Well this morning, I bailed on taking the bike because it was very grey and ominous looking, and also raining a bit. I was planning on taking it, until I got outside and realised there was NO way I was going to want to bike home in the rain after teaching tonight, so I went back inside and upstairs to get an umbrella (it was hanging on the back of my bedroom door), then went downstairs and carefully locked the door behind me, and walked half way to the station before realising that I didn't actually have an umbrella with me! Oops! <-- I have no idea what I actually did in my room, like re packed my backpack or something stupid like that! Pretty quiet at work today - we didn't really do the giri (obligation) chocolate thing in my office, probably because no one is Japanese, but a couple of the girls had been to Sapporo for the ice festival, so they had brought omiage anyway, and Anthony made all of the girls in the office cookies which was very sweet! I should probably explain that in Japan, Valentine's day is when girls buy chocolate for boys. When they're buying it in an office type situation, it's called 'giri choco', or obligation chocolate, although apparently some girls are just buying 'tomo choco' now, which is for friends (girls). For girls, our day is 'white day', which happens on March 14th and was invented by a marshmallow company in the 50s! Pretty funny! Although, I have to say this is a cruel trick to play on us single people - why not rub that in our faces twice a year? Bonus!
(Tokyu Hands has cute little cars to advertise the holiday though!)

Luckily, I have a great boss, at about 11 this morning, the takubin guy (takubin is like courier, but everyone uses it for all sorts of things here! our takubin guy comes like 4 times a day, whether we need something or not, and things get to wherever they are going super super quickly!). Anyway, he turned up at eleven, with two huge boxes (like three feet tall) of flowers...one for me, and one for a girl in sales. I was very very very confused about who on earth would be sending me flowers (definitely thought it was a mistake!), but it turns out that Caroline won't let a single 'single' girl in the office go through Valentine's day without getting flowers, so the gorgeous arrangements were from her. It was so sweet! I love getting flowers, so I was v. happy!


I have pictures, but I can't find the download-y adaptor thingy! (FOUND IT!) I blame Venus because she escaped today while we were out and ate a whole bag of individually wrapped hard candies I had on my desk, plus some Orange flavoured Listerine breath strips, and who knows what else, so I wouldn't put it past her to have munched a small plastic USB drive. I really hope it turns up unharmed somewhere though!

We all went to Suji's for lunch which was very tasty - I had a BLT which was v. yummy, and everyone's food looked amazing! As for work, it was fairly administrative-ish today, I typed in Partyline, sorted out quotes and photos, looked over my article for March's BAB, finished the calendar, etc. Nothing too exciting, but all good things to tick off my list of things to get done. Incidentally, I came to a natural close at exactly four, so I headed off then...

It was lucky I didn't have the bike since I'd gained my big flower box (I figured they'd stay more protected in there than outside, especially since it was windy when I left the office). I took the train to meiji jingumae and went to the library - I stocked up on a couple of Margaret Atwood books, since Jordon and I are going to see her speak at the Canadian Embassy on Monday and I've only read one of her books, and then also picked up a few books to offer to my various kid students...

After that, I walked to the New Yorkers Cafe in Shibuya to teach, we had a good chat about his recent trip to Taiwan, and his upcoming trip to shop for clothes for a month in NYC! (he's a stylist). It sounds like a pretty great trip! Once we finished at about 7:15, I walked outside and discovered that it was absolutely PISSING rain, like get in the shower wet, so I ran across the street to KAMO, the huge soccer shop, and went to 'look' at cleats and turf boots. Well, I really wasn't expecting a good sale, and for there to be a HUUUGE selection of cleats, for cheaper than you can get at home! I ended up with a nice pair of Nike multis (so I can play on grass too, instead of just having turf shoes), for 45$ (50% off). I'm pretty happy with them, and can't wait till Sunday now!

After that, I went to leave the store and it was *still* pissing down rain - by the time I got half way to Shibuya station (I wasn't walking home in that!), I was drenched through my rain coat and my cardboard box was looking a little worse for wear! I called to check in with Peter, thinking that since its easy on JR to get up to Mejiro from Shibuya that I might just do that, but he said he'd be late, so I dragged my drowned rat self onto a couple of trains, and by the time I got to Yoyogi Uehara, it had stopped raining, which was nice! However, my box was destroyed, the bottom had kind of disintegrated by this point, it was a sorry sight!

Straggled home, and was greeted by an embarrased looking V (see above for a partial list of transgressions), she's lucky she's cute! My new passport was also waiting for me - it's sooo pretty and crisp and not covered in hot chocolate! I love it! (I do however hate my picture, it's actually horrific!)

I crawled into warm/dry clothes and then ate some leftover curry for dinner and watched a couple of episodes of Friends with V before coming up to blog. I think I'm going to submit my Suji's point of interest to Wcities (I finally got my answers to my last couple of questions at lunch today), and then curl up with Lady Oracle.

D