sen-chan!

Cookie Crumb White Chocolate from Disney. Courtesy of Jiahui

Guess how much this cost?

Looking young(er)

So what's up with the title of this entry?
Sen-chan is what some of my Japanese friends are calling me.
Anything special about it? Not really.

You see, in the Japanese context, you would refer to others as (name)-san and that's about it, right? WRONG. In fact, (name)-san is a polite way of addressing someone, who is often a stranger or someone who commands some respect. Other ways include (name)-sama, (name)-dono, and of course, (name)-chan.

Now comes the next question, why "sen"-chan? Like, I'm QL, and there's no apparent connection to "sen", is there? Actually, QL = "senri" in Japanese (I refuse to provide any other pronunciations) and hence, "sen"-chan. Think of it like "oppa" in Korean, just that you're adding a name in front.

I've been going on and on bout this, so you're probably wondering, right....so what's up with "sen-chan"? I don't really know, but personally, I find it a lot friendlier to call someone by his/her nickname, or in short, just a personalized name. However, the effects are very different depending on who's calling me "sen-chan". Let's look at the following cases...

1) Cute Japanese girl around my age group
Effect: Feels good. Pretty damn good.

2) Nice Japanese guy around my age group
Effect: A warm fuzzy feeling gushes around, but if said with a sneaky smile, evokes a sense of uneasiness.

3) Foreign Friend (what people would refer to here as gaijin)
Effect: WEIRD. Perhaps it's the accent. Or maybe its the intonation. Or it could have been the look. In any case, I personally don't advise it unless you can do it the way it's being practised here by the cute Japanese girls

4) Others
Effect: I don't really care that much :p

Bah. I don't even know why I'm typing this in such an inquisitive tone today! Perhaps I'm just sick of doing MORE research hehe. BUT!!! If my research project goes well, I'm getting a treat to HIGH CLASS SUSHI AT GINZA from my prof! Now THAT's motivation :P

Let's see...I met up with Ayako on Sunday, which is an amazing feat by itself. This is simply because I first knew her in Singapore when she came over to work as a waitress at a restaurant that I frequented. From then on we became friends (we = XY, Ayako, Me) and went out for dinner on a couple'f occasions. After some time, she came back to pursue a career in Kyoto, Japan. Anyway, back to topic. We went to Yokohama, Shinagawa, Harajuku (people are going to start noticing that I've been frequenting Harajuku a lot...) and back to Yokohama in time for her to catch the Shinkansen. It was great meeting up and catching up :D Since what we talked bout is mostly personal stuff, I shan't write it here, but instead, let's recollect what we ate.

First, we had a light snack (it was her lunch) at Chowder's. As you can collect from the name, the place sells soup. I had Fire Tomato Bisque with tomato rice and water while she had the soup of the day (spinach, not with pork ribs though :P) Following which, it was a frantic wave of shopping at Harajuku (on a weekend). As usual, we saw the cosplayers outside Meiji Shrine. There're plenty of X-Japan cosplayers this weekend though...I wonder why...I think she had a great time cos she spent a bomb on the clothes (chuckle). I guess I can start bringing people around Harajuku soon :D For those of you who like shoes, they're selling at 2 pairs for 3000 yen, just for your information. *skips the shopping part and jumps straight to dinner cos i needa do research soon...poor time management*

Dinner was at yokohama - SUSHI! Ok, be prepared for a barrage of Japanese terms now, this was our dinner menu
1) Ichinichi-gentei-20-shoku Kinkai-nigiri (includes 10 sushi which I'm too lazy to list)
2) Kaisen (Seafood) Salad
3) Kani-jiru (Crab Miso Soup) - they used a whole crab for this
4) Waka...erm i forgot. Something tempura
5) Buta-abura-nigiri
6) Oshinko
7) Matcha Warabi Mochi

I'll love to upload the pics, but unfortunately, I forgot my camera that day!!! It's in my cellphone though :P

Ok with that, I'll end this entry (abruptly)
2 pics at the top to show that I'm doing well :D