Hello!
I haven't made a post in a month now, whoops. I've been pretty busy.
I've now been living in Tokyo for 3 months and I'm honestly having such a great time. Like lately I keep thinking to myself that this is the first time I've legitimately felt happy since like..... I don't even remember? School is easy, I have really amazing friends (here in Tokyo, back in Vancouver, and around the world), I live in my favourite city, I have a great host family, I live in a place where I can go see Koyama every single day...
I'm just really loving life right now, which is kind of a big deal since only 9 months ago I was in a super dark place and reached my lowest point in life, so now I'm just glad I've stayed alive to get to see this day.
As for what I've been doing lately, I honestly can't even recall off the top of my head, so I'm just going to go through my photos again and post some and comment on it
For my culture class we went to learn Ikebana (traditional Japanese flower arranging)
My classmates' flower arrangements
More of my classmates' arrangements
My finished product
Me and my flower arrangement
Also for my culture class we did traditional Japanese tea ceremony.
My classmates and I waiting to go inside the tea house
Outside the tea room
Before tea is served you eat a traditional Japanese sweet, usually a seasonal one. This one is for autumn
Us participating in the tea ceremony (it's dark but I'm the one on the right)
More tea ceremony (I'm the one on the left stuffing my face with tea)
This was when we learnt how to make the tea ourselves
While we learnt how to make tea we also got sweets before drinking tea
Showing us how to make tea
mixing the tea
This is the tea I made! Somehow it tasted way bitter than the tea the teachers made for us, way to go me
Class picture with the ladies who taught us about tea ceremony
My host family and I all went to Kamakura! Kamakura is located in Kanagawa-ken, about 2 hours away from Tokyo right by the ocean. It's famous for this big buddha.
Me, my host father, and host sisters Kana & Mai in front of the big buddha
My host mother made me take this photo
Hello
At Shibuya's Parco building they're doing a Hello Kitty cafe until Christmas! I'm not even a big fan of Hello Kitty but THEMED CAFES!!!!! So I went
The Hello Kitty latte! Too cute
Hello Kitty apple pie. You get to keep the special Hello Kitty cup!
That's deep
Then afterwards I went to.... that's right, NTV. Again. How many times have I been there now? Far too many. Here is me and my beloved Sorajiro (I physically cannot smile in pictures, do not ask me why)
NTV has a Sorajiro Christmas tree set up
Me in the EXACT SPOT Koyama does the weather, and in front of Tokyo tower
The filming studio of news every has these cute little Sorajiro things in the window
The Studio Ghibli clock at NTV!
On this day they were about to film something outside the NTV building and some guy was walking around with a giant hawk on his arm. /I have no idea/
My love for Sorajiro is strong
Tokyo goes crazy with Christmas decorations, especially certain locations, one of them being Tokyo Dome City. So since I LOVE Christmas decorations I went there to see all their lights.
On the way to Tokyo Dome
Illuminations at Tokyo Dome City
Me in front of Tokyo Dome
The light tunnel
More of the illuminations at Tokyo Dome City
Me again in front of Tokyo Dome, this time with the light tunnel in the background as well
More illuminations at Tokyo Dome City - a giant cube thing and a...hexagonal object
Me in the tunnel of lights
The dome of illuminations
SO PRETTY
I couldn't stop taking pictures
Went for pizza afterwards. Pizzas in Japan are a bit interesting, they're very floppy and are much more like flat bread
And now for my birthday! I spent my 20th birthday in Tokyo. So twice now I have celebrated my "coming of age" birthday. First at 19 in Canada, now 20 in Japan (Legal age here is 20). I feel like I've grown up twice.
The day before my birthday on the 11th I decided to go to my beloved NTV (for the 283479283rd time) to see Koyama since he wasn't going to be doing the news on my actual birthday. Here is Sorajiro all dressed up in a winter coat and ear muffs being totally adorable
TOO CUTE.
Then Koyama came out and while he was waving he totally looked at me and I died (HE KNOWS I EXIST!!!!) and basically it was great and he made my birthday really good, thank you Koyama.
Then on my actual birthday I had school. Then basically the whole day was spent going into every single convenience store I saw looking for my banana milk which for some reason has all of a sudden disappeared. Sadly, I never found any.
After school ended I went to the one place I wanted to be on my actual birthday which was....................NTV! (again!) Even though Koyama wasn't there I ended up being there at the same time Kihara and Sorajiro were filming the end of the Friday episode of news every so I spent part of my birthday watching my favourite weatherman and favourite mascot being adorable as usual.
My #1 favourite spot in Tokyo: NTV - Shiodome. Even putting aside the fact it's the home of my favourite TV station it's just really pretty
The ItteQ (my favourite tv show) Christmas tree!
And the cast members' autographs!
More of the tree, you can queue up and ring the ItteQ bell and get a picture too (I was too embarassed to go up so maybe next time)
The news every studio has turned into a forest of Christmas
NTV flags
And inside the NTV shop I found this autograph of Kihara and Sorajiro! Too cute
Then I went to the NTV Family Mart to buy my birthday dinner: convenience store sushi, Family Mart eclair, milk tea, a waffle, 2 rice balls, oreo bars, a fruit tart, and some chocolates. All under 2000￥. And I ate it all right next to NTV.
After Shiodome/NTV I went over to Tokyo Tower! I didn't go to the top or anything, I just sat and stared at it.
I didn't have my camera with me and my iPad camera is kind of bad so all my pictures of it suck, but here you go
Trying to be artsy but failing because my camera sucks
went right up to the tower
Tokyo Tower also has some Christmas illuminations going on now
More of Tokyo Tower's Christmas illuminations
And yeah, then I went home to reply to birthday messages and all that! Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes, it means a lot to me. I had a pretty good day!
Now the rest of these pictures are just random things from here and there
So I bought a giant Nanana plushie. He is the TV Tokyo mascot and he is a banana and I love him
I finally bought my very first umbrella ever (I'm from Vancouver and I've never bought my own umbrella, I know). Its case is shaped like a bear
was in Shimamura looking around at clothes and found this... oh Japan
01 December: 19 degrees. GIVE ME WINTER
All the convenience stores have their Christmas themed desserts out now, here are two of 7-11's, the snowman one is super adorable
I've found it, the place I belong at Waseda (I don't know if you can see it properly in the photo but it's the maths and statistics centre)
One of my classrooms - was sat alone in here eating lunch because I'm a loser
I've found a new buddy and I'm bringing him all around Tokyo
Yukie, Jennifer, me, and Natsumi at Cinnabon in Roppongi! Apparently Tokyo only has two Cinnabon locations, this being one of them, the other being in Harajuku.
I bought a Pooh Bear kigurumi... (or in English, "onesie") I never knew I needed this until now
Mont blanc waffle! For some reason mont blanc is extremely popular in Tokyo right now.
This is my 10cm tall Christmas tree. While Japan goes all out to decorate the city itself in Christmas-y decorations, Japanese people themselves tend not to really participate in Christmas. My host family haven't put up anything, so this is the only Christmas decor I have this year.
Giant Crocs man spotted
And that's about it! Sorry about the long, photo heavy post, hope it was somewhat interesting (probably wasn't, but oh well, it's 3:07AM the night of my birthday, I can't write properly)
じゃ、
おやすみ！
