Wearin the Jimbe, Feelin Fat and Happy.

Today was an eventful Saturday. Woke up after about 5 hours of sleep and we all were planning on going to the used clothes store, Uniclo. Becca defected from her group to accompany Eric, Alan, Rob, and me to try to find this place, and we were off. We had to swing by the Post Office which has an International ATM before heading out, but it ended up being closed. Alas. We wound our way through side streets (It's an adventure!) to get there, and navigated our way well through the streets of Hikone. Upon reaching Bell Road, where the lights, they are a-flashy, we looked for Gusto's, and completely missed it. We found a hobby shop first, and it was filled with AirSoft weapons, Gundam and WWII models, model trains, and tons of anime stuff. I think the most amusing things to me were the Santa Yoda figurine for 2500Y ($25US) or the Charles Barkley Dunk Super Famicom game for 9200Y ($92US!!!!!!). After that, we went down a ways, passed a manga shop, then stopped at a Lawson's (what else) to get directions to Gusto's, since we weren't sure where we were going. We ended up turning around, and found our way to the manga shop again, where we saw some affordable used manga, tons and tons of used Super Famicom games, which, of course, are SNES games, and, of course EXPLICIT HENTAI (PORN) MANGA. The covers were just absolute guttertrash porn. Ugh. They also had used GBA games from 480Y ($4.80US). Not bad prices! We foudn Gusto's, but decided to eat at CoCo Curry House another block over. I had my lovely Katsu Curry again, and Rob had the curry he ate whenever he went to when he lived in Hawaii, the ShabuShabu Curry (boiled beef and onion curry), Alan was extremely pleased with his Chicken Katsu Curry (fried chicken curry, said it was the best thing he's eaten this since getting to Japan), Eric had Hayashi Rice (onion curry and rice), and Becca had a [i]salad and rice[/i]. She went to a Curry House and had a [i]salad and rice[/i]. There should be a rule against that. After Curry, we tried in vain to find the Uniclo, but to no avail. We ended up going to the YuuStore to get groceries for tonight's barbeque that I advertised. YuuStore was interesting today. They had two "Timed Service" Events (Timed Sales) where the first one was 99Y hot dogs (10 of them!!) and the next one was 48Y Sunkist apple juice, 1 liter. I was happy to get those deals! I bought a little hibachi grill, some chicken breasts, scallions, and yakitori glaze (like teriyaki glaze) to make Yakitori. I also got another, cheaper, Jimbe. Came home, stole an hour nap, then started up the grill. Now let me tell you something, Japanese charcoal is 100% carbonized wood, and they don't have the lighter fluid we have. They have something that is called Fire Blaze, which is a gel fuel, or, as we call it, Napalm. Japanese charcoal is a lot harder to light than Kingsford briquettes, and we had fun with the Napalm. But we ended up getting the yakitori grilling, then we put on someone else's steaks, restarted the coals, and did another group's chicken, then finished off our yakitori. After that, we put on a packet that had onions, red pepper, garlic, olive oil, and some black pepper and a bit of the yakitori sauce in the coals. It came out very sweet and delicious. I was pleasantly surprised how sweet. But, almost too sweet. Among those at the cookout were Alan, Eric, Rob, Claire, Dave (other one), Sarah, Megan, Jamie, Scott, and me. We grilled to one of Rob's Hawaiian cds and then to my Pat Dailey CD (thank you dad!), which made for the perfect mood setting music. The yakitori was delicious, and there was too much for us to eat, so we shared, and then after cleaning up, went on an ice cream run to Lawson's, minus Claire, Sarah, and Dave, but plus Elmer. It was interesting, and I picked up some beer, thinking we were going to go back and watch Zatoichi, the newest one with Beat Takeshi taking control. You all know Beat Takeshi as the guy who created the game show which is made fun of in America called MXC, or Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. He is also in it, he's "Vic" in the show. I got a Kirin Honey Brown, which is okay, but nothing compared to the Honey Browns back in the states. Imagine a Honey Brown Heineken. I had a normal Asahi, a solid beer, and I am currently working on a Kirin Gokunama, which apparently is a low-malt beer that uses something else to create the lighter flavor. I'm not too impressed. Back to the regularly scheduled typing. It turned out to be fairly late, and I instead changed into Jimbe, untangled the wires of the laptop area to meet my standards of Wire Management (I would be happier with zip ties), and typed this here. It is just about 1am, and there is a little party going on in the room next to mine. So I shall update soon. Yes, that's what I say now, Muaaahahahahhaahahaha......