Book sale!

The Takashimaya branch of Kinokuniya is having a foreign book sale! I went down to check it out after work today with a friend, and it was great - paperbacks for 400 to 700 yen. I picked up a couple books that I've been wanting to read; four books for only 2000 yen. I should be good for reading material for a while now! They didn't have all the books I've been wanting to read, but they did have a pretty good selection. I picked up a new Stephen Pinker, and a book by this Japanese author I read about who is supposed to be really good; I also picked up Fast Food Nation, just because it seems like everyone but me has read it so I need to hop on the boat, and finally a book by a French author who my friend recommended. I was debating a Poe anthology for 400 yen, but decided against it since I'm pretty sure I can read Poe online.

It seems like there's a new festival happening every weekend here in Tokyo! This Saturday is another fireworks display, this time over the Tama river. One of my friends was trying to get a bunch of people together for it, so I might do that. I won't be wearing my yukata to this one if I go, though! Knowing this friend she'll probably want to go out clubbing after, and yukata aren't exactly made for that, lol. There is, however, a big festival in Azabu-juban the weekend after that I might check out with some people, and it will be yukata time again for that. I'm going to get as much use as I can out of that thing, haha.

Fireworks

Last weekend was pretty busy as well; on Saturday I had planned to go to the beach with a friend, but then we both woke up late, and it was pretty cloudy too, so we ended up not going after all. Instead, we went to an amusement park that's really close to where we live. It's actually only one stop down from Ikuta, where I used to live. It's called Yomiuriland, and it's got a waterpark with pools and slides and stuff, and then it's also got rollercoasters and other rides. So we hit the waterpark first, and I finally was able to wear my new swimsuit, yay. We saw some really, really dark Japanese guys there; it was crazy just how tanned they were. Of course, the majority of the people there were pasty white. Japanese shun the sun. You see a lot of parasols here, people actually use them to keep the sun off.
Then on Sunday I went to see the Tokyo Bay fireworks with another friend. It was sooo crowded, it must have taken at least half an hour just to get to the viewing area after we got to Kachidoki station just because of the massive crowd all making their way to the same spot. Then when we got there we realized that neither of us had thought to bring a sheet or something to sit on, lol. So we ended up just sitting on the ground in our yukata! It was fun though, the fireworks were good (even though you can't tell from my pictures). Then after, we wanted to eat monjayaki, which the area we were in is apparently famous for, but everyone else had the same idea and all the restaurants were totally full, so we ended up heading back to Shinjuku and eating at an izakaya there instead. I want to try monja now though, I always thought it was just the same as okonomiyaki but my friend was like, no, they're different. Aw, I'm totally hungry now, talking about it! That's it for this post, I'm going to go finally get showered and head out for some lunch. Enjoy the slightly bad quality pictures!

Festival

Sorry for the quality of some of these photos! I was taking pictures with my phone, and it doesn't always like capturing movement...

Went to a festival on Saturday with a couple friends. We had originally headed to one in Shinagawa, but it turned out to not be the traditional bon-odori festival we had thought it would; all it was was a demonstration, not an actual interactive dancing festival. So then we headed up to a different one in Ebisu, which turned out to be exactly what we were looking for. Festival lights, dancing (which me and a friend joined in; my other friend decided not to because she didn't know the dances, even though we were telling her "we don't know them either! look at all the people going around who have no clue what they're doing! it'll be fun!" We just couldn't convince her though), food stalls with mochi, yakisoba, shaved ice (which we made a beeline for the minute we saw someone with one; it was sooooooo hot), a ton of people in yukata. There was even a little pool set up to catch goldfish, haha. In the little tiered stand set up in the middle of the ring of dancers was where the people who actually knew the dances were; they danced around the raised platform so everyone could see them and follow along with them. They would play each song twice, once so you could learn the dance and then another time for longer so everyone could join in. The dances are all mainly arm-waving and some footwork, easily done in a movement-restricting yukata. You progress steadily forward in them, winding a circle around some center landmark. It was really fun, even though between the heat and the crowd and the dancing in yukata, we were hot and sweaty and tired by the end.
There's another bon-odori festival later this month in Roppongi that we're also planning on going to, and this Sunday is the giant fireworks display over Tokyo Bay that I'm planning on going to with another of my friends. And this Saturday I'm finally planning on going to the beach! Yay, beach. I'll finally be able to try out my new swimsuit.

Nothing much

It's been a while since my last update, but honestly not a lot has really happened since all the excitement of April. It's been gray and rainy for pretty much the entire month of June; we had one afternoon a couple days ago when the sun actually came out, and it was exciting. I was going to go to the beach with some people this Sunday, but it's looking like it'll probably be rain again so it might not happen. I'll get to the beach one of these days.
I discovered that, oddly enough, sheets here are super expensive. I wanted to buy another set of sheets so that I could rotate them more easily; since it gets so humid in my apartment I want to wash them more than once a week, but that's sort of impossible with only one set of sheets because I need a full day for them to dry so I can only do it on weekends. So I went looking for new sheets on par with my old ones, only to discover that the cheapest sheet (that's sheet, singular - I haven't been able to find any sets) I could find was 2500 yen, and it's not even a nice soft high thread count. I don't remember the exact prices of sheets in America, but I'm fairly certain I didn't pay more than like fifteen bucks for my nice sea foam egyptian cotton sheets. I don't mind paying a little bit more for quality, but I'm not happy about paying a lot for something subpar : (
Anyway, I'll stop ranting about sheets now, lol. I was serious when I said there's nothing happening here!

No pictures, but a post nonetheless.

So, this past month I've been pretty busy. Parents visited in early April, for my birthday! and it was fun. We went out to a restaurant in Shinjuku for a birthday dinner, and it was quite good actually. We never did have 900 yen parfaits, but we did have crepes from a crepe stand in Shibuya, which, while not quite living up to mom's, were still pretty delicious. We took a day trip to Kamakura to see the Great Buddha, and also took a day trip to Nikko to see Ieyasu Tokugawa's mausoleum. We got to Nikko on a rickety old train that rivaled the Fujikyuu from last May; however at least on the Nikko train we actually had seats, and were not packed in like sardines (that only happened in Tokyo, almost every day). Nikko was a nice break from the city, all mountain air and trees and quiet. The mausoleum (we ended up touring Ieyasu's grandson's mausoleum instead of Ieyasu himself's, because it was cheaper, haha) was pretty fantastic, despite all the stairs. I have pictures... in theory, anyway.
Then I had about a week of rest after my parents left, before my friend Jon visited. He timed his visit for Golden Week, so I didn't have to take any more time off work. With Jon, we went out to an izakaya and to karaoke with some of my coworkers, and we also went clubbing with a couple of my friends. We hit a couple of museums and galleries as well, and walked around the Imperial gardens. Did some shopping in Shibuya and Harajuku, poked around Ginza. Oh, and we went down to Yokohama and walked around Chinatown, and thought about going on the giant Ferris wheel until we discovered it was like 1000 yen to ride it.
Now, things have slowed down and I'm not really doing a whole lot... just relaxing and hanging out at home, watching some Japanese dramas and being angry at the weather for still being cold even though it's already May. I'm thinking of trying to take a vacation soon, I have a friend who wants to go to Guam so I might try to see if she wants to go ahead and do it in June or July.

New post coming... eventually

My camera is acting up again, so unfortunately I won't be able to do another picture post until it decides to behave. Sorry! I'll keep trying, my camera just does this occasionally so I don't think it's permanent (well I really hope it's not, anyway). It just likes to randomly not read pictures sometimes. I think that on my next paycheck I might just bite the bullet and buy a new one. It's just getting kind of ridiculous the number of times my camera randomly decides to malfunction in new and interesting ways.

New post coming soon!

Promise!