誕生日おめでとう！

I had a great birthday weekend! On Friday, my actual birthday, I had school, but I spent most of the time with my 三年生 (sannensei, third year students). Some of the 三年生 are still taking high school entrance exams, so we spend the time playing English games with the students who were in class. My schedule in March becomes more hectic as the private ALTs will be on vacation, so I will be going to five schools instead of just two, so it was nice to spend some time with the students since I will only have three more days at Futajima in March before moving to a new base school.

After school I meet up with my friend Leah, who's birthday was the next day. We went to Lush and had a quick shopping spree before meeting Patrick, Tomoko, and Yukiko. We went to 白木屋 (Shirokiya), an izakaya that was amazing! We had a course dinner with 飲み放題 (nomihoudai, all you can drink). The dinner was served over two hours and consisted of salad, edamame, sashimi, karaage (friend chicken), yakitori (chicken on a stick), okonomiyaki (cabbage pancake kind of stuff with egg and sauce), french fries, and motsunabe (soup heated at the table with tofu and cow intestines). Everything was delicious! We even got small pastries with strawberry and chocolate ice cream inside for dessert! It was a lot of fun, but it was eventually time to leave so Tomoko and Yukiko could catch the last train home. We said goodbye and Patrick, Leah, and I walked home. Leah had packed a bag and stayed the night at my apartment. (She stays over so often she has her own shelf in my bathroom!)

The next day Leah and I slept in. When we did get up, we started working on making some chocolates! Throughout the day we made small chocolates with caramel crunch on top as well as truffles with chocolate ganache in the middle and almond powder or cocoa powder on the outside. It was a lot of fun to make, but we also made a huge mess! In between making chocolates we had a mini, at-home spa day with the stuff we'd gotten from Lush the day before. We had so much fun putting on face masks and getting ready for the night! We even got a shimmy shimmy bar (lotion with lots of glitter in it) and enjoyed getting glitter on everything. (Well, everything except the chocolates, we made sure to keep those clean!) We packaged up the chocolates into 18 gift bags and met Patrick at 6:50 to head over to the restaurant!

As a combined party for both Leah and I we invited a bunch of people to 牛さくら (gyuusakura), a yakiniku place we both really like. We had a great time hanging out with our friends and ended up staying for over two hours! After the restaurant a few people had to go home, but most of us continued out to karaoke. We stayed at karaoke for another two hours and had a great time! A few of us ended up staying out even a little bit later to get a late night snack and eventually Leah and I walked back to my apartment. We'd given out the chocolate as little gift bags and everyone enjoyed them! We had also gotten some great things including wine, chocolates, homemade sweets (chocolate covered strawberries in mochi! Yum!), and sparkly make-up. It was a great night and one of my favorite birthdays so far!

Leah left early for church on Sunday, but I slept in again. I got up in time to meet my friend Fumiko for lunch at an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant that was delicious! Fumiko had only been able to stay for dinner the night before because she had come straight from work, so we ended up sitting and talking at the restaurant well after our all-you-can-eat time expired. We eventually ventured out and headed to the fish store for me to get my ふぐ (fugu, pufferfish). I got two green spotted puffer and they are so cute! Fumiko came over and we watched a movie while we waited for the fish to acclimate to the new water before fully releasing them into the tank. When the fish were ready, we let them swim around and explore and they seemed to enjoy their new home!

I had a great weekend and I'm looking forward to heading off to Korea on Friday!