jennajapan-facebook-login

Last weekend I celebrated Halloween. Well, sort of. In the past few weeks I've picked up some Halloween stuff from 100 yen stores, including the stuff in the picture above which came from Daiso.


Halloween is two words? I was hoping to find something with "Merry Halloween" written on it, but no luck (I saw a few things that said that last time in Japan).  


I don't think I've ever seen so many warnings for just stickers. They really don't want you to lick them or put them on your skin... are they poisonous? 


I also got this stuff at Daiso on a different day. I got a bunch of random candy (it was 3 or 4 for 100 yen).


This axe was a totally random purchase, but it's so funny. I don't think I've ever seen such a happy, girly, sparkly, fuzzy, ridiculous axe.


I bought some imported Halloween themed Haribo gummies at Minipla at LaLaport. The bag was Halloween themed. I don't like Charlie Brown a whole lot, but I appreciated the Halloween theme.



I bought these snacks at the grocery store. The chips are pumpkin gratin flavored and the things on the left are little chocolate and strawberry filled cookies. The cookies are good and I haven't tried the chips yet. Maybe I'll eat them tomorrow, which is actually Halloween.


The lollipops I bought at Daiso were super cute! I gave the cream soda (melon soda with vanilla ice cream) flavored one to Jonathan (I put together treat bags for us, haha) and I kept the milk flavored one. Yes, milk flavored. I bought it because of the adorable packaging, but I ended up liking the flavor too. It just had a sweet creamy flavor, but it was tasty. Oh, and the lollipops are Mickey shaped! I will have to try some of the other flavors.


The cookies had such cute packaging! Disney seemed to be a popular thing for Halloween.


That's the stuff I put in the treat bags. Yum!


I bought that cute lantern at Seria, but all the rest of my decorations were from Daiso. 

Every Friday Jonathan and I eat junk food and watch Psych. It's our weekly tradition. It really wasn't any different this time except for the decorations and my "costume."


I forced Jonathan to put on this headband and hold this stuff. See how he felt about that?


Yeah, so there's my costume. It's probably the best Halloween costume I've ever put together! Way better than the one I made last year, right?


Okay, maybe not. But it was way less time consuming and was much less expensive than my Princess Peach costume. Though I loved working on that dress. I missed that this year. I love costumes and making stuff, so I love Halloween. It's my second favorite holiday, after Christmas.





We had KFC to eat. I wasn't even sure what this was when I ordered it, but it looked interesting. It was really delicious! Despite not being boneless and being dark meat, it was still really good. It was sweet and yummy. I still don't know what the flavor was though, haha.


The next day we got lunch at 7-Eleven before doing some shopping. I don't like milk tea (I like putting milk in some tea, but I don't like the bottled kind), but the packaging was so cute! :) I love how popular Marie from the Aristocats is here. 


I bought this pumpkin pudding candy and was surprised by a gummy center when I bit in (I thought it was just pumpkin flavored white chocolate) haha. It also had the sauce stuff that's on Japanese pudding (which is like flan). It wasn't bad, but it was a bit surprising, lol.

We ate our lunch at the park near the river. There weren't many people at the park because it had rained a lot the night before and the ground was still pretty wet. I took the opportunity to ride the nasu! Japanese eggplant! So exciting! Haha!


I wanted to take a picture of Jonathan on the nasu but he got scared and got off before I could take a picture. He claims that he was afraid that he would break it. Yeah, right. He just couldn't handle the intense excitement of the thrilling eggplant!


We walked along the river for a few minutes and saw these really really bright berries. They were brighter in real life. They were really pretty! 

Then we headed to Seiyu which is owned by Walmart. I took a picture of some beautiful graffiti in the cosmetics section.


The puzzle selection is definitely better than in the US!



Want to eat some aloe vera? Haha.

I bought some pineapple banana jelly, curry, and hangers. We went to a different Seiyu the previous week (a smaller one that mostly just had groceries) and bought Great Value parmesan cheese, cranberry juice, and honey roasted peanuts. It wasn't cheap. Imported Great Value food... haha.

Overall, Seiyu did have some good stuff, but the store was kind of depressing in a K-Mart sort of way. There weren't very many people there especially considering that it was a weekend. Though I will probably go back when I run out of parmesan cheese because it was a good deal.

Oh and they sold Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, but only the white chocolate kind. WHY????? It was like they were teasing me. So cruel! I like white chocolate, but it just doesn't go with peanut butter like regular chocolate does.

Then we went to Nandemo Kaimasu, a used store near Jonathan's apartment. I found a really cute Rilakkuma stuffed animal for only 400 yen! They had a really huge one holding a donut that said "Mister Donut" and it was amazing, but it was 15000 yen. I'll just get stick with the 400 yen one...


I added the axe to make this post more Halloweeny since I have kind of gotten away from that theme in the second half of this post.

That evening Jonathan and I walked to an area where he sometimes runs and has seen many stray cats. An old couple goes there every evening too and feeds them. The cats were a bit shy with us (one was super friendly though!) but we saw some of them run up to the woman. They definitely recognized her! It was really cute!

I only had my phone so this picture isn't very good, but it kind of shows one of the cats. We saw at least four black cats. So that was kind of Halloweenish. So cute, too!


Then we made taco salad for dinner. Yum! The grocery store near Jonathan's apartment doesn't have plain tortilla chips so we used some chips called Don Tacos which are basically Doritos. The flavor we got tasted a bit like Sweet Chili Doritos, which are my favorite Doritos.Yum!


The next day the weather was super super nice. It was so sunny but not hot. I took advantage of the nice weather and did some laundry. The weather was so nice that I even enjoyed doing my laundry. Weird, but I really did. Plus, "traditional laundry in Japan are so soft as to calm down our minds." Ummmm, ok.



I went running that afternoon and ran 7 kilometers. I had run 7 kilometers on Wednesday, too (first time I had ever run that far). I felt like I could run for a while longer but it was getting dark. When I signed up for the 10k I wasn't planning on running the whole thing, but I think I'll be able to! It's less than a month away now!

I bought a neat melon soda cell phone strap. It has bubbly stuff in there that floats around and makes it look like soda!


These tissue packs are so cute. I have a cute tissue pack cover, but I didn't use it with these. :)


I bought some stuffed animals at Nandemo Kaimasu, another used store in Iwata. I got all of these for about 500 yen I think. The big Tofu is my favorite! The Pikachu on the left is kind of weird looking (I only got that one because it was packaged together with the other Pokemon) but it turns inside out and zips up into a Pokeball, so it's actually pretty neat. That Pikachu and the two Nyanpire plushies are in my car now.


I got these other stuffed animals for my car a while back at Pick Up. A lot of people have stuffed animals in their cars here. So cute! The one on the right is tofu and I think the one on the left is maybe supposed to be pudding.


This alpaca is soooooo cute! It had blushed cheeks, but those mostly faded away.



The bags came from Seria. I had Hello Kitty ones before I bought these.


I painted my nails before climbing Mt. Fuji. They were supposed to look like the snowy top of Mt. Fuji (except it doesn't look that way in the summer) but they didn't really turn out exactly how I imagined. I still really liked them, but they were more just pretty snowy winteryness.


I drank that Pocari Sweat on Mt. Fuji. The change in air pressure did this.


I think I saw this train in Hiroshima. I didn't ride it, but I was amused by the decorations on the front.




Sometimes when I stay at Toyoko Inn I get random free stuff and I usually don't know what it is. I've gotten this stuff several times. "I can't join the party due to ugly body." What? Lol.


I couldn't remember if I had posted this random glue stick or not on here. There's nothing wrong with this English, but it's just random.



This is on the side of a vending machine near my apartment. Haha.


During the summer, there were a bunch of lotus growing not too far from Jonathan's apartment.


I saw this really awesome bag at the mall, but it's HUGE and I don't know what I would ever use it for. I wished they had a smaller one that I could use for groceries. Then, last time I was there they did have one in the size I wanted, but it was actually more expensive. The big one is like 1200 and the smaller one is 1300. It's more expensive because it has extra pockets and stuff.


So cute! The name of these cat treats are so funny and adorable.


One afternoon the clouds were sooooo super fluffy and pretty!


This is the Ichino Aeon mall in Hamamatsu. It doesn't look that special from the outside, but it's amazing. It's the best mall I've ever been to! It has a bunch of super cute clothing stores, including Axes Femme (my favorite!), a Seria 100 yen shop, a pet store with cute kittens and puppies, a Sanrio store, a couple stores just filled with tons of cute character merchandise, a bookstore, a small import grocery store, a Uniqlo, some good shoe stores, an arcade, a hobby store with puzzles, and a lot more! The Aeon store is a big department store that sells a ton of stuff including groceries. They have Nutella! :) Oh and in addition to the grocery store, there is a ton of food in the mall. Delicious ramen, Mister Donut, Subway, crepes, and soooooo much more. I saw a place there that sells these apple ring pastry things that look really good. Oh and Starbucks has some sort of almond frappuccino right now that I really want to try.



I found a really tiny can of Coke in the Aeon grocery store!


I bought some really cute Hello Kitty pasta there and made soup. Yum! I just boiled the pasta in water with chicken consomme cubes and added vegetables, red pepper, and garlic.


I bought a chocolate madeleine mix at Seria. They were pretty good, but a little bland, but I expected that with a 100 yen mix. Frosting them with Nutella and adding sprinkles made them delicious though. :) The mix worked very well in my toaster oven.

We had a typhoon last weekend. I got up in the night and it was pretty windy, but nothing too crazy. It sounded like it was raining hard, but when I looked outside it was just the wind making it sound that way. It rained a lot in other areas though and caused flooding.

The typhoon also brought some cooler weather. The other night I got a little cold as I walked to the konbini, but I was in short sleeves and I get cold super easily so it wasn't really that cold. But it feels like summer is ending and fall is beginning.

I have a few fun things planned for fall. In a couple weeks I'm going to a Backstreet Boys concert! Hehe! In late November Jonathan and I are running a 10k in Iwata. I've never done anything over a 5k so it should be interesting. I did 8k the other day with a bit of walking and it wasn't too bad.

I also signed up to take the JLPT in December. I'm going to take the N4 level. There are five levels. 1 is the hardest and 5 is the easiest. I looked over some practice tests the other day and I did ok. I still need to study a bit, but I think I have a chance of passing.

I have a three day weekend now but I don't have anything special planned. I'll probably end up at the mall at some point. If the weather is nice maybe I'll go for a bike ride.