The American Way

Liz had the weekend off so yesterday we decided to do some shopping and sightseeing. She had seen an H&M and a Forever 21 both near a McDonald's when she was out casting, so obviously that's where we were headed. I mentioned that Shibuya was probably the area to start, so we trekked to the subway. Initially, we were going to lunch at Tokyo's Hard Rock Cafe, but Liz didn't want to walk 15 minutes so we decided to get something to eat in the upscale shopping district instead. What's the first thing you think of when I say upscale dining? The correct answer is McDonald's, obviously. The first sign out of the subway station pursuaded Liz with it's beautiful golden arched M. It was actually pretty fun to see Japan's version of a classic American favorite. It was supposed to be a vintage American restaurant, but the only difference to me was the throwback radio station. Liz ordered a large double cheesburger and fries and I just had some fries and a small Sprite. Have I mentioned Japan's portion sizes? They don't even offer what we would consider a typical large. Instead, the large is the size of an American medium and the small is just comical. A highlight of that dining experience was when Liz noticed the music. She said, "Hey, they're even playing Japanese 80's music!" I giggled and quickly informed Liz that the music was in English. She was pretty shocked. One thing that has surprised me about Japan is that I rarely hear any music sung in Japanese. It really is all English music over here. I guess Tokyo has good taste!

After Mcdonald's we crossed the busiest intersection we had ever seen. If google lets me, I will upload a video of the ridiculousness. Once we braved that people jungle, we headed for H&M. On the way there, a man asked me for the time. I'm pretty sure he was American, but he was a little odd. He tried to tell me his life story about how he had lost his friends somewhere and he felt lonely or something like that. I couldn't really focus on him because Liz had decided to start sprinting for the Nike strore for some reason. I rushed a mumbled good bye to the guy and ran after her. It turns out she didn't even want to go to Nike but she didn't want to socialize with "that dude." She made me laugh and we wandered around a bit and headed out when she determined the coast was clear. We picked up some adorable outfits for her in H&M but still needed to find some shoes so we went to Forever 21. It had an astonishing 6 floors and obviously we had to comb through each one. Somewhere around the fourth, a younger possibly African? guy called me his lady and asked me my name. We ignored him. Later Liz asked me a very important question: "Why does everyone keep hitting on you?" HA! Honestly I didn't know what to say. Maybe it's because they can see me over the crowd?

Overall it had been a very fun day and Liz and I definitely got to know each other a little better. I made her go to the grocery store with me and I was tempted to tell her she needed to take a lap or two to wear off some of that excess energy. I was most certainly living up to the title "model wrangler" in that store.

Today, we spent the day working out and cleaning the apartment for Olivia's arrival. Technically I cleaned and Liz did homework. I did make her wipe off the table though. She said she would blame me if she failed out of school for making her take time to clean the table. It was all in good fun. Tomorrow we have to wake up really early to go to another job. Yay Liz!