Week 6 in Japan: Karaoke, Fall Colors

This last week has been another great one. The first thing that I did that comes to mind is a Halloween party on Thursday night, which was the actual day of Halloween. It was a party put on by my work mainly for employees but basically anybody was welcome. The style of the party was you bring a dish, I was asked to bring a desert so I actually just brought a couple bags of Kit-Kats because they are basically the only candy bar I am familiar with here. I said I wanted to bring candy because candy is important to have at a Halloween party. Around half the people who went dressed up and I went as a Pokemon Trainer. It was a very simple costume (i'll include a picture) but people liked it. Though a lot of people thought I was Ash from the Pokemon anime but I was just trying to be a generic trainer. Oh and it was confusing at first be cause in Japanese his name is Satoshi instead of Ash.

       On Saturday I went and had lunch with somebody I teach English to every other week. She wanted me to meet some people like her mom and sister. She said it was alright for me to bring a friend or two so my Chinese friend Yuan came also. It was very delicious and also free because her sister owned the restraunt or something... can't really remember.. but I do remember it was free! Also the service was great and they were truly kind. After I had finished my meal they asked me what my favorite and second favorite things were from the meal, I replied and thought they must have just wanted the opinion of a foreigner (they didn't ask anybody else) a couple minutes later they brought me a new bowl of rice and the two dishes I said I liked the most.. I was surprised and happy and ended up being really full too. I have a picture that Yuan sent me of the meal, i'll post it below. After the food and talking we went back to the apartment. Then me and my friend decided to go for a walk in the park because the weather was so nice. Here in Akita it is still around 60 everyday, but it also rains fairly often. The park was really great and we walked til it was dark so the sunset was pretty great too. Later that night I went to karaoke with some international students. People from Mongolia, Romania, Israel, Russia, and one Japanese. Karaoke was fun, everybody sang at least a little bit and the two girls from Mongolia were acutally very good. You pay a set amount of money regardless of how many people show up in your group because you just rent out a room. Also you get free non-alcoholic drinks (or I guess they are included in the rent fee) and alcoholic beverages are extra.
      Sunday I went and had lunch with my friend Chenmin, also went shopping but the guys clothes are very expensive. The lowest price I saw for a button up shirt, nothing too fancy, was over 90 dollars. Meanwhile girls fashion takes up the other four floors of the mall and they have nice looking womens clothes for like 5 dollars. They have some chain stores like Gap that I might go to. That way the prices are lower. Me and my friend also ended up going to Senshu park on the way home. It was raining on and off that day and I think that actually made the fall colors even better than they were the day before. Oh, one more thing we did was explore a high school that we found I think Japanese high schoolers are very interesting... I said we could just pretend we were international high school students but looking back on it I believe it was an all boys school, and my friend I was with was a girl... hmm. Later that night I met some Japanese friends of mine for dinner and then we went and hung out at one of their apartments. Two of the guys are the same ones that I was with last week. I think the picture I post will be mostly sufficient for showing what we did. Oh and that reminds me Sunday was the holiday Culture Day, it is a holiday that is anually on Novemeber 3rd and its for promoting culture, the arts, and academic endeavour. The holiday was on Sunday but most businesses and my college treat it like it was on Monday. For example buses are free to ride on holidays, and so Monday, although not November 3rd, had free bus rides.  
          Well thats it for this week, hope you enjoyed reading and I have a lot of pictures for you today.. yaay

 Yuki, Yuki, Me, and Marina. Yuki is a fairly common girls and sometimes boys name here. All First year students at college here. The things is their semester starts in the spring so they are all almost sophmores while I just started my sophmore year.

 The meal had a really good soup (my favorite) and various other things. This was my first Japanese style meal that didn't have a whole bunch of raw fish included.

 Me and Yuan. Shes from china and a really good cook. Her major is Japanese.

 Castle in the park (note that I didn't take this picture either, Yuan took it. Shes a good photographer).

 Shuto (left) and Yuta (right) are the ones in front that I was with last week. The ones in back are Ryouta to the left and Diachi to the right. All chemistry majors.. but a business degree is science too right?... right?. Fun night, and because they don't know English only Japanese was spoken, so that was good practice too.