Beer Gardens Are Amazing~!!!

So today I climbed a mountain and drank a lot of beer. Which means I have an amazing day. But also super tired. Anyway, here comes a condensed summary of what I did think week!!

Sunday:
So after I was lazy for most of the day/didn't know what to do with myself I was finally relieved of my boredom around 6 when I when to a friend's birthday party (the third one that week lol). It was held at this semi-fancy restaurant in Shinjuku, nomi/tabehoudai for like 2 hours. Which means most of us got a little tipsy. But anyway, the party was a lot of fun and I got to hang out with some friends I hadn't seen in a while!~




Monday:
had lunch with Becky and Keiks, made plans to go to Enoshima~!
After class met my host family and we went to a beer garden in Shinanomachi. My first beer garden. It was wonderful. Okay, so a beer garden is basically just drinking outside for two hours (all you can eat-drink) priced at a slightly higher cost that going to a restaurant. But it is just great. The one we went to had music, lanterns, and a waterfall. Just a wonderful atmosphere. I've been drinking too much lately though, so I held back on the all you can drink part...



Tuesday:
Class then dinner with my host family at this crab bar in our neighborhood. My host family is like always drunk.

Wednesday:
After class got coffee with a friend in Shimokitazawa, went back to Waseda to watch a dance performance that two of my friends were in, then got dinner with some of my friends on my program. Had a really great talk with Becky and Lucas. We just talked forever and got to learn a lot about each other. Sometimes it is hard to have such conversations in Japanese. I dunno, it was just a really great dinner.


Thursday:
Had my English conversation job. I have said this before, but I seriously get paid for doing almost nothing. I should be paying her sometimes I think. She makes me delicious lunch, she is so much fun to talk to, and this time we ended up singing jazz songs together!! So we are actually having a little party at the bar she owns next month where us students will be performing! So I might be singing??? Haha.
After work I met Becky to exchange traveler's checks together since we still has some left (yay for money!!! I am going to miss having money haha), and then met some friends to do shisa near Waseda.

Friday:
After class (slept through 1st period, 3rd we did absolutely nothing) went to karaoke with Shiori and two other friends from my program. So karaoke is a lot of fun, but I actually kinda suck at it. We then preceded to the game center where we took purikura (only 4 more till my goal of 20!) and played some games.
Friday night was also the last official Niji nomikai that I was able to go to! ;_; Not that many people were there, and a lot of my friends couldn't come, but it was a lot of fun! I got to to the kampai (cheers) call at the beginning which was pretty awesome, and drank a lot with friends. Just yeah, a great time!!



Saturday:
Saturday I met my friend Scarlet for lunch and then we went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and saw two exhibits there. One featured the winning photos of the year from Newsweek magazine (?) which was really moving and depressing and sorta made me loose faith in humanity/made me so grateful to be born in the circumstances that I was. The other exhibit was about the development of photography in Japan during the late 60's which was pretty interesting.
After eating dinner together we went to Ueno to see our mime professor's mime performance for class.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was blown away. Seriously, I never knew mime could be so moving. There was hilarious mime skits, ingenious mime skits, a dark skit, and a really sad mime skit (I seriously shed some tears). I'm so glad I was able to go.

Sunday:
Today I woke up early and met two friends to head off to Takao-san, a mountain an hour away from Tokyo. Originally more people were supposed to come, but I'm really glad it was just the three of us. I had a really amazing day. The weather was beautiful, and the trails weren't too crowded. We played in the river a bit and talked a joked around as we hiked the mountain. Our main (?) reason for going though was to check out the beer garden there, which was accurately called beer mountain instead. Much drinking, eating, and laughing ensued. We also somehow managed to tipsily walk down the mountain as well (thank god the path we took was actually a road). Fell right asleep on the train. About to fall asleep right now. Looking forward to another two busy weeks ahead of me!~