::And Now, My Day::

All righty then! After totally ranting forever, I feel mostly better. So, that's good.

A quick blog-update, about the actual technical and not-content stuff, I am working out a custom layout, getting music to put up, tabs linking to other relevant things, possible "theme" entries (as lame as that sounds), and other cool things like that. I'm pretty excited about that.

Also, my graduation party-planning is SO underway. That's pretty exciting too. Now, if only I could get Via Coma to respond.. Cough.

Anyway! Today--well, yesterday now, so Thursday, yep, Thursday, okay, that's all settled--I woke up at 7:30 AM (a HUGE surprise, like eight hours early for me, right?) with intent to meet Matt at the BART at 10. Well, we were all some random number of minutes late, but that didn't make much difference. We were going to Japantown, after all.

ALL ALONE.

I know, I'm shocked too. Of course, I still got the whole list of things NOT to do; don't make eye contact, don't sit by shady people on the BART, don't talk about money, don't talk to any seedy-looking people, don't you DARE take your sweatshirt off, Brittany Rose, I will NOT have you showing your belly--in my defense, it perfectly covers my belly.. if I keep pulling it down during the day. But I wear a jacket anyway. Ah, times.

So we were off, Tiger and I. We were bubbly excited. I took off my kitty hat and got a few looks from people--oi, my head had just exploded in pink. Anyway, we brushed up on our Japanese on the way. We failed to hold our breath going under the tunnels (come on, there were stops IN the tunnels). Mostly we caught up, and people-watched with our sharks, Jessie and James. Meowth is missing, again, by the by.

We got off at Powell Street. Phase One--done. Only, we got slightly side-tracked by the mall. Well, I sort of dragged him in. But, it's so.. nine-story-y! It is awesome. We took some pictures (which I am too lazy to upload, nyan, nyan) and left. Phase Two was in progress.

Japantown, I estimate, is only a bit over a mile from the Powell Street BART stop. Maybe.. Let me check. One point six miles. That didn't seem so far to us. And why would we want to waste a good dollar or so on bus fare when we could walk? After all, buses smell and have weird people and stopped at random places. Surely we'd get lost. Plus, it's so.. unsanitary!!

Anyway. An hour and a half of straight climbing up gigantic hills, we were sweaty, tired, and SO relieved to see the little waving Japantown flags. We were there!

Phase Three--mall. And then began our exploring. We had a three-hour time limit, unfortunately, but it was okay. We went to nearly every shop; the kimono shop, stationery shops, furniture shops, and a lot of candy shops, trinket shops, and oh-my-goodness delicious-smelling inscence shops. Matt had to stop our excursion for one of his beloved lychee pearl drinks. Blechk.

And then we realised--oh, shat! We had forty minutes to eat and start heading back. So, still a bit of time, but not much. We popped into the other side of the mall. There weren't many shops we were interested in--only one, actually. A little supermarket. It was adorable, as were the Japanese people who were (duh) fluently speaking in Japanese amongst themselves. We were so jealous.

Then, right as we walked out, to the right, we found the perfect restaurant. Phase Four. A sushi bar. Finally, I was getting my beloved sushi. Sake (salmon) nagiri. YUM. Matt got shrimp tempura (shouldn't it be tenpura, in Japanese?) and some sort of weird sushi.. Anyway, it was delicious. All washed down with oodles of soy sauce and two Cokes. The ice cubes, I feel I must mention, were ADORABLE. They were like, PERFECT small cubes, about the size of.. erm.. my keyboard keys! Yeah! And they were completely clear. It was awesome.

Except then, somehow, a small dollop of undiluted wasabi got into my sushi. I didn't know this. I ate the whole thing. This was my first--and hopefully LAST--experience with wasabi. My head nearly exploded. Spicy and I don't mix. At all.

So, after that whole ordeal (そおいしいでした！) we went back to the supermarket. I had been craving some MOUSE (actually small, cocoa-dusted chocolate mousse squares by Meltyblend, OOH I DO recommend them) all day, so I had to get some. Also, a bento box, which is priced as 3.80$ on Jbox, but was 1.50$ at the supermarket. I could have so bought two. My bento collection is happily growing. It's rather exciting.

Anyway, after that, we went across the street and popped into a store dedicated to origami. NYAN. All the paper was so pretty. It made me wish I could fold something other than stars and weird stackable claw-beak things. They didn't even had any star paper! Or, maybe we just didn't see any. It wasn't on my mind at the time.

We found a sign outside that had a kitty and, duh, said, "ねこ" and it was so cute. Obviously I had to take a picture with it. But then--

HO SHAT!

We had to go back. Into Phase Five. Going back. And, of course, going back was all uphill too. Sigh. But then we hit the peak of the hill, and it was basically running all the way down. We made it back in half an hour! That's better than my P.E. mile time. Really!

So then, Phase Six--wandering. We went back into the nine-story mall. People-watched. Hot Topic to scan ze card. Then out to get a cup-bowl-cone of frozen yogurt, which I had to slurp and get a brain freeze, noticing we were late.

Phase Seven--BART again. We were going home.

Today was an exciting adventure. Except the part of fearing for our lives walking to Japantown and back. But hey! It was a great experience. I hope this happens again sometime soon. And we WILL speak Japanese.. We WILL!!

Love and other indoor sports (like doing the wasabi-dance),

Blue Disastrous