Week in photos #7 – the potluck baby shower

Week number 7 already? Doesn’t really feel like it’s been that long.

December is in general a very busy month in Japan, and it’s not because of Christmas. Instead it is because of New Years, which is one of the main holidays in Japan. With the coming new year many companies are having bonnenkai’s (End of year party), so there’s lots of merry people about.

Monday night was another karaoke night, this was the last time my colleague could meet up before she left Japan :(. None of us knew what to have for dinner, until someone suggested kaiten sushi (conveyer belt sushi) and then we had the surprisingly difficult task of finding a good place in Shinjuku. After about 40 minutes, we literally stumbled upon this place called Sakura sushi and saw that it was pretty busy ( I’ve made it my rule to never eat anywhere new when there is hardly anyone there, unless their tabelog review is good). What a lucky find it turned out to be, I ended up eating 10 plates (personal record perhaps?) and fell in love again with Eel.

Tuesday, Ksk and I had plans to try and fix my iPhone. So we headed for the Softbank store, only to be told we needed to go to the Apple store instead. Since we were in harajuku, we just walked to Shibuya’s Apple store, but it was too busy and you needed an appointment. Fail.

Oh well, upon returning home, we found a Gudetama gatcha machine! After seeing some pretty cute Gudetama gatcha goods online, I’d made it a habit to check all gatcha’s that I happen to walk passed. On my first go, I won the best one XD. Lucky.

Dinner that night was Okonomiyaki at our favourite place:). Okonomiyaki is Japanese savoury pancake, it a mixture of batter and pretty much anything you like, cheese, pork, egg, ginger etc. Some places you can cook your own from scratch, other places have it already made. Our favourite is Jako negi (Dried baby sardines with spring onions), so delicious.

Wednesday was quiet, I just did my Christmas cards in the evening with the most appropriate pen ever. In the UK, I’d usually buy a box of 20-50 cards, in Japan it’s virtually impossible to find boxes of more than 10 cards and Christmas cards are expensive. So I don’t send many.

On my way home, I passed this. It’s popular for construction companies to use characters to hold up the barriers. Oh Japan.

Thursday was potluck baby shower day! Since there are lots of people of different nationalities at work, we ended up with lots of delicious dishes from around the world. I’ve forgot the name for so many of them but they were all amazing and left everyone feeling quite stuffed and content.

After work, I had some last minute Christmas shopping to do, so I headed to Donki with Ksk. Dinner was tantan men, which is a Chinese spicy noodle dish either served in soup or without. I chose without soup and the lowest spice level they have, since Japanese spicy food is hardly spicy in comparison to UK spice, I wasn’t expecting any trouble with this. OH MY WORD was it spicy, delicious but too spicy for me. My mouth was burning.

Two of my colleages are leaving this month :(. So Friday was their leaving do, which was hosted at an amazing mariachi mexican restaurant. It was such a fantastic evening, good food, good energy and company.

Saturday was a yakiniku date with Ksk best work friend and his girlfriend, after which we went to an open mic karaoke bar. I wasn’t feeling in a particularly good mood that day, so didn’t really enjoy the open mic place as much as I could have. But it was still an interesting night.

I usually work on Sundays, but my usual lesson was moved to Saturday this week. So Sunday was a rare completely free day, I watched Musketeers, while drinking tea and eating marmite toast :). Ah bliss. In the evening I had my appointment with the apple store, which diagnosed my phone problems but disappointedly didn’t fix it:/.

How was your week? Would you eat Jako( dried baby sardines)?

Thank you for reading,

Alanna

#tokyo #weekinphotos