a beautiful day!

I don't quite know why but every time I sit down to write these entries, I open my window and I hear this very faint marching band music. It's really strange and it has been happening every day now.. I thought it might have been the Laos festival (or something?) in Yoyogi Park. But then I couldn't find anything. Although I also haven't really found Yoyogi Park. Somewhere out there a marching band is practicing and I know it.

I finally went to Tokyo Sea Life Park yesterday! I love aquariums. This one did not disappoint and fortunately there were not 40,000 people visiting the animals (like the Shedd is constantly full) so I was able to enjoy myself.

There was a couple school groups of really small children there, but I was able to distance myself from them (man were they loud!) Seeing how the animals kinda would've lived in their kinda natural habitats is a lot of fun. I do feel bad for them sometimes when their areas aren't clean and (in this case) they are essentially food for the other fish and there is no way for them to get away. This Sea Life Park was not a nasty horrifying aquarium. Needless to say that I now have an entire folder of pictures of fish, which I will not bore you with, but instead here's the Park's most notable exhibit, their school of Tuna.

They had alot of smaller tuna but four really massive (must've been 400lb-ers) tuna. You can see in that picture their size versus the poor guy in charge of cleaning their tank. I'd actually be afraid of them, they are almost entirely muscle (as I was just eating the other day... nom nom nom).

There was also an outdoor penguin exhibit, which I thought was really cool. I mean, these guys are just chilling out, outside with their own private pool. There were at least fifteen penguins too. The children loved them.


Suction-guys under a starfish attached to the glass.

Obligatory cuttlefish. There were two cuttlefish in the tank, evidently male and female, because after I snapped this photo they decided to mate. I have some really dark pictures of them mouth to mouth exchanging their fishy-fluids. I don't know how often you all see cuttlefish mating, but I was a little confused at first.
After that I wandered over through the beautiful outdoor section into their freshwater pond. There were frogs.

Sneaky frogs.
As I was leaving the park I ran into this bird. He was trying to be sneaky too, but it wasn't working.

I have a bunch of pictures of him sneaking around. The park around the Sea Life park is noted for it's bird watching goodness, but this was the only bird I saw in my whole wandering around the park.

I did get to sit on the sea shore across form Disneyland. I accidentally got off at the Disneyland stop because nothing had signs on it. I thought for about two seconds that maybe this means that I should go to Tokyo Disneyland. No. No it doesn't. Not with the ticket price of 4500Y. Maybe someday. Maaaaybe.
The tide must've been high because of the weird rain the previous day but now it had just left all kind of weirdo beach debris and some dead fish. I have a bunch of pictures of dead fish because I was really shocked at how big they were. They were not your tiny dead fish, they were really large. I thought someone was fishing and had just gotten bored with them and left them, but no, it was definitely from the tides. Poor fish. I won't... amuse you... with pictures.

There was also a small field of poppies for people like me who take really close up pictures of flowers. After that I figured I should probably leave and head back to the ranch but I flipped through my Grutt pass book and noticed that one train stop away there was the Yumenoshima Tropical Greenhouse Dome. Given that I have easily already gotten 2000Y worth of my Grutt pass book and admission to this Greenhouse was essentially free, I decided to go check it out.

It was really beautiful inside, with your usual assortment of tropical plants. They had highlighted the different plants they had that were fruit producing, like pineapple and mango, although most of them did not have any fruit at the time.

These pineapples were working on it.

There was an entire room of Pitcher Plants. I don't think I've been happier in a greenhouse. Pitcher plants are my favorite, hands down, of all carnivorous plants and really just any bog plants. I do much prefer bog plants to most others. I'm not really a tree or a palm person. The door at the entrance was broken but I pried it open anyways to enjoy this entire room of carnivorous plants. The colors found in these guys are just so lovely. I also enjoyed the way they hung them in fairly tiny planters from the ceiling. I'm sure my roommate would freak out, but it really would be a fantastic insect kill in the summer.

Here they are outside. So cool!
There was even an herb garden. I was so happy to smell the calming oils from the Lavender plants.

There was also a huge area of thyme so I stole some for thyme-y potato breakfast this morning. Yum.
As if this place could get any better...

THEY HAD CHICKENS! Just chilling out!


and they were silky chickens at that! Oh, so cute.
I tried to get closer to them, but the rooster was like "WHAT."
So I think they might've had chicks. D'aww chickens so cute.

I headed back to the train and happened upon a REAL supermarket! I bought a large variety of mushrooms because they were on sale and a variety of other food because I need food. I headed back to my dorm and decided to empty out my mail box. It was stuffed FULL of menus. I decided to make collages out of them. I'll post them in the future when I finish all of them. I think I might make them into some kind of print. They really fuse this weird concept of cultural appropriation that I find really fascinating about being a foreigner in Japan. I took all these really bizarre Italian food menus and cut out the pizzas. What does it mean to patch together these sort of cultural re-appropriations? I don't quite know, but I find these things really visually and texturally interesting. It's sort of my own boro, of the modern day. Taking what is cheap and readily available to me and making some kind of patch work with it. I'll just have to reapply that in fabric in this screen printing class and see what it comes out like. I'm into these weird visceral reds and yellows these days. I think it was Barb that got me hooked with her crazy awesome photography of my hands.

Last night, as some of you who also read my livejournal or check my facebook status are aware, was another ridiculous party thrown by the very rude person who lives next door to me. I am still very angry about this party because it did not consist of people who live in this section at all. And I'm sure other people who actually live in this section were very angry about this, as the girl next door to me must've been because she was blasting r&b until she must've fallen asleep or something. I wrote another letter to Sakura H-dawg that they will hopefully respond to, although I guess when it comes down to it, I don't really care either way. This place is a bit too much of a craphole, but in a fairly nice area. After the washing machine fiasco of prior and the complete inability of the holding company to do anything about this noise issue (it seems I'm not the only one complaining), I'm certain that if I end up here in Tokyo again, I'll ...try to figure out a better situation?
Stuck between a rock and a hard place.

In the mean time though, tonight is a Tokyo Decadance party at Trunp Room. I don't have an outfit prepared at all, but I'll figure something out before then, hopefully.