Twenty-five candles.

This month was brought to you by the number 25.

The day before payday, I had a mere 25 yen sitting idly in my Japanese bank account. Literally. (For my Canadian counterparts, that’s about 25 cents. For my British girls, that’s about 17.5 quid. Pounds?). My passbook looked quite bare. (That’s right – I don’t have the luxury of online banking in Japan. In a country riddled with gadgets galore, they enjoy keeping some things simple. Thus, emerges simple things like squat toilets and bank passbooks).

My lack of funds can be attributed to an action-packed summer: the FuJET Fuji climb (p.s. Fuji, we're no longer friends), Tokyo shopping and nights out in Tokyo with the newbies (make that two “business” trips), sending money back home, paying a rather large sum for four months worth of school lunches, car inspections, and of course, my new bed. I’ve never been this broke. But it was all worth it!

***

I turned 25 a few days ago. It was pretty anticlimactic. I strolled into work at 8:10 a.m. I spent the morning coaching my students for the upcoming speech contest. After our individual sessions, I had casually mentioned it was my birthday. The girls squealed in excitement, and quiet N-kun greeted me with a nice “Happy Birthday!” I told my JTE, who announced it to the staffroom – so basically all five staff who showed up to work that day greeted me with an “お誕生日おめでとう！”

The school nurse even said in English: “Happy Birthday!” That afternoon, I ended up going out for lunch with the ladies of the staffroom. It turns out that was the designated day for the girls to go out and have lunch together. I felt awkward, because they were all chitchatting in Japanese. I played around with little Ayano-chan; she’s the spunky five-year-old daughter of C-sensei.

I’ve always enjoyed celebrating with family and friends. Even as a teenager, I’d invite my closest friends over to my place before we’d head downtown for the clubs. Dad always enjoyed being an “emcee” for the evening, and would even walk around our living room with a mic. That's right - we’re THAT family. :)

This year, I sat around the usual table at the conveyor belt sushi place in Nihonmatsu. We feasted over our favorite sushi, then Hezza surprised me with birthday cake topped with five candles! My friends burst out into song, which encouraged the rest of the restaurant’s patrons to sing along as well. Awesome. The sushi place didn’t have any appropriate knives or forks for us, so I dished out my cake by using chopsticks. Only in Japan.

On Saturday night, I kicked off my birthday festivities at the Asahi Beer Factory. This lovely drinking establishment is located just up the street from me. I invited my friends from across the prefecture. We enjoyed over for two hours of unlimited drinks and yakiniku. Looking around the room, I realized how grateful I am to have met a great bunch of people in Fukushima. It’s funny how being thrown into the unknown forces you to develop immediate bonds with people you’d probably never encounter back home.

Anyways, everyone got into Motomiya by train. They came from across the –ken: Fuku, Koriyama, Aizu, Iwaki, Inawashiro, Shirakawa and so on. So, it was kind of funny to see dozens and dozens of foreigners walking down the sidewalk for my birthday jam – my city doesn’t experience that every day.

It was even more hilarious when we walked into the beer garden’s parking lot, and I ran into my students. That is, some of the senior boys from our amazing baseball club! They were at the beer garden with their parents and M-sensei, their baseball coach. They were celebrating the fact that their team earned top honours! I obviously took advantage of this great photo opportunity – Yuki’s mom even jumped into the photo. (They have the SAME FACE.

(By Monday morning, everyone in the staffroom had heard how I celebrated my birthday at the beer garden. Later, I would remind M-sensei that we ran into each other at an izakaya (Japanese pub) when I was up in Fukushima City last month. He was there drinking with other teachers, while I was drinking with my fellow English teachers. I told him I only drink “cola.”)

Back to my birthday jam: Festivities continued in Koriyama. We went to our favorite watering hole, Billy’s Bar. We also had the brilliant idea to hit up a hip hop night at a nearby club. We ended the night by crashing at S’s inviting apartment. It was an epic weekend. That is all.

Teasers

I've quickly flipped through my blog, and have duly noted that I have loads of stories that I still want to share. I'm absolutely tired right now, so I'll just make a rolling list of stuff that will help jog my memory for future posts:

- Tokyo Trip in March (AGEHA)
- Nichu good-byes
- Hiroshima/Miyajima trip with the girls in March
- Sakura BBQ
- Golden Week in May: Kansai (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Himeji); Seoul.
- Sendai shenanigans
- Watching baseball in Sendai
- "Drinking party" to celebrate baseball at Nichu
- Sports Day
- Leavers' Party in Fukushima-shi
- Facing Mt. Fuji
- Tokyo Orientation (Groups A and B)
- Care packages
- Playing with my shogakusei
- Good-byes
- Fun times with my 3年生
- I don't sleep on the floor no more