were really tasty. Still kind of sad about the banana pie though. Still really want the banana mocha. They said the chocolate pudding was their most famous but yeah... I love fruit pies more.
Soon though. Soon the tasty pies shall be MINE. Japan has really nice cakes and sweets and parfaits, but I've missed the wonderfulness that are things like peach crumbles and banana cream pies.
Two and a half more days.
Holy cow.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Nara
Now that I'm homeless, I've been using my newfound free time to A) sleep a little B) travel a little and C) see some people and stuff. For a while, I was living at my friend's place (who was gracious enough to put a bunch of us up, though, we were put on the no-air conditioner-sweaty-diet {though really, it wasn't as bad as I complain since there was usually a nice breeze, just ohman humid} and I think at one point there were seven people). I feel like I've been doing a bunch of day trips, since finding a hotel or hostel or anything within a reasonable price range (ie, under $100ish a night) is pretty impossible even a week beforehand.
Today, I did a day trip to Nara, the first permanent capitol of Japan, and the capitol prior to Kyoto. Actually, yesterday I went roaming around Kyoto for a bit since that's where I'm staying, currently.
Before that, I did a day trip to Yamaguchi to see Akiyoshi-do, the longest cave system in Japan (and one of the biggest too, I'd bet). Like seriously, it's HUGE compared to the caves in Niimi. Quite magnificent too. They had explanations in English, which was an extra nice touch.
Limestone caves in Japan. Who would have thought.
Nara though, is where, really, I got a sense of enormity and the scale to which Japanese palaces used to be built. I made the mistake of walking to the palace grounds, so when I got there the primary thing on my mind was distance, but oh man! I went in through the Southern Gate - the Suzaku (tee hee, Fushigi Yugi) Gate, and the main palace was nothing but a small house in the distance. And the main palace, is quite quite large. I mean, there's a *train line* that goes through the palace grounds beyond the Suzaku gate.
My face looked a little bit like this: ；▽； ("Oh god, that's so far away. I should have taken the bus here. At least I'm getting all these steps in my pedometer...")
Seriously though, this place was huge. I'm probably exaggerating a little bit, but it felt like I was walking for a good ten to fifteen minutes at least! Then I got to the main imperial palace (reconstruction) gates. There was still another massive courtyard inside! I was like HOLY FRIGGIN COW THERE'S MORE?!
Yes, there was.
I had just been walking straight too. There were actually grounds to the east and the west that had things like gardens and museums, but I decided to forgo those due to time and holycrap they were far away.
It really made me marvel though, at just how big the palaces were back then. Seriously, that was a lot of space. You could fit a small village in there (and they probably did).
Needless to say, I took the bus back to near Nara Park. And then I had *more* walking to do, since there were a lot of world heritage sites in the park area. I don't think I even hit them all.
I'll get the names of them later, but I think I managed to go to three of the WHS, including, of course, the famous Giant Wooden Buddha. That was pretty awesome. Again, the scale to which both that and the building that housed it was amazing. I mean, these were built ages ago! How did they manage to build things that high? Blows my mind to look at things that tall.
There was also a gorgeous candle light kind of lantern festival that loads of people in yukata came out for. It was really pretty. I wasn't planning on staying until the evening in Nara, but it kind of ended up that way when I saw them put all the lanterns out. I killed time at this awesome little restaurant that had pretty tasty curry, an unlimited drink bar, and a fantastic (working) model train set. I felt like a twelve year old boy. It was pretty freaking sweet. I took so many pictures. :)
Today, I say bye to Kyoto though and make my way to Tokyo! I'm super excited. I'm supposed to meet up with two sets of relatives. :D Yaaay fun! I was also supposed to meet with two friends, but one turns out to be busy instead so hopefully we'll meet again in California.
Here we gooooooooo.
Today, I did a day trip to Nara, the first permanent capitol of Japan, and the capitol prior to Kyoto. Actually, yesterday I went roaming around Kyoto for a bit since that's where I'm staying, currently.
Before that, I did a day trip to Yamaguchi to see Akiyoshi-do, the longest cave system in Japan (and one of the biggest too, I'd bet). Like seriously, it's HUGE compared to the caves in Niimi. Quite magnificent too. They had explanations in English, which was an extra nice touch.
Limestone caves in Japan. Who would have thought.
Nara though, is where, really, I got a sense of enormity and the scale to which Japanese palaces used to be built. I made the mistake of walking to the palace grounds, so when I got there the primary thing on my mind was distance, but oh man! I went in through the Southern Gate - the Suzaku (tee hee, Fushigi Yugi) Gate, and the main palace was nothing but a small house in the distance. And the main palace, is quite quite large. I mean, there's a *train line* that goes through the palace grounds beyond the Suzaku gate.
My face looked a little bit like this: ；▽； ("Oh god, that's so far away. I should have taken the bus here. At least I'm getting all these steps in my pedometer...")
Seriously though, this place was huge. I'm probably exaggerating a little bit, but it felt like I was walking for a good ten to fifteen minutes at least! Then I got to the main imperial palace (reconstruction) gates. There was still another massive courtyard inside! I was like HOLY FRIGGIN COW THERE'S MORE?!
Yes, there was.
I had just been walking straight too. There were actually grounds to the east and the west that had things like gardens and museums, but I decided to forgo those due to time and holycrap they were far away.
It really made me marvel though, at just how big the palaces were back then. Seriously, that was a lot of space. You could fit a small village in there (and they probably did).
Needless to say, I took the bus back to near Nara Park. And then I had *more* walking to do, since there were a lot of world heritage sites in the park area. I don't think I even hit them all.
I'll get the names of them later, but I think I managed to go to three of the WHS, including, of course, the famous Giant Wooden Buddha. That was pretty awesome. Again, the scale to which both that and the building that housed it was amazing. I mean, these were built ages ago! How did they manage to build things that high? Blows my mind to look at things that tall.
There was also a gorgeous candle light kind of lantern festival that loads of people in yukata came out for. It was really pretty. I wasn't planning on staying until the evening in Nara, but it kind of ended up that way when I saw them put all the lanterns out. I killed time at this awesome little restaurant that had pretty tasty curry, an unlimited drink bar, and a fantastic (working) model train set. I felt like a twelve year old boy. It was pretty freaking sweet. I took so many pictures. :)
Today, I say bye to Kyoto though and make my way to Tokyo! I'm super excited. I'm supposed to meet up with two sets of relatives. :D Yaaay fun! I was also supposed to meet with two friends, but one turns out to be busy instead so hopefully we'll meet again in California.
Here we gooooooooo.
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