Festivals, Karaoke, TOEFL Update and more

Well, a lot has happened these past few days, so that’s why I haven’t been able to write that often here.

First of all, I joined the university gym last week. I got a one-year pass, it costs 8000 yen, which is surprisingly cheap, it’s even cheaper than the one I used to go to back in Panama (and a lot much better as well). There’s tons of machines, basketball courts, a pool and a lot of different classes like yoga and the sort, and I can do or use any of them whenever I want to without any additional cost.

Last week’s Saturday (not yesterday), I went with Gaik Theng, Shiyon (a friend from Korea), Baska, Ben and Junko (our first japanese friend here) to the Asian Festival at the International Students House. It was pretty nice, there were a lot of different foods from many countries, presentations of traditional dances and even a fashion display of asian costumes. I ate some malaysian food, which was very nice, but also very spicy.

Square-Enix Party 2007!!!

On Sunday I went to Chiba to meet with Ben and Mario on Makuhari Messe International Convention Complex, about one and a half hours on train. The reason??? The SQUARE-ENIX PARTY 2007!!!

I’ve been a fan of Square and Enix for years, from the time when they weren’t still merged, so when Ben told me they were having this convention I simply just couldn’t miss it.

I first arrived to Kaihin-Makuhari station, and really didn’t have any clue about where to go. Thankfully there were maps and signs all over the place.

Kanda Festival and Yoyogi Park @ Night

Last Saturday, Baska, my friend from Mongolia, invited me to join her and a group of japanese volunteers to go and see Kanda Festival. We were supposed to watch the “Portable Shrines” or something like that, but it turned out that was on Sunday, damn!! I really wanted to know what that was about… I mean… how can a shrine be… “portable”??? I guess I’ll have to wait until next year to know.

So well… we all met at Ochanomizu station first, and then we walked to a nearby shrine that was supposed to be a university in the past. We found some people over there practicing Tai Chi or something like that.

Kanda Shrine and… Final Fantasy!!! OMG!!!

Well, this past week has been interesting, after being lazy for the entire Golden Week, I had some problems to catch up with classes, but now everything is fine I guess.

Yesterday, we, the people from the lodge, went to visit Kanda Shrine with a group of japanese volunteers, very nice people. We met in front of Ochanomizu station, and from there, we first visited a shrine that used to be a chinese studies school/university in the past (or something like that, I tried to understand as much as I could).

Then we walked to Kanda Shrine, there was some kind of festival over there, so it was really crowded. I ate some takoyaki from one of the stalls since I like it very much, but this one in particular wasn’t very good though.

KAIT and Tokyo Tower

The other day Hui and I had to go to Kanagawa Institute of Technology to take the TOEFL. The exam was a complete disaster, so please don’t ask about it. We first took the Odakyu Line to Hon-Atsugi station, from there, we didn’t know what to do really, but, luckily, we found another guy, Yasuo, who was also taking the exam that day at KAIT, so he brought us there (hey Yasuo!! thanks a lot!!).

Tokyo Disneyland!!!

On Friday, Greenery Day, my cousin Horacio and his wife, Kinka, invited me to go to Tokyo Disneyland. Since Maite told me before that she wanted to go there some day, I invited her as well.

We had to wake up really early to get there. Here’s the proof:

That’s Shibuya at that time of the day. What? don’t you see anything weird? THERE’S ALMOST NO PEOPLE!!!!

Odaiba and Miraikan

Last Thursday was Constitution Memorial Day here in Japan, and since we didn’t have anything better to do, we decided to go to Odaiba, an artificial island with a lot of technological stuff in there, and visit Miraikan, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation.

We started our trip from the station, which is surprisingly called Tokyo Teleport Station, yes, the japanese have already invented teleporting technology and we arrived over there by going inside pods with all sorts of electrical phenomena inside (yeah right!!! but I still wonder why they called it like that).

Golden Week: Miraikan, Disney, TOEFL Death and Tokyo Tower

This week was Golden Week, a week with a lot of holidays one after another, so I didn’t have classes during the whole week (but instead, they left me a lot of homework, thankfully I already finished it). I spent the first days sleeping and doing some stuff on my own, so they are not that interesting I guess.

On Thursday I went to the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, “Miraikan“, in Odaiba with Luke, Lukas, Felipe and Naoki. We found some pretty interesting things over there like, superconductors, deep sea drilling, space crafts, etc. After 3 hours of exploration through all the fields of science, we left to have something to eat, so we had lunch at an all-you-can-eat restaurant (we were starving so it was great we found that place). After that we just continued walking through the place, we could see Tokyo Bay in the evening, that was fantastic. When I came back to the lodge I was really tired, but had to study for the TOEFL test.

The main event of this week happened on Friday. I went to Tokyo Disneyland with Horacio, Kinka and Maite. I really had a lot of fun there, I’ve never been to one of those places before so I was quite amazed with everything, the whole lot of attractions, people with Mickey/Minnie ears, Mickey-shaped food, really long queues of people trying to buy some popcorn or get to the bathroom, etc. This season’s theme was Stitch (or so it seemed), so you could see him everywhere and was the #1 product in almost all stores.