Spring Break Part 4: Sushi, Shopping, and Spocha

  

We spent the 22nd through the 25th in Iwata and Hamamatsu. I had to move to my new apartment on the 23rd and then take care of paperwork stuff on the 24th.

The above picture is what I had for breakfast on the 22nd. It was sakura peach tea and corn bread. It obviously wasn't cornbread like in America. It was bread with whole pieces of corn it it. The tea wasn't great but I enjoyed the bread.

For lunch we went to Kappa Sushi, which is a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. A conveyor belt sends sushi around the restaurant and you take what you want and the number of plates is added up at the end before you pay. There is also a screen where you can order exactly what you want and a cute train brings it to your table!

We were there at a busy time and plenty of things that I liked came around and I didn't have to use the screen. I don't remember all that I had, but I know I did have tamago (egg) sushi and wasabi eggplant sushi. I don't like the kinds with big slices of raw fish on them but they had several kinds without fish. Oh, and I also had a slice of chocolate cake.

Then we spent the rest of the afternoon at Ichino Aeon mall in Hamamatsu. That evening we went to Tsutaya and looked at their huge selection of rental DVDs and also spent a lot of time in the magazine section. Lauren rented a few things so that she would have stuff to watch the next day while I moved.

When we got back to my apartment we took a few pictures because I had to start packing up my car. I needed a few final pictures in my apartment!

At Tsutaya we saw a magazine with a hilariously horrible photo shoot of one of the members of Arashi. I was imitating one of those photos in this next picture.

Seriously. It was him barefoot sitting with a blanket over him. What?

Moving day was really long and boring. It took four trips back and forth between my old and new apartment! I do have a lot of stuff, but my car is also really small and pretty much has no trunk space. Just one big thing like a futon pretty much took up most of the space. Also, I didn't have many boxes so I had to unpack stuff at my new apartment (well, dump things out onto the floor) and then pack up stuff at my old apartment. So moving took longer than I expected.

Jonathan was helping me move and we went to an Indian restaurant at the mall next to my new apartment for lunch. That was a nice break.

Once everything was moved, I wanted to do something relaxing and fun so Lauren and I went to karaoke. It wasn't as cool as the Big Bang room of course, but it was still fun! :)

 

On the 24th I had to take care of paperwork. I had to do some moving in certificate at the city office (or something like that) and change my address and set up automatic bill payments at the post office. I didn't know what I was doing ahead of time (I had a translator/helper from Interac doing most of the work) and had no idea how long it would take, but luckily I was done by noon. So Lauren and I spent the afternoon shopping. We first went back to Ichino because Lauren wanted to eat at my favorite ramen place there.

After that we went to LaLaport and spent quite a bit of time there. Then we met up with Jonathan and went to Round One to do spocha.

I had never looked in their manga section before and it was really impressive! They had tons of manga!

I grabbed a random one and pretended to read it in one of the massage chairs for this picture.

Lauren beat both Jonathan and I at archery! She got three arrows on the target! I think Jonathan and I both got two.

Lauren and I pretended like were characters in the Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball video game. Lol.

I rode the mechanical bull for the first time! It seemed kind of scary, but falling off was kind of fun actually because it was super soft and squishy! Oh and it was really good exercise trying to stay on!

Lauren and I had planned on going to Kyoto on the 25th, coming back to Hamamatsu on the 26th, and then going to Tokyo on the 27th. But we decided that that was a lot of traveling and to save money and have more time in Tokyo, we canceled our hotel in Kyoto and booked a hotel in Tokyo on the 26th. It's kind of funny because our original plan when Lauren was thinking about coming to Japan was to be in Tokyo, go to my apartment for moving, and then go back to Tokyo. Tokyo is just awesome! :)