Lovely Gunma

So continuing with the girls' trip...

Last Thursday, we all trained it to the amazing city known as Ota, my current place of residence. I have to say, my apt seemed much much smaller with 4 people in it! Haha. Anyway, it was all so surreal as we watched Sex and the City (thanks to Jeff!) in my teeny living room. Dude, are we in San Diego or what?! I've pretty much watched the ENTIRE series of SATC over time at Lisa's apt in SD, so it was really really strange to watch in it Japan! Anyway. That night, we met up with Jeff, Ann and Sean at Ikkyu and had some amazing food and drinks, as usual. Ikkyu is our favorite izakaya (Japanese-style bar) in Ota, so I had to share this with the girls.

The following morning, I went to shougakkou (in the most TIRING day of work EVER!) as the girls slept in. We all met up at AEON, then met up with the other Ota peeps and headed to Eru, another izakaya owned by the same ppl as Ikkyu. Eru is soo different from Ikkyu. Anyway, this experience at Eru turned out to be not-so-amazing...don't think I'll be going back for some time. ;-)

On Saturday, we all trained out to Lake Haruna to...um, relax? Haha. When we got there, we were thinking we'd go duck-boating or walk around the lake, but our lazy butts got the better part of us, and we ended up just onsen-ing. Onsen-ing just doesn't seem as amazing in hot hot weather! Haha. We like almost died in the sauna, needless to say. Anyway, we had our traditional Japanese-style dinner in our own private room while wearing our yukata. (We girls had to "adjust" ourselves countless times in order not to flash everyone while the guys didn't seem to care at all. Haha.) After countless bottles of beer and sake, we headed to the karaoke room across from us and rocked out. We also got TONS of snacks and goodies so that we could eat, drink and "sing" at the same time. It was soo fun!! I'm glad the girls got to experience the wonder known as Japanese karaoke! Definitely better than some establishments back at home, me thinks. After 2 1/2 hours of screaming into the mic, we were all pooped, yet it was still early! We headed to our room, then tried desperately to stay up for the World Cup match b/w England and Portugal. Sad that England lost!!

The next morning, we all woke up, had breakfast, then checked out. We were bused back to Takasaki eki. We checked out Vivre and lucky for us, they had an awesome sale going on! Woot! We shopped a little, ate a little, then shopped some more. We were all beat from the non-stop days of traveling so we decided to spend a chill night at my place. Dude, we pretty much finished the 4th season of SATC while at my place! Haha.

On Monday morning, I saw the girls off at the eki as they headed to Kyoto, and I, to work. =(