Japanese fun

Well, I was all ambitious and have been running the past two weeks, and now I think I'm going to have to take a small break because I hurt my foot! The whole area around my big toe and the one next to it is really tender to touch and it doesn't feel that great walking on it, so I'm thinking running might not be a good idea! I don't exactly remember when it started hurting, it was more of a general pain after my last run. I'm thinking I should have invested in better tennis shoes than what I found at Wal-mart.

In other news, this is my last week of "spring vacation." I'm actually ready for work to start up again because I'm running out of things to do and lack of funds prevents me from going into Tokyo too much. Monday I did manage to have a pretty great day though. I met Hosana, a girl from the church I've been going to, and we did lots of exciting things. We met in Kashiwa, only about 10 minutes away from Matsudo. First we went out to lunch. It was so nice to be with someone that could help me read the menu! I got some chicken, rice, and soup. It was really good. After that we did some shopping. I ended up finding a nice spring jacket for only 1500 yen (about $15.00). Although my big puffy winter coat was great when I first got here while it was cold, it's too heavy now that it's warming up outside. After we had walked around for a while we went to starbucks and had some coffee and talked for a long time. Then Hosana asked me if I would like to try karaoke! I was nervous at first, but decided to go for it. Karaoke is very different here-it's not in a bar and you're not singing in front of lots of people you don't know. What you do is go in and pay for a room for however long you want. Ours cost about $7.00 for one hour. Hosana and I went into this room that had an L shaped couch and a table in the middle of the room with a TV in front. It was less than 10 feet x 10 feet, so pretty small. Then you choose your song and you just sing!! It was really fun. The only singer that we both knew was Avril Lavigne so we sang a ton of her songs. It was really fun and I want to go again! By the time we were done there it was getting late so we parted ways, but it was definitely a lot of fun and it was nice having someone to hang out here!

This is a bad picture because it's all fuzzy, but at least you can see how small the room was and what it was like.

Hosana and I