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Published: October 11th 2008
Trio
All three cuzes -- Nick, Mike, and me.My trip up north today was fairly uneventful. Despite not knowing a lick of Japanese (I counted up today -- I know 5 words total), I managed to get on the train, transfer twice, check in and get on a plane, and even get food. Not bad for a completely foreing country. It's funny -- whenever I needed to say something, I had a reflex to say it in Spanish. If only... The train system was actually pretty nice. Very clean, quick, efficient, and cheap. They even have TVs in the local "metro" trains. High tech. I was struck by the generous variety of hairstyles. I felt like I was looking through one of those books at the hair salon -- ranging from garrish to quite stylish. I also noticed how everyone seems to have better fashion sense here. I think I need to go shopping...
The flight again was a first -- the first time I rode in a plane with an upstairs. Rows 71-89 upstairs! Dang that's big. Bonus: we got a bird's eye view as the nose-camera and belly-cameras displayed our view on the monitors. Mike, Nick, and Nick's girlfriend Megumi met me at the airport. It
Pokemon!
They actually had a plane painted like Pokemon! was nice because Mayumi has a car so it was a comfortable ride back to Nick's place. It was the second time I had ridden in a Japanese car (the first was yesterday when someone offered me a ride from the terminal). It's still weird that the cars are backwards and they drive on the other side of the road. Out of all the traveling I've done, it's my first time in a country where the driving is reversed. As we were going down the road, we passed another car that had a golden retriever tied up in the front seat. It was really funny because for a second it looked like the dog was driving. We actually stopped at McDonalds on the way back. I've added McDonalds to my short list of "musts" when in other countries (the other is snagging a beer glass with the local brew on it). I always find it interesting to see what unique menu items appear in various McDonalds (this also works within the US). PS the one here doesn't have sushi (I was hoping!) but they do have a teriyaki burger and a shrimp burger. As well as a mega burger (4
Cuz
me and Mike patties!). The teriyaki burger was pretty good actually.
After a quite enjoyable nap, we headed out for dinner with friends. While I did have one piece of sashimi, it wasn't the sushi dinner I was hoping for -- not yet... The food was ok, the beer was weird (I held off on Sapporo since we're going to the brewery), and much of the conversation was in Japanese. On the plus side, I increased my vocabulary by at least three times! Our next stop was to Rad 2 -- one of the famed unlimited drinking bars. It was pretty nice actually! Even though I wasn't really in the mood to drink, it ended up being a pretty fun night! I even found a drink that I fell in love with -- they make drinks with milk and flavored vodkas which are surprisingly good! Actually tasted just like strawberry quick. Between those and the B-52 shots we all had, it was a good night and I got my money's worth 😊 (though $20 isn't hard to spend at a bar). We also made some good friends tonight. Megumi had a few friends meet us out -- one was a sushi chef
at a local hotel, where we should be having lunch tomorrow. All in all, it was a fun cuz-bonding night 😊 Now, as I write this, Mike is a drunk mess on the floor next to me, and Nick is laying on top of him trying to get him to go to bed. Haha.... entertaining. Brotherly love....
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Mom
non-member comment
Looks like fun. So how are you doing with your 9 Japanese words? lol