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A couple of days ago, I was going to get my part-time job permit (residents in Japan with a student visa have to ask for a permit) when I found something rare… or at least, I find it rare, and this is my blog and that’s the way it goes around here, so get used to it. And by the way, immigration office in Tokyo is way to far from anywhere else, check out the map.

What I found was a genuine fake LAWSON convenience store, only that it was named PORT STORE (at least that matched the location). People who knows about LAWSON will notice the logo and store’s shape is quite well copied (you can check LAWSON’s wikipedia page to check it out too). The store was right in front of the immigration office (link to Google’s StreetView). Until now the most original convenience store I had seen in Japan was the LAWSON close to Sakurajima port (link to Google’s StreetView), near the volcano with the same name in Kagoshima Prefecture. That LAWSON is said to be colored in brown to match the volcanic environment… weird… And do you want to knows something else weird too? Lawson was originated in Ohio (US), but it exists only as a Japanese company, that’s probably how Yahoo will end as well.

Here are the pics (click to enlarge):

Following my second of glory on Japanese TV I got last Thursday when they put a take of me weaving during Girls Generation Concert report on Fuji TV, a new second of glory came but this time on Korean TV. Apparently the debut of this girls band in Japan was a great success (I can imagine why) and thye reported the concert and all that stuff on MBC television, one of the major broadcasters of Korea.

Here’s the youtube video. I (as well as Yoshizaki!!) appear for just a second on 0’44″. I’m moving in a very weird way, so don’t judge for that ;D

As I told 3 days ago, yesterday I attended the debut live concert of Girls Generation (which I discovered are also know as “so-shi” for short) in Japan, which title was “Premium Show Case”, whatever that means. They were doing 3 performances in the same day, and were had tickets for the second. When we got to the station near the “Ariake Coliseum” close to Odaiba, I saw a pretty big amount of people, but getting closer to the spot I saw that the place was packed of young japanese teenagers (and not so teenagers) wearing all sorts of clothing to resemble their idols.

Whatever, the big thing wasn’t the concert at all, it was the I got to be in the video footage they displayed to report the event on Japanese TV!! Fuji TV to be more specific. Well, me and Yoshizaki (standing to my right). As you can see in the picture we were surrounded basically by females, but you could find also weird guys (just like ourselves).

Thanks to Yoshizaki who was lucky enough to catch the image (click to enlarge).

Here are also some videos somebody was lucky enough to record, because, since I was seating in the first row (I could’ve I literally shacked hands, or else, with any of the girls), I had a guy right in front of me to check that nobody was holding a camera during the concert…

I didn’t notice before, but check out at the end of this video, you can clearly hear a guy screaming “SUBARASHIII!!!!” really excited. Just FYI.

Overall it was pretty short.

In 2 days I’ll be watching live the concert by Girls Generation (which name in Japanese would be ???? “Shoujo-jidai”, and in korean “sonyongn-jidae”, or something like that). They are an all-girl-not-older-than-21 korean band, and my friend and former lab partner back in Kagoshima University, Yoshizaki, will be in Tokyo to attend some business and he got 2 tickets thru the new DVD promotion.

Truth to be told, songs are not bad, and besides their voices, they appear to have other talents too. Here are 2 of the songs I expect to see.

• A volcano right in your face (that was easy), I mean Sakurajima
• Volcanic ashes in the air (romantic but I don’t quite miss it)
• Yamakataya
• Onoya
• Nabeshima
• Fukufuku
• Onsen/Sento (japanese for natural/artificial hot springs, there some in Tokyo, bu no as much as in Kagoshima)
• People who’ve never seen foreigners
• Daie (although I think they call it Groumet City in Tokyo)
• Cheap Nomihodai courses (all-you-can-drink)
• Just get anywhere in the city in less than 30 minutes by bicycle
• An easy to get around Transportation System (no fair)
• A karaoke right in front of the university campus

There’s probably more stuff though…

Found at Tokyo subways.

Fun 2 days road trip to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka (click here for a map), the one we made few days ago. My former professor at Kagoshima University, Professor Takeuchi. He is still moving stuff from Kagoshima to his new lab and house in Hamamatsu and asked Anderson and me to go (about 3 hours by car) and help empty the truck. The truck was coming from Kagoshima driven by Yoshizaki (my other “senpai” until few weeks ago) and an older Professor Takeuchi’s former student for about 1400 km.

The picture is a “family picture” we took before coming back to Tokyo, but I guess this is not the last time I’ll meet Professor Takeuchi.

More fun pictures of the trip in the album Takuechi Reloaded (May 4, 2010).

Nevertheless, I spend the whole weekend with high fever, eating pills to control it and watching veetle.com. Friday was crazy, it took me an eternity to wake up and when I did, I started feeling really bad. Anyhow, I went to the lab, and later on a tried to go to the weekly seminar I have in Akihabara campus. There I felt like shit, and I had to leave in the middle of the session, buy a bunch of food, and go to a pharmacy to get some fever pills, ready to spend the weekend in bed.

This morning I expected to feel better but I still had some fever so I decided to go to the university’s health center to have myself checked. The result: no virus, but I have 4 days to eat this…

Last Monday we had an event at hour lab to welcome all the newcomers, and it defenitively finished late night. That was the time I discovered that Hongo campus closes all doors except for one. Which one? the farthest one from my house of course. Of course, I ended up jumping the fence in the picture, which seems a common choice between many other students.

Last weekend I went to Takao (??) to play PS3′s Winning 11 at Anderson’s house since Yuko (his wife) is returning next weekend and things will return to normal. I went to stay 1 night and come back on Sunday, but Sunday morning we went to a wholesale department called CostCo, where I saw how easy is to trick people by selling stuff in big packages to make it look cheaper.

People waiting to get some…

I found something I liked though, and that made me take the wrong way. We eat an “extremely” huge pizza, with excellent taste too! When we were about to return Anderson decided to buy one more to take home, and started pushing me to stay one more day. The result? We bought beers and jumped to the next Winning Eleven “freak level” playing games of 30 minutes each (needless to say that we actually intended to play real time games of 90 minutes, but surprisingly, 30 minutes is the maximum duration supported).