Baby in Boston: Day 12

Today, I had three things on my plate.

Do chores for the landlady
Go to the Japan Festival
Hang out with Matt

1. Doing chores for the landlady

Ughhhh. Shouldn't have worn a tank top for this. Every week, I have to help the landlady with some kind of chores around the house/yard as part of the agreement. My rent's super cheap and my parents are happy that I'll be learning some "real life skills" by doing chores. So I raked dead leaves out from under these really tall bushes and I got scratched up all over the place. YARD WORK IS THE WORST.

2. Go to the Japan Festival

This is a free event set up between Boston and the Consulate General of Japan in the Boston City Hall plaza. I wouldn't have known about it if Anime Boston didn't say they were selling Pre-Reg tickets there. It was pretty much what I expected: lots of little booths for selling Japanese knick-knacks, food, cloth, and other stuff. Also...

Lots of, uh, weird people hanging around. I saw cosplayers, Japanese school girls, kimonos & yukatas, a lot of fat people with cat ears, a lot of fat people with pikachu ears (and tails), Aperture Science shirts, girls in maid outfits, boys taking pictures with the girls in maid outfits, Marvel shirts, and MORE!

(my god, I'm terrible at formatting pictures on BlogSpot)

They were also holding performances on stage. According to the program, there were some J-pop performers, so I seated myself at 2:25 to watch YUSA Band. I expected some crazy dude to go running around stage with an awesome bass riff and girls singing the chorus and lots of pikapika and kirakira. I got a dude in a wheelchair singing folk tunes and a string quartet. Hmmmmm okay... I guess that's still J-pop? He was good, don't get me wrong, but I was a little disappointed, is all.

Overall, the Japan Festival was a bust for me. Probably would've been more fun if I went with someone slightly interested in Japanese stuff (Joe), but I think the event was mostly for families and nerds anyways.

After a very long train/bus ride, I arrived at the team apartment.

3. Hang out with Matt

YAYY! I got to the team apartment and Matt and Mike were home. Mike was, of course, shirtless and hacking the mainframe and all that. Matt was still sick. I made some eggs (hahahahaha stealing their food...) and ate a banana then sang a diddy (Snails by The Format) while Matt played his crazy guitar tunes. Afterwards, we played some old skool kool games. Well, mostly Matt played them and I sucked at them.

Super Mario 2: wasn't originally a Mario game, so Matt says, "It's just weird. I don't know what's going on. Look at this."

Super Mario 3: Matt and I would switch between Mario and Luigi and Matt would just beat the levels and I'd just die over and over again until we moved maps. I never realized how bad I was at Mario!!! Geez!!

Dr. Mario: Okay, I did alright in this one. Matt was obviously way better and beat me every single time, but this game is similar enough to Tetris that I did... okay. I usually didn't top off, Matt just beat me first every time. Oh yeah and when I asked Matt for some "Tips and Trix" he just says, "The winner gets to play the synth with this button." Not a tip, nor a trick, Matt.

After Dr. Mario, we watched Anchorman. I'd never watched it before (which is, whoa! what? you've never seen Anchorman!? Oh my god!!! OKAY, WELL NOT I HAVE, YA DINGDONGS.) and it was funny and I'd heard half of the lines before from Tumblr and the general Internet. It was okay. Probably just 'okay' because the world had been hyping this movie up so much and because I'd heard half of the movie before watching it. But now I'll understand all the references.