Expo and Travels

This weekend was quite a busy one! I racked up a pretty big amount of miles on the trains, that's for sure. Friday night, I went out to an arcade in Kabuki-cho near Shinjuku Station. My Korean friend Su-hon brought me there, so it wasn't my thing to go to that part of town, we just ended up there. Oh well, we played some gameage and of course had a Yakuza or someone trying to get us to go into some sex place, but of course we refused and just kept moving. Saturday, I went with a couple friends to Makuhari Messe Convention Center, which is in southwestern Chiba City. We attended Japan's arcade expo there, and it rocked! My next post should have a picture gallery up of those pictures. We played all sorts of games and such that aren't out yet. All of Japan's insane crane and ufo-catcher games were free there. We played some team Half-Life 2 Arcade, which was interesting. I also was undefeated in Virtua Fighter 5, which was amazing, considering I was surrounded by Japanese... some of them being Otaku. Afterward, one friend and I took like 3 different trains throughout Chiba Prefecture, trying to get to my friend's house in Yachiyo. It was crazy, but we finally got there and played some Naruto on his Gamecube, then raided an arcade there. Afterward, I started panicking and caught the local train at 10:50pm, afraid I'd miss my train home. I ended up on the LAST one once I got on the Chuo Line in Ochanomizu. It was exactly a 2-hour train trip from his place in Yachiyo to Nishi-Kokubunji.

You'd think I'd be "trained" out by then, but I went and met up with another group of friends up in rural Saitama Prefecture north of Tokyo on Sunday. We played some Smash Brothers, MarioKart Double Dash, and a Pac-Man multiplayer game for a bit on the Gamecube. They went somewhere else, but I had to make my 2-hour or more trip back home so I could do homework and clean up and such around my place. I put some hours on those trains. It's a good thing I have a sweet metrocard that allows me to come from anywhere on the minimum fare, hehehe. The trip from Yachiyo should've cost me about Y2000, but it was only Y200. Hahaha. I have to go renew the card this week as well.

As far as plans for this week... Tomorrow, my Korean friend that lives just a couple stops away on the Chuo is meeting me after class for some pizza at Shakey's near here. The rest of the week is basic, until Saturday when we pull out for Aizu-Wakamatsu for the overnight trip into the mountains. That should be quite an experience, I think, and I'll take lots of pictures and probably have stories to tell. Unfortunately, though I technically was out and about all weekend, there's not much to tell, except that it all involved riding on trains, eating Japanese fast food(well... we also went to Wendy's once in Ikebukuro), and playing lots of games. I did rather enjoy playing the heck out of the taiko drum game with the DragonQuest VIII music on it. I think I may hit up the arcade for that game 'till I master those songs, hahaha. I'm going to go nuts if I go back to Baton Rouge to finish school and there aren't any arcades anywhere for me to go to... I don't remember any but the little Japanese one in the Mall of Louisiana, but it was quite small..

I'm starting to really tear up kanji in my studies. I suddenly have a love for them for some reason and want to know as many as possible. Maybe I'll even study Chinese one day just because their language is nothing but. Who knows... Anyway, I'm up to like, 600 or 700, I dunno. I have a long way to go though. I know a lot of characters, but some I may not know every reading and word they go in, so sometimes I'll see a sign and know the characters and can probably figure out what it means, but maybe don't know how to say it.. or the opposite sometimes. Well, I'm gonna go now so I can study more! I have lots of vocabulary that is hurting me for not knowing it, so I better get to it!