I recently decided to take a trip outside of Tokyo prefecture, and found myself in Saitama [which is the prefecture directly above Tokyo] at a rather creepy doll museum. It was a tiny, hole-in-the-wall place on the 4th floor of what appeared to be an office building. When I got up there the entire thing was void of life, so I slipped my 100 yen into the box sitting there and continued on in. I don't think I was allowed to take pictures, because there were labels on the cases written all in kanji, but since there was no one there to tell me otherwise, I took some. On the way home I decided to play the game of "let's try to find a shorter way home" and ended up getting to use some of my Japanese lessons to figure out whether or not the rapid line train I was about to jump on went to Ikebukuro. "Sumimasen, eego no hanamasuka?"[Excuse me, do you speak english?]Japanese Man: "Tsukoshi" [A little]*pointing at the track* "Ikebukuro ni ikimasuka?"Japanese Man: "Ah, hai""Arigato-gozaimasu"

See kids? It's that simple.

I usually have anime club on Friday nights, where a group of us otaku get together and watch 4 hours worth of anime. However, this past Friday we had to cancel because the school had invited this supposed "Otaku Specialist" to come and speak....the guy didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, and he left a lot out...anyway, we had to be there as 'representatives' [don't ask why, this is what I was told by the club president, who was instructed by some head honcho at the school]. At first I was just going to go home after class, but then they said something about free dinner and I was so there. The school paid for the club members, this guy and his posse to go for dinner, allotting about $20 per person. I ended up with fettucini alfredo with RABBIT!!! Good Lord I ate Thumper! It was interesting...gray in color and tasted like chicken [I know everyone says that, but it's no joke. Rabbit tastes like chicken].

Then this past weekend, Bernadette's army friend Gust came in to town for a few days. Myself, Gust, Bern, Perri and Dat all headed out to Odaiba to visit the Panasonic building, which had a really nifty interactive museum that taught about light and sound and color and all the FUN science-y stuff. From there we grabbed some lunch at an udon place [Note: Udon is a type of noodle, rather thick and chewy] and headed to the Toyota Mega Web building in Pallette Town. They had a typical car show room, but they also had some really cool futuristic cars, and an automatic track that you could ride around on [which we did]. And I'm still not sure why, but Masked Rider was there making an appearance for the little kids, too. Right next door to the Mega Web building was the largest ferris wheel in Japan, even bigger than the one in Yokohama, so of course we got on it....it had heated seats! How nifty is that?! After that it was off to the arcade, where I scored two new keychains and a Toy Story watch. My list of claw machine scores is massive. Remind me to tell you about it sometime.On the train ride home I realize that  Perri and Dat are going their separate way, and Bern and Gust are heading out to the bars. I kind of invited myself along with Bern and Gust, and we hit three bars in Roppongi. I didn't get drunk, but I bring this up because the one bar was really neat. It was a little hole-in-the-wall place with a solitary old man behind the bar. It was dimly lit and smelled vaguely of incense, and was decorated with various owls. Really neat.This past Wednesday I went to Waseda to meet up with Eriko. Let me back up a bit here. I was on the train on my way to school one morning and she sits next to me and suddenly starts talking to me. I take my headphones off and realize she's seriously trying to have a conversation with me, and isn't just asking what time it is. So we talk and I exchange information with her until I have to get off to switch trains. We email a few times and she invites me to dinner at her clubhouse. So last Wednesday myself and my friend Kate went with Eriko to her clubhouse in Waseda, which is more like a student lounge. For 200 yen they gave us all the rice and chicken stew we wanted, and we got to talk to several of the students, even played MarioKart Wii with some of them.

Thursday was a day off from school, so I was supposed to go to Tsukiji Fish Market with my friend Lau. I waited in the station for him for half an hour before ditching him. This kind of put me in a bad mood, and I ended up not finding the market. Instead I wandered around an open air market I DID find, and had some really good salmondon for breakfast [Note: Salmondon is raw salmon sliced on top of rice, different from sushi in form]. I then proceeded to come home, crawl into the shower and slink back to bed for two hours. The rest of the day was me running errands after that, so we'll skip ahead. Oh wait, the weather that day was really really gorgeous. Sixty degrees with a blue sky.

Friday was the anime club's outing to the Tokyo Anime Fest! Completely different from any convention in the states, its set up more like a trade show, with booths for various companies promoting shows that are either currently popular or are coming out soon. There were also quite a few art colleges and grad schools there advertising as well. I ended up with four different DVDs from them, at least two of which I'm sure are showcasing student anime [the one that I watched so far was quite good]. Scored lots of free swag as well, though most of it is advertising. Now I can legitimately say I went to an anime convention in Tokyo.On the school front, I've been working on preparations for my final semester this winter via email with my home institution, and I've been working my bum off on assignments for classes here. I'm pleased to say that I have at least one of my final papers done and out of the way at this point.