Birthday celebrations ... Part I

In anticipation of the commencement of my fourth decade of life, my birthday celebrations began on Sunday with a picnic in Nara park! Saturday brought ominous torrential downpours of rain, but it was just a bluff. Sunday was a beautiful day... the air was the perfect temperature for outdoor frolicking, and the sunlight had this beautiful golden quality to it that lit up Todaiji like a postcard in the background.


I threw together an avocado salad, Alvin whipped up a chicken pasta salad, Linda made something loosely based on the concept of the potato, and other people brought various sushi, salads, and picnicky snacky things. Of course I brought my 4-liter tank of shochu too, which Yuki helped me out with. ;)


Besides my ATR buddies Alvin, Linda, and Cameron (an enigmatic character who, although he as only been in Japan for like a few days, has already mastered Japanese homestyle cooking, run the entire tokaido from Kyoto to Tokyo, built his own traditional Japanese house from scratch with no nails, and founded his own Buddhist temple),
Toshiko and Hiroko from Osakapella, and Yuki, we had some rare guest appearances by Keiko and Luke (with their 8-month-old daughter Aisa), Haru-chan (Maki's friend), and a surprise appearance by my old friend Philomena, the crazy pink-clad English girl whose dad used to do acupuncture with bees in China, and who did the JET program with me, but who is back in Kyoto as a researcher!

Unfortunately, although the weather was perfect on Sunday, the ground was still very wet from the day before. I wore my flat-bottomed sneakers, and I must have lost my footing and hit the ground like 5-10 times. Fortunately I had anticipated this and wore my trail pants, so all was well. :)


We played out in the park for a few hours, while Alvin and Cam kept us entertained with their mad soccer skillz, and then packed things up to head back as the sun began to descend. I suggested that maybe we should go for some karaoke, and everyone else agreed ... that it would be more fun not to do karaoke but rather to go back to my place and keep partying. ... ... ?!?!?!?!

Keep in mind here that I have never really invited anyone to my place and it's a total disaster area... but we went anyway. Pizza was ordered, drinks were mixed, wineglasses were smashed, settings on my computer were tweaked (?!?! what kind of dork goes to a party at somebody's place and changes their Windows taskbar settings and Firefox toolbars? Somebody erased my web history too. I wonder what kind of sketchy websites they were looking at during the party... ?!?! ) and a good time was had by all.

Anyway, the cleanup procedures have been completed, and we're all anxiously awaiting Part II on Saturday!