Week 7 in Japan:NoTimeoSay'Hello','Goodbye'. Also billards, nomihodai, and shopping.

      Hello everybody and welcome to week 7 of my blog. I'm late this week and for that I am sorry. This week has been really busy and some unexpected events have popped up (all good ones I assure you). I just got back from a morning run with my friend. We went out and ran at 6:30am, as you can probably guess I didn't schedule it for that time as I'm not usually a super early riser. We ran to the nearby park and got a great view of the sunrise so it was pretty awesome.
      One thing that happened during the week was after class on Thursday the 7th me and a couple friend went and played billards. It was me, two Romanians, a Russian, and an Indian. I had not played in a very long time but it was fun. It was about 525 yen or about 5 dollars to rent a table for an hour so it was pretty reasonable. The problem is that we stayed for I think 4 hours and were renting 2 tables so it was a little expensive. We played 8 ball, 9 ball, and cutthroat. I was definitely best at cutthroat.
      On Friday me and a couple Chinese friends of mine Ryouen (previously featured on my blog) and Fancy. Fancy is apparently her English name and I'm the only one who calls her that but I think it's a good name and It's an alternative to her Chinese name which I can't pronounce. We had a delicious sushi dinner where we had all the raw fish, veggies, rice, etc on the table and then we would take our own seaweed wrap or "nori" and make our sushi however we wanted. This was actually my first time having sushi in Japan. I've eaten a lot of raw fish but it has all been sashimi which is fish alone rather than with seaweed/veggies/rice. It was really delicious and I would post a picture but I don't have one. I think everyone took a picture of the meal prior to consuming except for me. Maybe somebody can send me their copy and I'll post it in the next blog. After the dinner Friday we went late to a late Halloween party.
      On Saturday I helped a friend write a report. We have the same class and the mid term report had to be in English so I helped out. In return she made me lunch so it was a pretty good trade off in my eyes. After that I had a different friend who wanted to go for a walk in the park. You should know by now I never turn down a walk in the park. Following that I went out with some friends to a bar in town. My friend is basically a pro snowboarder so we went to a bar where the owner was her snowboarding coach so we got some free food. Besides the food we got Nomihodai which is where you pay a set amount and you get free drinks for the next 2 or 3 hours or whatever is decided. It was 3,000 yen for 3 hours so at about 10 dollars an hour for drinks it really is cost effective if you plan on getting more than like 4 drinks.. cuz math and stuff. Nomihodai is very popular in Japan and is basically a buffet of drinking. I haven't really heard about this in the U.S. (but then again why would have I?) but I think maybe it would be a bad a idea for most bars in America. From the little experience I've had with it and from what I've heard Japanese people are responsible with how much they drink, even when everything is free.
      Sunday November 10th I went out with some friends and went shopping in Akita. Although we went shopping only one of us actually bought clothes. I haven't went shopping with friends many times but I don't think it is the best for me. Although I definitely enjoy it I don't think I will usually buy anything. I think I take after my dad a little bit in the sense that I take a long to make decisions sometimes. I'll have to see every option and weigh the pros and cons before making a decision. Also I don't like trying on clothes but since I'm in Japan I kind of have to since I don't know the sizing here yet so shopping would take even longer. I did buy ice cream though.. mmhhmm it was yummy. After shopping we went to my friend Kaori's house (who was also shopping with us) and had dinner with her parents. Her mom made some delicious curry so I'd called it a successful night.
      This was my week up til Sunday night. I was late on the blog because some things came up Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night but you'll have to tune in next week to hear about them. So rather than posting a week from now I'll try and post again on time at the end of the week, so maybe in like 4 days.

 The house we ate in was really cool. Really classic Japanese style.

 The pool place was really cool. It was called Big Shot and the best player in Akita plays at this place. I actually saw the guy briefly that night too. So I'm basically best friends with the best pool player in the world.. or something.

 Saw Ronald and had to get a picture. The kid in the picture was in the gaming zone. I wanted to take the picture with him in it too so I was trying to get his attention to look at the camera but he had the concentration of a brain surgeon. I then looked over his shoulder and saw he was playing Monster Hunter 4 and understood why. I think it turned out better this way anyways.

 At the ice cream place in Aeon with my snowboarding friend Kaori. Probably going to be able to start snowboarding in December.