After being lectured by our tour guide (apparently every minute wasted waiting us costs everyone $30, however he seemed to forget this fact on the multiple occasions he was late), we were on the move again, this time to Hiroshima. I learned that it is pronounced Her-o-shima rather than Hero-shima and every since feel so much cooler and cultured saying it that way.

Again, we were lead to an outdoor/indoor shopping mall light up like a Christmas tree. One of the girls was unfortunate enough to have the airline lose her bags and so we stopped at an H&M, breaking my rule of no American stores. But my interest was peaked so I decided to look around. The rumor was that everything is more expensive in Japan. FALSE! The sale items were $5+. Another standard thinking is that everything is different sizes. False, at least in American stores. I was a size S here and there. Of course when shopping in Japanese stores, especially thrift stores, I had to go up to a medium to accommodate my favorable assets (*wink*). Shoe sizes are different, they go by European sizes, unless they go by the S,M,L, or LL bunch. I wear a size 5-6 and I bought mediums. As you can imagine, smalls are plentiful and LL are few and hard to find.

After that quick excursion my small group headed to a ramen shop. There I first encountered my first food ticket machine. The concept is simple, there is a machine with all of the meal options series of buttons. You put in your cash, press your desired meal, and get a printed out ticket. You then give that to the chef and wait. Here I did come face to face with the lack of vegetarian options. Here there was also no fish, so even my compromise to be a pescatarian for the trip didn't fly. I ended up splitting with an omnivore who ate my meat and in return let me share her dumplings. I cannot exaggerate the deliciousness of the food though. It was so good, that once we got out bowls in front of us, our group was dead silent except for excessive slurping (a high compliment to the chef). Don't let your college experience of living off instant ramen thwart you of the heavenly experience of real ramen.

After another too short free time period, we were off to our second hotel, The Grand Prince Hotel. It was amazing, a high step up from our Osaka hotel. The lobby was luxurious, complete with its own combini. Additionally, the rooms were more spacious and had much more comfortable beds. the only down side was the hotel was far away from downtown, so once we arrived we had to stay put or get a taxi to town. Most chose to stay in for the night. Again we roomed in pairs and I remained with my previous roommate. There was also a hot spring bath you could partake of for the price of $20. I was still warming up to the idea of a public bath and decided not to pay to be uncomfortable. Instead, my roommate and I bought some snacks and watch some Japanese TV. We were unable to figure out where the subtitle button on the remote was, so instead we just entertained ourselves. We ended up finding a channel that teaches English. It was rather comical. One was a cartoon where the voices had a very strong Japanese accent that made us all burst into giggles with the theatrical dialogue. Another was a more direct teaching show. It was set up in two parts, one with the misadventures of a cutesy Japnese girl in Hawaii and the other as a sort of fourth-wall breaking studio were the hosts watch and responded to the girl's experiences. It was set up that one Japanese woman fluent in English would ask a Japanese woman who was learning English how she would respond if she was in the cutesy girl's position. After the learner would say some backward English sentence they would call upon a flamboyant American man to come out and tell them how to properly respond. I wish we had this kind of show to teach me Japanese.

After the braver, richer souls came back from the hot spring, a good group of us gathered in a room for the ultimate bonding experience: a drinking game. Circle of Death, Waterfall, King's Cup, whatever you call it in whatever region you're from, it gets the conversation going. It was one of the funnest nights I experienced with the group. We all relaxed and got to know each other. Highlights of the night: (1) taking 90s throw back pictures with a Polaroid camera, which everyone went out an bought when we got to Tokyo, (2) my first cold sake, which was surprisingly good, but I learned later that I prefer the hot version, (3) me being a world class librarian and shhing everyone when they got too loud (if we got kicked out of the hotel, we had no where to go!), hence earning me the nickname "librarian," which many used in place of my name for the rest of the trip, (4) me replying to every question master's question like an idiot, (5) a twerking rule which only person followed, and (6) getting the party broken up by our tour guide when we got too loud. After that night, our tour guide arranged us into "party rooms" and "sleeping rooms" so that the party room would be in the middle of our section of rooms and not bother the other guests to much. It was a highly functional set up.