Another birthday, another workday.

This years birthday work day was a day of student plays. They were pretty good fun and several of them managed to get a birthday reference into them! My delightful third graders even made me a card saying lots of lovely things about me and my classes, and sang me a little birthday song (their pronunciation was excellent!). So, as far as working on your birthday goes, it was actually a pretty good one!

My birthday fell on a Wednesday, and the Thursday was a bank holiday. This was PERFECT. No early alarm for me. Drunk on cocktails I got. We went to a local cafe that has live music on a Wednesday and a nice menu I can eat from. Sidecar was the name of our drink of choice (just a little brandy, rum and lemon zest…) and I needed the side of a car to get me home a little later. Or I was the side of a car. It is fuzzy and hard to recall…But it was all good, as Dan had told the cafe it was my birthday so a cake made of cream and youth was presented to me before we left, which helped sober me up (a tiny amount…actually, in truth, not at all).

On somehow ending up near our apartment (I don’t really remember how – Dan assures me we took the bus and I was well behaved, but I am pretty sure I flew there) I promptly decided, at 11pm, I needed hot chocolate and wanted to go to the beach. Well, it was my birthday so he had to let me…Family Mart hot chocolate in hand, I headed towards the ocean, determined to see some of the many ships we hear honking their horns at night. I was after a birthday honk. And what do you think I saw? Nothing. It was dark.

The following day, surprising sprightly after downing several pints of water on arrival home, we set off on another brilliant day in the company of friends. Noriko had planned a day of eating Nabe (Japanese stew-ish) in the forest. And that is exactly what we did! She drove us up to Mizaka Lake and forest and we picked a spot by the stream. She whipped out all the Nabe tools and a nice little bottle of bubbly to celebrate us not being at work, and we enjoyed some great food and conversation in the forest.

By late afternoon, Noriko’s small toy poodle was about to freeze to death, along with a few of us, so we took off to Chofu to check out the autumn leaves. It was Joe’s first time in Chofu, and it was fair to say we all enjoyed the warming stroll around the old town.

Together, we well and truly celebrated my autumnal birthday and Japan’s autumnal delights! It was a perfect seasonal day.

Thanks #Yamaguchi