Before I jump into action, I just wanted to clear up a few things...Ellen asked what a potsticker was. It is difficult to explain but it is like a thin, flat noodle stuffed with some kind of mystery meat (they have a lot of that here...mystery meat, that is) and spices. It is really greasy but does not appear to be fried. They have them in the states but only Amber knows where to score some. She is into weird stuff. Also, I wanted to say a quick CONGRATS to Laura who is PREGNANT. I will try to respond to all your e-mails tomorrow on my day off. I DO read them and love to get them but I don't always have time to respond right away. And now, onto the Amber Chronicles...
So there was a knock knock knockin' at the door and I opened it to find a large American with short red curly hair (have you all notice the red theme going on in all my e-mails??? EVERYONE has red hair! Not just the villains (Charlotte). Interesting...Anyway, she seemed a bit shy at first so I began rambling and asking her all sorts of questions and explaining who Amber was and why she was here and how long she would be staying, blah, blah, blah. I asked how she was feeling and she said tired. I told her that we were going out for drinks and asked if she wanted to come (thinking she would say no) but she said sure so she got washed up and we headed out to Chofu to meet my friend Chris (remember THAT red head?) I wanted to go karaoke-ing). I thought it would be fun to sit around and drink and watch drunk businessmen sing. But I was not aware that Japan karaoke is different from American karaoke. Japanese karaoke consists of friends sitting in a private room just singing in front of their own group of friends. THAT SUCKS. I was all ready to laugh myself to tears. So instead we went in search of an izakaya (a bar/restaurant) in Chofu. Since all of the signs are written in Kanji, we had no clue what buildings were izakayas. So Chris ended up stopping a couple on the street to ask them if they knew where any Chofu bars were. They pointed down the street we had just walked down. We ended up going to a place that is literally 10 steps away from my NOVA office. I walk past that place every day when I walk into work. We had a few different kinds of bad sake before we gave up on that idea. But by then, we were sufficiently buzzed and we had to catch the train by midnight or we would have to walk home. So we choked down the rest of the bottle and headed to the station. At the platform, we were accosted by a drunken businessman. He was falling all over the place and saw us looking at him so he started laughing about something and walked over to Chris and wrapped his arms around him and said something and laughed and imitated a sumo wrestler stomping his feet on the ground, then he staggered away...ahhhh...What just happened? Always something interesting...
Friday, Amber and I were PLANNING on catching a train to Hakone (yes, you read that right, HAKONE) but as fate would have it, it was raining...SHOCKER! So we decided to explore Shinjuku. There are TEN huge malls in Shinjuku. But we decided to stop in Chofu on the way because Amber wanted to go the the 100 Yen store (that is the Japanese version of the Dollar Store). The only difference between the two is that the 100 Yen store actually has cool stuff. If you have ever seen a kid at Christmas, you know what my sister looked like in that place. She was going NUTS! "OH, LOOK AT THIS! OH, RACHEL, LOOK AT THIS! OH, LOOK AT THIS! If she had the room in her luggage, she would have cleared out their inventory. I don't know how I got her out of that place, but eventually we walked over to the other side of the station and shopped til we dropped in Parco Department store. Once again..."OH, RACHEL! LOOK AT THIS! OH, LOOK AT THIS!" She said that so many times in this one fancy dress store that the store employee lady started laughing. After a few hours, I was starving so I had to drag Amber away from the kimono she was eye-balling so that I could get something to eat. We went to an Italian restaurant in the mall that overlooked Chofu and had a good lunch (although not very filling). Afterward, we had planned on going home and resting, then going to Shinjuku for a crazy night on the town. But Amber's jet lag started kicking in once we got home so I just rented two movies and cooked my famous nightly dinner (one egg with broccoli, sticky rice, bean sprouts and soy sauce). OH! When we had gotten home, there was a package waiting from me from Michael. He had sent me a big air mattress (along with lots of other goodies). Guess whose air filled that ENTIRE BED. You think blowing up a beach ball is a challenge, try blowing up 50 beach balls. I thought, "He has GOT to be KIDDING me" when I saw the size of the mattress. But I blew on that thing for about an hour, and success was finally mine! Of course, since it is made of some kind of blow-up-able stuff, it was like the world's largest whoopy cushion when you rolled around on it. So at night when we slept, I was not allowed to move for fear of "farting" and waking up my angry-bear sister. (My mom hates when I say "fart"...HI MA!) So after dinner and a movie and reading all the magazines Michael sent, we went to bed. I had to work the next day (Saturday)so a quiet night in was right up my alley. Especially since Saturday night was going to get CRAZY! And I'll tell you all about that TOMORROW!
Love me
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