I Didn't Die!

So, today is the day that Erik (The Global Trip) arrived. At around 9 am this morning, my mom called and woke me up - I didn't even know who it was at first (sorry mom!) due to that groggy totally out of it thing. As we were chatting Erik called to say that he had a layover so wouldn't be getting in until 7 instead of 5. Whehoo! That meant I could sleep for another couple of hours. I ended up getting up around 11:30 and the cleaning bonanza began. I was a cleaning fiend. I was decisive and threw things away! I noticed many more things that I want to throw away too, but will do that another day when I have more time. I finished dragging down the the 6 garbage bags of stuff just before it was time to leave to go and meet Erik.

I arrived at the station just before 7:30, which was just after a train from the airport had arrived. I didn't see Erik though so I just sat down and did some work on my laptop. Just before the next train pulled in I noticed my phone was ringing... and it was Erik. He had left the platform and was standing outside a ticket gate unable to get back in. So we met up and finally - the poor guy had to wait around for 30 minutes. (Mom - Erik looks like a turtle with his backpack on ;) I'll get a picture when he leaves for you).

We hit the grocery store on the way home as well as the bank. Then we came home, dropped Erik's stuff off and went out for dinner to the fugu restaurant. Even though I have been in Japan for five and a half years, I have never had fugu (blowfish). I know, that's sad. So we went out to the fugu restaurant for dinner and had the fugu course menu. It was so good! And we didn't die! We had a fugu skin salad as an appetizer, then fugu sashimi (raw fish) which was really nice and deep fried fugu. Then we had nabe - hot pot. That was super cool! Basically there was a burner built into the table. The waitress came by, put a bamboo basket on top of the burner, a piece of waxed paper inside, a metal plate on the bottom and filled it with broth - and the thing didn't go up in flames! Then the waitress came back with a plate full of veggies and pieces of fugu. The fugu was so fresh that the chunks were pulsing still. I kid you not. It was super cool. The nabe was delicious and we were stuffed, but then there was the soup dish. Basically rice and egg poured into the remaining broth from the hot pot. So we ate that and then were given a scoop of ice cream for dessert and pretty much had to waddle home. I'm very glad that I finally went and ate it. The course was expensive (fugu in general is) but i was great.

And the best part of the day - I didn't die from eating fugu. Or from cleaning (I never clean). Amazing.