SMAP! SMAP!! SMAAAAPPPP!!!! And the Ramen Museum!

Gees, today, there's a lot to tell.

First let me start off with a student story.
I was teaching a lesson: Preferences (For Your Home). We were talking about what we would like to have in our house, and what we wouldn't like to have. So generally we're talking about furniture, or cool things like a pool, or home entertainment system, or new kitchen...blah blah blah. First we talked about normal things, like "I would like to have a massage chair, because I am very tired...it is relaxing," in extremely broken English. Then I asked the students what they wouldn't like in their house. Here's the gold...and sorry for not really building up to it.
One of the students (highschooler) said: "I don't want beer in my house. Because I can't put my juice anywhere." Was hilarious!

Alright, work was great. Because I had two no-shows (meaning I only had one scheduled student, and if they don't show, I can sit on my butt and do nothing). I think the reason was because we had a HUGE thunderstorm in Tsunashima. The thunder was so loud that it scared some of the students. I've only once ever heard thunder louder than today, back in Pakington St. But this was just crazy. Unbelievable. But when I finished work, it had cleared up! Woohoo! Bright and clear skies, great how something so crazy and terrifying can clear up all the bad air...

Anyway, straight after work I went to meet Alli at the ramen museum! In Shin-Yokohama. I've never been to Shin-Yokohama, but heaps of our students have been there or were students there before. It's actually a mega large station. I met Alli there with little trouble, but we had some trouble finding the ramen museum. Eventually we found it, and it was pretty cool! I'll let the pictures do the talking...but basically there were two floors of ramen restaurants. We decided to just go and eat at one that had a fairly big queue; we figured it must be good. I don't really recall what type of ramen we ate, except that the soup tasted of pork, coz they soaked the soup in pork bones...mmm. It was MEGA salty! The ramen museum was cool because of the funky, old age decor. We spent a fair amount of time in there; there's a spot where you can buy your own "cup noodle" cup, design it, get ramen put in with 4 different condiments, and then package it in some plastic cushion. You can't really imagine it unless you see it, but its pretty funky. I saw some people put their cup in the plastic (transparent) bag, and then stick a pump into it and blow up the plastic bag until it filled out and held the cup in place. Not something I wanna bring back to Australia, but nonetheless, cool.



After the mega mega salty ramen, we looked for some place to have dessert. We walked around for quite a while (in and out of the Shin-Yokohama station) before we decided on Doutour, which is a standard coffee place all over Japan.
Anyway, we sat and chatted for a while, until the shop was about to close. By that time though, we saw all these people crossing one of the main junctions and pouring into the train station. I remembered that one of my students had told me about a SMAP concert, in Shin-Yokohama. So it clicked. It was as if all the ladies in Yokohama city had decided to come out for the night and pay homage to a dying boy band in Japan, SMAP! For more info on SMAP, click here, not here.
Anyway it was crazy. Once again, I will let VIDEO do the talking. This is a pretty cool video IMO, it lets you see all the millions of people in Japan crammed into one city, hahahaha!! HERE!
And the photo at the station really doesn't do justice to actually being there and looking down at the moving masses!

Oh, and another funny clip but not so funny because I missed iT! The cramming of the trains. At the end of the day when Alli and I were trying to get back, we couldn't get on the first train that arrived because too many people just tried to squish in/on. But the 2nd train, we sure were squished in. The back of my hand was pressed against some girl's butt. Nothing exhiliarating mind you, but I can't complain, it wasn't a guy at least.