Japanese Restaurant Party

Last night I was once again on a trip to Japan. This time I wasn't in Tokyo for most of it; I was in some other city that I'd never heard of, with a group of college students from various Western countries. There was a group of British students and at least one German, and I didn't really know most of them. We kept going to this one restaurant that had really good Japanese food of all different kinds (rather than being specialized like most places in real Japan). It was frustrating for me because it was hard to figure out if I could eat anything there, and on the repeat visits I kept forgetting what had worked and what hadn't the last time. The other students were loud and some of them were drunk, and I couldn't communicate very well with the server to ask questions about ingrediants. I kept forgetting important words. I kept trying really weird food of various kinds, sometimes reacting and but mostly not, which surprised me. I had a strange slug-like thing that tasted kind of like squid, some eggroll-like things with jam in them, and also a fairly normal-looking potato and cheese soup, haha. And the whole time I was trying really hard not to let my frustration ruin the evening. I was determined to stop worrying so much and just enjoy myself. And I did end up having some nice conversations with some of the other students, who eventually turned into random locals who were really nice. And despite all the food drama I was just really glad to be in Japan again. I think there was more to the dream- a host family, and maybe some confusing train stations, but I don't remember details.