Aug. 19 - 20 - Tanjobi omedeto to me! (Blog written Aug. 28)

I woke up bright and apato, excited that it was my 24 th birthday. Ah, I can now look forward to being one year closer to my Christmas fruitcake age, haha. (In Japan, there’s a joke that girls are considered “stale” after their 25 th birthday. This is compared to fruitcake sitting out after Christmas).
I was pretty excited to get my gaijin card, which would open up many doors for me. That is, I really wanted my cell phone so that I could finally call back home and the rest of Fukushima.
That day, I also got some pretty important “gifts” from my board. I finally got my washing machine, microwave, gas range and vacuum (literally translated into “cleaning machine.”) They also got me a new cable, so that I could watch the handful of channels on my little red television set. Dude, it was like Christmas and my birthday all in one day! I no longer have to wash my clothes in my buckets. And I no longer have to eat most of my food from the local combini. (Although their chicken nuggets are pure deliciousness. And who can forget good ol’ Crunky chocolate).
I also grabbed my new cell phone. I wanted a really cool “waterproof” phone. If you know me, you will remember my lame tale when I dropped my ballin’ Sony Ericsson phone in a lake. Anyways, that phone would’ve cost me a whopping $100 per month for a one-year contract, so I opted out. I settled for a cheap phone. I don’t really like it, but the price is right and it lets me call people and it is in my favourite colour – purple! Here in Japan, we use infrared red to exchange our contact info… it’s pretty hilarious how it never gets old when we do it.
In the evening, D. organized a sweet birthday dinner for me in Koriyama. We all went out for Asian food in a quaint little restaurant. I met the other JETs living in the Adachi district, and some of the Fukushima-shi dudes were also there. And my younger “supervisor” came out with us, too, which was pretty jokes. We have trouble communicating due to language barriers, but he’s super nice! We ended the night at a sweet fruit drink bar.
The next day, I found out that I got a message from back home. My parents had called the BoE to wish me a Happy Birthday! The office doesn’t really speak English, but they painstakingly wrote out a message in Japanese for me. They are really awesome like that. Mom said she was put on hold three times, because the office wanted to make sure they got the message down.