Door Doodles (Plus a Few Other Things)

I'm studying for a soon-to-be Kanji (Japanese Pictographical characters originating from china, a part of Japan's 3 'Alphabets') Test plus the rain that never stops made doing much of anything fun nearly impossible. Not that I mind the rain, of course. It's just my nose likes to behave similarly to the weather; when it is wet, cold, and rainy, well... I'll leave that up to you to imagine what my nose does all day.

So seeing as I've been a recluse this whole time, counting the weekend, a healthy-minded college student like me would probably burst of boredom if all I did was study kanji. Meaning unfortunately for my test I did NOT study the WHOLE weekend

away. Too bad for my test. (Just kidding, I'll do fine.)

What I've been doing on my breaks between my studies and trying to bash my face into a wall repeatedly is doodle. I'll show you a few of the ones I managed to take pictures of before deciding to scrap most of them. :D The two above are ones I did that are what I look like when I study, pretty boring aren't I? :P

This is the one that took the most time and was my main break time-waster. The flash took out some of the nice line quality of it but for the most part the colors came out well.

I think surfing around on falling leaves would be pretty thrilling, don't you?

This one's been up on Facebook but I rather like it so he get's to be here too. This one was for David. A sort of bookmark I made with the theme being "Guy drinking canned hot chocolate, and lovin' it". Speaking of, canned chocolate is delicious, and it comes in both hot and cold from a vending machine! <3

So that's about it for today. Maybe I can post again when the weather doesn't feel like making me use all the tissue handout's I've received from the very nice Japanese handouters. :<>

A Very Blustery Day

So what do you do when the weather doesn't make up it's mind whether (Ha, see what I did there? :D) to rain, hail, be sunny, or windy; all at the same time? Why, make a blog post of course. So I'll post a few pictures of the dorm so you guys can see what sort of place I live in now.

Ahem, this is the door. Beside that to the left is a small refrigerator and a few cupboards, plus the corner of the

sink. Nothing much to see. The fridge and cupboards stay well-stocked as the weather likes to throw fits and I don't like walking the 15 minutes it takes to get to the Dining hall when I could stay warm/dry and cook.

This is the..... Kitchen? My wee cooking area. It has a hotplate. Most of the cooking utensils and

whatnot have been scavenged from the 'Recycling

Room'. A Room to dump your stuff if you don't

want to take it with you when you leave. Mostly everything is from the R-room anyway; the teapot (plus two cups from David for my birthday), the small pot on the hotplate, sponges, dishsoap, dishrags, and the drying rack are mine. All the utensils (for cooking and eating), other pots, frying pan, and cutting board were saved from the room. Now, onto the Shoilet!

The dreaded shoilet. A closet that has been raised about a foot from the floor that measures about 3 1/2ft. by 3ft. inside. It contains a smaaaaall sink (about the size of my

hands cupped with 2in. between them), a small shelf for holding various bathing supplies, a toilet (western style), and a shower attached to a hose. If you got mold in the dorm due to Japan's terrible humidity and Kanazawa's near constant rain, the shoilet would be the first place to find it.

Sort of like a canary in the mine shaft, but with mold.

The bed and a bit of the desk/computer area. You'd be happy to know, Aunt Anne, I keep the bed tidy, as well as keep up with the vacuuming :D

The desk area..... Not so much.

On the bed we have Truffle, a stuffie Mark sent, mum's hanten, and the bean pillow. I should really buy a new pillow. Didn't think the school would REALLY give Japanese-style pillows for such a Western room. :/

Lastly we have the balcony. The place I dry my clothes when the weather feels like being nice. Which means laundry is hard to get done unless hung up inside my room with the heat turned on. The picture was taken while it was still 'Summer' so it looks bright and happy.

That's the room! Hope you enjoyed the virtual tour, and please, watch you feet when getting out of your chair. These images make the space around you feel much smaller than expected. :D

Next up will be pictures I managed to take while the weather forgot to be a jerk-face.

A Very Late Post (WITH PICTURES)

Hi Guys, sorry for the month long delay at least this post will have some pictures? :D

Mark gave me a spiffy card reader so I can upload things onto the laptop. Poor computer had a disagreement with its own card reader and isn't yet on speaking terms with it. I'll probably get the thing reformatted when I'm not busy studying.

HOPEFULLY, I can start making more posts.

So what this is an image of is the bottom floor of Kansai International Airport. It has 7 floors, most of which have a variety of shops and things to browse. Sadly I stayed on the bottom level because of the enourmous amount of luggage I was carrying around. :/ I guess I can snoop around a bit more when I go back to the States.

So, after about 10 hours of flying, 18 hours of sitting around the Airport, being harassed by a

gang of Japanese police people (two men and teo women) I got on a 5 hour bus to the school. Loads of mountains covered in maple and bamboo. It was pretty awesome, would have been bett

er if it

was Autumn and I hadn't been so freaking tired.

This is David eating some delicious Takoyaki. It's a sort of fried pancakey ball of gooey deliciousness with a

piece of chewy Octopus inside and coated wit

h awesome sauce and mayo and other things. It's awesome. David dis not know how to correctly eat a Takoyaki at this time and forgot that the gooey stuff in the center feels like boiling tar if not eaten properly.

Let's watch the fun :D

After successfully getting the Takoyaki in his mouth a short moment of bliss.

Realizing the center is hot, very very very hot, but amiably trying to chew through it.

Ended up giving in and made the "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF IT'S HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT" face.

Being the wonderful friend I am, I made sure to grab the water for him, after thoroughly laughing at his silly faces and taking pictures first.

The Takoyaki, almost demolished. It was delicious in all the good ways. >w<

Next post will contain life around the dorm and possibly some scenery around campus.

Purpose of Team Plush

Hallo! This is Nicole, team captain of Team Plush and the goal of this blog is mainly keeping track of Team Plush's adventures because every team has to have adventures, even if that team only has one person in it.

So what adventures am I talking about? Japan! The country of awesome food, silly animu, college life, and me! Thanks to Mike from Alaska I now have a camera to record these adventures I have and share them, you know, with words and stuff. Lots of stuff.

In anycase, this will probably also become a doodle dump because blogs seem to be a good place for that.

Tl;dr for folks who like it short:

1. Blog goal is to keep track of adventures in Japan

2. Become a doodle dump

That said I leave for Japan tomorrow from Seattle. Let's see how my adventures go!