Enkai at Tomo-chan's

June 24 - At around 2pm I met Tomo-chan with his wife Shoko-san in Hep Five and went to his house thereafter. It felt nostalgic and ecstatic to see them again after a long time. They live a little farther from the city proper specifically in Izumi-Fuchu (I'm not really sure though, hehehe). When we got there, we left some things and immediately went out towards the supermarket which was just about 5 minutes from their house. This is the door towards Tomo-chan's castle (ka-suru) :)

In prelude to the feast, I took some pictures of their pet rabbit "ranchi" (I'm not quite sure about this spelling though).

I also took one with Tomo-chan and his Takoyaki machine.

On top of the TV was their wedding picture when they got married in Guam. I wanted to take a clearer picture but my cellphone camera resolution is quite small. It was a really great picture. They both looked young and happy.

We talked about a lot of stuff including their plan to go to India in the coming month as well as the coming Summer Sonic concert. I hope we can go to the concert together. That would be really swell.
Here's a picture of the couple:

I often see takoyaki being prepared in shops and it looked easy but the truth is, it's not as easy as it looks. There is a technique for turning the takoyaki to make it into a perfect circle.

Here is a picture of us during the feast.

Later that night we watched a show on cable TV which featured the "man-turned-woman" people in Thailand. It was interesting and it felt great to watch it together with them. It made me think that it has been quite a while since I've had an open discussion of anything.

In conclusion, the night ended with me going home feeling great to have shared a moment with one of the most generous and coolest couple on the planet. Thank you both for a great evening. ;)

Minamikata Karaoke!

June 15, 2007, "Thank God it's Friday!" For the rest of my スリマスター colleagues, they are probably saying something different like "Thank God, it's payday!"
We had plans to go to Karaoke later that day and so I was very excited. I've always loved karaoke. Even if I can't carry out a single note properly, it never discouraged me to shout and sing my heart out. I'm quite the boldface one when it comes to the hoarding the microphone. hehehe. :P

At around 8:30 PM we arrived at the Karaoke place which was on top of Mos Burger near Minamikata Station of the Hankyu Line. The party consisted of Taku-chan, Naoki-chan, Tanabe-san and of course, me! The food arrived not long after we sat down and we started munching while browsing the pages for songs to sing.
After stuffing ourselves we started the singing streak. This time I discovered another secret star powered singer! Before it was Yoshi-san when I had an all girl night out in Namba. This time it's Taku-chan. May it be an English or a Japanese song, name it and he can sing it!

And I don't mean just the literal type of singing, I'm talking about a performance level type of singing! Way to go Taku-chan, keep at it! Maybe someday you might even earn more money through singing than tapping the keyboard.

Naoki-chan was another surprise when we sang Mariah Carey's Hero song together. It's refreshing to discover a guy who can sing a Mariah Carey song and a Japanese one at that. He might look a little boyish/girlish because of his hair (I call him a girly boy :P) but he's a really sweet guy. :)



Tanabe-san didn't sing a single song that night. He owes me a whole set of songs. It's probably really hard to convince this guy to sing since sober or drunk, he said he never sings...hmmmmm...
It was another great night of full fun, new discoveries and money consumption. It was worth every cent even if I go poor for the rest of the week. ;)

Sunday Calligraphy Class

June 10, 2007 - I woke up a little late than I wanted to. So I immediately went to do my laundry since I had a calligraphy class to go to a little later.
I was late in arriving at the meeting place (Umeda), added to that yoke I got lost trying to get to the Tanimachi Line! Sorry gyud kaayo Shei :(
I was still glad though that I was with somebody upon going to Osaka International House since I had no idea where that place was. So Sheira and I rode the train and started talking. Then she suddenly retorted that we have already arrived while "tanimachi 4-chome" was being announced over the train speakers. After walking around 4 steps from the train door, Sheira looked upon the sign on the wall that says "tanimachi 4-chome"....And then came the magic words --> Ayyyy sayop! 9-chome ta d-i ta naug! At that moment we hurriedly went to the next train door just as it was about to close. We ended up getting in the car next to the one we were riding before :P We couldn't help from laughing when we got in. :)
A little later we finally arrived at Tanimachi 9-chome. The instruction for reaching Osaka International House stated that it takes 10 mins from the station to get there by walking. So we started walking straight from the station. We were unsure if we were going to the right direction so after walking for about 8 minutes we went to a nearby Family Mart to ask for directions. Unfortunately, both Sheira and I are not very good with Nihongo so we couldn't understand what the store clerk was trying to say. We only understood the summary of what she was suggesting which was to go back to the station where we came from and from there ask somebody for directions. Later that day we found out that we were actually already very close to the place at that point. We only had to turn left and we would have spotted sign board that read "Osaka International House" IN ENGLISH! (Perhaps that is also partly the reason why the store clerk didn't know where the place was, the signs for it were all in English.)

Both of us then headed back to the station and looked for clues on how to get to the Calligraphy class. I decided to ask the store clerk adjacent to the station exit but she replied that she didn't know so we went back to looking at the map near the exit. After a few seconds the girl from the store came out with a map in hand and she was pointing at a location that says "Osaka International House"! She's such a kind and gorgeous angel! Whoever you are, you have saved both of our asses and we'll forever be grateful to you :)
A few steps later, we felt a great relief when we finally saw a sign that indicated that we were going in the right direction. We took pictures of the moments when we were no longer a pair of lost children in Osaka. :)

We finally arrived at the calligraphy place 20 minutes later. We went up, paid the registration fee and headed towards the classroom.

Extensive brush strokes after that, we finally finished our "masterpiece". After assessing the finished product of my clumsy hands, I concluded that calligraphy is truly NOT my cup of tea. :P

Osaka Castle

In the morning of June 5, 2007 I went with my manager Sagami-san to Osaka Immigration office to file for an extension of my VISA and on the way back to the office we stopped by Osaka Castle. When told Sagami-san that I haven't been to Osaka Castle yet he agreed to come with me. It was like an early morning date. hahahaha.

Unlike springtime, Osaka castle during that time was not so crowded. But the sakura trees were also not as pretty since there were no more flowers.

We didn't really went in the Osaka Castle but only at the tip of where it was located. But it was ok with me, the view was already great and besides, I was wearing high-heeled shoes that day so the soles of my feet were starting to hurt :P