AKIHABARA - first Tokyo adventure!!

The destination of our first Tokyo excursion was Akihabara! Teresa, Robbert, Roberto and I all went and thought it was really awesome!! Just a 40-minute train ride from Tsukuba. It has a few names, Electric Town, Akiba, or the geek district. 

First view of Tokyo outside the train station!

That big building on the right is Yodobashi-Akiba, a massive electronics store that is like RadioShack times 1000. Anything and everything that requires electricity can be found on one of its 9 floors.

 And in every color, too!

They sell other things too, like books, manga, anime, music, toys, etc... But mostly electronics. LOTS of electronics!! Akihabara alone accounts for 10% of the world's electronics sales. O.o

We ate lunch at a tiny restaurant on the street outside. Tasty udon noodles :)

I'm still learning chopsticks.

We got a little lost on our way to the street part of Akihabara--it was behind the train station and we couldn't see it! But a nice lady kindly gave us directions and we found it. Geek Paradise!



Tall, tall arcades! Anime characters everywhere I looked! They used them instead of real people in ads. So many colors!!



Here I am          ^ in this excellent picture by Robbert. 

I was amazed by the buildings and signs and just the look of the streets, so I took a lot of pictures!

 

We stopped for ice cream between electronic stores and anime stores and taking pictures.  The pink sign says "ice cream made by angel." Wow!

 

Roberto, me, and Teresa in a costume store.

My absolute favorite thing about Akihabara was the maid cafes, restaurants where the servers are these adorable Japanese girls wearing not-skanky french maid costumes. 

 

They don't like being photographed, or maybe they aren't allowed to be, so you have to be sneaky. Teresa is sneaky and she got this picture. 

There were lots of maid cafes there and they were all a little different. The one we went to was very, very pink! The walls, the curtains, and most of the decorations were all pink! I was so excited! The adorable servers there wore these cute brown dresses and spoke in these high-pitched voices and when they served the food to us they'd have us sing a short little song with them. It was almost too cute! I loved it!
Sadly, taking pictures of anything besides the food in the place was not allowed. :( But you could buy a picture with one of the servers, which I did. :)

This tasty drink was called banana milk.
It was sweet and tasted pina-colada-ish.

Chocolate oreo sundae for dessert! Yummy!!

You can see how the walls and coasters are pink :) My favorite color!

My day in Akihabara was a blast! I'm sure I'll be back more than once, especially since it's right by the train station!

The Fridge

This is my refrigerator.

 

It was cheap! And it's all the space I really need anyway. 

Shopping and SUSHI!

    On Saturday, three new Japanese friends of ours took us shopping at this huge shopping center--we didn't even get through one of the five floors! 

They have the funnest thing in Japan called a purikura. It's a big, fancy photobooth! You stand inside and take the pictures on one side of the booth, and then you edit the pictures on the other side! It is really fun, especially with a lot of people. Here we are editing our pictures. We all took turns and add something to them. 

The finished product

They bought us to this uniquely Japanese treat called haiyaki. It's basically a fish-shaped waffle with your choice of filling. Yummy! 

Mine had this brown sugar mixture and mochi inside.




 

THEN... We went to the store...

Just OCTOPUS in the meat section. But we didn't buy it, we got the salmon eggs instead. 




... And bought ingredients for SUSHI! Our friends were very experienced sushi-makers. They made the sushi rice, and then we got to roll it!

This is how it is done: 

Step 1: The Rice

Special sushi rice with vinegar, sugar, and salt. 











Step 2: The Other Stuff

Cucumber, tuna, salmon, salmon eggs, scrambled eggs, and avocado. Extra avocado on mine. :)










Step 3: Roll it Up

When you roll it, you actually squeeze it into a square, not a circle. It just falls that way later. 

Step 4: Cut it into little slices!

Yummy!! 








The purikura also photoshops your picture. It airbrushes your skin and even makes your eyes bigger! 

Coolish, Koi, and a Crazy Rainstorm!

Katie and I took a walk to the Tsukuba Centre to go shopping today. We stopped and bought some coolish first :) It has been super hot and humid!

Coolish is soft-serve ice cream in a pouch! I think it's a brilliant idea, and tasty.

On the way there we passed a big pond with lots of koi fish! 

They must have thought I had food, because a bunch of them came together right in front of me while I was taking pictures.

The Tsukuba Centre has such cool stores! I decided that right before I leave for home, I'm going to go there with what money I have and just go nuts. But not today. 

We decided it was time to leave when we saw the lightning and heard the thunder outside. Luckily, Katie decided to buy an umbrella that day. It wasn't raining when we left, but not long after it started to POUR! It was insane! The rain was falling so much I couldn't see very far ahead of me at times. I don't think I've ever seen it rain so hard! It was fun, but also scary. At one point, the lighting was right over us! It was quite an adventure. 

Even with an umbrella, we got soaked!

Everything is Cuter in Japan

Everything is cuter in Japan!

We went to one store in the shopping center with office/home/kitchen things and everything there was colorful and cute! Even little things like kitchen sponges or spoons or paperclips. 

This is an aisle with dishcloths, sponges, some slippers (they had a lot of those) and a few other cleaning things. Look how colorful it all is!!

Interesting... 
















The shopping here is most excellent! They have all kinds of really great stuff and it's not crazy expensive, usually. Almost everything in Japan costs more, but not everything is expensive. 

 
Really awesome vintage dress, and really big scrunchie (that coin is roughly the size of a nickel. It's 5 yen). 


Some Japanese money. 

I love those pink flowers! Plus I bought that umbrella. It has rained a ton!

First Things First!

First meal in Japan:

Udon noodles with some white paste stuff and soy sauce. Not bad, but still upset my tummy because Japanese food has really strong flavors, and I'd been flying all day. :/

First peach from Japan: 

The most flavorful peach I've ever tasted! Like I said, Japanese food has a lot of flavor. And it was super juicy!

My room!

Yeah, it is pretty small. But at least it's a private room.
This room was almost completely bare when I first walked in. Just the room, the mattress, the metal desk and the sink. It sort of looked like a cell to me except for this random, old cord phone that doesn't even have a plug. But the program director and the Japanese students helping us are super nice and they gave me a fan, some dishes, a modem, and these awesome pink curtains!!

The curtains make my room look much more livable, and without the fan I wouldn't be able to breathe because the room is even more humid than outside!

The bathroom is shared with the whole floor, so I think 19 people. Same with the shower room. It's not a public shower (though I hear they have a public bath somewhere here) but it's one shower the whole floor uses.

What my dormitory looks like from the outside:

The Hallway

The Building

Kind of an old building and it seemed kind of scary at first, but I like it! It's got character. :)