Day 33: College Mixers and Bunny Cafés

I got breakfast at the FamilyMart (convenience store) across the street and didn't realize until I opened it up that it was more Okonomiyaki. I felt kind of gross after all the rich food, so I ended up getting a lime drink before I left which helped a lot:

I walked around near the hostel in a park-ish area for a while and saw this sign. It reminds me of George Washington:

We went to a College Mixer event today where a bunch of HIF students met and played games with students studying English at a nearby university. They preformed a song for us:

Another of the mocha balls from yesterday:

On my way to meet Erin and go to the bunny café. I really like the countdowns on some of the crosswalks here, they're really great:

Bunny café!

Lots of bunny pictures:

This is the bio for the bunny I held. It was a two-month-old, chestnut colored, really expensive (about $880) Netherland Dwarf Rabbit from Osaka:

Here's the shop. The café was in a separate area, so we ended up not getting lunch there and just held bunnies.

More bunnies:

Bunny clothing:

Really large bunny in a separate area. It was probably about a foot and a half long:

Later we passed some sort of street event outside:

A little farther down the street there was another event. There were a lot of events.

Here's an entrance to the underground shopping mall. It was so crazy. It probably stretched across almost the entire city and connected to the basements of most of the larger department stores and shopping centers on the streets above.

Erin and I split up because I was getting hungry and she'd already eaten. I went to a bread shop and got some breads for lunch and to snack on later. I got one called "Mayonnaise Lover" which actually wasn't that bad. It was kind of like a savory/sour cheese danish. I also got a potato sausage bread and a cookie melon pan (I think normal melon pan is better).

The name of the bread shop was "Scandinavian Smell" which I thought was funny.

Here is the inside. There are a lot of shops like this in Japan and I wish we had more places like this in the U.S. that have such a huge variety of sweet and savory fresh breads.

I really liked this ramen shop sign:

Here's another part of the shopping strip:

I got this matcha cream puff from the convenience store. I was pretty good, but looked a lot better than it actually was.

After that, I wanted to go to an onsen and found two that were sort of nearby on the map. I chose the one that was closer, but I think I should have picked the other one. This one was really cool, but also sort of expensive. By the time I got there though it was getting sort of late and I was really tired so I just chalked it up as a cool experience and went in anyways. Usually average onsens are about $4-10, but this one was a bit more than $20. It was pretty awesome through. It was on the 20-somethingth floor of this tall building above the station, so there was a really great view of the city even though it was kind of cloudy:

It had several baths of different temperatures, sizes, depths, and with different kinds of jets. There was also a steamy, lavender-scented room which was pretty cool, and a sauna. I stayed there for almost two hours (switching between the hot baths, the cool bath, the lavender room, and the sauna) because it was so pricy and I wanted to get my money's worth. I was ridiculously relaxed afterward.

There was a monkey mascot in the station:

I ended up going to a restaurant below the station for dinner and had salmon oyakodon. "Oyakodon" literally means "parent and child bowl" and is usually chicken over rice with an egg on top. Because this was salmon oyakodon it was made with salmon and salmon roe over rice. I really like salmon, so to me this was pretty amazing. I really liked it a lot.

Here is the restaurant:

Later, I went to the family mart and met up with some other HIF members who had gone to get ice cream. I got this melon ice cream box-thing which was really yummy. The texture was interesting. It was grittier than ice cream, but not gritty enough to be sherbet or shaved ice.

The spoons they gave us looked like tongue compressors. Here is Rett after I mentioned this:

I'm really going to miss that when you get something at a convenience store or grocery store here the employee who checks you out always puts any utensils you might need in your bag. I always get food, realize I forgot to grab anything to eat it with, then find chopsticks, a little spoon, and a wet napkin already in by bag. It's really great.

I kind of wanted to go do something because it wasn't very late yet, but I didn't want to go somewhere alone. I ran into a group of HIF students that were going to go out to a restaurant/bar they found the night before and I tagged along with them. We got a nomihodo set which is basically all you can drink for two hours. We only had to get two or three drinks for this to be worth it, so it was a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, something happened and our server changed which caused our table to be forgotten about for about half an hour until we asked about our order. We still had a really fun time though. Mason got Imo-mocha (which is potato mocha) that he shared with the table and it was probably one of the best things I've ever had. (I've been keeping an eye out for it since the program ended, but found out it's a Hokkaido dish so I'm probably not going to be able to find it anywhere.)

This seasoning had a whole story on the back:

I split a warm sake and peach drink with Michelle, and also got a lime sour. We also all got free ice cream with a coupon some people had gotten the night before.