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So I guess it's time to start my Japan blog. For those who don't know, I've just moved to Japan for my year abroad so I'm going to keep a little blog. It's mostly for my own personal record, but I'd be happy if people are interested in reading too :)
It's only been just over a week so far but it totally feels like we've been here for about a month XD Needless to say, the flight was long and boring, but we arrived in Narita airport and suddenly it was really hot, everyone was speaking Japanese, and I ordered my first frappucino in Japan :D Some of our friends helped us get all our luggage (7 suitcases between 4 of us) back to our apartment and then we explored the town a bit. We're living in a really nice guest-house type accommodation that's really central, so we're just a few stops from all the main areas, which is really cool ^^
This is a street near where we live~ So pretty and Japanese-y ^^
Well a lot of our time has been spent doing annoying and boring things like registering for foreign registration cards and health insurance, getting bank accounts, etc. If anyone is going for a year abroad in Japan, just be prepared for a hell of a lot of forms and procedures, and there is 100% added difficulty if you're under 20.... which I am. Everything is SO much more difficult because I'm technically underage. I had to get written permission and a copy of my parent's passport to get a phone, and the only bank I was able to join was the post office bank. Everything is doable, and I've managed to get mostly everything done, but it's really time-consuming. Thankfully I'm here with my 3 friends so we've been able to help each other, and also being able to speak Japanese makes everything actually possible. If you're not so good at Japanese and need to do these kind of things, make sure to bring a Japanese person with you!!! They really aren't that great at dealing with foreigners here and the people behind counters will not know what to do with you if you try to speak to them in English! >.<
Apart from all that stuff, the rest has been amazing and exciting and every bit as crazy and fun as I expected :D Here, have some cool pictures of stuff/places~
Obligatory picture of tall buildings in Shibuya~ But with the big Kis-My-Ft2 sign!! Yay ^^
BB cream and pig-rabbit phone charm from Shin-Okubo. That place is like Korea town, it's really cool! There's a coffee prince cafe and there were Korean guys handing out flyers to come see them perform. We didn't go, but we did see Brown Eyed Girls coming out of a shop and getting into a big black tinted-window van O_o
Waseda~~~~~ We actually went to try and set up a bank account with the branch near it, but they told us to go back to Waseda so we did, and there we were told to go get health insurance and then get a post office bank account... but I was happy we got to see Waseda! ^^
This is a street in Shibuya, as seen from the big karaoke place we went into the other day.
Momo juice!! (peach juice) New obsession in our house >.<
Advertisement for Kamisama no Karute~ Cinemas are seriously expensive though... it's like 2000yen for a ticket... :/
Shinjuku~~ It's great, but easy to get lost in, haha. We lost lady__ishtar for over an hour when none of us had phones, which was a bit scary >.<
Okay, so apart from all the wandering and organising, we've also been getting in on the concert scene~ Thanks to the biggest amount of luck in the world, me and Alice were actually able to get tickets for Kis-My-Ft2 in Tokyo Dome!!! We had met this girl on the train on the way from Narita and she started talking to us because she spotted my NYC bag and it turned out that she's a Kisumai fan too. So we swapped mail addresses to keep in touch, and a couple of days later I got an email saying that her friend had 2 spare tickets!!! Seriously the most amazing coincidence ever >.< So we went last Sunday to Tokyo Dome at about 12 to get goods before the concert. It was completely crazy - there were just so many people! And fans outside the station with signs asking for tickets, which made me sad :( But the queue for the goods was insane!! It was just so long and we thought we'd never actually reach the back of it... I had to leave the queue at half 3 to go meet Yuri to get tickets from her, but Alice stayed to get our goods. I won't go into a whole report of the concert, because there are a lot of those out there anyway, and I'll totally go on forever about it if I have the chance XD It was amazing though and the best experience ever. It was my first Johnny's concert and so worth it!! I hope I can go to a few nights of next year's tour! Now here are some pictures~
Me and Alice after the concert. We decided that since we were going to stand out so much anyway we might as well dress brightly as well and hope Kisumai might have seen us (probably not since we were quite far back, but it's nice hoping) XD
Gooooooods~~~ Got an uchiwa, penlight and phone strap (which is huge and pink and glittery which I adore <3 ^^). We also got the flags free when we went inside. And there's the ticket at the bottom :D
So yeah, Kisumai was amazing~ And then there was Kokuritsu! Well none of us had tickets and considering they're going for around 100,000yen we weren't going to be getting any... but we decided to go and listen from outside! Turns out that Kokuritsu is right near where we live, like 10 minutes walk :O So we went to check it out at around midnight last night and there were actually about 10 people there already... So crazy. So we went home again and instead of getting some sleep, which would have been the sensible thing, we just talked about Arashi until about 4am and then went to join the queue for goods outside Kokuritsu. There were quite a few people there then, but nothing like what it was going to turn into later >.<;; I didn't actually stay for all the queuing because I wasn't buying goods. I have this personal rule that if I don't actually go to see the concert I don't buy goods XD The others got theirs really fast though and we all got some sleep before going back to stand outside and listen. Again it was a completely amazing atmosphere and I won't go into every detail, but we did meet some really nice (and totally crazy) fans where we were standing and the experience was all the more amazing because of that. We were able to see the fireworks as well, which was super cool! They were just amazing!
And yeah, that pretty much brings me up to now~ I'm sitting in the kitchen with Alice and we're watching Arashi's first Kokuritsu tour :)
I'll try to update again soon!
Lauren~
It's only been just over a week so far but it totally feels like we've been here for about a month XD Needless to say, the flight was long and boring, but we arrived in Narita airport and suddenly it was really hot, everyone was speaking Japanese, and I ordered my first frappucino in Japan :D Some of our friends helped us get all our luggage (7 suitcases between 4 of us) back to our apartment and then we explored the town a bit. We're living in a really nice guest-house type accommodation that's really central, so we're just a few stops from all the main areas, which is really cool ^^
This is a street near where we live~ So pretty and Japanese-y ^^
Well a lot of our time has been spent doing annoying and boring things like registering for foreign registration cards and health insurance, getting bank accounts, etc. If anyone is going for a year abroad in Japan, just be prepared for a hell of a lot of forms and procedures, and there is 100% added difficulty if you're under 20.... which I am. Everything is SO much more difficult because I'm technically underage. I had to get written permission and a copy of my parent's passport to get a phone, and the only bank I was able to join was the post office bank. Everything is doable, and I've managed to get mostly everything done, but it's really time-consuming. Thankfully I'm here with my 3 friends so we've been able to help each other, and also being able to speak Japanese makes everything actually possible. If you're not so good at Japanese and need to do these kind of things, make sure to bring a Japanese person with you!!! They really aren't that great at dealing with foreigners here and the people behind counters will not know what to do with you if you try to speak to them in English! >.<
Apart from all that stuff, the rest has been amazing and exciting and every bit as crazy and fun as I expected :D Here, have some cool pictures of stuff/places~
Obligatory picture of tall buildings in Shibuya~ But with the big Kis-My-Ft2 sign!! Yay ^^
BB cream and pig-rabbit phone charm from Shin-Okubo. That place is like Korea town, it's really cool! There's a coffee prince cafe and there were Korean guys handing out flyers to come see them perform. We didn't go, but we did see Brown Eyed Girls coming out of a shop and getting into a big black tinted-window van O_o
Waseda~~~~~ We actually went to try and set up a bank account with the branch near it, but they told us to go back to Waseda so we did, and there we were told to go get health insurance and then get a post office bank account... but I was happy we got to see Waseda! ^^
This is a street in Shibuya, as seen from the big karaoke place we went into the other day.
Momo juice!! (peach juice) New obsession in our house >.<
Advertisement for Kamisama no Karute~ Cinemas are seriously expensive though... it's like 2000yen for a ticket... :/
Shinjuku~~ It's great, but easy to get lost in, haha. We lost lady__ishtar for over an hour when none of us had phones, which was a bit scary >.<
Okay, so apart from all the wandering and organising, we've also been getting in on the concert scene~ Thanks to the biggest amount of luck in the world, me and Alice were actually able to get tickets for Kis-My-Ft2 in Tokyo Dome!!! We had met this girl on the train on the way from Narita and she started talking to us because she spotted my NYC bag and it turned out that she's a Kisumai fan too. So we swapped mail addresses to keep in touch, and a couple of days later I got an email saying that her friend had 2 spare tickets!!! Seriously the most amazing coincidence ever >.< So we went last Sunday to Tokyo Dome at about 12 to get goods before the concert. It was completely crazy - there were just so many people! And fans outside the station with signs asking for tickets, which made me sad :( But the queue for the goods was insane!! It was just so long and we thought we'd never actually reach the back of it... I had to leave the queue at half 3 to go meet Yuri to get tickets from her, but Alice stayed to get our goods. I won't go into a whole report of the concert, because there are a lot of those out there anyway, and I'll totally go on forever about it if I have the chance XD It was amazing though and the best experience ever. It was my first Johnny's concert and so worth it!! I hope I can go to a few nights of next year's tour! Now here are some pictures~
Me and Alice after the concert. We decided that since we were going to stand out so much anyway we might as well dress brightly as well and hope Kisumai might have seen us (probably not since we were quite far back, but it's nice hoping) XD
Gooooooods~~~ Got an uchiwa, penlight and phone strap (which is huge and pink and glittery which I adore <3 ^^). We also got the flags free when we went inside. And there's the ticket at the bottom :D
So yeah, Kisumai was amazing~ And then there was Kokuritsu! Well none of us had tickets and considering they're going for around 100,000yen we weren't going to be getting any... but we decided to go and listen from outside! Turns out that Kokuritsu is right near where we live, like 10 minutes walk :O So we went to check it out at around midnight last night and there were actually about 10 people there already... So crazy. So we went home again and instead of getting some sleep, which would have been the sensible thing, we just talked about Arashi until about 4am and then went to join the queue for goods outside Kokuritsu. There were quite a few people there then, but nothing like what it was going to turn into later >.<;; I didn't actually stay for all the queuing because I wasn't buying goods. I have this personal rule that if I don't actually go to see the concert I don't buy goods XD The others got theirs really fast though and we all got some sleep before going back to stand outside and listen. Again it was a completely amazing atmosphere and I won't go into every detail, but we did meet some really nice (and totally crazy) fans where we were standing and the experience was all the more amazing because of that. We were able to see the fireworks as well, which was super cool! They were just amazing!
And yeah, that pretty much brings me up to now~ I'm sitting in the kitchen with Alice and we're watching Arashi's first Kokuritsu tour :)
I'll try to update again soon!
Lauren~