First Hangover and More!

So the hangover was actually yesterday. Today, I'm in a cafe and I'm going to have to warn you that this post will be long. You have no idea how nice it is to use the internet from your own machine. Once online, I was greeted by the news that my portfolio has grown nicely in the last week and the Yen is getting a little weaker. The guy next to me is just staring at the cover of his TOEFL prep book in disgust as I type away. AHA! Take that Japan!

Internet comes tomorrow, but even having it now for the three hours my battery will last is pure bliss. I'm not exactly sure how to recap the last few days, so let's see what I can remember and work backwards. I got up extra early this morning to change my address at the ward office and the bank. I did this extra early because the wait yesterday was about 2.5 hours long. I waited so long to do random things yesterday that I didn't have time to go buy a bicycle, but fortunately I had plenty of time today.

Suginami Green Cycle is a bicycle recycling outfit. The city takes all the bicycles that get abandoned at train stations, picks the nicest, and sends them to Suginami for retrofitting and retail. If you have confidence in your Japanese you can read about it here:

http://www.sjc.ne.jp/suginami/NEWS/SGI1026_HTM.htm

For some reason, there weren't actually that many bikes available. They're only open for a few days a month, but I think that most people pick a bike and then wait a week for it to get cleaned up. The only real problem with Suginami is that it's kinda far from Shinjuku. I had little difficulty riding the train there, but it's illegal to take bikes onto trains without a bike bag. I basically had to ride for over half an hour on a single-speed city bike to get back home.

Did I mention that today was hot, too? But, I made it, and now my cute bike is safely registered in our building's little bike lot.

Yesterday was basically super boring as I walked around town dehydrated and a little hungover, trying to register for classes and register my new address at various locations. The best part of yesterday was reading about how hungover everyone else was from the night before on facebook. We did go try out pachinko last night and figured out very little by the time it was over. Clearly, we need more practice. Kevin looked right at home, but that just means he's accustomed to losing money...the poor fool.

Apparently, Kevin and Los came at the right time, because this entire week is called Silver Week since there are two holidays (Monday is old person's day and Thursday...I dunno). We are scheduled to go to an all-you-can-drink place tonight, but I'm not sure if people are mentally prepared to go through that again.

Actually, Monday was pretty uneventful until about 8 pm. V stayed home while I took the children to Odaiba Island. I met up with Los and Kevin a little past noon, and although it only takes half an hour or so to get onto the man-made island, we didn't make it there until 3-ish. This is because we spent exactly an hour and twenty minutes (Kevin apparently timed it) trying to convince JR personnel not to call the police on Los. The moron picked up a train card that clearly had someone else's name written on it. Used it multiple times, ran out of money on it, then took it to the station office to tell them that he had to refill it. Forget that he didn't even have the foresight to have enough money on it to actually pay for the train, he basically turned himself in.

*Newsflash* Los and Kevin just called to let me know that they're going to Akihabara to go to a maid cafe. Pictures aren't allowed there either, but I regret not being there to take them anyway. Back to regular programming.

I ended talked to about four or five personnel at that station, who all just said, "I guess we have to call the police." Eventually, I persuaded them to just call the person the card belongs to. That guy said it was ok if we just paid the difference on the card. So, after all this, we went to the office to get this all on paper. Los was supposed to write an apologetic letter, but he sucks at being apologetic. No seriously, he is so bad at it. The guys at the train station were on a bit of a power-trip, but they really really wanted him to be sorry. Los super sucks at being sorry. Here's his apologetic face afterward.

The irony of his t-shirt... Anyway, Los is an asshole, so I was trying to convince these people that he doesn't have anyone else here and they're going to need to take my cell phone number to reach him. I couldn't get that through to this guy and had to call D. Unfortunately, I didn't explain the situation very adequately to her and she basically relived the whole thing on the phone.

I understood most of the conversation and it went something like, "If I used someone else's credit card in the U.S., I would have to go to jail. If I ate at a restaurant and didn't pay in the U.S., I would have to go to jail." The guy really wanted us to be sorry and clearly was biased against Americans, but D and I didn't do anything wrong! Also, did I mention that Los sucks at being sorry?

Eventually, the phone got passed to Los where D taught him how to say "gomenasai." We paid and then were trying to leave the station when the guy needed to check my card to make sure I had paid before exiting the station...

After this, Kevin bitched about being in the dark and waiting for an hour and twenty minutes and we finally made it to Odaiba Island. I had actually be looking forward to this for a while, because of a Sasuke replica in Muscle Park. It's too bad that I didn't consider how my shoulder wouldn't hold up, so I failed on the whole thing. Kevin and Los didn't do much better, but I don't think anyone was that humiliated. I redeemed myself a little bit on the ledge climb, but the whole thing was really really hard. I guess I'm not ninja material.

I didn't make that gap by the way.

The rest of Odaiba Island is mostly a bunch of shopping malls and an indoor amusement park. We did go to the Toyota exhibition station where they had a lot of futuristic stuff and cars on display. They have this really cool test drive section for their single-manned vehicle. Unfortunately, they were shutting down by the time we got there and I didn't get to try it.

We met up with four women for dinner: V, D, Miwa, and Izumi. Dinner was okonomiyake and monjayaki at Okame in Tsukishima. It was also really really good. We ended up ordering yakisoba because the table next to us were eating it; we also ended up ordering way too much beer. Everyone was already a little drunk and very happy by the time we started to head to Roppongi to find a bar.

Miwa and Izumi always seem to be jumping. That's when the rest of the night went downhill and we started to do shots. Kevin pushed his shot to V, who in her own words "took it like a man,"and was of course punished with more shots. That'll teach him not to man up.

Drinking

Drinking

Drinking

V and I made everybody run for the trains when we realized it was about 11:45. We figured out that D and Izumi made it back safely via facebook the next day (real responsible I know) and made sure that Los and Kevin made their connection at Shinjuku Station. Finally, we walked back to our apartment and passed out.

T-minus three hours until all you can drink in Shinjuku. Here's to not repeating our mistakes. Kanpai!