[Previous entry: "Warabi High School Visit"] [Next entry: "The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT)"]

So after a lengthly month long break where I had a chance to visit my home state of California, it was time to buckle down and get back into the swing of things at school. Fall semester has started and I'm taking a massive load unlike my previous semesters. As a glutton for self-inflicted pain, I am taking 6 business classes, 1 Japanese class, working 20 hours a week at my new job (more on that later), and preparing for 2kyuu on the JLPT (more on that later as well..).


I'm really starting to feel the hurt now as I have trouble finding any free time to update the site or have any sort of social life. BUT, after the first week, there was a short lull of activity in my classes giving way to some room for weekend tomfoolery.





Just as my law class came to a close, Josh and I left to meet up with several of our friends in the main hall lounge area. It was friday night and time to celebrate seeing all our friends again after the break. We made plans with everyone to go to a nearby restaurant/bar that caters to Temple students with a large discount on alcoholic merchandise (an obvious large deciding factor on where to go).





One of my prized posession, which later were destroyed by unnamed parties, were my "stunna shades" which I picked up while back in Cali. Part of an ongoing hip-hop trend turned joke in northern California, these style of oversized aviators turns heads and bring laughs without failure. Since noone knows anything about the fad in Japan, they found it all the more interesting that I even had them, and had to give them a whirl themselves. Above you can see Yukari of Gunma looking quite stylish.





...And here is Erika with them on. She looks like a clown they're so oversized for her face.





So a short walk down the street from our school there is the before mentioned restaurant owned by a kind fellow named Tetsuya. They have a menu devoted for Temple students where the regular priced beer of 500yen, dives down to a low low price of 300yen. That means we can get more beer for less! He also offers 3 different meal sets which you can see me enjoying. You can also see my stupid-faced friend Mark Frank behind me in the background not drinking beer. I guess being a little girl and wearing dresses is cool for some people, to each his own I suppose.





Here is the first group picture of many that night. Throughout the evening's festivities, more and more people arrived. In this picture from left to right around the circle we have Ryan (from Cincinnati, OH), Josh (from Sacramento, CA), Yukari (of the esteemed Gunma prefacture), Yuu (a man who need to pick an American name so we stop having such damn difficult conversations in English), Tempe (of some Japanese area in Japan), Mark Frank (of who the hell cares), the coolest kid ever, Rena, and the legs of Keiko.





We're about 3 beers in at this point, not too far in, but about the time we pull out store owners/managers for photo ops.





Here is Yukari, Yuu, and Tempe. So every conversation we have as a group where Yuu is involved, is a constant confusion of pronouns. "(me)So are you going to go to work tomorrow?" "(Yuu)No, I don't have a job you know that." "(me)NO Yuu I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to Josh." "(Josh)You were? I thought you were talking to Yuu." "(me)Me? why would I be talking to myself?" "(Josh)I dunno, you are kinda off sometimes.." "(Yuu) Hey!" "(me)Yea he is sometimes huh..". Clearly, this kid needs to pick a nice western name to use while speaking in English.





Hey! Ayumi showed up to join the party! You can also see Mark Frank posing like a tool sporting his "Gaijin" shirt (His shirt literally says "foreigner" in Japanese). He wears this, understandably so, to differentiate himself from the masses of Japanese people. It is sometimes hard to find other 6+ feet tall ultra white foreigners walking in crowds here. They just sort of blend in.





Here is Ryan doing what men do. Josh didn't drink any alcoholic beverages during this evenings festivities.






5..or 6 beers in at this point. That means myspace-angeled funny face pictures.





Cheers to good times and good friends! I think we're at 7 or more and thinking about wandering to another section of town to sit with cheaper alcohol purchased from a 7/11.





Good friends here as well. Ayumi is a cool kid, lucky as well, she just got a new puppy. It was then decided, time to head to Shibuya to sit and drink in the streets like a hobo clan.





Thumbs up for public transit!





Yukari, Ryan, me, and Keiko sitting in the back of the bus. You can see Yuu, Yuu the person, on the right foreground. On the blurry left, you can see Yuji who met up with us just as we were leaving the restaurant.





Keiko, she's alot meaner then the picture lets on. She once spit a whole mouthful of crackers at me when I was sitting in a sofa.





Stupid lanky Mark Frank falling asleep on the bus. He unfortunately woke up when we all ran off the bus. Waking up easily must be one of those traits of little girls who are sober and don't drink beer with their friends.





Yea...Ayumi.





I don't remember what this was but seemed appropriate to share on a public website.





So as we first arrived in Shibuya, we all had to use the lavatory as quickly as possible so we ran into HMV (a 7 or 8 storied music/movie store). Everyone looks really excited I know.





Here we are headed to a conbini(convenience store) through a main street in Shibuya to restock on cheap refreshing beverages.





Hehe, this picture says alot. Commonly, in the main/most popular areas of Shibuya, Ganguro girls hang out in large packs sitting in their little pow wows doing nothing. The general feel or known facts of these Shibuya girls is they're rather, uncleased, and will often stay out from home for days at a time. They're kinda weird social rejects from what I've heard and rather promiscuous among their little cliks. I'm sure I'm not doing them any proper justice so follow the above link to learn a bit about them.


Anyway in this above picture I decided to just go up to the whole group of them and try to pick them up using such lines in Japanese as "Hey I'm American! You're hot! Let's do stuff! Nice face, what happend?!" Yea..it didn't work.





After I was completely shot down, I regrouped to continue on with our plans of more happy drinks and a place to sit.





And here is where the remainder of our night was spent. These steps were quite a popular choice as there were many other groups of drinking parties around us. Also, there was a pack of Ganguro guys, who by the way were much more friendly than the girls, who were quick to make friends with us and share some of their liquor and interesting stories about life and "fashion".


After this is was time to head home. It was an overall great night with friends! I had a blast and am looking forward to the next opportunity to get together in a large group like this. On a side note, you can see that in Mark's hand there is an alcoholic beverage. Always believe in the powers of peer pressure...