Sat night out

Note: a wise fellow blogger creates nick names for those she writes about, so that their identities stay relatively anonymous. So from now on I have decided to do the same so that I can write more freely about my social circle over here.

I had a pretty awesome weekend.
I dont often write about the sort of normal nights out that I have here in Tokyo. But I think I will start to document them. They wont be of much interest to you guys, but its fun for me to write about them and have them documented here.
It was a friends Birthday. We all met up in Shibuya at the Elephant Cafe, sort of Asian Fusion, we did a set menu and nomihodai (all you can drink). It was a really good time. I met some new people which is always great and got to hang out with my lil group of girls who I am growing to love more and more each week we spend together. A, You, JJ, T-cat, & M. After dinner we moved on to karaoke. I have to say I really love karaoke.
(If you come out to karaoke with me the things I am most likely to sing are: Norah Jones "dont know why"; Dusty Springfield "Son of a Preacher man"; Stevie Nicks "Dreams"; something by Madonna or Fiona Apple and probably Micheal Jackson.)
It was a really large group of us though, maybe 20 in all, so I only sang two songs, but still had such a good time. At some point we were joined by a few more folks including a young man dressed as a dinosaur. That was weird, but funny. After karaoke about 7 of us went back and crashed at JJ place. The party kept on going when we got there, drinking game, scrabble and lots of horsing around till about 4am. I fell asleep on the couch and kind of half participated in it all. Everyone slept till about 10. I woke up not feeling too bad, but everyone else was suffering. I cleaned JJs flat while everyone else went back to sleep. I felt really bad for JJ cause she lives with roommates and we kinda trashed the place, and they are all always so nice about letting people stay over and so I decided to give back a little by scrubbing their kitchen sink.
After cleaning, me and T-cat headed out together for the station around 3. But we decided to stop of at a kombini on the way, which turned into having coffee, which turned into having dinner at Zest a tex mex place, which turned into having desert at the kombini and finally hopping onto the Yamanote line and heading of on our different routs home.

I am back at my flat in inaka Japan. But its always nice to come home, even if no one is here. My little loft bed is so comfy and I am reading a really good book right now, The Northern Lights. I like it a lot. I am going to crawl in bed now and read it.
Oyasumi

Halloween 2007 We ROCKED IT!

I have not had the chance to write about Halloween yet. It was a while back but better late than never I always say, so a quick entry about Halloween.

I had a particularly good one this year. I went out with my Nihongo gurupu of gals. We all met at JJs place and got ready. We decided to revive the 80s for that night. When I got to JJs, T-cat was already there and we started getting dressed. A few other kids trickled in gradually and we had a rather large party happening. All the girls were dressed in 80s regalia and T-cat and I became the hairdressers teasing and spraying every ones hair into amazing 80s dos. T-cat did an amazing job with eye shadow too. After that we took cabs up the street to a bar near Ebisu station. The crowd was very international and EVERYONE was in costume which was really fun. I bumped into Navi who strangely knows a friend, who knows T-cat. The world is so small. We danced the night away. We closed the place down and were some of the last to leave the bar! Then we all took cabs back to JJs and slept. I had to wake up at 9am that morning (Sun) and rush back to Ibaraki to meet my IC and move apartments. It was such a rough day. After only having slept a few hours I had to spend the day lugging all my stuff from my old apartment to my new one. And let me tell ya, that hairspray did not want to come out. I washed my hair 3 times that day and it STILL felt sticky!!

Its serious business people.

I have neglected my blog in the most horrible way. I am truly sorry. I am just busy and lazy and lame.

Anyway, I went to Nikko yesterday. It was beautiful. It was the most perfect day to go. I had the day off, Tuesday, I am not sure why, but no one that works for my branch had work that day. well i took the opportunity to miss the weekend crowds and trek up to Nikko for the day. Nikko is a small town in Tochigi prefecture. Its famous for its shrines and temples. One in particular, the Toshogu shrine. It is a very flashy temple you might say. Its covered in intricate carvings and painted bright colors. Its very uncharacteristic of some of the other Buddhist shrines I have seen here. It reminded me of the sort of Buddhist shrines we saw in Darjeeling.

The train ride up took 2 hours. I love riding on trains though, so that was a treat for me. It was SUCH a nice day too. The sky was so blue and I had the best time just looking out the window.

The town of Nikko is not very interesting. I basically headed straight for the temple complex as soon as I arrived. Its about a 15min walk from the station. On the way you pass a very famous bridge called the Shinkyou bridge. It is very beautiful.

Then you enter the temple complex from near the base of the bridge. Its a bit like a temple park. There are several temples and shrines on the grounds. Both Shinto and Buddhist. The most famous is the Toshogu Shrine, but another really interesting one was the Rinnoji temple. I also saw a Buddhist service of sorts. I really wanted to take pictures, but it would have been inappropriate. But there was a monk and he was chanting in front of a fire. It was really interesting.

I wondered around the grounds and visited all the temples and shrines. It was a really nice day. Its fall so many of the leaves where changing, which was especially nice in this area.

I was pressed for time so i did not visit Nikkos other famous attraction which its National Park, with waterfalls and a lake. I must go back. Also wanna visit one of the onsen!

Oh yeah, and there was this little shrine for children. I dont know what little children pray for. Maybe good weather so they can play outside. Or maybe toys or candy, well you got me, but it was really cute.


OK well this is a pretty boring entry. The only funny thing that happened was when I was riding on the train home I fell asleep and put my foot up on the seat across from me. Only a little bit of my shoe was touching and it was not even touching the seat itself, it was on the front of the seat. Anyway, I got yelled at by the man sitting across from me. Old men are always yelling at me.

If you wanna see more pictures of Nikko check out my Picsa gallary. Just follow this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/Marjoriebyrd/Nikko