hisashiburi ni BESTIES!

We had a grand reunion the weekend before- J came up to visit from Osaka, and the three of us (S, J, and I) were reunited for the first time in about a year and a half.  (We were pretty much inseparable during our university days)

He took the night bus, and we met him at my station at 7am Saturday morning.  We decided to go somewhere for breakfast and decided on Denny's.

If you're in Japan don't ever opt for breakfast at Denny's- you'll be extremely disappointed.  To me, Denny's always equated breakfast foods, but not here.  After 10 minutes of trying to decide what we would settle for, we finally decided to leave and go to the McDonald's next door.  They at least had pancakes, sausages, and hash browns.  And orange juice..

Later on we played some home-made Scattergories before going to have lunch at my favorite omu-raisu (rice omelet) place, then getting ready for the going-away party.

Quite a few people ended up showing up throughout the night.  There were more drinks and food than we knew what to do with.  We played Jenga and a few rounds of very inappropriate Mad Libs.  I was surprised with a DVD of good bye/good luck videos from some of my friends, and also a stuffed Doraemon which everyone who showed up signed for me.  I know such awesome people!  *sniff*

Sunday we ventured out to Kamakura for a beach picnic.  We brought lots of onigiri, leftover chips and drinks from the party, apples, kimchi cucumbers, green bean and carrot salad, and kushi dango for dessert.  I think we had initially only intended to play in the water up to our waists, but it wasn't cold at all, and we were just having so much fun we ended up diving head-first into waves, body surfing, and just generally being little kids at the beach on a Sunday afternoon.  :D  It had been years since I'd been to the beach, and it was just as fun as I'd remembered.

S had to leave after that to go meet her boy for their anniversary celebrations, but the rest of us went to see the Daibutsu/Big Buddha of Kamakura, then stopped in Yokohama's Chinatown on the way home for some delicious Chinese foods and more sweets.

Big Buddha in Kamakura

Monday we went to Asakusa so J could see Kaminarimon and the Sensoji temple, but the Kaminarimon lantern was unfortunately taken somewhere for refurbishing (?) and we just got to look at a giant sign with a picture of it instead.  Poor J was disappointed, as it seems it is his luck that whenever he goes to see some famous landmark it is under construction.  We did have fun looking at all the gift shops around Sensoji and eating ningyo-yaki and age-manju... sooo good!

A picture I took of Kaminari-mon a couple years ago

 

S met up with us a little later and we had some lunch, wandered around, and took purikura together before J had to catch a shinkansen back to Osaka, and Roomie and I had to make it back for a good-bye dinner with some work people.  The dinner was at the Korean restaurant owned by the father of one of the little girls at the daycare.  Her mom showed up with her in tow, and they gifted me with a cute little drawstring bag with my first initial on it, and a bejeweled eye mask for the airplane.  M-sensei, my lady boss, gave me a huge bag of gifts- a ton of socks (she always gave me a hard time about wearing thread-bare sock and socks with holes in them), a nice pass case for my train pass, and a photo album she put together herself with pictures of all of my babies, and a picture of each of my coworkers and a little message from them.  Brought a little tear to my eye it did, and I'm so glad now that I have pictures of each of my kiddos so I can show everyone just how cute they are.

(Sorry, not pictures of my babies..)

Our lovely purikura

"It looks good on me"