Izakaya (居酒屋・いざかや)

So, as I mentioned in my "Sakura~ Sakura~" post, I had went to an izakaya after going to Kakunodate for a dance performance. You might be asking yourself what an "izakaya" (e-za-ka-ya) is. Well, the one we went to was an all you can eat and drink for 2 hours place.

The food in ours was set for us so there was basically no choice for what foods we wanted. But the drinks were. Since I was still sick, I only drank Orange Juice from the non-alcoholic section. Even if I was healthy, I would still drink from the non-alcoholic section, but maybe like a melon soda or the sort. The orange juice was disgusting though. It was like extremely watered down orange juice (and there wasn't even a single piece of plump!)

The place mat was cute-ish looking
When we got there and settle into our spots, we ordered our drinks and turned on our soup. After our drinks arrived, according to Paul, the youngest had to make a short speech. Unfortunately, that was me. :/ All I said was something like, "Cheers to good times and having wonderful memories together." After the speech is done, everyone shouts "kanpai!" which means "Cheers" basically.

Danie and me

Yuko and Rebecca

Tara and Phil

Thomas and Sara

This is going to be similar to just a food blog kind of thing, because I mostly took pictures of the food. I did take some of the people though so it won't be completely just food.
The Meals!!!

Phil checking on his section's (Tara, Sara, Thomas, and Phil) soup

So we copied them and checked on ours too (Yuko, Rebecca, Danie, and me)
MEAL 1: Salad

We were served salad first while we waited for our soup to boil and cook the meats inside of it.
MEAL 2: Soup

It's delicious looking, no?

My personal bowl... notice: no mushrooms. :p I can assure you, this was delicious!
MEAL 3: Kebabs

Your choice of chicken with green onions, gizzards, or regular chicken

Danie and I chose the green onion ones first

The gizzards was chunky and chewy all at the same time. It was strange.

Cheers to good food and good friends!! CREDIT: Tara O'Donnell
MEAL 4: Fried Foods

Your choice of delicious French Fries, Not so delicious Onion Rings, and Fried Squid, which was as chewy as the gizzards on a stick.
MEAL 5: Egg Porridge (the last meal)

This was super duper delicious and yummy. I am not just saying that because I was sick and made me feel a little better. :p

Okay, so here comes the random collection of photos taken that night. :p Some of them are mine, others are not. As always I did give credit to the ones that do not belong to me. Hopefully I can remember why some of them were taken (it was on the 29th of September. My memory isn't the best).

The girls "sexy" pose. It was more of a fail though XD

The girls "cutesy" pose CREDIT: SARA BIRNBAUM

The girls "(^_^)v" peace/victory pose. CREDIT: TARA O'DONNELL

The "happiness/we're having the time of our lives" pose :D Everybody minus Tara, who is taking the photo :( CREDIT: TARA O'DONNELL

While there, although we went with friends, we were able to make more friends. Extremely drunken friends. And it was mostly Sara making the friends, but they were nice to us and wanted to take pictures with all the foreigners. Thankfully it was a group picture and not individual ones. The people on the opposite side of us weren't as drunk as the left-hand people. REBECCA MANUEL

One of the drunken Japanese people Sara made friends with came over and sat down on Thomas' lap. It was one of the most hilarious things during that night. XD

It still makes me giggle~ XD CREDIT: TARA O'DONNELL

Thank you for all the wonderful memories and for a wonderful time! I love all you guys!! ♥ Let's do that again before I have to leave? CREDIT: SARA BIRNBAUM

After we ate, paid, and left, we went almost across the street to AEON mall for some Purikura and games. On the way out, we spotted an advertisement for AIU festival!! (post on that will be coming too~) Actually, I noticed it when we first went into the izakaya, but we were being lead to our booth/seating place thing that I could take a picture. So I took it afterwards. Once we went to AEON mall, we went to the arcade and took pictures using one of the many purikura machines. I had so much fun taking purikura with everyone! Let's also do that again~!!! ♥

ONE-san has his own brand of ketchup?!?!

In the purikura booth, editing our pictures. CREDIT: SARA BIRNBAUM

Thank you for reading~! I am trying to catch up, I swear! Comments are welcomed and appreciated. :p

Sakura~ Sakura~

Okay, so you must be wondering what the title of my post means. If you are familiar with Japanese culture, you know what a sakura is, but for those that don't... it's the Japanese word for the "cherry blossom." Now you are thinking, don't the sakura bloom in Spring around March? Answer: yes, you studied well, young grasshopper. I'll just cut to the chase instead of dragging you along and watching you suffer. :p

I performed in Kakunodate on September 29th with one of the clubs I joined: The Japanese Traditional Dance club. We performed a dance called "Sakura Sakura" (hence the title of this post). Do you remember Kakunodate? I provided the link for you already, you lazy person!

There are only girls in this club. I don't know if they don't allow guys, guys don't think they would be accepted, guys think it's too girly, or something. But anyway, We went off to Kakunodate for a performance and Thomas came along. Well, he didn't end up going to Kakunodate with us, but was also going outside of Akita so we rode the bus together to the train station.

Because we were going different places, Thomas's platform was across from our platform. We waved bye to him as we rode off into the sunset to Kakunodate.

The only 外人(foreigner/pronounced as "guy-jean") in the club
As we rode on the train, we got to see the beautiful scenery of Japan. I love looking at nature, but not being in it. Nature is gross in that aspect. :p Anyway, we had a long train ride from Akita to Kakunodate with one transfer. But it was really fun going. We sat on the trains listening to music, talking, and some people even fell asleep on the trains!

A cute design on one of the buildings we passed by

The club members!!
We made it to Kakunodate in one piece as you can tell by the above picture. After we got off the train, we had to walk to the building which wasn't that far. As we were walking, I saw my first Japanese police car. It was so cute and little!! ^_^ But anyway, we had to walk a bit up a hill area to get to the place. Once we got close to it, it looked kind of scary but beautiful all at the same time.

Oh, scary hill

Very scary looking at first

... but now it's beautiful ♥
Once we got there, our Traditional Dance Teacher (sensei/"sen-say") had provided us with yummy foods. I got to try a Japanese sweet potato, which was very delicious. After eating, we had to get dressed in our yukatas. Luckily, our sensei was helping us put on the yukatas correctly or else we would have done it wrong.

My tabi!

Sara and Rebecca getting their yukatas fixed and fitted.

I am also wearing one!!! ^_^

Don't we look pretty? :3

As I was sitting down while Sara and Rebecca were doing something, one of the dance members had came over and put a flower clip in my hair for me. ♥
Shortly afterwards, we had performed on stage in front of people. It was exciting to do, but unfortunately I have no videos of my dance. :( But I did get my dance members dances and pictures So here comes the awkward montage of pictures and videos!!!

I actually was able to get my picture with the cutie afterwards!! ^_^

My Sempai (older classmates?/saem-pie) doing their dance.

These girls did the Sakura Sakura dance with me. I am so jealous at their dancing ability. I want to learn how to do that too!

Different group of sempai dancing. I want to be as good as them!!

This is my sensei!!!

Because my camera was dying and to take videos takes up a lot of space on my camera, I ended up taking a lot of photos of the other performers. I wish I got my sensei's entire performance on film, but because of that reason, I was afraid it would die in the middle of it. I did manage to get some of it filmed though. She did many cool moves that were not captured unfortunately. But from what you might be able to see, she was amazing and I inspire to learn how to dance like her!

Here are some photos from after the performance ^^

I got a picture with the adorable little girl ♥

Our cute obi! ♥

All the gear folded up for the day

The lobby was beautiful!

Pretty lights~!

So, after all the performances were done, we cleaned up the room and put everything away. After that, we left to go back to AIU. Sara, Rebecca, and I had decided to join Phil, Thomas, Yuko, Danie, and Tara for izakaya (will post about that next). So we had to ride the train all the way back first. We left the beautiful but kind of scary looking building and head down the hill back to the station. Before catching our train, we all stopped at a gift stop located two buildings down from the station, how convenient! I didn't take any pictures there though.

The cute train station wall mural~

Sara ignoring Becca and me

Becca and I ♥

As always, thank you for reading and keeping up with these. Comments are always welcomed either down below or on the facebook status that lead you here. :) Sorry for the lack of updates, I have been busy lately. Midterms are coming up already and ugh. So updating will return back to normal soon-ish? Anyway... thank you! ♥