10/25/2010 My Birfday

So I turned 24. We went out to eat at a Shabu-shabu restaurant (my favorite), and did the all you can drink/eat special as Yuri and Johnny's treat. The restaurant is called Nagomi Neko (Calming Cat), and it had a free hot foot bath in the entrance. Hence the name.

When we got back to the apartment they gifted me with a small pumpkin pudding cup and an awesome One Piece t-shirt.

That's about all that happened. Thanks for the great birthday Johnny and Yuri!

Kanpai!
















Awesome last second coordination.
















The drinks are kicking in...

















Foot Bath.




















My pumpkin puddin cake!

New shirt + Nakama Pose

10/23/2010 Takekabu Residence

Ok, so here is the first of my catching up with a month of stuff. Sorry it's confusing because of the sequence in which I did things. Therefor I decided to put the date in the title and start with the oldest one first.

We went to visit Yuri's family the weekend before my birthday (Oct. 25th) and had a nice sukiyaki dinner together. It was my first time meeting another person in Yuri's family, and they were really great hosts to Johnny and I.

On friday we all went bowling and to a bar, both up the street from the Takekabu's residence. I wish I could have lived down the street from a bowling alley growing up! "Bar Moon Walk" is where we drank, and all the drinks were only 200 yen (about $2.50) all night! Some of Yuri's childhood friends met us there. It was her friend Naoko's birthday on the 23rd so Naoko and I were surprised with a delicious strawberry short-cake with our names on it! It was very thoughtful and I greatly enjoyed it. We stayed out pretty late, and had plans to meet Timur @ Dōtonbori in Shinsaibashi the next day.

Saturday morning Yuri's mother cooked us a great pancake breakfast: compete with egg and mini-hot dog's for sausage. It was a delight! We left at mid-day and met Timur and his russian friend Natalia. The rest of the day was spent checking in and out all the good shops in the area. The most memorable of these being Don Quijote, where we did a small photo shoot using Timur's high-tech camera and store objects. Some really great photo's were taken that day.

It was our Birthday!!!

These pictures were well worth the 5 minutes it took us to to get the light working.

New stuff and future Re-cap.

Well, a month has gone by since my last post. Sorry about that. I have been busy, but not too busy. As soon as I missed posting about one thing, it only got harder and harder to post anything at all! Finally the guilt has consumed me to get started on a month of stuff that I did. I plan to do this one post at a time, so bare with me here.

I guess I'll start with this week. On Wednesday, there was an event outside of the Moriyama train station where they lit up the trees in celebration of the holiday season. It had live entertainment, and the event was called Moriyama Hotaru (firefly) Baaru (Ball). Essentially it was city sponsored, and promoted all the different restaurants in the city. They were selling tickets for about twenty four dollars that allowed the buyer to try food at any three of the many sponsoring restaurants. Just like the Taste of Amherst/UMASS event that happens in the Mullins Center every year. It sounded nice enough, but was not something I could afford or wanted to get involved in. Johnny and I merely checked it out while out shopping for dinner.

While we were shopping Johnny got a call from Yuri and she said she was going out to diner with her co-workers. We did not know till when she arrived home later that she was actually doing the Firefly Ball thing. She said it was nice, and her boss paid for the outing. Sounds like a good time to me.

As for other stuff I've done in the past week, I've been reading a lot. I read Hawksbill Station, a 1968 Robert Silverberg novel, and now I'm about halfway done with Good Omens written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Both of them are fun and easy reading books.

As for the rest of the week, our friend Lisa is coming to visit us, and we will be visiting our friend Mizuho at the club she works at Giraffe on Saturday night. This will be my second time going there (the first being with Maija in September for Mizuho's B-day), and Timur is going to come to. I'm looking forward to it!

So that's the most recent news I can give at this time. Now on to recording everything else!

Random sunset behind my building.

Ok this is pretty awesome! Yuri Made this from elementary school to the end of highschool. These are called PuriKura a shortend form of Print Club. It is an extremely popular thing to do on outings with friends, and they are found at most entertainment complexes. I recently had the experience of sharing a booth with 15 other guys on a recent bowling excursion.

Here she took Atomu (Astro Boy) out of the newspaper and decorated the book tastefully. There are other themes, cut outs and drawings throughout the rest of the book. It was really great that she showed Johnny and I this.

Here's the tree lighting.

This is the live performance. She was singing English songs.

This is the sun reflected off a car through my kitchen window.