Jetlag

We're back!!

Of course you all must be DYING to hear about our much-anticipated trip to Japan. For the first few days, we did a tour that turned out to be far more luxurious than expected. Then we were onr our own (dun dun dunnn). Despite daily phone calls from one participant's dad (who will remain unspecified), the experience can be described as nothing other than an exercise in independence. Figuring out how to ride the subway to get to places, pointing mutely at menus to order food (because none of us can speak Japanese), remembering to brush our teeth at night...I feel like even though these two weeks might have caused us to waste a lot of money, they were definitely anything but a waste of our time.

It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be able to head to a foreign country with your friends with no adult supervison while you are still young enough to be immature and enjoy things that don't involve alcohol or host clubs. It feels great being hormonal enough to be able to check out guys' hair and squeal over it (Japanese guys have AMAZING HAIR @_@) without being unfaithful to lifelong partners.

Still, it feels nice to finally be at home where I can sleep off this ridiculously long all-nighter I've been pulling due to the time difference. More later? Maybe.

Requiem for a dream

Before I begin my blog post, let me offer a huge apology for my lengthy absence. My (metaphorical) fighter jet crashed (metaphorically) in the middle of the (metaphorical) Pacific Ocean. I managed to make it to an uninhabited island (metaphorically) and then proceeded to subsist entirely on (metaphorical) nuts and berries until I was rescued (metaphorically) by a (less metaphorical) hawk, who came to me with cries of "UPDATE THE BLOG, WOMAN".
So, Quail has stopped wallowing in end-of-school lethargy and is now functioning a little better.

I wanted to write this post before we shipped ourselves off to Japan, so here I am writing this 20 minutes before I'm supposed to carpool to the airport. Procrastination is the story of my life...

High school...I'm not sure what I think about it at the moment. There's a haze of disbelief around the whole graduating shebang, so much so that every day just feels like a weekend, rather than A) a day of summer vacation gone by and B) a day of pre-college summer gone by. At this point, it still feels like I'll be showing up to school Monday in a sleepy daze complaining about whatever homework there is to complain about.

The past 4 years certainly did pass by like a warm summer's day. It's been fun, it's been happy, and I've learned to think (I think). It most definitely hasn't been a "High School Musical", although it was high school, and I did burst into song in the middle of school with several of my cohorts.

The things I remember most about the past 4 years would be all the stuff I didn't do at school, like rolling down hills, going to Ikea, loitering in front of the local drug store playing cards, and all manner of stuff that belongs on clichéd lists of lazy summer activities. In retrospect, most of the things we did sound so charming and picturesque, like things that would come out of a sugary sweet, cavity inducing movie or book, though they really were anything but. "Hanging out at the drugstore" doesn't even begin to touch on the weirdness, banter, chocolate, and punching that came with it. (Though "VEGGIES AND CREAM" and "YEEEEUH BOIIIIII" somehow do)

And now the waking dream (or nightmare) that was high school is now over, and the future dreams of college are about to begin in a big way.

Y'all had better prepeare, we're taking the world by storm!






(Addendum: My apologies, I didn't get to finish this post before carting off on the airplane and heading to Japan, so this post is now a week late. Rest assured the main body of it was written before the airplane landed.)

Expect more Japan posts!

Moving On

What a CRAZY awesome week (with one exception).

It was pretty much fun with the friends EVERY day until Friday. I'll give a brief rundown of the incredible awesomeness before I go on to the more serious things.

On Monday, there was a lot of rockbanding, during which I did what I do best and wailed on the drums, still unable to play past the medium level unless someone else did the footpedal for me :(. I also got a new song addiction: Move Along by the All-American Rejects. I also watched the best Pixar movie ever. Yes, Wall-E was great but Up is just AMAZING. There was no random, magical ending. The physics of it might not have been perfect (if the house could float with them inside, then how could they anchor it to the ground?), and I was slightly dissatisfied that the Asian boy was portayed as chubby and having very little real-life experience (instead, invested in his books and what they taught). However, it must be noticed that his VA was actually Asian. Baby steps, I guess.

Then there was mooching of free food at the school barbeque, and afterwards the Senior Awards Ceremony, during which both Quail and I were regaled with awards. I got a few that I didn't know existed. A bit shocking, and random parents came up to me afterwards to express their congratulations. EGO BOOST X 1000!

On Tuesday morning was graduation practice, which was not notable in any way. However, it also came with a trip to Raging Waters! It wasn't perfect weather--kind of cold and foggy, which sucks when you're spending the whole day dripping. Still, we managed to make fun our own way while standing in long lines, whether it was by singing "Chickenman" or becoming involved in long, completely pointless discussions. We also almost missed the bus, apparently having gotten the departure time wrong, but we made it :).

Wednesday, of course, was graduation. WAHEY--or not. It was a lot less exciting than it sounds, and a lot shorter-feeling than I expected. I spent the entire time worrying that my cap was sliding off my head before I figured out how to use my tassels to maintain it in horizontal equilibrium on my head. Still, I had to walk extremely slowly to shake the board members' hands, which was kind of embarrassing. Note to the next generation: unless you have a large head, clip your hat to your hair to save yourself a lot of worry. I lost my cap in the tossing afterwards, but I didn't mind because I had taken the tassels off (another note to those of you graduating later).

Immediately afterwards was a trip to the USS Hornet. That would require a blog post all by itself, so I'll just say that it was AWESOME. Except for the tour through the boat. Tip: when there's a party on a boat, no matter how bored you are, don't spring for the tour because it's a waste of your time...you also have to spend a lot of time standing up while your elderly tour guide takes a leisurely break in the only chair. That sucked.

We got back to school at about 4 am, then there was a mini-sleepover, during which an all-nighter was attempted and failed. We slept until 12, then had a productive time planning JAPAN. We're leaving in 8 days ^_^ How exciting is that?

Then all the things I need to do hit me in the face. I gotta start being concerned with finances as far as paying for Japan goes. I've sold books on Half.com and made about 20 bucks (even subtracting the amount I paid to ship), but unfortunately I don't have a checking account and all the money was diverted to my parents--so I pretty much just lost a lot of time spent walking to the post office and spent 10 bucks out of my own pocket.

I also really need my license, but haven't gotten the insurance papers today in time for my test tomorrow. I also don't even know if I CAN take the test tomorrow because I may need to work. Lifeguarding, which I planned to do in order to earn the money I need for Japan, turns out not to be as reliable as I had hoped. With the two weeks' leave for Japan, I haven't received constant hours yet, a fact that my dad saw fit to lecture me on last night.

Talk about your pointless lectures. I don't even know what he was trying to tell me. He was pissed about the lack of a definite plan. I get that. But I offered to cancel Japan (did not LIKE it, but if I had really needed to I guess I would have) and he got even madder. When y'all become parents in the future, before giving your kid (or charge, because I am no longer a kid!) a huge lecture, PLEASE have an idea of what the hell you're trying to tell them and don't drag out the lecture while you're trying to figure it out yourself. And especially don't repeat yourself 20 times and keep cutting off the other person when they try to repeat themselves to hammer it through your thick skull. Also, when they stop talking, it's not because you're right (so PLEASE don't feel like you are), but because they are SICK and TIRED of you not listening to what they're trying to say and have just given up on you. Because, seriously, repeating your point does not make it right and will not change the "facts" that you are hung up on.

Sorry about the rant there, but I'm pretty sure a lot of you with occasionally unreasonable parents will understand. But I'm not condoning precociousness and impudence on the Eyrie here, because your parents are your parents, and no matter how much you hate them at times, they did pay about a million bucks to raise you by the time you're 18. That's a million bucks they could have spent on themselves. So...note to self, don't begrudge $20 going to their bank account, earned by selling books that they paid for.

Once again, countdown to Japan: 8 days!

Aaaaah, epic fail

Oh, and I forgot to mention that my camera got fixed and is now happily back (though I'm not sure if it's the same camera.....)

Anyway, the little Japanese store is actually really amazing. I want to go there every week now. Also, someone we know works there; I saw them last week. It was kind of strange.

At any rate, Quail is richer 1 pencil bag, 1 much-needed planbook, 1 camera case, 1 watch, 1 polka-dotted skinny-tie, 1 bottle of Ramune (in a plastic bottle! Wonder of wonders!), 1 box of pocky, and 1 bag of shrimp chip/fries, and poorer a bit of cash (but not much, amazingly enough). Fantastic.

Back to the title of this post.....
Quail decided to bleach a black shirt yesterday and failed spectacularly. Golden rule of shirt making (and probably much of life in general).....

KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TRYING TO DO BEFORE YOU DO IT.


But! It's not my fault that particular black shirt bleached orange......
Or that I didn't know what kind of dilution of bleach to use....

Trying to fix it with Sharpie is my fault though.....and then trying to fix that with rubbing alcohol.

I like the scissors part, though. And the forks.

In total, this shirt contained: Coins, strips of paper, scissors, a lock, chains, paperclips, paperclip chains, forks, and a house key. Maybe I should stick to one or two concepts per shirt....

Well, after wearing it for a day, it's kind of growing on me. Too bad parts of the orange are almost the exact color of my skin, which doesn't look so great. I swear I'm not orange, it just looks like that compared to the black.

BUT! One of my friends gave me a great idea today, so I can't wait to accquire some more shirts to experiment with. Mmmmyessss. This time I'm using a stencil. Objects can wait until I feel more comfortable using bleach.

Hmm....what else?
Ice-cream social at work tomorrow. Yum yum. I haven't had ice-cream all summer, except for once in Japan, I think.

Everybody seems to walk into my cubicle at precisely the wrong moments. I swear I'm doing work! It's just that everyone walks in right when I'm not doing work. Which is like, the 3 times that people walk in every day. Well, more than that, but still!
At least no body important walks in....

Augh, I just found out that the pocky I got all melted together. Wonderfullll
Even better, the shrimp chips I got are wasabi flavored. I should really look at these things before I buy them.

Back

Quail is back from Japan. Aaaaaah, so many souvenir type things. Argh.

Work tomorrow.

Unpacking today


It's hot here.

Japan Day 11-12

Oh, and for those of you who live on the internet, my FB is no longer super sekrit.

So another 2 rather uneventful but tiring days have passed, and now it is almost time for me to leave Japan D:

Anyway,

Day 11: Our concert with the Okayama Jr. Orchestra. The concert hall was awesome, except it was really echo-y, so we sounded even louder than our usual triple forte.

I just sort of smiled and waved at the Japanese girl next to me and she smiled and waved back. It was kind of awkward.

We had a reception afterwards in which my friends and I stalked these cute little Japanese violinists that were about 8. Japanese kids are much cuter than American kids, I must say.

After that, we had a 'farewell banquet' at the hotel. It wasn't very exciting, but we had to dress semi-formal anyway. I had too much floral print.

THEN WE SLEPT AT 10 because of the recording session.

Day 12:
7 hours of recording at the concert hall.

Dear lord that was painful.

Arrrrrrgh.

And then we got on the bus and came to this hotel Ramada in Osaka. It's kind of ghetto.

We ate some delicious Ramen

And then played more Taiko drumming. That game is amazing. I want to bring it back to the States.

And now it is 2 AM and I have to wake up at 5 and whee.

Whew, Japan Days 7-10

Egads it's been a long time since my last post!

A bunch of stuff happened, some of it unfortunate, some of it awesome.

First off, it sounds like you're having mucho fun, Hawky dear! You must tell me more. It looks like I'm being forced to get a fb for picture sharing of pictures from the Japan trip. Blah.

Anyway

Day 7: We took the bullet train to a temple on Mount Hiei near Kyoto. It was pretty awesome, except my camera broke on the way there.



The temple was awesome. Aaaaaawesome. Very Japanese style. It was funnnnn. We meditated with some Buddhist monks!


Day 8: All day sight seeing in Kyoto. There are lots of temples there. It was hot and muggy D:
There was this one really cool place called the Golden Pavilion that used to be the Shogun's residence in Kyoto.



Then we bussed over to our awesome hotel on Lake Biwa. It was reaaaaaally pretty.

Also: There was a game arcade and entertainment center next door, so we played the taiko drum game (aaaaah, my favoritest game ever) and I bought more capsules from the capsule machines. I have 12 now.


Day 9: Free day! We walked around Lake Biwa



and then went to the arcade for some happy fun time. I won a cubular pig that's almost too big for my suitcase!

Then we ate lunch and went bowling

After that was rehearsal. Tiring as per usual.

Then we had the most amazing night ever. We were so high off of who knows what (probably oxygen) so 5 of us started making music videos. To Disney songs. Oh lord, that was amazing.


Day 10: More rehearsal, concert, and bussing. Not too exciting

AND AND AND

I JUST SAW DOMOKUN ON TV : D

Japan Day 5 & 6

Okay, skipped a day because too many people wanted to use the internet before I went to sleep.

So day 5 (Monday for me) was pretty exciting. We woke up in the morning and explored around Shinjuku in the small streets and found some nice Engrish like:

Then at 12ish we went to Tokyo Tower! Yay!
We ate lunch there and explored. My friends and I also found a photo booth and had a ridiculous amount of fun in there.

Afternoon was Ginza district, which is all the high end stores and name brand stuff, so I skipped out and escaped into the subway with some friends to go to Akihabara.
I wish I had more time at Akihabara! It's the anime and electronics district, which is exactly what I was looking for in Tokyo. Damn, I only had 1 hour there. I did get to buy all the TTGL models I wanted and a crapload of anime stuff for people : D

After that, we ate dinner at this AMAZING sushi place near the hotel. It was cheap and delicious and had the conveyer belt thing. Awesome. There was a waiter that spoke Chinese, too.
Then we went back to the hotel and played with Photo Booth on my computer. Good times.
----------------------------------

DAY 6

Another concert day. These days are coming more and more often.

Morning was Edo-Tokyo museum, which was kind of interesting. I took a lot of blurry pictures because it was dark in there, and they didn't let us use flash in most places.
I took a bunch of stupid photos of my friends :D
Me and my stalker camera are best frienddddds

After lunch at the museum, we bussed over to the concert hall and had rehearsal, then break, then pre-concert show (because we couldn't fit some of our pieces into the concert time....whut), then break, then concert!
We had a joint concert with the Tokyo Junior Orchestra Society, which was fun
They were so much more in tune than we were! We played horribly and everybody was dropping things left and right.

Their second bassoonist was kind of cute, though. I'm probaby biased because he's a bassoonist.

Then we went back to the hotel. Tomorrow we leave Tokyo (sadness) and we get to stay at a temple for a night (happiness)

Nighty!

Japan Day 4

Whoo, today was tiring.

It was our free day today, which was fairly exciting. Unfortunately it wasn't quite as free as I thought it would be, since we were forced to go in groups of 15 to specified places with chaperons.

So I went to Shibuya and Ueno. Unfortunately it was raining the whole day, which kind of put a dapener on things.

Shibuya is a shopping district with lots of department stores on the main road and a few side roads lined with boutiques. Didn't buy much.

Then we went to Ueno park and hung out at the Science museum because it was raining. We just....ate lunch and visited the museum store. That was it, mostly.

We came back soaked and tired, and then went out on the town around Shinjuku for dinner. I bought more Moyashimon stuff.
I saw some bags, but I didn't think they were pretty enough. so yeah.

Tomorrow I really need to find a store selling anime goods besides just moyashimon figurines. Seriously.

Japan Day 3

I'm too tired to put pictures in, so I'll just put in a video at the end.

So today, we rehearsed with a youth orchestra from Tokyo in a combined rehearsal for one of our pieces we're playing in the next concert.
The second bassoon guy was pretty cute :D We didn't get much time to socialize with them, though. We played through the songs then went straight to the bus.

Lunch was odd. We had bento box things that had sandwiches and 2 pieces of sushi. I'm seriously getting sick of Japanese sandwiches. They're kind of gross. We ate at a park that had no benches. Then all the guys tried to show off by doing pull-ups. Some things never change.

After lunch was the MOST ADORABLE THING EVER.
OH MY GOD.
We did an exchange thing with an elementary school where we went there and played some songs with them, except THEY COMPLETELY PUT US TO SHAME. Dear lord, they were amazing.

THEY MARCHED IN FORMATION, MEMORIZED A REALLY LONG PIECE, PLAYED WELL, AND THERE WERE 2 FREAKING MARCHING BASSOONS. It was so amazing

Aaaaahhhhh

THEY WERE SO CUTE.

And they sang for us too! And aaaaaaaah. Even if I say I don't like little kids, LITTLE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLERS MARCHING WITH BASSOONS are too much for me to handle.

So after that bit of adorableness, we loaded the buses and drove away while they chased the bus.



So after that, we went to an amusement district with a giant ferris wheel and a shopping mall. We ate dinner at the mall in the food court. I had fresh takoyaki, and it was delish. So amazing.

Except then we were late so we ran to the ferris wheel, but it was too late D:

So we played games in the arcade. TAIKO DRUM GAME IS SO AMAZING

And then we took the JAPANESE SUBWAY home. Whee!

Japan Day 2

We watched a tea ceremony (it took about 15 minutes) and then we had rehearsal.



For 4 hours.




And then we ate tuna pizza with corn and ham from Pizza Hut. It was strange.

And then we had a concert. For 3 hours.


I was too exhausted to move, but then we had a japanese and music trivia contest on the bus ride back, courtesy of our conductor, and then we went back to the hotel and told scary stories. Yep.

Not a very exciting day.

Japan Day 1 (picture heavy)

So, first full day in Japan!

Some basic rundowns. I've decided that I'll post pictors. Yay pictors.

Woke up at 6:30ish. I slept extremely well! I'm surprised.
Breakfast at hotel. It was pretty awesome; all you can eat, nice food, etc
Well, their eggs were a little sketchy, but that's okay. Miso soup for breakfast ftw. Ate a big breakfast to make up for smaller portions at lunch and dinner.


(Our bus was yellow. I took a lot of bus pictures.)


First place we visited was the Imperial palace area. It's not open to the public, so yeah. We just took pictures of the guard towers and stuff like that. Not that exciting.




(bona-fide Japanese hobo!)



After that, we went to another shrine! This time it was a Buddhist shrine. It was pretty busy, since it was right in the middle of Tokyo (Asakusa neighborhood). We walked around a bit, and saw some pretty awesome shrines. We also ate lunch there; I had this delicious bowl of Udon. Awesome udon. Like, amazingly amazing. I love udon.

A dude at the shrine doing squats because his dog was doing squats, if you know what I mean

EGG UDON. ¥700! DELICIOUS!

I also got a moyashimon keychain at one of those toy vending machines with the capsules. IT'S SO ADORABLE AND SQUISHY.
Also, Hawk, do you still want a bag? I saw some nice ones here.

After the Buddhist shrine was the Shinto shrine, which was a lot quieter and more deserted looking since it was the middle of the day. It was in the middle of a freaking forest. In the middle of Tokyo. What?


(kegs of French wine in the middle of the forest to the Shinto temple)




NEXT we went to Harajuku! I was so excited! I really wanted to see Harajuku because it's awesome, except it was raining while we were there, so I didn't get to see as many strangely dressed people as I would have liked. I'll go back when the weather gets better.
BUT I did find a store selling anime goods, so I bought more Moyashimon merchandise and a Gurren Lagann action figure (that was almost half the price as it was at Fanime). Pretty awesome.

Socks with pandas for toes at a store in Harajuku!

After Harajuku, we went back to the hotel and I practiced bassoon. Kind of. Dinner was an interesting affair of convenience store sushi, melon bread, and pudding. Not bad, I must say, and it cost less than lunch.
Tomorrow we have a concert (blaaaaaaah) and we get to learn flower arranging. yey. hooray.


Pictures taken: 272
Money spent on meals: ¥1380

Quail out.

PS: Don't you love how I didn't actually post any pictures of the landmarks?

Whoot

Quail is in Japan!

And is falling asleep!

More forthcoming!