Last-Minute Adventuring

On Friday, as we have been doing this week, I got out of school early. This is primarily because school has yet to officially start, and this is just orientation. Upon arrival that morning, however, I was informed that several of my friends wanted to go out and do something. After some discussion, we decided to go out for Karaoke at a place we recently learned of that had rooms running at $10 for 3 hours of singing plus one beverage. VERY reasonable, especially on a Friday.

To get there we had to take a Hankyu line train to a station a few stops away from school, then get off and walk down the street to a JR line station. Kinda confusing, but not that bad, really. More details on that later. Anyway, after several stops we got off at a fairly large station that had a nifty walkway attached to it that led to the shopping mall in which the Karaoke place is.

Turns out it wasn't $10. It was $6.80.

I kicked off the fun with a song I never expected to see there: "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" by Eric Idle. I also went through some Queen, Beatles, Pet Shop Boys, and a few others. The high point of the night was when I did a trio of the song "Barbie Girl" with a French girl and a guy from Michigan. Believe me, it was plenty hilarious.

After the singing and paying, we each got a voucher for one free pay at the neighboring Arcade. The downside is that we could only use them to play a grab-hand game. The upside is that this particular grab-hand game contained nothing but ice cream. The other upside is tha I am he only one who won. =P

Not long after that, I headed home. I told my Okaasan that I'd be back home by 7 or 8, and as it was I wouldn't make it back before 8:30. Now when I say "I headed home," I mean it. Our remainig group at this time consisted of two guys who wanted to try out the ping pong place in the mall, and three folks who wanted to romp around in Osaka. This means that I had to find my way back on my own.

As I said, it wasn't so bad. After getting to the JR station I started at, it was a simple matter of walking down a main street, making one turn, and arruving at the Hankyu station moments later. As many of the signage is bilingual, I managed to get myself on the right trains and everything. I didn't even get lost!

Well, that was my latest adventure. Sorry there aren't any pictures, but as I said, it was pretty much a last-minute decition to go anywhere, and this camera is too bulky to just keep around all the time.