Californian Adventures

I saw Transformers today. Not really a fan of it but have to agree it was pretty satisfying to the eye. The reason why I watched it in the first place was because a friend from Annandale, Virginia who I met while on my Japan homestay was visiting California, and I agreed to meet up with her.

The girl is Elizabeth, and she took her brother, Eric, along with her. Unfortunately, she drank some Nuoc Mia (sugarcane juice) at a Vietnamese restaurant and had food poisoning so her stomach was giving her a bad time. She told us to go on ahead and watch a movie while she stayed home to rest, and would catch us up later.



These are scenes from the movie. Eric and I sat in the movie theater from 2:40 to 5:20. It was a LOONG one. I liked it, though.

We took the light rail to downtown after, and it was such a joy to see it full of life. (In fact, it was even hard walking!) I never knew music could liven the city this much on a single day.

I wonder what all the people here must've look like from the office buildings high above. A scrambled TV channel? Ants? In-sync bobble heads? Whatever. There's a lot, that's all that matters.


And so I gave him a tour of my city, took pictures, and waited for Elizabeth to come. But in doing so, two marine recruiters suddenly approached us--as if they were going to mug us--, started boasting about the U.S. Marines and how we should join.

Sorry, no. I have a future somewhere else, and I'm too skinny. Bummer for you.

So I politely hushed them away, dragging Eric with me because he couldn't get out of their grapple of him by eye contact.


I met Elizabeth at St. Joseph's Church and we took the train to Japantown from downtown. Shopped at Nijiya's Market, did some more touring, dined in at a Ramen restaurant. Yup. I had Egg Rolls (from outside the store). Spoke Japanese along the way, too; but received some stares from non-Asian pedestrians so I just went plain English.


The restaurant, it looks like a bar, no?



Ahh, what a day. :)