Yankee doodle

It's been a patriotic few days, with the celebrations of Canada Day (which exists, it turns out) on July 1st leading into American Independence Day and (far more importantly) my birthday on the 4th. The "Summer Timetable" has kicked off at work meaning that my day starts and finishes half an hour earlier now, so we had a nice early start to the weekend's festivities. A nice late end, too - I took a day off yesterday for birthday eats and shopping, but I spelled it wrong and accidentally wrote "personal business" instead.

Finishing up at the entirely civilised hour of 5 on Friday, I met Lis and we had a bit of a wander around until it was time to head out on the subway to Sifton's place, which is about as far away as you can get before you have to stop calling it Kobe. From my limited knowledge, Canada Day seems to be much like Australia Day - a good excuse to put on obnoxious flag hats and tattoos and get really drunk. We huddled in around a little table laid heavy with snacks as pots bubbled in the background with everything you can imagine putting on chips. "Poutine" is my new favourite Canadian thing - essentially a big plate of crinkle cut or shoestring fries swimming in gravy and cheese. There are apparently lots of regional variations and people add their own toppings, so we were treated to one with tomato sauce, capsicum and mushrooms as well; it was like nachos had stopped even pretending to be healthy. We ate, drank and merried for several hours before excusing ourselves to get the regrettably early last train back to our neck of the woods. The maple leaf temporary tattoos came out in the shower, but the poutine will live forever.

After that and a day of wandering the shops and boardwalks in Harborland on Saturday, we decided to just have a nice relaxing Sunday at home, which as usual had the opposite effect. We ended up abruptly going to see Thor which finished at the witching hour of 6pm, all but guaranteeing dinner out. We went to Ajiajia and Lisa treated me to an official birthday dinner where we spent the next 90 minutes celebrating the best way we could imagine - stuffing ourselves with banana-sized prawns, dim sum and egg tarts. All you can eat and drink seems like a bad idea straight afterwards, right up until straight before the next time.

On Monday we slept in and then headed out to Namba in Osaka to meet Abel, for hour upon weary hour of wandering through games shops and a surprisingly colossal second birthday meal he treated us to at a Mexican restaurant. By virtue of the special occasion, Lisa's nerd-patience was extremely generous and she seemed particularly contented for the bits we were wandering around the wholesale "kitchen street" area looking at outrageously realistic plastic food and $600 chef knives. I also won a pair of shoes in a UFO catcher, which I must say is a first. It was an excellent end to a very "me" weekend and I appreciate being spoiled rotten by everyone. The festival of Mike concludes on Saturday with a 3rd and final meal in Harborland with the lads and ladettes for lashings of red meat and beer. This is how the Vikings would have celebrated their 28th birthdays if they lived in Kobe.