Sunday, June 16, 2013

Birthday in Japan-land :)

I share an early summer birthday with my mother but since our birthday is during the summer, I only occasionally get to spend it with her.  This year I am in Japan but with the lovely application skype, we were able to spend a part of our birthday together (granted I am thirteen hours ahead of the US east coast so technically while it was our birthday in Japan, it wasn't our birthday on the east coast).

After skyping my family, Jamie and I traveled to Yokohama to meet one of our friends from Duke who lives in Yokohama.  We went to Chinatown and ate lunch at an all-you-can-eat place. Anyone who knows me, knows how much I enjoy food, so you  can only imagine how much fun I had ordering seemingly endless amounts of dishes off the menu.  After eating for two hours, we counted how many plates of food we ate and it was exactly 21 which seemed fitting for my 21st birthday.  At lunch, Jamie also revealed he attempted to bake me a red bean cake for my birthday in a rice cooker, since our apartment doesn't have an oven.  However, it didn't work so he gave me a very cute pop-up card of An-man (a red bean bun anime hero) for my birthday instead.

After lunch we walked to the ocean.  Although you couldn't go into the water, we walked on a path alongside the bay and it was absolutely gorgeous.  We passed by an old amusement park and saw a beautiful old Ferris wheel but decided to ride a really crazy spinning ride instead.  Before we said goodbye to our friend and returned to Tokyo, we went into an arcade and took pictures at a photo booth, to commemorate the day.  Unlike photo booths in the US, there are an enormous amount of options to edit, draw, and write on your photos after you take them.  While the photo booth still spits out a narrow strip of pictures at the end, there is also an option to have the pictures emailed to your phone as well.

Once we were back in Tokyo, Jamie and I went to eat at a very cute pancake place for dinner.  I, again the sweets and food lover that I am, had a monster plate of flower shaped pancakes with mango, pomegranates, bananas, kiwis, mango sorbet, chocolate ice cream, and these really cute colored white chocolate hearts.  My perfect dinner was then followed by a perfect after dinner chamomile tea.

I am so grateful to my friends and family who helped make my 21st birthday one of my best.  Thank you!


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