日本 11!1111!

Back from break = back to reality :) School has started once again; I missed the first day but all is well. Anyway, Japan...it was great! Mostly because I got to see Charlie after not seeing him for 8 months :((( I felt really touristy, which is both bad and good, but I was happy to see many areas of Tokyo that I had only read about online XD. Anyway, click 'read more' to see some pictures from the first few days of my trip; I'll upload the rest later this week.

So the plane we were supposed to catch to Chicago on the first day had mechanical problems and didn't leave until 2 hours after it was scheduled to leave, which made us miss our plane to Tokyo. Thus, we spent the night in Chicago and caught the first plan to Japan the next morning. A bummer because we had one less day to spend with Charlie, but not all bad because we went to see Django Unchained that night and I liked it waaaaay better than I thought I would. :D

Day 2 // Shibuya

---I wish I had better pictures of the things we did the first day and night (like going to my favorite izakaya), but alas I don't so I'll just have to start with the second day.---

It was rainy and chilly outside that Sunday. We took the train to Shibuya to go to Tokyo Baptist Church, and then we walked around for a while and ate yummy food at this toast place nommm.

We stopped in this big bookstore/cafe thing that I really liked and there were lots of people and tons of books and as you can see I spent some time in the magazine section because I literally am in love with printed matter. There were so many magazines I was so happy happy crying. Anyway, I saw the Rookie Yearbook there for like 3,700 yen which is t o o  m u c h and then Charlie bought me a magazine called RollaCoaster that I will show you later later later.

Day 3 // New Years Eve

Charlie has made a good number of Japanese friends and his good friend Yasu invited us to his apartment for a New Years party and we had a lot of fun. I got to meet some of Charlie's friends, and there was good food and I drank more than I ever have ever XD and after midnight we walked to a temple because I guess that's what everyone does (though we did not go in).

Nori and Yasu sang songs for us; they are in a band together. Later I posed with Yusaku because he was really funny/cool and everyone calls him 'you suck' because his name sounds like that waaaahhh :D

There was this big bowl of meat that someone put out on the table, and while everyone next to me was inhaling the taco salad that John (another American teaching English there) had brought, I ate at least 6 pieces of meat before anyone else touched it XD. It was SOO GOOD. I almost died. We sang Oasis and drank whiskey and coke and Charles ate an entire tub of cheese spread by himself?? It was a very enjoyable evening. I was also complimented on my Japanese pronunciation, to which I replied, "YEAH I'M REALLY GOOD AT LANGUAGES" instead of just saying 'thank you'. Haha, I'm a braaaat.


Day 4 // Recovery Mode

January 1, 2013 was spent mostly lazing around Charlie's chilly apartment, recovering from the previous night's festivities and eating snacks from the conbini down the street. Outside, the sun was shining so nicely and Charlie made us yummy tea in the morning :)
Stay tuned for part two and more pictures!

I feel like I have a lot of personal musings on my short stay in Japan. Perhaps I will share them in the next post as well.

Thanks for reading!