day of shopping

as everyone already knows, i love to shop. :) a high-schooler at new life, lina, comes into my room after school to hang out while i clean up and get ready for the next day before leaving for home. since she knows where some of the malls are, we decided to go on saturday to check them out. it was interesting to see some of the things they have! for one, they have self piercers! i asked lina what it was and she casually told me it was to pierce your ears.. uhm, do you see something wrong with that!? i could not imagine piercing my own ears or somebody else's! what if i did it crooked haha! and then she told me there are ones for your belly button and upper ear. i'm sorry.. but when i got my belly button pierced the PROFESSIONAL piercer had to manually do it (not use the clamp.. just the needle) to make it perfect because i guess my stomach moves a different way. i would hate to know what it would look like if i did it myself!

i went to the hello kitty store.. so cute. in the states, the stereotype of japanese people is that they are obsessed with hello kitty so it was fun to go to a store with just hello kitty stuff.. and there was a lot of random stuff haha. i've also observed that there are a lot of arcades everywhere you go, which is also a stereotype of japanese people (that they love video games). in my class, all the first graders have at least one DS.. a lot even have two! the arcade at the department store we went to was full of kids and adults. it was funny because it wasn't packed with arcade games but slot machines! i was laughing to myself as i saw kids sitting in front of the slot machines trying to win coins. the machines reminded me of the penny machines at vegas. and the adults were serious about it too! at the back of the arcade, lina wanted us to take pictures at a photo booth. WAY DIFFERENT than the photo booths at home! you sit in a green couch in the huge booth and pick your background and take about five pictures. then you go to another booth to decorate the pictures and then print them out and download them to your cell phone.

we ended our shopping excursion by getting some doughnuts at mister donut.. yum! you get points each time you buy something and can buy coffee mugs, keychains, tote bags, and other cute things. so we'll see how many points i can make in a year :)