Yesterday the group of foreign students went into Fukuoka town to buy some bedding. One of the french girls Audrey said that she knew where to buy some for cheap, but it turned out to be just the same place as last time - Muji. This time though, there was a sale and I got some for about 4000 yen which isn't so bad. Unfortunately when I got home and tried it out the sheet was far too small for the bed =< and all of the stuff came in a set so I will have to try and take it back. I hope it's okay to take back things from the sale in Japan because I can't afford to have useless tiny bedding when I only have about 6,000 yen left! And I need to return my rental bedding tomorrow morning. Behh.
Anyway, I asked Marie where would be a good place to buy some cheap bedding in Japan and she recommended ナフコ or ニトリ, and then offered to show me the way <3 how lovely. So that will be a weight on my shoulders. Such a stress over bed sheets omg =/
Anyway, after we bought the useless Muji bedding yesterday we went into the ゲーム センター - the game centre/arcade. We played a big of what was like Guitar Hero and did some プリクラ purikura photos. That was totally fun. Really crazy. You have to move so fast and we can't understand the Japanese very well so it's just a total scramble to get anything done =p and it always chooses things for us before we have the chance =p
I ate the same instant noodles, but this time I put some tofu in it. It's SO cheap here, like a big block for maybe 50yen. A lot of stuff is very expensive, like fruit. a pack of grapes is nearly 400yen, and a pack of 4 apples is 300 (although the apples are very large here, it's still expensive). Bananas are cheap, I bought 5 quite small ones for 99yen. And today I had some udon noodles which are 33yen a packet which is more than enough for one. I think you just have to know what to buy for a decent price. If I wanted to eat what I ate at home, like tomatoes and mozarella and stuff it would cost me a fortune! Cheese is the most expensive thing ever. Although pepsi is pretty cheap in comparison.
Today we went to find the gym. We went a very very long way round, but found it in the end and it's actually really near to where we live. So tomorrow morning after we give in our bedding at International House we plan to go to the gym together =] I hope it will be alright, because the gym was quite scary and masculine so I'm glad I won't be going alone.
And then we went to a big bookstore to try and find some text books for Sophie and Ash. These are the Kanji in Context books that I bought already for some mad price in England, but at least I have them =p it's one less worry on my mind. We also have to buy a Haruki Murakami book "A Wild Sheep Chase", but I know they sell that in English in the Campus book shop. I was SO shocked in that store though. As well as manga, DVDs, CDs and even a little arcade section there was also a huge pornography section. In just an ordinary place like Borders or HMV =/ and it wasn't just a little bit of ordinary porn. There was some freaky shit - and even a rape section that was labelled レイプ (rape). Obviously simulated, but some of them had titles like "homeless rape" and "domestic violence" and the women were all bloody and beaten and scared looking. Pretty horrible. I know this sort of thing exists in hentai but real people porn is worse I think. The only thing separating this from the rest of the store was a curtain saying 18+. Japan is weird.
-------------------------
Well, the night of the 11th, as soon as it turned 12 a lot of the Japanese students and French, Belgian, etc. all came to my room and asked me to come to the kitchen. There was a whole bunch of people there and the lights were off. There was a cake and candles and everything. Surprise party =D I was all ready to go to bed so I had to run back and change and put on my makeup and everything before everyone started to take photos. The cake was really cute and had my name on it ルーズちゃん. I ate some and then people brought out the alcohol! So all the plans of doing useful things the next day disappeared. I got SO unbelievably drunk I don't really remember much of what happened next, but I took some photos with my camera I will try and upload soon. The problem is that the internet is very slow here because a lot of people are using the same service, so it's hard to upload any pictures. I will try and find a time to do it more easily, or maybe go to a place with wifi like Starbucks.
I had a great night anyway and I was so thankful to everyone for giving me a birthday in Japan. I didn't think there would be any party for a moment but there seems to be a big party culture here even though it's actually not allowed! Any excuse to drink and people go mad on plum wine. It's delicious though. They even bought me a little notebook with the design of the front cover of Penguin Classics 1984 which is really sweet, and people brought different drinks and food. I didn't go to bed until 5 o clock, and then Ash and Sophie had to pretty much put me to bed.
The next morning I had to get up at 9 o clock to return my rental bedding eurgh. I was still drunk ;__; staggering around. It was hard. I must have been rank too. And then I went back to bed, although I set a million alarms to make sure I woke up to go and see Marie at 12:30. But it still didn't work =/ I didn't get there until maybe 13:10 and I felt terrible to leave her sitting outside the station all alone in the heat for so long. I apologised loads and she was super nice about it. I hate being late any way and in Japan it's even worse because it's more important to be on time.
Anyway, we got the train to Tenjin-Minami which is a sort of shopping area and big part of town. She showed me to the Post Office which had an ATM which would accept my card. So then I finally had some money to use yay! We went to the Hello Kitty store and Marie bought me a super cute present for my birthday - a lovely little Hello Kitty phone charm where she is dressed as a strawberry with cream. It says Fukuoka on the back, I an't wait to get my new phone so I can use it. I even stuck the plastic bag it came on on the wall because it's super adorable and says "Small Present, Big Smile". Cuute. Then we went to Starbucks and I had a Matcha Cream Frappuccino that I sort of ordered myself. Well, with pointing to the picture too =/ and we talked for a while. She told me a good book stop where Ash and Sophie could buy Kanji in Context which is the Leeds textbook that we need. And then I took the subway back ON MY OWN I felt so brave =3 it was fine though, I know the way.
When I got back to International House everyone was around so we went to a ramen place nearby and had real Fukuoka Ramen =] it has meat in, but I picked it out and gave it to Ash. Although, I think the soup base is still meat =/ but I thought I would risk it and actually I wasn't sick later so either I have built up a resistance or it wasn't enough meat in there to make me sick. It was very tasty though, and super cheap. Only 330yen! Then we went to the arcade and me and Sophie sucked badly at House of the Dead. There is also a batting centre there, which is like practice baseball. Some people stayed to play darts, but I went home to sleep. I was super tired, although I stayed up a little bit online.
Today we went into Uni for 11 to meet with some Japanese students who took us to get a bank account. First we had to go to the municipal office and get a certificate to allow us to open an account which cost 300yen. Then we went to Kanayama which is where all the banks are and opened an account. There was a difficult form to fill in, which took some people 3 goes to get right =p we were there for more than 2 hours. After that we had to wait another few hours to pick up our bank books. We went to an udon place, but it was very expensive. Me and Sophie and Leila and Meike shared some onigiri and inari which only cost us 180yen each. We then picked up our bank accounts and went back to the International Office for some more administrative stuff.
Then Ash, Sophie, Meike and me went to Tenjin again to try and find the book store. We were a bit lost and a Japanese guy who could speak English just came up to us to help without us even asking! He said the bookstore was pretty famous and was just down the road by a Starbucks. We found the Starbucks but for some reason couldn't find the bookstore, although we went into a couple of others and couldn't find the books we wanted. So we went to Starbucks and I had a soya latte. Soya milk here is much more common, and they even had soya cream if you want it. You get a little sign to take with you to make sure you don't accidentally get given the wrong type of milk too. Pretty cool.
Then we found another cool ramen place where it was only 280yen! It was really good too =] and you could see them making it in front of you. Super fast food. I was so hungry too, so it was even better. Then, when we left the ramen place, we saw we were right by the book store we had been looking for the whole time. There was a copy of the books Sophie and Ash needed, but only one. Ash managed to order another of one of them, but not the other, so we will share for now anyway. I think we will be studying together mostly. After that we went home. The nights are nice here, cooler than the day but still very warm. We have all been bitten to death by mosquitos though. They even got through my tights somehow, my legs are covered in red patches and bruises because apparently I bruise from mosquito bites now.
I'm going to go to sleep soon because it is my first day of classes tomorrow! I think they will be mostly introductions this week, but I'm looking forward to it. I can't wait to get studying and working hard. I'm a dork I know =p
No comments:
Post a Comment