A very long day

Last night, I couldn't sleep very well. I think it's because my sleeping patterns have all been messed up and now I'm going to pay the price. I only managed maybe 1-2 hours of sleep. And it wasn't that good either. I kept rolling around too. But since I planned to meet my friend at 9:30am at Shinjuku, that meant I had to get up at 6:30am to get there on time. Since I take one of the longer ways to get there, but the cheapest because I use my commuter pass. The morning walk seems to get colder too. That's something I don't enjoy very much.

I arrived a little late around 9:40am, but the person I was meeting arrived there at 10:10am. So I was just standing there. I was starving as hell too. I haven't been eating that much lately. That's really not good. I only recall eating only once or twice a day. Even unmotivated to eat too. But then the next step was to go to Saitama Shin... something Station to meet more friends. I mean we made a few connections and picked up some more people along the way.

We ended up at the Saitama Shin something station and then went to a new mall that just opened up. It opened near my friend's high school. It's pretty big for Japanese standards. But it's very similar to the malls in the States. We just cruised around for about an hour or so to check out the stores. And then we grabbed lunch at a buffet store. It was fairly good, even though it was quite limited. I couldn't really eat that much, even though I was starving. I think it's because of the dessert. I could only eat so much before I would get full. It's the lactose intolerance coming back I feel.

After lunch and the mall, we dropped off one of the people we were with (Mayu) and we went with her boyfriend Hiroto to just drive around. We stopped off at a few more malls so CNto could go shopping for some clothes. She bought some clothes, and I bought some alcohol so I can share with RW when he comes this week. I think I might be joined by another friend too, which is good. I wasn't expecting it, but it would be cool. I was starting to feel sleepy around this time. I challenged Hiroto and CNto to drink some root beer. HAHA, they thought it was nasty. But I love that stuff.

The final place we went to was a pet shop to look at some snakes. I mean this took up around 6 hours. We dropped off Mayu around 1pm and then we were dropped off at Omiya station around 6:45pm to meet up with CNto's friends. The meeting time wasn't until 7pm.

There was a lot of people who came this time. Last time I met with CN's friends, it was only around 10, but around 7pm there was already 10 people and more people were going to be late. In all i think the total was around 20 something people. It was like a little high school reunion of CNto's classmates. I thought it was cool. They are truly an interesting group of people. There were some of the same people as last time there too. And I think it would be ok to mention that I like one of them. She's so cute. The Organizer of this event is sooo cute, it's hard to resist asking her out. But the communication is still a bit difficult. Although I learned that drinking alcohol helps my Japanese. I think it allows my brain to just work at absorbing it. I was able to joke around with many of the guys, which at first felt pretty awkward. But after they were wasted, it was quite fun. They could understand English better too. It was really quite an experience that I will NEVER forget and it was a good experience too. I'm looking for more experiences like the one I had tonight. I mean all these friends were a close knit group of people. And my friend CNto was the glue that kept them together. She started up a group for a cultural festival and they just remained close since the 10th grade. I can't imagine that they would be friends too. They are just such a diverse group of individuals and some more radical than others. I mean my friend CNto is one of the most conservative people that I know. But this group was off the wall.

After the Doma Doma restaurant and $30 a person, we went to Omiya station. I took a picture with most of the people that were still left. Some people left early. This is where the group kind of split up. It was around 11pm already so people started to go home, but others wanted to stay. So half the group left, the other half split into two other groups. One of the groups went to drink some more and my group went to go karaoke. I went with people that I was sitting with earlier, Imura, Hando, Takatoshi, Oya or aka Hiroto. We went to a small place around Omiya station. I sang two songs, the SMAP and Mongol 800 songs that I know. I'm starting to get better at reading Japanese too. But then I had to get out in a hurry because I wanted to catch the last train. Oya looked on the internet for the last Keihin-Tohoku train that left Omiya station. It was at 12:30am. They were all relieved because we were all worried that I wouldn't be able to get home tonight. When I arrived at Omiya station, I realized that he was wrong. It was the last train for the Keihin-Tohoku line, but it would only go a few train stations down before it would end...

Therefore I was stuck at Kita-Urawa for the night. The temperatures were nearing 0 degrees Celcius, so I had thought about going to my friend's house in Kita-Urawa, but I couldn't find her house. The problem was I wasn't able to contact her. My cell phone had run out of batteries way too early. My batteries died while I was at the mall. So I had no way of contacting anyone, and I was on my own to figure something out. So to get out of the freezing cold after I had circled the area a few times. I decided that since the first train left at 4:37am to Ofuna, I would just do my best to stay awake and go to convenient stores and read magazines till the morning. I went to two of them and stood there reading it for about 1.5 hours in each store. It was kinda embarrassing since I was the only one in the store for most of the time, I think one of the guys was getting mad, so I bought something before I left. But it won't be a night I will forget. I wasn't really prepared for the cold weather either. And since I had bought some stuff, it was difficult to walk around because my hands would get sooo cold.

I managed to survive the night and catch the first train back to Ofuna. But I went a long way even though I arrived around the same amount of time. When I arrived home, the neighbor below me was there and she was talking to me that some guy came to my house and was looking for me because of a package. Since I was dead tired for having no sleep in the past two days, I decided I was going to take care of the later. I took a nice hot shower to thaw and then talked to people online to make sure I tied up some loose ends before I went to sleep.