An amazing five days - boring diary post

(These diary posts are just to help me remember what I have done - I don't plan to write or edit them particularly well - sorry gentle readers!)

Well, I can truly say I achieved my goal of having a fabulous time this weekend and really taking advantage of all the days off.

I'm so glad I didn't go anywhere because I got to save time and money and spend lots of time with Rai. I also managed to do lots of stuff in Tokyo.

Thursday: Rai stayed home from creche and I took a well-deserved metnal health day after a bad night's sleep, a persistent semi-cold and an accidental sleep in. We took up the invitation from Declan, Meghan and Brian (Meisei teachers) to go and climb Mount Takao. We took a few (wrong trains) and got there in about an hour and a half, took the cable car up the VERY steep hill and then climbed up the final 40 minutes or so to the top past an amazing amount of temples (I pity the poor monks who used to live / worship there before the cable car was built!). We took a wrong turn on teh way down (took track 5 instead of track 4) and had to back-track a bit which tested all our muscles pushing 18 kilo Rai up the hill in his buggy. It made it quite fun and memorable though and we all felt we had had a good workout.

Friday: Rai didn't want to go to creche so I kep him home and we ended up going to Omotesando to see the amazing five (six?) story Kiddyland toystore. We also went to eh Design Festa gallery and had a delicious lunch nextdoor of chijimi (Korean pancake) which I cooked on the table in front of us.

Saturday: A relaxing day was punctuated by a trip to the supermarket to buy ingredients for my pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. At 5pm we left the house to go to Seiji's old workmate's friend's Halloween party. Had a great time talking to the hosts and otehr guests Raj, Dio, Yuko, and some crazy Japanese guy whose name I can't remember.

Sunday: We were pretty tired after a late night, but I decided to take Rai to the Meisei Cultural Festival and give Seiji some time off. It turned out we spent FIVE hours there and had an amazing time. Some highlights included the chamber music club's cafe - we had coffee and cake for only 300 yen and listened to the most gorgeous live violin and cello music; the manga club's cafe - all the members were dressed up as various characters and acted COMPLETELY like otaku (Japanese geeky salarymen) - even though they are only about 18 years old; the movie club's short movies; the live concert performed by various rock bands; visiting the computer club's room and checking out the various projects they had made (none of which worked); looking at the beautiful ikebana design from the flower arrangement club and putting stickers next to our favourites; watching the "ningyou geki" (puppet show) and laughing our guts out at the simple minds of children; seeing lots of students enjoying themselves and truly being themselves (not often seen in class!).

Monday: I finally attended a session at JALT, also checked out some books, got a few freebies, chatted to Craig at his poster session and got home by 3pm to have a sleep and do some cooking.

Tomorrow's plan: Go to Akihabara with Susan and check out the otaku shops - a post on it will surely follow : )