Game Day

WARNING: This post has NO PHOTOS =( It might be kind of boring.

Sunday was a pretty relaxing and laid back day for the most part! I ate lunch on my own since I had sushi from the Yaoko market that I needed to eat (you can read about the rest of yesterday's eating in the post before this one..) Then I blogged for a while before our evening adventure. It was time once again to attempt the journey to the JJ Club 100!

We met up at 5, this time joined by Jen and the somewhat unwilling (read: tricked into going) Jeannette! When we arrived at Minami-Urawa station, we were promptly lead out the wrong exit again by an anonymous member of the group. After some thinking and checking, we went back in and out the other side to a new and unfamiliar square. I lead us according to the streets and landmarks I had written on the map, and eventually we got there without any trouble!

Sada had warned me in her comment on my last JJ Club blog post that the signup process for the card was kind of difficult, but totally worth it. Luckily, the staff at JJ Club were suuupper nice and understanding of the fact that we were foreigners. The first thing the guy asked was, Is Japanese ok? Are you all ok with Japanese? A little? Haha, ok, is this your first time here? (In Japanese of course). Then they got us started on the computers to set up our accounts. It wasn't too difficult of a process since we knew most of the vital kanji on each page, but it was pretty intensive as far as the information they wanted. There was even a part asking how you got there and how you heard about the place.

Next thing we knew, we were JJ Club 100 members! The cards cost about 300 yen, and the way the place works is this: They print out another little card with your name on it and the time you checked in. When you check out, they charge you 100 yen for every 15 minutes you were there. Now let me tell you why this was an amaaaziiing deal unlike any other. There were two floors of awesome entertainment! There were video games on both floors, including a bunch of rhythm games we love like the drum master game, Taiko master, and some new ones we hadn't tried like Pop N Music, a piano game, and Beatmania (although the speakers were a little too quiet). These were the kinds of games we had been paying 100 yen or more just to play one time in a regular arcade!!

Aside from the video games, they had a variety of other activities you could do for free, including ping pong, indoor soccer, pool, batting cage, fishing (?!), manga to read, videos to watch, internet, and karaoke! This place was just full of fun things to do and for a super cheap price. We all played a lot of games first, especially the rhythm games! I liked the piano game a lot, although it wasn't much like real piano. Jen and I had a fun round where our song was playing about 5 times as loud as all the rest of the songs with a really obnoxious instrument, and we were missing most of the notes. =)

After a while, we decided to do karaoke! This was my first time doing proper karaoke, so it was a neat experience for me. I bombed a couple attempts at Japanese songs I thought I knew (it's amazing how much you don't actually know once there's no vocal track and kanji is thrown into the mix..), but luckily there were plenty of fun English songs for us to choose from as well. Greg and Hunter were hilariously theatrical and entertaining the whole time, and us girls just got to sing when we wanted =) We wondered if any Japanese people had *ever* sang the songs we were choosing (Gunther, The Darkness, West Side Story, etc..).

Before we knew it, it was 10:30 and we had to head out before we missed the last train and ended up stuck in Minami Urawa! X( I think our total came to something just over $20 for four hours of entertainment, and at the end they have a little lottery thing you get to play and maybe win something. We all got the consolation prizes, which I think is 60 minutes free under some conditions. One of the staff challenged Greg to a game of pool next time we go there, even after Greg almost destroyed the guy's hand with his signature inappropriately powerful high five.

For late-nite dinner, we hit up the same vending machine noodle place in the Minami-Urawa station as we did last time, and I enjoyed my Tsukimi udon for the second night in a row! That stuff is pretty darn good.

All in all there was fun had by all, and I'm sure we'll be going back there at some point for more cheap and fun times.