They'll call it chance, or luck, or call it Fate

Here's the last part of my winter vacation updates.

On Thursday night, Kiri and I slept over at Leslie's apartment so that we could get to Comiket bright and early on Friday. I was so excited to get the chance to go, cause Comiket is only one of the biggest anime and manga events in the world. There's always a huge line to get into Comiket, so we arrived over an hour before doors were supposed to open. We met up with serria and got in line. By the time we lined-up, there was already a giant crowd waiting that must have stretched around ten minutes away from Tokyo Big Sight (where Comiket is held). We huddled like penguins in the cold until doors opened and we could go in. Very soon after entering Big Sight, we saw an awesome cosplayer cosplaying Barnaby in his hero suit and had a fangirl moment. Then it was off to look at all of the doujinshi. We looked through four huge halls of doujinshi and still managed not to see all of it. Luckily, as soon as we entered the first hall, we immediately found the Tiger and Bunny doujin. There was so much of it that I think it took up a quarter of the huge hall. I was quite pleased and immediately made a couple purchases. After some browsing we met up with Ali in the outdoor cosplay area. We had to separate from her earlier because she had to go change into her cosplay and we weren't cosplaying (but I do have plans to acquire a new cosplay for the next event). Ali was cosplaying Aeris from FFVII. We spent a bit of time trying to look at all the cosplayers, but it was too crowded since all the cosplayers and people trying to take pictures of them were essentially crammed into a courtyard area. I didn't get too many pictures of cosplayers due how crowded eveything was. We managed to find the awesome Tiger and Bunny cosplayers though (including the Barnaby cosplayer from earlier) so I was happy. (There was also a photographer who asked for pictures of the four of us gaijin girls together, even though Ali was the only one cosplaying. Our pictures are probably floating around somewhere out there on 2ch...) My final doujinshi shopping count for the day was 5 Tiger and Bunny (plus a free T&B cloth bag and clear file because they were gifts being given out by certain circles if you purchased their doujin), 1 Gundam 00, and 1 Saiyuki. We stayed over at Leslie's apartment again that night and continued with Tiger and Bunny and Booze.

( Comiket! )

Saturday, New Year's Eve, was a more relaxed day. Kiri, Leslie, and I did karaoke. Then, later in the day we met with Anna and Ali. All of us put on our warm layers and headed out to do hatsumode (the first shrine visit of the year) around midnight. We ended up at Gojo Tenjin Shrine in Ueno Park to ring in our New Year. There was a line of people waiting for midnight. There was also a large bonfire to burn the previous year's good luck charms. After midnight people were allowed to start making their offerings at the shrine. We went up to pray for good luck in the coming year. We drank traditional sweet sake afterwards. Then we bought good luck charms and fortunes for the coming year. Then it was time to go to back to Leslie's place and go to bed. Also Kiri, Leslie, and I have officially declared that 2012 is going to be the Year of No Fucks (figuratively, not literally). It's our goal to become the most awesome individual we can, by being ourselves and not caring about what others think. I'm also hoping for good things from this year because it's the year of the dragon, which is when I was born.

( Hatsumode )

Sunday was New Year's Day. Leslie, Kiri, and I went out without Anna because she had a bad headache. We had already done hatsumode, so we spent the day shopping at all of the New Year's sales in Harajuku. New Year's Day is when all the stores start selling their lucky packs. Lucky packs are bags of items (generally clothing or accessories) that are sold at greatly discounted prices. The only catch is that you usually can't see what's inside the bag before you get it, so a lot of it is up to chance. Most of the brand name stores sell lucky packs, so we took the opportunity to get some brand clothes for cheaper prices. We went to Laforet and I bought a Sixh. IBI lucky pack from h.NAOTO. It had four pieces in it: a coat, a cardigan, a skirt, and a tank top. It also came in a nice cloth bag. I'm pretty pleased with it! (It also made me realize that most of the clothing I've bought so far in Japan has been shades of black or gray. Not on purpose though. I do like colors!) Then we took a break from shopping and used Kiri's iPod to tune into the online broadcast of the ball being dropped at midnight in NYC. It was kind of a surreal moment, realizing that I was in the middle of Harajuku watching the New Year arrive in America when it had already been the New Year for over half a day in Japan. Then we stopped and did a little shopping, since Ikebukuro was on our way back anyways. Then Kiri and I picked our stuff up from Leslie's place and went back to my apartment. We finished watching (or in my case re-watching) Tiger and Bunny and had lots of feelings.

Monday was Kiri's last day in Tokyo. It was also the day of the Emperor's annual New Year's speech, so we headed into Tokyo in the morning and made our way to the Imperial Palace. January 2nd is one of the two days a year that the inner grounds of the palace are opened to the public. Things were pretty efficient when we got to the palace. We went through the most polite bag search and pat-down that I've ever experienced. Everyone was given a paper Japanese flag to wave and it was off to the inner court of the palace to see the Emperor's speech. We got to the court just in time for the speech. The Emperor appeared with the royal family in a glass enclosed balcony. He gave a short speech about his wish for Japan's recovery. I was honestly expecting the speech and appearance to be longer, but the Emperor is getting pretty old and I guess that appearing in public is getting harder for him. It was still a cool experience though. Anna, Leslie, Kiri, and I then went and got fried rice for lunch. Kiri and I had all of the Tiger and Bunny related feelings about fried rice. Later in the day we had a goodbye dinner for Kiri at one of the 270 yen izakayas. Then Kiri had to go to Shinjuku to catch her bus back to Tokushima.

( The Palace )

It was great to see Kirsten and I was sad that the break had to end. At the same time though, it was nice to have time to relax again. It was a really fun ten days, but we were so busy. We're hoping that Kiri might be able to make it up to Tokyo again during Golden Week.

I was going to update last night, but LJ was down. There's so much less to do online when LJ is down.

I had a nice time this weekend. I met up with meepalicious on Saturday afternoon. We went to a matsuri at some shrines near where she lives. We didn't know much about the matsuri at the time, but I later found out a bit more online. It was called the Tori no Ichi Matsuri. It always takes place on the day of the rooster in November. Besides the usual festival food, this matsuri was filled with booths selling decorative rakes. These rakes were covered with Japanese symbols of good fortune and are thought to rake in wealth and good fortune. It was neat to see everything. After we explored the matsuri, Leslie and I ended up wondering around the town. We unintentionally ended up in Asakusa and decided to go to Sensoji since we were so close to it.

( Tori no Ichi Pictures )

We then took the train to Ikebukuro, to wait until the time we were meeting up with corvae_regina. I stopped at a Lawson and bought a ticket to LM.C's fifth anniversary concert in January (the first of multiple concerts that I should be going to that month)! Then, Leslie and I browsed Closet Child and Otome Road, like usual. I bought one of the Tiger and Bunny comic anthologies (there's about half a dozen of them) at Animate. After that, we met up with Anna because she was off of work. We went to KFC to continue our tradition of Thanksgiving fried chicken in Japan. Anna and I then spent the night at Leslie's apartment. Before we went to bed, we had slices of apple pie (that we'd bought on the way back to the station in Ikebukuro) while we watched an episode of Tiger and Bunny.

We woke up fairly early on Sunday morning. Most of Sunday was a lazy day, with the exception of walking to First Kitchen to have lunch (where we discovered, much to my dismay, that they no longer have cheese flavor potatoes). The rest of the day was spent watching anime. First, we watched all of No.6. Oh my god, so many feelings about the ending. ;_; Shion and Nezumi were so cute though. I seriously think Nezumi might be going on my cosplay list along with Barnaby. After No.6, we watched about six more episodes of Tiger and Bunny. I needed that after No.6, cause Tiger and Bunny always makes me happy. Then, it was time to go back home and get ready for work the next day. It was a good weekend.

Tonight is the last night of my stay with meepalicious. I'd say that we had a relaxing week. We took a few different sets of dolly photos. One night we tried making hot dogs over the fire pit we put together. That part kind of failed, but we were still able to make some s'mores. We also had a failed attempt to walk to the Edward Gorey Museum because it was too far, we weren't sure we were going the right way, and it was too hot outside. We went out to eat and went to a couple different beaches with Leslie's family. At the last beach we walked around and witnessed a storm blowing in. Yesterday we did casual FMA cosplay, got lunch at the gluten-free cafe, and took cosplay photos. Today, Leslie's mom took us to Provincetown where we browsed around the fun little shops. I learned that Provincetown is also apparently where all of the gay people in Cape Cod congregate (yay!). We also got delicious gelato at a place called the Purple Feather, even though it was kind of cold and rainy. Oreo flavored gelato is yummy!

In between all of that, Leslie and I mostly sat around and watched awesome things together. Besides the Gundam, we finished watching all of Baccano. For the rest of the week we came up with goofy awesome crossover ideas like "Isaac & Miria spread happiness among the Coven of the Articulate" and "Isaac & Miria have wacky hijinks forever...IN SPACE". We've watched a bunch of movies like Clue, Star Trek, the first Pokemon movie, both the American and French versions of The Birdcage, Road to El Dorado, and Howl's Moving Castle. We also watched the Saiyuki Reload Burial and Saiyuki Gaiden OVAs and were pleased with the quality (compared to the sucky quality of the original anime). Although the Gaiden OVA moves way fast and shit goes down right away in the first episode, which means that the rest of the OVA is going to just be filled with sad (and make me cry when I watch it). Right now we're watching Inception to fix the sad feelings leftover from watching Gaiden.

Tomorrow morning we're leaving at 7 AM, so that I can get to Boston in time for my 10:40 flight. I can hardly believe that the week's already over. It was really good to spend more time with Leslie and to get the chance to see her again before I go to Japan. I'm gonna miss her, but hopefully things will work out and I'll get to see her again sooner, rather than later!

I'm at meepalicious's house in Cape Cod right now! I'm enjoying myself!

I knew the week was off to a good start when I was seated next to one of the Warblers from Glee on my flight to Boston! I didn't even really realize it until the end of the flight, but since Glee Live had been in Chicago the night before some of the secondary cast members were flying out on my flight (to the next tour stop in Boston). I thought that the guy next to me looked vaguely familiar and then at the end of the flight he started joking around with some of the other guys on the flight and I realized that they were Warblers! The one that I sat next to plays David, who has a few lines on Glee. I was too tired/shy to try and strike up any conversation with them, so I just watched from afar.

I met up with Leslie at the airport and we spent the afternoon walking around Boston. The city is really nice. We stopped and got some ramen for lunch. It wasn't as good as ramen in Japan, but it was better than packaged ramen. Then we walked around the city, looked at a couple historic buildings, and walked by the harbor. We finished the day by eating dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. We pretty tired after that because we had to carry my luggage around all afternoon, so we caught the bus back to Cape Cod. Leslie's mom met us when we got off the bus and we went back to her house.

Leslie and I started this morning with a little Tea & Gundam 00 and then we started watching Baccano because Leslie had never seen it before. We've watched about half of it so far. This afternoon we went outside and took some dolly photos with Brynn, Ichii, and Camui. Later in the day, Leslie's mom took us to a couple of the different beaches around the area. We didn't stay very long today though. Afterwords we got Chinese food for dinner and watched Ferngully. That movie did not hold up to my childhood memories. <_<; Now, before we head off to bed, we're watching some more Baccano. (Each time I see this series I'm reminded of how much I love it. <3) I think it's gonna be a good week!

Finally got my copy of Miyavi's newest CD, What's My Name?, in the mail today! (I ordered it a couple weeks back, but it took a while to ship from Asia.) I'm in love with it! The bouncy rock style makes me want to dance around and, of course, rock out. No one plays the guitar like Myv. Listening to the CD reminds me of seeing him in concert over the summer, because that was the first time I heard him play a number of these new songs. I think "Futuristic Love", "A-ha", and "Gravity" are my favorites of the new songs on the album. Every time I've heard "Gravity" so far, it's made me get all emotional. Myv just sounds so anguished when he's singing it. It gives me goosebumps.

I also watched the 3rd episode of Kuragehime today. Omg, this series is so cute! I really look forward to the new episode each week. Tsukimi is adorable and Kuranosuke is fabulous. I am trying to talk myself out of wanting to cosplay his (yes, his) outfit from the first episode. So far, it's not working. I'll give it a few more episodes, but I think he's going to end up on my cosplay list.

Last week was so busy for me. It sucked. I had so many projects and papers, and practically no free time at all. By the end of the week, I felt like I was in some sort of zombified state, just trying to keep going. This week isn't going to be quite as bad, but I still need to finish one group video project. Then, I only need to worry about next week's finals. Only two more weeks of school!

I discovered a very nice thing about living off of campus this past weekend. It was Little 500 weekend (aka the most drunken weekend on IU's campus, centering around our annual bike race, for those of you who don't know what it is) and I could barely tell it was going on. It was so nice and quiet by our place and I was able to spend time just relaxing, like I wanted to.

This weekend we finished watching Sengoku Basara at anime club. Omg, so fucking ridiculous and awesome. I believe our anime club said it best on our Twitter page: "Oh Sengoku Basara. Never has the Japanese war of unification been so bad ass, so gay, and so historically inaccurate ALL AT THE SAME TIME!" And that is why we love it. I know that it's so inaccurate and I don't really care because it's just that much fun to watch. I'm now on the hunt for good Masamune/Yukimura fic because how could I not ship them? Also, Yukimura is cute like a puppy. 

Something very interesting that I got to do today was go to the Kinsey Institute. I had a small extra credit assignment that I could do for my Gender Studies class there, so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. Only certain parts of the Kinsey Institute are open to the public, one of which is the art gallery. I spent the better part of an hour just wondering around, taking everything in. They had some really lovely (and explicit) art on display. I'm glad that I went there.

Lastly, I am typing this up while I am kind of tipsy. Kristi broke out a bottle of hard cider. I only had a small cup, but I guess that it's been a while since I've eaten because it affected me pretty fast. Hopefully, this entry won't contain too many spelling errors. I'm going to double check it.

So, Thursday night was Beauty and the Beast. It was lovely! I had seen a well-done local production of it before, but the professional production took it to another level (as it should have). I thought Belle, the Beast, and Gaston's actors were all very good. I think the coolest part was the Beast's transformation sequence, near the end. They had his actor hoisted up on wires and spun him all around, while these cool lights flashed. Then, by the end of the sequence, the Beast's mask had been pulled off and he turned into the Prince. And of course, he and Belle lived happily ever after~.

This afternoon we all went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D. I really enjoyed it. It was a nice re-imagining of the original story and the visuals were stunning. This is quite stereotypical for me, but my favorite part was Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. He maintained a nice level of insanity. I also really enjoyed all the inclusions of the Jabberwocky, since I've enjoyed the poem even since my 6th grade English teacher made us memorize it. I do think the movie could have been even better though, possibly if it was not a joint venture between Disney and Tim Burton. I feel that Tim Burton needed to hold back a bit on his usual weirdness because of the Disney label on the movie. Oh, well. It was still quite good though.
 
We also went to anime club tonight, as we normally do. Tonight, we started watching Sengoku Basara. Oh my god. The Sengoku Jidai just got fuck awesome. This show is completely historically unrealistic (aside from the fact that it contains fictional versions of real Japanese historical figures) and I don't even care. It's gar levels are through the roof and they fight with manly spirit. Therefore the battles have large amounts of gay. There is also random gratuitous, but not completely unintelligible Engrish. And Oda Nobunaga. The motto of this series should be "Sengoku Basara: Uniting Japan through GAR and GAY".

For the past week we've been re-watching Baccano here at the house. We just wrapped up our re-watching last night. God, I love this series. It has such a fantastic cast of male and females characters, who are somehow all connected to each other. There are mafia, bootleggers, thieves, and alchemists. I very much enjoy the 1930's setting of the story. I really like the grittiness it brings to the series. I also really like the fact that the story is told out of order. The first time I watched the series it was a little confusing, yet really intriguing. Watching the series for a second time was just as interesting because this time I was able to map out the story as it was going along, despite all the crazy jumps back and forth between time periods. I think re-watching the series gave me an even better understanding of it. I then found out even more fun tidbits about the series by reading the TV Tropes pages (it has two, one is a separate one to keep track of all the characters).

I wish the Baccano novels would be translated into English. The anime is only based on a small section of the novels. I'd really like to know more information about the rest of the series. I guess I could always work on translating the one Baccano novel that I picked up in Japan, but that will take quite some time to do.

Things have been going better recently. As of Saturday, I moved into my new dorm. My room is nice and big. It's also nice to have more freedom. I think I'm going to enjoy living in the dorm.

Yesterday, I went with meepalicious and her friend Kate to Nakano, which is apparently the new Akihabara. All the real otaku are apparently moving to Nakano. Shopping in Nakano Broadway was fun, yet bizarre. It was an odd mix of normal clothing stores and resturants, old school Japanese toys and collectibles, as well as anime stores. There had to have been more than half a dozen different Mandarake stores in this place. It was kind of crazy. You could easily lose track of time and reality in there, going around in the maze of all the different floors, as there are no windows in most of Nakano Broadway. I bought some doujinshi in one of the Mandarake stores. One awesome Reno-centric FFVII doujinshi, and four Gundam 00 doujinshi. One of the Gundam 00 doujinshi is crossed over with Kuroshitsuji, in that all the 00 characters take the place of Kuroshitsuji characters. It's pretty much everything I didn't know I was missing in my life~. We also happened to walk across the pretty awesome (and random) sight of a Jack Sparrow cosplayer and a Michael Jackson cosplayer drummming up some business for a noodle resturant. I took a picture and the Michael Jackson impersonator even said domo arigatou to me in Michael Jackson's voice, lol.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch a video of one the Saiyuki musicals with meepalicious (who is so generously letting me leech off of her internet until my own is set up). I can't wait to see how awesomely cheesy this is going to be!

A list, in an attempt to be more cheerful:

Things That Have Recently Made Erin Happy

1. I'm going to Japan in the fall! *flail*

2. My discovery of the band Cinema Bizarre. They are yet another German band that has English songs. I'm in love with them. That's two of the band members in my new icon up there. *points* First of all, their music is like an awesome mix of rock, pop, and electro. They're also gorgeous, with their visual kei inspired look. *_* Check them out!  I was also really amused to find out that some of the band members first met each other at an anime convention. And their lead singer's name is Strify, which is a reference to Cloud Strife. XD Stylish, geeky, pretty boys. Oh, yes. This makes Erin happy.

3. The new FMA anime. I really enjoyed watching the first episode. I think it'll be very interesting to see where this series goes. I can't get used to Roy's new voice yet though. I love Shinichiro Miki, but all I can think of everytime I hear Roy's new voice is Lockon. Roy's new voice just doesn't have that same smirky tone to it that I loved in the original series. I guess I just need to try and let go of the old anime and get used to the new one, so I can get the full amount of enjoyment out of watching it. Overall, I'm just happy that there's more FMA anime.

4. This message from Miyavi. He's such a sweetie. I wish him the best for his new family and his new company~.

5. I get to see melody1228  this weekend!