P was at the onsen with some friends, so I had the entire apartment to myself for most of the weekend.
Not wanting to waste time, I spent my Saturday studying and shopping for gifts to bring home. And then my favourite Shuichi and his friend Tomo rescued me from a lonely dinner by bringing me for a Korean seafood course at Shin-Okubo. 干杯!
I picked up some Japanese slang like ippai ippai, tende wakaranai and biru hara.
And because Tomo hardly speaks any English, Shu-chan acted as the translator for most of the night and I got to practise my Japanese.
Shu-chan has the best English I have ever heard from a Japanese, having studied for a few years in the UK and he speaks with a crisp British accent and peppers his sentence with words like "cumbersome" and "conjunction". He also had a Singaporean roommate when he was there which triggered a lot of fond memories for us both when I used some Singlish like "lah", "like that", "bluff" etc.
When Shu-chan had to go to the toilet, Tomo and I literally sat there and giggled like nervous schoolgirls because we didn't know what to say, and after much agonizing, Tomo managed to squeeze out "I... am... DRUNK!" in English and more laughter erupted.
So much fun.
Sunday was spent on more studying and then P came back and we hung out.
He bought me cookies and grape mochi from the onsen in the middle of nowhere, and then he bought me a haircut to cheer me up because I was grumpy from waiting for him at the cafe for half an hour. I was intending to get my hair done in Singapore since it would be cheaper, but he convinced me that I needed to try it being styled in Tokyo.
The salon was posh a la Beautiful Life and the receptionist who welcomed us had a headset on and everyone looked so stylo milo! I was asked to pick three different styles from the magazine and then the stylist proceeded to ask me what I worked as, what kind of clothes I usually wear, what kind of look I wanted etc., which really impressed me.
I knew I wanted something really different, but it came out much better than expected! He gave me a cut, perm, wash and blow and I ended up with a chic bob. It also only cost a little over 6,000 yen (about 80 SGD) and thanks to P I now have a 新しい style.
We spent the evening in Ikebukuro with the housemates and friends from Sydney and ended up in Namjatown again. It was amusing when the chef looked at P and I and asked us if we liked the gyoza because he recognized us from our last 2 visits.
So I am leaving for the airport in about 4 hours and I am excited to be home, but I will miss P and Baba a lot too...
See you in Singapore!
Labels: culture, food, friendship, language, love, memories, photo, tokyo
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