楽しい週末: fun weekend

This past weekend was pretty busy for me. On Friday, Sam had to stay behind for a catch-up lesson with her teacher, so I decided to stay behind and do kanji homework while I waited for her. I ended up just doing a practice TOEFL test with Natalie and hanging out with Sam’s buddy Ryokan. When Sam was finished, we went to visit Ryokan’s campus, which is about a 5 min walk from my campus, to get some food and ice cream.  Even though class finished at 2:30, I ended up not leaving school till 6! I tried to do some homework Friday night, but was pretty unsuccessful.

Saturday, me and Gabi met up with Koki and Hikaru in Yokohama to check out Chinatown. The Chinatown is HUGE and about 80% of the shops are food stands. We ended up meeting up with Ai and Natalie and ate lunch at this AMAZING Chinese restaurant. It had these lunch sets with a main dish, soup, a dimsum side, and desert for ￥980! So cheap! I got the エビそば, which was basically a Chinese saimin with shrimp, shumai, and the egg-drop soup. I didn’t realize I like Chinese food so much!



After lunch, we all went to this プリクラ place that has costumes you can rent for only ￥100! Of course, the プリクラ was ￥400 each time, but that’s still way cheaper than doing it in Hawaii! Me and Natalie were these cute Korean Airlines flight attendants while Gabi was Sailor Moon and Ai was a French maid. Of course, there were no costumes for the boys, so they just jumped in at the end. It was so much fun!

Afterwards, Ai and Natalie went to the amusement park while the rest of us went shopping in Yokohama. On the way to the mall, we saw this street performer who did all these random crazy tricks like juggle while balancing on an unsupported ladder, finishing a Rubik’s cube in a minute, and tossing & catching spinning tops in the air. He was super funny because he would ask us to scream really loudly and pretend to have fun so that more people would come to watch. He was more entertaining to watch than his actual tricks.

At the shopping mall, we went to this HUGE Pokemon store that took up 2 store stalls and this anime shop called Jump. I felt like such a fail Asian cause I didn’t know what any of the Pokemon were or any of the anime shows. But, we also went to a Hello Kitty store-yes, an entire store for just Hello Kitty stuff-and was in heaven! I only bought omiyage though…nothing for me ): It’s probably a good thing though, because I could have easily spent like $200 in that store. In 15 mins. We also went to an H&M because Koki was worried that me and Gabi didn’t have any warm clothes (it was pretty cool that day and me and Gabi were both wearing shorts and t-shirts). Ironically, we both started out only picking out summer shirts, and Koki and Hikaru had to make us look for warm clothes like sweaters and jackets. I have like 3 jackets with me already, so I just picked out an orange long sleeve shirt that’s on the thicker side (￥1990). And the super cute t-shirt that I had found earlier (￥1190). So cheap, right? There were SO much other stuff I wanted to buy…restraint is so difficult. ):

We met back up with Ai and Natalie and went to a…guess what…a 飲み放題 (an all-you-can-drink bar). By far one of the funnest nights yet. I know I say that about every time I go out, but it’s always so fun! Ai got drunk within 1.5 drinks as normal, and me and Gabi went ALL OUT in order to get out money worth. We basically went through the Sours and Cocktails menu trying to try everything. Some of the more memorable ones were the Triple Berry Sour and the Reggae Punch (what tasted like what I would imagine a Long Island Iced Tea would be like). Keep in mind that all of the names were in Katakana, so we totally guessed at what the English name was supposed to be. Reggae Punch looked like レゲーパンチュ, so I have no idea if it’s supposed to even be “reggae”. We just got it cause the name sounded funny. I ended up drinking around 7 drinks and Gabi got 8 before we realized we weren’t very drunk and got beers to end the night. It was fun! They had these weird branch-looking sticks called スペーススシックス (space sticks) that Ai was obsessed with in her intoxicated, red-faced state and Gabi, who was pretty tipsy kept calling them “alien sticks”. Another awesome thing was that we could order electronically using the touch-screen menu at our table, and the drinks/food would come within like a minute…meaning no problem having to ask for your beer 3 times like at the yakiniku place! The service was awesome, and since we called in a reservation like half an hour earlier, we didn’t even have to wait for a table on a Saturday night in Yokohama. Pretty awesome! PLUS, the 飲み放題 was ￥1250!! I so want to go there again. We got back to HSH on time (for once), and since I had finished packing already, went straight to bed!

Sunday was the start of my homestay, so I’m glad I didn’t have a hangover. WEEKEND WIN.