Day 5

Here is an example of a standard breakfast for Mia and I. Jam + bread + fruit + drink (maybe + yummy sweet bread). And vitamins.

Ani has been carefully documenting all the flowers of Japan.... She has a flower art journal where she’s been drawing flowers when she can, and when she can’t she snaps pictures for later reference. There are some beautiful flowers around here.

Here is the koi pond on campus, and the koi (video, upload). 

Ooh, we found the traditional toilets. While most of the toilets are quite nice, and they have bidet most everywhere, a few more rural areas don’t offer those conveniences....

OK, really Day 5 now. Day 5 was lots of study and homework and all that, but then there was some excitement — we went to karaoke!!! For the first time ever. Kazu-san, Serina-san, and Nana-san took most of the U students. We were also joined by one Japanese and one American friend of the IBU students. 

Japanese love karaoke, and it’s easy to see why. Before 7, it’s 100¥ a half hour per person, and you get free drinks (soda, ice tea, ice coffee), a nice area, and fancy karaoke equipment. 

Let me explain the process.

First, you find the song with this device, and enter it into the cue.

Then you sit back and wait until your song comes up, or keep entering songs to the cue, at which point you sing.

We sang. Needless to say we were wonderful. .. .. .. 

It was a lot of fun to sing songs in Japanese. They also had a host of American music, which most of the American student group went for. Kazu-san sang a couple American songs, he was awesome, and Serina-san has a beautiful voice. Everyone seemed to have fun. We did, immensely, even if half the time we found ourselves forgetting the tune :)

 (see what we really sounded like... or rather me uhoh - upload video)

After 4 hours, we were getting a little tired, so Mia, Ani, and I decided to go walk around Fujidera station. Skye came with us, and we hung out for the rest of the evening. First we went to the giant Aeon mall, where we’d gone before, and explored it from floor 5 down. Except that there didn’t seem to be a floor 4 (4, pronounced shi, is considered unlucky because shi is also how the kanji for death 死 is read). 

Most of the food places everywhere display models of their food. Say yum.

We found a place with kimono. Expensive kimono. Pretty kimono.

I love looking at signs and ads. They smile at you.

Say eew.

The mall had a lot of food and clothing. But different food and clothing. After exploring, we left, and passed by a food stand (we keep passing it by and watching it go by), where we finally decided to try tacoyaki! Taco does not mean corn thing. Taco means octopus. Osaka is famous for its tacoyaki, which is a batter with a piece of octopus and some sauce inside. See.

Ani didn’t like it AT ALL, Skye liked it pretty well, and I thought it was ok. Mia, of course, didn’t bother to try any.

Then we went to try Coco Curry, which Tin (who went on this program last year) said was really good. It was good. You eat it with a spoon.

After that we decided to walk home instead of take the bus, and it was a great walk. We passed by some sort of local shrine:

So we did karaoke, tried melon soda, tacoyaki, and curry, and made it home on foot from Fujidera-eki, all in one day. WOW!