This is SO Gross

will avoid fast foods from now on...

http://www.snack-girl.com/snack/mechanically-separated-chicken/

our dogs

our two dogs are soooooo cute! they will be something that I will miss a lot a lot besides shopping in shimokitazawa and hanging out at the Hub...

there is the toy poodle named dan




and an italian greyhound named peace!!



they are so adorable! everyday when I come home they will wait at the door and jump on me to show me how happy they are to see me! I dont personally know any person who would do that to me everyday. (and i rather not..)

Anyway there are lots of stories surrounding these two doggies. Dan is the bad guy who pretends to be a behaving lovely pet when the bosses (us) are around, unlike Peace who would reach out onto the dining table when he sees us eating steak or something. Dan wouldn't do that... until one day I went home and saw him standing on the dining table! boooo! He is actually a bad ass when nobody's home... that was some news that shocked the whole family ><
Also peace used to be this little puppy when he came to the home, when dan was already a relatively big dog. So what happened was Dan would be really mean to little Peace and bite him and stuff. Until Peace grew and grew and now he's a 8kg medium-big dog and has overgrown Dan! And unfortunately Peace has also learned how to be mean and trick others from no one other than--Dan. So now whever they fight Dan would lose because he is smaller and get bitten by Peace as a revenge for him biting Peace when he was small! Ha. what a shock. Who would thought that puppy would one day grow bigger than Dan himself!

so thats the two lovely members of our family~

update

its been a while.. sorry blog. there fore i will write an extra long one ><

at the beginning of april there was SAKURA! blooming in Japan everywhere. it was really beautiful! and the beauty is that in Japan sakura is everywhere, so when its the blooming season, we can see pink patches here and there all over the city. I was all like excited and taking lots of pictures everywhere, while many japanese people I know watch with indifferent coolness.. my hostmother even said that she is so used to sakura blooming every year that she doesnt take the effort to go see them anymore. I was really ???? confused. how can anyone be tired of seeing these pink things blooming among the green trees and making this world so pretty? i went to at least 5-6 sakura spots and each place is pretty in its own way. To me it's like no wonder sakura is so famous and symbolic in Japan. Though i would say many people at the spots are foreign tourists, but still the people doing the hanami (flower-watching party?) are mostly japanese.

talk about hanami's.. according to my observation and japanese people's alibi, the main purpose for sitting beneath the sakura trees and having a party might be more than appreciating the little pink flowers. Actually I went to one too. It started at 10 in the morning and went until sunset. When me and a friend arrived there at 4pm, 80% of the people are drunk already. we started drinking at 10, they said. And it is totally permittable! maybe its the only time Japanese people are allowed to drink in the day time and act drunk and crazy and party and not be looked at weird. (screw the sakuras.. most people are too drunk to see them) yeah it is kinda fun in its own way too... and i know quite a few people who would love this.. drinking all day long.. yeah can you believe those same bunch went to a bar that same night?

anyway. for me seeing sakura in the state of soberness is best. from a trusted source i learned that since april or the spring is when all the new fresh-out-of-college employees start their work, securing the best hanami-spots under the tree is their first job entering their companies. The trusted source's younger brother was assigned such a duty and he had to sit under the tree from early morning through the whole day until the evening when the party starts.. kind of a cool first task i would say.

this is right outside our house->


however im sad to say by today they all fell (the season is really short.. about 1 week and then they fall). but maybe their being short lived is a beauty in itself.

back in Tokyo and very genki~!

I want this pair of shoes!!!

cherry X 平野由實

They are so adorable. Even though I had gotten complaints that I already have too many pairs of shoes... I still want more! who doesnt?
I think Tokyo has certainly influenced me to become more of a shopaholic than I already am. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I have to pass by shibuya and a lot of shops with cute clothes and shoes everyday on my way home. But I am controlling myself well! I usually just drool at them outside the stores.. except for some occasional loss of control, which leads to loss of some of my study-abroad-funds and closet space. But after the guiltiness.. im so happy to wear them the next day hehe.
Things are not as bad and out of control until the sales periods begin... winter sales, spring sales, summer sales, new year sales, valentine sales, emperor's birthday holiday sales..... you name it, and every holiday its a sale. But what amazes me more is how much the prices drop on sales. A lot of stuff are 50% or 60% sale, and I have even saw 80-90% off stuff! it was really crazy... I am still reminiscing over this winter...when the big sales were on. it was good... no i should say it was bad...

spring in japan means sakura and blooming flowers! Maybe thats why i have been attracted by pink things a lot lately. Shall go see sakura once they start blooming :)

So.

It's been a while.. i know. sorry *_*

Updates.. No i didnt get to live with the family with the cute kids. They had someone else T T but it was my fault for replying too late! So in the rage of somehow feeling like being cheated (and there is the urgency to find somewhere to stay soon) I went with the other family. They are a couple. The husband is kind of old... But he is a musician~ and i fell for the idea that i can probably borrow his guitar and piano to play with sometime :) and i had to move in a week! so i chose them, moved my stuff in with them with a taxi..did everything else in a hurry.. and flew to Taiwan for Chinese new year. Hope they will be a good family ><

Another thing is that i had my birthday a few days ago. I wasnt as excited as always.. a lot of people said happy birthday to me. I am happy about that. But from this age on, sadly, i wont be excited that i got older anymore. so i didnt really celebrate it. oh, but some friends made a video for me on fb, and that was really sweet of them :D !! but maybe i was just a little sad because the person who is supposed to prepare a bunch of roses or like tiffanys and call me at midnight to say happy birthday forgot about my b-day and i even had to mention it the next day before he's like oops i forgot........ FAIL. yeah i am not gonna name names. he knows who he is. im just here giving hints about the tiffanys.

will update more....

homestay craze

My dorm is kicking me out after half a year even though I am studying in Japan for a year. Just because i made a mistake to sign up for only half a year. So i have been going to the school's international center to negotiate for extension or whatever. i dont want to name names, but Keio's international center is full of b.. i mean the people working there dont listen to you and they are so indifferent to student's needs! i talked to them for like 4 times about this, in ENglish, in Japanese, with my professor calling them... yeah i tried everything holding up to my home university's true values of protesting. But they just dont budge. now they probably know my face and is really annoyed at me, but yeah so now i am looking for other housings..

so thats why im looking for homestay! it just sounds really fun like if you are just idealizing. But in truth, as these couple weeks' searching as showed, it is difficult to find the ideal family to stay in. SOmetimes they want you because they want to make extra money, or they want you to teach their kid english...etc Plus tokyo's houses are notoriously tiny, so most families dont have an extra room to have guests...unlike california where people have like 20 extra rooms sitting around. for each of their pet dogs, maybe.

but there is this family that i really like once i saw the pic of their kid!

THEY ARE SOOOO CUTE!
so maybe i will consider them>< the only thing is that it would take 10minutes by bike to the station, then 1 hour to my school and 10 minutes walk to campus.........yeah thats a lot of time.
but the kids are so CUTE! i wish i will have kids as cute as them!
i will have to decide my housing soon, so will update then!

-_-

My finals are all over!!! Leaving the exam room my head started aching... i think i used too much brain this week. So it deserves some rest. That's why I watched some sex and the city.. its old but its still good. Just can't watch it for the "trendy fashion" anymore.

I was talking with my Japanese friend, and apparently the show is kinda famous in Japan. She said she watched it because her friend said that she is like Charlette and Miranda combined. Yeah I wonder which one I am. Actually I dont really want to know, but what I know is that I dont relate to any one of them. Dunno, I am just me. Maybe it's cuz none of them have my hair color.. hehe.

I will be tutoring English to someone sometime soon. I hope I am qualified enough to teach. Well its just conversational English. I mean I think I can at least talk decent English... if I am going to an university in US.

Anyway as i said, my brain is not working so well, so i think i should stop staring at my computer screen and typing nonsense.
time to zzZ

Ooonsen! Hot Spring!

Phew. Two finals down. One more to go.
Next week will be more fun because all the finals will be over!

I was talking about Onsen~or hot springs~ with someone yesterday.
I said I want to go to a hot spring! since it's so cold now. He said, you think like a monkey. Apparently monkeys get into hot springs in Japan when the weather gets cold, and sometimes you can see humans sitting in hot springs along with monkeys. Hehe it might be hard to picture that, but I will help you with this image that made me laugh when I first saw it but made me a little scared about going to unknown hot springs in Japan.



I don't want them picking licks off my hair.......


So I heard there is *one day hot spring* where you take the train to a hot spring spot, enjoy your hot spring, and come back on the same day. Good for saving $$ on hotels, but enjoying onsen, to me, is made to sound more like running an errand or a trip visiting the dentist and less like enjoying and relaxing yourself at a vacation spot...

Dunno maybe its just me, but I wanna take my time at a hot spring and dip myself in that healing water until my skin becomes unbelievably silky~~

But judging from the picture, I don't think it worked on the monkeys... hmmm

1/21/2010

I am in the middle of my final exam period for the program I am currently attending.
It's ok, tomorrow's exam is un-preparable because it is for a Japanese listening class and I can only count on having watched quite a lot of Japanese TV, although not really getting what they are saying, to give me luck for the listening exam tomorrow. So I say.

Ok I am officially forgetting how to speak or type English properly. Which is why I am starting this blog. The 6 months of intense Japanese classes do make people forget the other languages that they used to speak more fluently.

But Tokyo is fun. So it's all worth it!

I love being able to dress up really cute and not having people ask you, what's the occasion? Oh no, just going to drop by 7-11 to pick up some pockys. In Tokyo, dressing up nice and cute and wear make-up is what you do before you go to a convenience store just across the street.

And all the girls out there, Tokyo is where you shop and drop! January is the big winter sale, and I have found myself spending more $$ on nice stockings or adorable lingerie than my meager budget allows me to!! (oh but I am not regretting it! not until my phone bill comes in...)

As I always say, Tokyo, being one of the most expensive cities in the world, will be a heaven if you are rich.
But I did enjoyed a little bit of heaven when I rode the train on my way home with quite a few shopping bags and a smile on my face :)