We looked around for a place to eat, so we all headed to the Yodobashi-Umeda building . To think about it this is my first time in a Japanese mall/department store. We passed through Yodobashi Camera, a major electronic’s store, which was super busy and super noisy. There was a lady in one area of the store with a microphone promoting cameras. The place we ate at was an okonomiyaki franchise restaurant called Fugetsu. Okonomiyaki is sometimes called “Japanese pizza”, but I consider it more of a cabbage pancake, and you can add whatever you like (hence the 「好み」”konomi” in the name) I actually tried okonomiyaki once before at Mitsuwa, but I was so excited cause it’d be my first time trying okonomiyaki in Japan ^_^ A waitress turns on the grill to let it warm up, and brings over the ingredients in a bowl. She combines the cabbage, egg, mix in the bowl and pours over the grill and bunches it together. After letting it grill for a while, you flip it again and wait, then after the sides are pretty much browned, it’s ready to eat, by adding the okonomiyaki sauce, bonito fish flakes, aonori, and mayonnaise. It was really good ^^ good comfort food I think. After we hung out a while played Tetris DS, we had to go to the register to pay (most sit-down restaurants in Japan seem to be like this). Also, they don’t tip in Japan. We wanted to look around some more and Risa suggested we check out the Jump Shop, a store dedicated Shounen Jump merchandise. This is a very dangerous place for me to be in I thought ^^;;

We were gonna do karaoke, but we had to stop by the train station so that Fernando could buy his bus ticket. That was my first time being at a JR station. I took a pic of the “Mountainous Folklore” clothing shop name in hopes of starting my Engrish collection (Japan-ified strange English), when Fernando mentioned “the Engrish to end all Engrish”.

We all follow Risa to another building called “DD House” which had a lot of restaurants and entertainment. The karaoke place, called Karaoke Zacc had a bar/lounge near the entrance, and as I suspect the private rooms along the hallway. When you walk through the hallway, you can hear the loud midi accompaniment coming from the rooms. The room was pretty big. There were oshibori towels on the table with the microphones, tambourines, and a drink menu. You can choose a drink, with a lot of drinks to choose from. I expected to find a couple big binder song lists there, but they used a touch screen electronic search system! Yay for technology advanced Japan @_@ Just type in the artist, name, etc. I searched Utada Hikaru, and ended up with 13 pages worth (probably every song) which made me cry happy tears T__T Out of curiosity, I searched Caramell Dansen, and IT WAS THERE! (Caramell Dansen is a Swedish dance song used in a popular Japanese meme of two ero-game chibi characters doing a simple dance) It was the biggest WTF moment of the day for me.

Fernando and Ryan sang Green Day’s “American Idiot”,…I guess that would be the song to sing in Japan =X Risa sang the “Hare Hare Yukai” and “Motteke Sailor Fuku” theme songs and performed the dances for them, she got awesome skills =) I sang Gackt’s “Returner Yami no Shuuen”, and whatever other J-pop song not available at the Korean karaoke places in Convoy San Diego. It was kind of amusing when a waiter came in to refill drinks while Fernando and Ryan were rocking out to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Of course we recorded our performances but of course it’s not all for public viewing =P

It was already time to take off, and one thing to keep in mind in Japan is that the trains shutdown at night (usually around midnight on weekdays), so if you were to go out to a club or something you’d have to stay out all night. So the challenge is, can Ryan and I find our way back? We took the train back to Tennouji station and had to figure out which train. According to Christina, I had to make sure to take the train heading toward Kawachi-Nagano (since the line Y splits at one of the stations). Ryan and I tried to figure out how much to pay for the ticket and where to go, a girl passed by and tried to help us out in English. She was trying to hurry us through the ticket gates though, and found out later that it was because we were about to miss our train. We didn’t make that train on time though. And among the 5 or so platforms, one of the signs said Kawachi-Nagano, but changed into something else. That was probably the train that just took off =( I was hoping that was not the last train, and possibly we could take a different train? So we ask around and asked 2 young guys we were trying to get to Kishi station. Turned out they were heading to Tondabayashi station, the station just past Kishi (God is awesome!). We just had to wait another 15 minutes for that train. We had a small chat with them, and they were a couple international business students from another university in the area. Ryan and I got off Kishi station and walked back home. What an experience! which Ryan and I high five’d, excited to share the story with Hisano-san later.

We had a lot of first experiences that day. We were able to go and come back through working together and through the kindness of the people there.

Flickr Set - Umeda - Mexican Embassy Fiesta