Host club fun

Well it's now been over a month, and still no damn internet!! But finally, I'm moving places very soon, as the previous occupier has now finally moved out! Hurray! It's so big and nice, too. All the walls that are not connected to another apartment (which is about half) each have a window, so it's nice and bright. The views are quite nice too, not just someone elses balcony. I'll also be sharing the internet with a neighbour it seems, so it'll even be half the price, which will be good.

These past weeks have gone by so fast, as has a lot more of my money. I suppose it's my own fault, going out drinking and the like so often. But there are so many fun places to go, it's Tokyo after all, I don't want to spend most of my time at home! But unfortunately my HSBC card now does not work, probably because I failed to mention that I was going to Japan. Oops. So now I'm trying to get that sorted, which is actually harder than I thought, but hopefully will turn out all right in the end.

My university life is quite fun, because even though I get homework regularly it takes very little time to do, and all the kanji I'm learning I've already done, so it's only revision really. But it's useful as I'd forgotten how to write most of them! Finishing at 12 every day is also really good, although having classes from 9am every day of the week, with 90 minute lessons is a bit of a drag. But not unbearable.

I've now experienced the Japanese "culture" experience that is a host club twice since I got here. For those of you who don't know, a host is a young Japanese guy who is paid to entertain the ladies who go to the club to get chatted up. It seems that a requirement to being a host is to have very big, dyed hairstyles and wear tight shiny pants. Whatever floats your boat, ladies! While personally these kind of men are too flashy for me, it's actually quite a fun experience. However, if you go back to the club after the first time the price becomes ridiculously expensive. The first time ranges from between ￥1000 to ￥3000 yen for about 2 hours, including quite a few drinks, but if you go again can cost as much as ￥20,000!! Fear not, however, as there are so many host clubs in Tokyo (Shinjuku is the place to go! Kabukicho particularly) that you could probably go pretty often and still go to a different place each time.

For you men out there, there is also the female equivalent, unsurprisingly known as hostess clubs. Again, very flashy girls with big, dyed hairstyles. However being something you can't experience in western culture (that I'm aware of), it's definitely worth if for the experience.

I also want to go to a maid cafe at some point, although being surrounded by otaku (japanese geeks) might be very creepy, I'll just have to brave through it! Hopefully they'll let us take photos, if not there are many maids in the streets of Akihabara I could probably get a photo with.

That's it for now, as once more I'm in an internet cafe. Hopefully for the last time in a while, I really want to be able to use the internet in my own apartment ;_;

Bye!

2nd Week

Hey there,

It has now been around 2 weeks since I arrived, and for some reason A LOT of my money has disappeared! When they told us that the Tokyo lifestyle was expensive, they really weren't kidding! I don't even want to think about how much I've gone through in such a short amount of time. All I can say is thank God for loans, grants and scholarships! Hopefully my scholarship will go in soon, it's supposed to, so fingers crossed! I also need to pay for rent, bills and pay my laptop off too. I'm not in a dire situation by any means, but I'm gonna have to slow it down if I want to, you know, EAT.

Anyway, as for what I've been up to, this weekend I went to Japan's biggest club: Ageha. Basically, if you want to be picked up, that's where to go. Although you have to pay a ridiculous ￥3,500 (￡18ish?) to get in, so you might just want to go to a bar and try your luck. As we went on a Saturday, there was only one kind of music - trance. Which is fine if you like that kind of music. I don't. But never mind. I thought, the entry fee is expensive, so the drinks are probably cheaper, right? Wrong! My advice: drink beforehand. Lots.

One plus about Japan's clubs is that they're open until about 5am. As trains stop running from about 12:30am, it's hard to get home, so they stay open until then, and then when you want to get home you can stumble to the nearest station and get the first train. Which is what we did, and as you'd expect, it wasn't really that fun. I also noticed the amount of people who were getting trains to wherever at 5am. Crazy Japanese people.

I may have enjoyed the experience a bit more, if one of my friends hadn't taken my previous advice, and drank beforehand. While going into the club she was fine, but it went pretty downhill from there. I won't go into details for her sake, but we spent a lot of the night looking after her until we could get back.

On another note, I've been to the shrine in Asakusa, where I bought myself a little souvenier, which I then proceeded to forget in the restaurant we ate in... and I went to Yasukuni Shrine too. Both were okay experiences, although I still have no camera, so once more... no photos.

Other than that, I've mainly been drinking, shopping, and playing crane games (UFO catchers), which is probably where all my money has gone. Ah well, you live and learn.

As for classes, they are actually really easy. As my university only has 8 exchange students, we all have to study at the same level. Which is unfortunately equal to first year grammar at the moment. Same goes for kanji... hopefully things will get more difficult. I talked to one of the teachers though, and she said she'd give me some stuff to do by myself, which should be good. I'll just have to make sure to actually do it...

I have my first non-Japanese class on Wednesday, which happens to be tennis, followed by badminton! I don't know if the 3 hours of sport will be too much... I'll find out, I suppose! So even though I've been taught in Japanese anyway up until now, the other teachers will be speaking as though to actual Japanese students (as most of them will be) so hopefully I'll be able to understand!

Well this is long enough already, so I'll stop now. I'll update whenever I can, as still no internet.

Bye!