(Day 13) Stomping Ground

I’ve started my preliminary packing for the long journey home. Today I’m off to stay at Mayuko’s house for a few days and I won’t be back until the night before departure. Therefore, I don’t want to create too much work for myself and so I beetled away. This morning, I also planned to make the semi-long journey out to western Tokyo to Jissen Women’s University in Hino to meet up with an instructor there for lunch and then bum around for several hours. Sounds busy, right? Let’s get it started in here.


I’m really starting to get used to being called ‘Elin’. I can just hear Tiger’s voice now.

Because of my lollygagging and train infrequency, I was supremely late for my appointed time to arrive in Hino. After a brisk hike up the hill that left me really sweaty and wet from the rain, I arrived at Jissen.



I headed up to the prof’s office, and I was delighted to find a personalized message, just for me, here in Japan. These moments, when someone is expecting you, somehow makes one feel not-so-alone in a foreign place. But I digress.



I met up with the prof for a speed-eaten lunch at the curry shop on campus and then for a lunchtime English conversational group. The girls were all really impressed with my Japan experiences so far and had some questions about Canada. After that, I took a tour of the campus on behalf of my sister who will be attending next year…after the tour I used their washrooms and found this:


WTF is this about. Does the sign say to watch out for the sneaky cat who comes and uses up all the toilet paper? Very strange.

Then I was off on my way back to the train station. I’ll burn up my remaining hours over in Tachikawa, one stop over. Thankfully the walk back to the station is now downhill.



When I came to Japan for the first time, wayyyy back in 2007, I stayed in Tachikawa. Therefore, it will always hold a special place in my heart as the first place I laid my head in this fabulous country.



I put my iPod on and wandered through the antiquated department stores here. There’s nothing better than laughing out loud to The Lonely Island while shopping in the basement of a department store in Japan. Okay, maybe there are better things, but that’s not the point. Stay with me. I saw a small shack serving crepes on the corner and so I decided that now was crepe time.


That is the saddest-looking crepe ever!

There was this lady sitting in the window reading a book and had all the crepes ready-made, waiting to be filled. BAH! Don’t mess with me! I don’t know what “Sapid” means, but I bet it translates to “sad crepes”. I should have known.

I did more wandering.





Tachikawa is pretty much a country town, in relation to downtown Tokyo. Lower-volume of traffic, only one Louis Vuitton store, etc.

I headed back to Hino to meet Mayuko and then we went back to Tachikawa for dinner. Time for Oyakodon (chicken rice bowl with a raw egg on top!)







We had come to Tachikawa to buy our Disney tickets for Saturday. This didn’t stop us from look at other stuff though, and I found one product that was particularly blasphemous.


Terrible!

After a stop at the grocery and drug stores, we finally made our way back home for a night of snacking and watching Arashi in 3-D!




Our makeshift 3-D glasses. We could not stop laughing.


Er…these are all my empty wrappers. Why do they have to individually-wrap everything here? It makes me look like I eat my feelings.







We watched the same 20 seconds of Arashi in 3-D for 10 minutes. We couldn’t stop squealing at all the strange things popping out at us. Cheap thrills!

Tomorrow Mayuko has school so I’m going to haul my cookies on over to Kichijoji and try to make at least one person flustered. I’ll likely succeed.