8th day - instant ramen and welcome party

Hey everyone!

If you know me then you know that I love instant ramen.
I love all the different coloured pots all lined up in the convenience store. I always find myself excited to try new flavours, its a real treat for me. There are so many different flavours from a more traditional soy flavour to some more unusual flavours like cheese curry. Some instant ramen come with only one seasoning packet and others have lots of little packets of goodness from dried vegetables to seasoned oil. I hope to try lots of different kinds so expect to see more ramen here!!!

Anyway, I knew I had a welcome party later that evening hosted by WIC (one of Waseda's international meet up clubs) but I wasn't sure if food was provided and I hadn't eaten all day so I decided to try out the instant ramen I bought.

This was a yakisoba instant ramen that comes with furikake (seasoning that you sprinkle on top). I have really liked the  yakisoba packet noodles by Nisshin that I had in London so I was looking forward to trying this one.

 The instructions to make the yakisoba is on the top of the lid. I read the instructions the best as I could and was able to make myself the delicious treat. The pictures also served to give some reassurance that I was doing the right thing.

There were some cabbage pieces inside!

sauce and furikake packets

First the instructions say to pull the lid up to the second line and remove the two packets.

The next step was to pour in boiling water, put the lid back down and wait for 3 minutes.

After 3 minutes you pull the tab off on one of the lid corners, which reveals this cool little built-in colander (above) from which you pour out all the boiling water.

After pouring out all the water you mix in the sauce and then sprinkle the furikake on top.

The finished product!

There noodles were pretty tasty and the portion size was good. I liked the furikake, it was a nice addition but I think it would have been better with something extra.

I really liked these but I will have to try more yakisoba instant noodles to compare it to!

After the noodles I headed to the welcome party. 

The welcome party was pretty good. 

As soon as I got inside I saw lots of tables in the middle of the room with lots of different bottles of drink on top (although none were alcoholic). and around the edges were buffet tables covered with food! I immediately regretted tucking into the ramen beforehand as the spread looked amazing. However, nothing - not even my relatively satiated stomach - would stop me from partaking in some free grub!

Once everyone had settled and poured our drinks there was a speech from some of the WIC members welcoming us to Waseda after which we all toasted, shouting "kanpai!" the Japanese equivalent of "cheers!".

Following the speech we had an opportunity to grab some food. Everyone immediately swarmed to the buffet tables so I had to squidge in to get to the good stuff!

I only had time to cram a few things into my gullet before they asked everyone to give their attention to some entertainment they had prepared.

The first entertainment piece was a choreographed dance to AKB48's Heavy rotation with the boys dressed up in school girl uniforms! It was most definitely entertaining!

One of the boys from the dance posed for a picture!

Next we had another dance called Souran Bushi. We had learnt about this song last year at university from one of our teachers. It is a traditional sea shanty sung by fishermen from Hokkaido to keep their spirits up. They also had us join in with the singing. 

It was nice to see the performances from the Waseda students - I took some videos of the dances which I will try to upload soon. However, I will admit I was itching to get some more food in my belly!

 

The food on offer was suprisingly good. You can see how eager everyone was to get some of the food on their plates, look at the blurry hands as they were snapping up some sushi!

They had sushi, chicken karaage, chips, vegetable salads and lots more!

Amy's plate

My plate - sushi, sashimi, prawn salad, egg mayo sandwhich, chicken karaage and a meat skewer

I had two main course plates, I know, I know, I am a little piggy! the sushi was really good but I made to nab some vegetables, it being hard to make sure that I eat enough veg here! But I didn't want to take too much as veg is the expensive part of the meal in Japan. It's quite odd, if you go to a restaurant the meat dishes are the cheap meals and the courses with lots of vegetables in them are the pricey ones!

Later they started bringing out some dessert platters. I took a tart and a green tea pudding - I love green tea flavoured things! I grabbed some fruit too - given the price of fruit here I was oddly craving the vitamins! Look how big the grapes are!

It was a good night, entertainment, drinks, food, desserts and conversation with both Japanese students and other exchange students!