More Visitors

Unfortunately the Christmas party that was organised for our new jobs was cancelled due to someone at one of the offices stealing one of the laptops…. Silly bastards!

We have been quite lucky with visitors from Australia on this trip so far, and next on the list was Ben, Marty and Aaron. Cam met the boys in Asakusa and visited the Mori Tower viewing platform and the contemporary art museum. Along with this, it was the 40^th anniversary of on e of Japan's most famous animation programs: Ultraman.

This guys name is Coinpurse Head! (for obvious reasons!)

The star of the show: Ultraman

This animation was a pioneer of Japan, its formula being copied by many shows after this.

Although we knew nothing about it, it was very cool to see how it was all put together.

Sophi finished work and we all combined at our now favourite restaurant: Momo's Paradise, for some hearty Shabu Shabu. Stupidly the boys had eaten ramen about 3-4 hours before dinner so the all-you-can-eat feast was somewhat not utilised to its full extent.

We took the boys to one of our favourite restaurants in Tokyo for Aarons last night before heading to Europe, The Buddha, which consisted of a huge meal, many many drinks, and singing karaoke until very very early in the morning. (it's so Japanese!)

Dave Tran had been speaking of coming back to Japan for a while now, and finally made his return!!!! It was great to see him here! We all went for dinner at Shin-Okubu (Korea Town) and had an enormous BBQ.

Ami's brother came along and brought his mate Nao-san (aka Sumo san). We were chanting Australian drinking songs and inviting him to join in sculling competitions. Unknown to us, he drank much more than he could handle, and within about half an hour he was unconscious on the floor.

We decided the best course of action was to call an ambulance, as he is a sumo wrestler, even with 5 or 6 people helping we couldn't lift him down the stairs!

The week leading up to Christmas was very busy, we were trying to juggle work, seeing Kumiko as much as possible before she went to Australia, and also hanging out with Marty and Ben as much as possible.

There were quite a few people at work getting sick with the coming of Winter. We had a usual yummy dinner at Kumi’s, her brother cooked a traditional Japanese soup (Nikka Jugga – one of Sophi’s all time favourites). Taka decided not to eat because he was feeling quite sick in the stomach. We later found out that he had to spend almost a week in hospital with a virus. So, as is to be expected, Kumiko was next.

For Ben and Marty's farewell we decided to go to a new restaurant that Takako had found. It was in Yoyogi-koen, a really small, quiet area of Tokyo next to Shibuya. The restaurant was more like a bar than anything; serving a combination of Japanese food and bar snacks. However the interior was gorgeous and the friendly staff made it a hit, and of course with any night, the dinner ended with a big round of shots for everyone…staff and all! The boys had decided that they wanted to go Neon bowling for their last night, so we made our way to Shibuya, for some shenanigans.

In the lead-up to Christmas, we thought it best to do like the Japanese do, and go shopping (even though we still didn't have any money at this stage). We had heard many recommendations for good places to shop and the most common was Tokyo Mid-Town at Roppongi. It is a high class shopping centre that opened in 2007, and provides Tokyoites with every designer label imaginable plus more!

In Tokyo, Christmas/New Year is celebrated mainly with the use of Illumination – meaning that all around Tokyo, Christmas lights are erected. We had been told that Tokyo mid-town's illumination was amazing, but in actual fact it was quite disappointing.