First of all, I'm like 5 days late with this but between the move and my husband's birthday, I lost track of time. I used random.org to select a winner for "The Pact" giveaway
and that person was Kelly of Modern Camelot. Congrats Kelly!
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This weekend my husband celebrated his dirty 30! He's not one to want a big celebration but he'll never say no to karaoke so that's what I planned. We spent the afternoon lounging at the pool with some friends then headed out for dinner and karaoke that evening.
We bought a waterproof camera for our vacation to Okinawa and decided to put it to good use at the pool.
After some fun in the sun we were off to an izakaya for dinner and some karaoke!
I...I...I...I work out!
The girls doing our best Guns N Roses impression
I love these girls! I'm so glad we had one last fun night out.
We earned hearts from the karaoke machine for our rendition of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot".
We have some great friends here!
The whole gang!
As we were leaving we ran into a large group of Japanese people who were all wearing Obama t-shirts so we stopped to get a photo with them.
Unfortunately we had to say a few farewells at the end of the night.
The 6 of us spent a lot of time together over the past year and the memories we've made will stay with us a lifetime!
We finished off the night with a stop at a darts bar. I'll give you one guess who won!
I had every intention of blogging about this past weekend on Monday but due to the craziness that is my life, that never happened. If you follow me on Instagram {bleudressnjapan} then you already know why I didn't get around to it. I went to Tokyo for the day to meet up with a friend who I volunteered with in Tohoku last year who was in town for a just a short time.
Our fun day of window shopping and photo walking was cut short when I was attacked by a bunch of large flying insects. I have no idea what exactly they were but they were HUGE and I'm convinced they were tracker jackers {not sure what that is, go read Hunger Games}. I was stung twice, once on my neck and then once on my scalp near my temple after one of them got stuck in my hair. It hurt like nothing I've ever felt before but I was determined not to let it ruin my day. Being a giant wimp, I made it about 15 minutes before I started sobbing and decided to head home. Let me tell you, that was the worst train ride home ever! I spent the whole 45 minutes sobbing into a little hand towel I carry in my purse and holding cold water bottles to my head/neck. It was an odd sight for all the other passengers I'm sure. I made it home, took some pain meds and some benadryl and fell asleep. When I woke up that evening, the right side of my face had started to swell but it wasn't too bad and wasn't affecting my breathing so I wasn't too concerned. The husband and I had a quick dinner, watched a movie then headed to bed for the night. The pain had receded drastically and I was mostly feeling ok. I woke up the next morning thinking "wow, my face feels really strange" but I was not prepared for what I saw when I looked in the mirror!
At that point I decided it was time to go see the doc so I threw on some sunnies to cover up and headed out. They gave me some steroids and a stronger antihistamine and sent me on my way. Thankfully the meds seems to do the trick and I'm feeling {and looking} MUCH better now!
Needless to say, that basically had me out of commission for a few days.
Now that that's out of the way, I can tell you all about the fantastic weekend we had with our friends.
I picked them up from the airport on Thrusday
and with in hours of leaving the airport, we already had our 1st awesome sign sighting
{just as eastern style toilets are a mystery to us, western style toilets are fairly new and still confusing to some people here}
Friday was a training holiday so Jason and I had the whole day free to hang out with them drive them to a few appointments and start their inprocessing. I had a really hard time remembering that they actually had work to do!
That evening we had a few of our favorite people over to introduce them all to each other. Obviously the boys wasted no time bonding, and while this was happening, the ladies all sat around and had a nice chat. I'm sure this is just the beginning of what is going to be a great last few months for us in Japan!
Saturday we decided that it was time to get off base finally and actually see part of Japan, of course, starting with the train!
We headed to Machida and did a little walking around before settling on an Izakaya for dinner.
At an izakaya, you order lots of small dishes and share, sort of like a Spanish tapas restaurant/bar. Of course we had to order some sashimi {raw fish}.
I eat sashimi all the time but this was a new experience for me. The fish that some of the meat was cut from was also on the plate for presentation. Ok, this is not uncommon, but the twist was that it was still twitching. This video is AWESOME! {it a little loud and you don't need the sound so you may want to mute it}
After our exciting meal, we went off in search of a few drinks
and settled on a darts bar where the girls proceeded to dominate the men
After darts, we still weren't ready to go home so we went to the karaoke bar next door.
Rachel was a little disappointed that it wasn't "real" karaoke since in Japan everyone gets their own private room. I guess she wanted to show off her mad skills to 1,000's. I'm ok just embarrassing myself in front of my close friends!
I'm pretty sure this was either the Ramones or Blink 182...either way, I'm sure it was horrifically awesome! {I am an AWFUL singer!}
This was one of the best nights out that we've had in Japan. I cannot wait to do it 100 more times!
Last week I received an email letting me know that some local photographers were getting together to participate in a Worldwide Photo Walk I already had plans to meet up with some All Hands friends in Tokyo before they took off in different directions all around the world so I decided to join the photo walk as well and make a day of it. The group was headed to Harajuku which is one of my favorite places to spend a Sunday afternoon so it was perfect. The weather was great, the people were great, and some of the photos were even great.
Here's the whole group, pre-walk
We started in Yoyogi Park. I love these guys, I talked about them before here
He's my favorite, I can't get enough of his hair!
how cute are these two
choosing the right song
sometimes they pause to help each other with their hair
she's totally adorable
Then we moved over to Takeshita Street which is famous for its shopping and its street fashion.
We saw these guys giving out free hugs and kisses on the way over
Takeshita St. people watching is some of the best
that's actually a dude under there
After the photo walk, I met up with friends at an izakaya which is a Japanese all you can eat/drink for one price restaurant/bar. It was such a bittersweet night. Everyone had a lot of fun but we all knew when the night ended, it would be the last time we would see each other...at least for a long time!
Toby and me, love him!
with Chris, he and I worked together every day I was there the 2nd time around
half of the room
I LOVE THESE GIRLS! Lucky for me, they both live locally =}
