30 Seconds: Ueno Station

Japanniversary!

My one year Japanniversary was on Saturday, so I have been trying to have a super Japanese weekend. On Saturday night after work we went out for giant tuna head. I found the prospect of eating a giant tuna head a little worrying, and when they brought out a giant grilled tuna head, I was very worried because it looked scary, but eating it was fine! There were some really delicious bits. I even ate some eyeball jelly! It wasn't gross! I would rather eat tuna eye jelly than natto! After giant tuna, three of us went to karaoke for a couple hours.

Yesterday was massively Japanese. It started with a visit to the Nerima Animation Carnival. We went to the Toei Animation Studio gallery and then took a bus to another part of the festival where we watched people make mochi and then got to eat some mochi while it was still warm! Fresh mochi! Sugoi! And we got free amazake, yum. Then another bus to another venue where we watched an amaaaaazing live action Fresh PreCure show. It was life changing.

After the anime thing, we switched to traditional Japanese activities. We went to a garden/cultural center near my place for tea ceremony and lacquerware. The tea ceremony was really lovely and interesting, but it was so uncomfortable to kneel for so long! My legs were just painfully asleep. But I really enjoyed it anyway! I looooooved the lacquer. We decorated some sake cups; it took a long time, but I had fun!

Three of us went to an izakaya after because we wanted to have Japanese food for dinner. It was nice. And after that I met up with my friend and his co-worker in Shinjuku at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office observation tower - amazing view of Tokyo! - and after a lot of wandering around in underground passageways, we ended up doing some karaoke for an hour.

Today I plan to go to Omotesando and maybe Meiji Jingu before meeting up with friends in Shinjuku later. Will be maybe slightly less Intense Japanese Experience Explosion than the rest of the weekend has been, but it should still be good for the Japanniversary!

Enjoy some pictures of me eating fresh mochi, the place where we did tea and lacquer things, three of our cups (mine is the flowered one), some lovely cupcakes that were made for us, and a delicious salad that was part of our dinner. And enjoy 30 seconds of mochi-making (you can hear us talking, sorry).

apologies, apologies

Sorry! I haven't updated in a long time! It's just that so many things happened I didn't know where to start! Valentine's Day! Epic karaoke! A rainbow restaurant!

I'll try to make some kind of epic post of epicness this weekend: Saturday is my one year Japanniversary, so I should definitely commemorate it here somehow!

For now, please enjoy this random commercial with Ichiro in. He's in loads of ads here, mostly encouraging me to drink Kirin beer, but sometimes for other things too. I just started seeing this one on TV recently, and I kind of love it.