Arcade Time

Alright~ So today was the first day of classes. I had Health Issues in Japan as my first class at 10:40am. Then we met for lunch in the cafeteria where I made a fool out of myself trying to order without understanding. Finally I pointed to a picture and the boys behind me read it to the lunch ladies. Beginning Japanese was canceled today, so then I started to just chill until 4pm and then go to the study of society through manga and anime class. But Christ and Brian showed up at my door and said our certificates were in. They let us get phones earlier than mid-September. So we ran off to get those, I got some notebooks for class, and then we went to manga class. We watched a satirical short movie on stereotypes in Japan and it was absolutely hilarious. It was about the guide to getting a date by following a certain set of steps. Supposedly it's on youtube. Hm... eh, I can't find it.

Then we went to get our phones, but apparently the SoftBank only had 3 prepaid phones in stock. So we went to another electronic store and they didn't even sell prepaids. So we went to Tenjin again, with a girl named Maki who was in our manga class. She helped us find things more easily. We went to the Tenjin SoftBank but they didn't have the model others got, it was more expensive, and they said it didn't have the features the others had like a built in English-Japanese dictionary. So we put it off. We're meeting in the lobby early tomorrow morning to go to the original SoftBank, since the one in Tenjin cost more and takes 500 yen to reach. We'll ask about the prices, features, and then how long it'd take for new ones to arrive for us to buy.

Um, after the phone chaos we went to a super crowded ramen place. I need to stop because I can't finish a bowl, they don't ever seem to have smaller sizes, and it's a waste of money. But, after that we went to a new arcade and played around a bit. I think Maki really wanted to do one of those photobooth things and we didn't end up doing it. I suddenly feel kind of bad, but I have her name and I'll add her on facebook, so we'll have another chance. If there's one universal thing I've found, it's that every country here has facebook. Some of Maki's friends were at the arcade though, and we watched them play a claw machine game for ice cream.



After that arcade we went back to the one we'd gone to previously, Taito Game Station. It's 5 floors of games, including a casino type place. Edwina found some coins so we played a little and I won a small prize on my first turn of 8 coins. Um, watched Brian and Christ play DDR, Edwina and Chris play Tekken, then her and Brian play some war shooting game for apparently around 40 minutes. No wonder our feet were all dead.

Japanese business man playing DDR:






Edwina's awesome go against a Japanese guy:


Shooting game:


Then we finally got back to catch the train with time to spare, because I was told that it shuts down at midnight and doesn't restart until 5am, even on Friday night. Oh, it was much more crowded everywhere tonight though. There were at least three streetside singing performances too, but Maki was in a hurry to get where we were going so we never stopped to properly watch. They sounded good too.

(Christian, me, Brian, Edwina, Chris, Mitchell, Maki)

Got back, collapsed into the chairs in the lobby, and then split for bed after being attacked by a giant mosquito thing of doom.



Though, I checked my computer to upload pictures, saw my mom had tried skyping me, and called her a couple times until she called back. So I just got my first verbal interaction with home, and I'm actually talking to her right now.

Heading out on another cell phone attempt tomorrow, then maybe a night aquarium or something.