Maid cafe

We have been to a maid cafe three times now. It is great because it's another way to get drunk cheap and the maids are super cute and energetic!

The deal is 500¥ entry with one order of food per person per hour, and the drinks are 1800¥ for two hours. We went for Michael's birthday and unfortunately didn't book otherwise the maids would have sung happy birthday. They did give him free bunny ears though :)  We did Russian Roulette takoyaki twice which included one takoyaki ball with Wasabi. Hayden got it bothh times! He didn't seem to react to it much though.

Photos of staff are not allowed, but we did get photos of our food! Here is a curry that I got for dinner:

They decorate all the food all cute like this! And then they do a little song thing for it.

At the end of the night the maids perform a few songs and dances. They have so much energy! I would definitely recommend Maidreamin for a very Japanese experience. We know the one in Shibuya has a lot of staff that speak English so that is where we kept going. 

Tokyo Dark Castle

Since getting back to Tokyo we have been pretty busy so I haven't had time to write about it. A few things we have done are: LOTS of Coco's curry, 6 hours of karaoke twice, lots of time in Akihabara, way too much shopping, went to a maid cafe, and Tokyo Dark Castle.

Tokyo Dark Castle was a lot of fun! People were dressed up very cool and there was heaps of cool music! Tim and I went with Hiroko, who we met at a previous Tokyo Dark Castle about 5 years ago. Her friend DJ Uraguchi was djing and put a lot of cool music on.

There was also a band on called Cracks who reminded me right away of an Aussie band called Zombie Ghost Train as they were dressed like zombies from the 80s and had a cello. Their sound was sort of similar with the cello and all, but heavier.

Probably the best act though was the band that the organiser of TDC is in called Auto-Mod. They have an opera singer who wore this cape that looked like it might have been latex and cool devil horns. The opera singing made their sound a bit more unique and sounded really good! They also had a guy dressed all in latex who wasn't playing instruments or singing but dancing. That was entertaining.

There was also a strange part of the night when the lights all went dark to focus on a projection on the stage curtains. The music was slow and the projection was of David Bowie's face. Then it went to all these videos of WWII. I'm not sure how long it actually went for, maybe 5 minutes. Then it ended with David Bowie again and his birth - death years as * started playing a David Bowie cover and the curtains were raised. I dunno what David Bowie has to do with WWII. I guess it was just to get everyone to calm down and feel sad for a minute? It was really weird, Hiroko said they don't usually do something like that.

I'll write about some of the other stuff in upcoming posts. :)

Yuzawa

So after being in this cast I realized it might be easier ti wear a poncho rather than draping a jacket over my shoulder. In the morning I asked the hotel staff if they knew where i could buy one. One staff member named Mariko-san who spoke English very well called a few places to ask them. She said nowhere in Yuzawa does but there's a shopping center in the next town who does. I thought about getting the train there but decided against it, but she said she has a poncho I could borrow while I am here! Very nice of her.  Here is me in the poncho listening to David Bowie:

So a I accepted this and a bit later was handing my key in to wander around town and find something to take photos of,  they pointed out that it is not good weather for photos. It was very foggy so you could barely even see the mountains. However Mariko-san asked if I would come to the shops with her. She ended up driving me half an hour out of Yuzawa to the place in the next town that she mentioned earlier! She said she was doing other things there too although ended up just getting a bento from the grocery store. I did not end up buying a poncho as they were really short so wouldn't really be so suitable but did buy a little hat thing with bear ears.

That night we had dinner at a restaurant across from the train station. I'm not sure of the name of it since it was in Japanese but most of the menu was vegetarian, locally grown, and healthy, and the guy who served us wad really nice and told us what was in all our meals. It was a nice experience. It was also very funny because Jake made a joke about himself being fat and this guy agreed with him and they kept joking about it!  ^.^ Jake was going on about how cool he was when we left so he obviously didn't mind.


The next day was much nicer weather! I spent the day taking lots of photos around town! Here are a couple:

On day 6 of Yuzawa it was very clear weather so I went back to Kogen with Tim, Jake and Hayden to take some mountain-top photos! This was a very fun day. Luckily for me the snow stopped so I could bring the camera out. This might not have been so lucky for the people skiing and boarding but they said that they had a good day!

Overall, even though i fractured a wrist and couldn't skii much this trip, Yuzawa was a lot of fun! We had a lot of yummy Japanese food from very traditional style restaurants, I got a bunch if cool photos, lots of fun all around.

Japan 2016 so far

I arrived in Japan with my boyfriend, and 4 friends. I am now currently writing this entry while sitting in the hotel lobby with a fractured wrist! It's a shame but しかたがない (it can't be helped). On our first day here we went straight to Shibuya. We left our luggage in lockers then got Cocos curry!

It was so delicious! I'm sure we will eat it a lot. After shopping for snow gear we found a Manga cafe to stay at for the night.

It was cheap and there was free slushies so it was good!

Early the next morning we went to Yuzawa. We left our stuff at Hotel Sporea and went to skii and snow board at Yuzawa Kogen. I had not been skiing in a couple of years so at first I wasn't sure at all what I was doing but picked it up again pretty quick! I still was not very fast but it was still lots of fun!

That night we had dinner at a yummy Japanese style dinner recommended by the Hotel staff who drove us there.

I had udon noodles which were delicious but so filling I couldn't finish them!

We were hoping to go to Swing Bar after this but they were closed. We did find a place where you get to shoot corks out of a rifle and get prizes! This was really fun especially because the owner encouraged us to shoot 'Japanese style' which is when you lean right over the counter to get close to the target. I picked up a few knick knack gifts here.

Next day we went skiing at Ishayuki (something like that) and we went SO HIGH UP. It was so cloudy, we couldn't see shit. From the summit you could go down to GALA mountains if you want. If course then you couldn't get back up though. So we started going down this mountain.

I really didn't get far before my first fall. It was way too steep. I struggled to get my ski back on but eventually wad ready to go again. Again it was way too fast. I totally lost control and couldn't slow down. I knew I was gonna fall but couldn't even control that. Ended up kind up tumbling over my wrist and it was VERY SORE. It hurt to try to do anything with it but I didn't realize it was that bad. I thought the cold was probably making it seem worse than it was, so I let my partner go ahead and arranged to meet him at a restaurant, then began walking down.

My wrist was still hurting and I was crying due to the pain, so a couple of Japanese people stopped and told me to wait while they went to get first aid.

I was taken to a doctor nearby who ended up taking 6 xrays in total, and two attempts before getting my wrist snapped back into the right place. Too bad I didn't get travel insurance! The cost was pretty good though.

 So now I'll be spending a lot more time taking photos of stuff than I thought because I certainly won't be rushing everywhere!  I'll just have to relax way more now.  :P  I am glad that it was my left wrist rather than my right, and a wrist rather than a foot :)

We did get to go to Swing Bar the next night so that was cool! I cannot drink alcohol for now but they had games available. The owner remembered us a bit from 2 years ago too!