Sophi's Birthday Madness

Sophi’s first Japanese Birthday!!

Happy happy 25^th b’day bash!! This had proved to be difficult to organise a place at first. Mainly due to the fact of finding a place that is big enough for 20-30 people. As we already know Japan sadly lacks the open space bars that we realise we take so for granted!!

After long searches, the final decision was made to go to 3 consecutive nomihodais in Shibuya. This meant that we had to move 3 times with was a pain in the ass…. However, each place was cheaper than the previous one and the last one was only 1500yen ($15) from 12-5am!!

So with the restaurants set the party started! We started off at a completely hidden away restaurant on the 7^th floor of a no distinct building. As you walk in the narrow strip has one entire wall of tables, these tables are behind an all light curtain – looks awesome against the place interior

PHOTO

There were 20 people at the first dinner which was 4500yen for nomihodai and a course meal. The food itself was standard, but the restaurant had such a cool interior! The cake was brought out with everyone singing happy birthday, plus 2 other tables there were celebrating their birthdays too!!

Sophi was sooo spoilt, everyone who came gave her a present (minus the 5 or so gaijin). God bless the traditions of Japan! Sophi was spoilt with Dior lip glosses, lots of toiletries, alcohol, flowers, accessories, food and a big toy Tottoro!! Ironically most of the toiletries were from Lush and Body Shop – both which can obviously be bought in Oz! So with 2 big bags full of presents and 2 smaller bags FULLL of Lush soaps! We set off to the next destination!

SOOOOOOO…… sadly at this point we will let you know in advance what happened to alllllll our precious 200 photos!!!!!

So skipping briefly to the end of the night the following morning, back at Fukazawa house (our house) we were partying on and Shinji, our Japanese flatmate, was trying to load the photos onto his computer…… and all of a sudden they disappeared!!!!!! What the f**k!!!! Weird – it said it was on the computer but in a different format.

Being in the early morning state that we were in this really wasn’t the time to try and resolve the issue. So days later and after much frustration we realised the card reader was f**ked and wasn’t uploading the photos properly. This was realised with another set of photos, which luckily got recovered. Horrifically though the birthday photos were lost forever L

Luckily for Sophi she had looked through before it all happened and has the images in her head still. To add to the dramas, Kumi had also accidentally deleted her photos too!!! What’s wrong with everyone!!???

So only a few photos were managed to be able to get scrambled together form various people….sadly they don’t show do the night justice, but the memories are their for those who partied!!

The next venue to hit was Amataroo in the Sega building. This proved to be better atmospherically as we had our own room of 2 long floor table which catered for the 30 people that attended there. An interesting mix of people from co-workers, flatmates, students to randoms we met in clubs.

Cam surprised Sophi with 3 big profiterole pyramids as another birthday cake!! (Sadly no photos) YUM!! So once again Happy Birthday was sung again and everyone got into the nomihodai! By this stage everyone was getting well wasted, particularly Cam who when we left to the final destination was so drunk couldn’t remember where we were meant to be going… luckily the birthday girl knew!

So the final destination it was and there were 14 people still standing till the end. This next izakaya we had our own room again and this time was a bit cosier. The drinking and opening of presents carried on until 5.30. Shinji and Sumo were having Sumo matches and everyone else was entertained by wasted rambling! A new comer to the scene was Stefan. This was the first night we met him as he came with one of Sophi’s co-workers, he stayed till the end and proved to be a hilarious companion who we will spend more hysterical moments with in future! Proved to be true entertainment saying random things to randoms such as “Do you want Sakana chin chin”.

So the night continued at home with Sophi, Cam, Andrew and Shinji. This was followed with lots more drinking and the photo episode. Sophi passed out and Cam passed out on the roof! Trooper Andrew headed to work and Shinji sunbaked for the rest of the day!

An awesome Tokyo birthday! Thanks to everyone for coming and the pressies, you’re all so generous!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOPHI!!! (Disney Round 2)

The first week of March, we were busy planning what to do for Sophi's birthday. We wanted to have everyone we knew there, but we also wanted to do something a little different than just go for dinner and drink all night. But, more on this later.

When the Midlams left Tokyo they gave us their JR train passes that they hadn't used fully, so we decided to take a day trip up northish to Nikko. We didn't make it there till about 3pm due to oversleeping. It was so nice to get out of Tokyo, and get some fresh air. We wondered around some temples and were quite amazed by some of the trees they have there, they are enormous.











Nikko is a tiny city about 2 hours away from Tokyo and there was still quite a bit of snow around, so there were hardly any tourists around (and we were there quite late too!).


As the weather was still a bit chilly, we caught the bus around, and went and had lunch at a local restaurant (we ordered the Nikko Ramen which was the same as any Ramen in Tokyo!).

We didn't spend a lot of time in Nikko, but it definitely has a lot to offer in beauty and wabi-sabi. I think we will make the trip there again for sure.






We spent the next week trying to finalise numbers for Sophi's birthday party, but unfortunately a lot of people were already busy on that weekend, and Kumiko's grandfather had suddenly passed away. So the party was postponed for two weeks. So far there was about 20-30 people for the party confirmed

On the weekend of Sophi's birthday we did the one thing that Sophi had been dying to do since we last did it; we went to Disneyland.






The weather forecast was for rain on Monday so we changed our plans and went to DisneySea on the Sunday instead. We made the right decision, although, being the first nice day for a long time due to a long Winter, it was extremely busy.









This being the second visit to DisneySea this trip we took a more relaxed approach and just wondered around and took in all the magic without waiting in any long queues for rides. We managed to go on all the rides by the end of the day, but most of the kids had gone home so we didn't really have to wait for anything. The longest waiting time we saw was 210minutes for the most popular ride (which is actually pretty crap) anyway so we didn't bother with it.

We did a little bit of souvenir shopping to end out the day, and sleep very very well that night.

The next day we had planned to use the train passes to go to Sendai for the day. It is about 3 hours North of Tokyo. When we woke up it was pouring with rain so we decided to give it a miss and just go to Chinatown again for Yum-cha in Yokohama. We ate another huge lunch and then made our way into the centre of Yokohama to check it out.






The Yokohama city skyline is amazing at night, especially with the bay surrounding it.







Of course, a big city in Japan wouldn't be complete without a ferris wheel. The ferris wheel in Yokohama is the biggest in the world. Being on the ferris wheel was no problem for Sophi, but it was making Cam's stomach turn being above the roof of the buildings looking down from a small capsule.

The ferris wheel is actually in an amusement park called Cosmoworld, so all around you there are roller coasters and rides moving around. It is quite a nice setting to watch the city from.








We finished the night off with a few drinks at a local bar, and made the trip back to Tokyo, exhausted.