Aquariums, Karaoke, and the Names-I-Forget

Last Weekend I ventured out into the world that is Japan on a school field trip. Well not really a school field trip but it was free and a bunch of volunteers came to our door to pick us up and take us to the aquarium. There were 2 choices, Nagoya Castle or Nagoya Port Aquarium. I figure that a giant structure is much easier to find if I decide to visit it on my own than say, well for lack of better words, a small and very far away sea-level building. Turns out I was wrong. The aquarium happened to be at the end of a train line, which was probably about as difficult as it got to find. Past that you can just follow the children. It seemed that on any given day every child in Nagoya travels to this very fun little hole in the wall. On the way there you follow all the little wide eyed Japanese children who are so excited to see all the animals. Once you get there it really is amazing. I saw for the first time ever a dolphin performance AND a killer whale performance. It was so amazing. The turtles are exactly like in Finding Nemo too. They're giant and kind of float around with no real schedule. Its like they are sooooo cool and finally they figure out how cool they are so life looses its meaning. Instead of spending all their time keeping up on their Cool, like the dolphins, they take up floating/drifting to pass time until death. MAKING THEM THAT MUCH COOLER! Its mind blowing. Seriously. My ears are leaking...

Anyway the aquarium was fantastic and I'll never forget it because it was very very fun (and mind blowing, reference to the overly cool turtles). The other horribly awesome thing that I did last weekend was, for the first time ever, I went to Karaoke. There are no words that come to mind when I think about it. All I can say is that the Japanese perfected Karaoke. Not so much the singing as the whole act of going to go sing. Their singing is good, don't get me wrong, but there is work to b--you know I'm gonna stop there...

::Ahem:: moving along then. So when you get there your greeted by a very kind fellow who shows you directly to your room. You don't pay first so you don't have to think about money right away. Rather, they show you to your room straight away and then ask what you would like to drink. Did I mention that drinks are cheap and unlimited? Did I mention that ALL the drinks fall under one price that happens to be unlimited and cheap? Did I also mention never to get the coffee float? Yeah beware that coffee float, its not too sweet. Everything else is good though. If you drink alcohol as well, it saves quite a bit of money. On top of all the amazing beverage opportunities, you also have a large screen TV and comfortable seating, 2 microphones for duets and hand held song finder and a ton of American songs that I knew that I sang (like Weezer, and Incubus) and impressed a few people.

Hrm...I'm still searching for the correct analogy for all of you to truly grasp its convenience. I think I have one. Its like this: Convenient became a noun, then had love children with Comfortable, who also was a noun, coincidentally being the daughter of Relaxation and Happiness. The grand children were as follows: Vending Machine, Karaoke, and All-The-Name's-Less-Than-5-Letters-Long. The Oldest became famous throughout the world as the son of Convenient, Karaoke made herself popular and renowned in the local region of Japan, possibly the best hangout event in the world. Aaaand the last child happened to be a mistake that occured at a time when the Convenient's were down on their luck and Mr. Convenient had just lost his job. They're glad they had him (supposedly).

And I'm glad they had him too except that all those names that fit in that category are SERIOUSLY HARD TO REMEMBER. I meat so many Japanese people with names that are really long so they decide to shorten them to about 4ish letters long. These are too small for my brain to hold on too so I have to say "Sumimasen, namae o wasureta, namae wa?" (Sorry, I forgot your name, your name is...?) like a machine gun to catch on to it. Their convenient but still difficult. I hope I start remembering them soon, school starts tomorrow ^_^.

PS: Sorry, forgot to do Mondays blog, too bad for y'all (>_<)!!