ant’s birthday. Not surprising given my general lack of awareness of days and times, coupled with being in a foreign country on holidays where so much is happening, it’s mindboggling sometimes. Anyway, we were having Keiko, Jun and Nobuko over for dinner that night, and I suddenly remembered in the middle of cooking dinner (Fajitas), so I sent Zoe out on an errand, under the guise of getting some note paper for Grant to continue to write his journal on. She rushed out to their favourite tiny (I really mean tiny – the size of an Aussie bathroom) local ‘toy store ’where being my size makes moving around the store very difficult. Anyway, she rushed back, took the presents and card upstairs and came in to the kitchen to tell me what she had bought. She mentioned that it was Daniel’s birthday soon and Grant’s ears pricked up when he heard ‘birthday’ and said “oh by the way, what’s the date today”, without a pause, I told him it was the 6th and of course, not realising what a good liar his Mum is, he believed me. So the next morning, when Spike started singing over the phone, he had no idea what was going on, judging by the look on his face, but after a while it clicked and he had a good laugh.After presents and a long chat to Dad, we all went out for a bit of exercise. We’ve worked out a route that Grant could jog every morning and Zoe and I can walk together. It takes Grant about 15 mins to jog and so he does between two to three laps depending on how he feels each morning. Half way round there’s a local park, surprisingly not well kept, but good enough to do some toe taps, juggling and techniques for soccer. Of course being a foreigner, doing something totally un-Japanese at a time most people are rushing to school or work, he gets a few stares, smiles and giggles, but it doesn’t bother him. For me it’s great to see him so keen to maintain/improve his fitness and continue to show some independence while we’re living here.
Later in the morning Mari was due to come over so we could go out for a bit of shopping, so when Grant went up for a shower, Zoe raced out to buy him some cute Japanese cupcakes made out of tofu! Blagh you would be forgiven for thinking, but it was incredibly light and fluffy and had no trace of tofu flavour in the cake or icing. We had no candles, so we stuck a tiny dessert spoon into the amazingly creamy icing and got him to blow on it while we sang happy birthday. Later as he was walking up the stairs to the bedrooms, I over heard him say ‘this is the best birthday ever’! I should have given him a lesson in ‘tempting fate’ years ago!
After spending the morning on the computer and phone making bookings for our hotel stay in Kyoto and Osaka, we decided to go get the “shinkansen”(bullet train) tickets. We’d heard of a place that sells discount tickets, so off we went with Mari to find it. On the walk into Kichijoji, we ‘bumped’ into my ex-Japanese teacher from Cowra High, who now works at Seikei High teaching English, John Millen. He was on his way home on his bike after doing some shopping and then was off to meet some of the official guests from Cowra arriving at Tokyo station by Shinkansen after spending some time in Kyoto/Nara. We chatted for some time, and then both realised we had to rush off. John has not changed (except for a few extra laugh lines) from when I knew him as my inspirational teacher in Cowra.
When we finally got to the discount ticket shop, Mari was disappointed that the discount was only about 5%, and we couldn’t buy Grant’s ticket there, but we decided to get Zoe’s and mine there anyway. Unfortunately, they don’t take credit cards, so even though we were running late for our trip to the ‘Gibuli Museum’ (our tickets were for 2pm) we rushed to the ATM to get some cash out. Without going into the crazy details, it appeared that I had ‘lost’a huge amount of money from my account in the transfer. So after consulting someone from the bank and speaking to an Indian lady in ‘Melbourne’, she assured me that everything would be fine. So after subjecting the kids and my wonderful friend Mari to a typical Maria meltdown, we set off for the animation museum about an hour late. It was a less than ideal incident and especially being Grant’s birthday, but after speaking to Spike (my rock and best-est friend), we felt better.
For dinner we stopped off at a tiny local restaurant but it wasn’t till we were inside we realised it was for Japanese businessmen on the way home from work late at night. It was run by an “Ojisaan and Obaasan”(Old lady and her hubby) and when we walked in she was unimpressed, assuming we’d be grunting and gesturing at her to make ourselves understood. I could tell she was feeling very old and tired and just didn’t need the hassle. But by the time we ate our meals, she had softened a bit and when I told her later the meal was ‘delicious’, I could hear her giggling while telling her hubby in the kitchen. I think they’d been in the business far too long to care what anyone had thought of their meal, but she was very polite and friendly when we left, so mission accomplished from my point of view. And although it was nothing spectacular, it was homely, tasty and a good price, just wha
t we needed. The only real drawback to the restaurant was the fact that the guy sitting opposite us lit up just before we started eating and although Grant continued to look across at him and glare, at first in disbelief and then in disgust, he continued to puff away. I looked across at Grant and said, we’re not in Kansas anymore Toto!At about 8.30pm Keiko (and her good friend) arrived home from a discount shopping outlet about an hour and half out of Tokyo, having been there to shop for the Cow
ra Seikei BBQ to be held at our house on Sunday. After we unpacked the car, I told them we had seen this huge bee on the ground just outside the museum and I got a ‘great’ close up of it. I showed her on the camera and her and her friend gasped and said ‘do you know what that is! “It’s a killer bee”, I said yeah it was awesome and she said, no it really kills people! You should never go near one! When I said I had held the camera about 2 cm away from it for quite some time, chasing it to get some great photos, she was horrified. Zoe and Grant were also horrified, especially Grant who kept saying
, ‘Mum you could have been killed on my birthday!’ Zoe was also freaking out, because she’s allergic to bees. The photo will not do it justice, because it was seriously about 5cm or more long, and had a huge body! I’ll put a link in Wikipedia in case anyone is interested.
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