Last Day

So yesterday...or the day before that... something was my last day in Japan.



Here's my room for the last time, fully cleaned and all that stuff.

I realized I had never gotten a picture with my host grandmother, so here she is.  She's a nice lady.

Here's my host family and I at the bus stop in Sakado.  Thank you for a wonderful experience!

Here's what I had for breakfast on the bus: sandwiches and strawberry milk.

Here's a shot of Tokyo, Skytree included, taken from the bus.

I had McDonald's at the airport because I didn't think they'd give us lunch on the short flight to Korea.  It turns out they did, so I was pretty full.

This is probably Mt. Fuji from the plane.

The flight to Korea had one of the prettiest flight attendants ever, by the way.

At the airport in Korea, I wanted to get a souvenir of our short time there, so I got City Hunter chocolates.  Did not watch City Hunter, but Hara from Kara was in it so I just gave the box to Wesley (she's his favorite).  The chocolates were absurdly good, too.

I also bought banana milk.  It's actually really hard to find inexpensive Korean products at Incheon Airport, so this is all I could manage.

I spent about an hour or two setting this up.  It's everything I got in Japan that isn't considered "valuable" by most people.  It's CDs, posters, games, that kind of thing, so my school diploma isn't in there.  However, everything in this picture, absolutely all of it, has a story that goes with it.  It may be a short story and it may not be interesting at all, but everything is important.

The Best Time I've Ever Had

Today was my last full day in Japan.  Here's what I did.



My host family took me back to the Taiwanese restaurant we like.  Today I tried something different, which was meatballs and spicy ramen.

It wasn't too spicy, but that's okay.  I had melon soda.

After that I went to go back to my favorite book store one more time.  It's the nameless, somewhat sleazy one that has mountains of disorganized media gold.  There wasn't anything there that I needed, but I took a picture anyway.  After that I took one last trip to Book-Off, where I bought Clock Tower 2 and Sister Princess.  Thank god for that store; for around $10 I bought hours of interactive language practice and pretending I'm still here.

I needed to bring my posters to Wesley so he could put them in a protective tube, so I did that by going to school.  While there I saw Lucas, Sophie, and Micah, and we talked for a bit until they had to go.  I went to meet Wesley at the closest station, and it turns out he was waiting for Nana to get back from her job.  When she did, we all went to McDonald's and talked for a long time.  We took pictures before we went our separate ways.

Here's my last shot of the building where we did everything.

And just a nice shot of the school in general.

One last picture of the lounge.

One last banana milk.

One last picture of the rice field on the way back from school.

One last picture of my bike.

One last dinner from my host mom.

And one last spontaneous dessert.

Going to TIU has changed my life for the better.  For the first time in my school career, I can actually say I'm proud of where I studied.  I liked being there.  Of course there were days when I didn't want to go to class, but literally everything about the place was worlds better than my American school.  Thanks to TIU and the JSP program, I was able to finally, in my last semester, have the college experience I was promised.  Studying, eating out, and talking with friends, learning a lot, and growing as a person are all things I was never able to do at schools in America.  In four months here, I've had more fun, more education, and more experiences than in the rest of my college semesters combined.

There are two words for "return" in Japanese -- "modoru", which means "to go back to", and "kaeru" which means "to go home".  When I speak of the day I finally get to come back, I always use the latter.

Japan, TIU, and everyone I've met here -- I'm going to miss you.

妖精帝國 YOUSEI TEIKOKU

Hi everyone.  I'm feeling good.  Why?  Because dreams do come true.  We'll get to that soon.



I woke up early and went with Wesley to Tokyo one last time.  Here's the shot of my last ride into the city.

We went to Akihabara first, and these guys were outside the station.  They're wearing complicated male-cheerleading outfits for members of the idol group SKE48.  Even if I don't care about SKE, these guys were great.

One of the stores had a Nana Mizuki display on the elevator doors.

They also had one in a corner that had a TV.  REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS ONE.

See the Akira and Trigun figures there?  I took this to prove a point.  Because they both got popular in America, most Americans seem to think that these are just very popular anime.  What they do not know is that no one in Japan cares about either very much.  These are the only pieces of Akira or Trigun  merchandise I have EVER SEEN in Akihabara, the world capitol of that sort of thing.  It's fine if you like them, just know where they stand.

We each had this drink made from red beans.  It wasn't bad at all.  After that a strange man offered us a peanut butter sandwich, which we of course turned down.

After Akihabara, we went to Harajuku and had lunch at Yoshinoya.  Here's what I had.

After that, Wesley went home, so I headed off to Shibuya-AX to wait for the concert to start.  On the way I saw this festival happening.

And this spooky house.

Here's the back of the venue!

Here's the front of the venue!

It was really, really hot, so I got Orangina.  It helped so much.  I wanted to die.

THEN THE FUNNIEST THING HAPPENED.  This old guy came up and started talking to me, and it turned out he was also there for Yousei Teikoku.  After speaking with him for a while, I found out he's Tatsuo, the fan I've been talking to online for around two years now.  I knew he was pretty old, but it was still a bit surprising.  DOesn't give off a creepy air or anything, though.  Mostly he's just into music most people his age aren't interested in.

He also brings this flag, signed by Yui-sama, to every Yousei Teikoku event.  It is awesome.  I don't even care how bad I look here.  YOUSEI TEIKOKU.

YOUSEI TEIKOKUUUUUU

I GOT TO TOUCH THE SIGNATURE.

Did I mention he also brings a collapsible flag pole?  Because he does.

And I had a good time with it.

Even though it was super hot.

This picture turned out much blurrier than I thought, but it's some of the flower stands for this event.  I took a picture of the Lantis one specifically because that's Yousei Teikoku's agency.

Here's a picture I snuck to show just about how close I was.  I managed to get a little closer later by way of Tatsuo seeing me and calling me to the middle.  It was a good place to get noticed.

Yousei Teikoku was the first to perform, and they did two songs (Kuusou Mesorogiwi and Egoist) before leaving.  I forgot the order of the event, but it was hosted by the voice actors for some of the main characters of Mirai Nikki, the anime this event was for.  One of them was one I've known for a long time, Minoru Shiraishi, and he was still just as entertaining as in 2007.

As for the performers, Faylan really blew me away.  She has a way of moving around on stage that is half BoA Kwon and half Kyo from Dir en grey, and that doesn't make sense.  I hadn't listened to her before this, but I'm definitely going to start.

I hadn't heard Rokugen Alice yet either, but I was looking forward to doing so.  I was NOT expecting what I got.  The singer came out dressed like royalty, and the bass player had sort of a knight-ish thing going on.  And then, for no reason, they had a guy in Renaissance clown makeup who spent the song having seizures, dancing, and being bizarre in general.  It was great.

OLDCODEX was... weird.  It was a very heavy rock ban that felt totally out of place at this sort of event, but there they were.  They were gimmicky like the last one in a really weird way.  They had a board on which the band's name had been painted repeatedly, and during the song one member's only job was to jump around and use this board to make art.  He painted on it and wrote words and stuff.  First time I've ever seen anything like it.

Every group sounded great live, but on of the voice actresses suffered from her lack of musical training.  Everyone else did a really good job.

Yousei Teikoku came back and closed the main set with "Herrscher" and "filament".  It was around this point that I lost my voice, but I am NOT going to let a silly thing like personal safety keep me from Yui-sama.  They left for a bit, then there was an encore where they did a new song called "Kyouki Chinden" and  "Kuusou Mesorogiwi" again.  The new song is super good oh my god

At the end, the whole cast gathered for speeches and bows.  It was during this time that Relu, Yousei Teikoku's drummer, noticed me and gave me a humorous wave.  Even more exciting, Yui-sama noticed me and gave me a smile that said "I'm trying not to break character, but I'm so happy to see a foreign fan I want to smile even bigger".

As they all left, Relu and I had a brief conversation with hand gestures that meant he wanted me to catch the drum stick he was going to throw.  I was super ready, but it ended up with three hands on it.  Me, a girl, and the most stereotypical, waste-of-space nerd all played rock paper scissors to get it, which was a nice idea,  but that stick was MINE.  Relu went out of his way to give it to me.  It doesn't help that the fat guy took.  it's even worse that when I offered him a lot of money for it, he was super rude and said he "needs a souvenir" as if I'm not from America or going home in a day or anything.  I hope he chokes on a chicken leg during his inevitable nightly food frenzy, because that's the only sort of drum stick he deserves. One that's cutting off his air supply.

Here's a poster for the event at the event.  Just because.
After this, I met with some other subjects (that's what Yousei Teikoku fans are called) that Tatsuo introduced me to, an we joined small group of people waiting for the performers to leave the venue.  No, we didn't see Yousei Teikoku,  but Minoru Shiraishi did walk by and I got to talk to him and shake his hand.  Faylan walked past, too, but I was too afraid of missing Yousei Teikoku to do much more than say "おつかれさまです!" , which is a thing you say after you do something exhausting, usually a concert.  Yoshihisa Kawahara (another of the voice actors) also dropped by and had a nice conversation with a group of us.
Once I found out Yousei Teikoku wasn't there anymore, I went with some of my new acquaintances to Harajuku Station to go home.  I got some contact information, so I'll have a lot to talk about when I get home.  The ride home was uneventful.

Are you guys aware that Yui-sama is the most beautiful woman in both the Human and Fairy Realms?  Are you aware of that?  You should be.  It's true.

Tokyo International University

Today was the closing ceremony for the Japan Studies Program.  I was able to sort out my end of the Sophie business, so I'm feeling great and was able to enjoy my last day as a student here.  My host family also bought me a yukata to wear to it, so that's what I did.  Pictures later.

The ceremony was very Japanese in that the president of the university spoke for a long time and there was a lot of formality, but the taiko club performed and broke up the monotony.  Taiko drums are those really loud ones they use a lot over here at festivals.



After the ceremony I went home quickly to change clothes, because I'm not comfortable in a yukata no matter how much cooler it was to wear.  While I was still at school, Cermet and Anita walked by and we took a nice picture.  Anita only visited for a week, but I'll miss her and Cermet a great deal.

After the school sort of cleared out, we all went down to the river and just... did this for hours.  It was wonderful.  I got to say goodbye to many of the people I've met, and overall we had a good time.

There were some pretty good fireworks once it got dark, too.

After that, Yukiko, Makky, and Taishi wanted to go to karaoke, so Wesley and I went with them.  Our room was really small, but that's always okay.

I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to Yukiko as well as I'd have liked, because she had to hurry and catch the last train home.  This may be for the best, because I absolutely would have lost it.  You know how in the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy says she'll miss the Scarecrow most of all?  I'll miss my other good friends just as much, but Yukiko was the first one I made here.

I've been collecting pictures of all my friends/friend-type people, and those will be going up at some point.

Don't make me go home, please.