Tremendously overdue and just tremendous in general update

Hi kids, how've you been? We miss you all! We miss that we missed Ange's Bday, Beno's farewell, Baccae's Toga Party, Nick and Georgia's burrito love and pizza. We also miss West Lakes food court's fish and chips.

So you're wondering what we've been up to?

J&F Farewells
Our friend Linda left on tuesday, which naturally required a lot of drinking and some eating. We missed her farewell BBQ but we made it into the kitchen in time for the fun to really start. And by fun, I mean lots of alcohol (not so much on mine and Sarah's part) and seemingly endless repetition of a Japanese song that goes "Linda Linda! Linda Linda Linda! Linda Linda! Linda Linda Linda!" and so on. (With such lyrical diversity, I'm sure you can't imagine how I found it annoying...) The day after that, Oche left, but no one knew he was leaving and to be honest, we didn't see him before he left. Weird. Then our good friend Sebastien, one of the nicest guys I know, left back to France. We're going to see if we can catch up with a few J&F people when we hit Europe!

From top, left to right: 1) Linda is the one pointing, 2) Nicolas, Ayumi and Sarah bewildered by the drunken goings-on, 3) Sarah and I get exited, 4) Fumio decides to breakdance, hilarity ensues, 5) Kira... I don't know what Kira is doing, 6) Sarah does the ALIEN DANCE! (aka "We no speak Americano")


Spaghetti Party!
The reason we missed Linda's BBQ was because of Chizuko's Spaghetti Party! Miho was finally better and Chizuko invited us to lunch. We took our Malibu, pineapple juice and garlic bread with us, and Chizuko made us two different types of spaghetti to try, one with eggplant, ham and ... I have no idea what else, the other a kind of herby tomato with feta cheese. They were both quite nice, though I admit, I ate just the pasta and tomato sauce, none of the extras!

DenDen Town
On tuesday we went with Miho and Mai to DenDen town. DenDen Town is like Tokyo's Akihabara district, only it's in Osaka, obviously. Sarah bought a tripod stand for her camera, while we looked at the newest iPod gear, over expensive "jewel" headphones (seriously, they look nothing like jewels, how dare you try to charge that much??!?!?) and Sarah's favourite gaming shiz! It was REALLY hot. We toiled on, looking through game shops, wasting our money on machines that gave us awful keyrings, buying figurines we really didn't need (Okay, that was me, but they had Meyrin and Lacus cheap! Now of course I have to get Kira and Yzak.)and had a look at cosplay shops. Wigs here are pretty expensive, but way cool. I want Aqua hair! We stopped for a snack break at Maccas (what, it was so hot! Maccas is air conditioned, has ice cold coke and is delicious! And cheap. so many reasons just to stay there forever!) Then we (reluctantly) walked into the heat and continued down the road... to get icecream! It was delicious, by the way. Soft serve is called "Soft cream" and comes in many different flavours, including "Corn Pottage"... wtf is that?

1) Carly under a nice looking arch, 2) Sarah finds a sword, 3)Akatsuki BLING Gundam with Cagalli and Mwu La Flaga sparkling on the box, 4) A giant Gundam punches a hole in the no-photo rule, 5) Den-Den Town, 6) Statue from Fall Out 3 game.


Hard Rock Cafe
After DenDen town, we went to Hard Rock Cafe. Sarah was excited about the food, me about the cocktails and I didn't think Miho or Mai knew quite what to expect. The cocktails were arse. You paid $10 and they didn't even put them in a cocktail glass, just like, a normal coke glass! Not impressed! Also, despite ordering three different cocktails, they all looked identical. Boring! Unfortunately, with the exception of Sarah's blackened chicken pasta, the food was pretty lame too. Sarah loved her pasta, Mai's caesar salad was okay, but Miho's fish and chips were absolutely awful. The chips were gross- tomato sauce couldn't save them, and the fish was... It was about 5 small fish, not one piece, which wasn't so bad. The fish was 70% tasteless batter and grease, and 30% warm sandy tasteless fishmush. Lemon did not assist in any way, and I felt sorry for Miho. My garlic bread was quite average, and I was not impressed. The only area in which I rate it is music, cause it had awesome music, and at the perfect volume; you wanted to dance but you could still talk easily.

1)Mai, Sarah, Miho & I at Hard Rock Cafe Osaka, 2) Mai and Sarah, 3) Miho and I

Shoppping
After sternly deciding on a budget, we then proceeded to go shopping. Hyakuen stores are quite dangerous- deceptively cheap they are, yet buy $15 worth I do. Understand this mystery, Yoda does not. We found a Daiso right near us- just a 10m walk away. We literally spent an hour scouring its depths, and i spent $13 on $1 products. I bought "shiny powder". We also hit UniQlo. We'd found a great bargain there before, many great bargains actually, but this time, we wanted to buy another and it was GONE. Oh we didn't know how well we had it- if only... but it was not to be, as I even tried ringing the Umeda UniQlo and they too were sold out. Of course, I didn't know this until Miho rang for me, after asking my carefully translated question and then announcing I did not speak Japanese, the guy launched into quickfire Japanese which seemed much more elaborate than the simple "hai" or "ie" I was looking for.
Nonetheless, we still triumphed, returning with more clothes than were previously had. We love UniQlo.

Kelly’s Party
Kelly’s party was on the 40th floor of a building in Miyakojima. It was pot luck so we bought Pesto Pasta (courtesy of Sarah) which went down well. When we came in we were the centre of attention which was unnerving; we felt like hobos attending an expensive dinner (maybe not too far from the truth). Most of the people were Chizuko’s colleagues, including Kelly and his brother Corey who are Canadian. The Japanese people were very nice and keen to talk to us; I think I scared them talking about sharks, snakes, poisonous spiders, octopus and jellyfish, drop bears and killer kangaroos.
There was more Takoyaki, which we declined, slightly alarmed. The view was killer, as you’d expect from 40 floors, and we took some nice photos including “you’ve run a marathon and now you’re puffed out”, “you're that suave Japanese guy who thinks he's Italian”, “ and more. Also, we had fun train watching and saw some fireworks from far off.
When we left, we looked down from the 40th floor (the building had a hollowed out square in the middle... a straight, 40 floor death drop) and if that wasn't facing my fear of heights, I'm not sure what was. I also kind of felt like I should have a light saber, and that Luke Skywalker was coming to toss my boss into the abyss.
At 11:30 we decided we’d better catch the train home, alas, the last train was at 11:34 from a stop 10 mins away. This was slightly awkward but Chizuko and Miho came to the rescue, refusing to leave us on the streets. We walked back to Chizuko’s, buying a delicious “soft cream” (soft serve) cone in choc-vanilla. It was cheap but ridiculously delicious.
Then we got to sleep on a real Japanese Futon! It was pretty comfortable actually, though I did have a weird dream about trying to convince a plastic bag to turn back into a boy. The boy was also pregnant. Weird stuff, I know.

1)The view from the balcony, 2) same view, diff pic, 3) "You're a walnut, hanging from a tree", 4) "You're a plane, coming into land, tilting a little to the side", 5) "You're a samurai", 6) 40th floor of the Death Star, 7) Fireworks in the distance, 8) Carly and Sarah, 9) Miho and Carly, 10) Sarah and Miho, 11) view from the balcony with a blue light, 12) futon party, 13) "dead" on the futon, 14) a mighty sly monobrow sneaks its way across Saros' forehead.



The day after
After a nice sleep in, we watched SYTYCD America (and got the COOLEST idea) then we departed for Maccas- futatsu cheeseburger, ooonion to muuuustard to pickulshu nookie de! I also created beauty with our leftover wrappers.We then headed back to J&F and had a lovely shower, wasted our time (Onion, NO! Mustard, NO! Pickles, NO!) and made Miho Tacos for tea! And watched Gundam Seed ;)
















^^ I created a TANK! ^^


"Planning" with Miho
Today we decided to visit Miho and plan more activities for September. What actually happened was we watched America's next top model, then headed to Daiso and UniQlo. Upon comparing my budget and my money, I was alarmed and vowed not to spend much money. I then bought two dresses, a skirt and a scarf and some presents. And a new handbag. Oops? So we're trying to plan again on thursday. Also, on the train on the way to Miyakojima (Miho's station), a kid got his hand stuck in the train doors... they didn't close on his hand, his hand got dragged into the space where the doors slide into when open. He screamed and screamed, and it was really freaky. In the end about 6-10 Japanese men were trying to pull his arm out while holding the half closed train door open. His hand, when pulled out, was fine... Sarah and I half expected it to come out bloody and like raw meat. It was both relieving and slightly disappointing, after the feeling of horror! Also, I'm not allowed to eat Maccudo (Maccas), chips, or ice cream until next sat. If I do, I have to eat lots of octopus. I am a sad panda.

















^^ Never thought I'd be grateful Adelaide train doors are so weak...^^

Shoutouts:
To my family- Sorry about Skype, I didn't blow you off, talk to you Thursday for sure!
To Kim Simpson, your malteser and Mars bar goodness is unbelieveable!
To Kim Bowden, I'll try to catch you on skype this weekend or friday?
To Ange, you should really check your email more often.
To Ben, we really should have bought those hats.
To Laura Turner, get on those pantsu cards!
To Laura Simpson, I didn't even know you had a cat. Looking forward to Skype date!
To Kirilly, yes, when we get back, we will make punch!
To Beno, your pizza makes me jealous.
To Georgia, you haven't commented us! WHY?!
To John, wow, grounded? Sucks to be you!


Hugs, Kisses and ... (you can fill this one in Ange),


Ichinose Maki
A.K.A.
Darth Vader
A.K.A.
Carlos Jorgen
A.K.A.
Carly



P.S.

Dear Diary,
Nose a little itchy today...
xx Ichinose

P.P.S

Secret Video coming soon here ;)

THE EPIC POST! Crepes, Cicadas and Cocktails!

Warning: This is going to be a long post…as we haven’t updated properly in a while…I’m just sayin’… it’ll be lengthy, and there may also be a pop quiz on it next post to see just how closely you pay attention to every single exciting word we post on here (which is definitely all of it!).

Alternatively, you can just scroll down to each highlighted day if you do want to skip out...but we will find you...and hunt you down!

Thursday night was Ayumi-san’s birthday, and to mark the special occasion Nicolas had organised to make crepes with our group. By the time Carly and I came out to the kitchen the batters had already been made up for both savoury crepes (made by Juerg) and sweet crepes (made by Nicolas). I don’t know about carly, but I have to say, the thought of savoury pancake type things didn’t sound too appetising for me… so when Juerg gave me the first savoury crepe with ham and cheese…I wasn’t expecting anything good. Especially if the quality of the meat is anything to go buy in the supermarket - check out that fatty steak!

The roll on the other hand actually looked pretty good:

I was overly surprised to find it was probably one of the tastiest things I’d had so far in Japan! It was awesome, and now I’m afraid I’m going to have to go googling for some sort of recipe…. I think Carlos will agree we also need to cook the sweet ones again too. After watching Nicolas for a bit, I decided to give it a go at cooking crepes too – the first one, needless to say, turned out a bit stodge – too thick and over buttery, I sneakily put it on the plate for everyone anyway, hoping that some poor soul, who wasn’t me, would take it and eat it (my plan was a success!). However, my crepe flipping skills became much better after the first one, and Nicolas and myself had a ‘flip off’ in which I became the new master flipper and got upgraded to the large fry pan.

Meanwhile, as all this was going on, Carly was in the background concocting suspicious crepe parcels for Nicolas, Juerg and myself. Apparently, if we were to turn around before she was done; we would find Tabasco sauce in them as a special treat.

When I finally bit into my parcel Carlos had made, I found that she had carefully planted all three different sauces (kiwi, mango and strawberry in the shape of a smiley face) into the middle which exploded out of the crepe and all over my hand, arm and plate.

It was a delicious burst of flavour and I do not regret getting everywhere in any way…even if I did totally forget about the crepe I still had cooking on the stove…for another unsuspecting victim! So, Carly became the crepe saucing master after Juerg and Nicolas also appreciated her special parcels.

OH! We have an Italian update! After keeping us up again til 2:30 in the morning, being their usual douchey selves, we found out that it was their final night and that they were leaving the next morning! Needless to say, there was much joyous celebrations in our room, so no more haggling the manager to try and move rooms. I think we’ve actually got one of the best rooms in the house…as we heard that the higher storey rooms are almost a third smaller than ours, and we are the only room in the house with two singles instead of bunk beds; and compared to the mattress’ on the bunk beds, we scored pretty well!

Also, if any one was looking for pet mould balls, we found some:

Friday marked the awesome free movie day and the discovery of another 100¥ shop! Seeing as I totally missed out on seeing Inception before I left, I couldn’t believe it when Yoshida offered us free tickets to go see it with her! Once again off to Tennoji station, we met up with Yoshida-san and her niece Ryoko who lives in Nara (about an hour away from Osaka). We found that similar to us, they also sneak in food and drink into the cinemas, which was great when we saw the 100¥ sign. I was very happy to find Pringles and Peanut M&M’s to have during the movie, while Carly found some chocolate/strawberry triangle things, plus a coke each and all for $1 each! (How we do love being stingy!)

In the actual cinemas, I was pretty excited to discover they sold frozen coke, only to discover it came in a shittely small cup not even fit for small toddler. After two sips, that was gone (yay…) and all for a nice overpriced $2.50.

However, I was delighted (as was Carly horrified) to discover the release of a new Pokemon movie that’s out! Only to horribly discover (to Carly’s delight) it was only in Japanese :-(

We were a bit early in the cinema, and while we sat waiting for it to start, we couldn’t help but laugh at the fact the cinemas were playing deep suspenseful music, while calmly showing us not to put our feet on the seats, or that the candy bar was still available.

For those of you that haven’t seen Inception, we would definitely recommend it, even if like us…you’re not really Leonardo DiCaprio fans. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, Yoshida gave us all 1000¥ gift certificates at the local mall in Tennoji. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find anything on Friday…but as it is the equivalent of shopping in Myer, with anything from Tiffany and Co. jewellery to Victoria Secret Lingerie…it was a bit hard to find anything within our price range. However, Yoshida-san being as awesome as she is - just sent us another message with more free movie tickets (Win or what!). Carly is also organising to teach Yoshida and some of her students English – so we will keep you all informed on how that goes! Apparently, there is also a Café about an hour away that hires foreigners per hour to participate in simple English conversation…so we’ll see what happens there too…

Saturday night was our first night out on the town. We met up with Miho and Chizuko at Tennoji station and went to a small bar called Tin’s Hall to see Chizuko’s boss Kelly play in his band with his brother Corey. Here we had some cocktails, and Carly's Mango Daiquiri looked pretty awesome!

It was pretty old school stuff (ie…Led Zeppelin) so not really our sort of thing, but we still had a good time having cocktails with Chizuko and Miho, as well as Ryoko who also came down to see us. Ryoko (right) and her friend.

Chizuko bought us a round of interesting drinks which were fun to try – one tasted horrible and we all pulled faces as we tried then gave it back to Chizuko who actually liked the taste! (Yeh…if you like the taste of raw gasoline with a hint of mint!) The other three were really nice – we had Mango, Pineapple and Orange daiquiris.

We left Tin’s Hall at 11 and said goodbye to Chizuko at the station. There we met up with Miho’s friend Shiho, who had stayed in Adelaide with Miho and headed off to Shinsaibashi - the largest and most well known shopping district during the day and nightclub scene during the night in Osaka. On the way to the Pure Osaka Club we stopped at one of those classic Japanese photo booths and this was the result:

Our eyes look crazeh!

Finally, we made it to Pure at around 12:30...everyone goes out so late here because the Taxi's are a minimum of $50 so everyone just waits until the subway starts at around 5:30 then catches that home for $3...which is definitely worth it! We got in the club within 10 minutes and paid our $25 for unlimited drinks. The free drinks menu was limited...but they had vodka sunrises, so we were set! We also tried a few different drinks - I liked the Peach Oolong and Carly liked the 'Moscow Mule' and the 'Screwdriver', and we both liked the 'Fuzzy Navel'. Most of them were just mixed with different juices or tea and were nice and sweet. Apparently my drink choices were poor and shitty, and Carly's were awesome - but I like Oolong tea...even if it does taste weird! Hmph!

So Pure was tiny, and it was quite hard to dance, but we were very impressed with some of Shiho's dance moves, we thought she was all quiet then BAM she just came up with these ultra cool dances and a few people stopped to watch. Apparently she does African dancing...so Carlos and I want some lessons. Kim - I know you'll want us to learn some to teach you when we get back!

Carlos, Shiho and Miho!

Oh, also, unlike our VIP rooms in clubs...theirs was not only upstairs, it was hidden behind a secret bookcase door which led to a private bar and room that overlooked the dancefloor with chandoliers, and red walls and carpet and really nice leather chairs...just a pity it was the VIP room and we couldn't go up there :(

After we'd had enough of Pure Osaka (it gets sooooo hot in there) we left for some fresh air and headed to our first Japanese Maccas experience around 4am to wait until the subway opens. It was also apparently the place to get some sleep before the subway opened...

I also managed to successfully order Futatsu (2) Cheesubaagaa's with cheezu to (and) meato to ketchup and Furido Potato an futatsu coca-cora's. Amazingly, they got my order correct...even though it was a mix of English grammar and Japanese words strung together or made up completely. Carly was quite impressed! We were also very impressed at the fact that they are only $1 here, and THEY TASTE THE SAME AS BACK HOME! Quite possibly the first pre-made food item still full of delicious flavour...just a pity it's unhealthy :-( We left maccas around 5:15 to head to the station and Shinsaibashi was still filled with drunken teenagers roaming around everywhere. As we crossed the bridge, the sun was just starting to come up, so here's Shinsaibashi with the river flowing through the middle.

We also found this crab rather appealing, and thought that Ben would appreciate its awesomeness:

Lastly, we saw a group of guys carrying one of their passed out friends to the subway, who had obviously had a big night haha

Then, among the giant crab we found, we came across this giant Whale in the middle of Namba station. The station was desserted...so we took the opportunity to pose with the roped off whale.

By this time, we were so overtired it wasn't funny, and couldn't wait for the subway to arrive already. It was now around 6am by the time we'd taken photos and said goodbye to Miho and Shiho.

Shout out to J-Hoop...this image is for you buddy!

On the subway home, we met up with Oche, our friend from JF who is from Cairns. He'd also been out all night and couldn't wait for bed. Walking back to the house together, we thought we'd record the cicadas that were chirping in the trees. Those shitty things are so loud, Carly, Oche and myself had to shout above all the noise just to speak to each other. Enjoy!

And finally, we are done. Apologies for this lengthy post...we hope it was worth it!