Day 4: Karaoke

Today we were shown some interesting thrift shops in the nearby area around Chris' apt. The first place was SUPER cheap! it was called sogo seigatsukan and the second place was a little more in cost but had good quality stuff. It was called Hard Off. Afterwards we went to a community cafeteria called Higashi-yamato shokudo. It made me think of a japanese fresh choice sort of. Then we headed to the grocery store and then home to take a load off. A little while later we got a call from chris' girlfriend and she invited us to go to karaoke with her. We accepted and then I took an hour nap since I was feeling funny after dinner. The weather here in japan right now is very humid and thus can be not so nice on the organs. However, despite this I was determined not to spoil everyone's plans and fun, so I got up and went. We stopped into a 7-11 and I got what I thought was gum for my nausea (it was candy..good candy..but candy..) after meeting up with chris' girlfriend, I started to feel a bit better and we arrived shortly after at the karaoke place called Shilax. This place was HUGE! There were balloons everywhere and some all-you-can-drink soda/tea/coffee/corn soup(yes..) fountains outside the rooms. It cost $18 roughly/person for unlimited time. We paid and then they pointed us to our room. It was cozy, but unfortunately the AC was broken.. so they moved us to another room around the corner which was much bigger. You could probably fit 12+ people in there! It smelled like tobacco but we didn't mind since it was so big. So after singing many decent songs and me trying to sing some Korean songs to try and impress chris' girlfriend we ordered some much needed food. I ordered a basket of fries for James and I with ketchup and mayo dips, and chris' girlfriend ordered some kind of spring roll. It was おいしい(tasty). Then when it was time to go home at about 5am, we said goodbye to chris' girlfriend and went to another 7-11 for あさごはん(breakfast). When we cameout we experienced some weird movement. At first Chris thought it was the train coming, but I quickly said, "trains don't make buildings move dude..." So we ran out and waited for it to stop. It lasted about seconds and I supposed it was a 3-4 and james said it was a 6-7 on the richter scale. (we later found out james was right, and it was about a 6.8-7.1) Being on the train home at such an early time, was very strange. We had all lost but a miniscule amount of vocabulary and kept speaking non-sense due to fatigue. We saw our first sunrise here and let me tell you, it was the most beautiful one I have seen in my life.. I don't know if it was because of being in another country, fatigue, or the fact that it was starting it's rotation around the earth from the beginning point...but it was definitely something NEW.