Friday afternoon, after classes I went to the student lounge in the CIE (remember that's Center for International Education), therein I found this boy named Sam. And Sam says hey, if you guys aren't doing anything wanna come with me and some friends to Ring (which was the place I went in my second post for billiards and karaoke). Irene and I stepped up to his offer and soon it was me, Irene, Sam, and his friend Matt walking about 20 minutes to Hirakata Shi Eki (city station), where we met their Japanese friend. Then all of us went to Ring which was no more than 3 minutes away by foot. There, we started off by playing darts, drinking from their unlimited drink bar, playing pool while I perused the manga collection, and then sat down in karaoke for maybe 45 minutes before collectively going home. Following ensues the pictures of Ring, and it's extremely huge manga collection, in one of the most messy picture collections ever posted in a blog ever. Blogger is hard to format on. I cry a lot.
So that made for a fun, surprise Friday trip. And then after I got home I found out I was eating home-made okonomiyaki, meccha oishii! (Super tasty)
Now comes Saturday, yessss! Time to go to Kuzuha mall! The day started off with me eating typical breakfast, and since we decided to meet at 11, I had some time to kill. So, rather than spending time doing oh I don't know, studying, I decided to read and catch up on an entire web manga. I have no regrets. :^) I left at 10 and
So since it was already kind of nearing lunch time, we went and split up for only about 45 minutes before coming back together again for lunch. Micah, Irene, and I went off and Irene found a real Uniqlo to shop in, while Micah and I literally did nothing but play around on electric drum sets in a music store for the entire time.
Lunch was a "gyoza setto," from some place in the food-court area. It was super delicious. (By the way, setto, or set, is just the Japanese term for meal.) For dessert I had "AMAZON" flavored ice-cream from Baskin Robbins. It had like... coconut and strawberry and maybe pecan flavoring. It was interesting, and tasty. Also the size I got was the second smallest, and was something around $3. I honestly wasn't that surprised. The girl who took my order was super nice too, she did exactly what I've always done with foreign customers- held up an example of the size so I'd know what I'm getting, and pointed at everything and spoke slowly. Wonderful. Also, Anna joined us at lunch time, throughout the rest of the day.
Okay so after eating we went to check on Kimi no na wa movie tickets, but the 2:20 showing was nearing selling out, so we bought 5:00 tickets and went to waste time elsewhere, primarily in Namco. Ah Namco, you money eating monster company. I really didn't spend that much there, honest... no more than 1,500円... probably. I spent 300 on getting a neko atsume plushie of spots, or しろくろさん (Shirokuro-san/Mr. White Black) as he's called in Japan. It was secretly one of my goals to get one/some of these plushies when I came here and I did it. It was this crane-like game where the plushies are hanging from q-tips on a plastic grid and you must get the hanging stick to push the q-tip inward. It was pretty easy. :) Next I spent probably 1,000 on trying to get a Sanji (from One Piece) figure. I watched someone else do it and I thought I could mimic his moves but I forgot what he did after a certain point, so I ended up resetting the placement. :( The final 200 was spent on playing Taiko with Micah, which is a Japanese rhythm game based on traditional Japanese drums. It was really fun!
So next, to kill more time we went shopping at various places! One was called peach club and they had all these funny English things in there, and also some REALLY CUTE towels. I bought one for 100 yen. :P
Next we went to some hipster-y clothing place, where we all found Micah a jacket that complimented his tallness.
Next we went to a bookstore, where most of what we did was peruse manga. You have no idea how hard it is to find something you're looking for when it's all in another language. Or maybe you do... You might have an idea. Anyway it's hard. I kind wasn't planning on buying anything unless I saw something that really caught my eye, when it dawned on me that I watched an anime over summer based on some novels that weren't successful in the U.S. So I figured, eh, why not try to find the novels. Ironically I'd already seen them when I had been looking around earlier, and had commented that the series looked like a children's series like Narnia or Harry Potter. Now what I'm talking about is Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, and to be perfectly honest, it's not like I can read a Japanese novel, even though it is for children, at my skill level. So I didn't go all out and buy all 9 books. I just bought the first one, for $12, and plan to try to read it in a year or two. Still I'm really psyched about that purchase, cause I really liked the story.
Finally it was time for the movie! It was a really sweet story about a boy and a girl from different places and different times and they swapped to live life in the other's shoes. Then stuff happened and aaaaah. When I come back I know some specific family members I'm going to make watch it with me, and this time it'll have subtitles so I understand more. >:O We also saw a poster for another movie that comes out next weekend (the 17th), about a deaf girl and a boy who bullied her in grade school who sees her again in high school and falllls innnn loooove. Cuuuuuute. We wanna see that one too!
Now we're hungry, it's 7PM and past our dinner time (okay not really, but dinner time is nearing). We go to Dining Street to eat at Kushikatsu. Basically it's an all you can eat and drink buffet for 90 minutes. You take raw food on a stick and put it in white stuff, breading, and fry it at your table. Super delicious. I ate so much squid. :) It was super delicious, but also a little bit pricey, definitely not a weekly habit to get into, although I totally would if I could. All in all, after a Friday well spent, we all hopped on the train back for 4 (well, for me, 3) stops, and made our tired little ways home. Sunday was a sleepy day for me where nothing too special happened, and Monday I had a Japanese review test that I feel went okay, and started women in the economy (which is taught by a Romanian woman married to a Japanese man). All in all, I think I'm ready to tackle more things in Japan, let's go, bring it on!
Until then, I'll sign off with some pictures of Kushikatsu, because I just wanna make everyone jealous. :D
-Good night, picture posts take forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment