Once again, it's been a while since I've updated. I've been super busy, and I can't believe that the last time I blogged was late September. Now, October is half over. Time in Japan is going by super fast, and I want it to slow down!! I'm not ready to leave here yet.
Anyway, I've pretty much gotten used to living here by now. My weekly routine is usually:
Weekdays -
- Go to class
- Eat a bunch of food in between classes
- Screw around in the student lounge at school with friends after class
- Go home and eat dinner
- Do some homework or play some video games
- Sleep and repeat
And as for weekends, they usually just consist of shenanigans and random explorations around the Kobe and Osaka areas.
A few more things I noticed in Japan:
- More on Japanese toilets: there's a button by the toilet that says "Play flushing sound" that literally just plays a recorded sound of a toilet flushing to mask the sound of your peeing/pooping. It sounds obviously recorded and not convincing at all, but I guess to many people here, it's much better than having others hear them doing their thing on the toilet. I realized that a ton of people actually use it, lol. Often times when I'm going to the bathroom I hear the fake flushing sound coming out of the stalls.
- Money! Random little observation - bills here are never janky or messed up like I often see American money is. Pretty much every bill I've had here has been perfectly crisp, clean, and unwrinkled.
This post is kind of just a little update of various things I've been doing here, and I will also talk about a terrible but memorable experience I had last night. But first, I'm going to post some pictures of food I've had here:
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| A bowl of convenience store ramen that was actually super good and a pack of cute panda chocolate cookies |
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| My first cup ramen experience in Japan (excluding the pre-prepared convenience store ramen) |
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| We found a Mexican restaurant!! |
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| Tortillas, frijoles, beef, pork, quesadillas, guacamole, tortas, a taquito, chips and salsa, margarita, and horchata - we went all out |
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| The most delicious ice cream here |
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| It has ice cream in a waffle cone covering with real strawberries, mochi, chocolate, and red bean! |
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| Look at all the flavors of Cup Ramen they have here!! I wanna try the cheese curry one... |
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| Instant ramen even has bean sprouts in it in a little package |
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| A picture of the instant ramen that I chose |
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| I love these giant egg puddings |
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| Stone pot hot pot |
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| Non-spicy soup |
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| And a spicy soup - so delicious |
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| Edamame, salad, takoyaki, and chicken wings |
In addition to food, here's a picture of another adorable purchase that I made recently:
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| This month's products at the Pokemon Center are Pokemon-butt themed, so I bought two Pikachu butt coasters. Look how cute |
Okay, now that all that fun stuff is over, I would like to talk about my biggest screw up and biggest accidental adventure here so far. Last night, some of my friends and I (there were 9 of us total) decided to go to Namba for some drinking and to visit a gaming bar. The gaming bar seemed super cool because it had all these consoles from old ones to new ones, but of course, buying drinks at a bar is very expensive, so we decided to stop by a supermarket to buy some cheap pre-game drinks before entering. In total, we bought a big bottle of vodka, a big bottle of rum, a big bottle of this fruity vodka that's less alcoholic than the other hard liquors we bought, a bunch of wine coolers. Since Japan doesn't have laws against drinking in public, we found a parking lot on the side of the street and just started going for it. All 9 of us were just drinking out of the vodka and rum bottles while drinking our individual wine coolers, and needless to say, we were pretty drunk pretty fast.
One of my friends and I entered the gaming bar after all the drinking. It was really small and super crowded, so the atmosphere was already kind of meh. Almost everyone in there were non-Japanese people, and almost everyone was male. We each ordered one drink and played a couple games of Smash Bros with some people. Everyone else in our group of friends decided to head out before us, but we thought it was okay since we were still with each other, so we didn't go with them. Anyway, after a couple games of Smash, we decided to head out as well. We weren't feeling the full effect of our drinks yet, so we headed to a convenience store and each bought one more drink and drank it on the way to the subway station. This is where the screwing up begins.
We started to feel the delayed super drunkness, but we somehow made it to our stop to transfer onto a train. But at the train station, I started feeling nauseous, so I had to puke...and not in a toilet, just in the train station. Sorry train station janitors... Earlier, we had left our bags in a locker at the train station, so we wanted to get our bags before getting on the train. Drunk and stupid us somehow could NOT find the lockers despite asking multiple people drunkenly, so we wasted probably an hour just in the train station trying to find those lockers. Of course, at the time, it didn't seem like it was that long. Eventually, we just gave up and got on the train. Unknowingly, we got onto the last train of the night. On the train, once there was motion, I needed to puke really badly, and so did my friend. I couldn't hold it anymore, so we had to get off the train to puke, and once we got off, someone passing by told us that it was the last train...welp. We had to get it together and get out of the station and figure out what to do, since at the time, it was about 12:30AM, and the first train of the next day is 5:10AM. Oh, I forgot to mention, but my cell phone reception also cut out earlier in the day, so I could not communicate this whole time. Anyway, we walked around asking people for directions for any 24-hour places we could waste time in until 5AM, and we ended up finding a karaoke place. We paid for a room, and slept in there for 4 hours, sobering up a little bit. We walked back to the train station, finally got on the 5:10AM train, and headed home. I need to mention that between this time, I also puked 3 more times. Okay.
By the time I got to my stop, it was already around 5:40AM. I finally made it home at around 6:00AM after a whole series of unfortunate events. But it doesn't end there. When I woke up in the afternoon, a friend and I had to go back to Osaka to get our bags from the locker since we didn't pick it up the night before. Feeling hungover, it was terrible being on the train for over an hour. And somehow, since I was so tired and defeated, on the way home, walking from the train station to my house, I lost my wallet. I didn't notice until I got home and saw that my backpack was open and my wallet was gone. I panicked and looked everywhere and finally told my host mom. She was super nice about it and took me to the police station to file a police report, hoping that someone turned it in to the station. Right at the station, a police officer picked up the phone and called the main station in the area, and sure enough, a super kind hearted life savior lady had found my wallet on the sidewalk and turned it into the station. HUUUUGE sigh of relief. I had everything in there - money, credit cards, all my identification, insurance cards, pictures...everything. I wish I knew the kind soul that found my wallet and turned it in to the police. I can never thank her enough!
So between underestimating the amount of alcohol I drank, puking about 6 times, having no phone service, and losing my wallet...I would say that it was quite the eventful couple of days. Even though nothing turned out the way I thought it would, it was an adventure that I don't regret. This is definitely something I will remember forever, although it's proooobably not something that I would ever want to experience again...lol. I would say that for the amount of trouble we accidentally got into, everything turned out okay.
Well, that ends my newest update on Japanese life. Until next time, my lovely readers!
