Getting better all the time!

Well I just got my third and forth prospective students for English tutoring. I hope to hear back from them all soon. Currently I only have one definite meetings scheduled. I am very excited about this. I look forward to meeting them, I only hope that I can do this well. I think I can. I'm happy that things are going so smoothly now, and a shout out to my prospective students and Maggie who helped hook me up with most of them. Wish me luck mina-san!

I had the best night EVER on Saturday. Me and my friends have been wanting to experience Tokyo club night life since we got here. I love dancing, so it has been something to do high on my list for a long time. FINALLY we got to go on Saturday. Atom is an awesome, reasonably priced, and very popular club in Shibuya. If you ever find yourself in Tokyo and are bored between the hours of 11 pm and 5 am, I suggest you check it out.

The club is kind of set back off the main drag and surrounded by other clubs, bars, sex hotels, and convinies. It's not a seedy area though, it can't be, it attracts too much attention. There are also lots of police every where, so it is very safe and you don't have to worry about walking alone. I my self, walked there at 11:30pm to meet my friends who had already gotten there.

It really is reasonably priced. 1,000 yen (about $10) to get in, if your female you get two drinks on the house with that entrance fee. The club is 3 stories of pure awesome. The 5th floor is the main floor and features a huge DJ area, big bar, and a lot of seating. Though there isn't enough seating once it hits midnight, this is no problem for ladies however, as there is pleanty of seating specifically for the ladies around the edges of the floor. The 5th floor also has a huge dance floor with 4 large wooden boxes spread out in a eshilon off of the DJ's podeum. Each box is accompanied by a bouncer (all of whom are EXTREEMLY NICE, and will talk to you if you start up a conversation) and you can get on a box and dance if you are brave enough. But be warned, everyone will see you. Also, make sure your under wear matches your skirt, or wear shorts under your skirt, cause guys get a look right on up there.

ANYWAYS! So this club is awesome! I met up with my friends and we danced a bit. They had already finished off their first round of drinks. I got mine later, a red bull and peach liqour. It did very little. I drank water for the rest of the night because dancing under the influence of alcohol is not fun at all. Besides that the drinks were kind of expensive. 500 yen ($5) for water, and 1000 yen ($10!) for a Smirinof Ice. RIDICULOUS. I bought one bottle of water and just kept refilling it from he tap in the ladies bathroom.

One surprising thing was that the mens bathroom had a bigger line than the girls did. Another interesting thing about some Japanese clubs, you can smoke in the bathrooms. They provide ash trays and stuff. That I don't have a problem with, what I do have a problem with is people smoking on the dance floor. Which is really problematic when your close to getting your face burned by some guy waving around a ciggarrette. I walked out of there with a bunch of ciggarrette ash on my shoes, quite annoying.

Other than that the club was a lot of fun. The 4th floor is awesome! It's all trance techno music. But the theme is a cave. The walls look like they are made from mud or rock. There are little projector screen sliced up and streatched across the ceiling and others intact streatched across the walls where they play the mindless, trippy, psychadelic techno music videos, that make you feel like you have tarrets. They also had this giant prehistoric looking arthropod on the ceilinng, which I didn't notice until later into the night. Also there is a small bar at the entrance to the 4th floor and a bigger one off of the actually place to dance. I think the 4th floor was my favorite by look. Though the only lights they had down there were white strobes and green lasers, so after a while I started getting a head ache. But that was a lot later into the night after being on my feet dancing to ridiculously loud music for hours. So who knows. But I think all in all, the 4th floor was my favorite, but the boxes on the 5th floor were the best part of the club in general.

While on the boxes so many guuys wanted to touch my hand and were cheering. I was called sexy quite a lot. One guy saluted me. On the boxes is actually the safer place to dance. Guys can look but they can't really touch, your too high up, they would have too reach to get your butt, and the bouncers are ever attentive. Besides not needing to worry about people touching your butt, your pretty much safe from betting drinks spilled on you or poked with a cig. You also don't need to worry about over enthusiastic guys coming over and grinding up on you. It's really nice to dance up there. If your not too nervous I suggest you try. I was trying to coxe some of the Japanese girls up on the boxes with us, but a lot of them were just too nervous. I wonder if that isn't one of the cultural differences, that English girls are more personally agressive, and thus don't mind doing things like getting up on a box in a crowded dance floor and dancing where as Japanese girls (who are prettier than said English girls) are to afraid to.

I didn't actually go to the 6th floor that much. It started out not playing the best music when the night first started off, so not many people were up there. But by 1 am it was packed and there was no getting in their with out the aid of a sledge hammer. But they started playing mostly rap and hip hop later in the night, so that was nice. I actually liked it there when I was there. They had it set up just like a regular bar, mostly standing room. DJ in front with a big over head projector. Really low lights but no strobes or flashing lights, so it was a nice place to go to just chill. They also had things you could dance on there. Namely two oil drums on either side of the DJ. The problem is these were very small, if your moving any amount only one person could have fit up there. There were little boxes next to them that another person could have stood on, but they were really only about the size of a step. Not much room. But it was still fun. One of my favorite belly dancing songs actually came on up there near the end of the night and I hopped on an oil drum and did my thing. It was a lot of fun.

I actually met a lot of people, some girls some guys. Three really pretty Japanese girls started talking to me in the bathroom, asked me where I was from and if I was having fun. Later a few guys were talking to me down stairs asking the same questions. I actually met some American chicks on the stair well and kept bumpbing into them all night. This one girl when I was dancing on box kept giving me the evil eye, which I found funny. A Japanese girl and her Korean friend jumped up on a box with me at some point., they were very nice. I met this other American girl who was hanging out with us for a while. It was pretty cool. I actually ended up hanging out with these American military guys from one of the Tokyo bases for the last 3 hours of the night. We hooked up on the 5th floor and hung out on the 4th floor and meet up with all of my friends. They all wanted to leave so I let them go and me and the 6 military guys chilled in Shibuya for a bit, till about 6 am when we all parted ways at the train station (another big point about Japanese night life, don't go if you don't plan on staying out all night, the trains shut down around midnight and the clubs don't start livening up till around 11 pm, so there is no point in going if your not going to stay out. Luckily, even if you want to take a break, there are sex hotels every where which let you stay for about 3 hours for $35, or go to a Kareoke bar or a McDonalds for a little bit. There are also all night noodle and curry places, just keep your eyes open for places to chill.) Even gave out my number, woohoo for a productive night. Not really expecting a call back, but still, good times all around.

I really enjoy that night. It's the most fun I have had in a very very VERY long time. I have been stressing a lot lately as anyone who has been reading this knows well enough. Dancing is one of the best ways for me to relax, so this was the biggest thing to relieve stress, and dear lord knows I needed it.

Anyways, I currently studying for a chapter test in Japanese, so I am going to go do that now. Later I need to put up this awesome recipie I invented today. It was really good, and easy. I will write it out for you later.

TATA FOR NOW, read on
~Eve Nealon