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Published: November 3rd 2008
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You Can't Stop the Beat
Minori and Vanessa Karaoke-ing the day away! Hisashiburi! (That means it's been a long time!) Sorry! I won't make excuses...even though I've been busy I should have been writing...So, I'll just get started!
08/28/2008
Every year the Tsuru exchange students climb Mt.Fuji. It's grueling, tough, and one of the most memorable experiences that the group shares. The Thursday before the Friday that we were supposed to climb finally arrived...and our climb was canceled because of "heavy" rain in the area. Amongst grumblings about going and climbing on our own and complaints that it was barely raining, the tutors came up with a plan to cheer us up! We would go do Karaoke!!!
The biggest Karaoke place in town is called "Tento" and is wild-west themed. The person at the front desk always wears a cowboy hat and there are old black-and-white westerns playing on the tv monitors in the lobby. Pretty funny, eh?
Inside there are lots of little rooms that each have a table in the center and couches all around with a giant TV. We rented out a couple of these rooms and proceeded to sing ourselves silly for several hours. It seemed like they had any song you could think of!
Super High-Tech
Would you expect anything less from Japan? You select your songs from this fancy little touch-screen remote that has a library of all of the songs available on it. Super cool! Here we have Jimmy demonstrating whilst Kevin ponders the whole Karaoke thing in the background. We sang everything from Queen and Journey to the Sailor Moon theme song. It was definitely a good way to distract us from the bad weather! 😊
08/29/2008
We woke-up to find sunny skies on Friday. Not at all the terrible weather that had been predicted when our Mt.Fuji climb was canceled. Needless to say, we were all pretty bummed, but there was nothing we could do. Ever-ready to distract us from our woes, some of the tutors planned a day of Udon-eating and bowling for us!
The Udon-place was definitely the best Udon that I've had yet. One of the tutors works there and was our server for lunch, which was pretty cute. The restaurant was of the traditional Japanese style with tatami mats and low tables, of course. We took up one entire room with our group. I had yummy tempura Udon. If it wasn't so far from our apartments, I would probably go there once a week. So good!
After lunch, we walked over to the bowling alley, which was only a couple minutes away. I managed to do alright, even without bumpers! There was also a large arcade-area in the bowling alley,
Mi-Chan's Solo
One of our favorite tutors bringing down the house which kept us entertained for a while when we were done bowling. There's a Taiko game that a few people kind-of got addicted to. And I had a second Sailor Moon sighting! Among other various anime characters, she was on one of the crane-games. No Sailor Moon prizes inside, though...Darn!
08/30/2008
Host family day! Me and Allison's host-families had invited us to go play ping-pong and go to karaoke with them, so we hopped on the train out to Fujiyoshida (if you'll recall...or maybe I never told you...that's the town next to Tsuru where they live) in the morning and met-up with them. Then it was off to some place in the boonies where we were to play takyuu(ping-pong). We ate a wonderful home-made lunch that they brought with them before we started playing. There were all sorts of yummies, like this Udon-noodle-salad thing and pumpkin and chocolate muffins. All of it of course packed into containers and carried in cute little Bento-box cover things. I don't know if I could make it as a Japanese mom!
There was only one table for the ping-pong, so Allison, the kids, and I took turns playing each other. I
it's that exciting
That's real Karaoke fun right there! was able to hold my own against Allison and the kids, but the moms were another story. Turns out Allison's host-mom is in a ping-pong group of some kind. She had this crazy serve that I couldn't imitate for the life of me. It was really fun, though!
After we played ping-pong to our heart's content, we were off to pick-up the older daughter in my host family from band and then on to Karaoke! Karaoke was pretty much Allison and I singing songs and then the kids singing songs. They were slightly more energetic than we were, I have to admit. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. The funniest part of the whole thing was when my host mom asked me to sing the Sailor Moon theme song and then recorded me on her phone! I felt ridiculous, but hey, they got a kick out of it. That's kind-of the story of my life here--if I can make the Japanese people I'm with laugh, I must be doing something right...or very wrong...but at least they have a sense of humor! 😉
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