On Saturday, before going to a Japanese SARUSA BAR (salsa bar!! I am in heaven) Kate and I went to a karaoke bar and sang for two hours. OK OK actually, Kate was singing and I was playing the tambourine and moraccas since you all know I DON’T SING. I would choose the songs I wanted her to sing and we would switch off choosing songs. (It`s always fun to choose songs the other person doesn`t like to sing lol). I considered it my weekend study time because I practiced reading Hiragana when the songs came on AND I even ordered drinks in Japanese :)
Then at 11:30pm, we headed for the city since apparently the salsa club doesn’t start until 12:30ish in the am. We found a 24-hour parking lot, but it turned out that we couldn’t figure out how to work the machine. It kept talking and talking even though we pressed every button several times; we couldn’t figure it out. It was getting embarrassing because people were passing by and it kept repeating the sentence. I was convinced the entire neighborhood could hear it over and over: “blah blah blah onegaishimasu (pllleeeeease)”. SO, our solution was to get back in the car and try to find a parking lot with a person. So went next door to the next parking lot and pulled into this elevator-ish thing that we parked my car in. The attendant came up and pushed my mirrors in close to the car and said something, which we took to mean that my car was going to drop a floor down into the parking structure because he kept using a “down boy” dog command motion with his hand. He left and came back about 3 times with the same sentence. Kate and I were sitting in my car for like 8 minutes waiting anxiously while he asked if we were ok and repeated his question. I was so scared I felt like I was going to go on a roller coaster and we weren`t quite sure if the car was going to turn first, then drop, or go forward, then drop or what. In front of me were three flashing signs with red. Flashing signs in red can NEVER be good. The attendant finally came back and opened my door. He meant GET OUT OF THE freaking CAR!
We got out and immediately my car practically flew in the air on this elevator thing going UP so quickly. Kate and I looked at each other and started laughing because of the stress and hilarity of the situation. The attendant gave me a parking ticket thing and told me to come back. We went salsa dancing (which was awesome and MANY PEOPLE were so good at it. Surprise, surprise salsa dancing is big in Japan.) We came back to get my car around 3ish in the morning and gave the attendant my ticket. Somehow my car dropped down the elevatorish thing, the windows were rolled down….but I had my keys with me the whole time. I still don`t get it. The attendant totally thought we were stupid. We just laughed and then realized that the price was double what we thought we had read.