Not so exciting birthday (but still pretty nice)

Yesterday was my birthday. It seems to be the busiest day of the year for everyone I know in Japan. I tried to find someone to go have dinner with me, or do anything fun at all, but in the end I was all alone this year too. My friends were: working (many), had to get up early today (for work, or interviews for work), had dinner with their girlfriend instead, were sick, went to a birthday party (not mine), did not feel like going out, were out of town, or just in general did not have time.

I also had to work, of course. I was thinking of taking a day off, but my professor decided it was very important to have a meeting very early in the morning on this Monday so I had to get up obscenely early and work instead. In the end, our professor did not actually show up at the scheduled time (he overslept or something), so we spent 15 minutes or so just sitting around waiting. And wishing we could have slept longer instead, haha. He showed up later and we had a meeting that did not turn out the way I had hoped.

Ma- Bo- Don

The meeting finished around lunch time, and I went to the student cafeteria and had lunch there. This week they have a "autumn vegetable ma-bo-don" special dish, which I tried. It was nice.

I worked some more but got tired and went home without doing more than around 30 minutes of unpaid overtime.

A zipper glued to my arm

On my way home, the last people to reply to "do you have time to celebrate my birthday today?" came in with their "no"s, so I did not really have much to do. I bought some theater glue on my way home and glued stuff to my arm in preparation for a Halloween party I want to go to. It was quite fun, though the glue hurts more than I expected.

Avocado and cheese hamburger

Around 9, I got hungry so I walked to the hamburger shop named "Tack" (which happens to mean "thank you" in Swedish, but that is just a coincidence) which is a 10 minutes walk from where I live. I had a nice hamburger and a glass of water there. A young girl showed up and talked about Aerosmith music videos with me for awhile. She was pretty funny. She also asked to see a magic trick, so I did two tricks for her and gave her the business card of our magic bar. She said she often goes to another place in the same building.

A "shot glass" from Chicago, with Four Roses Black whiskey in it.

I then decided to try to find someone I know to talk to and the best bet is usually to go to a place where one of my friends work (since they have to be at work). I went to a bar where a friend of mine works as a bartender. He was pretty busy with other customers, so we did not get to talk very much. He did however give me a shot of whiskey for free from a bottle he received as a birthday present that week (his birthday is exactly one week before mine). I do not like alcohol, but this was the best whiskey I have ever tried. I would still not actually drink it if there was for instance water or something tasty available, but it was the best whiskey at least, haha.

There was a girl in the bar who came up to me and said that she wants to have a baby. More specifically she wants to have a half Japanese (she is Japanese) and half Caucasian baby, since she works in a maternity ward and all the babies born to mixed couples there are super cute. So she explained that she wants this half Japanese half Caucasian baby, and noticed that I am Caucasian, ..., and thus I should now other Caucasians so maybe I could introduce some nice man to her? Her thinking makes sense, I guess, but the implied "I am totally uninterested in you, of course" nuance of her Japanese could maybe be considered slightly impolite? Interesting country... Well, she did say "happy birthday" to me, so she was polite in general.

Then I left and my birthday was over. Not exactly the most exciting birthday I ever had, but more or less what my birthdays usually are like. Total count of presents received during birthday: 0.

I got one plastic egg toy three weeks ago, and a handkerchief two weeks ago, though. And my parents said they sent a card that might arrive during this week.