Hoshigaoka, Izakaya, etc.

So now that classes are getting serious, I've started to neglect the blog and will probably continue to do so from now on unless there's something particularly interesting to write about. In other words, no more daily updates, sorry :/
This past Sunday, I went to a place called Hoshigaoka. It was my friend's birthday and she wanted to take us to a Hawaiian restaurant there:




I thought it looked pretty cute inside, although they literally played the same Jamaican-sounding song on repeat.  We were seated upstairs and had that floor all to ourselves.




After we got our food; we got the waitress to take this for us. The Japanese girl in the middle was the birthday girl:




I ordered something with fried shrimp in it.  The food was absolutely delicious, and probably one of the best meals I've had in Japan yet.  Even the salad was good, which for me is saying a lot. Of course I was still the last one to finish (I'm the slowest eater EVER).




Here's us getting ready to leave. We had to sit for a long time after eating, we were so full.




From what I could tell Hoshigaoka is a place for shopping, very similar to Easton in Gahanna, Ohio. They sell nice stuff but most of it is a little expensive.  Also everything was western, so I really had no interest in looking around :)




Some mannequins wearing pants heheh




After coming back home, I found out that several people were going to an Izakaya (bar).  This one is very close to our dorm, and although it looks quite shady from the outside, it was very nice inside.




Shady entrance...




Fancy, traditional inside. We arrived at around 7pm and it was a Sunday, so we were the only ones there haha:




The gang:




I ordered sake once again, but this time it came in this form. I think it's because I mistakenly ordered cold sake instead of hot sake. The waitress placed the shot glass in the box and poured the sake into the glass, letting it overflow into the box. So once you finish drinking what's in the glass, you drink directly from the box. This sake was a little stronger and harder to go down, probably because it wasn't hot.  I made my friend finish it ( I had also ordered a lychee drink).




Here's me trying out the sake:




Later drinking from the box:




I was pressured into ordering this dish, which came with an egg that I was supposed to crack open into the food.




My friends ordered this (I forget what it's called) but basically one of them is filled with wasabi, but you don't know which one. Ironically the first one my friend tried out turned out to be the wasabi-filled one.  I thought he handled it pretty well, he only teared up a little and kept eating it until it was done. :)




As I said earlier, I've been pretty busy with homework and studying since this Monday (although it's not that hard, Nanzan gives a lot of busy work).  Nothing has happened much lately. Today there was a welcome party for the foreign exchange students again and there was a kind of rock*paper*scissors tournament which I somehow won........I had no idea what was going on and I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to win, but I got the prize anyway. We played again, and I almost won again; I got to the very last round (there were over 80 people at this thing).
I'll try to update again soon, it will probably be sometime next week :)