What a great weekend it was. Things began on Friday with an SCTI 'friendly' lunch, which turned out to be absolutely fabulous. My only grievance was the lack of more rice to go with the 20 or so various delectable items. Following the lunch, we made our own handkerchiefs doing Yuzen dyeing. It was surprisingly easy since everything was performed in a assembly-line fashion. After that Michael, Daryl, Mary, and I headed to Kiyamachi for bowling. Bowling during the day is not too expensive in Japan. It's about 325 yen for shoes and 325 yen per game. It's more expensive after 6 pm, each game being 525 yen instead. That afternoon we bowled three games. I surprised even myself with a score of 176 during the second game. The place was pretty crowded too although it's more popular on the weekends. After bowling, Mary took us to an okonomiyake restaurant on Kawaramachi where she raved about the Bukkake cheese topping. Following the hearty dinner, we met up with Jason and company for two hours of karaoke. It's amazing how much fun karaoke is in Japan. Some highlights: Jason and MickeyD busting out Eminem, Megan rapping Jay Chou, Backstreet Boys in Kyoto, Green Day's Good Riddance, and everyone hollering Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer and It's My Life.
On Saturday, I had badminton practice as usual. The club has an in-club tournament coming up at the end of June and beginning of July that they invited me to participate in. Sounds like fun. Brian overslept so it was just me. With nothing to do after practice, I went and ate lunch with the other members. Afterwards, the captain invited a few guys over to his apartment which was right next to campus for some Mahjong and Winning Eleven. Japanese Mahjong is slightly different from the Hong Kong style David taught us at Stanford. After I lost horribly, we moved on to the PS2 soccer game which I also sucked at. It was interesting hanging out with those guys though. We ended up talking about what kind of music they listened to (Linkin Park, Chihiro Onitsuka, Ayumi Hamasaki, Mr. Children, etc.), what types of girls they liked (skinny legs, small waists, long hair... I'm just reporting mind you), and which girls in the club they thought were cute (not the ones that are particularly good at badminton). Around dinner time, I left to meet up with my host brother Atsushi and the DESA people for another night of bowling. It's a shame that Brian, Michael, Daryl, and Jason canceled on me. There ended up being more girls than guys. Only Keisuke showed up to come with me. It turned out to be a lot of fun. We played three games and formed random teams. The 3rd place team paid for the shoes of the winners. After bowling, I met up with Jason and company for another hour of karaoke. An hour is kind of short but we did our best to stick in our favorites. Just by chance, there was a group of foreigners playing with fire along the river bank. They gave quite a performance and had a huge audience gather before them. I think they were advertising for their group. But that night... Keisuke and Hiroki, the two Kyoto University students who came with us to karaoke, had a blast. We sure gave them the American karaoke experience. Or for that matter.. the Stanford American karaoke experience.
On Sunday, my host brother, his friend Miho-san, her friend Delia, and I went to eat at an Indian restaurant on Sanjo. It's a little disturbing how good the Indian waiter's Japanese was. In the end, I just ordered in English. It's too hard trying to read the Indian dishes with Japanese accents... Miho's friend Delia was from Michigan. Miho, like Atsushi, had studied a bit abroad in Michigan and Delia was now staying with her while on vacation. Ordering turned out to be actually quite an ordeal since Miho doesn't eat spicy food (no wasabi) and Delia is vegetarian, doesn't eat eggs, doesn't eat dairy products, and is allergic to wheat. Despite all that, we stilled had some great curry and naan. The food was disappointingly not spicy at all, but the naan was delicious. After dinner, we went... that's right, bowling. This would be my third day in a row. My arm's now a little sore and I should think a little buffer since it felt like lifting weights. We bowled five games since I had a coupon from the night before. All-you-can-bowl for 1050 yen. My host brother is really, really good. He averages 170 with a record high of 210. His dad was actually the Japanese national bowling champion back when he was in college. Needless to say, we had a great time. All in all, that was definitely more bowling than I have ever done in a while..
6 comments:
I heard you had your hair styled. I was so eager to see your Tokyo style, but... you looked the same in the one and only picture :-( What happened?
I am really curious about the meaning of the two finger pose? It is so popular, everybody does it. But, is it a female pose or a male pose? May be men should show their fist. I wonder what would it looks like when different poses were shown - "scissor", "rock", and "cloth". :-)
hair styled? i went to the salon once while in Japan. It turns out, my hair wasn't quite long enough by their standards to do anything cool with it. hopefully by the end of summer or something that'll change...
the two finger pose is the peace sign. it's just the Japanese way to pose. whenever i get my picture taken it just sort of creeps into the picture unconsciously. it definitely applies to both males and females here. although, the guys could be considered feminine by our western standards...
Hey Patrick, thanks for clarifing the peace sign. Did you ever thought about posing the rapper signature pose? I wonder, is there a Chinese signature pose developed among you guys in UNH? Oh, my pose other than stand still is "cloth", the big waving palm, which must be out of style already.
heheh. there are ppl who do the west-side pose... I don`t know about a Chinese pose though. The `cloth` huh? Sounds like the Buddha`s signature pose.
Why I never thought of it? Haha, you are right Patrick. It is Buddha's pose.
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