Event-less weekends and indecent rap songs and WTFJapan

Today was another homework, thus generally event-less! But I decided yesterday, that without pictures my blog entries might be generally boring. The comment-to-entry ratio is far smaller when the entry lacks pictures. Therefore, here are some interesting(ish) pictures I took yesterday:

So we went out for lunch in hopes of finding a new restaurant. But of course we haven't been to every restaurant in Hayama, this was an easy success. We found this great (slightly pricey) restaurant that served Japanese food with a Chinese flavor. I had shrimp fried rice:

It was omfg so delicious. The portion looks kind of small in the picture, but trust me it wasn't. I couldn't finish it (like every other meal I eat here, I don't even know, the portions seem giant). The bad part of not being able to finish a meal here? People don't take the rest of it home. It's just not done here. Ho hum.


On the way back from the restaurant, I found this... I don't know what this is. Anyone? It looks cool though.


Fireworks are a really popular and important part of summer here, so they have them for sale at nearly every convenience store. Here's some convenience store bottle rockets! Surely wouldn't be able to find this in Oregon haha.

Upon exiting the convenience store...

The biggest bug I have ever seen D: Terrifying.

What did I buy at the convenience store?

Pudding~ Which had a cookie on it! Yeah, I was that excited about it. And so we had our first Pudding Club meeting.

Also, Nicole got an exciting present for her boyfriend and another friend there:

Nicole and her convenience store porn! And Emily being shocked in the background. Yes, they do sell porn in the convenience store. I'm tagging this post as WTFJapan for this. This is obviously a WTF Japan moment.

Well that was yesterday.

Today for dinner we went to the same restaurant, and instead of shrimp fried rice I had CRAB fried rice. I totally just mistyped 'fried' as 'friend'. Yeah, I had 'friend' rice.

Then we walked around for a bit and I found this:

A little way behind this was... well not a cemetery, but something like a cemetery.

So the past few days I've been really tired, thanks to a certain... time. Thus, I needed something to wake me up in a pinch! And since I'm pretty sure energy drinks are still killer on my stomach, I had to come up with something else. And that is...

A playlist of indecent rap songs! It really is a good waker-upper. Yeah, that's a word. Oh shoot, my playlist has some reggaeton on it too. Don't judge me!

Anyway, that's it for today! Tomorrow I have yet another kanji quiz and presentation~

Official WTFJapan number one! AKA Akihabara.

So this is my first WTFJapan post! And of course, it'll probably be the biggest of all, because I went to a part of Tokyo for the first time today, and not just any part of Tokyo... I went to Akihabara. Home of the following:

Yeah you read that right. It says 'So ronery'. Yeah, I went there. And yeah, that IS a pillow with a cartoon girl's face on it. It's actually a body pillow with her whole cartoon body on it. Those were for sale there. But no, I didn't take this picture, this is thanks to Google.

Anyway, let's move on to some pictures I *did* take...
First of all, my breakfast!

I'm kidding. I had Calorie Mate again this morning, but I did buy those to eat for some other breakfast. Check that artsy shot.

Exiting the train station, we walked right into Akihabara (Akiba for short):

I'm not going to say this district of Tokyo is pretty, because it's not. But it was overall... very interesting. Yeah, interesting. Let's go with that.

Looking the other way, we see:

Exciting Adult Mega Store! I didn't get to go in, but I suppose if I did I would have ran away screaming. An American adult shop is fine, but a Japanese adult shop? Terrifying I'm sure. Filled with tentacles, probably.

We walked into some store, which had a billion floors with different things on each one, but on the first floor I found...

A Mario hat!! Doesn't it look awesome on me? I should have bought that. Ho hum.

HERE is questionable-photograph-number-one. Viewer discretion is advised. But as a bit of a description, it's a mouse pad, and there's a special place to wrest your wrist. Definitely a WTF Japan moment.

And HERE is questionable-photograph-number-two. It's pudding.

Linked to the photographs because I'd rather not have that all up on my blog, thank you very much.

On another floor they had a ton of figurines, ranging from creepy to awesome (Star Wars!) to creepy again. I wasn't sure if pictures were ok, but I managed to sneak one of Godzilla:


And also this... drippy-looking monster:


More weird figures:


These are decals that you put on your car:

Click here for the full-size image.

More of these weird figures:


The reason why I'm showing you all these pictures of figures, is because... they look like toys, right? They're toys, and yet...

The average age range of shoppers was older than me.
I'd post the other picture I took, but I do have some people reading this blog who might be offended.

Some store front:




This was a light bulb shop. They had some cool ones, but it was still an entire shop dedicated to light bulbs.


And for lunch... I can't believe this happened... we went to a Maid Cafe. As in something like this:

I didn't take that picture, this is thanks to Google again. This place... I'll sum it up for you: Girls dressed in maid costumes serving men who will never get girlfriends. There were tons of said men there. I ordered omurice, and the waitress drew Rilakkuma on it for me:

Thanks, girl! I bet her job sucks, since she actually has to interact with her customers. Like praise them, and what not.

Here's another picture:


Now for some awesome engrish! The following was in a cosplay store:

"You can not be wear to try." == "You may not try items on."


The store rules! Thank goodness I didn't buy anything, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to returnded it!

At one of the train stops on the way back to the dorm, I found this Arashi poster:

Too bad they're advertising beer!

Upon returning, Yinzhou had a special present for me...

An uchiwa (fan) from the Arashi concert she went to! Thanks, Yinzhou!!!♥

So anyway, that was my trip to Akiba in a nutshell. It was interesting! But to be honest, it's really not something I'm into. I call it 「見たくない日本」 or "The Japan I don't want to see". But overall, it was an experience! And I did have fun.

Well I just finished my homework, so I'm off to bed! I have a kanji quiz and a presentation tomorrow, so wish me luck! Preferably good luck.

Goodnight!