It's a celebration.. and another.. and another...

(I apologize in advance for a very long post and a LOT of pictures, as usual!)
No matter where I go in the world, it seems that my closest friends are almost always born in the month of October or thereabouts. Japan is no exception, since my good friend Nancy (in the first picture here with me) had her birthday on the 7th. We decided to celebrate our birthdays together this year since we have mostly the same friends anyway. We originally planned just to have a dinner Sunday night (since today, Monday, is a national holiday here, so no work) but it turned out that quite a few people couldn't make the dinner, so we decided to have a lunch on Monday as well. Those of you who know me know that I tend to kind of "spread" my birthday out over a few weekends anyway, so just because I'm in a different country doesn't mean that has changed!
DINNER PARTY
Our "first party" was at a kind of cool trendy Chinese restaurant. We made a reservation for 12, and arranged a "set course" of the same dishes to share (Chinese style) as well as "nomihodai" (which literally means "all you can drink" within a specified amount of time- in this case, 2 hours. Nomihodai is definitely a good deal for people who can drink quite a bit, and we always seem to get our money's worth!) This restaurant also offered long tubes of beer (known as "bazookas," as pictured here) with a tap that were brought to our table. Most people drank beer although there was also a menu of drinks we could have with the all-you-can-drink special. After a few bazookas of beer, people started to get a bit crazy. A whoopee cushion emerged from somewhere. The waiter played along and kept holding his nose as he passed our table. Lots of crazy photo poses were taken. We serenaded a wedding couple who were having their reception party in the next room. Other random (and drunk) people from other tables in the restaurant kept stopping by to chat and join in our photos. We had a birthday cake (which we brought ourselves... birthdays aren't really that big in Japan) and just ate and drank and laughed.



NIJIKAI ("Second party")
After dinner, our group broke up a little. Some people live an hour outside the city, so had to catch the last train back. There had actually been a big festival that day (one I had gone to last year, but since I was a little but hungover from the party the night before, decided I couldn't handle all the noise of the yelling, taiko drumming, and blaring bugles) so many people were still walking around on the streets after the festival, a bit buzzed themselves. Nancy (who used to play the trumpet herself in high school) stopped one of the festival guys on the street and asked if she could try out his horn. She serenaded us with a nice rendition of "Taps".


We weren't sure of our next party's location (it's quite common with Japanese parties to change the venue, so we have kind of adapted that style ourselves) so we wandered the streets, looking for a place to stop. Finally we found a place we could all agree on for our Nijikai; a shot bar by the name of COWBOY FREEDOM. It also had an all-you-can-drink special for one hour AND karaoke. The karaoke here was more like the style back in the U.S., meaning the karaoke screen was in the middle of the bar so you were singing in front of everyone there. Sometimes it's nice to have a crowd when singing. Sometimes we do some Carpenters or Beatles for them. And we definitely like to try to join in when there is Japanese music being sung- if we can read the screen in Japanese fast enough, that is.

SANJIKAI ("Third party")

We lost a few more people due to intoxication and tiredness, so it was down to the diehard karaoke singers. The other place was just a warm-up. We proceeded to a "proper" karaoke place, which means a private room with just the people in your party. We had yet another "all you can drink- and sing" option for 2 hours. We finished at 3AM, contemplated going to the hip-hop club for some dancing, but thought better of it and decided to go home and get some sleep like the sensible young professionals we are.

LUNCH PARTY
This morning, after not much sleep, 8 of us met for lunch at the "Healthy Kitchen." For those of us who had had more than a few drinks a matter of hours before, this was a nice way to detox. It was a buffet (or, as the Japanese like to call it, "Viking," which comes from the idea of the Swedish smorgasbord, I think) with no time limit and we enjoyed all the delicious food over a sober lunch together, discussing some of the otherwise hazy events from last night. My friend Allison made me a birthday cake (pumpkin spice, yum!) which was just about the best gift anyone could give me. (You should know that ovens are not standard in Japanese apartments, which makes baking therefore impossible unless you want to invest a small fortune on an oven yourself. Most of us foreign teachers don't really feel it is that much of a necessity. There are some creative ways around not having an oven, however... Believe it or not, rice cookers, which ARE a standard kitchen appliance, can be used to cook more than rice! In fact, they are the perfect size for making a nice round cake, which is exactly what Allison did!)

They were great birthday celebrations and they aren't over yet, of course... I haven't even had my actual birthday yet (that's tomorrow!) but instead of "living it up" on my last night of being a twenty-something, I think I might have to give into my age and go to bed at a decent hour (meaning, around 9PM!) Fortunately, I don't have to work tomorrow (we have this very cool part of our contracts which states that we can not work more than 20 days in a calendar month, and October just happens to have 21, so I chose the 10th as my day off.) Too bad I'm not from South Africa, though.. my friend from there told his school that in his country, no one works on their birthdays, and the school believed him so he has had his birthday off every year here! That's how it oughta be!