I’ve been really busy lately, and I’ve ended up falling behind on the blog. Sorry! It’s one of those traps where I’m doing lots of stuff, so I have lots to write about, but no time to write it down.
We had a fairly successful matchmaking dinner the other night. Kuniko was setting up one of her friends with one of her coworkers, and we watched them get to know each other a little bit over a pretty good Korean dinner.
I tried to get my driver’s license, but was held up on a technicality. It’s a long, boring story, but I’m going to need to write to the California DMV and hope that they can dig something up from their database from 1986. I’m not optomistic that it will work out. Until then, I’m off the streets.
I met up with Komori sensei, and we had a couple of beers and even some sushi at the underground sushi restaurant. As usual, it was fun to hang out with him, and he had an interesting idea for doing an English conversation course using his spare studio on Sundays. We’ll see what develops there.
Yesterday was a full day of shopping, culminating in the purchase of a plasma television. We didn’t really intend to buy one yesterday, but we found the one we wanted for around $600 cheaper than anywhere else. That’s right – and it’s not a floor model or used or the wrong serial number or anything like that. I think we stumbled on a sales manager that needed to move some TVs out of his store before the end of the month.
Here’s the part that blew me away – he showed us the price tag, and then offered an even bigger discount. Then, once we accepted the quoted price, he asked if we had an elevator where we lived. Since we don’t, there was an extra 2000 yen charge for the delivery guys to haul it up to our apartment and set it up. I was already nodded my head imagining the low price that he quoted was starting to get higher, but he subtracted the 2000 yen from the price, to cover the delivery charge. And he apologized the whole time. Service in Japan is pretty amazing sometimes. The TV arrives on Monday night.
That night Ai-chan and Chiemi-chan came all the way out to visit us in our new place. It’s always fun to have them over – they are really nice people and fun to eat and drink with. Kuniko had worked hard to make several dishes that used up all the vegetables that we had received from her father, and the evening started off pretty calmly with conversation over wine with dinner.
Things got a little more lively when Ai-chan had her first taste of tequila, and soon everyone got into the act. I was drinking two shots for each one that Ai-chan drank, and in between we finished a couple of bottles of wine, including a delicious Chianti that we brought home from Italy.
We finished all the food and moved on to dessert, and had some dessert wine interspersed with tequila shots and some cream pudding that Ai-chan had brought along. Around 10:30 we had to break up the party, since it was a long way back for them. We were all bummed out, since things were really going well. I think we decided to do it again just before a weekend when everyone can stay over and not worry about the last train. It was a great night, and both Kuniko and I went to bed a little bit drunk.
