Oh, what a day! Today didn’t start till it nearly ended – I spent most of the day just relaxing at the guesthouse (which was somewhat forced – my wallet had been misplaced the day before, and it wasn’t found until it was a little late to head to the flea market I had originally planned to go to.)
So instead, I blogged, chatted with folks at the hostel, and relaxed.
But!
In the evening, a large group of us (18 people) left the hostel to go to a Korean Barbecue place with all-you-can drink lemon sours.





After the barbecue, we ran across someone with a guitar jamming out next to the train station. Several people ended up dancing while the rest of us watched in a circle, and at the end we clapped and left him a few tips. (Sadly, I did not get a photo of this!)
Then, we navigated all 18 of us back to the guesthouse through two train stops. For some reason, the Korean Barbecue place only gave us one check, not split by tables (for about $400 USD) – so we spent the next hour and a half trying to decipher the Japanese receipt and figuring out who needed to pay how much. After much ado, we ended up just splitting everything evenly (except for the people who didn’t have a lot). The guy who paid was also american, so I acted as a bank and took some of the cash and sent him money via Venmo. Now I have spending cash for the rest of the trip!
On the way back we had ran across a couple of Japanese locals who’d just left a bar, and they convinced a number of our group to join them for karaoke after the payment sorting out had happened.
I did not go back out, but instead stayed back and kept chatting with one of the other guests. We lost track of time as we chatted, until the other group came back from Karaoke . . . At 4:30 AM 😅
Then of course, we had to chat with the folks who’d come back for a while, and then by the end of that, the sun had begun to rise. At that point, it looked nice outside, and we were already not going to get good sleep – so we just headed out to the quiet morning streets, grabbed a coffee at 7-11, and meandered around the quiet neighborhood as the sun rose.


















Finally at around 10AM, I ended up heading to bed – and now after 8 hours of sleeping (I woke up at 6PM), I’m here chilling and writing this post. I’ll (in theory) go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour! I have to, because I check out of this guesthouse tomorrow at 10 AM. I’ll be back to this same guesthouse in a few days – I wanted to extend my stay for the rest of the trip, but the next two days are booked out – so I’ll be staying in another guesthouse for two nights before coming back for the rest of my trip.
All for now! 🙂