Farewell Clubbing in Tokyo

Went clubbing this weekend for our friends Caitlin and Olga's shared birthday bash. We started the night at our favorite Tokyo hotspot... Muse. Creatures of comfort, we are! Come to think of it, we rarely go to any other clubs. 

broke out the typical weird dance moves

managed to take a nice photo!

This dude, Masa, is not the brightest but he's a sweetheart. Since we always go to Muse, we've slowly become friends with him (and another bartender, Ryuki!). Since it was probably the last time we'd see him we took a nice, blurry farewell photo.

We strayed from Muse and went club hopping to Roppongi. Unfortunately Muse is in Nishi-Azabu so it's kind of far from Roppongi Crossing, which is where the majority of the night clubs are. 

It was Saturday night so most clubs were rammed with sweaty foreigners and drunk salarymen but we managed to find a nice, empty, air-conditioned space to dance our hearts out for a bit. Since this particular club was empty we were able to request songs to the DJ

After the empty club, we headed to a club called Kingston.. lots of reggae music and foreigners. 

Since it was the last night of clubbing for us, we made a pit stop at Esprit (a club we'd been to before that gives out packets of mouthwash in the bathroom!). Unfortunately we were too late, the mouthwash was all gone. Fortunately, we managed to take a picture with a stripper/club promoter!

After failing to get mouthwash we quickly left Esprit and headed towards McDonalds so that Sophie could get her egg mcmuffin... only we had to wait for the breakfast menu to start at 5am.. While sitting outside we made some friends with a couple of ruffians... oddly enough we had a pleasant chat with them since they weren't trying to pick us up with the 'Where from?' line that most Japanese men use to start conversations with foreigners. 

Slightly delirious and dying on the train ride home.... at 5:30am!

We were just being the typical loud and obnoxious foreigners

懐かしい！(natsukashi)

Natsukashi is yet again one of those difficult to translate words/phrases, but it is definitely one that you will hear often. It means something along the lines of nostalgic, remember when, aww good times, that sort of thing. It's said anytime anyone brings up the past, really. Anyways! I had a little reunion filled day and that word was in just about every other sentence.

Way back when, I graduated kindergarten. Yay! Picture of my teachers and me..

I was able to meet one of my kindergarten teachers (Osuki Sensei) and a classmate (Rikako-chan) for lunch! Compare this picture with the one above and that's proof that Japanese women don't age (she's 50 something now!)

Oh the awkward years of glasses, braces, and all around dorkiness. This was taken at Tokyo Disneyland with Rikako-chan..

This is my 1st and 2nd grade teacher, Suda Sensei and Rikako-chan. Rikako-chan is living with her family in Chiba and commutes to university in Shinjuku, where she is studying at a design school.

  

Spot the geisha! This is a picture of Ikeda-san and her two boys, Aoi and Naoya, and her sister and her sister's two girls.

Suda Sensei, Ikeda-san, me, Sanno-san having a little mother's meeting. It would have been nice if the kids could have joined as well but Yukino (Sanno-san's daughter) had to work, and Aoi-kun came down with a cold. Aoi is now a 2nd year at Aoyama Gakuin, he lives on his own in Machida.

Ikeda-san's oldest boy, Masaki, married someone with a child from a previous relationship and also just had an adorable little baby - making Ikeda-san a grandma! Hard to believe. 

It was so nice to catch up with everyone, although I'm sure they would have rather had my mom to chat with instead of me. 

Nikko fail

We attempted to go to Nikko this Wednesday (the day before our Japanese final!) but in the end we failed...  so we had more time to study. Guess it was a good thing. We woke up early to go to Tokyo Station because according to the website you can purchase a World Heritage Pass that includes train tickets, and a bus that takes you to all the different temples. After wandering around and asking every ticket office worker where we could buy this pass we went to Asakusa station (because the website said both stations sold the pass). At Asakusa station we were told that we would have to pay extra since it was a later time and because the temples close at 4pm, by the time we got to Nikko we would only have an hour and a half to sight see. After all this confusion and craziness we just decided that we would have a stroll in Asakusa and spend the day wisely and study.

All we could do was laugh (and cry a little) at how horribly wrong everything seemed to be going.. 

Ended up being a fun day though - putting off studying for as long as possible. Sophie had a parfait (which in Japan means ice cream and cornflakes) 

Shaved ice is the BEST in Japan.

Emelie had a smoke, in a clearly marked no smoking area..

..and then the heat got to her. 

Samurai in Shibuya

After my final exam for Japanese (finally over!!) Emelie, Dan, and I went to Shibuya to do a little shopping for climbing Mt. Fuji. We sound prepared, don't we? I'm lucky to have one of my students (friend of friend) lend me a headlamp(since we'll hike through the night), a windbreaker, backpack, gloves, and a few other things he said I'd need. When I told him we weren't staying in a mountain hut (the recommended way to hike is to go up during the day and have a rest in a little hut until about midnight and then continue up to the peak for the sunrise) he genuinely looked concerned for my safety, but he told me to がんばれ！(ganbare!) which is one of those hard to translate phrases that means something like do your best! 

Samurai... up-to-date.. not entirely sure what they mean by that

Right next to the up-to-date Samurai, you can also buy souvenirs from a vending machine! How convenient!  Maybe a few of you will get lucky...

夏ばて(natsu-bate)

Time for a quick Japanese lesson! 夏ばて(natsu-bate) is a phrase that roughly translates to summer lethargy. The 夏(natsu) is the character for summer and the ばて(bate) is shortened from ばてる which means exhausted... It's a phrase that refers to Japan's ridiculously hot summer and how it makes you want to do absolutely nothing. This week's weather is warm... yesterday and today it reached 37C (98.6F).. the worst part is definitely the humidity, and the fact that it gets this hot by about 9am. Trust me, it is not fun shoving onto a rush hour train when you and everyone around you is sweating something fierce. 

As much as I want to lie about and avoid the heat and sun (and crowded trains), I've got finals to study for! Trekked to a cafe in Jiyugaoka and plunked down with all my things to try and get a good chunk of studying in today. Tomorrow I have my last Japanese exam and I can't wait for that to be over and done with. This week has been hectic between writing essays and giving presentations, speeches, studying. I  haven't slept in days! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! It's been so busy that I'm looking forward to Friday, the one day I have this week where I can sleep in!  

Farewell Party

This was the first of the farewell parties. It's given by our school so we received certificates and had to make a little speech. Well, it didn't have to be little but I don't like giving speeches in English let alone Japanese! Plus it's hard to say thank you to the school buddies who have organized and done so much for us this year that it just seems like thank you isn't enough. 

I'm an awkward public speaker in any language.

Group shot of the foreigners being deported in August

Happy but tired. These last few weeks are jam-packed with farewell events and last minute trips, plus this week we've had the added bonus of studying for finals and writing papers... 

After the farewell party we went to our friend Namhee's house. She lives in a share-house in Toritsu-Daigaku, which is about a 15 minute walk from the dorm. Namhee's got a ridiculous amount of nail polish so we had a little manicure party.

Final exams 期末試験(kimatsu-shiken)

Today we had the first of our Japanese final examinations! This exam was with bear-lady and the second exam is on Thursday... need to study for that.. After our exam, we had a school farewell party on the 10th floor! We received certificates and picture boards with pictures taken throughout our stay here. We also watched a slide show of pictures and at the end of that there were some definite tears starting to flow. I don't think it's hit me yet that my time here is almost up (denial ain't just a river in Egypt..) but after looking at all of those pictures it's made me start to think of just how lucky I've been this year. I've been blessed with the chance to do so many things and meet so many people - it's really going to be hard to say good bye. I'll put up photo's of the farewell party soon, just had to get at least one photo up for today.