Nichome and Internet Cafe!

Okay, so let's go back to December for a bit. So on Friday the 28th, I didn't do much in the day, but I meet one of my friends for dinner/drinks. We went to Shinjuku where we got curry. After that we headed to Nichome, the gay section of Tokyo (my friend is gay so he's been there before and he wanted to show me a bar there). I had heard about Nichome before, but had never before been. I was interested in going though. Being gay isn't really an acceptable thing in Japan/something people are very open about sadly. The area wasn't too different from other parts of Tokyo except for all the gay porn shops, gay clubs, and gay bars. At about 8pm we got to the bar he wanted to take me to. There was a nomihoudai (all you can drink) from 8-10 so we went early. Not too many people were there at the time, but that was actually a good thing. We meet (a somewhat weird) older man who graduated from Waseda at the bar. We also became good friends with the bartender! He seemed pretty cool/nice so we just decided to start talking to him (also my friend had seen him another night when he came). We stayed till around 11 (more people started to come, we actually meet people from one of our classes at Waseda haha), and had plans to go to a friends house to watch ANTM, but my host mom didn't have her key and couldn't get into our apartment, so I had to go let her in. That was probably a good thing though, since I was already pretty drunk. I mean, usually the drinks aren't that strong here (I guess it just depends). But our bartender was awesome (we kept asking him for his recommendations) and made us super strong drinks. So I was pretty drunk when I let my host mom in, but she thought it was funny (I told her I went to nichome and she said she wants me to take here there sometime haha).


The next day, Saturday the 29th, I actually got some work done. But not enough. But oh well. Anyway, at around 3pm I decided to go to a modern Art museum called the Watarium down the road from my apartment. I had been wanting to go there for a while, and needed to kill some time before meeting the friend I meet the night before for dinner, so I decided to go. I'm so glad I did! The exhibit they had at the time was really cool. My favorite pieces were the hand drawn city-scapes in ink this artist called Kyohei Sakaguchi made. Pictures weren't allowed, but I took two anyway.





After the museum (and after I looked at the cool book shop there), I decided to just walk around since I still had free time. I really, really, really love the neighborhood I live in. Really. I walked down Aoyama dori to Omotesando where I went to a store called Kiddy Land (it's like a huge character shop; there was even Star Wars stuff there! Definitely going back to get the lightsaber chopsticks). After that I went to Shinjuku and meet my friend. From the station he took me to an internet cafe (a 24 hour place with small rooms you can stay in for a certain amount of time where there is a computer, t.v, and shelves of manga and free drinks outside of your room. Also, there are showers there. So it's sorta like a hotel but the rooms are really really small and there aren't any beds but it's really cheap and you can stay for a long time). We became members (I have my own card haha) and rested a bit before dinner since we weren't quite hungry yet. After that we ate dinner (gyudon, beef on rice) and headed to the bar.



At the bar we did another nomihoudai. The same bartender was there again, and we got to talk to him for a bit, but the bar was pretty crowded and he was busy so not for too long. One of our other friends from our program met us that night too, so the three of us drank and talked a lot! It was a lot of fun! We are definitely going back again.



We had wanted to stay until 5am, but my guy friend was feeling sick so we left around 2. From the bar we bought snacks and went back to the previous internet cafe we were at before (my friends 3rd time there that day, my 2nd). There we ate, tried to sleep, and watched youtube videos until 7am (5 hours for about $13). Internet cafes are great, but ohmygod it got so hot/stale in there; we were dying. It feel so weird to be walking to the station at 7am when people usually are there at that time to go to work, etc. When I got home I crashed into bed and got some sleep, but woke up around 1 when my host mom texted me to tell me we were going on a trip in an hour (she was at her mom's house so it's not like she texted me when we were both in the same place lol). And then we drove to Kinugawa! But I'm tired and have plans to help with mochitsuki tomorrow, so I'll end here for now. Still have SO much to write about, but hopefully I can do that tomorrow or Friday! Aggg I can't believe break is going by so fast!