A trip to Omiya

I pretty much didn’t do much this morning but get ready to go to Omiya. It’s a far trip for me to take, since I take a longer route than I really need to save some cash. But it does eat up a lot more time, about 30 minutes more and since the trip itself is already 3 hours, it makes it almost an all day event to go there and back. I went early since I didn’t have anything else to do, and got lunch at Shibuya since it was on the way.

I arrived in Omiya around 3pm, which was an hour before I asked everyone to meet up at. I wanted to walk around and to check out what there is to do there. I first went to the East exit and took a little stroll outside. I picked up some stuff that some advertisers were passing out, hoping to get an idea of where we could go in the area. It doesn’t really look like the happiest place in the world and a bit slummy, but that’s where all the things to do are. It is tailored for the business man since there are bunch of pachinko parlors and a bunch of izakayas too.

Then I went to the other exit of the train station. This one is far different from the other side. It’s got a lot of tall buildings and reminds me of the time when I went to Sendai. It has a lot of big shopping malls and plenty of things to do, but it’s got a different feel to it. Last time I went to Omiya, I went this way. But it looked much different because it was at night and now I’m looking at it in the day time and taking my time walking around and exploring. I’ve met several of my friends here before too, so I should be familiar with it, but I’m not. I think now that I’ve been there a few times I have started to recognize it and will probably be ok for the next time.

They both showed up late to the station. That was something that didn’t really surprise me, but something that I wasn’t expecting too much either. I was expecting one to be late, but not both. So I had to wait around the meeting place for another 15 minutes or so. We chose to go to the exit with more izakayas. When we went inside the place, we were the only ones there. We went to eat at shirokiya. I’ve eaten there before when I first met up with my friend in Japan. It was about a year ago, so I’m glad that we’ve stayed in touch and remained friends. It’s a bit tough since she knows absolutely no English and my Japanese is still poor. She likes to speak really fast Japanese too, which doesn’t make it any easier to be her friend, but we still are. That’s the amazing part about it, I could still understand, but it does take a bit more time to translate in my head. I think that the first time I met my friend, we went to this store. But it was at night and it looked much different since we were sitting in a different area. We stayed here for like 4 hours eating. It really wasn’t that much at all, I mean the eating part since there were 3 of us and everything we ordered was small. Both of them were pretty hungry since they hadn’t eaten lunch yet. It was around 4 hours after when people normally eat lunch, so I could understand their feeling. It was a lot of fun, but I was a bit nervous the whole time. I really didn’t know how to act or anything since my Japanese wasn’t that good and I really couldn’t get involved in their conversation. It was a bit awkward at times. But I took a moment when one of my friends went to the bathroom to talk to her friend. I was able to start a conversation, but she speaks so fast that it’s really hard to comprehend everything. But I’m working on it. We left around 8:30ish.

I was just walking home from the train station and was stopped by a police officer. It was weird because I was just minding my own business and I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary either, so I was wondering why he stopped me. I look Japanese, so it wasn’t because I am a foreigner either. I think it might have been something with the time. Since its 11:30 at night and walking home, he told me that it was dangerous… but I guess he’s never been to America before. Japan is the safest society in the world, and my area where no one lives… I was like you’ve got to be kidding. He asked me some questions as he was writing down all the information on my gaijin card. He asked about what I do, teach English, ask me about my host family, and I said they were nice. He complimented me on my Japanese though, which was something good. The first question he asked me was how old I was. I told him that I was 23 years old. But I said it poorly or something because the next thing he said was, you’re a foreigner… in Japanese of course. He also asked me where I lived and if I lived far from where we were. I didn’t actually; it was near the second entrance to a shortcut to my house. He then told me to go home very fast because it was dangerous to be out late at night. I’m not really worried about being attacked in the middle of the night, more than what he will do with my information. I’m not sure if I should be worried or not because this hasn’t happened to me before or to anyone that I know. I know that sometimes I don’t have to show the officer my gaijin card, but I thought that this time would be a good time to show it. I mean he wrote down everything and even drew a little picture. I’m not sure why, or what for since I didn’t do anything wrong. So I’m just curious if anyone has heard this happen to someone before. I hope that you could help me out. I would hate to find out the hard way.