total number of posts (23 september 2005 ~ 29 july 2010): 189
Monday, March 31, 2008
- ohikkoshi: part 2 -
i used to take TX from Akihabara to go to Tsukuba, but today i took a different route! it costs slightly less (like maybe 200 yen) and faster, if you manage to go on the right timing that is.. lots of train transfers, and the fact that i went at the wrong time increased the number of transfers further - got on a local train at Kitasenju (1,000 yen to Tsukuba) and i had to change to a rapid one at Nagareyama Ootakanomori.
so what made me go to Tsukuba in the first place? to provide free-labour for moving, of course. it's Adeline, the person who's moving, and her 4 helpers - Louise, Cora, Yuko and i.
reached Ichinoya dorm only to find that they were still packing. slowly we helped wrapping up boxes and moved things downstairs. this might sound like an easy job but considering the amount of things she had.. well, i don't wanna imagine how many boxes will i have by the time i move out of my dorm. after getting the room checked we (Louise and i) had lunch at convenience store Coco while Adeline went to collect her rent-a-truck.
it took the truck (not me, i slacked after the first shift) 2 trips to move everything to the new apartment. had fun playing with wires (we're supposed to fasten the goods so that they wouldn't fly out of the truck when it jerks halfway through. although, i did naughtily anticipated the wire to snap and imagined the mattress prancing across the zebra-crossings, but it didn't happen anyway), while we (or rather, our truck) blocked the Chinese newcomers who were trying to move a fridge into the dorm.
Louise and i were made to do "full-service" - to carry everything from the 2nd batch into the apartment without assistance - including the fridge and the big-ass chest. because we fooled around before that *grin*. somehow we didn't whine about anything and accomplished our "mission" swiftly and efficiently *fuiyo~ show off sia*
anyhow, dinner that night was very nice. had tandoori chicken, keema curry with rice, cheese naan and free fried crab chips, after an hour-long wait for Adeline and Yuko to arrive, who apparently got lost and went shopping at JUSCO. also tried lassi for the 1st time and i love it (cuz its totally yogurt).
we spent the night at Cora's mansion - 3LDK, what more can i say? lots of rooms, spacious kitchen, cozy dining space, lovely bathroom (but i think we clogged her toilet, oops).. watched Heroes while drinking before sleeping finally before midnight.
and now i have to anticipate the 3rd season in fall 2008. grrr..
okay i had to put this up. i don't care if nobody understands how funny it is at first sight (except my sister, maybe). this is a soramimi-kashi (literally it's "misheard lyrics", but it actually it means made-up lyrics which sound similar to the original one) that i found fromthis person's blog, of Origa's Inner Universe (from Ghost in a Shell series).
had a good cry. hahaha. for your information it's 2.15am currently. after scanning through the "lyrics", my "sad and beautiful" image of this song totally collapsed. imagine Origa going "Haeee koreee, kourin NOW!" at the chorus.... by the way this is the song.
playing GE (or SNW), another online game by the creator of RO. lol.... can't help it, i'm too bored in the room. it's a 3D game, unlike RO, and my laptop couldn't take it.. so i decided to order another memory card to increase its RAM.
which i got like.. today. hah!
*****
had a date with Susan at Ikebukuro. i was late because i had some problems with the teikiken - the station staff refused to renew my student-teiki because i didn't have my tsuugaku shoumeisho with me (which i don't usually have to show the station staff when i renew). then i realised i could have done it with one of the ticketing machines.. well it's not that i've been ignorant, just didn't know that i could do that since my teikiken includes 3 different train lines controlled by 3 different companies (Tobu, JR and Tokyu).
so we ate at Denny's. a freaking huge lunch, which actually freaked out the waitresses and the girls sitting next to us. i ordered a carbonara and a lasagna, whereas Susan got herself a pasta and a doria. and both of us had free flow of drinks. which, to many of the Japanese out there who have small/normal stomachs, seemed like a lunch for FOUR people. when the waitress served us 2 of the plates, she stared at us and stared at the remaining 2 plates on her tray, and she actually walked away to her colleague with a troubled face.. and we were like, "no, excuse me! here! it wasn't a mistake, these are all for us.."
yes we're crazy gaijins, thank you...
then we watched Enchanted at the cinema opposite Denny's (gotta love Sunshine City, it's very convenient). it was very funny, as expected from a Disney movie. predictable, in a sense - happiness which you obtain easily often turn out to be short-lived or not the best choice in your life, and you'll end up gaining happiness elsewhere, from something you've never considered a priority before. i had to make this vague, since some people haven't watched the movie and i don't wanna give out spoilers =p after the movie, we shopped at the nearby Tokyu Hands for things to decorate my room. my old room, the one i've been living in for a year. suddenly i was so inspired to change its appearance.. perhaps i was still dissatisfied with how it looked like, after having "reformed" it once already. first i found a nice hanger stand for my overwhelming number of clothes - my wardrobe is stuffed with half of them and i've been using the metal rack to keep the rest of them, which is not quite the way i like..
also bought 2 acrylic boards to make my own "wall" - since i'm not supposed to stain the room wall by directly sticking stuff or drilling holes on it (actually i can't even if i want to, it's just not sticky enough)... there were funky nets too. we were thinking of hanging them from the ceiling just to make the room more homey, but i didn't buy them in the end.. and Susan was so obsessed with this hot pink chain thing she wanted me to get it as a room decoration.. obviously, proposal rejected.
and so in the evening you could see 2 crazy gaijins running in the streets with crazy big Tokyu Hands goods. the acrylic boards were about 2m x 1m wide each, so even after stacking them on top of each other it still looked huge. on the other hand the hanger stand parts were kept compact in a box, so it was about 1m x 0.3m x 0.1m in size. of course Susan was the one who carried the bulky boards, lol.. we surfed through the sea of people, from Sunshine City to the station, into the train, towards my dorm. occasionally molesting Japanese people with the boards and they stared at us with confused faces.
dropped by the electrical goods shop to collect my 512mb memory card. costs a little more than 5,000 yen. i was very tempted to get the 1gb one since 512mb is only cheaper by 2,000 yen, but the sales attendant said that it's not advisable and professionals would get a memory card with the same size as the one provided in the laptop. i guess 2 x 512mb will be more than enough for now, although it says on the guidebook that my laptop can take up to a maximum of 2gb RAM...
enough of computer geek talk. apart from interior stuff, we also shopped at 306 and Claire's. and since we had a heavy lunch, we settled at Baskin Robbins for dinner.
like i said, this must be the most productive day in the whole of march, since i've not been doing much other than playing, eating and providing free labour for moving..
*****
1) teikiken - commutation ticket/season ticket. 2) tsuugaku shoumeisho - student commutation certificate (to prove that a person belongs to a certain school/university so that he/she can buy a student-price teikiken).
march, the moving season. 3 of my friends moved (or moving) out of the dorm to an apartment.
*****
on the 23rd, i went window-shopping at IKEA Chiba with Adeline and Louise. saw a lot of nice furniture and room accessories which come in different themes and colours. we got DIY curtains and bed sheet with blue linen for Louise and coloured towels for us to stay over at her place. we were supposed to meet Hanyee who came to Tokyo for vacation but the plan was cancelled at the last minute(?).. would have been a good place to get furniture, if only it's closer to where i live.. i'd rather spend my money on something cheaper at somewhere more convenient if i had to pay a few thousand just to make IKEA send me the goods.
later at night, we accompanied Louise to her dorm to pack up things in her room, from time to time finding things like receipts from the last century.. toys and figurines that's been hiding in the drawer for ages.. a bunch of metal junk which was actually a few (quite a few) badly tangled up necklaces, which in the end i was asked to untangle them.. cockroaches and friends.. dust and friends.. and LOTS OF PACKETED SUGAR.
during the cleaning-up, we found a drawing block so Adeline and i started fooling around by doodling things we remember from our childhood days. it started with a geometrically-acceptable (but logically, not so) house with chimney and trees and birds with the sun at a corner.. then somehow there came a funky-looking My Little Pony, distorted Pikachus, a retarded Doraemon and a crazy Mickey. i remember singing the Circle of Life while drawing the entire setting of the Great Rock from the Lion King, with Mufasa, Simba, Rafiki, Zazu, Sarabi, Sarafina, Nala, Scar, the hyenas whose names i've never bothered to remember, the sexy elephants and giraffes... which reminds me we've also drawn a flying Dumbo beside the tree but it looked as if he was screwing the tree trunk...
so anyway.. we moved the *ahem* *supposedly* last few bits of stuff to the "new" apartment - a small but comfortable 1K with a loft. first we folded the curtain fabrics we bought from IKEA and clipped them onto the curtain rails. then we had a bonding session, drinking umeshu and munching snacks, and finally slept at 3 or 4 in the morning.
*****
on the 24th, we woke up late at 11-ish.. it was kinda cold that day so i borrowed one of Louise's long pants (which, obviously, i was swimming in them but i didn't want to wear my office-lady shorts, so i had to fasten them with a belt). we cleaned up Louise's room - vacuumed the floor and cupboards and drawers, wiped the furniture and windows, cleaned the veranda, showered the clogged bathroom (and left it clogged), and finally wiped the floor.
for lunch, we ate at Matsuya. after returning to the dorm to have Louise's room checked by the office lady, we headed to Siti and helped her move.
Siti's apartment is said to be near Saty (which apparently isn't THAT near, just walking distance), a nice and wide 1DK which is quite impossible to be found in Tokyo with only a monthly rent of 48,000 yen. we waited for the furniture - futons and IKEA book-shelf - to arrive (once again, i helped untangling her necklaces), and had mi goreng as dinner while watching a quiz show.
lastly we shopped a little at Saty, and the 3 of them sent me off at the station. couldn't afford to stay in Chiba for another night, otherwise i would start dreaming of having my own sweet mansion again.
found Narnia book 1 in the recycle box downstairs. it's a pity to leave it there and let it face its end, so i kept it :D (although i've read this a long time ago).
***** went to Tsukuba again, this time to attend an orientation at my sister's new high school. as a guardian not a student, of course.
students were asked to wear their uniforms from the previous school, but since we couldn't possibly make my sister go with a pinafore (we don't have one here anyway) she had to go with the newly bought ones. luckily we didn't look like aliens because some chuugakkou uniforms were similar.. when we arrived at the main gate a white man came to us, "hello, would you like to learn English at GEOS?"
wanted to say "that's very kind of you sir but no thanks," but we felt bad about it.
it began with the registration session - queued according to groups (there were 8 groups, divided according to the student's registration number), handed up forms and paid for PTA, in return we received a bag of books and another envelope with forms. then we were asked to sit according to groups.
next, a speech by the head of discipline, followed by a few others from the school administration team. almost fell asleep while the adults were talking about "how students and parents should behave" on the stage. i knew it was something about mobile phone problems and students' attitude towards learning (no "mendokusai", no degrading people and oneself, no negative expressions..). also about uniforms - girls must have their skirt length right on the knee-level (which doesn't looks cool but i suppose that's the proper and decent way).
to our horror (ok not really..) every student was given the same amount of assignments to be completed before the new semester - 2 English, 1 Math and 1 Japanese workbooks to be done and handed in on the respective first lessons. for English and Japanese, there will be placement tests to grade their language proficiency. all students (there're about 320 of them) will take the same syllabus in their 1st year, and they will be grouped into more specialised classes in their 2nd year (normal science, normal arts, international science and international arts.. or something like that). the majority will proceed to normal classes and only 25% of them will be allocated to the international classes, which place more importance in English and the curriculum is slightly different.
at the end of the speech session the students were told to put away their own (and their parents') chairs to proceed with the purchase of sports wear and shoes. among the little high school kids, i alone stood out because i had to carry 4 chairs (and i wasn't even a student from that school) - my own chair, the chair beside me which was empty, my mom's and sister's, because my mom was kiasu and she wants to be the first few to order the sports attire..
apart from buying sports wear, we also bought textbooks. they were far cheaper than my reference books, but they added to the total weight of heavy goods which we received on that day. so we decided to buy the dictionaries on another day, and walked back to Tsukuba station.
met up with Adeline for afternoon "tea" (it was ginger ale for me, actually) and we gossiped again. my mom even practiced the "china-man custom" by telling me to "learn from Adeline". ugh.. mothers..
no pictures for the orientation, but probably will take some during nyuugakushiki.
*****
1) chuugakkou - juinor high school 2) mendokusai = it's annoying/tedious 3) nyuugakushiki - school entrance ceremony
university student
+ part-time Ragnarok Online player
updates
29 apr 2009
・renewed myflashfetish playlist 28 apr 2009
・will try to blog bilingually from now on 5 jan 2009
・new ShoutMix chatbox 25 dec 2008
・deleted new chatbox LOL
