Recovering

Last week was my birthday, the 7th, to be exact. My friends here made sure that I was out celebrating the entire time. It was pretty good. I met Julian, his roommate Todd, and our friend Nicole for drinks on the actual day of my birthday. Since it was a Thursday, I couldn't really be out late. Friday I organized a party for myself. I was worried about exactly how many people would show up, since many of my friends have a tendency to tell me the day before that they can't come because they're too busy. Must be a Japanese thing. But we had enough people turn out to have fun. First we hit a bar, Beck, in Fujisawa for some drinks. I figured that by 8 everyone would've eaten something, but I guess not because within 15 minutes everyone wanted to move somewhere else for dinner. We ended up at a restaurant called Tapa, where we stayed until the last train. I caught it back with the Hiratsuka crew, plus one of the other ALTs, Kim. We proceeded to a small bar to meet up with a couple more of Nicole's friends, then hit the local latino salsa bar.

The bar used to be really good. The owner/bartender, Hector, was awesome as always, but the crowd and atmosphere seems to have declined somewhat. I think it's because the people who show up now seem to be just kids and a very few older guys. There isn't really anybody in their 20s unless I've brought them. Julian, Kim and I finished up the night in a Matsuya downing cheap grub before Kim caught the first train back and Julian and I wobbled home around 5:30am. I guess it's a good night when you have to peel the contacts from your eyeballs.