楽しい時間 Fun Times

So this weekend was a pretty good one. I went to the world's tallest aquarium, which was a little expensive, but I still had a good hour and a half of fun at it so I can't really complain too much. The aquarium was placed at the top of a mall, which had the cutest clothes ever. From what I hear, there's going to be a massive sale at that mall sometime July, so I plan on going back and bringing some money with me :).
After I spent the day in Sunshine City, I ended up going out to dinner with some friends. Little did I know that dinner was going to be just one huge disaster waiting to happen. My group of 7 basically got taken advantage of. While we were walking trying to find somewhere cheap and that had food, a guy ran out to us from a restaurant saying "We have English menu," so we looked at it. People catching you on the street and asking you to eat at their restaurant isn't too uncommon in Japan, because since a lot of places are above or below other restaurants, they have to do that to get business during slow hours I suppose. So everyone agreed they wanted to eat there because the food looked good and pretty authentic. Most of us got small, cheap items because we weren't very hungry. Or so, we thought they were cheap. My meal with water and 3 Japanese style egg rolls was supposed to cost me only 480 yen ($5) plus included tax&tip, but because we were Americans and weren't familiar with custom, we didn't realize we'd be smacked down with an extra 330 yen ($3.50) table charge. In the end, I paid over 100% tip for this restaurant and I will not be going back again. They say that table charges are custom because they have "no tip like you Americans," but I know that the last few places I've sat down at didn't have such charge, plus at the bottom there was a spot where tip was already included. Basically, out group got taken advantage of, which was ircking to say the least.
Luckily not all of Japan is like that. Everything else seems to be exactly how I wished it would be. Sunday I spent the day at Yoyogi Park, which is home to the Meiji Jingu Shrine. It was very gorgeous! A girl in my study abroad group, Savi, had her host dad take me and 2 others around the shrine and told us a lot about the customs. While we were there, 2 wedding ceremonies were going on, which apparently, according to Savi's host dad, was a rare occurance and that we were very lucky to see both.
After the tour of the shrine, Savi's host dad left and my group went around exploring the Harajuku area of Tokyo. The shopping there is to die for! All the shops are super nifty and I very much plan on going back before I leave :). Cameron, a girl in my group who's an architecture major, was bent on finding a designers house so we spent a good hour searching for it. When we finally found it my jaw almost unhinged. The house looked like it was floating off the ground and was a sight to look at for sure! We probably spent a good 20 minutes gawking at the house, and I hope the owner wasn't there because he was probably laughing at us all for just staring at his house with our mouthes wide open.
After our gawking, Cameron took us to a 4 story toy store. Cameron knew where it was because she had been to Tokyo 5 times prior to this due to her mom's job. In the toy store they had a whole giant section dedicated to my two favorite animation companys -- Ghibli and Pixar. There was a giant Toy Story display because Toy Story 3 is apparently hitting theaters here in Japan pretty soon and the anticipation for it is incredible. What they don't know is that I've luckily already seen it :). In the Ghibli section they had a lot of Totoro merchandise and there was a full size Totoro stuffed animal for almost 10,000 yen (that's $1000!)! I almost died of happiness in that store.
The rest of the day my group and I just wandered in Yoyogi Park and relaxed and people watched.
My classes this week are rough. They are all review and they last from 9 30am to 4 45pm. Wish me luck surviving them!