Celebrating 27 years of not dying

Exams have officially started now, which means a whole lot of not much for a couple of weeks until we break up for summer holidays. This can only be a blessing because I seem to have become a crotchety old loafer since my birthday on Sunday. I'm sitting in the staffroom nodding off in the cool of the air conditioner, grumbling at the thought of having to do anything and frowning at everyone that walks past.

My pants? Up to my sternum.

I shouldn't really be grumpy given how much I've been spoiled over the past few days. Yesterday I was taken out to a far away sushi restaurant on the outskirts of a little fish market somewhere in Kobe. Like most good things in Japan, it was completely packed despite being incredibly hidden away and inconvenient; getting there involved walking through a locked-up looking carpark, past a series of forklifts and into a corridor of shuttered shopfronts, which obviously screams "very nice restaurant" if you're Japanese. The advantage of being right next to the water was the freshness, of course - for all intents and purposes, the fishermen were throwing today's catch off their hooks directly into my mouth and that's way nicer than it sounds. I'm still very unadventurous when it comes to trying new sushi though - the best I did beyond my usual tuna/salmon/prawn/scallop comfort zone was eating a shellfish thing that looked like a plant leaf. I'm quite happy to assume sea urchin tastes how it looks - like little yellow tongues made of sorrow.

This was about as healthy as things got though - as mentioned, Sunday was my 27th year of smiling awkwardly through the Happy Birthday song and I celebrated it the only way I know how - with food. Once beer o'clock hit on Friday night, we headed to a Mexican restaurant that turned out to be excellent, which in Japan is like finding a perpetual motion machine that turns out to grant wishes. The only downside was that it turned out to be cruelly close to the gym - I can foresee a lot of good work undone by quesadilla binges. Among other things, we thought the chorizo omelette option sounded interesting, which sounded a lot less exotic when the waiter shouted out "sausage and egg taco". Lisa wondered out loud whether they were open for breakfast - it obviously sounded like something she'd like to wake up to. Having had our fill of burritos, nachos, salad and any cutlery or small children that may have stumbled into the line of fire, we headed hopefully towards a coffee place which turned out to be shut. That was probably for the best.

The next day, the hot and sticky weather turned into hot, sticky rainstormy weather so we reluctantly had to cancel our triathlon plans and just go shopping instead. Thankfully, there are several almost entirely covered routes direct from our front door to very large shopping malls and we found ourselves in full spend mode with minimal soaking. Lisa had planned to buy me a couple of pairs of work pants for my birthday which we both admitted was probably the least interesting present in history, so luckily we found a nice jacket instead. Once Japan has turned off its steam bath setting in a few months, I should even be able to wear it. I did end up buying some lighter summer pants which the tailor altered while I enjoyed a coffee. This was less posh than it sounds - the tailoring cost $3 and the cup of coffee was $2 and bottomless.

Before long, it was time to head to dinner proper so we met up with Andy, Goran and Kym and went over to a restaurant called "Ajiajia", which had almost as many customers as dotty letters. Being all you can everything, we were handed a menu and I had the pleasure of ordering nearly everything off it. "Everything off this page thanks," I said, "and everything here except that one. And 3 of them." The guy mumbled something about an extra charge if we didn't finish everything, but he had clearly underestimated our dumpling eating ability. We polished off the lot and then had 2 more rounds - it was a bad night to be fried or covered with cheese. More wine, more of those prawn ones, bring me the damn dessert menu. We did end up running into the best kind of trouble though, when after we had eaten our weight in ice cream and donuts, the birthday cake showed up. They had even gone to the trouble of stencilling "Happy Birthday" in icing sugar, so I pushed through the pain barrier and hit the agony wall to show my gratitude. Nothing a little karaoke couldn't fix, of course. All up, it was an excellent night and we have a new place for hungry (and thin) guests to eat. The next day, we decided to get some fresh air and exercise by walking down to the convenience store for supplies... then we gave up and got the bus home.

I may need to get my pants tailored again.