Going to Guam With the Girls! Part 1

The translator for the water sign in our hotel
may have been a pirate. Argh!

This is the cautionary tale of poor planning and travel mistakes.

My friends Ao and Lucy may be leaving for Canada soon, so we all decided that before they left we should have a girls trip somewhere sunny and beautiful. It would definitely be a change from the gray, Japanese winter. At first we thought Okinawa would be a good pick, but because I waited too long to confirm on the trip, the ticket prices skyrocketed. In retrospect, though, Okinawa isn't THAT much warmer than Shima in February, so we set our sights on a new location: Guam! Lucy and I could travel there easily since she is Canadian and I'm America. Ao had been there ten years before, but she was interested in a second visit. With our hotels and tickets booked, I was super excited to go traveling again. Sure, I visited the US last summer and lots of places in Japan in the fall with my boyfriend, but this a "never have I ever been there before in my life" place! The best kind!

Say goodbye to snow, girls!

Unfortunately, I had been apartment hunting for about two weeks and had hardly any extra time to help with the planning. I didn't know ANY of the schedule or locations and had entrusted all of the preparation to the girls. All I knew was that we were going to try scuba diving and to pack summer clothes. 80 degrees weather was so hard to fathom! Was anywhere really that temperature outside? Could I really walk outside without a jacket? It is odd what distance from an experience will do. I was hard to image any of this having been in the cold weather for so long.

We all had work on Friday, but decided to try and catch the train to Nagoya together. We were able to get train seats next to each other and used the ride to catch up about recent events, schemes, and dreams. This is also the time when I found out that we wouldn't be in Guam for as long as I was expecting. Oh, well. I could always layer on the summer stuff I brought to make more outfits.

You look a little chilly, sir.

Our first night in Nagoya was spent dancing in the biggest club. I was really impressed with the different vibes each floor had (about five floors in all), but Lucy was shocked that they even had separate floors! I guess stairs in a night club back home are too much of a liability, so all of them are one story or have elevators instead. Also, the Japanese clubs have coin lockers to store your things. No coat checking here. I had seen this sort of set-up in Tokyo, but after she mentioned that difference, I thought of Paris, Greece, and Cleveland - those were usually one story and didn't have lockers either. Definitely a different mindset due to space limitations and lower crime rate here.

My friends trudge on towards the train station.

Personally, I was more impressed with how EVERYONE KNEW ALL OF THE SONGS IN ENGLISH!! Seriously! How was it that everyone in the club knew the words to all of these songs so perfectly and I had a hassle teaching my students Auld Lang Syne? Ugh. As we moved through the club, people we passed were singing along with the music and smiling as they completed long rap segments. Really now? Wow. Sadly, some very happy guys ended up buying us some drinks that I had not anticipated on receiving and I got sick. At this point Ao got stuck dancing with a Brazilian boy that was following me around the whole night. Sorry, girl! But she was able to get a great line out of him that became one of our catchphrases for the rest of the trip: 最高の夜を見せ上げるぜ (Saikou no yoru wo mise ageru ze)。Translated, it is the same kind of super cheesy pickup line that any guy at a bar or club would give: "I'll show you the best night ever." But grammatically it is super showy, totally over-macho, and only ever found in TV dramas or cartoons. No one talks like that in real life! When she told me that line, I cringed and we had to fill Lucy in on how oily and gross it sounded in Japanese. He was very kind and seemed like he would be really funny in any other situation. But a "ze" as a final particle? Bleh!

Look at all the pretty pictures!

The next day was super snowy - a good send off to our island paradise. After much searching, we found coin lockers at the station that would fit our suitcases so that we had our arms free to do some shopping in the city! We had all purposefully left extra room in our luggage for the gifts, presents, and personal things we were going to buy on the trip, and Nagoya was part of the trip, right? Of course! While walking around one of the malls, we stumbled upon a Disney "Fine Art" collection. Different themes, characters, mediums, and styles covered the walls. Tucked in the back corner was an artist drawing Daffy Duck over and over for people to buy at a cheaper rate than the more expensive and larger works. He was an America, so I spoke to him about how he started, when he got here, and what he had been doing since Disney moved away from 2D art before we moved onto the Pokemon center. When I came back, he was giving a speech to the visitors of the collection. The Japanese love Disney so much, and the guests seemed blown away to have him there. It made me really happy they they could all enjoy it together.

Salad on a waffel. So Japanese!

After a lunch of salad waffles (that is right, no breakfast food is safe from the Japanese), we made our way to the airport for a bath before the flight. Bath? Yeah, the airport has a bath house on the second floor, so we stopped in for a soak! It was a great way to kill time before our late flight and my hair still smelled of smoke from the club. We had arrived there earlier than we expected, which was good because it gave us enough time to get lost amid the second floor shopping town, have the bath, make a guy pack up some mochi treats only to realize that we couldn't take them, find out that there was an extra "a" in my name on the ticket, and that I might not be able to go on the trip after all. Spoiler: I was able to go after an hour wait to get clearance.

Anpanman and I have a smile contest

We found an interesting shopping center along
the way. Shonen Jump, anyone?

A very Nagoya style noodle dish for dinner.

Last time I came to the airport, they had ninjas instead of
winter sport mannequins.

Phew! That was just to get into the heart of the airport. More later. I'm tired just remembering all of that.