what an insane summer it's been!
when. will. it. end.
i'm SO over the heat. please go away! good thing is, hopefully we only have a week or so until it begins to cool down, it is september afterall! i did hear that it begins to feel the worst in the last leg because you're so drained from dealing with it the rest of the summer, and autumn feels sooo close yet so far. i still have hope though. even this morning, it was slightly cooler than usual! what an improvement!
anyways! i'm always saying that i'm going to post more often but it never happens lol. at this point, i think i'm okay with just posting whenever i feel like it. but i know it would also make me happy to see this calendar more populated! my motivation to create is completely run by my mental and physical health. i may love school here, but it's still so draining!
i have had a lot of firsts recently! my first time wearing yukata, my first girls night out with new friends, first karaoke, even my first trip! (i also just celebrated my birthday a few weeks ago! yippie!) from the middle of august until now has felt much longer than simply one month. it feels like it's been three i swear.
i've been to a couple more festivals since the last time i posted, one of them being another pretty miserable day solely because of the heat, but hey, at least i didn't almost faint like last time. another one i went to was inside thank GOODNESS! it was extremely fun because my school taught us to wear yukata and then took me and my classmates to the festival. they had 盆踊り（ぼんおどり, bon-odori, tradtional obon dances）and these old ladies had me and my friends come in the circle and learn the dance! i danced the entire time and it was the best thing ever. i've never been good at dancing in general, but it was just a great time to see everyone so happy and dancing together. i thought i did well!
at the end of the festival, i was talking to some other classmates that happened to join that didn't come wiih the yukata group. i ended up asking them if they wanted to grab a drink together, because the friends i have made so far don't drink at all, and i was dying to just have a cute girls night grabbing some drinks and talking about whatever. i was so happy they agreed and we ended up walking pretty far to this hilariously themed bar. it was all underwater themed! the entire interior had those blue water lights, pirate memorabilia, and jamacian music playing for some reason haha. anyways, i ended up getting along really well with all of them, and we had a great time! i had two new drinks: a singapore sling, and the bar's signiature drink. it was blue, and i originally thought it was curaçao, but it was just like straight menthol. it was good but...just not what i was expecting at all. i love minty flavors so it was good but i don't think i would get it again. it was verrryyy strong in both flavor and alcohol content lol. anyways, an extremely fun end to a great night, and i totally didn't have trouble walking in a straight line after :3
the next big event was the perseid meteor shower! i was really hoping to see them after class, and they were happening the first morning of obon break. thankfully, one of my friends rented a car for the break, and he offered to take me and another friend to go see the meteor shower in a smaller town, with less light pollution! i have never seen a shooting star in my life, and the biggest meteor shower would be CRAZY to see! so that evening, we drove to a really cute, small town by a big river. we went for a firework festival first! it was in the mountains, and already nighttime, so it was genuinely, surprisingly, cool weather. maybe it was also the nice mist from the river, but yeah, that night was perfect. i haven't had a night like that since i've been here. it turned out to be my favorite firework festival we've attended, solely because of the nice weather. also they had a cute little game where you had to guess what the shape of some of the fireworks were! they had cute things like cats, smiley faces, stars, and sunflowers! it was adorable. after that, we grabbed some dinner at this extremely hole-in-the-wall place that was obviously a home that turned into a restaurant. the owners were SO kind it was the best experience. they even gave us free watermelon and homemade desserts before we left! after, we got back in the car and headed to a random, empty park. it was pretty late at that point, and very cloudy, so we knew we wouldn't see anything anytime soon. we ended up sleeping in the car for a while. the peak was supposed to be around 3am. i woke up at 2 and...
only. clouds. in every. direction.
i wish i could say that i was upset, but honestly i was just so incredibly exhausted that i wanted to go home. i do so badly wish i could have seen them though :( it would have been amazing! i feel like meteor showers would feel very magical. anyway, we took a long trip home and i don't think i actually went back to sleep until 5 or 6am. the sun came up and my dumb ahh was just like "yep! it's sleepy time now!" haha. still, it was a good night, even though i didn't get to see any meteors.
also here's this silly car from that night that was parked in a CRAZY garage. it's like it was built exactly for that car. i had a good laugh
soon enough, my birthday was upon us! me and my friends all went to a cute little cafe that had a parfait that was actually bigger than my head. i didn't get it, they just had those food displays out front lol. anyways, i had a great time that night and i was so appreciative to have friends that went and celebrated it with me :) and now i'm twenty two! old enough to start having cronic sholder issues i suppose. lol
with the same friends i went drinking with, and a few new ones, we went to the city to go to a 飲み放題（のみほうだい, nomihoudai, all you can drink）which was CRAZY! we stopped at a lil izakaya earlier in the night to get some food as well! this particular all you can drink was ALL sake（日本酒、にほんしゅ）which i have never genuinely had before! it was an amazing experience. it definitely made me drunk fast lol. honestly, i know it's, like, basically wine, but it was more like wine tasting than i thought it would be! sake just kinda tastes like a different type of wine (literally rice wine lol, what did i expect?). i had a couple of pretty nasty ones, and by nasty i mean it was literally a savory drink, like it tasted like i was drinking food. not my thing. but there were also some really good ones that weren't too sweet but not too strong either. it was such a pleasant surprise and especially for the price! i had a great time with my friends and made some new ones along the way :)
next, it was one of my other friend's birthday! we decided to do karaoke, and then eat italian food! both were a first for me here in japan. i've done karaoke before but only really with friends and family at home. this was my first real karaoke, at one of those places where you get a private room. literally living the dream. it was awesome. i sang a lot, i love to sing! we had a really great night. there were a lot more english songs than i expected too! after, at the italian restaurant, i got a pizza! it was pretty good actually! not show-stopping or anything, but i hadn't had a pizza in a long while, so it was pretty good. overall, a very fun night, and i was glad to celebrate my friend's birthday with everyone :)
all of our birthdays were within like, a week or so of each other, so yet again, we celebrated another birthday. this time, we went to okonomiyaki! it's the first time i've ever had it! (again, a lot of firsts within the past month!) this was one of those places where you cook it in front of you. it was a lot of fun, and cooking is just the best when you don't have to prep all the ingredients lol. that day was pretty funny because this friend was sleeping after class and came late to his own celebration haha. he said he was still asleep by the time we had gotten a table XD i had some pretty decent okonomiyaki, but i think for the most part, it's not really my thing. i still had an amazing time with my friends. they also had a BANGER dessert after which was basically like an apple batter that you cook yourself and then add it on top of a scoop of icecream. it was freaking delecious
with my other friend group, i finally went to a "hidden" bar (it was just downstairs by itself in this one place. we were there for quite a while and we were the only customers, not as bumpin' as i would have preferred, but we had a nice night and the drinks were pretty good, so hard to complain) they had a TV that was playing american 70s/80s classics with AI vidoes. me and one of my friends couldn't keep our eyes off of it and just kept making fun of the AI's awful job haha. we ended up getting home pretty late that night, i was sooo pooped. i had fun though! and i got to know more about some of my newer friends in this particular group
the very next day, a friend from my other group (let's just call them the homies, and my drinking buddies the silly guys) invited the homies to a sparkler event with an english study cafe that she attends. apparently, japanese people come to this cafe to speak to english speakers! it's a pretty cool thing! anyways, that day was HECTIC! i mean, it could have been avoided, but i was totally being dumb, as per usual. basically, it was verryyyy hot that day, also as per usual, so i wanted to take the bus. i got on the bus, i missed the one that took me directly to the location, so i had to take one that i needed to change busses. well, it told me to get off at this train station and go to platform 2, so i kinda thought i was supposed to take the train? basically i wasn't paying attention at all to what my phone was telling me to do. i used my phone suica app to get into the train station, just to see if it might be the correct way. well, the train i saw went the wrong way, so i knew i shouldn't do that. i start to head back out of the station, i tap my phone again just like i did when i entered, and then *beep beep*
it didn't let me out. i tried again. still, the doors closed. i know i could have just gone through without doing anything because it wouldn't charge me at all and stuff like that, but i was really worried to be caught and i knew i should do the right thing and at least explain myself. i'm kind of stressing a lot for a while, texting my friends, and then i finally see a train station attendant. i ask him why it doesn't seem to be working, and he just told me to press this "inqueires here" button where you have to speak to an actual person over the phone kinda. i did it, spoke to the lady, told her i didn't know too much japanese, she still proceeded to tell me in very complicated japanese, so obviously i did not pick up a single word she said. i'm panicing, i don't know what to do, i texted my friends like "help i'm stuck. i can't leave!" very dramatic-like and all. and then...
a savior. two older japanese ladies were walking by, about to leave the train station. one lady goes, and the other does it with her phone, and guess what happened. yup. it rejected her too! so, she did the same thing as i did, but this time she actually knew what the people on that speaker were saying. i mustered up as much confidence as i could've and told her i was having the same problem and i wasn't sure what to do. earlier, she knew this was going to take a little bit, so she told her friend to go on ahead and wait for her outside. so it was only the two of us. she was the sweetest old lady i have ever met. i was so grateful that it happened to her at least so then we could both firgure it out. and my japanese was decent enough to get the point across, so we were even able to chat afterwards. but yeah! apparently we had to go like 3 flights downstairs and then the actual fare workers were there. she told them her problem, and then said i had the same problem. obviously, my card did not submit any money, so they were pretty confused. anyways, this lady was the highlight of that day for sure.
so! that's pretty much everyhing that happened in august! it's around 23:00 for me now, and i can barely keep my eyes opened writing this, so i'm definitely going to sleep now. the next time i post, i will talk about my september so far!
thank you guys so much for reading! i always forget how much fun it is to actually write these. i just wish i had the motivation to do it more often :/
here's a few random silly photos before i go to sleep!
until next time! love you all ♡
またね！