Peter headed off on some random errands mid morning today, so Venus and I decided to head down to the Shibuya Ward Office to get some information about Japanese lessons. Turns out they do exist, in Ebisu, every Wednesday night. There are three left before Christmas, and while it says that you can join at any time, I sent an email off to find out if it would make more sense to start at the beginning of a new ten week session in the new year...

Due to Venus smelling the roses, (and everything else!) it added quite a bit of walk time to Shibuya, giving me plenty of time to listen to the new Met Podcast for this week. I thought it was great since it stayed to the magazine, and I think an hour is a perfect length for a podcast - much longer and you start needing a really really long journey to get through it, but any shorter and you feel like you're missing a lot of potential stuff...I know that's not necessarily the general consensus, but it's what I've been finding through my now regular podcasts... I also listened to part of this week's American Life - what happens when you are a major pastor who stops believing in hell? Interesting stuff!

V. and I walked back through the park, and stopped for some 'street meat' for lunch... Some kind of long vaguely European sausage on a stick, and cold(ish) tea. Venus was quite happy to wait while I ate, holding out for the last morsel to come her way (she lucked out)...

The main event of today, however, was Thanksgiving part two. I now need to reevaluate my 'I don't really like turkey' stance! Peter, Hitomi, Welsey, Michelle, Kong, Yasako, Sarah, and I all headed to Bourbon Street for some fantastic Cajun, deep fried turkey. It was sooo good! (and huge portions, we all have turkey sandwich leftovers in our futures!) Besides turkey, there were starters of salad, corn bread, and crab cakes, and then the turkey main course (with stuffing, mashed potatoes and peas), and then we finished it off with some pumpkin-chocolate pie, a once yearly occurrence at Bourbon Street.

The chef, Sohan, is a great guy, and already knew everyone except for Sarah and me from past dinners (and I think before that?), so he was super friendly, and when we were the last group left (the restaurant only seats 25ish people, if that!), he came and joined our table, chatting about all sorts of things for the last hour or so...

Once again, with Kong at the table, conversation swung towards that old 'which mountain is tallest' question first posed the night we went to Odaiba/Zest and argued with the poor Nepalese waitress... Nobody could come to a satisfactory decision tonight either, but one of the people at a neighbouring table contributed (through Sohan on his way out), that he figures there is actually the world's tallest mountain-underwater! I guess someone will have to start googling, and also define how we want to measure that damn mountain - harder than you might think!

Ummm what else...? The food was really good (did we mention?) and everyone was really nice... Plans afoot for the couples of the group to head back for a planned Valentine's feast including stuffed lobster and Rose sauce, which piqued the curiosity of many in our group... There are also Mardi Gras plans afoot - yum!

Hitomi also had very exciting news for me today - she seems to have managed to secure me barrel practice privileges at Baji Koen :) We have to go meet the guy, but it all sounds like that's a go, so that's pretty exciting! At least I can work on my barrel stuff for whenever I end up back in Victoria, and it will definitely be a huge step to staying in vaulting shape!

Anyway, I have to get up pretty early to try and catch basically the last RENT show in town (I definitely read/mis-assumed the website wrong! I thought they added extra dates, but they actually have a couple of shows in two different cities, which I found out too late today to do much in the way of re planning - hopefully there will be some rush seats left if I get there early enough... After that, we're headed off to Noh, which will be a cultural experience... Grab your java before you read the blog tommorow!

Those turkey drugs are putting me right to sleep, so I should head off, but exciting stuff tomorrow, so should be a decent blog...

D.