Day 17 - Harajuku & Izakaya

Today Clinton & I decided to tag along with Joy to meet her friend Hisami from Hawaii. Once we met in Harajuku, we decided to do some shopping around. Boy was that a costly mistake -- we guys ended up standing around everywhere waiting for the girls as though we were the Kareshi (boyfriends).

Some cool places we did go to was a store called "Bape" or otherwise known as "Bathing Ape" which is basically a designer brand here in Japan. And designer brand it was, costing 7,800yen a shirt. It was ridiculously overpriced, so I turned around and walked out the door. When walking down the main road of Harajuku, Hisami found a place she knew best - Pirriko (Picture Company?). In any case, it was one of those stores that had nothing but picture-machines where you can customize your pictures. I wasn't used to anything more than taking about two snapshots in a little booth before I came to this place. Once we walked inside, all we saw was pink & sparkles flowing through the store as though it had come to life.

So the four of us took some pictures and frankly it was pretty fun. For a dollar each we all got to experience something different than what we get back home. Afterward, we were in the mood for some food so we decided to get crepes, the best dang crepe I have ever eaten. I thought it was supposed to be flavored to my choice, but instead they put the actual items inside the crepe. What I had was a chocolate, strawberry, ice cream, cheesecake, whip cream crepe. Yes, yes I did - and all for just 450yen. The best 450yen I have spent on dessert yet this trip.

Tonight after some good hearty food from a place no further than 30feet away from our apartment, we all decided to go drinking again. Yes, again - I'll be doing much of it this trip I'm sure. So a bunch of us went to the grocery store to pick up some sake or so-chu and headed off to Kidae's room where we made so much noise drinking & laughing, that when Matt was trying to enter the apartment complex, an old woman approached him and started yelling at him about the noise coming from this 3rd floor apartment.

After hearing the bad news we decided to take the trouble to the 280yen Izakaya to finish up. It was nothing more than the usual tonight, except maybe Bob teaching one of the Korean girls all the swear words in English. And this is the same Korean girl with an impeccable capacity for memorizing words. So we ought to figure she's going to be repeating a lot of those words throughout the next 8 weeks. Thanks a lot Bob, haha.

Once we were all done drinking and eating it up, we decided to head home. And so here I am typing this blog and I am 2 so-chu's, 3 shots of sake, a giant glass of beer, and a mango calpis sour later. Really I'm glad I live just minutes away from the Izakaya, otherwise I could & would not be doing this on a regular basis.