I forgot to mention in my last post that this family has a pet cat and dog.
Yesterday I was feeling very sick, so today I ended up staying home all day resting and recuperating. And naturally my body had picked the perfect time to rebel (*sarcasm*). Today many of the students in my study abroad program had decided to go to Ueno park for Hanami.
Hanami - traditional custom of enjoying the beauty of the sakura blossoms, which mostly consists of having an outdoor party/picnic beneath the sakura.
I had really wanted to go, because last time I went to Ueno park the cherry blossoms had not been in full bloom. :(
Although I missed out on the fun it does seem that maybe today was the perfect day for me to be sick since I do not have any classes on Wednesday so I didn't end up missing on any school work.
Since I didn't really have much fun today I will update you all on the fun I have been having during the past week or so.
On April 3 I went out to Karaoke for the first time while in Japan! I went with a rather large group of friends (15!!!!!!) that was a mix of IES students and our Japanese e-pals! It was sooo much fun! Our E-pals sang some Japanese songs while some of us attempted to sing along. The only words I was able to join in for were さくら (sakura) and Happy Birthday (which probably doesn't count since it was written in English).
Before going to Karaoke we had stopped by a convenience store to pick up some drinks, I decided to try some peach beverage and a lemon/grapefruit drink called, "Strong Zero". Of all of my friends I was the only one who was asked to be carded (since I look 15 to everyone) although some of my friends laughed (because I was the only one) I really couldn't care, I was happy to show my ID since my 21st birthday had just passed only a couple weeks ago.
While in Karaoke we had ended up getting caught with our smuggled in drinks, but thankfully we got off really lucky. The staff worker had simply asked us to please remove them ourselves when we were done with our Karaoke session.
The next day (Easter) my host family had invited one of my IES friends named JK (who is living on his own with the Independent housing option in our same city) to have dinner with us. It was really funny because both my host mom and host sister found JK to be very handsome. My host mom seemed to have a pretty big crush on him. After dinner and playing wii with my host siblings JK and I met up with our other friend Veronica to visit one of the sake bars near by.
The typical traditional bar (Izakaya) in Japan is way different from any other bar I have been to! Upon entering the bar we were asked to remove our footwear and place them in individual lockers near the entrance of the bar. I should probably mention that it is customary to completely remove your footwear before entering most private establishments in Japan. There is even a specific way in which you are expected to remove them (which I will explain in my next post). Then when you have only your socks on you and your party are guided to a compartment which upon entering and closing the door you are completely sectioned off from the main building in a private booth. The whole bar is set up like this, so originally upon entering you only see a narrow corridor with doors on each side. Once inside your booth you can peruse the menu and press a button to signal to the waiter that you are ready to order. The basic idea is to give everyone privacy, which I found to be really cool. So it seems like these Japanese bars serve to be a place to hang out with close friends/coworkers and not really a place to meet new people. I find the differences to be really interesting!
One concern I had about being only in my socks while at the bar was, what if I needed to use the restroom? I didn't want to walk into the bathroom in my socks...gross! Turned out that in the restroom they provide you with slippers to use. Which was pretty cool.
JK and Veronica
After having a small appetizer and a couple of drinks we ended up going to the arcade. Turned out JK is pretty talented at those claw machines and ended up winning all 3 of us a small prize. It also turns out that he is very determined to win, because he had spent $50 trying to win a small anime figurine for my host brother. Unfortunately he didn't win it, but he had gotten so close many times, but Veronica and I convinced him to stop.
Veronica, JK, and I with the cute prizes JK had won for us.
Strange prizes you could win. (*NOTE: These were not the anime figures JK was trying to win for my host brother)
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