Emi's Journal

We got home a while ago, but I fell asleep…. I’m still really tired. I didn’t sleep for 25 hours, then only got 4 or 5 hours of sleep… Just wanted to let you all know that I’m back now.

We’re at Narita now, sitting in the United Red Carpet Club. I had ice tea…. In a beer glass, because beer glasses are bigger. :p
Good news for us here…. We got upgraded! We were Economy Plus, but they put is in BUSINESS class! That’s right, business class! I’m excited about it. :p My dad says the food is better, and that is always a plus.
Well, we’re headed down to our gate pretty quick, so I should pack up my laptop. We have a 2 hour layover at Sea-Tac, so maybe I can get on then. I’m going home soon!!!

Mixed feelings… I love flying, so I’m looking forward to the flights. I’m looking forward to going home. I’m looking forward to seeing Ret-Ret.
When I get home, what will it look like? The house is on the market again… My bed is already down in Creswell, in storage. I told my mom I didn’t want my desk or dresser, so those might be gone too. Kento has moved out. Mistow is gone too. Ret is at the kennel.
I’ll need to rush to get registered for spring term… MTH 112 only has 9 spots left, and WR 122 is full. I could take speech, but I don’t know if I’m ready for that. I could take the night WR 122, but that’s 3 hours straight once a week. I’m not sure if I want to commit to that. HE 275 is a possibility too, and does have 7 spots left. I still need to be admitted though, and then get all my stuff set up to register.
I’m going to miss Japan too…. The kids, as annoying as they can be, are great. They’ve been my best friends for the last 2.5 months, and once I leave I probably wont see them for a couple more years. I’m going to miss them. I’m going to miss everyone. Even Sam-chan, despite how loud and annoying she is, and I still think she shouldn’t still be alive (cats should not live to be 21… That’s just weird)…

6.5 hours until our flight. 14 hours until we arrive at Sea-Tac.

I’m killing this blog and starting fresh. I wont delete it… It’s my first blogspot blog after all! :p But I wont be using this one.

I forgot about The 13 Doors. Probably because I hate getting startled, and haunted house things tend to thrive on startling. My dad went first, so he got startled first, so it was OK. Otherwise I would have probably freaked out several times. :p I have a terrible startle reflex. The thing wasn’t really scary at all, but those things that startle…
We did that after Wonder Drop.

OK. Where did I leave off? Oh, Linear Gale.
After going on LG, we went into a building called Geopolis. It was then that we decided to have lunch.
In Geopolis was a place called Baseball Cafe. We went to the restaurant part (it was connected), and it was decorated with a lot of baseball stuff (not too surprising). I laughed when I saw that they called themselves an “American Grill”. THey had red, white, and blue everywhere. It was kind of funny.
I was feeling very American, so I ordered the hot dog and pretzel meal. My dad got a steak thing. My hot dog had cheese on it, and they gave us true American ketchup… Heinz! That was very nice… I miss my Heinz ketchup! My hot dog was rather bratwurst-ish, but it was good. The pretzel had that sweet cream cheese in it which tastes kind of weird, but it was good too. After lunch I had a “frozen strawberry stadium”. It was basically a scoop of ice cream surrounded by frozen strawberries with chocolate sauce drizzled on top.
After that we went back into Geopolis and headed to the rides in there. First we went to Zombie Paradise, which I thought was just plain funny. It was one of those things where you get in the cart and it drives you around in some place with scenes around you…. In this case, zombies. The zombies seemed very happy to be there too. Some of them were smiling. I thought that was very funny. It was that dumb sort of supposed-to-be-scary thing. When I was little it would have terrified me, but now I just laugh.
After that we went to “Hyper Illusion”. The name, although maybe kind of dumb, sounded fairly promising. Illusions tend to be fun. I was greeted by funny English… :p One would think that in Tokyo there would be SOME translator or proof reader that would know not to say “Have a nice riding!”. Oh well. I laughed. Then we went into a room and got into huge chair things. It turns out “Hyper Illusion” was one of those movie things where the seats move, and they’re supposed to simulate you in the movie. It may have made more sense if I knew what they were saying… But I didn’t, so instead I ended up watching the movements, and realizing they were really not synchronized. I’m still trying to figure out why it said 1966 at the end of the movie…
After that it was time for our last ride…. A little roller coaster called GeoPanic. It was sort of a kiddy coaster, but it had an interesting element to it….. Darkness. There was light at some points, but it was usually twinkling lights on the sides, or things like that that end up kind of disorienting you. It was pretty cool. At one point we went through this tube over that went out over the Geopolis lobby a little bit…. That was pretty cool. The darkness really worked for it. I don’t think there was much that would be classified as really scary, but when you can’t see it coming, even only a few drops has an effect.
After that we left. I wouldn’t have minded staying a little longer, but we were tired and ready to go.

Besides that not much has happened. We’re back at my grandma’s house now… I’ve had my last dinner in Japan, and my last bath…. It’s funny how just a few days ago I was saying “I’m ready to go home.” but now I’m saying “Has it really been 2.5 months?”. I will be glad to see everyone at home though. Especially Retnuh…. I can say that, since everyone back home knows that already. At least they should, or they don’t know me as well as they should! :p

I’ll maybe be getting more pictures up, but I’m not sure. I do know I’ll probably still be posting some when I get home…. In less than 24 hours I’ll be on the plane…. Wow. Tomorrow I’ll be going home…. If you think about it, tomorrow I’ll be home. Not in this time zone, but it’s Monday in the states, and I arrive noon on Tuesday. It’s been a GREAT trip. I’ll probably write some little reflection things when I get home too. It’s been an amazing trip….

My dad and I went to an amusement park!!!!
It was in Tokyo Dome City…. It was so much fun! We had ride bracelets, so we did (almost) EVERYTHING!
First we did the “Tower Hacker”! It was one of those free fall kind of things…. Something I always wanted to try, and was very happy about doing so. It brought us up really high, then dropped us, and it was SCARY! I thought for a second I ceased to exist…. Strange, but true. It was scary, but fun! The weightless feeling kind of freaked me out. My dad and I agreed that once was enough for us.
Then we went to the Spinning Coaster. We joked around in line… There was a guy in a suit and tie waiting to ride this kiddy coaster type thing…. A “very official rider” as my dad put it. The spinning coaster was really fun…. The car swiveled, so it was spinny.
After that we went over to another part of the park, and went on the big ferris wheel! I got pictures up there. I’ll get them up someday. :p Got some of the tower, so you can all see that… I also got pictures of what we did next…. Definitely my favorite…
THUNDER DOLPHIN!!!!!!! Yes, it’s a kind of strange name… But it was so much fun! Thunder Dolphin is their big roller coaster. It’s certainly one of the most creative designs I’ve seen, though that I had to appreciate from the ferris wheel beforehand. It starts right off with a huge drop. You go up a hill, peaking at 80.5m (about 264 feet), and then before you know it you’re flying at 127km/h (about 79mph) down a 74º hill, dropping 66.5m (about 218 feet). Then the track goes onto the roof of a shopping center, though I wouldn’t have known had I not seen it before hand. There’s a hole in a thing sticking out of the side of the building that the track swerves through, and then it threads through part of the ferris wheel. After more twists and turns and lots of fun, it’s over. 1124.8m (about 3690 feet) of fast paced fun! We agreed we should go again.
Before getting in line, though, we went to look at the “high-tech ride photo”. They take pictures at two points of the ride. One at the very beginning and one somewhere in the middle. It cost ¥800 to get the picture, but I wanted it…. Especially because my dad and I were named the “best couple”! :p I have no idea why, but that’s OK. We got a sticker… And I bought the picture. It’s a really good picture, or two pictures I should say. I took a picture (of the picture), so it’ll come up here eventually.
After that we walked down to the “Wonder Drop”, which is a water ride. Many people waiting in line had bought “ride ponchos”, but we were both willing to get a little bit wet. We waited in line for probably about 30 minutes… That may have been the longest wait we did. Considering when I went to Six Flags I spent 2.5 hours in line for ONE ride, that is not bad at all! I’m not sure if it was worth the wait though…. It wasn’t terribly exciting. The big splash at the end wasn’t even that big! Not to say that it wasn’t fun…. It was! But if I had to choose between waiting in line for Thunder Dolphin or Wonder Drop… Well, you can probably guess what I’d choose!
After Wonder Drop we walked across the park to “Parachute Land”, where we rode Sky Flower. It was basically this big thing with parachutes tied to platform things. We got into the platform thing (it had cage-like sides), then the parachute was pulled up and dropped… Twice. It was fun. The view was nice, and it was no where near as fast or sudden as Tower Hacker was.
Then we decided to go on the one ride that at first we both said NO WAY to. After watching it go it didn’t look bad, though, so we went for it. Linear Gale it was called. It was similar to the Superman at Six Flags, but scarier looking. If you’re not familiar with the Superman, it shoots you up this hill really really fast, and then you go back down (backwards, of course) really fast.
Linear Gale was similar, but not quite… Because Linear Gale was in a U shape. Also, LG was suspended. Instead of the cars being on the tracks they were hanging from them. The suspended part was what first made me say no, but after watching it looked alright. We got on (near the front), and got all fastened in… Then we shot forwards and up. We soon went backwards, and up (backwards). This happened three times, and was not scary in any way shape or form.

Well, there’s a few more things to write about, but I think I’ll go take my bath first. I’ll probably finish writing afterwards.

Speaking of tamagochi, mine died a few days ago, because I forgot about it for a day and a half… Oops. So I had to start from first generation all over again… Oh well. Whatever. I’ve put off getting pictures up, because I have. Yeah…. So I’ll get some up now, and I’m sure I’ll put some more up after I get home.

This was my first gochi in its kid form…. I think it looks like takoyaki.

This is my second one (second generation) in kid form… I call it the deformed heart.

This is my third one in adult form, with a baby… And my hand. The baby is my 4th one, the one that died.

Well, looks like the internet isn’t going to cooperate. It wont let me post.

Maybe it’ll let me now…
While I’m here I’ll say I had sushi for dinner…. I had a bunch of maguro… My favorite! It was so yummy.
Oh, and my last post was my 100th post!

Well, it looks like the internet DID let me post earlier. I just couldn’t tell because my blog wouldn’t load. :p So I’ll just delete that first part from this post.

Hey. Sorry I didn’t write yesterday. I actually could have, but I was battling with an unstable internet connection that I didn’t think I’d even have. I’m in Kanda now, and I have not been able to get internet here before…. I have a connection now, but it’s really weak and likes to give up on me a lot.

Yesterday we got up, had breakfast (hot dogs), and watched TV for a bit before leaving. Yuko and I left and took a train to meet my dad. We had Italian food for lunch, and my dad and I had teramisu for dessert.
After that my dad and I went to meet Kanda. She and I would go back to her house, and my dad had to go somewhere for work. I was supposed to go to a Mekiki Jr. thing tonight, but I ended up not going.
I haven’t done much here at Kanda’s…. Battled with this internet connection, mostly. It comes and goes…. So while it was gone I sorted through and arranged some stuff on my computer and played with my sudoku widget.
We went to dinner at a place…. I had a combo meal with a little hambag (hamburger type thing), little steak, and a shrimp thing. Very yummy. Kanda also shared some ebi fry with me, which was yummy too.
After that we came back… We got cake on the way, so we ate that. I battled the internet connection again, but apparently it works worse at night, so I gave up. I watched some TV… Found some bilingual stuff to watch…. And I read a bit before bed.

Today I got up at about 10:00… Had toast and an apple for breakfast. I did the whole internet thing again…. Did sudoku whenever the internet gave up. I also watched the opening baseball games of the Pacific league here in Japan. There were three games, and I only really know what went on in one of them…. I know there was Softbank Hawks vs. Lotto Marines, Eagles vs. Fighters, and Lions vs. Orix. Atakawa Shizuka did the opening pitch for the Lions game…. I only really know what happened in the Hawks vs. Marines game…. The Softbank Hawks won 7-2. My dad says the Marines gave 8 players to the WBC team, so they should have been good…. But then he said they were maybe jetlagged and stuff from the WBC….. I thought since Oh-san was the manager coach guy of the WBC team and now he’s back being the manager coach guy of the Softbank Hawks, he knows how to play against the players he had on the WBC team. :p
Part way through the games Kanda and I went shopping. That’s why I don’t really know what happened in the end of the games. We went to some big stores… There was a grocery store kinda place, and then there was a place with lots of little booth kind of things everywhere…. The second one was really crowded and confusing to me.
After we got back I started watching sumo…. I found bilingual sumo…. They have interpreters. So I’m watching that now…

3/23/2006
Less than five days now… Wow.
I got up later today… I think it was 9:00. Had a doughnut and a couple omosubi for breakfast. Then I watched TV for a bit and wrote up that entry I wrote earlier (about yesterday).
At about 11:00 we went to Nao’s school. I watched Ako for a little bit there, then Nao came down. There were lots of byes and stuff going on… I guess spring break is starting up.
Then we came back to the house. On the way we picked up some takoyaki. Good takoyaki! We had that for lunch, along with some really pretty sushi that someone brought by earlier. Sounds odd to call sushi pretty…. But it was. :p I’ll get pictures up…. I will I will I will… Someday.
Then we goofed off a little. Ako brought out a Fisher Price zoo set, and we played with that a bit. It made funny sounds. :p Nao and I had fun with that… The zebra was making seal sounds.
Then Nao and I decided to watch Harry Potter. The second one… Chamber of Secrets. That is such an awesome movie. Even though I can’t watch when they go see Aragog…. Too scary!!!!!! We also watched bonus stuff… It was good.
We also colored, and stuff like that…. We played around today. It was fun.
We had tonkatsu for dinner…. So good! Tonkatsu is good anywhere anytime.
Then we watched TV…. There’s an animal show that’s on Thursdays. There were tigers…. Too cute! And lions too. And dolphins, pandas, a chimp…. Oh, they were all so cute! There was one place with an inoshishi, tiger, and labrador in the same cage…… Very cute!
Today was fun. It was just playing around, but that’s fun.