In E.S.S. we played one of those mapping games where your partner has half the names of the places and you have the other half, which was actually quite fun. My partner was actually REALLY good at understanding my instructions and was really good at giving them as well, though we had to change a few street names to get there. There were roads such as "Rock, Lock, Grass, Glass, Weeland and Willard, and if you know anything about the Japanese language, it is that the do not have 'l's, so their 'l's frequently come out sounding like 'R's....so after I realized that my partner thought I was saying Rock, instead of Lock, we quickly went to work on making up our own street names.
And for the first time in a LONG while we actually went back to Taiko for dinner! I actually kinda missed the place. We ate on the second floor in a Tatami room, which was cool because it was one long table, so we all got to sit together for a change. Yasu, Takami and Sat-chan taught me Japanese hand games and I kept reiterating to Yasu that, no matter how many times he said it and no matter how much he wanted to change it, "get some" is not a suitable substitute for "take some" (and yes you can let your mind go into the gutter for the 'why' we told him not to say that) Have I mentioned how much I love my E.S.S. friends? :3
Saturday was Marie and my German day! The Oohira's were out for the day, so that meant Marie and I went downtown and we walked around shopping for a good portion of the day. We walked through all the floors of Keisei department store, just talking and laughing about how many Japanese beauty products look like medieval torture items (I wish I was kidding about this) and just generally having a good time before we ultimately made our way to the station.
There are actually a surprising amount of stores inside the train station that I actually had never been to, so we explored the stores above the station as well as in Marui, the huge department store next door. I will say one thing though -- shopping in Japan is oh so convenient. In a department store there will be floors and floors of any and all kind of goods and sundries you could ever want or need, but on the off chance you get hungry, no worries there are a bunch of restaraunts usually on the top two floors, and hey, if you need to get groceries on the way home, no worries, they've got a huge grocery store in the basement too!
When we got to Jupiter, the chain import store, Marie was thrilled to see that they had her favorite type of Rittersport, a very popular German chocolate that I am also quite a fan of. I picked up some new pink,
brown and white chucks at ABC Mart since mine had holes in them and the new ones were on sale for only $25 :D. We took some Purikura together, and before we knew it, we realized that we had spent 6 hours out and about downtown O_O.I showed her just how close my house really was (its pretty much a straight shot 10 blocks on the same road) and she used my computer to talk to her boyfriend on Skype. All in all, it was a very fun day :)
Sunday I went on my date with Rinda, and we hopped on a bus to go to Ooarai's Aqua world, a really cool aquarium. It was right up on the beach so the views from the Rendezvous Deck and the cafe were stellar :). I learned the names of a lot of fish in Japanese...such as Shark is
Same (said Sa-meh, not Same), Ei (said Ey as hey) is a Sting Ray, kani is crab and Iruka is, my favorite, dolphin :). Having never been to an aquarium before, Rinda got a huge kick out of some of my reactions to the fish, especially when I was looking into a tank to see the eel before I realized that it was two inches from my face just chilling up against the glass and screamed and ran behind him. >< My favorites were the sharks, the tropical fish and of course, the sea lion and dolphin 
show that you didn't need to know Japanese to understand. (Dolphin tricks are pretty universal) The sea lion, named Natsu, was quite funny and and he kept blowing the audience kisses throughout his performance. The dolphins jumped to insanely high heights and even managed to carry a big building block with their 
flippers and carry it back to their trainer. O_o After the show we climbed the tower/roof to look out over the Pacific Ocean, which was gorgeous :)
After we made it back to Mito, we hung out in my room watching Ocean's Eleven and eating Japanese Red Bean sweets that he bought me since I've never had them before. We then got invited by Rinda's friend, Fuji, to a Yakiniku party at Fuji's girlfriend, Ka-chan's house. Sat-chan and her boyfriend Shinji also came :) Everyone was from E.S.S. and friends of mine that I all ready knew, so it was a lot of fun and the Yakiniku was really yummy. I actually ended up eating intestines of some kind of animal (I think it was a pig), which was very....chewy. I also found out that apparently for the last two months Sat-chan has been under the impression that I am Canadian...and when I set the record straight, before I could finish where in the U.S. I am from, Sat-chan's boyfriend piped up that of course, I couldn't be from Canada because I was from Hawaii...
O_o; Confusion starts....now.
Apparently because Tony, the other American I am here with, is originally from Hawaii and because Shinji views Tony and I as "a set" (these were literally his words. It made me feel very much like a collectible in a McDonald's Happy Meal), Shinji thought I was from Hawaii. Mmmm, not so much. Luckily Rinda quickly explained that Tony and I got the same university in Pennslyvania...which doesn't really do much good anyway, seeing as I'm lucky if Japanese people have even heard of it. Minor detail really. :P
Yuuki finally came back from her vacation in Korea and planned our long awaited Tako/Taco
party. To recap, in Japanese, Tako means Octopus...and in Japan there is a very famous food called Takoyaki, which are little fried dough balls stuffed with Octopus and dipped in Soy sauce and mayo (I had this while I was staying with the Oohiras). We always are making fun of the fact that the name is the same, but the food is so drastically different, so we decided to juxtapose the two in an party of sheer awesomeness in the Kaikan lobby with a bunch of our friends. I met Ayako, one of Yuuki's friends who is also a fourth year student. She had spent a year abroad in Galway, Ireland, which I discovered on Friday when at the E.S.S. Yearbook picture she recognized my ring for being a claddagh ring. Yay for Irish pride. :)Well, I best be off to bed as I have a way to early morning ahead considering the fact that I don't have class until 1:00...Yay for group projects and 9 AM meetings in the Library! >< TTFN!
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