Samba Serendipity - Oct 8th

Today again I had no specific plans, but Hans rang me up to see if I wanted to hang out again with Hilary, Kaoru and Maho. Of course I had nothing else to do, so I went over to 'baba to meet up with them. Kaoru was already there waiting for us, watching some random performers up on a makeshift stage that had been erected a few days ago in the rotary. After a while, Hans and Hilary showed up and we headed out for Ikebukuro. Maho couldn't make it until later, due to her job schedule.

We went around to various shops and malls in the Ikebukuro area. Upon Hilary's recommendation, we hit up a local ramen shop that her boyfriend frequents. It was about the same price as 一風堂, but had a decidedly different flavor. If I'm back in the area again, I'll hit them up again for sure.

We returned to 'baba, intending to go to Big Box, but were stopped by a fantastic sight; a humongous Samba Parade! Totally unexpected, there were several hundred participants clad in all sorts of costumes dancing down the main drag to the tune of carnival music. It was almost as if Mardi Gras had broken out on Waseda-doori. After watching the noisy spectacle for about 20 minutes, we returned to our original plans and went up to Big Box to kill some time before meeting with Maho. We took some purikura and played a few arcade games, including the new guitar hero game which only has three buttons, but I failed anyways cause apparently I don't know any Japanese songs! My kingdom for Killer Queen!

We got ahold of Maho, who was apparently already waiting down at the Hub with a group of European exchange students. We met up with them and pondered our next move for a while. The other students wanted to go drink at an izakaya, but we didn't want to spend another 2500 yen to have watered down drinks for a couple hours, so we stuck around the Hub and made the discovery of a lifetime.

Happy Hour!

After enjoying drinks at less than half the normal price, we moved our party of five to a local karaoke joint, and along with cheap nomihoudai, sang for about an hour or so before walking Hilary back to her place, then returning to baba to part ways once again.