Movies, Magic, and a Mountain of Ice Cream: This Weekend

I'm grouping all of this weekend into one, because nothing major happened, but still cool shenanigans. On Saturday, Riyo and I went to the movies! (I happily had a ticket in my American wallet from Beauty and the Beast to give her, she was excited) Unfortunately, all of the movies that are out here are movies that were out when I left, so I have either seen them or didn't want to see them. So I let Riyo decide which movie; so, we went to see Sherlock Holmes :)

English movies here can be shown in English with subtitles, or dubbed, depending on the showtime and the theater. We opted for the subtitles, thank goodness she doesn't like dubbed films that much either.

This was the movie theater; as far as I've seen, all of the theaters are in malls. i'm sure there might be a stand alone one somewhere. Warner brothers is a name like Cinemark here.

Walking to the theater

When we went to purchase tickets, I had forgotten that they were assigned seats, so it surprised me. Sherlock came out last month, so it was not crowded. It was also expensive, about 18 American dollars for a normal non-3D show. Yay. Popcorn was butter and salt like usual (we snuck in a candy called Pocky and pop of course, that happens here too), except the sizes were smaller. The largest was about an American medium, and it was called the American Size (I laughed a lot). 

They also have caramel popcorn in Japan! Unfortunately, it was just as expensive as the large popcorn and it was ridiculously small:

Teeny popcorn, did I mention it came in a bag?

So we got the expensive popcorn, because we had just eaten lunch at the mall food court ("Chinese" food, although I recognized none of it as Chinese, but it was delicious. Food courts here are just as good as normal restaurants) so I wasn't too hungry for a big ol' bag of popcorn. I still finished it before the movie started.

We had to wait a long time to go into the theater; it wasn't seating until 10 minutes before the show began, which I thought was odd.

Japanese movies had the same amount of commercials, but only a few previews. The previews we saw were wonderful though. The first was for the live action film of Rurouni Kenshin, an old popular Japanese manga that I love. It doesn't come out here until August though, so I won't get to see it at home for a while. Then we saw a preview for Dark Knight Rises, which is surprisingly close to the American release date. I think it was only a week later. Just like Harry Potter, it is probably because it is an already popular franchise ( ::shakes fist at Hunger Games::)

The movie was just as good as I remember it; it was interesting to watch the Japanese subtitles try to convert English humor into Japanese. People did not laugh as much, and a startling number weren't leaving until after the credits, although I don't think there was anything after Sherlock Holmes. True to form in Japan, there were no trash cans to throw away stuff. You had to put all your garbage in the little bag and give it to the guy by the ONE trash can when you left. There definitely weren't as many people with snacks as there would be in America.

Then we went back to the mall and got Mister Donut (heehee) and Baskin Robbins, which was on sale because there are 31 flavors and it was the 31st!

This brings me to yesterday. Yesterday in Beer Park (that's not the name, but so many international students drink there and be stupid that's what they call it) there was a school-sponsored international festival for the residents of the city we live and and the students of the school. I was a volunteer, so I woke up at 9 in the morning to tie some balloons to trees and things before coming back home and going to bed from 11 to 1, when I was supposed to start  my "shift." I was sort of in the middle of the "show" volunteers and the "booth" volunteers, because I was performing magic tricks. However, doing card tricks from a stage is terrible because no one can see the cards except the volunteer. Hence, I wasn't reeeeally a show volunteer. But I still reported to the volunteer coordinator for the shows? I don't know, I got a cool volunteer t shirt. And lunch. The coordinator told me to stay around the stage in case she needed help with something, which she wouldn't because there wasn't really anything to do.

So I stood around there for a while, before I walked over to the face painting area where my friend painted the kanji for 'fun' on my face:

That purple thing says fun :)

I then decided that standing useless around the stage was stupid and set off to do some magic for some unsuspecting students and Japanese people. However, I have never even done street magic at home before, so I was nervous. The other magician was also in an actual show, so he wasn't very interested in running around magicking, so I was on my own. And nervous. I had a few tricks in mind, the ones that are easy for me to remember and perform without a lot of practice.

I saw the RA of the dorm that I live in, and walked over to him and told him of my predicament. He walked over with me to some nice old Japanese ladies, where I performed magic for all of them. One of them spoke some English, too, so I only had to perform the trick half in Japanese. (I knew all of my magic tricks in Japanese ;p) It went very well, and they were very surprised. 

This gave me encouragement to continue. I then began walking up to groups of Japanese people and foreigners alike, asking "Tejina wo mitai desu ka?" Would you like to see a magic trick? The answer was always an overwhelming yes; they all had great reactions too! It was really fun. I did magic for friends, strangers, and even a few of my teachers. I also inadvertently did magic for one of my RA's family, it was funny. I got to do the same tricks over and over too, which was nice. I only messed up a little bit once, for my friends, so it was okay. It was also cold, so my hands were shaking a bit :p

Overall, it was awesome. After we took down the festival and cleaned up everything with super organization, I had a great need to go to the grocery store. After I had gotten my purse and was starting to walk there, the RA asked me if I was going to the ice cream party. ...Apparently there was a secret ice cream party for the volunteers who actually stayed and cleaned up like they were supposed to. So I figured I could make a quick stop for some ice cream before heading to the grocery store, which closed in 3 hours. 

I have never seen so much ice cream in one place before. Before they took 12 of the gallons of ice cream to the other Seminar House for the show performers (I did not go over there, haha, the other party was also in my dorm building) there were thirty gallons of ice cream in one room. There HAD to be some left over, although I left early to go to the grocery store. I still ate a goodness load of ice cream. So much ice cream, goodness me. 

Well this week is the midterm week for my English courses: a final presentation proposal, a midterm, and a paper. FUN. 

~Rosie

EDIT: I forgot to say, this really nice old woman was walking around passing out bookmarks she made as thank you presents! It was very nice of her, it says thank you on the back in Japanese. However, I'm an idiot, and didn't look at it closely before I asked what it said. Fail.