Long post is long

Long time no post. It's been a week officially since I got here! I've been wanting to update more but there is no internet at Dorothy's apartment- however now it is orientation so we have internet at the hotel.

Sweat Angels:
In the past week, Dorothy and I have gone with Marco and his dad to ikea, and a few other shops looking for furniture for Doro's apartment. She eventually accumulated a futon, table, mini fridge and "denshi oven" (microwave and oven and toaster combo thing) haha. It has been totally hot and humid here. We have made a lot of "sweat angels" as described in this picture:

So attractive. I know.

 Marco informs us that even though we have an air conditioner, and as much as we want to burst into the apartment and turn it on full blast at 17 degrees Celsius, that the Japanese government discourages it. They would like everyone to keep the temp at about 27 degrees because that way, it is better for the environment, and Marco says better for your health. (because it is healthy to sweat I guess). As much as I love this idea, I can't help but feel like I am still melting away at 27 degrees. So I'm excited for autumn and the cooler temperatures to come.

Bites:
Another thing which is uncomfortable would be the mosquitoes. I counted,  by the end of day 5, I had 20 mosquito bites. To this day I've probably accumulated 26. (And even though Marco had been to all the same places as us, he hadn't gotten any bites! So basically the mosquitoes are some Japanese governmental plan or something to scare foreigners away haha.) This wouldn't be that bad if I hadn't recently developed an allergic reaction to these bugs. (In July, I was bit and my ankle swelled up to the size of a baseball). Not all of them developed a reaction, but a good number of them did. My arm being the worse:

Marco with his translation skills though helped me buy some medicine, and it was looking a lot better and feeling a lot better by the next day  :)

Photo by Dorothy. That would be Marco putting the medicine on my bites haha.

 Oh, we got our revenge on the bugs later. and were extra careful about using the screen door after that:

BWAHAHA

Anyway enough complaining, because besides those two things I am having a great time so far!

FOOD:

Haha, Marco and his dad took us out to dinner too one night. This picture just makes me want to die, everything is so delicious @_@

Tempura and dipping sauce, cold Udon and dipping sauce, Miso soup, and Sushi! (careful, wasabi is hidden under the fish as I soon learned) 

In Marco's dad's car, they have a tv. So when we hit traffic coming home, they turned on Golf and started watching tv while driving-ish haha.

Breakfast one morning: more milk tea and tuna mayo onigiri of course. Then apple yogurt and "Meron Pan" aka melon bread (although it doesn't taste like melon). Japanese Yogurt is SOOOOO good. I can't even tell you how much better it is. There's no artificial coloring or anything and the pieces of fruit in it are so good and ughh just so much better than in America.

Lunch  one day. Ramen! totally delicious (although salty and greasy haha)

CURRY RICE!

MISTER DONUTS!!!!!!!! MY LOVE:

Pain de Lion is like my favorite thing ever now too. His mane, if you will notice, is a donut. (Note: Japanese milk is very different. Thick and tastes like corn to me, but Dorothy says it tastes like condensed milk. )
The theme song  to the commercials goes like this: "ii koto aru zo, MISTA DONUTS" which means "there are good things here...MISTER DONUTS." but then of course, Doro and I changed it to fit the book I just finished reading...JURASSIC PARK so "kowai koto aru zo...JURASSIC PARK" (there are scary things here...jurassic park!). Inside joke, but I thought I'd share...or else this picture wouldn't be so funny.

Note: if anyone wants to send me a care package with "the lost world" book, (and "get him to the greek" movie) I would be happeh. <3

Close up of a plastic bottle. The garbage is very picky here. There are like 10 places you can throw away garbage: burnable, unburnable, plastic, bottles, cans, plastic bottles, recyclable paper etc etc. Most of the things we throw away are either burnable or plastic. You can see on the bottle that there are two recycling symbols. One is for the label and cap...most companies make the labels extremely easy to tear off so you can simply toss the label and cap in the plastic trash, and then throw the bottle with the plastic bottle trash.

Oh also, most of the household stuff like shampoo, laundry soap and handsoap etc...How it works is you buy the first bottle. And then they sell little refillable packages of the same stuff. So you aren't throwing away this big huge clunky piece of plastic from shampoo or whatever, you just refill it!

For how environmentally conscious they are though, a lot of things are made out of plastic and they give away a mass number of plastic bags for the smallest items. (something I was trying not to use too much of in the states).

Blind:
When I was walking down the street in my new cute heels my grandma bought me, I kept tripping over all these yellow things stickin out of the sidewalk and in buildings everywhere! After asking Marco what they were, (because if they were "grips" they were doing a horrible job and making me fall over instead of keeping me from slipping) he said they were for the blind.

You can see the lines that lead up to little dots. kind of? Sorry for the bad photog quality. Anyway, you can put your little blind stick there and know where to go!

Tattoos:

 I always thought tattoos were srs taboo in Japan because of the Yakuza. And I'm sure there are still places where you can't go in if you have them (water parks for example or hot springs) but more and more on this trip I saw a good number of people with tattoos (the younger generation that is). The most when we were in Ikea, not surprising as it is a western store for people probably more accepting of western tradition?

Random Stupid Cat Thing I love:
Basically, in a game center (arcade), this robotic cat was tied to a pole and just rolled around on the floor forever

SHOPPING: 
For Dorothy's apartment, we visited a hyaku en shop the other day called Daiso! (equivalent to the dollar tree). On the way out we went into this store called "Craft Park" and found TOTES CUTE STUFF!

That would be the new backpack I had to buy, cute frilly socks and a new makeup bag. Also pictured is dorothy's new coin purse. The shopping bag says "good feeling life for you" haha. Also, that Alpaca on my backpack, a little addition by me. I found it in a different store and HAD to buy it (so cute!) Dorothy also bought an Alpaca floor rug which resulted in my fave photo ever basically:

HE'S SO ANGRY!

 At that store, there was also this gem, little red riding hood engrish (japanese english which happens quite frequently here as I'm sure it happens in Japan. Funny translations...)

Quote "WHY IS YOUR MOUSE SO BIG?"

Fashion:
 While trying to look cute when you are sweating away is hard, Dorothy manages to pull it off haha. Here's a few photos I got of her on her street.:

Orientation:
And so here we are. First day of orientation at the Sun Route Hotel in Japan. I will find out my host family in a few days, but tonight was a night for settling in and meeting some of the students. And more food.

Basically the area we are staying

Scary eyes advertisement near the photo booths. (purikura) In these photobooths, sensors find where your eyes are and photoshop them to look bigger and "cuter" mine are already giant so you can imagine how it looks haha. I will post photos later.

My new friend Kanoko who has been extremely helpful.

Fin
Anyway, I think that is it for now. More to come. A last note: It's very interesting being a minority. Whenever we see other foreigners on the street we're always like "WOAH" and of course, especially since dorothy and I are crazy, we stick out and everyone is staring at us all the time (probs even if we weren't crazy).
Oh! also today this cute little girl comes up to us and starts yapping away in Japanese like "what nationality are you" and then would just ask us other things and dorothy told her "sorry I don't speak japanese very well so I don't understand" and she just says "OH you understand!!!!!!!" so cuuuute.