Date Night Downtown

Wanting some quality time together having fun and not worrying about school work, language class work, or house work, Kris and I headed downtown on Sunday for a fun date day.  We had a blast -- as we usually do when we are spending time together.

Since it was raining, we couldn't start our date day with picnicking in the park, as we'd originally planned; so we made fried rice at home and then headed downtown.  We strolled through the Ichibancho, a covered mall that is 2 km long.  I bought tea and made the whole transaction using only Japanese -- it was very exciting, even though it was only 3 sentences! We also found some interesting things on our stroll.

wtf?

Many girls were wearing little-bo-peep type dresses like this one

Yes, actual sign to an actual clothing shop...and no, it wasn't "one of those kind" of clothing shops, either!

We stumbled upon a place called "Funky Time" that had a picture of a robot on it's logo so we decided to check it out.  We thought it'd be a cool gadget place.  Wrong.  It was a place for nerds...and my sister would have loved it lol.  It is a manga/video game/anime library.  You go there to watch dvds, read manga, or play video games that are stocked there.  You pay for the time that you are there.  It would be okay, except that it is SO QUIET.  Eerie quite.  You could hear a pin drop a mile away kind of quiet.

Vending machine at the manga library -- it sells hot foods!  The Japanese are all about these vending machines!

Our goal was to find a Karaoke place with a drink bar (unlimited soft drinks) with air conditioning (most places don't have central air) that didn't smell like urinal cakes when you turn it on (like the Karaoke place close to our apartment).  The 4th place we looked at had exactly what we wanted at a really cheap price (less than $4 per hour).  The best part was that the drink bar had ice cream and slushies too!!!!  And you can't find slushies very easily in Japan!  There was also a chocolate fondue fountain that you could buy marshmallows for from a vending machine.  But I soon found out that if you put your cup full of ice cream under the chocolate fountain, you get a hot fudge topping -- glorious!

In case you missed my earlier posts, karaoke in Japan is very different from the United States.  In Japan, you go to a Karaoke place that has several rooms.  You pay to rent the room for however long you want (we went for 2 hours), and then you sing karaoke in that room with only the people who are with you.  I like it much better here, because I can sing as loud and off key and as silly as I want and don't have to worry about strangers judging me. 

Kris and I had a blast singing together.  We are such a good match :-)  When the front desk called to give us a five minute warning, we couldn't believe the time had flown by so quickly!

After karaoke, we went out to eat at a diner-type place called Royal Host.  It is kind of like a Denny's, but the food is Japanese-attempt-at-American-food, and not quite the same.  They also had a drink bar, which Kris could not resist.  Many restaurants that serve American-type food have these and they are pretty sweet.  They have a whole assortment of soft drinks, and espresso machine, and a variety of loose leaf teas.  Take note, American restaurants - Japan is way better than you in this department!

Serve-yourself drink bar at Royal Host.  Look at the variety!