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!~

Christmas Eve!~

Yesterday was Christmas Eve! And today is Christmas! Yay!~ But to be honest, I haven't really felt the "Christmas spirit" much here. Even with all the Christmas lights and incredibly weird English Christmas songs (I have never heard such weird Christmas songs in my life...so random), I definitely don't feel the same way I usually do around Christmas back home. I do miss the snow, making Christmas cookies, and decorating the tree. That being said, I did have a really nice Christmas Eve, and I look forward to opening presents with my host family tonight.

So anyway, yesterday I was craving pancakes; nothing else would satisfy me. Luckily, I knew of a pancake restaurant not too far from my apartment. I've never been to it before, but I've seen a super long line outside of the place so I knew it would be good. And since it was a Monday afternoon, I thought it would be pretty easy to get into. Boy was I wrong. At around 3:30 I went to go pick up my friend from Harajuku station so we could get pancakes for a late lunch. I immediately noticed an influx in couples the second I stepped outside. Which made sense since it was Christmas Eve. I was not anticipating, however, the mass amount of people that would be walking around Harajuku and Omotesando. Now Harajuku is a pretty popular place, and I've seen it get pretty crowded before. But I've never seen it this crowded. It was ridiculous. Usually it takes me five minutes or less to walk through Takeshita dori to get to the station. But since there were so many people, it took forever. Eventually I found my friend and we started off to the pancake place.

I was assuming that since it was like 4 in the afternoon, and since the restaurant was on a side street, that the pancake place would have space. Boy was I wrong again. There was a line but it wasn't that long so we decided to wait. We soon found out, however, that reservations had taken up most of the day, so the next available time to eat would be 7 at night. I was somewhat shocked that the place had that many reservations. Thankfully I knew of another pancake place which also had a line, but was not that crowded! We waited about 15 minutes or so, but it was well worth the wait (also I think they let us in a bit early since everyone got a ticket number and most people went to shop while they waited but we just stayed in the restaurant). I got a coconut latte and maple and nuts pancakes which came with delicious whipped cream and the best bacon I've ever had in my life. So. Good. But it was a bit too much sweetness overload, so I wasn't able to eat all of it.

So pretty!~

Seriously this was worth the overpriced price we payed.

After eating we decided to walk around the area we were in for a bit. I had never been to that part of Omotesando/Harajuku, so I was really glad we ended up there. There were so many awesome shops! I literally live in the best neighborhood. I'm so lucky/grateful. We found an amazing sticker shop which were all original designs from a guy there. I'm definitely going to go back and buy more stickers! After a bit of shopping, we decided to head to Tokyo Station where I had planned an event to see illuminations. I'm glad we left when we did. The main Omotesando street was ridiculously crowded. It reminded me of New Years instead of Christmas. I mean, I knew Christmas was a couple holiday, but no one warned us how crowded places would get! It made me realize I really do live in a huge metropolis...

So many people!!!

There were so many good stickers it was hard to pick one!

After getting out of the crazy crowd, we got to Tokyo Station and waited for everyone else (some fellow study abroad students and Japanese friends, 9 people in all) to show up. Sadly, the main illumination (a light show on the actually station building outside) was cancelled since the staff there was worried the crowd would get too big. But there was still some illuminations outside which we went to see. We all had a lot of fun! The illuminations were beautiful. There were a lot of couples there and people doing poses by the illuminations, so me and my one Japanese friend started to imitate their poses in our pictures. It was pretty hilarious. I'm glad people actually came to the event I planned (like two days before Christmas Eve haha). It's nice to have great friends here!~ After illuminations we went to get dinner and a couple of us went to karaoke afterwards (were we of course sang Christmas songs). Overall I had a wonderful Christmas Eve and made some great memories. I'm going to be so sad when I leave here...but for now I'll just enjoy my time here as much as possible (which I am)!~
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!~

Sort of like a candle!

Our two guys of the night being pretty cute.

One of my favorite photos of the night!

A huge Christmas tree!

My favorite illumination.

Karaoke!~