Week 11 in Japan: Shrine, Shopping, Karaoke

This last week was pretty great. I'm going to give a brief overview of what I did and then post pictures and have more of the content relating to the pictures I post. Monday I went to a mall called Donkihote for the first time with my Romanian friend Alina. One thing I bought was a cool "My Neigbor Totoro" towel. Totoro is a Studio Ghibli movie which has all kinds of very famous animated movies (even fairly famous in the United States) like Spirited Away and Ponyo. I actually haven't seen My Neighbor Totoro yet but it was cute so I bought it. Tuesday Richenmin, Ryouen, and I had a little party and played cards. More people were supposed to come but they didn't so it was just us 3. It was fun and I learned a Chinese card game.. well I have no idea if it is really Chinese in origin but Chinese people taught me it so it is Chinese to me. Wednesday was really great weather (I think it was in the 50s and sunny.. in December) so after class Teppei who is from Hokaido, Japan (Hokaido is the northern island of Japan), Yunseok from Korea, Karen from Taiwan, and I went to a shrine that was only about a beautiful 15 minute walk from the University. of course people go to shrines for religious reasons but from what I can tell they are also kind of like parks (a lot of times I think shrines are in parks too). Very pretty and a great place for a little walk. We all did Omikuji which is like a really detailed fortune cookie. The ones we chose were 200 yen or like 2 dollars. You get a detailed fortune that can vary from bad to good and also cause of the ones we chose we got a little cat too. I ended up getting "daikichi" or the best luck possible. I was very happy about that. Wednesday night I fixed Richenmin's computer. It was getting the blue screen of death if she went on the web. It took me a little while but I ended up getting it fixed. It was actually a nice nostalgic feeling fixing somebodies computer. Thursday I went to a Museum in Akita City that was all about the different festivals in Akita Prefecture. Friday I went and had Ramen with Kaori and Sasha followed by karaoke with some other people as well. Saturday I went to Donkihote again and ended up seeing a couple of my friends Balgeum and Yunseok there. They are from Korea and are pretty awesome. We were already planning on hanging out that night but since we met then we just hungout from then on. We eventually met some other people as was planned and then went and did Purikura which is like a photo booth and I think I already explained previously. After that we went to an "Izakaya" or bar to have dinner. It was really fun because we had a private room rented out for the night. The main dish was "Nabemono" or usually just called "Nabe". Nabemono means pot with things in it which is basically what it is. It is like a soup. They give you a pot and there is already a gas cooker on your table so you just turn on the gas cooker and put the pot on. To put it very simply there was beef and vegetables in the pot. It was delicious. During the dinner we had Nomihodai (a buffet for drinking) for 1 and a half hours. One thing that makes Nomihodais fun is that you can try drinks that you might not otherwise be willing to. Since you are just paying once and get unlimited drinks you can try different things. I liked the Umeshu, which is a Japanese wine. After eating we went and sang karaoke. We ended up singing karaoke from midnight to 5 in the morning! Renting the karaoke room for the night (until 5am) with free drinks was only 700 yen (about 7 dollars) each with a total of 5 people. That was a basic outline of my week. Now I'll have some pictures and maybe elaborate a little bit.

 The entrance to the Shrine area. 

 Here is the shrine itself. What is common for people to do is throw some change into an area right behind those ropes and then they ring a bell by shaking one of those ropes. Then they clap twice and pray for a few seconds. I've been to two shrines in Japan (well I guess ever) and they really don't seem too popular. Like I said it was very nice on the day we went and yet almost nobody came while we were there.

 Here is a picture of my Omikuji. I hope it's not bad luck to show you haha. There are a bunch of different colors of cats and they have different meaning based on their color and what paw is up and other things too I think. I got green but the other three got white. I think even though they all got white based on the details of the cat I think their fortunes were slightly different. I was able to decipher a little bit of what my fortune says but I had Teppei translate it the best he could. Later in the week I showed it to another Japanese friend Marina who speaks good English and she read me the fortune too.

 Here a picture fromt the Purikura. It was a little tricky with 6 people but 6 is not too uncommon or bad to do. A friend of mine said that he once did Purikura with 20 people and they got everybodies faces in the picture. This time the Purikura was 400 yen so we played Junkenpo which is a game similar to rock paper scissors to see who out of the 6 of us had to pay 100 yen. A 100 yen coin is similar to a dollar bill in America accept it is more popular, therefore that was the easiest way to split up the cost. I won so I didn't have to pay. Also we each got a little strip of the pictures. There were six of us so we all got a really narrow strip with all six pictures on but very tiny. I took two pictures and then cropped them together.

 Here is a picture of us at dinner. It was actually Balgeum's Birthday and that was why we were hanging out together. Balgeum is from Korea and she is the one on the far left. Behind her is Teppei, he's from Hokaido Japan (Hokaido is the northern island of Japan). The guy behind Teppei is Sebastian from Romania. Next is Karen from Tawain. Next to me is Yunseok, she is from Korea.

 Here is another picture of us all. We asked our waitress take the pictures. Karen has a new Polaroid camera and I took a picture of the picture it printed for this and the previous picture. It was so nostalgic and fun getting the pictures right away. Shake it like a polaroid! We actually at first just took one picture which is the other one above where I listed everybodies names. Everbody loved it so much that Karen generously offered to give us each one. I say generously because the polaroid film is not cheap. Although it is a new polaroid camera there is no digital copy so it was going to have to be another 5 different pictures. We asked the waitress to take 5 more pictures. We did a little bit different poses in each one (people moved spots too because there is a little time while the picture is printing) so we played Junkenpo to see what order we could choose the pictures in. Junkenpo is a super common in Japan for these situations.