Met Non and Ryo in Ginza to watch Up in the Air movie with George Clooney. It was a kind nice, slow paced movie that did not leave too much of a memory an hour after we left the theatre.
As always with Club Leo we have dinner after the movie. This time Ryo had made reservations at Aux Amis des Vins. We had a fun time talking about everything and nothing in particular. The food was so so, and quite expensive.
Wednesday and “no overtime working day” 🙂 A Japanese government invention to decrease the work hours of their employees. That has now spread to private companies too, like Sony Ericsson.
I left the office at 6 pm, which is an hour earlier than when we absolutely should leave the office on a “NOWD”. Yamanote-sen (JR commuter line) was more overcrowded than usually. One reason may be that I went in the opposite direction than I usually do when I go home.
Pulling myself out of the cart at Yurakucho station along with what felt a thousand other passengers I could not do much else than follow the slow pace of everyone else. My destination was easy enough to find. Just walk along the rails back towards Shimbashi.
At the Coca restaurant located under the rails of Yamanote-sen I found Mash-san and Chie. They had started eating and drinking, waiting for me.
We had a good time and after a while we were joined by Saito-san. Continuing to eat spicy food, drinking and talking. We had a good time 😀
At around 10 pm we finished and continued to Tori Ichi just around the corner. It’s a yaki-tori restaurant, though our purpose tonight was not to eat but have a last drink before going home. And of course to speak Swedish with the owners wife 😛
In the evening, after a gym session, Chie and I went to Red Pepper in Ebisu. There we met Non, Ryo, Andreas and Jonas for St. Valentine’s Day dinner.
We had a lot of good food and talked about ãŠã²ã¨ã‚Šã•ã¾ (ohitorisama) which basically means a person without a date. That was what Non, Ryo, Andreas and Jonas were. Andreas and Jonas kind of had dates but they are in Sweden so it was a bit difficult to have dinner together.
We talked about other things than people without dates as well. Like what to order for desert. We all had apple pancake with vanilla ice, but I also had strawberry sherbet. Yummy!
Oh, almost forgot. Valentine’s Day in Japan means you get chocolate… If you’re they guy 🙂 Though we have to pay back in a month’s time when it is White Day 🙁
In the afternoon Chie and I went to Shinjuku for some New Year’s shopping. We bought some mame (Japanese snacks). It was almost impossible to move around for all the people.
Our main purpose was not to buy mame though. Today was the 29th or 2-9 which in Japanese is ni-ku. Niku also means meat in Japanese so what better food to eat on one of the last days of the year than yaki-niku (BBQ)? We though going to Korean BBQ had no better alternative anyway. And so did Mina-sensei, so she joined us.
After the dinner we rolled to ChakaChaka for another drink. We’ve been to ChakaChaka a few times before, for instance after the last Gamarjobat show. It is owned by Taro-san, a friend of Chie. He always seems happy when we come there and usually joins us at the table. He did so today as well… Until a girl turned up that was more interesting 😉
At 5:30 pm we were at the Naka-Meguro station to pick-up Yin, a work colleague of Chie (exchange worker from China) for dinner. Yin will soon leave Japan, going back to China.
We had dinner at Yasaka and Yin seemed to like it. Afterwards we went back to our place to talk, drink tea from China, and introduce Apple TV for Yin. Sorry Patrik, but I do my best to remove M$ from the throne 😉
Around 10 Yin had to leave to get back to her apartment or her husband (in China) would get very worried – he seemed to be the worrying kind.