After my short walk down the road, I went to Shizuoka's Shiyakusho. There I wandered a little into the machi while waiting to meet up with Kazu, Kathy, and Nick. Of course, I made sure to stay near where we were meeting. Together, we looked at comics, looked the green recycling booths (think of something like 4-H), bought oden etc. The highlight of the afternoon for me was probably the Shizu-oden-man that I had. It was basically shoumai (or nikuman) with Oden inside it instead of the usual stuff. It was yummys. The highlight for Kathy was getting to make a little cutesy parfait phone strap thing. It looked like a lot of fun, and some of the little kids that were also making things were really good at it. I was surprised to note that the desert strap things looked more like something you would find in a store than find made by a child.
From there, we met up with Aoi after a short side trip into Village Vanguard in Parco. VV is basically a Spencer's Gifts gone Japan style. I bought stickers for my students and a A&W root beer for me. Once we met up with Aoi, we all went to Saizeriya and enjoyed the drink bar service while chatting for a while. I think I had Hamburg. Nick and Kazu had something that I cannot remember the name of it, but it was basically a pseudo-Italian dish with rice. It looked really good and apparently is considered the most popular item at Saizeriya. The funny thing about chatting, is that it is really fun, but there is nothing really to report that we “did.” Sorry. It was a blast though! Melon Soda rocks!
After Aoi went and headed home, Kazu took us to eat Udon. Sorry Kazu, I forgot the name of the place, but it was really good. I learned that Kama-age udon is udon that is still is sitting in the liquid in which it was cooked. I also think the tempura that I had there was really good. BTW, have you noticed that we seemed to spend the entire day eating? No complaints there. To borrow Kazu's words “it was a food tour of Shizuoka!”
Having insufficiently killed time by eating, we went to Sega World and chilled there for a long time. Kaze played his Tennis Game. Nick and I played Resident Evil Ex. Kazu and Nick played some shooting game “River something.” Eventually, we all did Purikura. Then Nick, Kazu and I beat it out on that one game... darn, sorry I don't remember the name, but it involved a lot of mini games and a lot of slapping three different colored round buttons. The funniest sight of the day was seeing a couple high school girls playing House of the Dead 2 (was it 2, or was it 4?).
Eventually, we met up with the larger Omaha group: Andy, Tom, Aya, Dai (I went and grabbed him from the station), Kumiko (she met up with us at the udon place), Takuma, Tomohide, and Misato. Did I miss anyone? Oh yeah, Brent was there too. We met up at Karaoke. Nothing much to report there, it was karaoke and it was fun!
The last event of the evening was basic hanging and chatting. Some of the group played ping pong though I guess. We even got some of the new Germans to join us and shoot the breeze. It was like some big International party for a short while there. People kept coming and going so much, I'm not sure if I got to chat sufficiently with anyone, but the experience definitely has made me want to head back to Shizuoka sometime soon.
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