My Weekend

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konnichiwa! my weekend's coming to an end, so i thought it would be a good time to write about it...and it's more fun than working on my homework, which is what i really should be doing right now! oh well...

but first i have a few announcements:

1. i officially hate the weather here! i'm so tired of being cold. it's not fun to go anywhere when it's cold, cause all you can think about is how cold you are! i swear if i go outside one more morning and its snowing i'm going to get on a plane and leave right then (ok maybe i won't go that far, but i will be very very unhappy!!

2. the other day when i had my balcony door open i noticed there's a constant ringing coming from somehwere outside! it sounds like the bell on someon's bike, but it never stops ringing. it drives me crazy!!

3. i found out today that the building right next my seminar house is actually the gym!! which means i can go workout...yay!!

4. i realize that i still don't have pics of my pretty bike OR my room. but i want to wait until the weather gets nicer before i take pics on my bike (don't ask lol). but who knows when that will be (see #1)...and i hope to have pics of my room very soon. i still have to make it pretty and decorate it more.

ok so now let me tell you all about my weekend!

FRIDAY: that evening i went out with a few of the guys from next door to this place in hirakata city us gaijin call 280, although that's not it's real name i don't think. but everything there costs 280 yen. so we took the bus down there, and it was funny cause all the seats were taken except the ones next to me and rob! people were standing too...but then we realized that it's probably because we were sitting in the handicapped seats. OOPS! well we got to the building and there's like 10 other people there that we were meeting. we took the elevator up to the 4th floor and got out just as 280 was opening. we had so many people, we took up 5 whole tables!! so we all order our drinks...pretty much everyone gets the "ookii" biru (big beer). and yes, it is a big glass of beer! but since i don't like beer i got a cocktail drink, something called kashisu. it was very pretty and very good too! we order so much food (everything was chicken and fried) but i also had a salad. everyone was having a great time! i was sitting next to this japanese guy named kazu and he was so much fun! we asked each other questions about japanese and english since he had studied at washington state university. he taught me some very useful phrases in japanese, and i taught him how to talk like a southerner! haha it was great...i really like 280! it's a nice place and the food is good, but not expensive. and they have amazing drinks! i had two of those cocktails, the orange one and the peach, and this one called plum wine (mixed with soda) and then something called kamu kamu. so yeah the drinks in japan are good! some of the guys there got pretty drunk and started hitting on some japanese girls at another table, it was so funny! and of course the late night bus ride home was interesting too. it was a fun night, i can't wait to go to 280 again!!

SATURDAY: i met leilani at around 1 so we could go to kyoto again! we had been wanting to go back to that one amazing store we went to last time that had really cute shoes. so we walked to makino station and took the train to kyoto. it was really cold that day too! it actually started to snow a little while we were walking around kyoto. and yes i was very mad! well we managed to find our favorite store...it's called cpa. we walked around there for a few hours, but unfortunately a lot of the sales that were going on the last time we came were over, so things were kind of expensive now. we ended up not buying anything there. then we went to find the 200 yen udon place we saw last time. well we found it...ok let me explain how this place was. first of all, there was no door. just a curtain hanging at the entrance. it's very small and there's a counter going around the whole room, but there's no seats! so we found a spot at the counter and ordered our udon and stood there to eat it. it was so weird! but i guess we should've expected that at a 200 yen place, right?

after we ate our udon we went to the shopping strip shinkyogoku and walked around looking at all the different stores. but i couldn't really enjoy it because it was so freakin cold! and i just wasn't in a shopping mood. i didnt have money to be spending and i felt like i had already seen everything. all the stores had the same stuff. you know you've been shopping too much when you start to recognize certain shoes lol. but there was one good thing that came out it! we found this okashii shop (sweets) because kyoto is known for it's sweets i think. and they had little boxes of samples for almost every sweet in the shop! so me and leilani went through tasting EVERYTHING...they even served you hot green tea to drink while you're looking around. so we spent a lot of time there, we tried everything, every single flavor, and they were all so good! we had to go back and get a second round of some of them! but by the time we left that shop i was so full from all the sweets, i didn't want to see sugar for a long time. but then after about 30 mins we came to this little pastry shop...and we ended up getting these crepes. they were so good! but of course it just added to my sugar overdose and afterwards i was left wondering why i ever decided to eat that. bad decision on my part...but it was still really good 😊

well after that we walked around even more, eventually made our way to the teramachi shopping area. it was so cool though because we realized that all throughout the shopping areas there would be random shrines right in the middle of all these stores! and they were very beautiful shrines too. one of them had a buddhist statue, one place was actually a burial ground, and another one had tons of lanterns. it was so cool, i never thought i would see those in the middle of all that shopping! see that's why i love kyoto...you get shopping and culture all in one spot!

we finally started heading back to the train station at around 6:15 cause i had to get back in time for our seminar house's okashii party! yay for more okashii...

the okashii party was a lot of fun too! it was just a little get together of people who live in the seminar house so that everyone could meet each other! and they had a ton of snacks...chips, candy, crepes, and so many other things! i ate so much, even after all the sweets i had in kyoto. i don't think i've ever had that much sugar in one day! but i'm so glad i went to it cause i got to meet some more people who live here. i met the other 2 guys who live in the unit down the hall with rob and all those guys! i didn't even know there were more of them lol. and then i met this really cool guy ryan who is indonesian but is from the netherlands. he lives on the 5th floor, or the penthouse as he calls it lol. and then i met a bunch of other guys but i can't remember their names! whoops...and i also got to finally talk to my roommate. ok, so this girl lives with me but we've never actually talked! it was really awkward so i'm glad we finally got to talk. she's really nice! but my roomie sohyun wasn't able to come because she went to tokyo for the weekend (i'm so jealous)...and then i sw nin again! she from thailand and i had met her the night before at 280...super nice girl. and all of her roommates too! i stayed at the party until about 11 talking to ryan and raheed and marlon (brando lol). then i went back to my room and called it a night!

so that brings us to today, SUNDAY:
this will be pretty short, cause i basically did NOTHING! i did clean up my room though. i straightened up everything and got all my school papers in order, cause my desk was a mess after this week. then i was putting up some pics on facebook when i heard a knock on my door...i opened it up and there was leilani! she said her and bas were on their way to 180 ramen and wanted me to come. and i can't refuse 180 ramen, so i went them and we rode our bikes to the restaurant. after we ate we stopped by fresco and did some grocery shopping...saw some intersting things there. bas found a whole squid (or octopus) and we decided we should buy one and cook it one night, just for fun! cause i'm definitely not going to eat it! i promise to take lots of pics if we ever actually do that lol. then we went to kyu-kyu and did some more grocery shopping. then i came back to my room and took a little nap! then i got up and started looking up stuff about hiroshima so that we can start planning our trip. we found a pretty nice hostel that's relatively inexpensive, and i looked up a bunch of sites to go see. i'm so excited to go there again, it's probably one of my favorite cities i've ever been to. it's going to be so much fun, i can't wait for hiroshima!

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Photos

mountains
nice view of the mountains from makino station. i took this while we were waiting on the platform for our train

more mountains
more of the mountains. i love how you can see every little hill...

shinkyogoku
sign above the shinkyogoku shopping strip

GIANT pocky!
the biggest pocky stick ever! it's probably about as thick as my arm lol

jamaican store
haha we took this one just for lauren ;)

burial grounds
burial ground we found while shopping...i was kinda surprised to find this in the middle of a shopping area!

shrine
leilani at one of the little shrines

ringing the bell
ringing the bell at the shrine!

buddhist statue
this shrine had a buddhist statue, and people were actually praying there

me
me in front of the statue

leilani
leilani in front of the statue

the making of my crepe
my chocolate crepe

folding it up!
almost done...just folding it up!

my crepe
my chocolate crepe...so good!

leilani's crepe
she had a strawberry crepe, which looked very good too!

shopping
stores, stores, and more stores!!

lights
pretty light decoration hanging along the shopping strip

desserts!
this is the kind of temptation we have to see on every block in kyoto! can you blame me for all the sweets i ate?

more desserts!
japan by far has the best desserts and pastries i've ever had

kyoto city
the more modern city area of kyoto

school??
this was a pretty building, but we weren't sure what it was. we think maybe it was a private school