遅く起きた時 (When I Woke Up Too Late)

in which Max and I discover a wall closed on Sundays, and spend money at a Very Nice Store called Uniqlo.

So when Max and I woke up, it was about 12pm, which was when we had arranged to meet my peer tutor and Anna’s peer tutor at Tenjin station to go hang out at the beach. Max has set an alarm the night before, but forgot to change it to Sunday, because he had it only set to weekdays. Sigh. So we kind of rushed to get ready and leave, while I tried to call my tutor to no avail. We eventually walked all the way down to the chikatetsu (subway) station and looked around, but we couldn’t find anyone, so we went back to Max’s apt. I emailed my tutor apologizing and explaining the situation.

After a bit Max and I decided not to waste the day just because our old plans were ruined, so we went to eat breakfast at this tasty bakery in the Tenjin underground, and then got on the subway deciding to check out some historical sites. We headed towards where the Japanese defended Japan from the numerous Mongol attacks in early history, only to realize that whatever was left of the barricade was apparently inside another building and was closed on Sunday. We explored the area for a while, discovering a church that advertised itself using 8-bit art (of course), among many plants whose names were in Hebrew.

Churches are indeed 8-bit in Japan.

After giving up, we decided to go to a nearby 100-yen store to look for a hachimaki (Japanese headband) because I wanted to buy some. Before finding the store, we saw a sign for Uniclo, and Max said I’d really like it. Turns out I do (who knew a straight guy could recommend shopping) and to an intense degree. It’s sort of like a mix between American Apparel and H&M, at H&M prices. Which, in Japan, is cheap as fuck. We ended up shopping for like 40 minutes, and spending about 7000 yen each. Ouch. But I got some excellent clothing out of it, and an umbrella to replace the one I bought in Taiwan, which had completely shattered on its own.

Afterwards we went to Daiso (the 100 yen store) and bought a bunch of random stuff for even cheaper than before, mostly funny Engrish notebooks and stamps on my part. We found crazy weird shit, including a weird mask Max had to try on. After actually finding hachimaki, I decided I wanted a real Japanese cloth and not a costume-status one. So, we got on the subway and went home.


When I got home, my host family asked me if I wanted to go play at a game center (Japanese equivalent of an arcade, except usually with photo booths, a bowling alley, billiards, and pachinko) to which I couldn’t refuse. We played claw games a bit, usually winning nothing, and then tried the Taiko game. It’s really fun, I think.

Mama-san being cute and playing the crocodile game.