Friday August 29, 1997: 9pm
Well I knew I would regret going on my run this morning - just because I hadn't slep much latelyl, and the 5 hours last night probably could've used a sleep-in! Ah, but at least it was a nice day. I ran at the time when I would usually run into Suehiro-san (happy-happy bike lady), and was really hoping to see her because I haven't talked to her since early August and she probably thinks I'm avoiding her! No, I'm only avoiding Spock! Oh yeah, no Spock today :-)
Anyways, Dave came into work with me to say hi to Hidaka-san and Tsurumi-san because he had partied with them in Sapporo when they were there on a business trip. And he had to kill time until it was late enough to phone his friend Meiro (it was Meiro's bday yesterday so he was up late I'm sure!) Yeah, so he left a few minutes after 11 (not before giving Hirabayashi-san and Hidaka-san high-fives and secret handshakes, of course) to meet up with Meiro. Meanwhile, I stayed at work and was mostly brain dead until 6:30 when I left. Oh, I stopped off at the grocery store on my way home to try to find a cake because I simply MUST have a cake tomorrow even if I have to eat the whole thing (which would, of course, be oh-so-tough) But no, there was definitely NO cake to be seen. Well shucks, maybe not this year.
Almost as soon as I got home, the phone rang (it was one of those "Chariots of Fire" sprints to get it) and it was Dave, just asking if I'd already gotten a cake!?! Ohmygoodness, he says they found a Baskin Robbins, in Kunitachi (so close! How come I never knew this?!?) and a cake was on its way to my place. Oh WOW. NOt only is it a cake, but it's ICE CREAM too! You couldn't wipe the smile off my face for a million bucks, no way.
So while I was waiting for this cake to get here, I talked to Simon. It seems he's in monor pain from all the dancing last night, and I believe it! We're gonna try to do something tomorrow but we don't know what yet. Oh, he's going to a baseball game and invited Dave and I along, so we may do that!
Oh - then my doorbell rang. I think I rudely ended the conversation - I didn't mean to, but an ice cream cake is an ice cream cake, and one was walking through my door ya know.
We put the cake in the freezer (can't eat it now) and oh wow, there was some dry ice in the box. Now I don't know if it's just because we're geeks, or if everyone would feel this way, but dry ice is so much *fun*. We played with the stuff for a good 15 minutes. Dave was silly enough to show me how no, you can hold the stuff for awhile and it won't hurt - ow! That hurts! Hahahaha! What a twit! And Meiro put some in his mouth! But it was almost finished so he didn't convulse and die - yet...
And they've just left to go out again. They're going to Inokashira-Koen - that AWESOME park. Man, I _really_ wanted to go but if I'm going to get up incredibly early to do my big run then I'd better start catching up on some sleep. Plus, I must save my energy for tomorrow night...
Saturday August 30, 1997: Sun. morn
6AM I am woken up by the phone... wha? I manage to gather my senses enough to grab the receiver and mumble a "moshi moshi" somewhat incomprehensibly. It was Jon phoning to say "happy bday" and I was planning on getting up within a half hour anyways, so it was fine. Cool. He had a prepaid phone card for $10 so we didn't talk for too long - plus, he was phoning from work! Last day, 5 pm... I think he was only minorly relieved!
At 7:30 I left for my 19km run. Whaduh, it was tiring! I was hoping to do it in 1hr 45mins but I only got back at 9:30 or so - of course, I wasn't trying to run fast, I was just trying to finish! And almost as soon as I got back my parents phoned which was really cool. We chatted for awhile. Then when I hung up the phone it rang again - it was Levon! I was so - suprised! Cuz she had phoned me on Thursday to wish me a happy bday early so I was definitely NOT expecting her to call again! Wowee, what a great gal! So we didn't chat for an obscene amount of time because hey, I'd already run up her phone bill this week - but it was so great of her to call!
Ooo, so I took a shower then made Dave and I pancakes - loads of pancakes. Man, I was *starving*, just starving. I suppose running 19K does that to you. And I just shovelled those things down - woah! Yummy yummy yummy. THen at a bit past noon I get a call from Andre and... yes... Levon! We did a 3-way calling thing! That girl is crazy! Oh, it was so much fun talking with Andre, and Levon, and even better when it was both at once! It felt as though I was right back in Waterloo. Aw, those guys are great!
So then we waited for Simon to arrive - and when he did we bummed around the apartment for awhile. It was obscenely hot out - kinda sunny. Since he, Dave and I are all big music buffs, we talked about all these different groups and stuff - and both Dave and Simon had brought CDs so we were going through and listening to all these different songs and groups and styles, etc - really fun!
At about 2pm I cracked open the 1.5L plum wine (I thought it was a reasonable time to start drinking. Oh - except for that we had some Johnnie Walker in the pancakes.. hey, I AM 19 now ya know) and we took the cake from the freezer.. mmmm... good cake! Pure ice cream! Wow, I ate a whole bunch of it.
Simon left at about 4:30 - Dave and I left soon after. First stop was Tachikawa, where we wandered for awhile but didn't find anything of interest - so we got back on the train and headed on down to Kichioji. Dave and I walked around there for awhile - and we found a bar called "Copa Cafe" that we thought we'd give a try. Wow, this place is so great! It's small, dark, with lots of atmosphere. They were playing really really good music, from Bob Marly to blues to rock to funk.. it was great! Plus, we got there at 7 and it was still happy hour until 8... so we took advantage of that... hmm, I musta had a screwdriver, a campari orange, a vodka lime and a salty dog and they were all really good. Really, the bar was great! And it was fun!
A little after 8 we headed on over to the other side of the station, where we'd heard there was another Copa bar. We got sidetracked first though and went into some other bar (name promptly forgotten) where we stayed just long enough to do 2 tequila shots (Tequila Goddess' bday wouldn't be complete without tequila shots!), then we headed to that other Copa bar (right downstairs, incidentally) called "Copa Jalibu". It's a great place too! A little bigger than the other one, and this one plays Reggae music. As we found out, there's a third Copa bar called "Copa Bros", also in Kichioji, and at Copa Bros they play blues music. So you can choose which bar to go to depending on your music tastes. Cool. SO, we were at Copa Jalibu for awhile - we talked to this Japanese guy sitting at the bar beside me - he was born in Sapporo so he and Dave had one of those "Do you know where ____ is?" conversations, ya know. Oh, as we were leaving Copa Jalibu, this guy's wife arrived *with the kids*. Yes, they looked about 6 and 8 years old - and they were in the bar! Hmmm... that's something you just wouldn't see in Canada!
Now we went to the station and took the train to Kokubunji. I had told Dave about the Mexican restaurant I had been to for Hidaka-san's congrats party [for THAT story go HERE] - and about the really nice Mexican woman and the cactus pizza and the beer... and so he wanted to go have some Mexican food. So we walked over to "Viva Japanesque", but when we got there it looked closed. Oh no! So Dave pops his head in the door to aks, and the woman who I'd met before (the owner, I presume) came over and was telling him that they closed at 10 (it was about 10:15 at this point). Then she saw me and I was like "Hi! Remember me?", and she reconized me from before so she let us in!! She said it was special just for us - how nice! So we go into the restaurant and I see that they (the woman, her husband (I think), her cook (the gaijin woman I'd seen last time) and the cook's friend (also a gaijin)) were sitting around the table relaxing with beer - just winding down their day. So the cook got up to make us the food (wow, that's so nice!!) and they brought us chips and salsa.. yum! I had this really great enchilada dish in that chocolate sauce again. oh, it was just so tasty! Of course, we also had the specialty tequila drink, which is cool. When we were finished eating, we started to talk with these guys.. they're so nice! Dave was talking to the 2 gaijin (as it turns out, they're both German, so he was trying out his talents on them) while I was talking to the owner woman about why I was in Japan, and the Co-op program, etc. Then suddenly Dave, the gaijins and the husband start to sing Happy Bday - ack, the secret is out! Wow, it was just so cool. So the owner is like "It's your bday? Then you simply must have ice cream!" (how did she KNOW?!?) and she went and made us each a sundae! It was really tasty. It also had *something* more than just your regular butterscotch sauce on there... maybe a little Johnnie Walkers??? Ha ha! Wow, it was on the house. I can't bel ieve how nice the owner was -- for letting us in - for cooking us food - for giving us ice cream.. wow! She told us to come again soon, and I think I will!
Ah, and now Dave and I headed over to do some karaoke. Yeah! We got ourselves one of those rooms and sang away - lots of fun! It's weird though - they keep on phoning the room to make you buy drinks - I guess that's how they make lots of money.
So we were home by about 1:30 or so - yeah, I'd had a super-duper fabulous bday! cool.
Sunday August 31, 1997: 10pm
What a laaazy day! I'm such a bum. I was woken up at 11:30 by my sister, calling to play me happy bday on her new snazzy piano (I'm so jealous) and to tell me that she has run down her supply of Black Black gum and I simply must replenish it. So we chatted for awhile (at the expense of mom and dad, of course) then I went back to sleep for a bit longer. when I got up I did a little dyeing job on the hair - a nice bright flamingo pink (must use the "flamingo" Andre) stripe down my - um - left side. Ah yeah. It was like paint... I wouldn't call it dye. I, of course, wasn't just dyeing my hair for the pure fun of it, actually, it was a promise I made almost a full year ago that I would "go pink" with Andre for frosh week. Unfortunately I'm not in Waterloo hence not able to be a leader, but the promise still holds... so I got Dave to take some pics of it (as proof) and then just prayed that it was non-permanent (I couldn't read the Japanese package!).
Oh yeah - when I was taling to my sister, I told her about my Fuji-climbing horror stories - and she says "Oh, _I_ climbed Fuji". Huh?!? Oh yeeeah... she was here when she was 13 or something and she climbed Fuji! Anwyays, she said that it was fine - she had no problems that she could remember... then again, they climbed during the day. This is surely puzzling for my "Fuji-climbing-difficulty-assessment"...
Hmm.. Dave left at about 3:30 or so, and I basically wandered around Hino and studied Japanese for the rest of the evening. I talked to Bianca later on - she had been in Nikko for the weekend and she had a gooood time. I got some advice outta her on the place, cool. Ah, and then she told me about Princess Di, which I hadn't heard about yet, sheesh, what a shock!
Oh yeah, and my parents phoned again, to tell me that my sister might phone, but she already had.... strange parents I have indeed.
Monday September 1, 1997: 10pm
Today was energy day. Wow, like I was just bouncin of the walls! Everything went perfectly too.. it was very cool. Ooo, the sun was a bright red this morning and that was funky. Ok ok, my email was down for the afternoon and that was a pain... you'd think I would be used to it by now considering it happens almost everyday now...
Oh yeah, the pink dye mostly came out, so I'm home free *whew* I was worried that I may have a 4 coloured head instead of my present tri-coloured one.
Tuesday September 2, 1997: 9pm
Ok well so much for it cooling down over here. My goodness, it's been hot these last 4 days! Ridiculous, really ridiculous. I mean, it's September now so doesn't that mean it's supposed to cool down? I guess I still live in my Canadian-world.
Weird, this morning the sun was really red again. Maybe this has something to do with the time of year, I dunno... but it's neat.
Wednesday September 3, 1997: 10:30pm
This is sooo cool. Today I got an email from Andre (who's being a frosh leader with Jon for Math this week) telling me that Mark (the guy I met in Osaka who's starting Math at Waterloo right now) [for THAT story, go here] is in HIS frosh group!!! *What* a coincidence! Like, I had told Mark to find Andre and Jon, but I never dreamed it would be so easy as that! Wow, out of all the frosh groups, he ends up in Jon and Andre's. Amazing!
Ah yes, so once again today was HOT. This just isn't fair. I think I'm allowed to complain, so I will ;-)
Oh this afternoon I had a meeting with Ueda-san, the head honcho (ie, prez of E.S.D.), who was on a business trip from Hirooka. Actualy, the meeting was with Ueda-san, Hidaka-san, Gupta-san, Shravan-san, and Behera-san. I had NO clue what the meeting was going to be about since I was only told about it - oh - 3 minutes beforehand. Anyways, we start the meeting off with a bit of chit-chat, you know... "how are you liking Japan?"... "how's the Japanese coming along?"... etc etc. But then, after 15 minutes or so of this chatter, I'm starting to think, wow, this is a lot of pre-meeting talk -- not like I mind of course, but I found it a bit strange. So we continue talking about life here in Japan.. food, language, activities, people... and after another 10 minutes or so we finish up the meeting! Yeah, Ueda-san just wanted to check that the 4 gaijin were doing allright and stuff! Neat. He's a funny guy, that Ueda-san.
Tonight was calligraphy. I did a Chinese saying of the characters "moon", "bright", "stars", "rare"... in Japanese you would say "when the moon is bright you rarely see stars". Sensei explained the symbolism behind it.. as in how one great thing often eclipses lesser great things that are still great - anyways, it was cool.
So there I am at Sensei's house, when suddenly crash boom! there's a huge roll of thunder, and woosh! the sky lets loose with all this rain! So we're all like, huh, rain? Wha? It didn't look like it was gonna rain earlier on today... Argh, and I had no rain gear whatsoever with me.. not even plastic bags to bundle up stuff like my camera, dictionary, journal, etc...
Anyways, so when it came time to for me to leave, sensei set me all up with tons of stuff. I musta looked hilarious. I left wearing a pink rainjacket, my jeans rolled up to mid-calf, all my stuff in a huge white plastic bag, clutching a transparent vinyl umbrella... and of course, I still got soaked! But at least my stuff stayed dry. Ha! Sensei's so nice!
Oh yeah, I was telling her today how Jon and I are going to climb Fuji-san in a week or so - and she told me about when SHE climbed Fuji-san, when she was 20. She even showed me pictures! (Almost 30 years old, I imagine) And she didn't mention it being horrible, but she DID tell me a common Japanese saying/fact, which I'll paraphrase as "To climb Fuji-san once is something everybody wants to do, but to climb it twice is stupid". I liked that.
Thursday September 4, 1997: 8:30pm
Hmm, I think I can honestly say that I had an uneventful day today. Just one of those mediocre so-so at-least-I-got-through-it type things.
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