Yesterday was by far the BUSIEST day so far! I left my house after doing laundry at about 10:00. I met Ryan and Tanya at Sumakaihinkoen station, which is one stop away from me in the Eastbound direction. We went to the awesome aquarium using our free foreigner pass thing. It was a pretty big aquarium, we saw penguins, lots of fish, and a dolphin show. We also ate ice cream while we waited for the show, which was probably the highlight of the day! There is also a kiddie amusement park center area in the aquarium, so I rode this rabbit thing that moves at the speed of a turtle. It was pretty awesome.
After we were done with the aquarium, we went to Sannomiya and walked around a bit to kill time before meeting the group in Nishinomiya for the Autumn festival. While at Sannomiya, we ate lunch at this place called "Sushiya," with not that many sushi options. But I ate otchazuke, so it was all good. After that we headed to the Hanshin line and rode it all the way to Nishinomiya. When we finally got there we couldn't find anyone. We ended up waiting for about 2 hours for people to show up and stuff.
The three of us met up with Reynold, Anna, and Flow, then we continued to search for Paine. However, her phone died so we waited for Aaron and his host brother to show up. Once they did, we all walked as a group to the festival (finding Tini along the way). The festival was pretty fun, Tyler gave me a brief tour of the shrine, and it was wonderful! Very festive with the food stands and everything.
The next leg of the journey was going back to Sannomiya for Tyler's birthday izakaya party! We eventually found a place that could accommodate all 17 or so of us. Almost everyone had nomihoudai (of course I didn't), so it got pretty rowdy. Tanya and I decided to leave early since our commute is in the same direction, so we left wishing luck to all of the drunk people. This was by far the longest day so far!
