Omoshiroi Desu-yo!!!! - Japanese Night With My Neighbor and Friends!!

- February 25, 2011, Friday

- Last night, Charmaine and Tifa asked me to join them with their Jap Food Culture class' culminating night in Little Tokyo. Both wanted me to join them because of my not-so-unknown interest in cultural stuff. Tifa also planned to have a karaoke session in a nearby Japanese karaoke place with her cosplay friends.

- This afternoon, Tifa, together with her La Sallian cosplayer friend Audrey, dropped by around 5:45 to pick up Charmaine and me. We arrived soon at Little Tokyo, met Charmaine's class (and Cheska sensei) and Tifa's other cosplayer friends, Charizze and Peppy.

- Cheska sensei gave us the freedom to choose whichever restaurant we'd like to eat in, while the main bunch of people was at the courtyard, eating. Tifa and Charmaine chose to eat at a small okonomiyaki place, where the okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancakes) are cooked in front of the customers.

- The service at the okonomiyaki place was very very fast and efficient. The food was undoubtedly authentic, fresh, and filling. The place was very small, clean, bright, and minimally-decorated with Japanese souvenirs, and small statues of famous Japanese sports idols and personnel. What caught my (our actually) eyes was a small statue of a baseball idol that was decapitated. The head was placed beside the erect body.

- After the rather short filling, we said our goodbyes with Cheska sensei, and went to the Japanese grocery to buy Japanese snacks. Charmaine and I bought some ice cream. The milk ice cream (Hokaido style) was interesting, because it seemed like we were eating frozen butter. While enjoying the ice cream, we read the cover just to make sure that we were eating ice cream, and not frozen butter.

- We later rode Peppy's car to Wako, the karaoke place. That's where the "real" fun began. We dug through the song books to look for Japanese, Korean, and English songs. The Japanese songs were the most of course; it even had its own songbook. Aside from the usual anime songs we sang, (I mostly sang Sailormoon songs. Haha. *Don't judge me.*) we also became crazy, and sang retro songs, as well as Tifa's "Basketbol" song by the Viva Hot Babes. We didn't really know what came over Tifa, so much so that she decided to sing this rather un-Tifa-like song.

- My only concern with the place was that the songs are not updated. According to Tifa, the "latest" songs in the song books were from the year 2007. Even so, not a lot of songs from 2007 were there. Still, we all had crazy fun, and sang our hearts out. Again, it was also Tifa's idea to sing "Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xin" (The Moon Represents My Heart -> a really really old Chinese song that may be considered one of the Chinese counterparts of "My Way" in Chinese karaoke places.)

- From our two hour reservation, we had to extend another hour since Tifa's dad wasn't around yet to pick us up, and that we were having too much fun as well. Tifa's dad picked us up at around 11:30, and had a chatty rode home.

- Hopefully, this adventure will make a bright future for me, and that I'll have more adventures to come. My first day as a free bird from college (hopefullyyyyyy) had been great. Again, cheers to more adventures. :D:D:D:D