Sunday, November 28, 2010

Day 244

 

I've been seeing commercials for these things everywhere. Home television sets in 3D! They have these little 3D glasses for you to take a look as well, and after five minutes, my eyes started to hurt. They're really milking this 3D gimmick for all it's worth. I've seen commercials for 3D computer screens as well.



Saturday, November 27, 2010

Day 243: USJ Christmas

Yesterday I went to Universal Studios Japan with a group of friends, mostly to see all the Christmas decorations as Christmas is my favorite time of the year.

Last time I went to USJ, I failed to get a photo with the Cookie Monster, Elmo, and co. as their shift was ending and were seriously sprinting away from everyone. This time I managed to catch the group of Sesame Street Monsters, but of course, there was a huge group of people. It would take too much time to try and get a picture with everyone so I just focused on getting a photo with my favorite Monster.

 

This little girl seriously cockblocked me. She went up to him and asked in the cutest voice ever, "Cookie Monster, can I take a picture with you?" Holy crap, she even won me over.

 

But I got a photo with my Monster in the end. :)



Thursday, November 25, 2010

Day 240

 

I'm not sure if you can tell, but those are all Harry Potter posters hanging up and down the ceiling of the Umeda train station. 

But I just watched Harry Potter movie last night and it was great fun. An interesting tidbit about movie watching in Japan. So there are a good number of restaurants and recreational places that offers a "Ladies" discount price, the movie theaters being one of them. The standard movie admission ticket is an ridiculous 1800 yen ($21.50 USD), but usually every Wednesday is "Ladies' Day" where if you're a lady, an admission ticket costs 1000 yen ($11.95 USD). I usually don't worry too much about trying to schedule watching movies on Wednesday since there's a movie theater chain that offers a foreign student discount of the same amount, and is also applicable any day of the week. 

However, sometimes when I go to watch the movies with Nick, I'll get a Ladies' Day ticket and a foreign student ticket, give Nick the foreign student ticket, and use the Ladies' Day ticket for myself. However, for Harry Potter, the best time slot ended up being at another theater where I wasn't sure if they had a foreign student discount or not. I went to the theater in the morning to buy the tickets and when I went to the counter to ask, the staff member just started saying since it was Ladies' Day that I should just buy that ticket. I got annoyed and was about to be late for class so I just told her to give me two Ladies' Day tickets. 

So now we had the problem of how to get Nick into the theater with a Ladies' Day ticket since I wasn't sure how closely they would check our tickets. So what did we end up doing? While walking up to the movie staff and giving them our tickets, talked loudly in English as to distract and intimidate them from confronting us. 

And yes, it worked.

Mom, Dad, aren't you proud of me?


By the by, wasn't the animated sequence of the Three Brothers, beautifully awesome? Useless tidbit: the guy who directed that sequence is Swiss animation director Ben Hibon, and just recently signed to direct a Peter Pan remake.


Monday, November 22, 2010

Day 238

 

How Juso celebrates the upcoming Christmas season. It looks a bit better at night when they turn on the lights, but it still looks pretty ghetto. :P


  

And about 5 minute train ride from Juso is HEP5, a popular swanky shopping mall in Umeda. In front of the mall was this beautiful Christmas setup. 

Sigh. Poor Juso. 


Saturday, November 13, 2010

Day 229




Sigh. Oh, messy desk. My Grammar midterm is coming up this Friday. I've been having a bit more trouble wrapping my head around the grammar as of late so I'm studying way more in advance than I usually would have. 

And yes, that's Lord of the Rings playing on my computer. Fellowship of the Ring, if you're curious. :D


Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Day 224

 

The night I took this photo I was waiting for my friend on the Dotonbori bridge. I think I made a post around the time I came to Japan how there are a lot of hosts that stand around on this bridge hoping to pick up customers. While I was waiting, this young guy walked up to me and started to talk to me. He only managed to say 3 words before I freaked and bolted to the other side of the bridge. I knew he wasn't an izakaya employee trying to get customers because they usually are holding menus and this guy wasn't carrying anything in his hands. He was just standing there, kind of watching people, which is actually what hosts that frequent the bridge do, except this guy didn't look like one. My friend came up to me a few minutes later and I pointed the creepy guy out to him. He took a look at the guy and deadpanned, "Maybe he's a cheap host."

I punch him rawr.


Thursday, November 4, 2010

Day 219

 
Last weekend, my host family took me to a famous onsen that was actually the model for the onsen in the Hayao Miyazaki film, Spirited Away. It was an over six hour drive. Still haven't decided if it was worth it.