Crazy things from Japan, vending machine edition

Hey everyone!

I have tons and tons of news to share, and it will hopefully make it onto this blog very soon! Just not in chronological order. Anyways, today's topic is crazy things from Japan: vending machine edition, and it will consist entirely of pictures of said crazy things! Woo!

ALSO, regarding updates, I did update more recently than the majority of you think; however Blogger put the new entry below the one directly below this one (is this making sense? It's a bit late here) so I don't think many of you saw it. So, pretty please, if you'd like to read an update, scroll down 2 entries, and there should be a new one that you haven't seen before.

じゃ、またね！

a juicebox full of cold hot chocolate. yum!

a cafe latte available from the vending machine. served cold and drunk through a straw.

here's where there crazy kicks in: a vending machine for bowling shoes in the bowling alley! "wow," you are thinking, "Japan has vending machines for everything!" you'd be pretty much correct (including beer, although those are as rare as a vending machine with food in it), which is how you find things like the following:

that, my friends, is a can of pancake flavored drink, served warm. when we saw this in the vending machine we all thought "ew! ... wonder what it tastes like?" I was more curious/brave/stupid than everyone else there, so I took the plunge and drank it. post first sip, this was my expression:

read: euhh, i just drank that, didn't i? and for your information, it really did taste like pancakes with syrup. i have no idea how they make such a thing happen, but that's what it tasted like. incidentally, I could only take a couple sips before passing it off to Jake, who was the only other one brave/curious/stupid enough to try it. bonus picture of his facial expression post sip below:

mm, yeah, sorry, that really did just happen Jake.

Guess what I did today?

Can you guess?

No?

Maybe?

Okay, okay, I'll tell you... I used a traditional Japanese toilet (successfully!). やった！But what about the rest of my adventures? They pale in the face of this grand accomplishment, honestly. But I jest, and it is about time that I chronicled last week for you and at least put up some more pictures. So please expect some posts very soon. For now, I hope that you will be satisfied with this awesome picture of milk tea that I got (cold) out of a vending machine for only １００円.

すげ～　象ですよ。

< やった！ yatta!: hurray!　円 en: yen 　すげ～ suge~: awesome, wonderful (the exclamation), so maybe more like wow! or amazing! 象ですよ zou desu yo: it's an elephant, you know>

Nicole "whoisit" and two trees

今日は、みんな！ Ready to hear about some of my adobenchaas from last week?

First of all, on Thursday I was significantly less jet-lagged, although I did manage to doze off at a nice early 6:30 pm. Getting up at 8:30 will do that to you, I guess. But anyways, Wednesday was orientation for me and 5 other international students, which was all of us sitting in a room being given packets of forms to fill out. I got to finally meet Jake, the other Clemson student, which was nice! Everyone here was surprised that we had never met before coming to Japan.

After that we each went off with our tutors to do various errands, such as getting our pictures taken for 色々な用紙, and other things that are way too exciting to write about on this blog. Marina-san had a meeting to go to, so I tagged along with Jake and his tutor, Chie-san, to go and meet Tachi Sensei, who is the Clemson-Fukui liason as well as Jake's advisor here. Tachi Sensei, who is a professor of linguistics, is really funny and charming. When I introduced myself he said that he'd have no problems remembering my name because in 福井弁、the local dialect in Fukui, my last name is slang for "Who is it?" 例えば、when someone knocks on your door you can shout "誰あぁ？" (Dare a?), which sounds the same as my last name in Japanese: ダレーア (Dareea). He also told us to make sure to be "good little aliens" as we had to go to 市役所　later that day to complete our Alien Registration Forms. And because these forms are official documents, we needed ハンコ or　印鑑, which are both names for a personal seal (it is stamped alongside your signature on official documents). Which leads me to this:



This is my personal seal, in a handy dandy personal seal holder complete with ink, thanks to the generous Chie-san. You may notice that the seal has some Japanese on it, and at this point may be thinking "But your name doesn't have any Japanese in it Nicole!" or maybe even "How much cornier can this post get?" Because I am a foreigner, I can't just waltz into my local スパー, which is where I got the seal, and pick out one that says my name in katakana (ダレーア）. However, thanks again to Chie-san, we found this little seal, which says 二木　（にき）. The literal meaning of this is two trees, but the pronunciation is "Knee-kee," and since I've been telling people here that they can call me Nikki or Nicole, this is nicely fitting. (My second choice was Kishimoto, as a tribute to the two 岸本先生　who have done so much to help me over the past two years. お世話になったありがとうございます。）So now I have my very own personal seal of "two trees."

One additional fun fact: in the スパー, which has 4 floors and a restaurant, the seals are all in a four-sided rack, and you just pick out the one that matches the kanji (characters) for your last name, in the same way that you would look for a keychain that has your first name on it at a souvenir shop.

That's all for now from "Two trees who is it?" (aside from some 写真）。

おはようございます、Japanese student dorms!

＜　今日は、みんな konnichiwa, minna: hello, everyone　色々な用紙　iroiro na youshi: all kinds of (blank) forms 福井弁　Fukuiben: Fukui dialect 例えば tatoeba: for example　市役所　shiyakusho: City Hall ハンコ　hanko: personal seal 印鑑　inkan: personal seal スパー supaa: supermarket　岸本先生　Kishimoto Sensei: the Professors Kishimoto お世話になってありがとうございます osewa ni natta arigatou gozaimasu: Thank you for taking care of me　おはようございます　ohayou gozaimasu: good morning ＞