asianatheart15

YAYNESS!!!

I can safely say I take pride in the fact that I have officially finished my 2009 with seeing, for a second time, my more cherished J-rock band, Dir en Grey.

I went with my friend Rose this time since she's never seen them live, and we left earlier than a half hour before the doors opened because it was deep in Beverly Hills this time at the House of Blues Sunset Strip. We left at about 5:30-5:45 and spent the ride there catching up. We got there a little before 7:00 and waited a little more than an hour to go in. I spent about half the time waiting for them to start waiting in line to buy merchandise. I got a T-shirt with a huge pic of the band and band name blazed across the top in a bad-ass font and their Average Blasphemy DVD. I didn't spend much considering the money I had to spend, which was $176 exactly. I bought a DVD for Rose too since I wanted to participate in the meet & greet and she was willing to go along. I told her she didn't have to pay me back.

While I was waiting in the merch line, I ran into my friend Momo (her name is Monica, but we all call her that), who is at pretty much every J-rock concert either just there to rock out, take pictures to put in review articles, or sometimes both (She's a photographer/indies band manager). And afterwords, I hung out with her talking until the band started 35 minutes late at 9:35. It was an awesome show regardless, I kinda liked the set list concept of going backwards starting with Vinushka and ending with Withering to Death classics like The Final, Kodou, and finally Saku. I also loved how Kyo let the crowd sing the chorus of quite a few songs.

There was one thing I didn't exactly love, though. I had to squeeze into the pit and ended up on the right of the stage in front of the right ground speaker, and about ten minutes before the band came out, here come these two Chinese and Japanese Die fangirls talking my ear off in Mandarin and when the show started, they literally just flail over Die, who was right in front of us. And they were really rude cause the one that was literally behind me kept hitting me and touching me somewhat-inappropriately/rudely and I kept hitting her back because as rude as it was, I was in the pit and I couldn't exactly scream 'GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME', which I wanted to so freaking much.

I hated that it seemed like they weren't even there for the band, just to see Die in his undershirt. And even worse, they were talking during some of the best songs they did, including Agitated Screams of Maggots -unplugged-, and they were fangirling over Die when he was doing nothing but taking a sip of beer or changing his guitar. I wanted to cut their limbs off and put duct tape on their freaking mouths so freaking badly.

After the show ended a little after 11:00, they opened the VIP area so people could line up for the Meet & Greet upstairs, only Shinya and Kaoru were there, though. I got Kao's autograph on the inside of my DVD with a big smile and shook his hand with his manly grip, I almost swore I'd never wash my right hand again.

All in all, is was just as great as my prediction last year the first time I saw them. Let's hope #3 is even more awesome!

I disagree with the whole concept of forcing someone to serve in the military, and not just because I'm against war. Alot of adults I know wouldn't be able to do it for psychiatric reasons, and forcing them to is unimaginable.

I wholeheartedly believe in soulmates and always do what I can to meet him someday.

M'kay, I was planning to do this tomorrow, but I wanted to wish Rachel a happy belated birthday! Wish I could be there to help cheer you up with your flu and all ^^.

Nothing much happened during these nine days but school, and my new Laure Milan CD that I ordered came yesterday. My Astrology book hasn't come yet, though I honestly thought it would, since it was shipped earlier. But I really like it. Like Vitaa, Marion Raven, Micol Barsanti, and all my other European singers, I discovered Laure on the IMF channel when it still existed. That's how I found out about most of the European singers I know of.

Only thing though was that I listened to it while I was cooking yesterday and as I tried to take it out of the CD player and back into the case, my right hand acted up and I dropped the damn case in the sink full of dish water. Major fail ><. I saved the artwork of the suave French CD case by letting it dry on the windowsill, and now there is only slight water damage. At least the actual CD is still perfectly playable.

I've been having strange dreams of jealousy lately, and if it crossed into my dream world, that means it's running pretty deep, the paradox is this girl is one of my best friends, and it's about a guy. In short this is a 'the guy you like may like your best friend' case, but I don't know why I'm so jealous, she has a boyfriend, but this is the consequence of on rather nasty house placement in my astrological birth chart, I analyze EVERY SINGLE RISK associated with a situation even if that risk has a low chance of happening, meaning 'What if she breaks up with her boyfriend?' in this case.

I'm being paranoid, I know I am, and I am doing everything I can to not be, by releasing my thoughts in this and my Book of Shadows. I have a talent for channeling, but regardless, the negative feelings I had expelled and channeled through writing or some other way get reinforced once the situation comes up again. It's an unhealthy habit that I really must get out of >

Dir en grey on November 29th, 2008. Best. Concert. Ever.

It's frakin' Dir en grey, that's enough of a reason to make it awesome.

I wouldn't say I wholeheartedly believe in Astrology, but I do research it in my spare time; I know more than my mother, and she's the one who introduced me to it. I'm a damn astrology freak, I know all about houses, signs, planetary aspects, transits, the works. On top of that, I buy a lot of Astrology books. I search the internet and read books on the subject, reading my birth chart, which I know by heart. The only thing I hate is when people ask me 'What's your sign?' because there are planets that make more of an impact on yourself than your sun.

Most sites only have sun sign crap, and I hate that, so I usually don't check my horoscope. I check my transits, though, they usually explain why I'm feeling the way I am in a more precise manner. Like today, I have Mars opposition Neptune, and my emotions are defiantly in a whirlpool as it peaked late last night!

I don't think it's a question of gender; it's personal.

I can't wait to get married, to be quite honest ^^

That's it, my new title is '10-day overview', dang it ><

I woke up feeling like crap this morning, as my period came down yesterday in class (and I didn't have a pad, oh joy) and I got really, really bad cramps >< I couldn't even gather the energy to do my Japanese homework.

Speaking of Japanese, Kitagawa-sensei handed us our chapter tests back and I got 19 out of 20 points ^__^

My mom and I are working on getting financial aid for myself and we were supposed to go to the FA office today, but again, I woke up feeling like crap, and so did she, so we'll try again presumably next week.

Earlier in the week I started writing poems and songs to help channel the pain of my 'said experience' which I blogged about last week. Creative writing like this is a hobby of mine, anyway, but I really don't want anyone to read them because they're like my book of shadows in lyric/poetry form; no one will ever know.

I scanned the rest of the pics from my first week in Japan, but I still have to photoshop them because I scanned them as groups to save time. I'll upload them to my Facebook hopefully by the middle of next week. And maybe I'll upload the pics from the second week, too (I have a LOT of pictures, and most of them are not just on my camera, they GAVE me the pictures THEY took as well).

I started a Japanese blog yesterday to practice my Japanese writing on the computer, and I type just as fast in Japanese as I do English, at least when I know what I want to say and know how to say it xDD

Here's the URL: http://blog.oricon.co.jp/nephchan/

You know, I should stop calling these 'weekly' because I never do them exactly a week apart from each other. I should just start putting in random titles like pixel. xD

Well, I had a 10-question quiz in Geography that was easy enough and a Kanji quiz in Japanese in which I'm more than sure I got all but one right. We have a Chapter quiz tomorrow, but I'm not worried.

Between all my school activities and homework, in relation to what goes on in my personal life, my computer got a malicious virus on it and my dad had to help me fix it this weekend by wiping my hard drive and rebuilding my whole system. I saved the stuff I wanted to to his computer, but something went wrong and now all my Karaoke Subbing files are gone! TT_TT The folder I kept them in went missing somehow, and I have to re-install all those big programs I had on it like Photoshop, Manga Studio, Aegisub, VirtualDub etc.

Actually, a few of my important files went missing, but all 10.7 gigabytes of my music, my videos, and most of my word documents were saved, so I'm at least happy that they didn't go missing. (BTW, the 10.7GB is JUST the music)

On a more personal level, a bad experience I had emotionally in the past has come back to haunt me. I've been sulking about it for about a year now, it's almost the 'anniversary', if you will, of that certain day. It was late June last year when my emotions awakened before me, and mid-to-late-September of that same year when they all crashed down and I was never the same inside. I never told anyone, and I don't plan to, as far as the details, mostly because I'm still healing; my heart is still broken. If I ever make it as a writer, or something that deals with writing, my inner thoughts of said experience will be published in riddles for all to linger on. I probably will never truly get over it until I marry, for my future husband will be the one who will save me from the torture that is seemingly everlasting heartbreak. 

When I got home from Japan, my mother told me my parents weren't getting a divorce, they were going to try and work it out, which I was extremely dissapointed about with the whole him dragging me off the couch thing.  They have date nights now, which I find really wierd, and I have to get used to them being so......happy, after all the talk of divorce dragged on for over a year.  Seeing them be the whole happy couple doesn't help me at all getting, or at least trying to get through this emotionally distressed period in my life.  As I am an astrology geek, I check my transits every two weeks and it said my Venus profile (My Love sign profile) would awaken this month, but after all this, I think it already awakened early last summer.  I have no real planetary indications of a new relationship for a while, it looks like a few years or so, so I'll just take my sweet time. 

It's times like this I write in my book of shadows, just to get the stuff off my chest.  I have that and a diary, which I really just keep to distract people from my BOS which is my real diary, for stuff I don't want a soul to know about. 

My mind is actually pretty dark.  I have an alter ego I never let out, a daily Gothic Lolita writing poems of suffering from heartbreak and the ugly side of this world as a hobby with a tendancy for stereotypical emo acts such as cutting herself. 

Just a heads up, I'll probably be alternating between doing these on Monday and Fridays. I have homework, ya know~

My second and third weeks of school weren't all that horrible as I thought they would be. I'm officially settled in at Japanese 3 and Kitagawa sensei really isn't that scary, I just thought that because of that beginning-of-semester syndrome that we all have to go through.  For the first week we just reviewed potential forms again, and again, and again and now we're finally getting down to business with some new grammar.  The Kanji isn't really that hard, because alot of the Kanji we've went over so far I've already seen and memorized from either Karaoke subbing, reading Shoxx, or surfing Japanese sites with my trusty Rikai-chan. 

Geography I'm not all too excited about, but then again, I despise the thought of all those damn GE classes I have to take, especially.....ugh, American History.  I'd seriously rather just listen to Tchaikovsky and/or Namie Amuro while the teacher preaches from the propaganda-ful textbook I will later burn after it's over and I pass. 

Well, last week I bought a Koda Kumi Kingdom Collectible Tour bag from YesAsia which I have been dying to shop from for two years the minute my mother added $25 to my debit card and in the process, cleaned out my balance again.  I want to go get this Ayumi Hamasaki tour bag next time, but I already set my next spending goal as a 32GB iPod Touch because regular MP3 Players don't like me.  Besides, my mom said no more purses because I already have three.  But that's my Jupiter's' fault, I'm good with money, but my money can be spent as quickly as it comes in, hell, sometimes faster. 

Not much goes on with me other than school nowadays, I'm starting to hate Photoshop because I have to edit all these pictures from my trip to Japan that I had to scan, and my creativity's drained so I can't think of anything for the new layout for the forums of my Namie Amuro fansite. 

Tonight I watched Project Runway and saw Melvin go (Too bad, I liked him, but the egg was just too much) and my mom and I had a very awkward conversation about birth control and how I can't always count on the guy to take responsibility (and it all sprung from a NuvaRing commercial O_o) and how I'll look back on myself in a couple of years realizing I've never been there until now and the fact I'm saying 'If a guy doesn't wear a condom, we're not doing anything' in my teens now is just because of that.  I've never had a boyfriend, either, so I guess that supposedly adds to her 'theory'. 

She doesn't know me like that, I'm not 'screwing around' with just anybody when I do finally start having sex.  This is my Venus and Mars' faults, but I prefer it this way to be highly idealized about love and sex and how sacred I think it is. 

I'm back to my Weekly overviews. My body's still adjusting to being back home, and it was the first day of school today! And it was extremely embarrassing....

I didn't do too much last week except pretty much lounge around trying to get used to basically going back in time (In short: the time change).  All week I wondered why the bodily time adjustment when you back home is longer then the when you go, but I guess I can ask my brother that one.

I have Geography today, so I went to the right room and everything and asked the teacher there why my name wasn't on the list because I signed up for my classes over a month ago. Then a phone call to my mom, a visit to the administrations office, the social studies department, and back to the classroom, I talked to the wrong damn teacher. My teacher wasn't even there yet, and now I'll probably have the reputation of the girl who was hopelessly late for the first day of class. Just wait 'till they find out I'm 16, too!

After I talked to the wrong guy thinking the school had a mix up, I went to the bookstore to check out the price of my books for Japanese 3, and I find out they changed the series of texts we have to use and the whole set is just over $50! I was thinking "WTF? That is so not fair!" because my textbook for Japanese 1 & 2 was $120 all in itself, USED, and the workbook we use in language lab was $40. 

Well, at least I don't have a hole in my moms' pocket and just use my debit card to buy them myself. 

I got new Bratz curtains that make a pink tinted lighting during the day and makes my room look more....me.  ^^ I like my room with those cheap, drab blinds out of the way, it looks more like a teens' room and not some old hand-me-downed room. 

On the upside, out of all my new CDs from Japan, I can't stop listening to Mirotic! The Mirotic song is the shit and the PV is so hot! The DBSK guys have never looked so good, though it's weird to me that the only Korean sentence I can understand from it so far happens to be the one that says 'You're my slave' O_o Meh, it's still a hot song!

Sorry, but I won't be making my final Japan Youth Exchange report.  I'm too sad right now.....

I just came back home today and I'm happy to be reunited with my mom and stuff, but I just found out that Jasmine You, beloved bassist of Versailles -Philharmonic Quintet, has passed away on August 9th (Japan Time, apparently). 

I can't cry, though, he's in J-rock heaven now with hide and Kami.  I should be happy, right? He's in a better place now...but how in the world could an awesome person like Jasmine die? and this soon.... 

I wanted to meet him so badly, but now he's in the afterlife.  As my belief in the afterlife is partially Ancient Egyptian-influenced, I believe his heart was lighter then a feather, like his lovely voice, and so he will go to heaven and look down and smile on us and his beloved band members from above. 

R.I.P Jasmine, you will be missed so, so much...

I'm not back home yet, it's the 8th here and I don't leave until tommorow evening.  But I am going back to Tokyo!

Yesterday I arrived here to square one at my first host family's house and spent the night here.  Tommorow I'm heading back to Tokyo.  I can't wait to meet the exchange student me and my parents are hosting!

During my last few days with my third host family, I went to the Aomori Nebuta festival with my host-grandparents and host-sister.  The next day at night I went with my host-parents, to join the Fue parade.   Every year there is a class that parades through town playing a flute melody in unison.  I just walked with them watching feeling incredibly awkward.  My host-mom told me to do my best and try to play it, and I just looked at her thinking 'How the hell do you expect me to play this thing when I don't even know the damn melody or get the damn sound out?!'

And then I started thinking about Stewie Griffin because that's totally how he would say it. 

That night I tested Haruchika by saying 'Good Job' in Japanese and giving him a congradulatory peck on the cheek.  I didn't get much of a reaction, so I guess I either misread him or he's better at this then I thought. 

The ext morningI thought I was going on the plane, so I wore the disgusting beige pants and god-awful cheese-yellow shirt that can be spotted a mile away that Is our travel uniform.  But I ended up going back to Daisen City, so I clashed for nothing?!

In conclusion, when I come back to Japan, I'm staying in the city, because although I've been to not only Akita, but pretty much every bordering prefecture, I didn't see the one thing in Japan I wanted to see more than anything else: HARAJUKU, DAMMIT!! (And maybe a host club)

Anyway, it's morning here and I'm sitting here getting my computer fix.  I'll make one final report when I get back home!

I'm alive, and not insane, don't worry.  Thought I've finally lost it, didn't you?

It's been a month, a full 30 days already! I have one more week and then I leave, but it only seems like two weeks since I got here, even though it's been 4....

The day before summer camp I went shopping with my host-sister, Maria, and my host-mother Mayumi after we had lunch at KFC (blech) and dropped Ryuya off at school for Kendo practice.  I bought yet more CDs (5) because I do love my music, and that night we had dinner with the Yoshida family, who again I have no idea what thier relationship to my host family is.  The oldest daughter, Yayoi, spoke really good English and was the same age as me, so we hit it off great.  We watched Winx Club on Youtube and she said it was cute.  I had her see the RAI English dub because 4kids butchers foreign cartoons until there's virtually nothing left. 

I didn't realize it until I got back, but I have 16 new CDs and a DVD box set to take home with me.  Let's review, shall we?

1. Hikari (SID)
2. My Heaven (Big Bang)
3. BEST & USA (BoA)
4. VANDALIZE (Alice Nine)
5. Music (Mika Nakashima)
6. Yes (Mika Nakashima)
7. A Complete -All Singles- (Ayumi Hamasaki)
8. break the rules (Namie Amuro)
9. Best Fiction (Namie Amuro)
10. Genius 2000 (Namie Amuro)
11. Jesus (Gackt)
12. 3 SPLASH (Koda Kumi)
13. Trick (Koda Kumi)
14. Akuma na Koi (Yuma Nakayama w/ B.I. Shadow)
15. Ultra Blue (Utada Hikaru)
16. Mirotic (DBSK)

DVD: Attack of the Pin-up Boys (Super Junior)

This'll keep me off downloading for a while.....

The next day I was to ride 4 hours to the Lions' YE Summer Camp in Yamagata prefecture.  Nobody told me I couldn't bring all my bags with me, so I had to hurry and pack enough stuff for three days and in the process, forgot alot of essential stuff, like my Lions' frendship banners and pins (Okay, I didn't really think I'd need them, but I wasen't in the position to think too much about it with me having to quick decide on my outfits and everything, and my host-grandmother, who can't speak a word of English, grading on my last nerve), my retainer case, toothbrush, and dress, which I really wanted to wear to dinner at our second hotel.  I almost lost my retainer at dinner at our second hotel, but I saved it before the employees cleared the table. 

At the ritziest hotel I've seen since the Shinjuku Prince Hotel, we had our opening ceremonies and lunch.  There were 8 other exchange students other than myself there.  My buddy Maddie, Ine, who's from Norway, Anu who is from Finland, Laura from Italy, Ray from Taiwan, Sandra from Colorado, and William from the Netherlands (Holand).  There was Chen, and girl from Taiwan that was supposed to be there too, but she didn't come until the next day because she had to attend a festival. 

We had a tour bus that took us to our first hotel with the girls and guys sleeping in seperate rooms for obvious reasons and we went hiking on this mountain I forgot the name of and by the time we climed back up to the street I was litteraly soaking in sweat.  Before that, we went to this preserved samurai school and after we went to the convinience store and visited this rock museum/store where I bought me a bracelet, we went to our hotel which we nicknamed The Grudge because it was on a hill and the bus had to go slowly, it was kind of creepy, and somehow the conversation steered into horror movies and we made fun at the hotel having the girl from The Grudge lurking in the walls (it was an old hotel). 

We had bunk futon beds and the only thing that we could use to tell the difference between our rooms was our luggage.  Every room looked exactly the same.  There was no air conditioning either and it was hot that day so the rooms reeked of bamboo.  We kept the window open 24/7 to get rid of the smell.  By the time we went to sleep, there was actuallty a breeze coming in and the smell dissapated, so I had no problem sleeping.  My only problem was that in the middle of the night, there were a bunch of cicadas near our window that were loud as hell. 

We took showers in an onsen-type bathroom extremely quickly because unlike the real onsens I went to with the old Japanese ladies that didn't really care that everybody was naked, we did and had to manage without looking at each other.  That night was memorable for all of us.  >.>

Before the shower, we went back to the ritzy place and had dinner.  I sung part of Namie Amuro's Can You Celebrate?.  I say 'part' because I haven't listened to that song in a while so I forgot the order of some of the lyrics.  Afterwards, we went back to The Grudge, which shall henceforth be called that, and took the memorable shower and stayed up past our 'bedtime', which they set as 10:00 and stayed up talking about random things.  We spent a half-hour checking out Sandra'a iPod, and I wanted it because she had such a good collection on it.  That, and she had a DBSK keychain on it that she got from Thailand (she's Thai). 

I forgot to take a picture of her iPod case, because it was a wierd mix of too much and awesome.  She has so much stuff on it, it won't fit in her pocket like an iPod should.  It's litteraly covered in little pink rhinestones and on the back it's covered in little plastic sweets that looks like a freaking cookie table from Alice in Wonderland.  And she has way too many keychains on it, it looks totally Gyaru. 

But we hit it off great because we both love DBSK, her favorite is Junsu while mine is Changmin. 

Ray hardly spoke any English, but he was basically the most popular of the group.  I could speak a little Chinese, but I still had trouble speaking with him because we spoke different dialects.  I really wanted to talk to him though, because I got a crush on him, but Maddie liked him, too.  I looked for signs to see if he like either of us, and it looked like he either liked both of us or liked on and was flirting with the other to make the other jealous.  I know when a guy is standing, his torso is pointed towards the girl he likes and when he's sitting, his shoulders are pointed towards her, but his shoulders were pointed towards me when he was sitting and his torso towards Maddie when he was standing, and he always followed her like a lost puppy.  I eventually decided to give up, my host-brother already has a crush on me.  

I'm sure they'll be very happy together /sarcasm

Oh, and, you might not know this, guys, but I am an extremely jealous person by nature.  And since my Mars is considerably afflicted, it's only more so. 

The next day we went to the Amazon Folk Museum, a Photography meseum, the Aquarium, and to see a Maiko dance performance with a group of High School Students.  That was fun, but the lake at the photography museum smelled like old gym socks and our translator asked if we had our bathing suits to jump in it.  I forgot my bathing suit, too, but you couldn't pay me to touch that nasty water. 

After we dropped off all the High School Students, we went to a nice hotel with a beach view and had dinner with yet more Karaoke afterwards.  William got drunk, so we stayed up a little later then intended waiting for him to calm down.  Ine got a little tipsy too and started flirting with him and was just making it worse.  Everything was okay by the next morning, though. 

I didn't go on the bus like everyone else back to the ritzy place, I went with my Lions' chairmen and drove 4 hours to Central Akita.  We woke up at 6:30 that morning and I was so tired I just wanted to go back home and crash in my bed but my chairman told me I was to see the Akita Kanto Festival that night with my host-grandparents and host-sister.  Not that I didn't want to see at least one festival, but I was just so tired I was about to crack.  For the first time since I got here, I cried, inconspicuisly, at the table.  I had to go to the bathroom after lunch and spent extra time in the stall just crying. 

Afterwards I went to the governers' office and waited for my host-grandparents.  I sustained myself reading my many mangas I brought with me.  After they got there, we ate Italian for dinner and went to our seats to see the festival.  I took a few pictures and video of the lantern-lifting competitions.  It was fun, but I didn't stay because I was so tired so we went home.  My host-sister fell asleep on the ride home and when she dozed off, she ended up laying her head on my back and using it as a pillow.  She either didn't know it was my back, didn't really care, or was rather comfy there, or some combination of the three. 

I learned how to make hankerchiefs three days ago.  I made two of them.  I'm getting pretty sick of hanging out with all these old Japanese women.  Environmental Science class told me Japan had a huge population imbalance in terms of elderly people compared to people under 50.  I should've listened better. 

Anyway, after the handkerchiefs, I went to the house of the lady who was my guide and did Etegami, hand-painted postcards.  Her grandson and his mom live with her, they're from Canada, so they speak really good English.  Richard, the grandson, really likes me.  He's about 5 or 6 I think.   

That night, I saw Death Note, Hell Girl, and Bleach in Japanese.  I loved the Bleach episode, it was hilarious and I can't wait until they dub it, but they'll probably cut out the scene where Rangiku and Orihime were 'playing' with thier boobs xD

The episodes here are in the 200 range, and the color contrast is way better than the dub.  It was a beach day and Byakuya, Ukitake and his lackies, Nemu, Yoruichi, Soi Fon, and Unohana and her lutenant all came to the world of the living.  They all apparently live together now and went to the beach because Byakuya destroyed the pool 'practicing' his Senbon Zakura.  It was too funny.   

I visited my host brother Haruchika's Junior High school the next day.  School's out, so classes weren't in session, only the summer school students, the school band practicing for thier competition on Sunday, and the Judo club, who were apparently studying.  It's all guys, and the teacher who showed me around urged for them all to take pictures with me, Haruchika's in it too, but he just kept to his seat hoping to god no one would talk him into it.  

..........I can pick up others' feelings, and that's what he was thinking.  

Is it bad if he has a crush on me? Because he's been warming up to me lately, and he's a Hikkikomori.  His body language is giving me signs too, and his eye contact.  He's not upstairs all his free hours of the day anymore, he's downstairs more checking me out, and before he goes upstairs he sometimes peeks into the living room just to look at me. 

................................. ...Is it me, or am I suddenly lucky in love over here? The only guys who had ever liked me since I was 13 were Asian, what is it about me, I wonder?

The next day I went with my host-grandfather to see a Bhuddist temple with a huge golden Bhudda statue (All of my host families are Bhuddist).  It was raining cats & dogs again, but I remembered my jacket this time.  Afterwards we went to this Memorial Museum for this Japanese composer named Tamezo.  His stuff is pretty good, but Tchaikovsky will always be my #1 favorite composer. 

That night, I went to do Karaoke with Yumiko, Sayuri, and Mai.  I again, sung a crapload of Namie Amuro songs, and some Koda Kumi and Ayumi Hamasaki.  Apparently, they did have them, I just kept misspelling Kuu-chan's name by forgetting the extra 'u' and Ayumi's last name.  Instead of 'Hamasaki' I kept putting 'Hamasaka'.  I did some Mika Nakashima too. 

I also did FANTASY by Alice Nine and Arumia by Nightmare, Jesus by Gackt, and a few SID songs.  I found out through my three Karaoke expieriances that I sing J-rock better than J-pop.  Real instruments compliment my voice better.  

The thing about FANTASY was Shou's accent caused me to mishear some of the lyrics.  He pronounces 'iru' like 'iyu', for example and it caught me off gaurd when the lyrics said 'iru'.  We were in there for almost three hours singing, talking, laughing, and eating ramen, rice, chicken, salad, peas, and pizza. 

One thing I found intresting is that the Japanese eat peas straight from the pod, not cooked.  It actually a nice little snack that can apparently go with pretty much anything.  

Ruka Kuromiya.  Japanese vampire from this J-drama I've been hooked on recently.  I'm obsessed with Yuma Nakayama. 

Yesterday was another free day, I spent most of the day in my room writing epic fail-worthy fangirl fantasy news articles in my language notebook and listening to my European music collection of Italian Winx Club soundtracks, Vitaa, and teh epic Marion Raven who is one of my three idols in the music world, aside from Yoshiki-sama and Linda.  Most of her songs are about relationship struggle on the womans' part and post-breakup strength, but she's a really good storyteller. 

Anyway, I went with my host-mom, Mayumi, and my host-brother Sousi to go shopping for dinner.  She bought me a pack of my new favorite brand of pocky *___* It's called Topo. 

After we went to the grocery store, we went to the pharmacy to get some cleaning suppllies.  I saw some Vidal Sassoon shampoo there that I almost told my host-mom I wanted but after my expieriance with the skin-whitening body soap, I was sort of cautious to what Japanese shampoo would do to my hair.  I only wanted to try it because Namie Amuro was the spokesmodel, but I just grabbed a mini information pamphlet to satisfy myself XD

That night, after dinner, I went to Sousi and Maria's Judo dojo to watch thier lesson.  Apparently, the parents join in when the teachers and students say thier goodbyes.  I sat 'the Japanese way' for about 5 minutes while I watched with the other parents.  Fortunatly, my legs didn't get extremely stiff like they did when I did Japanese Tea Ceremony, so I wasen't hard for me to get up.  Whenever I sit like that I have to wonder why Japanese people seem to think 'foreigners' have trouble 'understanding' sitting like that.  It's not a case of understanding, it just hurts. 

(Sorry, I got my days mixed up! I added info on my host-siblings and a little extra stuff to my last post)

These last few days have been free days, so I'm happily enjoying the time I have to relax and adjust to my new city, at least until I head to summer camp, but that's not for another week-and-a-half.

Two days ago I went shopping again with my host-grandparents, and there wasen't even a music store in thier shopping center, so they dragged me to three diffrent places just to find some freaking CDs. We found some, and I got 5 new CDs: Mika Nakashima's Music and Yes albums, Ayumi Hamasaki's A Complete ~All Singles~ album, Koda Kumi's 3 Splash single, and Yuma Nakayama w/ B.I. Shadow's debut single Akuma na Koi (Demon Love).

I saw 7 or 8 copies of DIM there, but I couldn't bring myself to pick one up, let alone buy it. Besides, I was already at my weeks' limit with spending about $100 with what I already had.

............Yeah, since I got my new debit card, I'm going crazy with it and usually spend half or almost all of my spending money for the week in one day. So far I've spent around $150 on CDs alone, but I hardly buy anything else here.  It's only been about 2 1/2 weeks and I already have 11 new CDs to take home!

That night I stayed up to watch Yuma Nakayama's new drama Koishite Akuma ~Vampire Boy~ with my host-mom. Although I can only understand about 20%, I get what's going on and that's enough to keep my attention. Plus, I just love to stare look at him....XDDDD

The next night, my host-mom gave me a magazine with Yuma w/ B.I. on the cover and the first two episodes of Koishite Akuma on DVD as presents. 

It's just too obvious I'm obsesssed with him, isn't it? XD

How time flies, it's been two weeks already!

I'm starting to miss my own computer and alot of my favorite TV shows that I didn't want to tape like Futurama and Spongebob. 

.................................................................

OH GOD, I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THE 10 NEW SPONGBOBS EVENT THIS MONTH...!

phooey T_T
There's a new Fairly Oddparents TV movie I wanted to see, too....

Now I remember why I was anxious about coming, all the good stuff happens in July! I already missed the Anime Expo, which was a VERY BIG personal sacrifice, and now the one and only Spongebob Squarepants whom I've been obsessed with since I was 6?

................................................
Okay, I'm done. 

On Saturday night, I went to my second host-family's company barbecue and found out my host brother has a huge crush on Misako, one of the employees, they were flirting with each other all night, it was too obvious they like each other.   

It was raining cats and dogs outside and I forgot my jacket, so I was freezing the first half of the party, and surprisingly I haven't caught a cold.  They had this open warehouse next to the actual office, so we had the barbecue in there.

I'm learning the hard way that Japanese people don't eat too much meat, and unfortunatly, it's not in my genes to go without meat, and they had some real meat at the barbacue and I was so happy to have some real meat I just scarfed it down and had thirds.  I had some whole shrimp, too, but it was hard to take apart, escpecially since I was kind of scared to touch it when I was constantly thinking 'HOLY SHIT, THE HEADS' STILL THERE @___@'

We did some fireworks, too, and had drinking contests.  I, of course, can't drink, so I competed with soda.  I came in second place ~_~. 

I finally got that free day I was begging for on Sunday, 14 solid hours to myself, which I was way too busy enjoying.  I took the time to practice my reading comprehension with my new Japanese Bleach and Vampire Knight mangas and listen to my new CDs.  A9's VANDALIZE was pretty good, as I expected, SID's Hikari album was great, Big Bang's My Heaven single was pretty nice, too.  Of course, there is not a song of Namie Amuro's that I don't like, so I loved her Break the Rules and Genius 2000 albums. 

BoA's was okay, it was nice to listen to her again after a year or so, but I just can't get into her anymore.  I only got into the songs I knew for all of 5-20 seconds then sort of tuned her out, with the exception of the song everyone hates for some reason, Make a Secret.  Her English songs are unbelievably contemporary, and I can't get into any of them, and her lyrics stretch the phrase 'sex sells' a little too much. 

The next day was Umi no Hi (Marine Day), also the day I moved to Kita-akita City to meet my third host family.  Only the grandparents were there to meet me, I met the son, daughter-in-law, and four grandkids at the house.  Mayumi, the daughter-in-law, speaks a decent amount of somewhat broken English, fortunatly, but she has to work but comes back and forth between home and work between errands and the grandkids are at school, so on my free days, most of the time I'm stuck with the grandparents. 

After lunch, we went to see Ajisai flowers.  I like Ajisais, they're pretty, and they're the title of one of my favorite SID songs.  So whenever I see them, I think of that song.  It's very relaxing, so Ajisais relax me.   

I also learned the hard way that Japanese people don't think of cicada sounds as a 'noise' or abnormal sound.  When I asked my second pair of host parents what the noise was, they laughed at the fact I called it a 'noise' and didn't answer me.  There was a translator with them, so I asked her, and told me that hyperactive hissing sound coming from the trees was a colony of 'small insects', meaning cicadas.  I hate bugs, especially the ones that make noise, so I'm really uncomfortable around cicadas, escpecially since I've never seen one because we don't get them in SoCal. 

After the Ajisais, I went to my third host family's house and met my host-siblings Sousi, Maria, Yuuya, and Haruchika.  They're all younger than me, Sousi is 3, Maria's 11, Haruchika is 13, and Yuuya's 15. 

I seem to get along pretty well with Maria, we both have a DS and battled each other on my Bleach game.  Apparently, an American and Japanese DS can download games from each other and work just fine.  Nice little tidbit to know, ne?

I called my mom to tell her I was with my final host family, and she tells me that the Lions' activities are optional, which nobody told me.  So I basically tortured myself out of choice. 

>< Dammit. 

Unfortunatly, my international calling card ran out of minutes before we ended the conversation, and incedently, we were on the subject of my card, but she called here to get my PIN number and told me she'll add more money to it on Friday.