Extra!!: 5 [店の名前はおかしい]

JUST A SHORT ONE!

Thing's in Japan often have weird names. Often this is a result of bad translations into english, but sometimes this gets taken to a whole new level. When the bad english is in massive text on the front of a shop or on a massive advert the mistake is in the open air for all to see and me to giggle at!

Recently I have been taking note of these embarrassing shop names more and more on my daily trundle around tokyo and I thought i'd share a few of my favourites with you!




AT NUMBER 3!!! As rabbit.

This name sounds a lot like 'ass rabbit' which in the Uk would may imply the shop may sell a certain bottom related rampant product..... instead it sells clothes.




AT NUMBER 2!!!! Bagel and..... bagel.

I wonder what this shop sells? Oh good, I'm glad they clarified their products offerings under their store name or I would never have known! They DO look yummy though. 




AND FINALLY AT NUMBER 1!!!  Titty and Co

*immature giggle* I don't think this even needs explaining..... boobies. ( . Y . )


HAHA, thanks for reading..... ;)

体は４分の３キャラメルコーン

Getting organised


The other day I went to buy my textbooks.... it was SO easy! I don't know why i'm even mentioning this seeing as is was so uneventful. The shop I went to was really nice and cool, and it was also run by the university! It sold all sorts of stuff from ice lollies to t-shirts and I even bought myself a smattering of Meiji university related products. This included but was not limited to a super cool uni jumper and a little Meiji owl figure to hang off my bag!

My textbooks look super cool but slightly difficult .. some of the titles of the reading exercises are almost hellish in their 'why is this even here?' factor. The most -___- of these so far is 'health neurosis undermines the mind and body'<--- this title makes me sob....

I'm a textbook model.

While we are on the topic of books, I bought a bunch of magazines and stuff to read... back issues and such, this mean they were so cheap! only 100 yen (70p) each. The main type of magazine I bought are japanese 'fashion'  magazines... this means they are full of pictures of people wearing giant pink fluffy hats with ears and shiny plastic trousers posing like contortionists. Very amusing to read how this is fashion.... in fact i might just buy said fluffy hat. The other type of magazine I bought was a music magazine! The language in this magazine is more complicated so I haven't really read it yet BUT IT HAS MY FAVOURITE BAND ON THE FRONT... this makes it ok right?

KERAAAAA and One OK Rock!

Anybody who has read this far.....BOOK OFF!!! No no no! don't leave the page, it's the name of the book store! The home of 立ち読み (stand and read), This means exactly what you would expect, people go to the bookstore, take the most recent issue of their favourite manga and just read it then and there. 

If i just stand here, I don't have a pay... right?

On my day of shopping I also made the drastic mistake of trying the super delicious and highly addictive CARAMEL CORN. My favourite flavour of this delightful treat is basically like a peanutty wotsit, but instead of cheese there is only caramel. The main problem with these snacks is the price. A MASSIVE bag is only 70p and as such I bought loads and shoved them all in my face like a crazy hamster. In fact I have worked out using maths and angles and 3 calculators that I am now indisputably made 2 thirds from caramel corn. (give or take 2 thirds...........)

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil!!!

So I have to end my blog here as I'm just going to the shop....... definitely not to buy more corn... IM NOT ADDICTED.

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HULKに成ろう！！！

What a complete banker........


I want to cover a few points in this post, filling in the gaps about my boring life as a budding professional form completer... The other thing I intent to blab on about endlessly again is.... yet more trainy frolics. (I know you all SO look forward to train posts.) and it's definitely not like this....

So to start off on a more boring note than trains (so you'll think the next part is comparatively interesting) this part is about *drum roll please*

..........

bank accounts!!!

Ok, Ok, I get it... you want interesting content. I'll get to that soon! But for now I'm still happy I managed to fill in 6000 (give or take 5996) very complicated bank related forms entirely in Japanese! AND, I didn't even make one mistake. People all around me were making exasperated noises and getting replacement form after from. BUT as the amazingly skilled form filler I am, my correctly used ball point pen ink was glistening in the glow of the fluorescent light ready to be approved much before many of the room had finished even one form.

But not without some confusion along the way...

So, from one thrilling topic to another!!.... All aboard!! It's time for departure!! First class is situated in the first two carriages and a trolley will be passing through the isles as we journey through the blog paragraph of a lifetime. 

Trains part two. 

My theory is as follows: I think the station and the trains are the crossroads where all the weird, eccentric, frantic and bored people of Tokyo clash in a scattering of suits and briefcases. 

                     - Sam Burton

Face of utmost horror.

Today I was waiting for my train, (a rare occurrence in a country where it is possible to be in a train traffic jam due to their frequency.) So as I was tutting and sighing to myself at the huge span of 2 minutes extra I was being forced to delay my daytime activities, I gazed across at the opposite platform where the announcement that the train door were closing was just being made. At this moment a man who had just entered the station made a face of utmost horror... He then started to not only began to run towards the train but to take the stairs 3 at a time. As he reached the train the doors had almost closed, but, instead of resigning to his fate like a normal person, he instead grabbed the closing doors and amid the cries of 'お客様、やめてください！！’ (STOP please Mr customer), proceeded to become the incredible hulk and wrestle the doors back open as to board the train.

Even though the train he boarded was the 12:42 and the next one was at 12:43. 

I hope he comes back......I could use a hand with those pesky trains.

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全地球の生き物は虫

It's time.....

to face.....

THE INSECT!

Japan is full of bugs. So much so in fact that you wouldn't be blamed for just staying indoors 24/7, with your feet of the floor and all the windows shut. There's crawly ones, slimy ones, flappy ones and even jumpy ones, each annoying and creepy in their own way.

But I think my 3 least favourite that i've seen so far are as follows!



3. Cicada　セミ

These horrible tree bugs are the somewhat iconic sound of summer in Japan. That is if you enjoy the relaxing background music of buzz saw crossed with dial up internet. They live underground for most of the year as mini child bugs and then when the heat of the suns rays warms their manky bodies they pop up to the surface to annoy everybody and shed skin everywhere.

Damn am I getting fat?

2. Stink bug　カメムシ

These bugs are like my sister, green and eat rotting food out of bins. Well not just bins actually, any delectable piece of mouldy garbage is like a 5 star restaurant for this green buggers. So basically they have a hoover on the front of their faces and suck all the extra juicy rot juice from inside the food and this sits in their belly for the next forever. This means if you squash them or even sometimes just shove them off your items all the stink comes out and contaminates the immediate vicinity with lingering grossness.

look at it, pretending to be a normal bug.

1. Giant hornet　スズメバチ
Quickly everybody, get indoors, get into the bunker, hide your budgerigar, the hornets are coming and they are ANGRY!!! In summery, these are the worst; so bad I even named my blog after them. (But now, I am saddened deep down into my core to tell you.... I saw a hornet. My blog title is redundant. For shame.) Fact is, these stingy monstrosities live all over Japan and this includes in random bushes around Tokyo, as such is there prevalence they claim over 40 lives a year. But as if the sting isn't bad enough, if you catch them on a day where they went to the shop but it was out of milk, they also spray you in the eyes with flesh melting toxins... signal the rest of the swarming hive to hunt you down. You don't get stung by these, you get stabbed.

He mad.

EXTRA CONTENT: I also don't like it when i'm casaully walking down the road in the glow of midday, and all of a sudden the sky goes dark as the sun is put into eclipse by the gigantiuan wingspan of what I call 'demon-hummingbird-flapper'. I call it as such because google did not provide me a name, so we can only presume its lack of internet existence is because it came STRAIGHT FROM HELL! It's body is fully black and when it flies directly into my face unexpectedly I swear it's wings have power akin to a jet engine or two. Ok, maybe i'm exaggerating a little... but when I see a big-ass bug, this is still me:

I'm just going to go weld my windows shut. Bye guys!

お金 --> 好き

NOGROPEY

It seems people in Japan no longer care about perverts... or else the perverts no longer care about putting effort into their work because I have not seen one lady have her bum groped on a train.

According to my first year textbook, this was apparently a frequent occurrence in Japan and as such the lack of groping has made me somewhat disappointed or else dismayed that a supposedly factual book could lie to me in such a way. (see below for accurate snapshot of said textbook)

gropey grope

The ladies only carriages too seem to now be a thing of the past, apparently there are too many people wanting to commute every morning that it would be unfair that the ladies get a train carriage all to themselves to avoid the lustrous hands of lonely office workers... it seem creepy men have decided that room on the train > ladies bottoms  and instead everybody of all genders (man woman or otherwise) just crams themselves into luggage racks or wherever they can fit.

Nevertheless, the signs remain, reminding us of a better time, a time when men were interested in ladies and not just the extra centimetre of space they can use to play 'puzzle dragon' in on the tube. (in actuality i'm glad my peachy bottom has remained ungroped, I'm just grumpy that I can't have extra room on the train anymore *sob*)

Those were the days.

This post is going to be sporadic, there is absolutely no segue here just a random jump in topic. Here goes; we played that game with the sticky notes, where you tape them to your head.

Who am I?

You know the one, where you have to guess which celebrity / tangentially famous cartoon character / communist dictator's name is written on the post-it by asking yes / no questions.  (for example you say 'Am I Mufasa?' and i say 'yes! that was a quick game....')

Well here's what I got: 

Sigh.

Those who know me will know that this was very irksome. Even so far as I decided to throw my 1 direction stress cube at the floor a few times. (edit: I just read this back and it sounds like i'm a massive fangirl who has such strong preferences for specific donkey boy donkey band members and gets emotional regarding them... TO CLARIFY: no. This is not, has never been nor will ever be the case. I'd rather slowly burn all of my possessions one by one while painting a football field of grass pink by the blade) In spite of this annoyance, I managed to use my supreme skills of guessery to guess the name in a matter of turns whereas my opponents were not so lucky. One of them, despite being told that the character on his postit was not only 'dinosaur big', but also a gay, singing TV character, did not guess it was Barney the dinosaur. 

The last completely unrelated point, come in the form of ending on a high note. The other day in Shinjuku, I got (basically) free sushi! This was because it seems the cashiers here in Japan can't count to 3 correctly and instead mistake it for the number 4. This addition stupidity is all the more ridiculous seeing that it is policy here to count out the change bills in front of the customer to prevent mistakes.... and he still got it wrong.

So basically, in the sushi place, the food goes round and round in circles and I haphazardly grab at my food before it escapes around the corner once again. Despite my chasm of a stomach however, I only bought around 1000yen worth of sushi >_<... after filling up the rest of my belly space by drinking the free green tea by the barrel I then sloshed my way to the till to pay the bill. The cost turned out to be 960yen and I paid with a 5000yen note.... I then received 4940yen change.....so I'll definitely be going there again!!!! That is unless they remember me as the sneaky foreign change thief..... My conclusion is; I think the sushi lord was smiling on me that day, thanking me for consuming delicious salmon, or else it was definitely ... SUSHI O CLOCK!!

It's sushi time!

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ビーバ メキシコ！

Tuna pepper.

Today has been a bit of an up, down day.... maybe I'll serve this blog in the fashion of a compensating restaurant ... good crisp starter, then all the scraggly end bits for the main, finishing with a yummy dessert...


The prix fixe starter choice of today will be a lovely helping of sifting through my course booklet... FINALLY! There's not a great deal to say about this, other than the fact that the person who wrote my timetable was obviously in some way closely related to a gorilla or some sort of in-advanced variety of sloth....

It seems to me that people in every country have chronic administration deficiency despite the fact it seems to be all that the staff are employed for... But anyway after much annoyance and several trips to the office I have finally decided on a whole ONE class I can take this year. WAHOO!!


So now for the buffet style sloppy mash of a main course, the typhoon and soy sauce incident. Even if this disaster got given a name by the papers (like all the worst atrocity commiters do), it would most likely still be dire as the water you drained from said sloppy mash... but here's what I'm thinking; 'THE WINDY BROWN WHOOSHER!!' <--- snappy right?? 

In fact.... I seem to recall an article of a very similar name...... OH HERE IT IS! What a coincidence......

Where is the soy sauce you previously mentioned I hear you ask. Well, in my rush to save the remaining socks I managed to knock a tiny bottle over (the ones you get free in sushi boxes), right onto my almost-as-freshly-laundered bed sheet. -_-

And finally to finish from the a la carte sitting comes the mexican feast. 

As you may or may not know.... (i'm presuming the latter) recently it was mexican independence day. This meant it was time for the resident sombrero lover in our dormitory to organise a mexico themed party in the lobby! (obviously I went dressed for the occasion...... ok I drew on a moustache...)

Which is the real mexican?

But anyway it was really nice and the guys here made real life mexican food  not just nachos and cheese, called chiles capeados (peppers with tuna in) and chilaquiles (like doritos?)... 

Yummy!!

Obviously no mexican party is complete without the resident cactus based beverage being on offer. In fact there was almost 3 large bottle of tequila just waiting to be consumed... I actually decided to not be a weak little seal and try the whole, 'salt, tequila, lemon' thing and my only previous experience of this drinking 'ritual' was involving lidl's finest tequila and some Haribo tangfastics, needless to say it was not overly yummy. BUT this time it wasn't actually half bad..... the random other flavours of sour and salt manage to mask the horrific taste of strong alcohol. Well done sodium chloride and the lemon tree. I didn't manage to take a picture of my doing these shots because as I just said... I was doing the shots, but heres my friend instead :)

If you watch it backwards it's like she spits out the drink in disgust.

And that concludes my post!!!

VIVA MEXICO!!!

Credit to Gustavo Camacho for the above picture.

お金が足りない

OK, I BUY NOW??? Oh, no, it seems i'm not a million quappilionaire. 

Today's post is about my slightly impromptu trip to the ever so technological Sony building in Ginza; home of the stuff you want but can never...ever.... have. 

Ginza itself is what is commonly know as a swanky-ass district. This means that unless your hands are as soft as an alpaca due to the velvety cushion of pure gold that surrounds them, you cannot afford even the most basic of life commodities here. 

The sony building

The reason we decided to go to the sony building wasn't surprisingly to make ourselves jealous of the ultra-rich such as the Elon Musk or, at a push, the Queen (that was just a unavoidable consequence). In fact, we were on a hunt to find somebody who would open and fix my friends phone. Turns out however that nobody in Japan can fix it and as such we decided to look around the extra-technofolific technology as not to have made a wasted trip.

I think i'll just tell you about the top 5 coolest bits of potentially advanced weaponry  futuristic technology available for purchase by the general public of Japan, as were I to give the lowdown on everything I may as well just post a picture of I-robot and be done with it. 

The all new 'sony-everything' V1.0

5. The walkman headset.

This headset is the player and headphones in one, so no more cables! Downside, if you forget your good headphones then instead of having to make do, you have no music player at all.... Could also easily fall down the back of a sofa, down a drain, off a bridge......









4. 4KTV.

I don't think my camera does this TV justice... apparently the picture is a clear as the image seen through a human retina. This in fact makes it better than my own eyes.... So maybe my camera can appreciate the picture more than I. Anyway, the picture looked super pretty and lovely but i'm not sure how it would hold up when it has to display crap like Eastenders.... If it were up to me there would be a setting where only TVs worse than HD have the ability to air soaps. (yes mother this would include Neighbours.)





3. The camera lens attachment 

This nifty little gadget is a lens that you can clip to your phone to un-crappify the camera. It gives zoom functions and other upgrades to the generally mediocre phone photo capturing technology. They had a mini farm yard set up so you could test how the camera would hold up on the frequent cow photo excursions I know you all love to take. Result is, livestock photography will look splendid with this lens.










2.  VR headset.

This thing is cool. Somehow these VR goggles make it seem like you are in a 3D imax cinema viewing from the relative comfort of your own face!! (face comfiness may vary). They have a really got picture and didn't actually hurt my eyes, they also have room in them to were glasses for the unfortunately eyeballed among us. The worst part of them is the fact they they are really heavy, and will likely become the leading cause of kyphosis and probably also pinkeye.








1.  The Sam-proof phone!

Ok, it's probably not Sam-proof, but it IS water proof! This little upgrade of the phones seals gets the number 1 spot for me because I was just amazed by the fact that the phone did not break. Of course normally if somebody said to you 'Oh snap! I dropped my phone in the ocean' your immediate and rational response would be to start digging a phone sized grave. However! Due to this advancement, all phone grave diggers may soon be out of business, making way for a large pond in which we can all throw our anti-leak phones with glee.



Extra Sony goodness!

Sam-show! The best show.

Oh my god!! I'm so famous, I'm on TV... yet I seem surprised (despite my obvious fame) to be captured on film about my daily TV browsing.... 

Let's play.... musical stairs! Although I can hardly say I have an ear for the finer points of the musical scales.... I guess I'll just walk all over every key haphazardly and call it funk or something...

That's all from me for now!!! Cya later banditos!!! *gallops into sunset*

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SURPRISE EXTRA CONTENTARY SHEEP FACE!

Sneak peak for blogs to come :O

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ホームレスでも、マクドナルドを食べたがる

ROUND 2!!

I'll start this post on a positive note!! . (before the degradation into complete disheveled beard growing lunacy) I COOKED SOME REAL LIFE FOOD. This means, if you check the dictionary..

Real life food /rē(ə)l līf fo͞od/ : Food which has not been made by means of solely a kettle, microwave or a combination of the two. Must contain vegetables and not be burnt to a cinder. (some charring is acceptable)

Here are some examples of Not-real food:

And now, in contrast (as to look EVEN MORE spectacular) here is my feast-in-a-bowl. The magnificent Gyuudon. A japanese style dish made of rice topped in seasoned beef and onion. In my case i've also added broccoli to fulfil the vegetable requirements of 'real-food' and also an egg because... why not?

MMMMMMMM.....

After that tasty looking picture I bet you're all thinking, 'how can this post possibly take a turn.... a person who cooks THAT well will obviously have a perfect life of sunflowers and rainbows'. Now let me assure you, I do have sunflowers and rainbows in my life..... all be it only when I see them through tiredness induced daydreams on a random patch of street after my contact lens has fallen out.

Oooo i'm giving stuff away, tantalising insights into the story that is yet to come........

Ok, Ok, here's a lowdown of how the other night went... HIT IT:

Basically the night started off really well, I went to the station to pick up my home friends I know from University and also managed to collect another random guy I was asked to pick up (despite not knowing what he looked like) by shouting his name and seeing who looked around... 

Then it started to go downhill, my friends (namely Matt) is apparently notoriously awful at beer pong and as such was completely and utterly drunk as a pirate before we even reached the club.

The club itself was free to get in, so obviously it was a grimy dirt hole of grub squashed into the side of a building. To top it off they also had a 'drink in hand' policy in order to make back all the profits they lost letting us in with no charge.  This means basically if you didn't keep buying drinks all night they could just pop over and kick you out, and when drinks are 900 yen for an alchopop, it turns out to be an expensive club after all!

The club was called 'Gaspanic', a name of finesse and charm.

It seemed however my ploys of 'keep the empty bottle and sip from it sporadically' and 'indicate at a random glass on the table whenever the staff come past' seemed to work and I only spent the equivalent of about 10 pounds overall. *sneaky drink ninja*. It may also have been partly due to the fact that our group was huge and the only people there dancing, so if we had left the club would have consisted of bar staff and the resident loitering weirdoes.

Was good to see people in Tokyo (before they decided to sleep on the floor)

Then, it struck. The Matt Gaarder problem. 

So, both of my friends fell asleep in the club on the table, and being the nice nice person I am, we managed to heave them up and out of the club. And what repayment do I get for my angelic saintlike behaviour? You guessed it, one decided to be sick right in the middle of the street. Ew. In fact i'm disgusted now writing this.

tautologically at 1am in the morning, the night is still in it's infancy, yet the last train has already sped away laughing, leaving us stranded in the streets of Shibuya. Now in this situation any normal person would have got directly into a taxi and gone home, but instead my friend decided the most logical idea would be to lay down on the floor of the magnificent and beautiful Shibuya crossing and fall asleep for 2 hours. 

The first train home leaves at 5:30am, so for over 4 hours I sat next to the collapsed and crumpled frame of Matt, and explained to the countless passer-bys that he IS in fact, despite appearances, absolutely fine and they could continue their very early morning wander without worry. 

Let us now remind ourself of the cause behind my loss of contact lens. (I lost my contact lens because my eye became so dry from sitting in the open air it would non longer remain in my eye socket.)

Hobo.

Also my bum went numb. (very upsetting)


I cheered up a bit around 5am when the sun started to rise, and another of my friends came along and threw 1 yen coins at the sleeping blob of Matt like he was a real life hobo. He probably kept the coins..... (they worth 0.6p)


So, at 5:30, as started before the train thankfully returned and plonked me back at my house just in time for breakfast....Which i'll have you know was definitely NOT made of 'real life food'.


Peace out mofos.

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