Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
updated class schedule!
January: Etruscan
February: Bodine
March: Round Robin/POETRY MADDESS
April: Siberakh1
May:
June: Celestial Rainstorm
July:
August: Suzanne-Marie
September: Lupuslunae
October: Natasha
November: Ela Hara
December: RylorienVery nice, very good. But we still have two straggler months, does anyone want to step in?
July is hot, awful, humid and ughhhhhh
Makes anyone with a lick of sense want to yell fuuuuuughhhhh…..
It’s bad for the archives and mildews old tomes
Battle that summer funk with a refreshing poem!and the rhyming possibilities…Goodbye, July, you make a terrible hair ally!
May..well, that’s just plain silly it’s so easy. All sorts of things rhyme with May! May may just be the easiest one, you stay inside all day, lay about, dream about a faye unicorn Windstone, yay! Dye your grays and pray you slay your May poem play.
BUMP!
Where oh where have all the Bards gone?
Oh where oh where have they fled?
Dawdling and dodging when poems are due anon
Or are they all still snoring in bed?Attention bards! Classes are now more than half full! Here’s the updated syllabus. Join now for your chance to compose this upcoming academic year!
January:
February: Bodine
March: Round Robin/POETRY MADDESS
April:
May:
June: Celestial Rainstorm
July:
August: Suzanne-Marie
September: Lupuslunae
October: Natasha
November:
December: RylorienThat is a new forum issue. The only reason we could edit old posts on the old software was because of a bug – they weren’t supposed to be editable. On the new forum, you can only edit your posts for a short time. I think it’s 5 minutes.
Not sure why bulletin board software is like this. Maybe to prevent people from changing offensive posts and claiming they never wrote any such thing?
In that case, I will post the completed syllabus when classes are full. Please check the months already selected by your fellow Bards before posting you preferred month!
Wonderful, nice to see both new and returning students.
However, does anyone know if it is a new forum issue or a moderator issue… I can’t edit my post to update the class syllabus?
What an awesome idea! That looks like the kind of fun wedding everyone will remember. Very cool and congratulations!
No onsen for me. I was gearing myself up for it, my ryokan in Kyoto had one and also private baths in each room. So I showered/bathed that night the Japanese way, getting all washed and cleaned up on the stool with the little shower then jumping into the tub. It’s bloody hotter than hell and after about 10 minutes of relaxation, so boring! So yeah, I still hate baths. Public baths sound even worse!
Ah JET, that was my plan too before I found my library job. I’m checking out their application process again right now just in case I need to be a political refugee after tonight. I would hate to have to bring my cats through the quarantine process, but I’m not leaving them for 4 years.
From what I saw of Miyagi to get to Zao, it’s a beautiful area.
Hokkaido also has the best brewery tours apparently. We wanted to go there too, but it was too much for the first trip. Maybe next time!
Zao has a good sized gift shop. At Zao, I got a bunch of fox charms to give out, fox statues, and a scrunchie for my hair with fox ears that stand up on the back. There were fox noren curtains and my sister got some of those. There were these really cute chibi illustrations on display but I don’t know what they were, there was nothing to buy with those on them. The best souvenirs were the photos though!
That’s great to hear! So were there any English speaking employees there to explain it all you you guys or did you know enough Japanese to get by? Right now I’m learning really basic Japanese, but I imagine it wouldn’t get me too far if were dropped in Japan right now lol.
At the owl cafe there was an English-speaking lady from Russia. but mostly, no, there is very little English speaking going on, but there is high English comprehension. Lots of people will understand you, but good luck understanding their response in 100% Japanese. If it is in a touristy place or somewhere with lots of people, they know how to handle English speakers. Some places have English menus, lots have signs to help, we went to a special sake tasting bar one of the days we knew they had an English speaker working (from info posted on their website). We went to a haunted house and their gave us our mission book in English (Japanese haunted houses are way more interactive). My favorite was at one of the big arcades where I won my figure from the UFO catcher but had coins already in the machine for additional tries. The arcade worker had a flip book of responses to show me to my questions. Such as, “money is not refundable” then he flips to another one that said “but extra tries can be played on any other machine” so he transferred my credits to another machine of my choice. Never did he speak a word of English, but he knew exactly what I was asking. Speak slow, and get ready to write it down.
We know very little Japanese (sumimasen, kore wa desu ka? arigatou gozaimasu, ikura desu ka? nihongo wa wakarimasen biggies like that) but I can sound out the kanas and we lived with Google translate to translate signs and ingredient labels and things like that. But learn as much as you can. The biggest regret of my trip was not studying harder; I hated being illiterate.
People tried to scare me about not being able to eat there, but it is a huge international city. There are a ton of vegan only places and a million veg options. I found the BEST ramen there at a place called T’s Tan Tan. 8 to 9 bucks gets you a huge ramen bowl with all sorts of different flavors and add ins and everything there is completely vegan. I and my non-vegan sister ate there 3 times during our stay. We also found an all vegan traditional sweet shop and binged on manju and soy ice cream. Ate some weird curry flatbread pizza. There was the 2016 vegefest going on at Yoyogi park while I was there so we went both days and stocked up on all sorts of things like veggie nigiri sushi and kebabs and apple pizza. Tokyo also has a Loving Hut with a killer all you can eat Saturday brunch special. Just check out the Happycow site and you will see all the delicious noms that await you in Japan, it just takes a little planning and some plain or ume onigiri to fill in the gaps.
Was the Owl cafe hard to get into? I read somewhere that Owl cafes have a long waiting time since so many people want to go in?
Lol nope. We showed up at 12:30 and they asked if we have a reservation, we said we wanted to make one. They said okay, for when? We said how about now? They opened at 1pm and we got a reservation for 1pm and so just waited for 30 minutes for an hour long cuddle fest with the lil hoot hoots. They only let small groups in, but just plan a bit in advance and you shouldn’t have any trouble. This was at Ikefukuro in Ikebukuro like a 10 minute walk from the station.
Hey Landipan,
Zao is worth the taxi ride! If you pile in the taxi it’s only about 10 bucks a person each way. We found some nice New Zealanders (are they really called Kiwis?) to share our ride with. The big enclosure is amazing, they walk right up to you, follow you, sniff your shoes, photo bomb you. We went with no tour group, my sister and I put it all together ourselves. Saved thousands doing it our way. We tried talking to a travel agent and she failed to understand we know how to ride trains and google map locations and didn’t need her hand-holding and ugly limo buses. Business hotels for the win; they are cheap considering Tokyo is a huge city and you don’t need space anyway, you won’t be in your hotel room much But get your Ghibli tickets before you go, no matter the cost. The loopi machines in Lawson are a pain and even after we found a non-speaker cheat sheet the tickets were sold out in Japan for over a month in advance. You cannot enter even the Ghibli gift shop without a ticket! We literally stood outside the gates and whined.
Those JR passes are amazing. If you are doing more than one bullet train ride it pays for itself. Zao is up in Miyagi about 2hours and some each way by bullet train. It’s a nice ride if you have reserved seats. Feel free to message me if you have any questions. I did it as a strict vegan with very limited kana reading skill, so anyone can do it!
When are you planning to go? Tokyo gets the Olympics in 2020, so the yen is only going to get stronger.
