YMCA

Greetings from the Internet Cafe. We just had the best time tonight. My pals Kara and Cynda and I ventured out. First we went to the supermarket. We had a great time looking at everything in Japanese. I think the people thought I was a little crazy for taking pictures of them shopping but it is easy to make the little kids laugh and they were happy to indulge me. The girl at the register was laughing so hard because I wanted to take her picture while she worked. We bought some fun things to take home. Upstairs was a department store. A man selling komonas gave us a lesson on the art of buying one. There are many pieces needed to make the outfit complete. We didn`t buy one as they are very expensive.
From there we looked for a restaurant. We came across on that looked interesting. The young people who worked there coaxed us to try it, so we said OK. A young man waited on us and he was extremely patient. He name was "Lein". He got such a kick out of us. The menu was in Japanese, no pictures and no English translations. He sat with us for almost 15 minutes while we figured out what two vegetarians and one carnivore could eat. We ended up with many dishes including an eggplant dish (delicious), edamane (soy beans in the pod), rice balls filled with salmon (too fishy), a tofu dish (great sauce), and finally cheese fries served with shredded lettuce and ketchup! We were never sure exactly what he was going to bring us next but he did great between hand gestures, his limited knowledge of English, and a dictionary. We all laughed a lot but the funniest part was when the song YMCA started playing in Japanese. We all sang it together and later all the kids posed for us while they sang the song! All this food and entertainment for only 35 dollars. The experience was priceless.