Catch up with my blog, that is. Here it is Tuesday and I have yet to update you all on how my weekend ended....

Sunday my plan was to get all my studying out of the way early in the day, and then go out exploring whenever I finished. Unfortunately I made the mistake of opening my porch door and realizing what a glorious day it was outside...needless to say, things got a little reversed. I decided to take a trip down to Akihabara [aah-key-hah-bar-ah] to see what all the fuss was about. The train station was in a more business/residential area than what I was looking for, so I started walking, half searching for some form of lunch. Oh, for those that don't know, Akihabara is the electronics/anime central for Japan.

I ended up at a foreigner friendly bar chain called 'The Hub' for lunch. No pictures of the food cause it was a simple cheeseburger with some awesome mashed potatoes. I don't know what they did to 'em, but the flavor was amazing. The important part of this portion of the story is that I don't have a watch and I didn't want to stay out all day, seeing as how I had studying to do still. Before I left I approached the counter and said "Sumimasen, ima nanji desu ka", which translated means "Excuse me, what time is it now?" And much to my excitement, the bartender replied "Nansanji desu". The exciting part is twofold here. The first being that he understood me enough to respond, and that I actually understood his response of 2:30!

Anyway, I ended up finding the main street and allowed my jaw to hit the floor as I came face-to-face with about a dozen anime/video game shops that all had more than five floors in each. Unfortunately, they're plastered with signs of cameras with slashes through them T-T. It was amazing [no, I didn't buy anything....yet....] However, at a lot of these places they have full-color anime flyers advertising one thing or another, and since my apartment has boring white walls, I ended up snagging as many different ones as I could find to give my room some flair.

I made it home by 4:30, and was working on my laundry when Perri found me, saying she had an errand to run to Shibuya. I ended up going with her, she got the errand done and we decided to hit Denny's for dinner. Yeah, I know 'Why go to a Denny's while in Japan?' They're completely different here. No 'Moon Over My Hammy' or 'Grand Slam'. Their menu caters to their population, and unfortunately I don't have pictures of the deliciousness there, either, because my camera batteries had died at this point and my spares were in my other bag...I had fries with cod roe sauce, an omelette with cheese served over some sort of seasoned rice with some sauce of sorts, and Perri and I split an unrolled crepe filled with strawberries and bananas for dessert. Soooooo goooooddd.......oishii!! [delicious].

From there we headed to a nearby cafe and plopped down with our study materials [she has the same professor for a different class and the material is somewhat the same].

Fast forward to today. I was on a mission to find a taiyaki stand....a mission that I somewhat failed. I found one online, and I went to the area it was supposed to be in [two stops down from the school, actually], and couldn't find it. However, I did find a grocery store that caters to foreigners with brands like Ragu, Lays and even Turkey Hill Eagles ice cream! I didn't buy anything there though, because the importing jacks up the prices too much [the ice cream was smaller than a pink and cost about the same as the 1/2 gallon you buy in the states]. It was nifty to see.

This is right across from a large, lovely park where I took some nature shots that'll be in with the pictures for this entry. They also had a Baskin Robbins xD.

OH! Someone tell Sam that if he were to come here he'd be able to survive, because while in Akihabara I found my first Japanese Burger King! [if you don't understand that last sentence, don't worry yourself over it]

Observations:
1. People on the train, especially businessmen, have no qualms about shoving people out of the way. This morning there was a girl [18-25 maybe] who was shorter than me. We stopped at a station and this tall [6'0" easily] guy shoved into her with the side of his arm hard enough that she stumbled back.

2. I don't know if I've mentioned this in a prior entry, but there is an enormous amount of blind people here, to the extent that I see no less than two a week. I think that'd be scary, to be blind in a city with so much traffic and sounds.