Day in Osu!

January 11:

I woke up super sick last night and was still feeling terrible this morning. All that time soaking and cold in the rain finally caught up to me.

Yuko made SO much food for breakfast. Btw breakfast is at 8 on weekends, yay! And so much meat, ugh. I told her I only eat chicken and turkey because I didn't want her to keep wasting so much meat on me but I ate the ham anyway. She told me it's really hard to get turkey in Japan, which sucks because that's my favorite meat.

Miyabi has a loose front tooth so I asked what you do in Japan if you lose a tooth. She told me when she was younger, they'd throw their front top teeth under the house and their front bottom teeth on the roof... Lol

But now they just collect them. I told her about the tooth fairy. She knew kids in America got coins but she and Miyabi didn't know about the tooth fairy. They thought it was so interesting that the tooth fairy uses the teeth to build her kingdom haha.

Anyway, after breakfast I left for the station. I almost took the 10:09 train but I thought it was going in the wrong direction and skipped it to wait for the 10:17 train, which I saw the kanji for  Kanayama on the announcement. But when it came it was going in the same direction as the other one. Fml.

But this box train came while I was waiting. It was so cool!

Some things I've been noticing about Japanese people:

• When they're walking or riding bikes, if the light says don't walk, even if no cars are coming, they will not walk. Idk why. I just go ahead and cross if there are no cars because I'm not just gonna stand and watch an empty street.
• When riding the escalators, they form a line of standing people on the left so people in a rush can walk on the right. I love this because I always like to run up escalators. But at first, before I realized this, I kept standing wherever I wanted and whoever I was with told me to move over.
• They like to form lines. There're long lines for the escalator when the station's busy. (Sometimes I'm a rude American and join the line right at the beginning of the escalator lol). They also form lines to get on the train before the train comes. When the train gets there, the line parts like the Red Sea to let people on the train get out first. So nice!
• I'm not sure if they know what paper towels or napkins are... There are no paper towels or hand dryers in the bathrooms anywhere. On campus students just use toilet paper to dry their hands. It's super inconvenient. And my host family uses a tissue box at the table. I wish I'd brought napkins. My friends tell me their host families don't use napkins either. 0_o
• They say "niiiiin" when they take pictures haha.
• And this one is for Ashley: they say "peen pon" and "pika pika pika" just like Kumazawa sensei!

After we passed Nagoya station where everyone gets out, guess what guys? 

For the first time ever, I had four seats to myself. Ahhhh. So amazing!

Wow my legs look fat. But I have leggings under my leggings and super thick socks, okay?

When I got to Kamimaeza I found Emma at exit 9. We went up to wait outside until Josephine, Jess, and Taylor showed up. They're all in their second semester at Nanzan. When they got there, we headed to this HUGE shopping center with a giant Maneki Neko at the entrance. 

Shrine we saw while walking

Entrance

Kawaii

First, we ate lunch - takoyaki. It was my first time trying it!! It was pretty good. The octopus tentacle was kinda hard and chewy. Emma and I split one because I definitely could not eat 6 of those balls in one sitting. I also had melon soda because I've been wanting to try it forever! It was so good :)

おいしいですね！

Melon soda!

Making the takoyaki right when you walk in

After lunch we headed to the cat cafe. We had to take our shoes off and wear slippers. We also couldn't pick up the cats. It was kind of a waste of money in my opinion, but it was an interesting experience and something I wanted to try   (and check off my list).

Mr. Grumpy. I liked him.

Okay you guys are probs tired of cats now.

Isn't this bunny toy totes adorbs?

My free drink in eigo & nihon. Mmm blood orange!

Next was shopping at a thrift store! I took this picture for Bridget:

They had this awesome 200 yen sale, but I didn't see anything I liked.

Shirt with creepy ass baby angel things

Me being derpy in front of the SWAG shop!!!

You don't know how much I wanted this hat.

I LOVE THESE! But I already have all of them except one lol, so I didn't want to buy one pack for just one eraser.

Adorable dumpling thing.

Across the street was an arcade, which I was super excited about because I wanted to play the UFO catcher! I decide to do the one with little Pokemon dolls in it... and I failed. Not wanting to get addicted, I ran away quickly.

Front of arcade

Me failing at the UFO catcher.

I wanted to do purikura too, but the only machines there were ugly, boring ones. I looked around and watched other people playing games. 

Taylor had this huge collection of cards where each card has a clothing item and in the game she has a character she can dress up. So she was feeding her cards into the machine and customizing her character.

Creepy game covered by these torn black hangings

 While she did this, Emma and I went to go play the taiko game. It's this rhythm game where you hit drums to follow a beat. Emma chose an anime song to play along to that I didn't know. Then I picked this song "Pon Pon Pon" that I knew because we listened to it in Japanese class one time. Then Emma chose "Totoro," which we both knew. I won that round! It was really fun!

We briefly checked out another arcade across the street, but it had the same sorts of stuff so we left.

The next stop was this store I'd heard of before that sold discount anime goods, called "Mandrake." 

Fox girl out front

Japanese sign for Mandarake

It was interesting seeing the stuff in there. The first floor was manga, cards, and video games, the second was anime movies and dolls, and the third was cosplay and these things called doujinishi, which are fan-made manga. Everyone was really interested in those.

They have such an awesome job, getting to dress up every day.

This dress was so cute, but so expensive.

I didn't really want any of the things there. I did go see if I could get a cheap GameBoy game to use to practice Japanese, since that's how my sister learned to read English haha. But they only had rare ones I guess since they were all like $20! (The GameBoy advance games were only $8, but none looked interesting).

I also had a really bad fever. I had the chills and was really, really tired. Luckily I ran into Emma and the two of us went to sit outside while the others finished shopping.

When they were done, we decided it was time to hit up the Pokemon Center. But first Taylor wanted to stop for coffee.

Cute takoyaki stand

Akamon

So we went to this place called Komeda Cafe. The wait was really long. I saw this boy get a giant melon soda with ice cream!

When we were finally seated we all got two pancake things to share. I was really excited to finally try one after seeing pictures of them on Instagram in the past.

I really wanted to take a picture of it but in the rush to split it before all the ice cream melted, I completely forgot! 

Here's what it's supposed to look like though:

And this is what I was able to take, my piece:

With very little ice cream so I didn't die after eating it.

Oh, and P.S.? First bathroom I've seen yet with PAPER TOWELS!!! Omg it was sooo good to feel paper towels on my hands again.

And I took a bathroom selfie for good measure. 

See guys? Still alive and well ^_^

After we polished off the pancake thing and paid, we walked across the street to the Pokemon Center. It was in a giant depato (department store) on the 5th floor.

The 5th floor

Taylor entered this raffle for 500 yen and won a humungo pikachu pillow. Everything was kinda expensive so I didn't buy anything. But I decided to do the gashapon at the entrance:

It's a risky thing to play because you don't know what you're going to get out of it, but I ended up with this super cute keychain!

Btw, this depato wins for best bathroom! The toilets, stall doors, and sinks were all guess what?

PINK!!!!!

It was Heaven ;)

Such fun!

When we were done at the Pokemon Center, Josephine, Taylor, and Jess left on the subway while Emma and I decided to quickly walk through this Chinese festival going on across the street. We had missed all the performances and it was just stalls left over and some recorded Chinese music playing. It was interesting though because Emma said China and Japan hated each other lol.

Illuminations

So we took the train back home after that. Because the stop we were at wasn't on my train pass, I had to pay 200 yen to get back to Kanayama. Then, once I got to Kanayama, I had to pay another 200 yen! I didn't understand why though. I tried arguing with the attendant, saying I already paid 200 yen but I ended up having to pay it anyway. I should have just bought a ticket.

For the first time, I didn't take the super rapid train home. They run less often on weekends, which sucks because they only stop at 1 stop before my stop. Instead, I stopped at like 5 stops on the way home tonight. But hey, the seats were heated!

It was dark by the time I rode my bike back home. When I got home, everyone was gone, but they got back quickly. Ken saw me and was like "Keito, pinku ga suki?" (He asked if I like pink because I was wearing a lot of pink).

I was like "pinku ga daisuki!" (I love pink)

Hahaha.

Then we ate dinner. I told everyone about Osu. It turns out my host family knew Taylor already because they're friends with the family she lived with last semester lol. They kept saying she was omoshiroi (interesting). That's a good word to describe her!

After dinner, I sat around with everyone for a while and then I was too tired to stay up anymore, so I went to bed.