An amazing weekend

This weekend basically ruled. I had so much fun... enough fun to make up for the fact that I lost a lot of sleep while having all that fun! It started off calm, I slept in on Sunday and went and got some food from Jolly Pasta which is a restaurant directly across from my apartment and is a Japanese attempt at Italian food. I, however, have dubbed it "Japitalianese" because it is really nothing like what most people would consider Italian food to be. Most of their dishes revolved around sea food, but I did find spaghetti and meat sauce, so that made me happy. Then I got ready and headed off to an area called Ueno (sounds like wayne-oh) to meet up for the Higashi Kanto area Teacher's End of the Year Party... yeah, I know that's a ridiculously long title for a party but it also sums up the purpose of it pretty well. I saw my friends Jenn and James from training and some of the sub teachers who helped me out during the first couple of weeks. I also met some new people which was cool. The place we went was very very nice and we were seated in a big private room around 2 giant tables. For the price of 4300 yen (about $43) We got a five or six course meal and unlimited drinks, but the best part was that there was a big karaoke screen at the front of the room so we got to sing karaoke while we were eating and drinking! I sang a couple of songs on my own and joined in on a bunch of them. The room was only rented for about two hours so after that the whole group had to leave and find something else to do. Most of the other teachers decided to sing at a karaoke place across the street, but six of us decided to head off to the area where Jenn lives and find something to do there instead. It was Me, Jenn, James, my sub teacher (aka my boss), another sub teacher (I think he would also be considered my boss), and this really sweet girl named Eimilly who I met through Jenn because they interviewed together in San Francisco.

We ended up at a very cute bar with a rustic Caribbean atmosphere. It was fun and at one point we joined a table with some Japanese customers who lived in the area. They were very nice and it was cool talking to them, but we needed to leave a little earlier than planned because there was some sort of an issue between one of my friends and another guy at the bar and it got a little tense. We stopped at a convenience store where Eimilly bought more snacks than any of us could ever have possibly eaten, even on empty stomachs, and then we went to this little place that Jenn really likes. It was kind of like a cross between a Japanese bar and an American diner and since it was rather late by that time (maybe 3 am or so) we were the only customers there and the guy was super nice and gave us free food. Finally, we all headed back to Jenn's place to crash for a while. In Tokyo the trains stop at midnight and don't start back up again until 5 am, so we all had decided long ago that we were going to be spending the night at Jenn's. We hung out for a while, played a couple of stupid drinking games, and then I tried to sleep because I was obviously quite tired by that point. James was a jerk and tried to freak Eimilly and I out with scary stories, but he didn't really get to me (he got to Eimilly though).

In the morning when we all woke up (it took some of them a while) the six of us headed to Shibuya, a very trendy area of Tokyo with lots of really good shopping. The first thing we did when we got there was eat because we were all hungry! We went to this really wonderful burger place where they practically put an entire avacado on my avacado burger... soooo good! The actual reason we came to Shibuya was so that I could buy a cell phone, so after lunch we headed to Softbank, a big cell phone company in Japan. I was a little nervous that they wouldn't be able to sell me a phone because I had a different document from the one that they wanted, but it worked out and I am now the proud owner of a freakin' awesome Japanese phone (pictures below)!!! You guys might think that cell phones are popular in America, but you can't even begin to understand just how obsessed with phones the Japanese are! And they have a right to be because their phones are soooo cool! You can do everything on them. You get an actual email address for your phone, you can check train schedules and routes, get money conversion rates, there is an English/Japanese dictionary, a camera and video funtion, EVERYTHING! All of us, except for my sub teacher, then went to Harajuku and spent forever wandering through the beautiful Yoyogi Park before we realized we'd gone in the complete wrong direction. Jenn and I are going to return to Yoyogi Park on a Sunday because that's when the people dress up in their crazy street fashion, e.g. Lolita's, Gothic Lolita's, anime characters, etc. and all gather in the park to show off their outfits. I'm really excited to see that, I think it's going to be pretty wild! We finished the day off on a main street of Harajuku with Udon (a kind of think noodle), Crepes, and an enormous 100 yen shop where I bought decorations for my apartment.

I'm tired now, but I can't tell you how glad I am to have had the chance to hang out with all my new friends this past weekend. I have been slightly caught off guard by the friendship I am forming with my sub teacher. On one hand he's just a really chill guy who's funny and is just like everyone else; he drinks, he swears, he talks about crazy stuff that you would never discuss in a classroom, and on the other hand he determines whether or not I keep my job. It freaks me out a little, but he straight out told me that he hopes to be my friend, and as I mentioned in a previous post, friends are always a good thing to have.