Me, Myself, and Japan: The Life of an Exchange Student: Imperial Palace and the Drunk People

Two straight nights of eating excessively will do wonders to your belly. It has grown to be about...lets see, 5 months along in size. Belly expanding, wallet shrinking. Where them maternity clothes at?

I went to Tokyo Station two days ago to go shopping for someone and Sasha tagged along since she's never explored the area. What was supposed to be a shopping trip turned into a food fest (surprise surprise) as every time we looked remotely interested in a food item, the store people would hand us samples. This went on for about 6 stores and ended everytime with us embarassingly saying "thank you" and running away. Classy.

Samples galore! The picture on the right is bread with cream cheese inside, and the one on the right is green tea

GINORMOUS buns

It's Rollcake mom! But yours is better.

My Ebi Chili Bun. It was surprisingly spicy and almost paste like.

After the food run Sasha and I decided to go into a cafe to drink coffee and chat. We set our eyes on one of the cafes but we realized that there really weren't a lot of spaces to sit except for the counter. When a waiter came up to us to see if we wanted to come in, we kind of hesitated and after careful consideration, said "no thank you". Swiftly walking around the floor, we came to a conclusion that the best cafe around the area would be the one we went to before. As we made our way back, we saw that there were more tables available so we lined up once more. When the same waiter came out to greet us, he sarcastically (gasp! but he's Japanese!) asked us if "the other cafes weren't open". It may not sound like much on text, but boy that waiter had a full on smirk going on. You should move to America, where that's acceptable. JOKING JOKING, Lily I know you're reading this.

Sasha and I, trying to act passive after the unnecessary comment, proceeded to sit down and talked for about an hr and half on her home town of Russia and how the political system there is messed up. Putin, if you're reading my blog, stop messing up your country and listen to the demands of the people.

We left the coffee shop feeling rejuvenated, and discussed where we were headed next. Sasha mentioned the Imperial Palace, so off we went! Who knew it was so close to Tokyo Station? It was literally only a 6 minute walk away, and the scenery was completely different despite the close proximity.

"Sasha, make a zebra face!"

erm, yeah that should do it.

One lone swan.

The palace is in the background, but its very difficult to see in the picture. That area isn't open to the public so all we could do as tourists were to take pictures and stare longingly in the distance

So this concludes my day trip to Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace.

But the crazy stuff came that night. Precisely two hours after I came home from the relaxing trip, I was to meet at my dorm's lounge for the dorm party conducted by the RA and the Dorm Manager, Aya san.

First off, who knew we were allowed that much alcohol at the party? And why is the pizza so dang good.

Its real pizza!

We each had to do a mini introduction in Japanese. It wasn't as scary as I thought, and everybody clapped and laughed at all the right parts.

Who knew bingo could get this intense. I felt so happy when I won, but it turns out another girl did too and we had to rock paper scissors. Obviously it was all downhill from there. I suck at rock paper scissors. People see right through me.