Birthday Celebrations in Japan

Today was my birthday AND my first full day in Japan.  Though I was sad to be away from home and the people I love on this day, it was a fun day filled with new experiences.  We spent the day traveling around with 3 others: Jake, Alycia, and Caitlin.  We went to the alien registration office where we sat for a looooong time and got to know each other while Rumi and Mia filled out paper work and spoke to officials for us.  We also went to the bank and opened up bank accounts.  Again, we sat while they did the work.

The Japanese LOVE cartoons for everything.  This is a cartoon pamphlet for...something.  We were bored so we made up our own dialog to go with it.   Notice how in the one picture there is snot and tears coming out of the frog's face. Gross.

Rumi and Alycia at the immigration office.  Notice the face mask of the worker.  The Japanese LOVE to wear these.  Everywhere. All the time.

In the evening Jake, Aharon, Caitlin, and Alycia came with Kris and I to a Korean Barbecue place.  We ordered a large platter of raw meat and grilled it at our table!  It was sooooo good and very fun! We had pork, beef, steak strips, and cow tongue.  The cow tongue was surprisingly good! It was hard to communicate with our waitress because she didn't speak any English.  Luckily the menu had a lot of pictures so we could point to what we wanted.  She did get confused and sent us 3 orders of something we didn't want that we had to send back.  I felt pretty silly about it.

This is where we celebrated my birthday

Cow Tongue -- tastier than it looks!

After dinner, I showered Japanese style and it was glorious!  This means you shower first outside the tub with soap and shampoo.  Once you are clean, you get in the tub to soak -- basically a hot tub!  Because you are clean, when you are done you cover up the tub and can use it the next day.  When you are ready to use it all you have to do is hit the "reheat" button!  In this way the Japanese are BRILLIANT!

Thanks to everyone who offered me wonderful birthday wishes on facebook, email, or phone calls.  I miss my friends and family, but I am definitely enjoying this exciting new world!