The Land of Happy [entries|friends|calendar] Trini Quiroz Quote of the Moment “We know where she is at this very moment. We’ve got a lock on her. Soon as I finish these Chicken Tickles, we’re gone. It’s destiny.” The Man in the Hat, Tokyo Suckerpunch by Isaac Adamson General main userinfo friends calendar Skip Links 20 30 40 50 The Layout The layout was coded by premade_ljs. The image was found at www.pixiegirl.com and was editted using psp7. [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

None Shall Pass Until You've Answered My Questions Three. [ 01.01.10 at 10:01am] Comment to be added, yadda yadda yadda. You know the drill. I'll only probably add you if you comment, and I won't add you if you randomly add me. (23) thoughts?

Higher and Deeper [ 06.28.08 at 10:41am] [ mood | blank ] [ music | Mysterious Ways- The Logarhythms ] Thus the first week in Spain comes to a close. Longest week in the history if my life, if I do say so myself. The daily routine is getting up around eight and having breakfast with Daniela and Lucia (Luisa?), and then walking to school with Daniela while talking about how different Chilean Spanish is. We sit in Carlos' amusing grammar class for a couple hours, take a break, and then sit through Amalia's impossible reading and comprehension class until 1:30 rolls around and it's time to go home. Then we have a nice lunch while watching a cooking show, and then Luisa goes to work, Daniela sleeps, and I do homework. If we don't have an excursion we hang out and then have dinner around 10 and then go to bed. Yesterday Teresa, our guide, took us up to Sacramonte to visit a museum housed in a few caves. Awesome but by ten in the morning it was already aproaching 90 degrees. I felt fine until after lunch when I passed out with a four-hour nap and woke up soaked in sweat and dehydrated. Despite drinking plenty of water and coffee to get my blood pressure back up, I was out of order for the rest of the day and missed the second excursion at Sacramonte. All for the better though because my classmates have completely forgotten what it's like to be a student save for the partying. Except for Amber who may be 30 already and Daniela who's a month younger than me, the other three are around 26 and party like they're living the greek life again, staying out until the bars kick them out around four. And they wonder why they're always tired? Lauren is pretty cool though and a little more responsable than Amber and Napoleon who are the worst. Dustin likes having fun, so if it wasn't for the fact that he equates most fun with beer and cigarettes, he'd be fairly up there in my book. It's so hot here that it's impossible to do anything while the sun is out, and it's dangerous to go out at night alone if you have boobs. It's legal to smoke indoors here so going to a cafe is kind of a turnoff because I can't breathe. Looks like tomorrow will be another day spent indoors. thoughts?

Will They Ever Believe Us [ 06.24.08 at 10:02am] [ mood | awake ] [ music | The Boy With the Thorn in His Side- The Smiths ] So I haven't completely fallen off the face of the Earth; merely made a trip around it. I wanted to update with the last half of Japan, going into details of super-delicious sushi and how the chef brought out his books to show me the fish we were eating and where they came from. Or the onsen and how peaceful it was to soak in mineral baths all day, freely naked with strangers, and then at the outdoor baths that night with everybody. Or my ego boost at Muji where I went through an eye exam and got new glasses for only 100 bucks with a very friendly salesman, and then dinner at the overly-confusing cafeteria. And then coming home and still having Randall by my side until finally leaving again. I'm in Granada now-- been here about two and a half days so far. Dad and Randall dropped me off at SFO for my 8:00 am flight to JFK. Quick and not too teary. The flight took about six hours and then there was a five hour layover that was lame on all levels. JFK is big, ugly, messy, and you have to pay for the wireless. This was followed by another six hour flight to Madrid which is even worse than JFK on all levels. The seseo and ceceo grated on my ears and it was hard to follow; the airport is massive and massively confusing (I got lost four times looking for my gate), and I didn't find out that my flight to Granada was at gate H2 and not K62 until ten minutes before boarding, and the terminal the gates were in is seriously a mile long; I ran most of it with my luggage and jet lag and got there just in the nick of time. Except not because of reasons I don't understand. Then it was a 50 minute flight to Granada where the bus Theresa told me to put my suitcase left without me meaning we had to call the company and Amalia to rescue it. Now I am on the couch in the living room. Lucia is a very sweet host mum and my classmate, Daniela, is pretty cool too. She's also Chilean but she lived there until she was 14 and has lived in Seattle since. She's a month younger than me and already married, but partially because her husband (dating about four years) is a citizen and her visa was about to expire. The classmates are okay but speak to each other in English and like going out to clubs and bars. Oh, and Dustin and Napoleon smoke. Blegh. I'd write more but I don't really feel like it now. Daniela and I have to leave in a half hour for a concert excursion we're going on. thoughts?

[ 06.15.08 at 5:32pm] [ mood | excited ] Onsen is awesome and no, I did not feel the big earthquake. More meaningful entry later. Gotta get ready for fried things and karaoke. thoughts?

A Not So Big House [ 06.12.08 at 11:28pm] [ mood | surprised ] [ music | Randall snoring ] Today I have seen more fish than I probably will in the rest of my lifetime. The day started out normally (waking, grooming, and so on), except then Patrick warned me not to eat more than one slice of bread at breakfast because we'd be having sushi soon. Well, the three of us hopped onto the very crowded train to Tsukiji, the world's most insane fish market by far. The outer part was full of salari-men slurping down breakfast before rushing off to the office, with the odd souvenir store tossed in. The inside is absolute madness with stall after stall after stall of more fish than you can shake a stick at. Everywhere there are trucks that will run you over if you don't get out of the way. The smell of all the exotic fish sticks with you as you try not to trip over the boxes of fish and feet of the people that are there for a legitimate reason. And there was fatty tuna. Oh the fatty tuna... A piece of tuna flew out in our general direction which Randall probably would have consumed had he grabbed it. After barely making it out of there with our lives, we went to have sushi at a restaurant that Patrick is especially fond of. We waited outside in the rain for probably ten minutes or so until three seats in this incredibly narrow and tiny place could let us in. The sushi was amazing and so fresh that the fish literally melted in my mouth. Sea urchin, yellowtail, tuna, and some kind of shrimp that was still twitching. Unfortunately because the place was so ridiculously busy and hectic, it was impossible to fully enjoy the sushi, though it was still amazing from what I tasted. Afterwards felt like I was going to explode because that was so much freaking rice. Later we wandered around Ginza some, past all kinds of really snooty stores. Visited a very nice paper store and I impressed the two ladies doing the sign-in thingy for a hanko exhibition by writing my name in katakana. Then we went into a department store that has 10,000+ yen mangoes and grapes as well as many other expensive things. Then another department store with a really nice prefab houses and eye glasses for 10,500 yen, or about 100 bucks, and thats including prescription. I'm really tempted to go back and get another pair just for that price. Then, fried things on sticks for lunch followed by more shopping. We went to a really fun shop called Kiddyland that has all kinds of crazy toys, accessories, and knick-knacks and really cute cashiers. We explored the side streets a bit after, looking for what proved to be a very disappointing dog accessory store and got strange looks because we were the only gaijin in a more residential area. I have to admit I was very relieved when we got back to the main road where we didn't stand out quite so badly. Tonight one of Yukari's sisters is in town so we went out for okonomiyaki. Alas, no pictures, but there was an enormous pepper mill and ridiculously good food cooked for us at the table, kinda like at Beni Hana but less acrobatic and bleh. There was girltalk about how Randall and I met, and much complaining because Yukari was running a little late. Then we came home, I wrote a really long entry in my journal, and went to bed for another long day. (1) thoughts?

Like I Hoped She Would [ 06.12.08 at 7:42am] [ mood | hungry ] [ music | rain ] Why do I always wake up so early when I'm on vacation? I woke up at around 6:45 thanks to the rain I'm sure. We're so far ahead of PST that jetlag hasn't happened at all. So yeah, yesterday Randall and I left the safety of Patrick and Yukari's home to head down to the Citybank ATM (shi-ti-banku...) to get ourselves some American money, and then off in the opposite direction for the subway. What's really nice is that there's a yellow line that divides the corridors into two, with the side leading to the trains narrower since people tend to meander to the train but rush off when they're at their destination. It wasn't too crowded at all and was very clean inside with lots of businessmen. I think our car was newer because the LEDs over the doors also gave information in English. So we get off and Randall uses his handy-dandy card to buy a CC Lemon which is a surprisingly good lemon drink. Along the way into the park we found a monk standing with a begging bowl. We'd have given him some money but we didn't have any small money. Then we went up the stairs into the park. The first thing that made me fall in love was the explosion of green followed by the fact that the city completely disappears. The denseness of the trees makes Central Park look like a pile of puke. We walked along intending to go to the science museum but got distracted by the views because the park is on a hill, had my first interaction with a Japanese guy (asked it it was okay to go on after I took a picture), and ended up going to the zoo. There was an awesome squirrel that kept running back and forth in its pen that will soon be on Youtube. There were lots of birds and schoolkids around. The highlight was when a group of girls came up to us and asked if they could interview us for their English class. They were so excited to find out that we're from the San Francisco area and that my favourite anime is Fullmetal Alchemist. Afterwards we had lunch at a little mom and pop place and had really good udon and something that was similar to dango (I can't recall the name) but it was one block per stick and with miso sauce. I taught Randall to say "gochisosama deshita" to the lady that helped us and she was so pleased and went into the whole "nihongo ha jouzu desu ne!" thing. We had a lovely chat after where I told her that I'd been studying for about two years (4 semesters) and that my teacher was really good. Also told her that we were just on vacation for a week. We wandered around the park some more, went to a really dull music museum, and then hit the national museum which is actually five museums on the same grounds. Saw some Buddhist and ancient Japanese art, as well as the kimonos worn for theatre, and samurai armor. We left at closing time and made our way back home where Yukari made gyoza for dinner. Then we went out for ice cream. It's raining today and I believe we're going with Patrick to the fish market. Better get ready for that. (1) thoughts?

General Opinion On Sweets [ 06.11.08 at 9:37pm] [ mood | full ] [ music | Patrick and Randall doing work things ] Yokoso from Japan! I can definitely say that Tokyo is a very humid city. Didn't need to pack any lotion at all. The flight was very uneventful albeit long. We finally got to bed after midnight Sunday night and while Randall passed out quickly, I didnt drift off until at least 2:30 only to get up at four to ready up and head to BART. Then we had a lovely ride to SFO and from there went to Vancouver. Accidentally went through customs so our passports provide evidence that we entered the beautiful nation of Canada. The airport was lovely but I started to get a migraine which wasn't very fun. It went away on the plane and I managed to get some sleep but not nearly enough. The vegetarian meals were both Indian and the seats had no screens which was wonderful though it meant that the movie was only "National Treasure II". I also studied some. Patrick met us at the airport, having just returned himself from the East Coast. From there we had a very long train ride to get to Tokyo, then a quick cab ride, and then to Patrick and Yukari's lovely home near Shibuya. Since we were all beat we had dinner at an awesome little restaurant down the street and I was very confused because Japanese Mode didn't want to click on in my mind. The first dish was tuna sashimi (also the first fish Randall has eaten in years) followed by home made tofu (it was green). Also had fried squidoctopus, a giant clam that randomly had a little crab in my case, and many other strange and exotic dishes. We then promptly returned home and passed out for the night. Today, we crossed the city to Ueno Park which is freakin huge and gorgeous. I'll write more later about our exploits at the zoo and a lovely chat at lunch. Now, cake calls. EDIT 21:19 My sincerest apologies to Patrick for confusing octopus with squid. It was a minor gaffe and I hope I have not caused any international incident by confusing two many-legged invertebrates. Moshiwake gozaimasen *bow*. (2) thoughts?

Take a Crisp [ 06.08.08 at 12:19am] [ mood | mellow ] I think my neighbours upstairs are rearranging things in their kitchen. The nice neighbours right above me I mean; not the abusive couple I've had to call the cops on a couple of times. Had lunch with dad and Rachel today at CPK. Dad and I had fun teasing her because she doesn't have the ability to whip me like she has with dad, and dad looses up ever so slightly after I've messed with Rachel. Amazing what happens when you get a sandwich instead of pizza which apparently wasn't hot and melty enough. Later we went to Pottery Barn because she found some glasses she liked and wanted to get a full set, despite her owning too many glasses as it is. While walking over dad and I were talking about the recession and how despite people losing work, at least it's changing people's consuming and spending habits to something a little more human. Rachel wholeheartedly agreed and then bought several glasses and eight-dollar hand towels as dad informed me that she's tired of her Lexus SUV and wants to get a Jaguar instead. Don't get me wrong, Rachel's a very nice lady and I'm glad dad has somebody to keep him company, but she is so nouveau riche and spoiled. I think her first husband let her go too much before he got the news that he was terminal. Dad told me that it was then the guy tried to teach Rachel to use public transportation by dumping her in the City with a BART pass and telling her he'd meet her at Pittsburg/Baypoint in an hour (turns out she though it was unsanitary and is also rather claustrophobic. She still has money on that BART pass). She never needed to cook until she met dad who also can't cook, she does not eat leftovers, and despite being neat and organised she can't iron clothes or do much else. I won't even discuss how naive she is about travel. I really need to study. I hardly did anything today afterwards besides landry because it was hot out so everything would dry fast. Need to also figure out thanks too all the lovely gift money I've been getting how much to devote to Japan, how much to Spain, and how much for emergencies and fun for the next few months. (3) thoughts?

Theydatha perunjchelva [ 06.06.08 at 11:06pm] [ mood | groggy ] Had lunch with Jen at Man Puku along with a lovely conversation about everything. Then hung out with Lauren and had a lovely iced mocha after looking at storage options at Target. I'm kind of worried that Norman may have a crush on me though. He always smiles and tries to make smalltalk with me every time I step foot in that Starbucks, including sitting with me when he's on break. Rather made chatting with Lauren awkward. He also drew a smiley on my cup, just like he did for Liz. Gaaah. The rest of my day can be summed up in this video that I've been obsessed with. The song is called "Solla Solla Endha Perumai", from the Kollywood (Tamil language) film "Ellaam Inba Mayam": thoughts?

Don't Melt [ 06.05.08 at 11:07pm] [ mood | thirsty ] [ music | The Daily Show- tv ] Lovey day today with dearest Christine though I made the mistake of spending money on stuff that wasn't groceries. I got a cute little vest at one of the many thrift stores on Telegraph Ave. after having lunch at La Mediteranee. Then looked at all the pretty doodads at Sweet Dreams including a very cheap set of lights I could use to decorate the studio. I'll think about it and probably end up buying them. I had a really bad bout of insomnia last night. I think it was after five when I finally got to sleep, after studying kanji and reading Calvin and Hobbes all night. Blegh, I forgot to buy juice at Longs. thoughts?

navigation [ viewing | most recent entries ] [ go | earlier ]