I thought I'd blog a bit about my experience of having my birthday last month here in Japan. Birthdays are definitely something special here in Japan and seem to be something worth getting excited about for a lot of reasons. For starters, there's a package to arrive from home (maybe two) and secondly, people here love to celebrate. It's something I've come to love about living in Japan, more to the point living in Juso and something I will definitely miss when we return to Australia; that people here are always keen to catch up, hang out and so something fun. Back home everyone has such a lot of stuff to fill their time; working, family commitments, different schedules to one another but here in Japan we foreigner in Japan people really only have one another. So, we spend a lot of time together. We generally do dinner, do drinks, sit on the river front, sit on our rooftop, etc. and chat and catch up and vent about Japan life and so on. It's great, it's relaxing. And when a birthday rolls around, we all celebrate - and most of the time we all go cos we dont really have any other commitments that wouldn't already involve one another! This weekend is Bryn's birthday so we're heading into Umeda for Vietnamese on Saturday night. For now, I'll blog about the many and varied ways i celebrated my birthday.
So, presents arrived by mail from Mum (Burberry Perfume) and Dad (money) and Nola and David, Ross' parents (a new dress/top and my makeup and some chocolates) and there was lots of well wishing from friends and family and students via Facebook and email. Stefanie has a really super special extra wonderful birthday gift that she's still planning on sending me. It's only a month late.....right Stef???!!! :) On the day I was actually in Tokyo with Ross as it was smack bang in the middle of our vacation for summer. I was glad cos Ross' birthday was at a school he doesn't particularly love and he didn't bother telling them it was his birthday so all was normal...awkward situation to be sure. So we were in Tokyo and that in itself was a birthday present! I woke up in the morning as a friend Sally who was staying in the same building wanted to give me a birthday hug. She greeted me at my hotel room and gave me a little present pack with a book by one of my favourite authors, some of my favourite chocloates here (favourite to mock and favourite to eat - if you come to visit Japan I will introduce you to the randomness of the Choc assortment pack by Meiji). She also filled the pack with oreo cookies and a rather large handful of the complimentary tea that the hotel provided for us in our rooms - incidentally a very thoughtful girt as i had spent a good three days previous raving to her about the complimentary teas and how I had taken to hiding them in my suitcase so that when the ladies came to clean and do turn down I would get more tea...conniving one that I am. Ross gave me beautiful gifts for my birthday - it was defintely a 'Burberry Birthday'. i am currently saving money doing private lessons with a woman named Masako every Tuesday morning at Mister Donuts in an effort to same for a very beautiful Burberry bag I have fallen in love with. I really want to work towards it though so this birthday i was given lots of other Burberry gifts that will someday find themselves nestled in that bag. Ross gave me two Burberry fragrances, two Burberry facecloths (compulsory Japanese accessory) and a beautiful teddybear, handmade from a cute little bar near our home in Juso. In the corner of the bar is a table of handicrafts like lace jewellery and handmade brooches and teddies and wall hangings and so on. Really cute and delicate. Yoshimi gave me Burberry cloths too so now I have quite the collection! We spent my birthday sightseeing in Ueno Park and exploring Tokyo then headed back to the hotel to meet with Sally. We headed to the Park Hyatt Tokyo for predinner cocktails. The hotel is famous for being a location in the Bill Murray film 'Lost in Translation' (see it) where Murray's character says something like 'The cheapest thing on the menu is the domestic beer at 1000 yen'. We knew of this pricing so we headed there before 8 (after 8 there's a $22 surcharge per person!) and had cocktails, then we headed to 'Outback' where we had dinner. American style, posing as Aussie style. Yum! So, in Tokyo my birthday was a blast but i also wanted to celebrate back with the people in the Juse! (and in other parts of Osaka but lately I have an overwhelming desire to continually refer to Juso as the Juse...any excuse will do). So, upon returning to the Juse (smooth Allie) we organised a get together with friends from ECC. We decided to go back to Hankyu Beer Garden but when I tried to book it was all booked out so our good friend Rumi helped me book a different beer garden but then on the day it poured rain so they just closed the beer garden (they're rooftop and on big buidings in the middle of the city, out in the open so its impossible to keep them open if it rains). We ended up meeting everyone at Big Man (the name for our favourite meeting spot, and most people's favourite in Osaka, a big television screen in Hankyu station that is actually called (and labled underneath) 'BIG MAN'. We moved the herd of friends to a kushiage restaurant nearby. We actually did Kushiage before, when Stef visited. Its a buffet style meal where everything is threaded onto skewers and ready to be cooked in a vat of deep fry oil right in the centre of your table. Awesome. You get batter and crumbs too if you want. Excellent. So we went for Kushiage then made plans to head to Shinsaibashi for a few drinks. We headed back to Juso to collect our bikes so we could ride over to Shinsaibashi and not rely on the last train. Unfortunately it was one drama after another as Stefan's bike had a flat, Jesse's bike got a flat and as we pumped Jesse's bike the sky opened up and extreme rain; some of the hardest and heaviest and worst I've experienced in Japan bucketed down. The only thing that made it better was that we were outside Don Quixote. Our fave place in Juso - a mega variety store. As it rained we had plenty to look at and plenty to eat. We gave up on Shinsaibashi and headed home for a movie night. We've taken to pulling out our futons and laying them on the tatami loungeroom floor - very cosy and reminds me of winter in Elder street when Ross and i would build cubbies using the sofa and the kitchen table and our doonas. Lots of good memories.
That was the Saturday celebration, but there was also a great dinner had the Friday night before with good friends Chris and Leigh, Sam and Brent - both lovely couples from the USA. Both of these couples work late Saturday nights and couldn't do the Kushiage thing so we went out for a meal at a little cafe on the edge of a gorgeous park in Osaka that Chris and Leigh has recently found. We've befriended the cook there and as such he whipped up som yummy special dishes for us to try as a treat. We also amused ourselves with a traditional Japanese children's game involving a net made from rice paper that disolves as you use it to fish out rubber balls from a children's pool. Actually, the same game had been set up in the foyer of one of my schools during the early summer weeks of Yukata parties, but it was fun for us to hang out with our grownup friends and give it another go! The park near the cafe is really beautiful, lots of big tall tress and places to relax and at night parks in Osaka come alive with young people practicing dance moves and hanging out together. This park was no different...though some of the statues were a little 'ahem' special. Thank you to Emma! Your package for our birthdays arrived yesterday- such sweet, hearfelt gifts - big thank you. And an enormous thank you to my lovely DCC students who put together a very sweet birthday message and to Nat who made me the package. You guys are LOVELY!
I thought I'd blog a bit about my experience of having my birthday last month here in Japan. Birthdays are definitely something special here in Japan and seem to be something worth getting excited about for a lot of reasons. For starters, there's a package to arrive from home (maybe two) and secondly, people here love to celebrate. It's something I've come to love about living in Japan, more to the point living in Juso and something I will definitely miss when we return to Australia; that people here are always keen to catch up, hang out and so something fun. Back home everyone has such a lot of stuff to fill their time; working, family commitments, different schedules to one another but here in Japan we foreigner in Japan people really only have one another. So, we spend a lot of time together. We generally do dinner, do drinks, sit on the river front, sit on our rooftop, etc. and chat and catch up and vent about Japan life and so on. It's great, it's relaxing. And when a birthday rolls around, we all celebrate - and most of the time we all go cos we dont really have any other commitments that wouldn't already involve one another! This weekend is Bryn's birthday so we're heading into Umeda for Vietnamese on Saturday night. For now, I'll blog about the many and varied ways i celebrated my birthday.
So, presents arrived by mail from Mum (Burberry Perfume) and Dad (money) and Nola and David, Ross' parents (a new dress/top and my makeup and some chocolates) and there was lots of well wishing from friends and family and students via Facebook and email. Stefanie has a really super special extra wonderful birthday gift that she's still planning on sending me. It's only a month late.....right Stef???!!! :) On the day I was actually in Tokyo with Ross as it was smack bang in the middle of our vacation for summer. I was glad cos Ross' birthday was at a school he doesn't particularly love and he didn't bother telling them it was his birthday so all was normal...awkward situation to be sure. So we were in Tokyo and that in itself was a birthday present! I woke up in the morning as a friend Sally who was staying in the same building wanted to give me a birthday hug. She greeted me at my hotel room and gave me a little present pack with a book by one of my favourite authors, some of my favourite chocloates here (favourite to mock and favourite to eat - if you come to visit Japan I will introduce you to the randomness of the Choc assortment pack by Meiji). She also filled the pack with oreo cookies and a rather large handful of the complimentary tea that the hotel provided for us in our rooms - incidentally a very thoughtful girt as i had spent a good three days previous raving to her about the complimentary teas and how I had taken to hiding them in my suitcase so that when the ladies came to clean and do turn down I would get more tea...conniving one that I am. Ross gave me beautiful gifts for my birthday - it was defintely a 'Burberry Birthday'. i am currently saving money doing private lessons with a woman named Masako every Tuesday morning at Mister Donuts in an effort to same for a very beautiful Burberry bag I have fallen in love with. I really want to work towards it though so this birthday i was given lots of other Burberry gifts that will someday find themselves nestled in that bag. Ross gave me two Burberry fragrances, two Burberry facecloths (compulsory Japanese accessory) and a beautiful teddybear, handmade from a cute little bar near our home in Juso. In the corner of the bar is a table of handicrafts like lace jewellery and handmade brooches and teddies and wall hangings and so on. Really cute and delicate. Yoshimi gave me Burberry cloths too so now I have quite the collection! We spent my birthday sightseeing in Ueno Park and exploring Tokyo then headed back to the hotel to meet with Sally. We headed to the Park Hyatt Tokyo for predinner cocktails. The hotel is famous for being a location in the Bill Murray film 'Lost in Translation' (see it) where Murray's character says something like 'The cheapest thing on the menu is the domestic beer at 1000 yen'. We knew of this pricing so we headed there before 8 (after 8 there's a $22 surcharge per person!) and had cocktails, then we headed to 'Outback' where we had dinner. American style, posing as Aussie style. Yum! So, in Tokyo my birthday was a blast but i also wanted to celebrate back with the people in the Juse! (and in other parts of Osaka but lately I have an overwhelming desire to continually refer to Juso as the Juse...any excuse will do). So, upon returning to the Juse (smooth Allie) we organised a get together with friends from ECC. We decided to go back to Hankyu Beer Garden but when I tried to book it was all booked out so our good friend Rumi helped me book a different beer garden but then on the day it poured rain so they just closed the beer garden (they're rooftop and on big buidings in the middle of the city, out in the open so its impossible to keep them open if it rains). We ended up meeting everyone at Big Man (the name for our favourite meeting spot, and most people's favourite in Osaka, a big television screen in Hankyu station that is actually called (and labled underneath) 'BIG MAN'. We moved the herd of friends to a kushiage restaurant nearby. We actually did Kushiage before, when Stef visited. Its a buffet style meal where everything is threaded onto skewers and ready to be cooked in a vat of deep fry oil right in the centre of your table. Awesome. You get batter and crumbs too if you want. Excellent. So we went for Kushiage then made plans to head to Shinsaibashi for a few drinks. We headed back to Juso to collect our bikes so we could ride over to Shinsaibashi and not rely on the last train. Unfortunately it was one drama after another as Stefan's bike had a flat, Jesse's bike got a flat and as we pumped Jesse's bike the sky opened up and extreme rain; some of the hardest and heaviest and worst I've experienced in Japan bucketed down. The only thing that made it better was that we were outside Don Quixote. Our fave place in Juso - a mega variety store. As it rained we had plenty to look at and plenty to eat. We gave up on Shinsaibashi and headed home for a movie night. We've taken to pulling out our futons and laying them on the tatami loungeroom floor - very cosy and reminds me of winter in Elder street when Ross and i would build cubbies using the sofa and the kitchen table and our doonas. Lots of good memories.
That was the Saturday celebration, but there was also a great dinner had the Friday night before with good friends Chris and Leigh, Sam and Brent - both lovely couples from the USA. Both of these couples work late Saturday nights and couldn't do the Kushiage thing so we went out for a meal at a little cafe on the edge of a gorgeous park in Osaka that Chris and Leigh has recently found. We've befriended the cook there and as such he whipped up som yummy special dishes for us to try as a treat. We also amused ourselves with a traditional Japanese children's game involving a net made from rice paper that disolves as you use it to fish out rubber balls from a children's pool. Actually, the same game had been set up in the foyer of one of my schools during the early summer weeks of Yukata parties, but it was fun for us to hang out with our grownup friends and give it another go! The park near the cafe is really beautiful, lots of big tall tress and places to relax and at night parks in Osaka come alive with young people practicing dance moves and hanging out together. This park was no different...though some of the statues were a little 'ahem' special. Thank you to Emma! Your package for our birthdays arrived yesterday- such sweet, hearfelt gifts - big thank you. And an enormous thank you to my lovely DCC students who put together a very sweet birthday message and to Nat who made me the package. You guys are LOVELY!
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