Going to Shinjuku

I woke up fairly early even though I didn’t have to. It seemed like it wasn’t going to be a very hot day today. I got started writing my e-mails again and did a little bit of studying of Kanji. I’m at the second grade level now… sounds kind of pathetic, but that’s already around 150 different characters. Most of which I already learned, but some I haven’t, so I think it’s a good pace to learn 1000 by the end of the year. And that’s only with reading, not writing yet. I haven’t taken the time to do that yet. I need to get the reading done first since it’s easier for me to recognize it, and I believe the writing would be easier if I could visualize it first.

I left a little bit early today to go to Shinjuku station. It usually just takes me about 2 hours to get there, but I wanted to make sure that I got there early, even though I think that they won’t show up early or even on time. I think that I’ve learned how to walk faster now, I was making pretty good time getting to the station by walking and the train ride was nice because I got to sit down the whole way from Hongodai to Yokohama and from Yokohama to Shibuya. From Shibuya since I was there fairly early, about an hour, I decided that Shinjuku wasn’t that far away and I wanted to walk there. It’s about 3 stations away on the Yamanote line. I had an hour to do it, so I figured that I might as well try it out.

I just followed the train tracks up until Harajuku station. I usually take this walk since it isn’t too far away. Then when I got to this point, it wasn’t that easy anymore. Since there is an older platform, the path stopped and I had to find a new route, but still try to be parallel to the tracks. It took a little bit of walking, but I was able to do it. I passed Yoyogi station without ever getting a chance to see it, since I wasn’t near it at all walking the direction that I was walking in. It was very interesting to walk this way because I hadn’t done it before and saw things that I haven’t seen before. It was actually pretty cool and since it wasn’t that hot, it made the walk very pleasant. When I got near Shinjuku station, I saw an interesting building name; it was the Japanese Communist Party’s headquarters. I wanted to take a picture of it, but I didn’t want anyone storming out of the building trying to kill me, so I decided that for my safety I wouldn’t take the picture. But I could always walk there again and get a snapshot of it and run as fast as I can.

I arrived at Shinjuku station in about 30 minutes, which makes it about a mile walk from Shibuya to Shinjuku. That’s a rough estimate of the distance from those two stations. I wasn’t really tired either, only hungry since I skipped breakfast and lunch to take this extended exercise walk. I was at the meeting spot a bit early so I just walked around a little, and I figured that they wouldn’t be there on time and that they were already there in the first place and shopping without me. It turns out that I was right about both things. And they had already eaten lunch so I was the left starving. We took another little walk to an area of Shinjuku that I haven’t seen before, but they showed me where their English Language school was, NIC. We saw some students outside and in the lounges studying and we saw some teachers going in and out of the buildings. I wanted to make a conversation with them, but I didn’t want to embarrass both of my friends, so I didn’t do it. But I think it might have been helpful for the students learning English, since they would have to use English to talk to me.

After this short little excursion, we went to Café Veloce to have something to drink. I also bought a little snack to eat since I was starving. We stayed there for a little bit of time just talking. It was pretty fun and I’m glad to see both my friends again. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of them, but the other one, I just saw two days ago. But I really enjoy her company, that’s CNto that I’m talking about. We had discussed many things while we were in the café. It was very enjoyable actually, since it was a good atmosphere and the drinks were pretty good too. It’s probably the best milk tea that I’ve had in Japan.

Then we went to meet up with CNto’s friend from Kindergarten. We met him at Shinjuku station, east exit in front of the police box, but it turns out that half the world was waiting there too. It took a little bit of time to locate him, but YSki and I saw him before CNto did and we’ve never seen the guy before. We had a feeling which person it would be, kinda amazing huh?

We went to eat dinner at a place where you could fry your own food. It was an interesting set up that we had at the table and we could fry a lot of things. You really couldn’t get full fast, which wasn’t a good thing, but it was buffet style so you could go back as many times as you wanted. We had eaten a lot of food there, and then EK came to meet up with us. He was a rude pompous jackass like usual acting like a little kid. I swear he’s never learned manners because he’s just so stupid when it comes to behaving in public. It was embarrassing having him eat dinner at our table, but what was worse was how he was eating. He said that he wasn’t going to eat, but he ended up eating things off of my plate and making a huge mess. It was very disgusting how he was eating that I was getting nauseous watching him eat. It’s just something that I’m glad I had eaten before he did. I don’t think I could have stomached it if I were still eating. The place was a bit more expensive than I would have imagined. It was about $26 split 5 ways, but if EK hadn’t come, it would have been more money. It wasn’t that good that it was worth that much money. But you know, it’s the time you pay for that hang out with friends and I’m sure they make a killing in the bank for what they charge.

After that, EK left to go home because it was getting late. It was only around 8pm, and he said that he had work the next day too, but we all know that it wasn’t that. He didn’t want to hang out with his girlfriend, what an asshole huh? So he took off and the 4 of us went to Starbucks at the Seibu Shinjuku station. We sat there, drinking coffee and talking for another 2 hours before we decided to go home. We wanted to make a plan of what we were going to do tomorrow. We are going to meet again and make an attempt to meet up with EK again in Odaiba, which is where he works. We are going to spend the whole day there so we wanted to know what’s there to do there and other places to eat too. I think that my Japanese is getting much better, I was able to communicate better today than before. It’s more fluent than usual too, so I’m happy to report that.

Around 10pm, they walked me back to JR Shinjuku station and I left by myself to go on the Yamanote line to Shibuya, and then to Yokohama. I was lucky that I had a seat on the Toyoko line since it was a bit late and it was a limited express train. I didn’t get home till around midnight, which is a bit late. I noticed that it’s really dark and a bit creepy walking home at that time, although I’ve walked home later. I kept my eye over my shoulder looking out for cops in both directions. I took a short cut walking home today, which is extremely dark in the forest area near my house. There was a HUGE ass spider right above me too; it was nice that it was above me and that I didn’t walk into it in the dark. The spider was probably as big as my palm. After that I took a shower and talked to YSki online for a little bit. I wanted to punch up this journal entry and look at some of my friends entries too. It’s been a long day and it’s about 2am now, so I should be getting to sleep since I will probably need the energy tomorrow too. So good night.