I'd like to start off by saying that I must have jinxed myself regarding the weather --- there is now about 3" of snow on the ground! When I got home tonight the first thing I said to my host family was ”オハイよ州みたいよ" which translates into something along the lines of "this is just like Ohio." They got a kick out of that and laughed.

I spent most of the day in Shibuya with my friends Cliff, Chinami, and Yuka. Cliff is a study abroad student here at TUJ, and also has aspirations to be an investment banker after he graduates. Chinami and Yuka both attend Musashi University in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Cliff and I met them through Temple's culture exchange program; and we figured going and hanging out in Shibuya would be a good way to get to know each other.

First, a bit about Shibuya. This is the place to be if you are into fashion, nightlife, or Japan's youth culture. Shibuya station is just as huge as Tokyo Station, and sees something like 3 million people per day. The streets are lined with fashionable places to shop, karaoke buildings, and places to eat. It's super lively, and a ton of fun. It can also get expensive if you aren't careful. Now, on to my adventure...

We started out by going to this 6 story "game" building. One floor was similar to an arcade, the next floor was a bowling alley, then a billiards floor, etc.. We played 2 games of pool first: The teams were Chinami and myself vs. Cliff and Yuka. Neither Chinami or Yuka had played pool before, so Cliff and I had to use our awesome (read: poor) Japanese to explain the rules. I have a feeling that something around 80% of communication is from body language may have played a part in this, but we managed to finally get all the rules explained and taught them how to use the pool que. By some stroke of luck, Chinami and I managed to win both games (she played better than me the second game, actually haha) - but if you know me, you know I'm terrible at any kind of pool other than speed pool (Kev and Conor - I'm not sure they would enjoy speed pool here. It is way too rowdy).

We then headed downstairs to bowl. The bowling alley was pretty cool; it was light by black lights, and had glow in the dark wallpaper, and lights all over the place. It reminded me of a birthday party I had way back in the past. We switched up the teams for bowling, so it was Yuka and myself vs. Cliff and Chinami. I am glad that I decided to go into finance instead of professional bowling, because I would be one poor bowler! My score was the highest at 96, then Chinami, Cliff, and Yuka. All the scores were actually in the 90s, which to me is pretty damn good - until you compare those scores with the 150+s grandma puts up... shyoganai ne (It can't be helped). Bowling was a ton of fun though - and cheap!

After bowling we decided to go get something eat. Cliff knew about a certain style of Japanese resturaunt, and after about 5 minutes we figured out that it is an ikezaya. So we went to the nearest one to eat. Basically at an ikezaya (it might be ikizaya, I forget) you get your own little room, and have a little lcd screen where you can order food from, and they bring it out for you. The particular one we went to was 290yen for everything (around $3). The best way to describe how the food comes out is family style. They just bring a plate of what ever your ordered, and everyone shares. We bought kimchi (Korean dish - don't ask what it's made out of), Sushi, Salad, Tamago (egg), chicken, and some other stuff.

The topic of conversation was pretty random. It is a very unique experience talking with people your own age in a foreign language, and have them speak to you in your native language. Basically Cliff and I would say stuff in Japanese, and they would respond in English. You definitely start to appreciate being able to express the same idea in multiple ways though. We ended up talking about movies, and in order to figure out movie we were talking about we had to describe what happened in the movie. One of the funnier examples was probably the explanation & acting out of various horror movies. I also mentioned that I had seen the move "Black Rain" by Kurosawa, which is "kuroi ame" in Japanese - which is what I said. For some reason that I still don't know this was hilarious to Chinami and Yuka. They said it was a funny combination of words - but it makes me wonder!

Following dinner, we went to karaoke... I was half-way skeptical about it since I can't sing to save my life, but it ended up being really fun. It was really funny because we kept trying to pick songs everyone else would know, however the other people ended up not knowing the songs. We managed to find some common ground with Michael Jackson and the Beatles. I think one of the funniest songs we sang was Thriller, since it was accompanied by a few of the dance moves. The most difficult was definitely ABC by the Jackson 5 -- we all kind of gave up on it about half way through.

The karaoke room was probably 12'x15, and the outer wall was lined with booth-style seating, and then there was a table in the middle for drinks and the mics. In the front of the room is the tv where the lyrics are displayed (it was like a 40" LCD - legit). There was also a phone so you could order stuff, and two tablet-pc esq things where you chose the songs from. Along with my bowling career, I will forgo singing - however karaoke is a lot of fun.

The entire day which started at around 2 and ended at 10ish cost only $30, which is not bad considering the variety and amount of things we did.

I will post pictures tomorrow, but for now I'm going to go get some much needed sleep!