While back in America, I wanted to meet up with my friends and see as many people as I could. So I got in touch with some of my buddies from college and we decided to meet up in Chicago. I rode the train down on Saturday and met up with my friends by lunchtime.
Chicago is known as being the "Windy City" and it sure didn't fail to hold its title. It was windy, cold, and not the best weather...but at least it didn't rain or snow! This would have just added to the cold feeling already! So we met up and walked around for a little bit. After working up an appetite, we wanted to eat some good food from Chicago...which only means Deep Dish Chicago Pizza!!! So we went to the restaurant around 2pm and chowed down our food.
We had already decided that we wanted to eat sushi for dinner as well so with that in mind, we were thinking we should go eat at around 7:30-8pm to let the pizza settle awhile. So we walked around Michigan Ave. and did some window shopping. I didn't buy anything because I didn't want to add any more weight/stuff to my already full luggage that I will be taking back to Japan with me. So I mainly browsed and looked at stuff. My friends had bought a couple things here or there but nothing too major. Walking around the stores and to the different places just made me realize how different the culture in Japan and the US are. In Japan, they welcome you at every single store with a phrase, "Irashaimase" meaning "Welcome!" However, in America, they don't greet you with that same phrase or any other common phrase as well. In Japan, once any person steps through that door, you can be sure that every single staff in the store will yell out the phrase. As well, when you leave even without having bought anything, they all chant "Arigato gozaimashitta!" which means thank you. Although it's not a big difference, you really notice it once you've spent a lot of time abroad as I have thus far.
Anyway, we continued on and then decided to finally head to the sushi restaurant for dinner. My friend had been there before and recommended. It's a sushi restaurant in Lincoln Park and is all you can eat for only 18 bucks. I love sushi, so I definitely did not argue with this. When we got closer to the restaurant, my other buddy and I looked at each other and were thinking the same thing...the place/area seemed familiar....like we had been there before. In fact, we had been! Almost a year ago, I had met up with my other buddy to go eat somewhere and we wound up at that restaurant...the same one that we had gone to this time! We just didn't recognize it by name! Haha!! Well, no arguments here as we had enjoyed the sushi last time, so we continued on in. After ordering a number of rolls, our dishes came out and we ate to our hearts' content...again! Today is a feast day! Deep dish pizza....sushi...it never ends! Well, after finishing we walked around a little more and stopped by a bar in a hotel to hang out and let the food settle. We were waiting for some bowling lanes to open up since they were extremely full. We had to wait for about an hour or 2 until a lane would open up for us.
By this time, though, we were all exhausted. It was nearly midnight when we started to bowl, but we got through it. We were starting our 2nd game when we noticed that we were bowling but our bowling balls were not coming back. We called the service people and we ended up waiting for nearly 30 minutes...a bowling pin had gotten stuck in the return gutter and so that's why our balls were not coming back! Well, we were all so tired that we didn't even bother with finishing the 2nd game....we just paid for the 1 game and headed back to get some sleep.
The next day(Sunday), we headed to Chinatown to eat some good 'ol dim sum for lunch. We ended up going to a restaurant called "Three Happiness" which is a restaurant that my family and I always used to go to while I was growing up! It brought back memories! Haha. My family used to make monthly big trips to Chicago as that was the best place to buy fresh and larger quantities of asian groceries. They have a large population of asians in Chicago, so they naturally also have better grocery stores to service those needs. After finishing lunch, I hopped on a train back to Milwaukee and that concluded my weekend in Chicago. It was great to see my friends and I hope to see them all again when they come visit in Japan!
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