Ced had gotten tickets for us to check out the Ghibli museum. Apparently, there is a strict reservation schedule with this particular museum, in which you must acquire a ticket for a particular day, and time. Ours was for Thurday, at 2:15pm. We meet up in Mitaka, as that is the station where the museum is. Ced gets pretty mad at me cause I am late (which, I swear, is only a normal occurrence in Japan). Japan's trains are almost always on time -- like, on the dot. If it says the departure is at 10:13a, it will leave at 10:13a. [View Full Entry]

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First Night - Yabe/Machida Upon arrival at Yabe, I wasn't sure which exit to take. I decided to make a right, and as I got to the bottom of the stairs, I see Lars approaching from only 30 ft away -- perfect timing =) He looks the same as he did 4 years ago (and isn't sporting the crazy beard he had pics of on facebook). It's sprinkling, and he has brought an extra umbrella for me -- awww. The walk isn't too far (the typical 10 minutes), and we drop off my stuff before heading out. Yabe itself doesn't have [View Full Entry]

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written Tuesday, May 12 - I finally have some time to put down my thoughts on the trip thus far Intro Months ago, Ced had floated the idea of a trip to Japan in May - and one in which Stef would also be able to make as well. It would be a reunion of the the trio that spent Golden Week together, 4 years ago in the IES program. I would be out of school from mid-April until mid-August. I had a friend's wedding on May 2, and another friend's wedding on May 30. With those bookend weddings, I decided [View Full Entry]

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Friday, 22 July 2005 - IES Sayonara Party September 20, 2005 I will update longer, when I'm not in class... For now though, I just want to say that Japan truly was the best time of my life, thus far. The number of great people met, whom I hope to see again, far exceeded my expactations. Just... everything was good. I am just going to try to start uploading the pictures now, so you can start viewing them. There are a lot, so check back once in a while. I hope I captured some of the emotion better than I can [View Full Entry]

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Monday, 19 July 2005 - Goodbye Kei? My third date with KEI, and she had agreed to pay! We went to karaoke at King Arthur's first, and that hour flew by. Then we ate where the Cineplex was, at some tabehodai for the fried-batter stuff... I forgot the name. It was really good, but it woulda been much better if they had some sorta veggie stuff - all that grease made me paranoid bout getting a heart attack and constipation. Cost was 25 a person. And when she took our her wallet to pay... she only had 10! ... I believed [View Full Entry]

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Saturday, July 16th - Wire '05 A month prior, when Mika and I were having dinner after the Disneyland trip, she had asked me to go to the "Wire '05" event, which was a big trance event costing a hundred bucks a ticket, with 10,000 people attending. So Saturday was the day the event was held; it was in Yokohama Arena. First, we looked for a RESTAURANT to eat and decided on a Thai place. The pad thai was ok, the rice was pretty good, and the veggies were amazing. The special Thai dessert - I forgot the name - was [View Full Entry]

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15 July 2005 - Final Night @ Y's So right now (Aug 21), I am mighty pissed that the dvd I burned all the pics onto is scratched, so things don't look recoverable at the moment... but I do have pics of the great, final night at Y's for you all :) Of course, I must tell this story in chronological order, so I will start with where I left off last. My last update was on the third-to-last week in Japan. I had went to Y's, then Ageha after. The night after that began the pics that are currently unrecoverable [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday, 5 July 2005 Last J-pop class. Aoyagi SENSEI was a real cool guy. Good times. The last day, he was trying to teach us some Okinawan DANCE. Oo, and I remember during the first midterm, I put my head down to take a 15-minute nap cause I was really really tired. I hope I ended up with a B in the class :) Thursday, 7 July 2005 I went KARAOKE with Maki. Friday, 8 July 2005 I remember this Friday as a very happy day. The weather was awesome, and my friends were riding up the crest of life's roller [View Full Entry]

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2 July 2005 - Fuji-san Saturday morning, we met up in front of IES to get on a BUS that would take us to Mt. Fuji. I had decided to try to get close to Sato-san during this trip ;) On the bus, I began to STUDY, but was unsuccessful, hehe. First, we hit up some TEMPLE(or was it some shrine, or garden, I'm not sure), where I took lots of pictures. It was nice though. And I liked a number of FLOWERS. Oh, and check out the progression of Andy's RELATIONSHIP with mystery girl! ;) Everyone was wondering who the [View Full Entry]

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26-30 June 2005 - Last Week of June On the 26th, I hung out with Mika at Makuhari. I had planned to watch a movie at SALC, but realized it was a Sunday (so it was closed). So we went to the Garden Walk to shop a little, before heading to a restaurant I wanted to go to that had a nice view of the city at night... It turns out they aren't open on Sundays either. So we headed back to Plena and found a restaurant there. I was being a jerk and refused to make the decision of where [View Full Entry]

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