Another Weekend!

So this past weekend was full of fun activities and a good variety. On Friday night, my buddy and I went to Chiba to meet up with a friend since he works close to Tokyo. He didn't get off work til close to 7pm, so it was better for all of us to meet halfway between Tokyo and Ohara otherwise it would have been pretty late by the time the friend from Tokyo would have gotten to Ohara. The night just consisted of walking around for a little bit, eating some dinner, and then hanging out at a pub before heading back down to Ohara. The friend was coming to Ohara because of one thing....THE BEACH!

Yes, beach season is almost over here...:( The beaches close when school starts here which is 9/1, so we all wanted to get some sun and ocean time before we would miss out and have to wait until next summer to go. So Saturday we spent the day at the beach. It was a fun time and we definitely got our fair share of sun, water, and sand. We decided that after the beach, we were going to head up to Togane to check out the city and visit some other JETs that live up there. It's a city about 30-40 minutes north of us by train. I had never been there and was looking forward to seeing what the city was like. My friend up there was dancing in the Matsuri festival up there, but we got up there a little too late to see him perform. But we did make it just in time for the fireworks! Which I love!

We spent some time going around and ended up at a darts bar. Apparently, it's a bar where they have exclusively dart machines. We went and it was a lot of fun. We played games of cricket...but my team lost by 16 points! We were dominating toward the end and one team merely shoved us out of the lead at the end! Arggghhh! Anyway, it was fun and we of course had to enjoy some karaoke afterward. We karaoke'd for 2 hrs and sang our hearts out to classics. What else would you do in Japan!?!?!

But the most interesting part of the night happened after Karaoke. We were walking home when all of a sudden we heard someone yell something at us. I was walking home with 3 other JETs and the man yelling at us was an electrician who was outside of his shop holding a bottle of shochu and a glass. There were 2 caucasians in the group, and the electrician wanted them to take shots of this drink. Now shochu is not a weak drink by any means, but my friends gladly took the drink offer although it seemed really sketchy at first! It started off as a drink. And then the electrician mentioned the name "Alex". There's an Alex that we all know from our orientation and he's known to be a funny and outgoing guy, so we wouldn't have been surprised if it was the same "Alex". Being very curious, I asked the electrician what Alex looked like and he said, "C'mon, I have pictures in my office. Come look and see if it's the same guy." Well, we were actually all very curious, so we figured why not. This guy was funny and seemed harmless. Plus, there were four of us and we were on a well lit street.

We got inside the office and there was the electrician's boss, sitting inside but was completely drunk! Haha, these two must have been sitting around for hours just drinking and having a good time at the obon matsuri. Well, we saw the pictures and it was definitely not the Alex that we were thinking of. Haha! Well, our curiousity stopped there because the electrician was the 3rd or 4th person to mention the name "Alex", so we just had to know. Well, the electrician continued to offer my friends drinks and to have our company since we were already inside. We figured we'd hang out since it'd be bad to just take drinks and then leave right away. The man obviously liked all of us because he kept 0pening the refrigerator and offering us things such as more drinks, and even pumpkins! Now, at first we had no idea what the "pumpkins" were, but apparently it's a Japanese type. Well, we couldn't refuse the offer so my friends now had some Japansese pumpkins. We hung out there for another 30-40 minutes, just talking about stuff, joking around, and having fun. It was fun and something that doesn't happen everyday! When in Rome!...or I guess, Japan!

Haha, so we finally got back to our friend's place pretty late....around 2:30am and got ready to crash. When all was said and done, I think we all finally went to sleep around 3:30am.

The next day, I had plans to meet up with a friend to do some site seeing and hang out in Tokyo. So I left for Tokyo in the morning and met up with my friend in Yoyogi. There, we went to the Meiji Jingu, which is a shrine which was created for Emperor Meiji who ruled from the 1880's thru 1910 or so. It was really neat and seeing the whole grounds was awesome. It covers many acres...I couldn't even guesstimate. But we were there for a few hours and walked through the area and then headed over to the park closeby. It's Yoyogi park and on Sunday afternoons, it is really full with people doing different acts such as dance, hula, drawing, juggling, yoyos, etc. You name it, and there were people out there doing something. There were also many people out lounging around or picnicking. It's kind of like Central Park in New York and also covers many many acres.

But overall, it was a fun weekend and had a good time! I'll keep you updated on what new adventures await! I'll be heading to Nagano this weekend with my dad, so I guess there will be more stories to tell when I get back!