Mostly chilled with Kathy and Nick today. We ate together at Micky D's and then Nick and I hoofed (meaning: “we went”) it to Yamada Denki and Kanteidan. Man, I wish there was a Kanteidan in Hiroshima. There is a Yamada denki, but there isn't a Kanteidan. Kanteidan, for those of you who don't know, is basically a Sol's Jewelry and Loan but designed for gamers. They have a large selection of video games, movies, music, manga, cards, figurines, and some other stuff. Besides, our fairly geeky chit-chatting about video games and related paraphernalia, we ate at Matsuya. Then right after we got our food, we got word from Kathy to meet up with her. After scarfing our food quickly, we met up with Kathy.
We ran into Kathy at the Train station, and while we were catching up with here, Erin and Catriona (sp?) found us. Together we went back to get my stuff. Meanwhile, we retrieved the new french guy in Shizuoka... (sorry, I can't remember his name... he's fairly soft spoken right now because he has little ability in either English or Japanese.) Somewhere along their walk home, Kathy and co did Purikura. Meanwhile Nick discovered the electronic dictionary that he had purchased was missing the main part: the denshi jisho. While he was going to get that fixed I waited for Kathy and crew to show up.
After some logistical finagling, we all met up at the Eki and chose to eat at Hanamaru Udon. It is to the South of the Train station and really cheap. I think that most of us had Kitsune Udon, I'm not sure how many of us, but I can tell you it was good. Kitsune udon, for those of you who don't know, is udon with tofu that has been seasoned and lightly fried. It offsets the subtle flavor of udon nicely.
After eating, we returned to the Eki where Kumiko and Misato showed up to see me off. Saying my farewells, we did the whole repetitive stop and wave type of farewell. Not a couple minutes later, I boarded my train and headed for a layover in Nagoya.
Currently, going from the Mark Twain quote of earlier, I have no regrets. I thank you all for a wonderful time. I will be back, but I'm not sure again when exactly. Please come visit me! That's all.
Side Story: Somewhere in all of this, I had to determine my reserved seat for the Shinkansen. While I was in line, I saw two things. The first was a boy wearing a really cool shirt. It looked a little like a baseball shirt, but the writing was Stich Experiment 626, and the front was cool. I startled him by asking him where he bought it. Apparently, you can find cool Stitch shirts in Shimomura in Shizuoka. The second thing I saw was a little girl with a clip in her hair that read I ♥ CL. Yes, I think her mom is a fan of 2NE1. What do you think?
Souvenir Listing
S1: I bought a stitch phone strap thing. He is chewing on a mini Mt. Fuji.
S2: I bought Abekawa mochi for my office. Omiyage!
S3: I bought all 18 volumes of X. Yes, Manga. Yes, only 1000 en (aka 10 dollars). The set was specially made for me by the girl who is in charge of the manga section at Kanteidan. Heh, I love using Japanese to communicate but was still really surprised at her response when she started making a set. Before that, I could only find sets that had volumes 1-8 or 1-10, and I was really hoping to purchase all 18 of them. Ongaeshi shitai... >_<
S4: 100en Umbrella, and I've nearly lost it three times already.
S5: Purikura taken with Kathy, Nick, Kazu and Kumi.
S6: Stickers for my students purchased at Village Vanguard: Three leaf clover sheet, pigs with flags sheet, and a butterflies sheet.
Approximate writing time for these blog entries: two hours.
I hate spell check. It has no clue what do with all of my Japanese words.... it wants to change Manga to Mange? Seriously? Can you imagine the sentence, I bought X mange?.. .. sickening.
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