Jenny-centric NCIS episodes are boring and I'm reading Sarah Ellerton comics at the same time. And by that I mean Dreamless because I've read the others.
www.seraph-inn.com for those who are unfamiliar.

Also, my arms are sore from pushups and my nails are still ruined. This totally worked better before.

Okay, I'm a little dubious about going to sleep since my dreams have been kind of weird. This morning I had a dream that was not a nightmare, but freaked me out a lot when I woke up, and it's not the first time my dreams have turned to horror in the last little while. What does it mean?! And why does it always seem perfectly natural until I wake up? Seriously, some of these dreams I would write into awesome horror stories if only they wouldn't scare me AS I WROTE THEM.

As a side note, when someone invents a dream recorder, I will be high on the list of people to buy one, regardless of cost; I can never remember my dreams in any depth or for very long and they are often worth remembering.

What have people heard about 'Climategate'?
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2258373
I feel so out of the loop ...

Okay, where was I? Right.
So Thursday was the last day of my trip that I went into Tokyo. I got up bright and early to get the to Tsukiji fish market. The guidebooks tell you to go for 6 am as that’s when the fish auctions are. Unfortunately, the train wasn’t able to get me there from Yokosuka before 7:30. I learned from the brochure at the entrance that foreigners aren’t appreciated in the auction area anyway, but I was still disappointed.
The market itself, however, has quite enough to see. You could buy every kind of sea creature you can think of in this market. They just had them sitting out in bins. The tuna were larger than me and frozen (I learned later that freezing them is standard practice to kill a number of bacteria so they can be eaten raw). Some of the crabs were seasoned and alive. There were bandsaws with buckets under them containing fish heads the size of dinner plates. There were flounders and sea cucumbers and some really ugly spiny fish that I would not want to prepare. Octopus, squid, all sorts of shellfish, 2 foot long lobster and king crab the size of my torso, roe of all sizes, fish the size of my thumbnail sold in bulk and a number of things so strange I can’t even describe them.
The locals travel around the market on these bumper-boat like scooters that take up the whole width of the aisle. In other parts of the market, you can buy bulk quantities of fruit and prepared goods. Unfortunately, the prepared goods were all being sold in mass quantity. I had been planning on sushi for breakfast, but I didn’t want a whole sushi boat full of unrecognizable items. Mostly I just wanted some tuna maki. No such luck. I grabbed some onigiri from a vendor and ended up with no fish in either. At least they weren’t salmon or raw squid or something.

Leaving the fish market, I headed up to the bay area of Rinkai. Here they had an aquarium with fish from all over the world, sharks, rays, crabs, lobster, penguins, tidal pools and eels. The bluefin tuna looked bigger dead. The penguins were adorable. They also had these adorable things called mudhoppers, which looked like tadpoles but could fling themselves impressive distances by folding their tails under them and pushing off.
The aquarium was full of screaming elementary school students, so I was glad to get out of there. Grabbed a few collectable stamps on my way out and tried (without success) to take a picture of Tokyo Disney across the water.
Despite the rain at my departure, I decided to turn down the island instead of heading straight back to the train station, and I found a lookout point with a large amount of information about how that area of Tokyo had once had a wall built between it and the bay for tsunami protection and it had become a slum, so in the 80s, they took the wall down and designed the island as a conservation area, which improved the city. I also took some nice pictures, but they’re a little grey due to the drizzle. Incidentally, this island also had a ferris wheel that wasn’t running due to inclement weather.
It was around 1 when I went to leave the island, but this restaurant right by the train station had 10 dumplings for 200 Y, which is a steal of a deal, so I went in. They have this thing at some restaurants in Japan where you pay for your order using a vending-machine like device at the front door that spits out chits with your order on it. I had avoided them before because they were all written in Japanese and it seemed dubious that I’d be able to figure them out. However, I really wanted those dumplings, so I memorized the kanji, went in, put some coins in the machine and pushed the button. Once I had a chit, I stared blankly at the restaurant, not sure if I was supposed to sit down or deliver my chit first. A nice waitress (who I’m sure was entertained greatly) led me to a seat, took my chit and gave me some water, returning with the dumplings later. Success!

At this point it was early afternoon still, but was drizzling again so none of my outdoor activities were available to me. I pulled out my handy museum guide and flipped through it to figure out whic one to go to. I settled on a museum where they had reconstructed a street from the Edo era (early 1900s) inside the building. A demure English guide, who was kind but not as outgoing as our wonderful guide at the Edo-Tokyo museum, took me through a sandal-maker’s shop, a candy store, a residence, a bachelor pad attached to a metal working shop, a family home and a shrine. I got to pull a stick from the box like in anime and look up my fortune, which they had translated into English. It told me to get a career in soils … ?
I played with some Japanese elementary school toys, which were different in form, but similar in concept to many North American toys of the same generation.

I stepped out of the museum and couldn’t decide what to do, so I wandered through the much-reduced drizzle for a while, finding a couple more temples, a playground, a woman feeding some stray cats and some potlights in front of a garden that looked mytical with the rain steaming off of them. I went through a giant toy store and thought about going to yet another museum, but decided to head back instead.

In the following couple days, I put my suitcases back together, bought a couple more souvenirs, sent a Christmas parcel home, finished a book in a Starbucks, sipping an American coffee with a Japanese twist and watching the outfits on the people going by, went to a slightly more traditional Japanese restuarant, where I finally found some sushi I wanted to order, bought a bunch of snacks at the grocery that looked unique but edible and all of which ended up containing red bean, tried the local beer and chu-his from a street vendor (the chu-his were not good), watched some local kids perform hip hop in the mall and said my goodbyes.

The train ride from Yokosuka to the airport was long (almost 3 hours). For the first half of it, the half I had seen a lot of from my back and forth trips into Tokyo, I watched an episode of Glee. It took the whole time since I had to keep pausing to wait for the trian noise to quiet down. The second half of the trip was quite enjoyable though as we passed by things I hadn’t seen before, including rice fields, livestock farms and beautiful shrines.

Now it is time to get up here in New Zealand and make a plan for myself. I hope you’re all doing well.

Originally published at Teri's NZ Adventures.
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Okay, so back to Japan for a bit. (I very much need a paper journal as well as this one since I can’t even remember what I did, but let’s give it a go).

On Sunday after I left you, Sammysam got me onto base for the Sunday brunch. I’ve decided that breakfast buffets are pretty much the best thing ever.
Afterwards, we headed down to Tokyo to go to Harajuku, which is a big shopping district. It reminded me a little of Kensington in Calgary or Queen St. in Toronot but with more tourism on one hand and way more people on the other. The stores were crazy; from goth loli to Japanese cowboys, 8 level toy stores, tourist shops selling everything from 50 yen trinkets and 1000000 yen furniture, stores just for chopsticks, some building I was scared of called ‘A Bathing Ape in Lukewarm Water’ and unique food.
The best part was watching the people go by and seeing what they were wearing though. Japanese street fashion consists of short shorts or shirts that are just long enough to be skirts, with tights or leggings and the most interesting assortment of shoes you can imagine. I couldn’t live there because I wouldn’t want to spend all my money on footwear.

On Tuesday I visited Yokohama with Alli for the afternoon. Unfortunately it was raining, making it not worth it to pay for the observation tower and the ferris wheel. I hadn’t done research into indoor things to see in the area, so we ended up just doing a little shopping and looking around the mall before heading back to Yokosuka. It was a little disappointing, but these things happen.

On Wednesday I headed over to Asakusa to see one of the most famous and touristy temples in Japan. As usual, this one had been rebuilt since the 70s, but was faithfully reconstructed and beautiful. Leading up to the temple grounds were row upon row of shops selling all kinds of garbage and junk food The only ones that I spent any amount of time in were the more established ceramics places. Japan has very nice tableware. I also bought myself a fried pastry shaped like a fish with red bean paste. Yum!

Once I’d seen enough, I meandered to a subway and went to Odaiba. Odaiba is an island connected to Tokyo where the main attraction is the shopping. It lights up real pretty at night though, so I decided to stay for a while and see that. The island also holds the Haneda airport and a couple good museums. I took the monorail over and that in itself was an adventure as it goes over The Rainbow Bridge.
Once I found the museums, it was getting a little late to go in and I was hungry so I wandered back over to the main mall area … and was completely flabbergasted to discover that inside it’s arranged like an Italian fresco, complete with domed night skies and columned stores.
It was, however, still a mall and an expensive one at that, so I bought myself onigiri and bao at the 7/11 and continued on. Just outside the mall is a giant ferris wheel that was reasonably priced but again it had started drizzling and I decided not to go up by myself in the rain.
When I walked a little further, I found the Toyota showcase where with the press of a button, you can move a giant conveyor belt to bring a different car to eye level. They are also in the process of producing mechs. I really should get a photo gallery up and running to show you.

I’m going to bake cookies now and this post is already long enough so I’ll do another one to finish off my time in Tokyo later.

Originally published at Teri's NZ Adventures.
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Watched ( Tin Man )
As for the plane movies, Changeling was awesome, My Sister's Keeper was as touching as expected, Shrink was kind of a mish mosh but somehow it still kind of worked and Moon was good but I've seen better episodes of sci-fi TV shows with the exact same plot.

I have safely arrived back in Auckland. (for those keeping track, watched Moon, My Sister’s Keeper, Shrink and The Changeling on the plane).

Tomorrow I go to the Auckland zoo both for zoo and to attend a meeting of a bunch of environmental professionals that I have been invited to. After that, depending on how that goes, I’ll be figuring out my timeline and applying to some other jobs in New Zealand.

I have a lot of time unaccounted for in Japan. I will make an effort to write about it once I make notes for myself about what I did when. I am thinking I should go back to a hard copy of my journal as I get a lot more time to do that kind of writing what with planes, trains and busses. Also, I’ll be able to summarize more effectively.

I’ll buy a notebook one of these days soon.

Originally published at Teri's NZ Adventures.
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FYI: Sending stuff to Japan/New Zealand is expensive. Granted, what I was sending was large and heavy. Family, I’m sorry if it doesn’t make it in time for Christmas, but sending it by boat was half price.

My suggestion to anybody thinking of sending stuff to me: keep it light.

That being said, it’s worth it to not have to carry it around with me for months. Why does Japan have such pretty ceramics?

Originally published at Teri's NZ Adventures.
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I almost bought a puzzle of this today except that it was a lot of money and what would I do with it in the meantime? Still, I fell in love with the image so I grabbed the artist's name. Shu Mizoguchi.

Has anyone seen the re-release of Haruhi from this year? Apparently they released it in chronological order with new episode inserts. Sounds dubious to me; I'd prefer a sequel. Anyone know anything?

The Japanese have an unhealthy love of Penguins.

We went to the fish market yesterday but it was closed. It was raining steadily so we decided to head over to some museums. Our feet were very wet by the time we got to the Natural History Museum. It was cool, with lots of taxidermy animals and dinosaur bones. They had neat computers set up that translated the exhibits into English. I wish there had been more of a focus on environmental sustainability though. I’d love to know where Japan sits with that topic, though maybe the lack of information was an answer in itself.

I tried to get tickets for the Ghibli museum, but they’re closed until the 21st and have no tickets left for the 21rst or 22nd. They only let 200 people in a day. Word to the wise; if coming to Tokyo and interested in Ghibli, choose a day and buy your tickets right away – according to the museum website, you can buy them at travel agents in your own city.

Originally published at Teri's NZ Adventures.
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sammysam has Sanctuary. I've seen the first 3 episodes before and wasn't enthralled with it, but I really want it to be good because I like the premise and Amanada Tapping. However, having watched 2 more eps now, there are a bunch of things about the show that really bug me. I'm still planning on slogging through a while longer to see if it improves.

Well, since the last time I posted, I’ve done a number of things. I should make a habit of posting more often though, since I can’t remember what I was going to say about most of them.

Yesterday I spent most of the day planning how to deal with my next couple weeks here. I have something of a game plan now. I also went to Yukosuka to check out the shops and I found some Ramen to eat!

On Sunday I went to Shibuya and Shinjuku. Shinjuku is an area of Japan that is relatively stable in earthquakes where there are many highrise buildings. The highest is the twin towers of the government metropolitan building, where there is a free viewing deck on the 45th floor. I also picked up some much-needed tourist maps there.
Shibuya is the shopping district of Tokyo where the giant crosswalk is. The area had many interesting shops, but as it was crawling with people and I don’t have a lot of money to spend, so I got a little bored. However, there were interesting outdoor concerts and the streets were a maze. I should have gone up as far as Harajuku, but I didn’t know that at the time. Next Sunday I guess.

On Saturday we went up to an edo-period castle. Of course, between earthquakes and tidal waves, most of Tokyo has been rebuilt a few times. This castle was circa 1990, but the original it was based on was older. The artifacts on display inside were quite interesting though; everything from travelling gear of the 1800s to medieval weapons and preserved letters. There was a saddle that looked like it was made from rock. We then went to the beach where there were hundreds of fish that kept jumping out of the water and watched as a fisherman caught one and dragged it to shore. At one point, we could almost seem Mount Fuji. The volcano is quite close to the city, but due to incessant fog and smog, it is not usually visible.

Friday was spent wandering aimlessly around Tokyo. I found the Tokyo tower, then went into the building that sits underneath it, where a large amount of Vegas-like attractions can be found. I passed and went to find a hostel for some tourist information, but failed. I ended up on some islands in the junction between the river and Tokyo Bay. (Sammysam says a bay is not the ocean, and as she’s the sailor, I’ll accede to her superior knowledge but keep my layman’s definition thx). I got some nice pictures of the sunset, then decided to head bck to the Tokyo Tower again for some night shots and to avoid rush hour. I diddn’t succeed at the latter, and got to enjoy the sensation of being completely incapable of falling over in a Tokyo train.

This day brought home a few points for me: There are about a million trains in Tokyo, each with 10 or so cars and they come every 5 to 15 minutes, but the city has so many people that it doesn’t prevent the crush of people. The city is also massive. It took 40 minutes to walk between one train stop and the next one and there are probably about 100 stops. In every other city that I’ve stopped in, there has been a central area where the majority of the intersting tourist stops were within walking distance. That is not the case here, which is one of the reasons it was important to get some tourist information and plan my future stops.

I think that’s all the updates I had for now (it’s probably enough for one post anyways). I’ll try to post in more bite-sized, frequent quantities.

Originally published at Teri's NZ Adventures.
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Japanese air is apparently good for the soul. Or maybe any long walks with yourself and your thoughts are good for the soul. Didn't really help me come to any conclusions about what to do with myself, but for some reason if felt like it did.
My sister was telling me to stop stressing about everything this morning and today really helped. There are a couple issues that I put to rest and others that I'm much more at peace with than I was this morning. Though I am no braver than I started, I found more strength.
I don't know how I always forget that walks make everything better.

I took a walk in Japan

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Originally published at Teri's NZ Adventures.
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So. I’m in Japan. Yes, I’m taking this breaking my bank account thing very seriously.
The plane ride was longer than expected. I managed to watch Julie and Julia, Inkheart, 500 Days of Summer and Harry Potter before the plan landed. For those of you interested in my take on NZ beer, I tried Steinlager on the plane and really didn’t like it. (Yes, I know plane beer is suspect, but still).
Sammysam was kind enough to meet me at the airport. This was excessively nice of her because the airport is a 3 hour train ride from her place, but I was grateful because though the trains have a lot of English instruction, there are about a million lines and it’s quite convoluted. 3 days of using the system later and I still have no clue how to figure out which train I need.
The first thing that struck me about Japan was the daylight hours. It was dark when the plane landed just before 5. The sun rises here at about 6 am. It seems like a strange set up.
Sammysam’s apartment is a mansion compared to what I was expecting. The lack of an oven means I can’t bake her cookies though. The coolest thing in her apartment is the toilet though. You know how the tank at the back of the toilet has to fill after each flush? Well her toilet has a spout at the top and a whole that drains into the tank so you can wash your hands with the water that’s going in. Genius!
Okay, enough of that, so the first day here was Sunday and there wasn’t a lot open so we had brunch, then went wandering through downtown Yokosuka, where she lives. We went to a decommissioned Japanese war boat and wandered around the neat fountain they have. Then we went through the shop district. I may need to make some purchases and ship them home.
The next day we took the train to a nearby area and toured some shrines. I wish I knew more about how the religions and worship works in Japanese culture but the temples were beautiful anyway.
On Tuesday we were on our way to the Tokyo National Museum and the Tokyo Natural History Museum, but it was a nice day out and we got distracted by the zoo. It’s in the middle of Tokyo with apartment buildings around it. One apartment building in particular could look out their window and see sea lions playing all day long. There were a lot of birds but the highlight was the giant Japanese salamander, which is 4 feet long and has a head the size of a dinner plate.
By the time we got through the zoo, we’d been on our feet for a while and even I wanted a chair. I don’t know how Sammysam, with her knee recovering from surgery. managed it. I’m so thrilled that she’s willing to spend the money and time to join me on my adventures but I hope she’s not hurting herself.
After that, she got me onto the US base so we could go for their Mongolian grill dinner special. It was kind of awesome, but I feel I should have gotten some special passport stamp since I was on US soil in Japan. Mostly I just like my passport to have lots of stamps in it. I was reflecting on the plane that I will probably never have a passport with this many stamps again since it’s gotten me to Europe, Singapore, Africa, New Zealand, Japan and possibly Australia.
That’s all from Japan for now. I go back to New Zealand on November 23rd.

Originally published at Teri's NZ Adventures.
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I can’t believe I left home 2 weeks ago and at the same time, I can’t believe it was only 2 weeks ago.
The Armageddon convention ended on Monday night. On Tuesday we recouped and then went out to laser tag. I haven’t played laser tag in a very long time. I don’t remember it being fun, but it really is. There were 11 of us, all fangirly, and it was good times.
After laser tag, we went to Burger Fuel, which sounded dubious to me at first, but was actually really good. They use real ingredients.
I have started receiving e-mails back from the placement companies; as soon as my tax number comes through, I’ll be set to start exploring.
We made zombie gingerbread cookies, cupcakes with coconut milk and a lemon basil pasta dish with lemons, fresh basil and parsley all from the garden (so crazy!)
The bank lied about when I was going to get my new credit card. Then on Saturday, before I’d even been in NZ 2 weeks, I flew to Japan.

Originally published at Teri's NZ Adventures.
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This post will be mostly for my Con-G staff and conventions goers
Auckland Armageddon Convention

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Originally published at Teri's NZ Adventures.
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Hawkeye!!

First off, my skype is theresa.michanna if anyone wants to communicate with me that way. My phone number is ++022-641-8935 and actually gets half decent international rates.

So I’ve been in Auckland for 5 days now; time to post what I’ve noticed. It’s windy here. The temperatures have been decent (10-20 degrees C) but the wind can really blow hard. The rain tends to come out of nowhere as the clouds roll in so fast.

Lemon and orange trees grow everywhere and apparently people also have passion fruit and grapefruit trees (that actually bear fruit). Yum.

Their public transit and infrastructure has worse issues than Calgary’s. They are a nuclear power free country. They pay for their wastewater.

I’m starting to get my act together: My New Zealand tax number should be getting processed soon. I have a new chip credit card in the mail since my current one isn’t recognized properly here (which no one at TD Visa knew to warn me about). My phone’s all working and I’ve applied to some recruitment agencies so we’ll see what that gets me.

We went to the Auckland museum, which was really cool, but I haven’t done too much else yet. Now I’m off to a convention.

Originally published at Teri's NZ Adventures.
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