Arcade-O-Rama

Ok, I've decided to use some different terminology from now on in my posts, because I'm a little tired of typing "my father-in-law" and "my grandmother-in-law." And besides, that's no where close to what I, and the rest of the family for that matter, actually call them from day to day. So here is a list so you shall know who I'm talking about:

- "Otousan" or "Tousan" = father/dad (my father-in-law)
- "Okaasan" or "Kaasan" = mother/mom (my mother-in-law)
- "Obaasan" or "Baasan" = grandmother/grandma (my grandmother-in-law)
- and Saori is my sister-in-law, Takeshi's sister. :) easy enough.

The first three terms above have the option of being more polite with the adding of the "O" at the beginning, such as "O-kasan" instead of just "Kasan". Just makes it more polite.

Anyway! Takeshi and I went to the mall again the other day, for some reason which I cannot recall now (oops). Whenever we're at the mall Takeshi and I almost always make a visit to this one store who sells a lot of San-X merchandise, specifically Rilakkuma items. Rilakkuma is a combination of the Japanese pronunciation for relax and the Japanese word for bear, which is "kuma" - so Rilakkuma is also commonly known as Relaxation Bear. He is also shown with two other characters "Korilakkuma" a white baby bear, and "Kiiroitori" a small yellow bird. Takeshi and I think that these characters are pretty cute, and have been trying to pick one of the plushies in the store to buy.



Right next to that store in the mall, is a huge arcade. Lo and behold one day, we both walk in to the arcade to just look around and we find that several of the arcade machines have Rilakkumas in them. Takeshi has stated that he's always been good at the "claw" arcade games so he wanted to try to nab one of the bears. And why not? It was only 200 yen per try. Of course we both forgot that the sole purpose of arcade games is to rob you of your money and leave you sniffling with anger and shame.

Needless to say, we did not manage to rescue any cute plushies from any of the machines. And it didn't help that in the middle of all of these machines that there was a HUGE Rilakkuma plushie just sitting there, looking cuter than ever. We got out before the addiction of arcade games took complete control. So we sobered up and went right next door again, to BUY a Rilakkuma plush. We don't know why we didn't just do that from the beginning.