Day 23

Woah today was long!

Unlike many other days, today didn't start with me failing to get up when I planned to and then trudging off to school at midday. No No. Today was the day of the UniQlo store opening in Shinjuku and as everything was reduced I had to go stock up.

Got to Shinjuku maybe around 11:00. School doesn't start until 13:00 so I had plenty of time to do a few laps of the place. First stop, of course, UniQlo. It was bumping in there. So many people and so many staff! Cool stuff though. Sure it's cheap and plain and whatnot but the quality is good enough and providing you're just looking for basics which I essentially was, then you can't go much wrong. T-shirts where less than 1000 yen (£7.50) and I got a couple of light hooded jackets (which you need once the sun goes down in Tokyo) for 1250 yen a piece. That's like £9. Seriously, we're talking Primark kinda prices for a lot of this stuff while the opening sale is on and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't find stuff this nice in Primark.

So with my pockets 7500 yen lighter I began my search for the new NEWS single 恋のABO. You have to watch that video. It's so funny and awful at the same time. Definatly one of their worst. I like that the song has Koyama as one of the main singers for a change. And even Shige gets a lot of solo time. Masuda was barely there however and I love his voice so much :( I guess they'll push him forward in the next single...I hope they do. Maybe they're just trying to show the versitility of all the band members by giving them all the chance to take center stage rather than Yamapi all the time. Then again, there's a reason that Yamapi was the group leader in the first place and I hope Johnny and co don't forget why. Anyway, I go looking for the CD but I can't find it anyway to my dismay, despite trying three different shops :(

Then it was time for school. Learned a little today and got the opportunity to teach the class a little Welsh. It was cool to blow their minds with "Diolch yn fawr" haha. We learned a bunch of stuff today about verbs and how to say things like "cuts with a knife", "writes it in English", "sends the report through the fax" etc etc. You get the point right? I guess it's useful, and I got to use it in a practical sense at least twice since class was over^^ Class if over now for 10 days or so. Thsi time of year in Japan is called Golden Week. Click the link, it'll save me explaining :p We don't go back to school until 7th May so I'll be using that time to master Katakana and learning verbs I think.

So school's out for 2 weeks :) But Daniel-san is going back to Poland tomorrow which is sad. As it was his last evening in Tokyo we went to a restaurant called Alcatraz + ER. It's a prison/hospital theme restaurant. These kinds of places are really popular in Japan. I've been to the Ninja place before so I knew we were in for a good night.

When we arrived we had to first select our blood type to open the door. We selected Daniel-san as the main spokesman for the group and this meant he got handcuffed before they would let him in the restaurant haha. Then we watched a little skit where the crazy doctor guy scanned Daniel (we'd selected him as the most unwell member of the party...partly because it was his last day and partly because he insisted on wearing one of those silly masks as part of the theme^^) and declared certain bits of him to be genki and his head to be not.

Our table was a cell with various bits of strange and grim decor scattered about. While some were tempted to buy the dodgy looking stuff on the menu, I went for a simple pizza and fries with a coke. Yeah yeah, not adventurous at all but I was gagging for pizza and it's hard to find anything in Japan without meat so this to me was heaven. Well, it wasn't fish flavoured so it was heaven, not the pizza itself being heaven. I've never had anything like it in my life. The base was about 2mm thick O.o so it was like a diet pizza. The fries on the other hand were lush as they were covered in salt and pepper :) I'm gonna try that when I get home. There was one minor twist to my simple choice of food....the fries came in a bed pan....yeah seriously.

Throughout the evening the lights would go out and we'd be randomly attacked by crazy escaped prisoners which the unenthusiastic female guards would pretend to shoot at with cap guns. The guys made an effort, the girls obviously were not amused by their costumes. Great place, average food but great entertainment.

Daniel-san, Katharina and myself managed to escape our prison around 21:00 and headed back to the station leaving those who remained to drink the night away. I'm off to Yokohama in the morning so I really didn't want to drink. On the way, I stopped by Tower Records to see if they had the NEWS single which they didn't because, as Katharina pointed out, it's not the 28th today afterall, it's the 24th. Damn XD So I'll have to wait until Tuesday. As I couldn't buy the cd I wanted I bought the new Kanjani8 album "Puzzle" instead. Meh, it's only money :)