China II: Ningbo!: Nerds

This weekend I went to Odaiba. It is a man-made island right next to Tokyo, that you access by crossing the Rainbow Bridge. It is full of shopping centers and it takes about an hour to walk around the entire island. When we were there, there was some racecar nonsense happening. It was a neat island, and I think I will go back to see some other things there, especially in the summer when it's sunny. I went with the first guy I met from the conversation website. He said we'll go to an aquarium and then to an amusement park. So I agreed, because as much as I hate aquariums, I love rides. Turns out what he meant when he said Aquarium was "Aqua City Shopping Center" and by amusement park, he meant "Sega's Joyopolis". The first place was a giant shopping mall. Great. Whatever. Walked around, ate, it was fine. Joyopolis was a 3 story arcade. You pay 8 dollars to get in and then each "ride" is 5-8 dollars. These rides are either 3-d glasses wearing things or you sit in a raft and it looks like your going through rapids, but you're really just looking at a computer screen. I mean the raft moves a bit. I guess it was fine, just not what I was expecting. And it was a beautiful, sunny fall day and I wanted to be outside, but we spent the day inside. My favorite thing there though was a Zombie Roller Coaster. The track went around the whole building and there was a laser gun attached to the harness. So as you're going around the track, zombies jump at you and you have to shoot them. At the end of the ride, it tells you what rider had the most hits. I won. 128. Heyoo. After that, he had to go to a meeting so I met Yuka in the party district of Tokyo for an International Party. Yuka found this thing on the internet and wanted to go, so I said ok. There were about 70 people there at a bar for it. I was the only non-Japanese female. I had two lines of people waiting to meet me. Literally, LINES. One was Japanese women who want to improve their English, but are scared to hang out with men. One was men who wanted to talk to a woman. It was a weird experience, but kind of cool I guess. I had the same conversation 75 times. Where are you from? What do you do? Where do you live? How long have you been in Japan? How long will you stay? Do you like it? What food do you like? Are you learning Japanese?

Overall, a good weekend. I have decided that experiences like this are probably really good for me. I'm learning how to talk to strangers, how to be a awkward parties and stay sober, how to hold my own when I'm on my own. It's exhausting, but I think being constantly out of my social comfort zone is really good for me. I hope it helps me in the future.