I'm a socialite!

Well I suppose that declaration is slightly premature-especially when you consider that I've spent the entire day surfing the net, playing videogames and watching Battlestar Galactica. Still I've made a start. On Christmas Eve Eve, Jared and his friend Ikue and Fumiko and myself all went to Shibuya to a restaurant called Outback. Some of you may know it-sort of an Australian themed restaurant. It was pretty good-I had a big steak for the first time in about two years! Fumiko was feeling a little bit sick unfortunately-we're not sure why. She had been out to an office party the night before and had drunk approximately a glass and a half of wine. She has absolutely no tolerance for alcohol! That makes us compatible since I usually have no taste for it. Unless of course it's a White Russian

Christmas Eve was spent with Fumiko again. I went to her place after work and we had a little Christmas dinner, opened presents and watched A Muppets Christmas Carol. She had actually managed to find it somewhere and bought it for me for Christmas. Here's a pic of our Christmas tree-a lot different from back home that's for sure.

Oops wait, that one's of my friend Pete. Looking very teacher-like in front of a NOVA arcade game we found at one of the huge arcades in Ikebukuro. Yes that's how we look in all our classes- "Mamiko, you said 'Yesterday I went to shopping.' Went to shopping??"

Lets see if I can get the right pic this time...
Yep there it is! Sort of cute and pathetic at the same time! Still there's an impressive number of presents under that tree! Here's a rundown of the Christmas l00t that we scored this year:

For me:

1. A sweater from Seibu.
2. A pair of pants from Seibu.
3. A Muppets Christmas Carol DVD.
4. WWII t-shirt from back home (and some cash that I haven't spent yet!)
5. A book from Emily. Hitching Rids With Buddha by Will Ferguson. I'm seven chapters in and so far it's a darn good read! Check it out if you can-his writing about Japan is much more interesting and funny than I can possibly produce.
   

From me:

1. A ring from Seibu. (pics to come).
2. A framed photo of us in Kyoto.
3. Some english books starting with some Peanuts for beginning readers, then a slightly harder Beauty and the Beast and then finally the Charlotte's Web novel.

Oh I got off on a bit of a tangent there. I was talking about my emergence as a socialite. Anyways, for the third night in a row (Christmas) I went out after work with Pete and his roomie Ross to an tabehodae (all you can eat) nomihodae (all you can drink) yakiniku restaurant. So we stuffed ourselves on meat that we cooked ourselves for two hours, and then after that we dropped into the arcade (see above) and then finally met up with a few of the school staff ladies who had just finished their own Christmas dinner and went out to The King George pub.

Stay tuned for more info regarding my upcoming travel horrors.

To South America! (or somewhere in the general hemisphere)

After my 3 day odyssey to Kyoto I thought I would retire from my traveling ways and settle down with a small patch of land and a plow and live out my days in peace and tranquility. If Fumiko has anything to do with it though it might not work out that way. Fumiko has what appears to be a decent job as a radiologist. Who knows what it pays but I think gets about 40 vacation days a year. The funny thing about being a Japanese working in Japan is that when you "get" 40 days vacation, you don't actually "get" 40 days vacation. You get approximately four and a half-rounded down. The idea is that you "get" the vacation days, you just can't "take" the vacation days. And the "taking" is really the most important part of the whole thing. I'm sure there's a Seinfeld comedy routine in there somewhere.

Anyways apparently there have been a boatload of new hirings at the hospital meaning that the more senior staff actually get to "take" some vacation days before they all disappear at the end of the hospital year in March some time. This little tidbit led to the following conversation (not verbatim for the sake of grammar and due to my poor memory):

"Ne ne, do you have any more vacation days?"
"Uhh...yes-why?"
"Because I can use my vacation days now-but didn't you use your vacation days for Canada?"
"No I mostly used swaps"
"Swaps??"
"When you work for someone else and then they work for you"
"??"
"Nevermind-where do you want to go?"
"Ano ne, I was thinking...South... South Ah..."
"South America!???"
"YES! I want to go to Cancun"
"Cancun's in Mexico"

At this point I am thinking, I did not come all the way to Japan just to go to Mexico. In fact, I didn't come to Japan to go anywhere! Where's my plow? I must have left it around here somewhere. Anyways, as unlikely as it is unfortunate, this situation is probably not going to go away. Stay tuned for future updates.

Updates 3! I'm fat

Well I don't think so but when your girlfriend says you're fat then you're fat-it's official. Fumiko, Jared and I had just finished watching a movie (Sweet November, terrible movie-don't watch it) when Fumiko reached over, patted my stomach and said, "Do you have a baby?" This of course was a great source of amusement to Fumiko and Jared, who grabbed the big pincers that you use to hang out your futon and used them as giant forceps. True I haven't been working out much lately or playing soccer because of a two week period where I was feeling a little sick-but I'm not at all fat! Anyways, soccer seems to have started up again and I'm trying to go to the gym more often so I'm going to nip that little thing in the bud! Last Saturday I played my first soccer game in a good month and I sent an email to Fumiko:

Brendan: I played soccer tonight so no more fat!

Fumiko: I will check your stomack!!　おやすみ　ハニー

Well that might be you guys fully updated. I'm gonna try to get a new routine going which involves more posting, more studying, more gym and less internet! We'll see how it goes.

Updates!

First in a multi-part series. Last Tuesday, Fumiko and I went to Disney Sea to visit Mickey Mouse. I'm not sure which I like better-Disney Sea or Disneyland. Disneyland has definitely got the childhood nostalgia factor but Disney Sea has got some more interesting rides and is a bit more adult oriented. In fact, Disney Sea doesn't have much of Disney in it at all actually! We had a great day-it was fun and definitely the $60 ticket-but I hate the 'fakeness' of these places. Several times during the day Fumiko mentioned how she wanted to stay at one of the Disney hotels on site. My official response was "Uhh yeah...I guess sometime...", but inside I was thinking "Oh Hell no! We only live a measly one hour train ride away from this overpriced place!"
I have to be careful not to say an outright "no". The far safer course is to give a neutral answer and then pray that it is never mentioned again!

Our new house update

Here are a coupla more pics. Jeez these Japanese can work fast! No picture from today because it's been raining too much. In fact I dont think they even worked today. You can see that they've got the second floor finished and are working on the second floor walls. When I came back from work last night the second floor walls were up and so was the frame of the roof and then had put a blue tarping all around the metal structure you see up around the house. The when I took those first pictures they had stopped by lunch time and didn't work on it in the afternoon. So they basically framed an entire house in a day and a half.




Here's a cellphone update from Fumiko. Apparently we've found a driver who can take us to Kyoto in November:

Fumiko: p-chan passed! ('-^*)
ok p-chan can drive a car !

Monthly post - come and get some

As some of you may have noticed, the number of postings on here has been extremely anemic of late. I'm not sure what to say about that-it could be that for all intents and purposes the blog is good and dead. We'll have to see what the future holds. All I can say is that it might be pushing it a little to get more than a good year's worth of writing about my life! What I mean is that it's not exactly likely that someone will write a book about my life. Anyways I'll do my best to throw something your way when I can-either that or I'll have to resort to mass emails.

Here are some pics for your enjoying pleasure. Last weekend we went to Odaiba (a small, I think artificial island in the Tokyo bay) for fireworks. It was pretty nice. There are after all 12 million people in the Tokyo area so you have to show up early to get a good seat. And that's what people did-they showed up in the early afternoon, measured off a section of beach or grass for themselves, set up their tarp to sit on, weighted it down and then left to go shopping for 6 hours or so. The fireworks were pretty good-over one hour long!! Anyways here are the pics. I am confounded as to how in the hell Fumiko can look so damn photogenic in all her pics and I always look so terrible!