Week 19: Victory Lap

August 3rd, 2026

This was my last week of the semester! Not sure how that happened so fast...

On Monday, I presented my final project for Japanese History (videogame characters based on yokai), and took a long nap. Afterwards, I went out for one last karaoke session with Etsuko, Emily, and Yoshio, which was great as always. Sang some new and some old songs, some duets, and had a nice big finale at the end with all four of us.

On Tuesday, I presented my Interaction Design final for my last class of my study abroad semester. It was not very climactic.

That night, I wanted to get a victory milkshake, so I went to a restaurant that had good reviews for their peanut butter milkshakes online. I got dinner nearby first, but after dinner I went to the restaurant and it was fully reserved for the night. Probably should’ve seen that coming (I would have felt a little awkward making a reservation for just a milkshake though...)

The next night, I went out with the boys (Yuichiro and Yasuo, my friends from Japan who studied at Rowan for a month last year) to a sushi restaurant. I ate so much salmon nigiri and it was lovely.

After dinner, we went to a bar, and something odd happened. I got IDed! That is the first time this has happened to me in Japan, and possibly to anyone in Japan. Anyways, this bar was so cool. It was all you can drink, plus free-play darts, karaoke, pool, board games and Nintendo Switch games. We ended up doing everything except the Switch and board games.

One of the workers ended up joining us for darts and pool, and was really sweet and funny. We played plenty of darts and I got extremely close to a hat trick (I got 2 bullseyes and 1 as close as you can get to being a bullseye), sung some karaoke (the bartender chose Country Roads for me because it’s one of the English songs she knows), and played some pool (I sunk all of my balls but 1 on the first turn of the first game, something I never have done before). I’m so glad I was able to hang out with the boys one last time, they’re a real joy to be around.

On Thursday, it was finally time to do something I should have done a long time ago.

I went to the bagel shop near my house.

You may be wondering why I haven’t done this earlier. Valid question. Honestly, I don’t have a good reason. Although, the hours are a little odd. It’s only open Wednesdays Thursdays and Fridays from 3pm-7pm. I assumed, naively, that this is because it’s run by 1 guy who opens when he feels like, but it is a team, so I think they just like their free time.

This bagel place has pretty crazy flavors. They have one called long weiner, and I don’t even know what that means. I ended up getting 5: plain, apple cinnamon, keema curry fried onion, oreo mint chocolate, and carmelized sugar milk red bean (kokuto milk anko). And you bet your ass I ate them all. But for this next segment, I would like to bring on my good friend and long-time collaborator, the Bagel Rater.

Plain:
I needed to get a plain for a baseline, and they made a good bagel. It was pretty soft inside almost like challah, and a very nice size.
Verdict: Pretty good!

Apple Cinnamon:
This one had apples inside of it, basically a bagel apple pie. Can’t go wrong with that. Although, it was a bit sticky.
Verdict: Pretty good!

Keema Curry Fried Onion:
Like a savory bagel sandwich, but all in 1 bagel. Surprised me with how well it works.
Verdict: Pretty good!

Oreo Mint Chocolate:
A real treat. I’m not really sure how Oreo-like it was, it was mostly just chocolate with mint. Still hard to go wrong with that though.
Verdict: Pretty good!

Kokuto Milk Anko:
Another nice dessert bagel. The taste was great, but after toasting the bean paste was so hot that it burnt the roof of my mouth and it felt bad for the whole day.
Verdict: Pretty good!

Thanks, Bagel Rater. Always a pleasure to have you on.

Friday morning I begrudgingly headed to the city office to submit my move-out notice and cancel my insurance. Luckily, though, compared to last time it was very quick and easy. That was a big stressor over with.

Throughout the day I slowly packed up my room, and in the evening my family arrived! We went to Lumbini for dinner and had a great meal, and I slept in the sharehouse for the last time.

Saturday morning I finished packing up and officially moved out. After bringing my stuff to the hotel, we went to Meiji Jingu shrine, a beautiful shrine dedicated to Emperor Meiji. We then went to Takeshita street, a famous shopping street, and checked out some stores, but didn’t buy anything. We did go into a very cool store that had lots of original drawings and animation cels from anime, but everything was way too expensive to even consider. But that didn’t stop me from considering.

In the afternoon we headed to Mitaka to go to the Ghibli museum, and everyone had a lovely time. We got to see a different short film than I saw last time, Boro the Caterpillar. It was really silly and weird and cute, and everything was voiced by one guy. Boro is such a little guy.

After chilling at the hotel for a little bit, we walked to a dinner place near our hotel. The food was great, but my dad and I had to wait over an hour for our food because the special rice takes a really long time to cook. A cool unique thing this restaurant does, though, is take the leftover rice you don’t eat and turn it into rice balls for you to take home. A really nice gesture, especially considering Japan doesn’t really do restaurant leftovers.

Sunday morning, we had to stop by my house, and there was a little festival going on! Lovely coincidence. We checked it out and then went to Tokyo Skytree, the third tallest building in the world. There are two observation decks, one at 350m and the other at 450m. It’s such a great view of Tokyo—it’s just city as far as you can see in every direction. We went shopping a bit downstairs in Skytree Town, and went to a place I bought pants from last year called go slow caravan. Harry, my mom and I all ended up buying something—I bought a shirt and shorts. I’m really happy with the shorts, but I forgot to try on the shirt before buying and I think it’s huge (also the cool design is on the back). Oh well, it will become an awesome pajama shirt.

The afternoon was baseball time! We made our way to the Tokyo Dome to see the Tokyo Giants play the Yokohama BayStars. We were right in the middle of a bunch of Giants fans, and they are so insanely energetic. However energetic you think they are, multiply it by five. They have chants they do the entire time. It was a great time, but in order to stay on schedule we had to leave after the seventh inning. Unfortunately the Giants lost, but fortunately there were no more runs after we left, so we didn’t miss much.

We took the train to Shibuya to go to Tower Records where me and the parents looked around and Harry tried not to buy every CD. He ended up only buying 5. Proud of him.

I planned for us to go to the Nintendo store and Pokémon Center in Shibuya, so we went to the mall that they’re in to grab dinner. We had curry, which was so lovely. It was just a random small restaurant in a mall, but it was such high quality and had such attention to detail. That’s something you find everywhere in Japan, which is so lovely. After the nice dinner, though, we didn’t have time to go upstairs because we had to get to our evening activity, a jam session!

At w.jaz, a club I went to a few weeks ago, two people I’ve played with before were hosting a jam session, so I knew we had to go. It was such a blast. All of the musicians were amazing and really nice, and I’m pretty happy with how I played (except for my solos—it’s been so long that I think I forgot how to solo). I played The Chicken, Superstition, Cissy Strut (jammy version) and Feel Like Making Love (also jammy version). All so much fun!! I got to talk about Vulfpeck with both bass players because they knew who they were, which is always a joy, and also had really nice chats with most of the musicians. Being able to play with such great musicians so easily is something I’ll really miss when I’m back home, and something I’ll really look forward to coming back for.

That brings us to the end of the week! It’s been so nice to see my family for the first time in nearly four and a half months, and be a little bit of a tour guide. We have lots of plans this coming week, so look forward to next week's blogpost (although I should really start it before Sunday at 11pm). And then the one after that will be the last weekly Japan blogpost. I still haven’t really decided what I’ll do after that, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Maybe a monthly update, or just checking in and saying hi every once in a while.

Until then. Have a lovely day.
-Dan