Birthday fun and anticipation!

Hello hello, sorry for the delay in posting. I was quite busy toward the end of last week/beginning of this week and subsequently got distracted from my blogging responsibilities. I met up with my parents again last Friday and took them around to a few new places. That night we went to karaoke again, but this time my parents brought some friends who they had met on their tour and it was really fun. On Saturday we went to Yokohama since I had my play rehearsal that evening. Unfortunately, my parents only got to watch my rehearsal for about five minutes because everyone showed up ridiculously late and my parents had to meet a friend, but I'm still glad they got to see at least a little of the show. After I finished with the rehearsal I also met up with my parents and my dad's friend. My dad met this guy in Connecticut. He's a long time listener of my dad's radio show, but he has lived in Japan for ages - 11 years I believe. I can't even imagine living here for that long, just the idea of it seems insane to me. It's not that I don't like Japan, it's just that it's so different, I can't fathom ever really considering it "home". My dad's friend seems to really love it here though. He has a Japanese wife and he actually works for a subsidiary branch of the corporation I work for, except he teaches English to workers at big companies like Nissan. The day after my parents left was my birthday. It fell on a Monday, which is kind of an unfortunate day for a birthday, but I do have Mondays off, so I met up with Jenn for my birthday dinner. Now normally I tend to frown on going to foreign countries and then eating at American/Western restaurants, but since it was my birthday and I missed home I decided to make an exception. We ate at Outback and it was delicious. First and foremost, I wanted the bloomin' onion, which we discovered has been given a name change in Japan, here it is the "typhoon bloom". Whatever, it's still an onion deep fried in fat, so clearly I'm all for it. When we ordered, our waitress, who spoke very good English, informed us that because the onion is very fatty and heavy maybe we should just get the half size. I was a little surprised by the waitress's suggestion. Jenn and I both agreed that in America no waitress would ever say such a thing for two reasons, 1) A half size costs less money, which in turn would decrease the waitress's tip, but in Japan there are no tips so it doesn't matter 2) It is viewed as completely normal for 2 American women to order a gigantic fried onion and eat the entire thing. I hate it when stereotypes turn out to be kind of true. Oh well, it still tasted good despite its heavy fattiness. After dinner we met up with Ivan to watch a movie, but since he had to be somewhere at a certain time the movie times didn't work out. Instead we went to an arcade and got photos taken in these crazy photo booths that are always impossible to figure out (I've been in three of them and I still get completely lost each time I attempt to use them). Eventually we did get the pictures, however, and they turned out very cute. Once I get the scanned bigger versions back from Ivan I'll try to remember to post them here or on webshots.

I know some of you may be disappointed by my lack of birthday excitement, but not to worry. Tomorrow night I'm going to go out with some more people to celebrate my birth Tokyo style aka clubbing or karaoke. I'm sure it will be fun, but what I'm REALLY REALLY REALLY excited about is Monday because that's when Ashley arrives!!!! YAY!!! For those of you who don't know her, Ashley was one of my college roommates and she is my first friend from home to visit me here! She's coming during Golden Week, which is a set of national holidays that all fall within the same week, so I have the entire week off to spend with her. We are going to have so much fun and a bunch of us are going to visit Kyoto on Wednesday which I'm sure will be amazing. I'm sure after Golden Week I will have LOADS to write about so be ready!!

P.S. The photo below is from the Penis Festival in Kawasaki that I wrote about a few weeks ago