Global Festa Japan

"The conductor said to me,
'Would you like a something to drink?'
The water that he offered to me was full of mud.
'I can't drink this water.'
The conductor looked at my slightly upset face
and inclined his head,
'This is water from your planet. It was drawn especially for you...'
'Do you like the place where you were born? My planet no longer exists.
I'm on a journey, riding the wind. Always going forward!' "

Yesterday, I went to a festival in Hibiya called Global Festa. A bunch of stalls were set up advertising the work of Japanese NGOs that work towards all sorts of causes--especially SE Asia and Africa.

 (Just because this is my country lol)

"Save this child. Save the future."

Nearby the festa, there was a really pretty Japanese style garden, so I took pictures.

The best part, though, was the free Undergraph concert! I had heard one song by them before, but the concert was AMAZING. Their songs are so good. Their lyrics are so moving. (The lyrics at the beginning of this entry are from their song 'The world is as blue/as inexperienced as I thought') Lives are really the best. After the live, I bought one of their cds of which the proceeds go to victims of the Touhoku earthquake.

Afterwards, me, Stephanie, Kit (girl from Hong Kong), Phoebe (girl from Taiwan), Kelly (4th generation Japanese from Hawaii), Yuuko (Keio first year girl I met at the Plurio sushi party), and Tsubasa (Keio fourth year guy Stephanie met at a drinking party) went to Tsukishima, which is famous for its monja. What is monja? Well, here are some pictures:

 We were split up into groups at dinner. This is the other table making their monja. The girl on the right is Kit. The guy on the left (the only guy in our group lol) is Tsubasa. It was my first time meeting him and he was really nice and really funny.

 My table was me, Kelly and Yuuko. This is Yuuko by the way.

 By the end of the night, I became a pro so that the batter I poured in the center stayed perfectly without spilling out of the ring of vegetables. My table ordered three types: Pork monja, salmon monja, and onion bacon curry monja.

This was the restaurant we went to but we could have gone to a number of them. The whole street was lined with monja restaurants.

After dinner, Kit bought some freshly baked melon bread and let us all try a bit. I've tried the ones from convenient stores and grocery stores, but this melon bread was amazing. The outside was so crispy and the inside was so fluffy!

For tea, we walked to Ginza. Stephanie said it was a 10min walk but it ended being like half an hour so we didn't arrive to Ginza until 11pm and almost everything was closed. We finally found an open cafe and I had a green tea cream drink with azuki. It was delicious.

Ginza is a huge city. It's kinda like Friendship Heights--full of stores like Gucci where you can't afford anything unless you're super rich--except the building are toweringly huge. Here are some pictures of the Ginza:

We took the last train back home at 12 and I didn't get home until 1am. It was really fun, though, and I got to talk a lot of Japanese. Good enough for me♪