Exploring Kannai

I decided to get off my lazy ass today and do something. I needed to do a bunch of things today to get caught up on my goals for the week. So there weren’t that many things on my list to do since I’ve taken care of most of them. Something I’m quite proud of since I’ve been really unmotivated recently. But I wanted to locate the travel agency so I could talk to them about the prices for where I would want to go and all the things necessary for me to do so. I found that the nearest IACE travel agency was near the Isezaki Mall by Kannai station. Since that isn’t very far and I needed to go there to get some clothes hangers and shop for some other stuff. I thought I could get a bunch of birds with one stone, since they are all in the same area. I thought that was quite convenient.

I did some laundry before I left and picked up some lunch while that was all happening. I was watching a bit of TV too and the weird part was that I could actually understand what was going on. I would even laugh when there was something funny. I mean I didn’t understand what they were saying 100% but at least I could guess what was going on. That’s good enough for me right now since I have failed to study Japanese as much as I would have hoped this week. I need to get back to that tomorrow to make sure I meet my goals for the week.

After that I took off towards the late afternoon, so I knew it would be cold I was tempted to not go, but decided that it was in my best interest to go. So off I went walking to Hongodai station and then ended at Kannai station. I’ve been to this mall area before, but really haven’t been down the whole street. My main focus was to find this travel agency since it would be important to know where it was for when I decided to leave Japan, I would already have a relationship with the company and I could trust them to get me home. But the problem was finding the place. I mean I walked down the whole length of the entire street, almost. At least it felt like it. It was beginning to get a little dark. I found another shopping street area that I’ve seen in other cities in Japan. I didn’t know that Yokohama had one. It is called Yokohamabashi. Another thing that I noticed is that the area gets a little bit unfriendly after the sun sets. Well maybe unfriendly wouldn’t be the right term, it’s more a bit eerie. You get a completely different feel that during the day. I mean I had African-American individuals trying to pass out flyers to me, I’m assuming they are for “gentlemen clubs” and they would be chasing me down the length of a block. They would only chase me down the length of one block because he had a friend on the next block that would chase me around.

They are dedicated to their work, to say the least and I was running for most of the time. I couldn’t scare them off with English since I’m pretty sure they spoke English too. That usually works with the regular Japanese people who pass out flyers and advertisements, but in this case I just had to run. So as I was running I was looking for the travel agency at the same time. I just couldn’t find it, but most of the time, I was just running. And since I had bought some stuff, my backpack was getting heavy and troublesome. I know now, not to go there at night. I think the area is pretty notorious for those joints since it wasn’t the cleanest area in Japan that I’ve been too, but it wasn’t the worst either. So just a warning to those of you out there, who are coming to Japan, be careful at night, unless you want to get friendly with some people, and I mean too friendly. The people will be a little pushy and they are the “get in your face” types too. To say the least, it was an adventure and a lesson learned about the area. No wonder none of my friends have ever taken me past that point in the mall. It is interesting there though, with the exception of all the running around I did. I think they have some nice stores that remind me of La Mesa Blvd. A nice feel and I noticed a lot of foreigners too. That was a bit weird for me, but shouldn’t be since Yokohama has the highest concentration of foreigners in Japan. But all this time I never knew where they were, but now I do. So I grabbed dinner before I went home, and then just chilled. I was thinking about watching a movie, but decided against that. I just finished up my laundry and cleaned up a little bit. Played some games till I decided I should go to sleep. Tomorrow will be the last day of my long boredom, which is a waste I didn’t realize that I had such a long break before I could have done something useful with the time. I doubt I’ll get this much time next year, but I should plan something out anyways.