Cosplay, the Livehouse and Minami's Sayonara Party

Several things have been going on in the last little while. It would probably be better if I talked about them all in chronological order. So first, Tiffany got a new host sister! Yay! Only, she isn’t a ryugakusei. Her name is Ai-chan and she comes from Tailand and is staying in Japan to study in and graduate from a Japanese high school so that she can enter a Japanese university. She used to be a ryugakusei a couple years back, so her Japanese is fluent. I met her along with another one of her Thai friends and we went out to karaoke, Tiffany included. It was neat little karaoke place that I hadn’t been to before, a little expensive but - Free All-You-Eat Ice cream! After karaoke we discovered a Moss Burger right outside Odori eki and went there for supper. I’m trying to practice my Japanese more, so I only spoke in Japanese to Ai, even though she is also really good at English. Tiffany wanted to show me the anime shop that she always goes to (because Tiff is otaku >.<) so we went there next. I wasn’t entirely interested at looking at all the merchandise, but perhaps a little too excited about the costumes. Then I found out that we were allowed to wear the costumes and take puri kura with them! There was a single puri kura booth just sitting there beside the change rooms. Only hyaku en fee on top of the usual puri kura fee, which is amazing. Tiffany wasn’t keen on dressing up, so me and Ai picked out our costumes and took amazing awesome anime-chick puri kura. I wish I could buy a costume like that. I swear I would wear it around Odori. In fact, I have actually made the decision that I am finding and buying a panda suit. And I will wear that panda suit to many places.

Next on the docket; this actually comes in two parts. Last Friday I went out to Odori with Dylan. Of course, I took him to the same anime shop that I just talked about. Oh, but first we had Moss Burger, because it is right beside the shop, and it was Dylan’s first time going there so it is important to note. He actually ended up buying three burgers because one of them had shrimp in it, and he was hungry. Ah-hem anyway, our purpose for going to the anime shop was to dress in cosplay and take wicked puri kura. That was fun. I was dressed first, so I stood outside Dylan’s door waiting, and posed for the Japanese schoolgirls that happened to be browsing. I was going to take pictures with them, but the store clerk wouldn’t allow any pictures. After that we walked around the streets a bit. There is this place in that always mystified me. It is essentially a door leading in a black abyss. I had went down there once before by myself, just down the steps a little bit, then turned back and ran away. Then the second time me and Dylan went down together, a little farther, but again ran away. Because it was just all black with some lights at the bottom somewhere, and silent. We had no idea what it was. SO. We made a pact that the next time we saw this place we would just go down there once and for all and find out what the hell it is. This time, we actually did it. We went down the stairs, slowly, and this time was creepier than ever. It sounded like people were speaking somewhere inside, and there was another sound very similar to the sharpening of a knife. But we made a pact. So we went down and stood outside this door in a small hallway-type place. People were talking inside. Sharpening the knife. Me and Dylan are whispering to each other about what we should do. At one point he tried to go back up the stairs, but I wouldn’t follow. No way was I giving up this potentially amazing adventure. So he came back down. I was building up the courage to walk into the room and start talking to these strangers with the knives when one of said strangers walked into the hallway. He seemed a bit surprised to see two gaijin standing there. I asked what this place was, and to my surprise, he said it was a live music house. Holy crap! So, we walked into the place and sure enough to our left there was a nice sized stage, some disco balls, a few tables and lounge chairs, and a bar on the far right. We walked around the place for a little bit, trying not to jump up and down like little girls, and repeating ‘sugoi’ over and over again. Live bands played there every night, except this night was a holiday. We decided that we could come back tomorrow night.

And so begins part two.

Getting to Odori the next day was a bit of trouble. I got to my subway station, only to find out that the subways were all stopped on the nanboku line because of some accident. Someone must have fallen onto the tracks or something, I still havn’t heard anything from the media about it. So that sucked. I was so excited to go to this live house. But luckily I know some meager Japanese, and managed to elicit the pity of an older woman who also wanted to go to Odori. She was going to call her husband to give her a ride, and she let me come along with her. Thank god for Japanese people. I finally managed to meet up with Dylan in a bread shop. Odori station was packed full of people, it was crazy. I don’t know if it was because of the accident, or what. But we made it to the livehouse well before the bands started playing. I don’t know how many that were going on for the night, but we saw about three I think before we left. Each played a whole bunch of songs. Very very loud. Very Awesome. Our favorite band was Smarttail. After they left the stage, we went into the hallway place where they were selling band merchandise and bought one of their cds. The band members were all just hanging out back there, and we got a picture with guys from Smarttail. The lead singer even got a picture with us on his own cellphone! Smarttail actually has a music video for one of their songs. You can google Smarttail and find it if you want. decided that the next time we go there, we need to befriend one of the bands so that they invite us to more gigs, and to hang out. If we can pull this off, the ensuing awesomeness will be beyond epic.

Now for Minami’s sayonara party. It happened on Sunday. Minami is going to Kobe soon to enter university, so she had a going-away party with all the rotary exchangers and one of her good friends. Tiffany and Emmi were unable to come. The party was held at Minami’s house and mostly consisted of eating cheesecake, listening to Lady Gaga (and watching her video for Telephone) and making videos with her video camera. That was all really fun. We went out later to karaoke and then to an Indian restaurant for supper, sharing bowls of flavoured curry dip and three giant pieces of pita bread called nans.

(P.S, The people in the livehouse weren't actually sharpening knives, it turned out. They were scraping old paint off a part of the floor.)