Tokorozawa Manhole Cover
I had an awesome day today. The first I've had in what feels like a really, really long time. Started off with a trip to the Tokorozawa Waseda campus for bamboo root (takenoko! it means baby bamboo!) digging.
I didn't initially know what kind of effort it would be, and assumed a lot of working on hands and knees in the dirt. No. It was much more awesome. We got to use these hoe-spade type things, and dig them up. Soooo muuuuch fuuuun. I managed to only get a pretty small one, fits barely in both of my hands. Tamarra got a pretty big one by comparison, and dug up the roots with it. There was a girl who's root was, I swear, at least as large as a two-or-three-month-old child. Huge. Mama tells me that the smaller ones are better though, big ones end up being to bitter.
We had lunch provided, and it was frankly pretty damn tasty. It included bamboo rice with some sort of turkey or something in it. Delicious, naturally pretty buttery tasting, and sweet. Also, a bamboo soup that wasn't very good, but the bamboo in it was good.
And also some other edibles. I got to try a very strange chicken nugget. I was expecting crispy chicken, but it was a little chewy, and strangely, was dark meat, not light. Still tasty though.
Next was a trip with Tamarra to the Seibu department store. This place is waaaaaay better than the Keio one near me. Sooooo big! It had twelve floors! Almost the entire bottom floor was a variety of sweets stores, bakeries, and food. Soooo much food. And delicious. I finally got to try Japanese short cake. It was one of my personal goals, because I always see it in manga, people eat it on special occasions. Well, the occasion today was eating the cake. So I guess that works out.
I also found what appeared to be a good chocolate store. However. The chocolate that I purchased was disappointing. I am still on the search for good Japanese chocolate. Ugh.
I also bought some fabric today. Bright, glorious purple. Wanna guess why? FLAG. Yep. I finally broke down, went to the Don Quixote in Baba and bought a pole. Now I can sew my flag and play with it a little. Unfortunately, I don't think the pole will fit in my suitcase, and I will have to pay to get it disposed of. But it is still less than buying one online and getting it shipped here. Only 1000 yen + disposal fee!
So yeah, after Seibu, that's where we went, Takadanobaba, Baba for short. We finally got plans and everybody together and did Karaoke! It was my first time ever doing it, and it was so much fun! Wow. I'm still reeling from how awesome it was to get everybody together and sing weird songs and have such a good time. The way it works in Japan, is generally you rent a room, paying a per-person rate per hour. For us, since we were there for a few hours, it ended up being about 2500 yen per person, which I think is actually pretty expensive, but I'm not sure. It was like, 400 yen per 30 minutes, so we were there like, three hours. Wow.
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