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This weekend: Friday was a big nomi/tabehoudai hosted by Brandon and Ed. Almost everyone was there and it was a good time. I didn’t exactly drink much (because I’m pretty much over drinking) but it was cool to hang out with everyone. People were doing the Thriller dance on tables and stuff in tribute to Michael Jackson. I ended up going to bed at like 3:30 Saturday Ok, Our school was doing a “dodgbee” tournament. Dodgebee is this bastardization of what the rest of the world calls dodgeball, only with nerf Frisbees. No one exactly knew the rules of the game until after the tournament had started. Evidently, there are 10 on a team but one person starts on the “outfield”. The outfielders get to stand behind enemy lines and still throw the Frisbee at them. This means that the entire game is surrounded by outfielders throwing the Frisbee back and forth until someone eventually gets out by buffing a catch (catching the Frisbee doesn’t eliminate the throwing player). Long story short, we got up at 8 AM after many had been drinking all night to go 0-2 haha. That was interesting. After dodgbee I met up with Richard to head to Tokyo. When I went to withdraw a couple hundred dollars (in yen of course), the 7 eleven said my card was invalid. Richard chucked this up to the atm sometimes messing up, so we head to Nagoya anyway. So we get to Nagoya and can’t find another atm, I just decided to buy the shinkansen ticket with my actual credit card and we head to shin-yokohama. Shinkansen was cool. It’s super expensive (95$ a pop with student discount). Nagoya-Shin Yokohama takes an hour and 45 minutes…. It’s 223 miles about. It didn’t seem THAT fast, considering I’ve gone faster than that in cars before. Anyway, we arrive in Shin yokohama and head up to meet richard’s friend Darryl (whom we’re staying with and is getting married). He takes us back to his place to drop off our stuff and we head off the a game center in Machida after meeting up with some of his friends in an Irish pub (800 yen for a beer haha). They play jubeat and I chill out because I’m dead tired from having less than 8 hours of sleep in 2 days at that point. Oh, we also tried to go to a 7 eleven in Machida and confirmed that my card is deemed invalid now (more on this later) Sunday We wake up around 10 and decide that we’re gonna see the big Gundam today, etc. So we all shower and leave the Apt. around noon. Tokyo transportation is expeennnnnsive. We stop at Daiba first to see the big Gundam, along with a great view of downtown Tokyo. After Daiba we take the monorail across the river into the main Tokyo area. There are a LOT more foreigners in Tokyo (like 1/50) and the Japanese people there act really different toward foreigners. In Nagoya they just always seem marveled at you and stare. In Tokyo it seems like they’re just suffering through you and hate you. Anyway, Richard and I deicide to go to harajuku while Darryl meets up with his fiancé in Shibuya. It was really rainy this day so the main street (takeshita) in Harajuku was just a sea/ canopy of umbrellas and rudeness. Richard and I just wandered around for a while until we decided to follow a crowd and see where it led. It ended up that it was a concert of some sort, but by seeing that only girls were going to the concert, we knew we didn’t give a shit about it. So we just wandered around harajuku park for a while (in the rain) until walking toward Shibuya to meet Darryl. We walk to Shibuya and meet Darryl at a Taito station after collecting a couple Dr peppers for the road (they actually have it everywhere in Tokyo….along with mountain dew). We head toward the big crosswalk- you know the one, the one that they always show when talking about Japan in a documentary or something in order to prove how densely populated the country is…- and meet Darryl’s fiancée at the dog statue (the statue of the dog that waited for its owner forever, like Fry’s dog on futurama). We cross the street a couple times and go to this hamburger place where you have to hold a napkin up to protect yourself from splattering grease or they won’t put the plate down. I got garlic and cheese and couldn’t get near finishing it. The dish came with 2 cheese, 2 garlic hamburgers, rolls, baked potato, and greens- 1700 yen (17$ and change)….Toyko is EXPENSIVE. Darryl actually told us that it’s a rather cheap place for the area. We head out of the place and I try to use the bathroom in the main giant building at the crosswalk area (the one with the starbucks haha). I wait in line just to see that the guy in front of me had dooked on the seat >.>. Anyway, the moral of this paragraph is that I pooped in that building. After all this we just take a long train back to Machida and hang around there for a while. The rain stopped around this point so we could walk around and kind of sight see machida. Today: I woke up in Tokyo and caught a train to the Shinkansen, took that to Nagoya and then Nagoya to home (about 3 hours total in trains). I then watched Alf on TV dubbed over in Japanese (lol going great distances through technology in a short period of time but then watching alf [a 20 year old show] now). Tokyo was fun but I wouldn’t want to live there. I missed Nagoya pretty much within a day of being to Tokyo. I saw Mt Fuji from the Shinkansen and it’s still frozen on top. It’s gonna be a bitch to climb haha. The biggest peeve was that my card wasn’t working, making it impossible to withdraw money. This meant that I was in one of the most expensive places on the planet with less than 60$ total to spend. I owe Richard around 55$ after all this because he had to pay for my food and some transportation. There was someone a couple months ago that called my bank and told them to cancel all credit cards/ debit cards and to redistribute the cards. Now, my cards have worked since then, but of COURSE the one time I’ve ever needed the ATM to work, it won’t. If this is because someone is messing with my account, I will be pissed. I took SOME pictures, but I had low battery when I went to Tokyo. I planned to buy some on the way to Tokyo, but since I had NO MONEY, I couldn’t even take pictures of the trip. I’m just really grateful I got the chance to go/ see some sights and that Richard was such a pal and lent me some money. I leave Nagoya in exactly 3 weeks now. I really love Nagoya and I’m going to be really sad to leave. I love the fuck out of America, don’t get me wrong, but Nagoya is 2nd home to me now. 1st home is with Caitlin =), but I consider myself to be from Nagoya. When people asked where I was from in Tokyo I just said “Nagoya”. This confused them for a bit but I eventually explained that I’m from ohio. I also speak Nagoya-ben to everyone because it’s kind of a trademark of where I’ve live and where I identify myself. I use Nagoya-ben whenever possible. It was fun speaking it to people in Tokyo and explaining what things meant to them. Action-packed weekend for sure. Soon to come, The beach (hopefully), climbing Mt Fuji.
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