After checking out and bagging my items we headed back to our backs where we were treated with a special surprise...that's right...another arcade! We played a gun game together, Time Crisis 4, but I only went in to check if they had Street Fighter 4. Mind you, the reasons I get excited about SF4 are that it's the first fighting game I ever played and got decent at and that it does NOT come out in the USA until February or later. After playing and quickly losing our game we made our way back to our bikes. We set off for Ogino's, the local super market, where I invest in some milk, cereal, bacon, and two more liters of OJ! Steve is going to allow me to use his rice cooker for my rice as well! If not for Steve I'd probably way behind in being able to do things myself here, so I told him once things settle down (financially and socially) that I would hopefully be able to treat him to a not so expensive dinner.
We headed back to the dorm where we finally got out the ole Xbox 360 I brought over to play Rock Band 2! I only have the guitar and microphone right now but it's still fun none the less. Steve hogged the guitar and I sang most the time. A few people walked by and gave us "wtf" faces. Eventually a two of the Aussie girls looked down from the second floor down into the lobby area we were playing laughing their asses off. Patty hollered at them to come down and a girl named Melissa came down and sang a Blondie song for us and she did great! RB2 is definitely going to be the American mainstay in the dorm and we're gonna get some alchy and have a party with it soon!
Anywho, after playing Rock Band 2 we decided to do one thing I've always wanted to do. Go to an onsen. Onsen means bathhouse but is used to refer to most hot springs. Here in lies the biggest culture shock I've gotten while here, having to strip down naked and bathe with other men. I actually had no problem with it, but I can see if someone weren't 100% confident in their sexuality and coming from a more closed bathing atmosphere (like America) one would find it very wierd. I also encountered what I believed to be a Yakuza (Japanese mafia) there. He had tattoos on his arm (tattoos here are a big sign of Yakuza) and had an eye patch. I had a towel in the floor and it he picked it up and gave it back to me, so pretty nice for a mafioso I guess. We first dipped into a more spa/jacuzzi type bath with bubbles and shortly after moved to the outside bath which I thought was much more relaxing. The unfortunate part to the bathing experience is that you seem to scare off most of the locals. This specific onsen we went to is only about a 5 min bike ride from the dorm and costs about $3.75. After having such a great experience we've decided to go to another onsen this coming week across town that actually overlooks the city. It as an interesting experience but a relaxing one that I wouldn't mind at all doing again, very soon. In the end we ended up weighing ourselves before leaving, I was curious as to if I'd lost any weight while here. Well, I have, and it's a shitlaod. I last weighed about 195 or so and now I weight in at 183! I've been eating shitty American food most of the time too, it's mainly not drinking soda and biking around everywhere!
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