7/17 adventure cont'd

Long time no post. I came back from a trip to Hakone yesterday morning. I will write about it when I finish writing about stuff that happened before that.

So, last time I lost gas after getting up to the rendezvous point. I will finish the adventure of 7/17 for good with this post. Wish me luck.

For a quick recap, I was meeting up with lots of people in Shinjuku for dinner, and it took about 1 hour to get everybody at the same place. Last group of people to arrive was Kanto and 3 IJST members this year who had come to Tokyo via the 7-hour-long bus trip. I had to go get them at the west exit, and 9 others went ahead to find a place to eat. After putting their luggages in the coin locker, Kanto and crew followed me to an izakaya, Japanese-style restaurant/pub/bar where you can eat food and drink alcohol. The izakaya was called Tsukimaru, and it was in Kabukicho area. For those of you who are Tokyo-naive, Kabukicho is the infamous red-light district. I personally think it's fun to take a walk there because I get to see so many interesting people and cool advertisements/names of establishments. The best thing about it all is that there's a police box in the heart of Kabukicho, and they are not there to stop prostitution. They are just there to guarantee an orderly operation of these establishments.

When the 4 of us finally got to Tsukimaru, we had to put our shoes in plastic bags and take them to our seats. This was the first izakaya I've been to that didn't have a place to store shoes and offered plastic bags instead. I had a feeling this particular izakaya wasn't up-to-par with the rest of the pack like Warawara and Watami. Ai and others decided on a nomihoudai, Japanese for all-you-can-drink, for about 1400 yen per person. One catch was that each person had to order at least one food, which started from about 300 yen all the way up to 900 or so. The group separated into two tables, one for guys and one for girls. I was with the girls. I felt left out, or right in, whichever you look at it.

I remember my gals ordering pizza, salad, and gyouza, Japanese for dumplings. I'm sure we had more since there were 5 girls and me at the table. I don't really remember what the guys ordered. Ray really liked the nomihoudai deal, so he ordered many drinks, especially the Malibu Pineapple cocktail, which happens to be my favorite.

Anyway, the dinner was good and all, although a bit expensive, the problem of the night showed up with the receipt. The bill divided in 12 came out about 2229 yen per person. So, I asked everyone to pay 2300 yen. Most people had 10000 yen bills or didn't have 3 100 yen coins, so I had to go get change a couple of times. Getting money from everyone took about 20 minutes, and in the process, there was a disagreement with Kanto and Scott and me about them paying me already. I said I didn't get money from them, and I still don't to this day, so Kanto ended up paying me 5000 yen for both him and Scott. I would find out later that Kanto and Scott had probably paid me somehow, in a way that I don't remember, because I went over the financial matters before I went to bed that day, and things just didn't match up nicely. This was the problem #1 of the night.

Kanto, Kim, and Greg were going to Yokohama that night and going to Korea the following day, so they bid farewell to everyone first. Others didn't really wanna stay either, so we all left and headed for Shinjuku station. Muk and Ai left together because Muk was gonna stay at Ai's apartment. Scott, Ray, and Tony left together via Odakyu Line because they lived in Kanagawa prefecture. Mina, Dylan, my gf, and I were gonna use the Yamanote Line, a loop line covering many of the major stops in Tokyo, but Mina had to go the other direction. Dylan was staying at a hotel in Gotanda, which was 3 stops after ours, so I told him the necessary directions before my gf and I got off in Shibuya.

After we finally got back home, I entered the day's expenditures into my Excel sheet and checked the leftover dough. Enter problem #2. At this point, I'm furious at myself because I can't seem to remember where the missing 10000 yen is. Well, it wasn't exactly 10000 yen because of the problem #1, but I had a feeling one of my beloved brown bills was missing. I got angry at myself at the possibility of dropping it somewhere, and even got mad at my gf because I was just not a happy camper. So, I decided to take a shower and think the course of the night over. Aha! I remembered the terrible, horrible incident that led up to my bill's MIA status. When I arrived in Shinjuku that night before the rendezvous time, I went to the Odakyu ticket machine area in order to buy the Hakone Freepass for our trip to Hakone on 7/19. There are two types of the Pass. One usable from Shinjuku and one from Odawara, a stop in between Shinjuku and Hakone. I wanted to buy the cheaper one, of course, but what I didn't know was the fact that I can only buy the cheaper Pass at Odawara station. To make things simple, I'll leave out unnecessary details. I entered my brown bill into the machine, and then this Odakyu guy came up to help me and told me that I can't buy the cheaper Pass in Shinjuku, so I decided not to buy it then and backed out of the machine. I had totally FORGOTTEN about getting my bill back! You have to press this cancel button in order to get your money back. The reason I had forgotten this simple action was because the Odakyu guy was such a pain in the butt. He talked to me as if he's really angry at me, and so I also talked to him back in an angry tone. So, when I decided not to buy the Pass, I quickly left the machine in a fury, badmouthing the Odakyu guy in Korean. Bad karma? Oh, well. In the end, my Excel sheet has entries called "Odakyu loss" and "missing" on 7/17. The lesson for the day? Don't let your feelings get in the way when it comes to $.

That's my story for 7/17. Stay tuned for another bad adventure involving Disney Sea.