I got an email today from the tea ceremony master (sensei) with a note that my application to become a second level (out of 10) tea ceremony master.
So from now I can officially take on students, leave a note here if you want to become one 😉
Chie and I met with Club Leo (Non and Ryo) in Hibiya today. First we went to the The Kids are Alright movie. Quite interesting movie about a lesbian couple with two kids searching for their real father, and the consequences of finding him.
Afterwards we took the train to Omori and the Tani Kitchen. A Thai restaurant with some really decent food.
As usual was impossible to get any good pictures of Ryo and Non 😉
Bad Boy was found today. Bad Boy is my bicycle. And, NO, I did not name it Bad Boy. Cannondale did.
I had apparently parked the bike in a no-parking zone for bicycles. They had dropped by in the morning and put a sticker on the bike asking the owner (me) to remove it. Then made another sweep in the afternoon and removed all bikes with a sticker on them. So the lesson learned here is that I have to use the lunch time to remove stickers if I ever park in that area again.
The pickup place for the bike was a 15 minutes walk from the office, see the map below. The guys working there, all men in the later half of their life, were very friendly and helpful. They also apologized for having to cut my lock. Well, if they were so sorry for that they should have thought about it before cutting it 😉 Just kidding, they just manage the returning of the bicycles, not the retrieval.
If you wonder where you can park a bicycle in Minato-ku, have a look the following maps. The middle left map is for the area around Shinagawa station. Blue street means no-parking zone. I parked my bike in the left-most blue street about midway down (or up, I guess).
I forgot my key card to the automagical bicycle parking today so I parked by bicycle a block from the Shinagawa station, in front of the Intra City, and locked it to a fence. To my surprise, when I returned in the evening, it was nowhere to be found. I must have looked quite stupid walking back and forth trying to remember where I parked my bike.
Hopefully it was moved since it seems I parked in a no-bicycle-parking parking area – that explains the sign full of kanji that it was parked in front of 😉 Anyway, stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion… Tomorrow.
When we were in Tokorozawa we took the time to supply some pre-washed rice and water. The prices are one level lower in Tokorozawa compared to Tokyo so we get more for the money, which is good.
On our way back to Tokyo we stopped by Ishihara-san’s place to leave the rice and water there, until the next trip to the Tohoku area. You can find the details at the Tohoku Donation page.