Birthday in Japan

So it turned out that Emanuel's and Diana's birthday was on Dec 6 and mine was on Dec 7. Yay! I got to celebrate my 20th birthday in Japan which is awesome because that's the legal drinking age, not that they enforce it much but they did at the club we usually went to. What's awesome is that when I turned 18 I got to spend my legal drinking age in Mexico and then this year I'll be turning 21 so I'll celebrate it in the U.S., how many people can say that they've become of legal age in three different countries eh? It was cool because I got to use my ID at a club for the first time; usually I used Marcela's Mexican ID since Japanese people are not used to seeing Mexicans so they can't tell the difference lol. We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant near school and then headed to the club for a night of partying and drinking. It was pretty awesome.

Some jewelry from Diana

Me, Jen, Daniel, Aya (my closest Japanese friend at Kansai Gaidai, she wouldn't let me speak English so that was awesome. I was decent at Japanese at one point.

The Ecuadorians, Carolina and Carlos

Majo, Francois, Adriana (Colombia), Emanuel (Mexico, b-day boy)

we filled up most of the restaurant

Marce and I

Ema, me, Crhistell, Marce

Caro, Carlos, Chris, and Jean-Phillipe

Andrea (Italy), Chris, me

Afia and Terri (Kenya)

Jose (Mex), Gaines (U.S.)

Diana and I

Princess for a day

Happy birthday to us! I was supposed to be blowing the candles out but I was being conceited hehe

Everyone who attended. I didn't know all the people but it was nice to have so many people there.

In pure. The tables were in these concrete igloo-looking things

Stripper pole. They usually had a got girl dancing but there wasn't one at the moment

Jen, Chris, and I

Kobe

The weekend of November 30 my friend Evelyn came to visit me. Evelyn and I met at my freshman year at Reed College. She's a Chicana from LA and she's pretty much awesome. She was my mentor and took my out to different places in Portland, she was a Chinese major and went overseas to China for a year. She graduated the year I transferred to L&C and we kind of lost touch. While I was in Japan she got a facebook and found me, then we realized that we were both in Japan!! It was so unexpected and great. She's doing the JET Programme (which I will hopefully be doing after I graduate) and she's staying at a town about 2 hrs from Osaka. So she came over and we had a nice weekend. She also wants to be a high school teacher and we talked casually about opening a charter school together some day, we don't know if it'll ever happen, but who knows, it just might.

We were cooking okonomiyaki at my house. The sweatshirt I'm wearing used to belong to Naoki. My okasan gave me three of his old sweatshirts so that I could wear them at home since I was always cold, it was a nice gesture, they were really comfy :)

Osaka, I took Evelyn to Osaka Castle because she had never been there

Takoyaki!! (sort of octopus dumpling, so good)

an artist we found nearby. He drew us, we had to wait like an hours 'cause there was a line

lol

On Sunday Ev and I went to Kobe with my okasan and otosan. Kobe was getting ready for Luminaria, an annual event where the city is lit with Christmas lights. Otosan looking like a model hehe

I think he was cleaning the windows or something (he is hanging by the wall)

We also went to China Town in Kobe

Mmmm Chinese food, all you can eat

Bruce Lee was everywhere

Charla Cotorra, I thought it was funny so I had to take a picture of it. It's Spanish. Charla means talk/chat and cotorra means parrot but it's also a slang for a woman (cotorro for men) who speaks too much. But charla cotorra could be translated to "talky chat" or "chatty talk", it's a play on words so it's hard to translate.

Kobe Tower at the Kobe Port

Some strange monument...hehehe

Pirate ship

I actually do miss them sometimes, I didn't think I would : (

Yay juggling! I took this one for Elana 'cause she loves to juggle

Cool biker girl. I wish I were that telented

Giant metal fish outside of a restaurant

I wish we could've stayed longer but my otosan was tired so we went home early. I heard there was a place with European houses but we didn't get to go, sad. I had a great time thought so I guess it's not that bad.