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Saturday, June 30, 2007

Ugh I've been horrible about blogging, as certain people insist on reminding me of by email, but anyway, I'll try and catch up a bit..(this is post #300, by the way, and I can't wait for the last post! This is the only way in which the rest of my time in Japan, so hideously short, seems like its going to stretch out for a long time!) Anyway, since I don't want to be the girl who abandoned her blog 3/4s of the way through (not that it matters, really):

Friday: was a long and weird day. I was still can't quite decide if it was a good one or not, but I'd have to say that bits weren't not so good! I got to the office around 8, and spent the day working predominantly on BAB, since that's the first magazine of the two to go to print. It's actually mostly in design at this point, which is good! When I finally got out of the office just before 9 that night, I had a low res pdf of where we were all ready to go with a very few blank pages.

In the afternoon, I met Caroline at the British Embassy to go to Lindsay Ann Hawker's family's press conference. It was incredibly sad, as you can imagine! He mum, dad, and sister (who is my age) were there, speaking about her murder at the end of March, and the suspect, and what the police are doing, etc. They also mentioned the t-shirt campaign that BAB is starting The family seems so nice, and all things considered, they seem to be handling everything OK, but I found the whole experience a bit depressing (the actual press conference itself was interesting to be at though).

Incidentally, since we launched the t-shirt campaign on Thursday, it got picked up by the Sports Paper on Friday, and as a result, the phone was ringing off the hook in the office, and we even had researchers from three or four tv stations coming to the door looking for info. Very interesting! Since I don't' watch Japanese news, I have no idea what got picked up or not, but it seems to be stirring up interest!

So came back to the (quiet!--Just Kieron and me) office, and kept working on BAB, had a chat with Helen in the early evening, and then after sending the pdf around 8:30 or 9, headed off to meet the girl that I teach at a Northern Lights (Canadian club) party. It was in a cute little bar space near Roppongi, and everyone was really friendly, and most people spoke pretty good English, although really I should have been practicing my Japanese, but ya know! Met a few of her friends and we chatted till around 10, when it ended, and then went to KOOTS by Roppongi with two of her other friends, and they proceeded to feed me a couple of traditional Japanese sweets--one of which has mochi in the name, but isn't the pounded, grannnies choke to death on this rice of new year's which shares the same name, rather its like tasteless blocks of chilled gelatin or something, that you then sweep around through syrup. It's pretty tasty, as the syrup is really sweet and the other stuff has no taste, so it works out pretty well.

We also got 'service' (free food) from KOOTS, which was like little balls of rice wrapped in something red and doughy (I guess usually its red bean paste, but not this time). Anyway, taste was ok, but texture was so similar to playdough I couldn't quite get over it! It was quite funny, because the girl that I teach was talking to one of her friends, in Japanese, and said she didn't like it, which I understood, and then just before I was about to eat it, I was like "So you don't like this, huh?" and she was like "OMG how did you know?" It was quite funny!

Anyway, home around midnight and then bed pretty early-was desperate for a lot of sleep, which I basically got, not waking up till like 10:30 on

Saturday

Headed down to teach at 1, and that was fine--we can usually make it through an hour without too much difficulty these days, and then I just basically went home--it had cooled down a bit so I walked home, although it was still pretty hot hiking up the big hill by our place!

Pretty soon after I got back, Peter's friend Emiko showed up and so we all spent the afternoon chatting with them catching up on olllllld FMA gossip and the such, and we had a tasty BBQ with chicken and ribs. At about 10:30, I went down to Dubliners in Shibuya, to meet up with Kieron's party crew and to wish him a happy birthday. There were a few familiar faces from the What the Dickens night of about a month ago, but I just stayed for a quick drink, especially since Kieron actually went home not too long after I got there, and was, improbably, home by 1. Which was actually probably a really good thing, since I'm tired enough now as I get ready to go teach the taxi guy who stood me up last week...

xo
D

PS--Happy Canada Day!

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