私の誕生日

That title says "watashi no tanjoubi," or "my birthday." That's right. I'm 20 now. Doesn't mean much in the U.S., but here it means I can now officially be tagged in pictures of me drinking!

Like this one.

I did do quite a bit for my birthday this year, although it was a rather eclectic array of activities. First, the night beforehand, I made myself a birthday cake. Because making it myself was the only way I was going to end up with a 2 layer Guinness-chocolate cake with a coconut-whipped cream center and chocolate on top.

Doesn't look like I made it in a microwave, does it?

I told some friends, and whoever I ran into while cooking it, and at 12:00 everyone gathered in the lobby to eat some birthday cake. The kitchen was closed by then and we didn't have knives or forks, but luckily the vending machines have chopsticks, so we grabbed all they had. At first I tried to cut it, but it seemed like a bit too much effort. So instead, we just handed everyone chopsticks and dug in. 

The carnage begins. We were like vultures descending on a carcass, there was nothing left but crumbs in a matter of minutes. And then Herve ate the crumbs.

Before the cake though, they had a surprise for me. Throughout the day I'd been seeing various friend hurry off, giving increasingly vague and/or overly elaborate (and yet still somehow vague) explanations to their destinations. As it turns out, they were all amassing to make me one of the nicest birthday presents I've ever received, especially from people I've only known for a month. It feels like I've been here so much longer already. I think because we all know we're leaving soon, we tend to skip the hesitational stages and dive straight into friendship.

This is the present they gave me. Those are Moomin characters. I love my friends here guys, they're great.

The collaborators were thus:

Organizer and Inking- Stephanie

Idea (in that they asked him what I would like on a poster)- Chris

Drawing- Susana (whom I have not met, but would apparently very much like)

Coloring- Erika and Momo

Seriously. All of the thanks. I just about melted when they handed this to me, it's so perfect. 

Stephanie explaining who made it, Tenshi documenting, and Herve smiling as I grin uncontrollably.

Also, look at that thing. Its like 2 1/2 feet tall. I'm pretty impressed.

The next day I started the second round of my festivities. There was a group of people headed to a semi-local variety/geeky/something store anyways for unrelated reasons, so we decided to join them. Only, instead of taking the bus like normal people, we biked. All the way. It took us maybe around 2.5 hours to get there, but that was partially because Bartosz's bike chain kept hopping the gear. We knew what was wrong but there was nothing we could do to fix it on the road, so we just lived with it til we got there.

Forever repairing.

"We" in this case refers to Bartosz, Chris and I. 

The bike trail though... I must mention the bike trail. It winds in between rice paddies and a river, and is one of the most gorgeous places I have ever had the pleasure of biking. I need to go back and actually take some pictures (I'm just stealing Bartosz's here).

So pretty!

We found the group who'd come by bus and walked around the store for a bit, I skyped Brett, and everyone bought some mystery posters from a grab box for 300 yen. We opened them later in an alley where we parked our bikes. Bart and I liked each-others' more so we traded.

An act which was documented, for whatever reason. Look at that strong trading stance!

Afterwards, we managed to sneak our bikes onto the train back into Akita (the city, not the school) but not on the next one we would need to take. So we decided to stay downtown, and went to a ramen/soba place for dinner. It was tasty.

Next, as I am now 20, which is the legal drinking age in this country, we kind of had to go out for a drink. And as this is Japan, and nomihoudai's exist (the all-you-can-drink places which I am still mildly dubious of) we went to a brewhouse Bartosz knew of and did that. It was actually quite good; decent beer, not too pricey, really nice atmosphere, and a few good friends. We had a pretty fun time there. However, afterwards, we had to ride our bikes home. Let me tell you, nothing sobers you up like biking for an hour and a half in the dark. At least it was a relatively uneventful way back, with only a few turn-arounds and the (by this point expected) breaking down of Bartosz's bike. 

When we got back to AIU, another friend of ours, Arisa, was waiting for us in her room with a strawberry-whipped cream roll cake she'd made for me. We collapsed exhausted onto her bed and gladly devoured the pieces she gave us, they were delicious. She put Mulan on and used a projector so we could watch it big on the wall. 

By this point it was roughly 1:00, and my birthday was officially over (in this country at least), so we all went home to get some nice, old-fashioned sleep. It was a hell of a day.