From Harlem to Japan

彼女はめっちゃかわいいね。

A girl we spotted in the subway. :)

FOR THOSE WHO CANT READ JAPANESE GOOGLE TRANSLATE IS YOUR FRIEND! :)

Hey yall! I'm back!

I realize I've been constantly putting my blog off. ごめん！I actually could not think of a direction for my blog. I don't want to just ramble on about my life. I want something informative. And even though Jade thinks that it doesn't think it makes sense because of the title of my blog. HOWEVER, I want this to be thought of loosely as GAY GIRLS GUIDE TO JAPAN.

But I digress...

I just got home from the WETTEST pride parade, and the FIRST I've ever walked in. レインボーパレードいきました！すごいでしたよ! とてもたのしい！！:) It rained on us boohoo. But it doesn't matter we were still proud through the drops!

So, because it was raining instead of going slutty, I dressed down and tried to butch it up a bit. ;)


It was SO RAINY. It was such a crappy day that we lost some members!!! (obviously they weren't dedicated gays. ONCE IN A LIFETIME EXPERIENCE AND YOU MISSED IT BECAUSE OF RAIN? coughcoughbrandoncoughcough) Anna and I walked ALL THE WAY TO THE STATION IN THE RAIN. Her in flip flops! It was a bad idea. :( But when we got to the station, once I was ready to buy my ticket I REALIZED I FORGOT MY WALLET! But Anna was sweet about it and spotted me money (I'm going to give it back to you very soon love!)

So we went on the train HOPING that it wouldn't be raining in Osaka.
It was.
But we were げんき　none the less!

(Corey is a hot ass tamale. Photo Cred: Jade)

So we get there and the crowd is pretty scarce, but we were like two hours early. By the time we were ACTUALLY supposed to be there it was a really nice sized group そしてたくさんレズビアン！I didn't think there were going to be that many girls showing up, but I was wrong! ^^

(I took pictures of cute couples! ^^)


かわいいですね。 (I had more, I don't know where it went!!! :'( )

Before we started walking we saw these men cosplaying pokemon, but in a Rainbow Parade kina way! ;)




They were dedicated!!! They were filled with pride! :)

First we formed like a few lines and started walking... It was terrible through the rain, but we were PROUD THE WHOLE WAY. At first it was kind of boring, but when we fell back to the DJ float we danced the two hours away! :)

I had a blast. We made friends! I befriended beautiful ladies.


From left to right: Chris, Adeline, Mayu(?), and Olga! (Adeline was the only straight girl! :P Photo Cred: Olga)

After wards we went for Ramen in しんしゃいばし because we were all hungry. きれいなまちでした！
and little Miss Adeline couldn't hang. She was drunk (at 5:30pm no less!) And had to go home! :(

Eventually we all went home though. It was super おもしろい.

Yeah so that's it! It was great. We danced we loved. We're actually going to Lady killer tomorrow　(with our new friends!! :) ). It is the last party of lady killer, and our first! So we're trying to have a good time. my next post will be on going to Explosion... and then after that I'll talk about how it was when we went to Lady Killer.

またね！

So, I've been frightfully neglectful of my blog WHERE IT COUNTS. I am IN JAPAN and yeah... that was the whole point, wasn't it?


Anyway, I'm gonna try to break this up into a few sections so they are easier to read, because I hate long streams of consciousness with no organization (i.e. most other blogs that show up in my searches). I want to have an informative blog so that if you guys want to go to Japan (specifically Kansai Gaidai) maybe I can help you out in places where I was very lost.


The Flight
So, 14 hrs seems really long and daunting, but it really isn't all that bad. Especially if you fly on the airline Renelle and I flew, which was ANA airlines. We didn't even know that we scheduled a flight with ANA through American Airlines, but we lucked out and got pretty sweet deals. I mean first class would have been nice.

Um, yeah. I'm not even messing around. First class you can actually SLEEP on this flight. (obviously I don't know about other first classes, but even economy seating is freaking high tech) It was pretty sweet. Ms. Renelle was asked if she wanted to change her seats, and for some reason she said no... There is still some bad blood between us for that one! :P


Economy seating was really cool. I paid about $1400 for round trip, so i would hope so! Actually being in the ANA terminal already made you feel like you were in Japan. People were speaking in Japanese before you even got on the plane. And ON the plane the flight attendants did NOT really speak English. It was very difficult for them to understand you, but they were very attentive none the less. We had this awesome tv and free headphones (which i thought they stopped doing). You can check the services here. They had awesome games A LOT of movies ( I saw slumdog millionaire! It was beautiful) and your menu on there. There was free alcohol, which isn't the best decision while you fly (nausea), but we went for it anyway. Being the drinking age is sweet. :)

They also gave us food, which i wasn't too excited about Renelle loved it, but it was just ok.

In Tokyo -> Connecting flight

When we got to Tokyo (which is where our connecting flight was) we just kind of followed the throng of Japanese people getting off the craft. On the flight they gave us these two forms that were in Japanese that we needed to fill out to get through customs. When we got to customs we filled these things out and gave them to the tellers. The tellers took out CoE's :( and the I think they gave us a sticker, but it doesn't matter. lol Well it does, its really important, but who cares. Remind me to put the video of us landing later? Okthanks. ;)

Anyway, sucky for us we have to pick up our luggage and RE CHECK IT IN. Wack, but at the luggage carousel we found Corey!

This is Corey holding her first can of her beloved grapefruit chuhai. The beginning of the end. :P

We got REAL food here. Most of which i could stomach, however i was still nauseaous from the flight.

In Narita Airport (NRT), Osaka

Instead of being intelligent people and exchanging our gobs of cash in Tokyo (which i knew had banks out the wazoo). We waited until we got ALL THE WAY TO OSAKA and realized that NRT airport did NOT have currency exchange. And after we got our bags (met Matthew) and found our pick up service (whom we had to pay $25 to) we were instructed to (quickly) buy groceries to sustain us for the night, because places in the area were to be closed. It was not very pleasant. So, Renelle being the trooper that she was, ellected to be my ATM as i had loads of money in Cash and Money Orders (and dollars are not accepted really anywhere in Japan. You need Yen). Good job Renelle! :)

So we bought some TakoYaki and fried rice. (not my picture)

Yum. It satisfied us for the night.

Seminar house ho!

Then we took all of our crap and loaded it into the bus. We met around 15 people (but the cool kids sat in the back aka us). It took us about 30mins to drive to the dorms... Which are pretty freaking sweet. We zoomed by tons of Love Hotels and everything was in Japanese. But we still didn't feel like we were in Japan. I still don't really feel this way. It feels like I'm stuck in Little Japan in NYC. We get to our "neighborhood",registered in seminar 2 (others in seminar 4), and then we went to our rooms.

There I met Helen. :)

She's a really cool girl and she was just willing to hang out with me, even though she just met me. Love Helen! Our phones didn't work in Japan, and neither did our internet (if i remember correctly). The first night was quite miserable. We had a curfew (10 or 11 pm I cant rememeber). So I couldn't visit any of my friends (Both Matthew and Helen lived in Seminar house 4), but Corey lived in Seminar 3 (where I lived!) so Helen adn I went to go find her,because we were sort of miserable and bored.

We met a few people awkwardly, and that was that. I spent my night wondering why i was in Japan and crying off and on. The time difference and the jet lag was EXCRUCIATINGLY depressing. I heard that some guy from my school couldn't take it and flew back to NY like the next day or two.

What a NOOB because it got WAY better after that one painfully depressing no phone or facebook in my room having night.

But here I am today! Happy as a Clam! More information in later posts... I think this one is long enough, ne? :*

So, It's been a while since I posted something else. ALMOST FOUR MONTHS! I'm sorry I've been so neglectful. This is what I've been up to.

Scholarship

Although I was little upset about Dipset stealing my title, instead of becoming violent and sending them a lot of hate-mail and robbing people, I decided to make another episode of your favorite kids show JAPANESE FOR GANGSTAHS!

Have you ever said to yourself "Yo son. I would love to learn Japanese, but none of these videos really speak to a homie." Well here is the answer to your prayers!

This is a video with some useful Japanese and Ebonics for those of us who are trying to become multilingual but have set backs. I know if you're like me, you think in Ebonics and then you have to translate everything into English. And by the time you translate what someone says from English into Ebonics YOU MISSED ALL THE JAPANESE. SO, this is for you. :)!

I'm not sure if everyone has heard of Dipset. I know I have because I'm from Harlem. I think Kam'ron knows somebody who knows somebody who shot somebody that baby sat me...or something. Nevertheless this is one of their CDs.

"This CD was inspired by a recent Dipset / Purple City trip out to Japan, where DJ Head does his thing for this thing called hip-hop."

Those Bastards.

So yet again I should be doing homework this fine spring break, but I like making videos & blogging better! xP