Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Last Weekend

Friday night after work I went out to an Izakaiya near Yokohama station with a couple teachers from one of my schools. I was looking for the dimly lit Izakaiya that I went to before near Yokohama station but I couldn't find it so we went to one that was a little too bright for my taste but it was a good time nonetheless. Only one of the two teachers spoke English so we decided to speak Japanese the whole time which was fun. After a couple drinks, I tend to drop the formality of my Japanese significantly which might be rude but it's a hell of a lot of fun.

Later that evening, I met up with Rory and we walked around the busy side of Yokohama station and drank convenience store beers. We met a couple random dudes who wanted to arm wrestle and I lost terribly. We caught a late train back home and all was well.

Saturday I met Rory at Enoshima beach and we went swimming for awhile. Surprisingly, we were about the only people in the ocean in the middle of June who weren't wearing wetsuits. Perhaps because of the communal mindset of Japan, nobody really steps out of line and does their own thing. I later met another white dude from New York though Rory and hung out at a surf shop for awhile which later turned into a cookout.

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The cookouts here in Japan aren't exactly what you might think if you're reading this in America. The Japanese idea of a cookout is various types of delicious yet tiny food. Hamburgers and hot dogs are nowhere to be found. Later, somebody brought a small guitar and we passed it around and played songs.

I tried to take a late train home but fell asleep and ended up in Ueno, Tokyo which is about an hour away. I was pretty pissed but decided to make the best of it. I met a tourist from another Asian country, I forget where exactly, who had missed her flight home. She spoke pretty good English and helped me find a capsule hotel a couple streets up from the train station.

For about $36 US, I got a tube with a TV to sleep in until 10am the next day. Surprisingly it was pretty comfortable and kinda fun. It's not really the kinda thing that you end up doing intentionally, you have to screw up the night a little bit to end up sleeping in a capsule hotel. Here is a picture of the capsule hotel next to where I stayed called Phuket, which is exactly what I was thinking when I decided to stay for the night.

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The next day I met up with Eriko after not seeing her for quite sometime. I don't feel like giving the whole story on the blog, but she's a handful to say the least. Overall though, we had a good time in Shinjuku walking around on a great Sunday afternoon. We went to the top of some really tall building with a great view and had lunch at a nice outdoor eatery thing. I made it back to Yokohama far too late Sunday night completely exhausted and thus began another work week.



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