Huge Update

I guess I last wrote in this blog in March. Well, I wont apologise for my neglect. A lot has happened since then.
On April 7th, my boyfriend proposed to me which I happily accepted and on June 9th we got married. Hows about that for an update ahaha.
I'm not sure how much I have said about him in my past blog entries so... here are some of the nitty gritty details:
- He goes by Shuhei
- 29
- Japanese
- Speaks English
- a 'mad man' (works in advertising)

In May we moved in together and have been occupied decorating and setting up house together. I think we are pretty much settled now though which is nice. The new apartment is a huge step up from both of my previous apartments in Japan. It is so refreshing to have a kitchen with an oven and a proper stove. I have slowly started to get back into cooking -- much to the dismay of my husband I primarily cook western food. haha.

So it is now mid August (How did that happen!?)... he, his family and I went to Canada for a big family meet and greet earlier this month which was in a word - stressful. It was wonderful for everyone to meet but I'm glad it's over and that I will hopefully never have to do that again. My parents threw us a small wedding reception at their house while we were there. It was lovely, the food was amazing (cooked by my best friend and mum), and I was able to see so many people I hadn't seen in a long time. I was really happy I could introduce Shuhei to some of our old family friends and he seemed to enjoy meeting them too.

His family are really nice people and have welcomed me into their home very happily (or so it seems). A lot of people have told me about their Japanese significant other's parents being very against their child having a foreign boyfriend/girlfriend but fortunately that isn't the case with his family. His family reminds me of my family in many ways... in particular the dynamic/roles each person plays. They also love to joke and tease each other, especially the newcomer (me).

The husband and I are planning to have a wedding which is in less than two months now (yikes!) so we have been very busy planning and getting organized for that. My whole family will be coming out to attend the wedding so I'm thrilled to finally get to show them all around my new stomping grounds.

It was my birthday a couple weeks ago so in order to celebrate the husband and I are taking a short trip to Seoul later this month. We both had to work on my actual birthday and all the days surrounding it which made for minimal celebrations at the time of. This will be my first trip to Korea so I'm pretty excited to finally check it out - its so near but I've never taken advantage of its proximity to Japan so far. Shuhei and his sister take regular trips there - they are big fans of the country and especially of its cuisine.

Yikes! It's been ages since I last updated. What can I say... I'm really lazy. But I guess now I have a lot to say.

1) My birthday night was pretty great. I got to see my closest friends, have a lot of laughs and even more drinks and even a little cat nap in a restaurant. All in all, it was pretty good! Over the course of the three days I celebrated my birthday I had the lights dimmed, cake brought to me and the entire bar singing happy birthday to me FOUR times. Unbelievable and very embarassing haha.

2) Hong Kong. I went for five days in early August and I really enjoyed it. I have to say one of the most memorable moments for me was before I even set foot in Hong Kong. When we were flying into the city it was around 11 p.m. so it was dark and all you could see was the many islands that make up Hong Kong lit up by traffic lights and buildings. The view was stunning.
The hotel we stayed at was really nice and had a great view of Victoria Harbor and Hong Kong island. The only thing is, it was on Kowloon. The travel agent told us that Kowloon was the better island with more things to do but I would have to disagree, I spent most of the time on Hong Kong island except to watch the symphony of lights.
While I was in HK I took a day trip to Macau. That was an experience in and of itself! While it was really great to see the Portuguese architecture and the massive casinos, I found it stressful because of the lack of English haha. I ended up getting lost on a bus for a while and missed my ferry back to HK... it didn't really matter because the ferries run every half an hour.
I spent most of my time there doing what I love best -- eating and shopping. Unfortunately I'm too big to fit most of the clothes there! (Wtf?) I guess when the British left they took their big bones with them? The food was good, my travel companion doesn't like Chinese food so we didn't really get to try too much authentic Chinese food haha but I convinced her once to eat some and I thought it was fantastic. We found a lot of western style restaurants and surprisingly enough a lot of Japanese restaurants with strange Japanese dishes like omuraisu.
That brings up one thing I noticed that I was surprised about - how much Japanese pop culture etc you can find in HK... I always thought the Chinese and Japanese despised each other? Guess not so much.

3) Good byes. One of my closest training buddies has finished his contract and decided to leave Japan so we had a good-bye party for him last Sunday. It was really fun but also really sad. We ended up going to a few bars and mid-way singing karaoke (as we always do), during one of the songs me, Nathan (the one who left) and my other training buddy Javier all got kind of choked up. I guess it hit us that it was the last time we'll probably ever do that together. After Karaoke we went to my favourite bar, the Loft in Kabukicho, and managed to convince the manager/owner to let us play one of the really nice Fender guitars and sing on stage (haha) so Nathan played guitar and we sang together for the bar. Finally, we ended the night true to form with an early morning snack, and since there are no pizza by the slice shops out here we had a little gyu-don instead (beef bowl). Rather than have a long heartfelt good-bye we just kind of said "See ya later." and walked our separate ways. I'm beginning to feel like an orphan or some kid getting left behind at the mall haha. Everyone is leaving! Javier will be leaving in December. Which brings up my last point of this entry...

4) Visit home. I've booked my flight and I couldn't be more excited that I'm going home to visit for eight days at the end of December/early January during Oshogatsu. Unlike my whirlwind visit last March, this one will be planned and I will savour every minute of the time I get to spend with my loved ones.

Lupus - A Restaurant's Name

Wow! I haven't updated for a long time - my apologies! I have no real excuse as to why I haven't updated. Actually, I kind of forgot about my blog. Oops!

Did I mention how the gig went? The first gig went pretty well. While my bandmate and I did make some mistakes on stage, the crowd loved us (granted they were all my students and friends). We couldn't have asked for a better crowd for our first gig. I was so nervous to perform, during one song I completely blanked on the lyrics for a while haha! Our second gig (We had a second gig on July 16th) went well - no mistakes but due to the last minute invitation to play and the time of our performance there were only about five people in the audience. Oh well! We had a lot of fun playing. We dont have any plans to perform again in the near future. I think there is talk of another performance at the first venue in October or something. The second venue asked us to perform every month but we declined - we're too busy for that kind of commitment.

So since Vietnam was cancelled due to an overall lack of interest by Japanese people (the tour needed 10 people to be held and only my friend Ayano and I signed up) we have decided to go to Hong Kong! We decided to opt out of going on a tour and to just sightsee by ourselves. We're going for five days leaving in about a week and a half. My travel companion is a bit nervous about going to Hong Kong so I have assured her I will be better than any tour guide so I have to start finding out where to go and what to see. While we're over there we are going to stop by and say hello to an old high school friend of mine. I haven't seen him in seven years! Wow time flies!

Speaking of time flying - it's my 25th birthday today. I had a nice video chat with my parents and brother, it was really good to see their faces. My family sent me birthday presents too!! I got some lovely clothes which I'm very excited to wear! So for the birthday festivities... tonight I'm keeping it a bit low key with a small birthday dinner with a few students and my coworker (it's her last day today). I took tomorrow off so I plan to relax all day and then head into Tokyo to celebrate with some friends. We're planning to have a photo scavenger hunt which should be very entertaining.
As a side note... people keep saying "congratulations" to me because it's my birthday. It makes me think.... are you congratulating me that I've managed to stay alive this long? Surely it cant be that big of a feat. It makes me think of dogs who get into the garbage and eat some chocolate and accidentally die. "Congratulations, you haven't accidentally killed yourself (yet)".

Your Mother is Developer - a t-shirt

So! I finally have internet! What a gruelling ordeal that was! Took ages and ages.

But rest assured I am alive and relatively healthy! After my birthday weekend I think my health took a major beating! My students took me out after class on Saturday and we proceeded to drink for a good five or six hours... maybe longer. They were all really sweet and pitched in to buy me a traditional Japanese fan (I'm always bitching about how hot it is here hahah)and they gave me a champagne toast and everything. It was really sweet!
On Sunday I drunkenly welcomed NTT into my home to install internet which was entertaining... and then I went to Yoyogi park to see some teachers and continue drinking. It takes a lot out of you -- drinking in 35 degree heat. I went to bed at 10 that night and spent the next day lounging around. It was a very nice birthday weekend. My one friend gave me a 1.8 litre bottle of Japanese sake... I named it Koshi and it lives in my fridge. I'm far too scared to open it.

Let's get on to the goods now!! Pictures of my travels!

The top picture is of the shrine in Omiya where I was at first.
The second is of a street in Omiya.
The third is of Ueno (one of the wards in Tokyo)during training a bunch of us went there and explored a bit, had some traditional izakaya food... and beer. :)
The fourth is of the traditional izakaya food - apparently when you eat the tiny squids they explode all their juices and gunk in your mouth. I did not try them.
The fifth is of Hibiya Park (also in Tokyo) we went on the search for Oktoberfest but apparently we missed it by one day. Shucks!
The sixth is of a building in Roppongi - the ward where all the foreigners go. I had to check it out!!
--> Blogger has somehow put them in reverse... the building in Roppongi is top right and Hibiya park is top left and then it goes down in reverse from there! My apologies I will hopefully figure this out sometime!
So those are all the pics I'm going to upload for now... I have plenty more but I need to put them onto my computer and all that jazz... I hope you enjoyed them!

Young's House - shirt on a guy

You're right it is!!

So today is my 24th birthday. It was surprising to see so many people remembered and went out of their way to wish me a happy birthday or give me a present! I've had two cakes given to me, one student bought me a bunch of my favourite candies, one of the teachers bought me some of her favourite drinks (heh heh) and another teacher bought me a Pikachu thing that's really cute. Everyone at school got me a card and signed it too! It was really sweet how nice everyone was to me today! It was a pretty good day! My students are throwing me a party on Saturday and then some people from work and I are going to do something on Sunday. Should be good!
Now that I'm 24 all I can hear is the ticking sounds from the tv show 24 haha
I'll put up some pictures when I get my Internet on Sunday or Monday :)