My day was pretty lackluster for the most part. I got up pretty late and then I went down to Ogino's to get some groceries. I was going to take the plunge on some expensive peanut butter when I realized for some reason they have all sorts of different jams and jellies, but they don't have grape. Which I find extremely odd because people grow grapes around here like nobody's business. Which leads me to my historical tidbit of the day; Yamanashi was the first area to which Japan started making wines. So one might easily assume there would be grape jelly but no such luck. I bought my first bag of rice and I splurged and bought some of the more expensive kind, but I like my rice! Also picked up some bacon (6 slices = 3 USD) as well as some chicken. Unfortunately I don't have a skillet yet so I can't really cook anything at all...Steve said I might be able to take his smaller skillet he inherited from one of the Brits.
After doing all that shopping I headed back up towards the dorm where I stopped off at the bookstore and picked up the latest volume of One Piece, yet another manga. However, this one has a bigger meaning behind it than the previous ones I've bought, this manga is geared towards probably ages 10-15 and because of that they inserted what's known as furigana (small hiragana text placed over the kanji) which makes Kanji very easy to read if I know hiragana (which I do for the most part). Basically reading manga can really help practice ones knowledge of hiragana, katakana, and eventually kanji when I learn enough.
When I got back to the dorm I pretty much just sat around for a couple of hours not doing much other than cleaning up and straightening my room up because it becomes very cluttered very quickly if one isn't careful.
I heated up the last of my Pizza Hut in the fridge and was questioned by one of the Chinese students "Pizza everyday!?" and I respond with "Ya, pretty much..." Soon after eating Steve suggested we start playing Go. I know the basic rules so we started a game. Steve more or less gained the upper hand early on and we soon realized where to move and where not to move on the board in certain situations.
While playing Go I got to meet Emily from Australia which I think was one of the last people to greet here in our dorm. Jeremy (also from Australia) stuck his head off the second floor and asked if we wanted to celebrate his b-day and go to shabu shabu. Steve and I both agreed and we all got dressed up and went out at about 6:30.
Leaving the dorm is always so great because it's downhill to town all the way, coming back the hill isn't steep but enough to make one tired and/or build lots of leg muscle. Speaking of getting around I took some pics of my bike and me to satisfy one of my friends back home. After showing him he immediately commented it looked like a woman's bike due to the curved handle bars and the basket. There was only one bike at D2 (a department store similar to wally world here) that had straight handle bars and it was like 20 bucks more, and every bike comes with a basket seeing as most people use a bike as a primary mode of transportation one will eventually need it to carry things. Besides it's great for getting groceries back!
Apparently there's a disease in Japan that makes you throw peace signs when taking a picture, so I make mine look as ghetto as possible. Some how I don't think it works for me....
Anywho, we got to the shabu shabu place and it seemed to be a small family run business and they only had two small private rooms and then a larger seating area that could probably hold about twenty people or so. Immediately I kind of felt something was up, and then after being seated I know why I had a funny feeling. We sat down and the woman helping us asked if horse meat would be alright. I've been more open to it and I thought it'd be okay, but then we opened the menu...There we found that the smallest set meal started at about 50 USD not including drinks, taxes, and service fees. So one would probably easily spend upwards of 70 bucks, but the next meal up was about 100 USD. Albeit I could have done it, but really people...who wants to spend that much on one meal?! Well apparently Aussie's and Brit's who have nothing better to do with their money. I'm not looking down on them for doing it, it's just that after moving here I've become very conservative with my cash flow and can't seem to understand why one would pay more than 50 for a meal. Steve agreed with the outrageous prices and we apologized to our friend for not staying and that we would meet everyone at the bar to celebrate then.
So Steve and I road our bikes to find somewhere to eat and since we kind of had it in our minds we'd be spending about as much as we did on yakiniku the other night we just ended up going back to the same yakiniku place! I pretty much had the same thing as before and I tell you I love their special sauce they soak their meats in, the only difference is I didn't pay 4 USD for a beer and got a MEGA (said it on the menu) gohan (rice) which I could even finish because the bowl of rice was about as large as my head. After the delicious yakiniku we road around to find me a pack of cigarettes and for some reason on the south end of town multiple places do not sell tobacco so we asked where the closest place was and a guy was nice enough to actually walk us over to the closest hotel and even ask a hotel worker to let us use her TASPO to get cigs. TASPO is a system still kind of new in Japan so that minors can't by tobacco or alcohol due the fact it asks you to scan a special TASPO card. After having a relaxing smoke we walked into a pachinko parlor where I quickly lost another ten dollars, but at least I can control myself and not spend load when I go in one.
So we then finally got to the bar and waited on our friends we had to bail on during shabu shabu. I ordered a Breztel (this bar was big on Oktoberfest) which is bascially a pretzel with butter injected into it, damn fine beer snack if you ask me. I only had two beers but the others drank like there was no tomorrow. After playing darts a few times as well as playing pool the night quickly wore down and so did one of the Brit's that came along. I think she just had a little too much a little too quick. Needless to say she had to use the bathroom which turned out to be a problem becuase there's only ONE bathroom in the bar and it's unisex. So when a women went in they couldn't use the stall and men could barely squeeze past the mob trying to help our friend out. Eventually the manager came and said something to them in the bathroom although I'm not clear as to what it was. Eventually the other girls dragged her out and up the stairs and they decided to leave, and although I'm no lech without women it's just a sausage party.
Steve, Jeremy, and I didn't stick around for too long so we departed soon after the ladies. Jeremy wanted to get money out of an ATM but the closest conbini didn't have an ATM machine he could use. We walked into a Canadian's bar, and I gotta say the dude running it looked like Iggy Pop and scared the shit out of me. Jeremy was so drunk at that point he began hitting on two girls sitting nearby, then a very hot waitress came up to him and asked him to go back to his seat. I felt horrible because we didn't order anything and Jeremy and Steve just wanted to hit on girls in a bar that had no more than 8 people. They glared at us the whole way out and I felt bad. I told them I was done after that and I was heading back to the dorm whether they were or not. They did indeed follow and we made it home safe and sound. Another note about Japanese culture is that there are no PI (public intoxication) laws here so one can stumble about as they please at night just so long as you don't hop into a car. I stayed up for a few hours after getting back and eventually hit the sack around 2 AM and didn't get up til noon today.
Hope everyone enjoyed my first bar adventure as much as I did!
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