December and January Randomness: Sailor Moon Merchandise and More!

Wow! I can't believe it's already February. I have less than two months left in Japan! I have a list of things I want to do before I leave and I've already started checking some things off. Anyway, December and January were both great months and here are some random pictures of things I've done.

Actually, that picture is from late August. I just finally got it off of Jonathan's phone. It's Shippei (Iwata's mascot) at LaLaport! :) 

In early December I took the N3 level of the JLPT (Japanese language proficiency test) and thought I did horribly. I thought vocab and listening were ok, but grammar and reading were really hard! I wasn't worried about it because I had taken it for fun (yeah, I'm weird) but I was still relieved that it was over.

When I got back to Hamakita Station I saw Christmas lights in the area.

I picked up some food at Mos Burger in celebration of the test being over. 

I got a teriyaki burger and onion rings. Very tasty!

One morning in mid December I was very surprised when I left for school. There was snow!

 

It wasn't much, but it was the first time I had seen snow accumulate on the ground in this area.

I was at one of my elementary schools that day and the kids were suuuuuper excited about it. I saw one kid manage to make a snowball, haha.

I decorated my tree with a candy theme. So cute!

I got a Barbie chocolate advent calendar from an import store. It had been a loooong time since I had had one of those!

I finally got to display the ridiculous KFC Christmas plate I got from a used store for 50 yen. I love the girl riding a drumstick on the carousel and Colonel Sanders standing in the back.

I made some paper snowflakes to decorate my window. Unfortunately the window gets wet in the mornings so the tape didn't hold most of them up and I was constantly putting them back up. But I had a lot of fun making them. I got some pretty, shiny origami paper which was the perfect size. I also finally learned how to make the six-pointed kind. I got the instructions here: Instructables - How to Make 6 Pointed Paper Snowflakes

On New Year's Eve Jonathan and I biked to Hamamatsu and went to Toys R Us so Jonathan could get another little remote control helicopter. I also got a muffin from Bagel & Bagel in the station. It had marshmallows and Oreos. :)

I ate it for dessert later. We got McDonald's from the mall for dinner. While we were waiting for our food Jonathan had to go to the grocery store for salad and some other stuff so we just met back up at my apartment. Jonathan surprised me with some flowers! 

I've had them a month now and the yellow ones are dying but the pink ones still look great! 

We ate dinner and played with Jonathan's remote control helicopters while watching Kohaku, an annual music program that has been going on since 1951. It's several hours long and many current and older singers and groups perform. The white team (boys) and the red team (girls) compete against each other and at the end a winner is chosen.

Most of the stuff was live and in one music hall, but one segment was filmed in New York. Idina Menzel and Sayaka Kanda (the voice of Anna in the Japanese version of Frozen) sang For the First Time in Forever together. It was really cool to hear it in Japanese and English together.

I actually found a video of it on Youtube. I'm not sure how long it will be up though. Japanese music often gets taken down quickly.

I bought apple tea soda with super cute Frozen packaging. 

I thought the drink was just ok though. I love apple tea, but I guess I prefer it non-carbonated. I had some at Tokyo Disneyland a few years ago and thought the same thing but wanted to give it another try.

Ichino recently went through a renewal and many shops and restaurants closed, but many new ones opened. One of the new restaurants in the food court is Hawaiian Pancake Factory and I finally tried it.

I got the tropical pancakes and was very impressed. So pretty and fancy and tasty!

We walked around the mall a bit and then got ice cream at Baskin Robbins. I couldn't resist their limited flavor Lucky Sheep! This year is the year of the sheep so that's why it's called that.

It was suuuuch a good flavor. It was strawberry ice cream with marshmallows and chocolate chips. They still have it this month so maybe I'll get it again sometime.

There's quite a big of Sailor Moon merchandise out right now and there are even some random products with Sailor Moon packaging. I bought several bags of these chips and plan on making some pencil cases or something with them when I get home.

Yum! Ice cream mochi! The strawberry ice cream is really good, but I don't care for the cream a whole lot. I tear them open and eat that part first. Then the rest is wonderful!

I've been eating more bentos and stuff from the grocery store lately because I know I will miss that food when I go home. I love that when I don't feel like cooking there are healthy, fresh meals I can get at the grocery store. So much better than frozen dinners. 

I couldn't resist taking a picture with one of the guys from Arashi at Mister Donut. I haven't seen anyone else take a picture with it, but it seems like it's set up for that.

Jonathan and I had a nice Thanksgiving/Christmas-ish dinner recently. We had turkey subs, cranberry sauce, and stuffing. Mmmm! Stuffing! :)

For dessert I had a D&D from Mister Donut. I have no idea what a D&D is. Their signs say "Brooklyn D&D." All I could think of was Dungeons and Dragons. When I search for it online I just find stuff about Dungeons and Dragons.

Whatever it is, chocolate banana Dungeons and Dragons are super delicious.

A couple weekends ago Jonathan and I made a video for his brother's birthday. Rilakkuma was in part of it.

He didn't look like he enjoyed the car ride too much though.

I had some strawberry cream soda Fanta that was pretty good. When I first saw the packaging I thought it was tomato Fanta, haha. That would be gross.

Last weekend Jonathan and I went to LaLaport and I liked my outfit that day so I had Jonathan take a picture.

I got the top at Earth, Music and Ecology for just a little over 1000 yen. So cheap! It had originally been about 4,000 yen.

Unfortunately Jonathan started feeling bad so we spent just a few minutes in the mall before we left.

He felt sick. :( But he looked so funny in my sunglasses! :)

I went to LaLaport by myself the next day and had really good luck with the gachapon machines.

At a store called Passport they had a bunch of cute stuffed animals. It was a display of tofu stuffed animals that drew me into the store. There was a really cute tofu sheep plushie (haha, only in Japan) but I didn't get it because I saw something even better instead. 

Sakura kitty! I had seen nekodango stuffed animals before and wanted one, but hadn't gotten one yet. I'm glad I waited to get one because this one is definitely the cutest! :)

This past Tuesday I got my results from the JLPT. I passed!!!!! I didn't do that well, but still... I passed! I got a 116/180 and passing is 95/180 so I got a higher score than I expected. I thought that if I did pass, it would just be a couple points above. So yay! Surprisingly my highest scoring section was reading (47/60) which I thought I had done horribly on. Though it had started out easy and it was really just the 2nd half of that section that was bad. And still I was able to narrow some of them down to two choices.

So that evening Jonathan and I went to Hamazushi to celebrate.

That's fried chicken sushi. I love sushi, but not the raw fish kind, haha. So I mostly just get fried chicken, cucumber, and egg sushi.

I saved room for ice cream at Baskin Robbins later.

I got Popping Shower and Love Potion 31 Dark. Popping Shower is a bit minty and has popping candy in it. It's tasty and fun! Love Potion 31 Dark had chocolate and raspberry ice cream and white chocolate hearts filled with raspberry sauce.

Yesterday Jonathan and I went to LaLaport again since Jonathan hadn't really been able to go the past weekend. We played basketball in the arcade and got drinks at Starbucks. I had the chocolate orange mocha Frappuccino again. Mmmm!

As we were leaving Jonathan got something funny from the vending machine. Corn soup. Haha!

I like corn soup and it's in many vending machines this time of year, but I had never been brave enough to try the canned version. Jonathan said it wasn't very good.

I was amused by the English on the side of an ice cream vending machine.

 

Yes, I took a picture of my dish soap. But I was so excited to get this! I had some like this last year and it smelled soooooo good. Ever since then every time I bought dish soap I checked for this one and never found it again until yesterday! :)

I saw Sailor Moon gummies at a couple 7-Elevens yesterday! At the second one I went to they had a big Sailor Moon display with some really cool merchandise including an adorable Luna plushie. The merchandise was part of a lottery thing. You pay for a chance and then take a ticket out of a box. The cashier scans it and then tells you which prize you have won. I tried and got prize E, which was one of my top choices! For E they only had Jupiter and Mercury left so I picked Mercury. She's so cute!

It's really awesome to see so much Sailor Moon stuff right now. It just keeps increasing more and more. It makes me sad to be leaving so soon, but at least I have gotten to see some really cool stuff!