Moomin Cafe Adventure

Adventure Time

Lately I've been having lots of adventures with Macee~~

Yesterday, she and I went to Shibuya to apply for jobs at an English school.  Afterwards, we got coffee from Starbucks and walked around for a little bit.  While we were walking, we discovered a pet store.  I'll let the following picture speak for itself....

After freaking out over finding a Meerkat for sale, we decided to go shopping since Macee had never been to 109 before~  Then we came home and cooked dinner together and planned future epic adventuring times!



Today, we walked together to Toyo's second campus because we both have classes there this semester and wanted to be sure that we remembered where it was.  When we got there the sakura were just too pretty to pass up a chance to take pictures~!

On our way home we took a cute little back street and went up some super steep stairs and figured out another way back to school~  It would be an awesome short cut if it weren't for having to climb the staircase of doom.

November 20th

We went on a "Tour of Shitamachi" with Kenji.  Shitamachi is the area we live in. Kenji and one of his previous teachers took us around and showed us lots of fun things around I-House like a puppet museum, a traditional sake shop, Nezu Shrine, and the cemetery where Yoshinobu Tokogawa is buried.  My favorites were the shrine and the cemetery~  The Shrine was gorgeous and Molly and I had fun running around looking at the koi fish and the turtles haha  When you go to the shrine you go to the alter, throw in a coin, clap, then say a prayer, which I got to do :)  We also got to run through the red gates! Poor Kenji hit his head on them and, despite our concern, Molly and I couldn't help but laugh.  I'll post a video below~  When we went to the cemetery, we all got into an in-depth conversation about why Japan would be the safest place to be during a zombie apocalypse because everyone is cremated here so there are no bodies to become zombies.  This theory held up great until Kenji informed us that during the time of the Samurai bodies were buried and we realized we would have to fight samurai zombies... haha

 

November 18th

This day started off with me and Molly being even more tired than usual, so for some reason we thought it would be a good idea for us to both drink two coffees before class..... Needless to say we will never make that mistake again.  We were so hyped up through the entire class, which resulted in a tower of coffee cans on our desk that our teacher questioned at one point, but never actually got mad at us for, as well as some interesting additions to our Japanese books.  That night, we had a "Takoyaki Party" in Eddie's room (Takoyaki are balls of cooked dough with octopus inside them).  Eddie did a great job cooking and I had a GREAT time at this party.  We had a giant tickle fight, taught my boys how to dance the macarena (for the record any time I refer to 'my boys' in this blog it means Daiki, Naoki, Takuto, and Masaki), had a chance to hang out with Akira again for the first time since the very first big I-House party, met Daiki's friend Kazuya, and watched creepy Japanese ghost movies.

November 16th

This was a REALLY rough day for me.  I won't go into details because it just plain sucked.  I'll just leave it at some things didn't work out the I had hoped and I was really upset.  However~ because I am blessed with some fantastic friends and the #1 roommate of all time, it turned into a pretty great day.  Molly went out and bought me a big chocolate birthday cake then Nick, Trevor, Eddie, and Alex came over to help eat it~  Nick even came in his Pooh PJs so I could cuddle with Pooh Bear and feel better \(^_^)/ We had fun and it made me feel so much better!

Pooh bear cuddles!

awesome yummy cake that Molly bought me in Nippori

November 13th

Molly and I were SUPER lazy for about 90% of this day.  It was a Sunday so we didn't have to be anywhere or do anything really so we didn't even change out of our pajamas until the evening when we decided to venture to Nippori and try out the "Renoir Cafe" that we pass by all the time.  This turned into an adventure of us being at a place that was WAY too fancy for how we were dressed, where we laughed at the terrible English on the menu and gagged on a 600 yen (aprox $6) scoop of vanilla ice cream that had some gross jelly stuff on it.  While we were at the cafe, Daiki texted us and asked if we wanted to go to an izakaya (a Japanese pub for those of you who might not know).  So we rushed back home to actually dress decently then headed to Shinjuku to meet Daiki.

the vanilla ice cream would have been lovely if the other stuff hadn't been on it.

fantastic Engrish

Izakaya time with Daiki

November 12th

I went to Shinjuku with Daiki, Takuto, Naoki, and Masaki.  Just an evening out with my boys haha We went to Burger King because here in Japan Burger King has an "as many whoppers as you can eat in 30 minutes" deal.  I didn't even try because I do good to make it through one hamburger! But I had fun watching them do it.  I'm pretty sure four was the most any of them ate, but to me that's super impressive.  After we went to eat we wandered around Shinjuku for a while in search of an arcade, where we played air hockey (I lost terribly) and played a zombie shooting game (I was pretty good at this much to everyone's surprise) and then took purikura (this part was per my request of course). I think we had a little -too- much fun decorating our pictures though haha.  It was such a fun day and honestly one of my favorites in Japan thus far.  We weren't doing anything super special but I have so much fun just hanging out with the guys. We are always so goofy and silly and just have a good time, it's great~ :)

air hockey~~

Takuto looks like Mario lol

November 9th

This day was just an average day in the life of Lauren and Molly really, but it just happened to be the start of the running "poke vs pork" joke we have with Kenji.  We were all sitting at lunch having a discussion about how the two words sound exactly the same when you same them like a Japanese person would.  Which resulted in me thinking Kenji was calling me pork when he was saying poke so I asked him if he was calling me fat.  So now we "ポーク" each other all the time :P   This was also the same day that Kumba and I were throwing paper airplanes at each other across the lunchroom and teaching everyone how to make "cootie catchers" and paper snowflakes haha

 Our kanji writing/drawings with Kenji

Just chillin' out in the cafeteria after class

November 6th

Molly and I ordered pizza for the first time.  From Dominos. It was amazing and tasted like real American pizza and truly deserves it's own special post because it is so very difficult to find real pizza in Japan.  And by real pizza I mean pizza that does not have corn or mayo on it.  Me and Molly were so excited that we could order it online (in english!) and then they delivered it all the way to our door (on the inside of the building not just to the office!)  it's the ultimate food for when we are feeling super lazy haha