Cute Ornaments

For my birthday, our friend and coworker Saori gave me this cute gift. They are two little dolls representing the Emperor and Empress, for Hina Matsuri. I think I actually have them sitting on the wrong sides in the pictures, but I have fixed them since. They sit on their own little tatami mat.

These are some other gifts we got from our Japanese teacher, Ikuko. They are origami dolls. We have them hanging on our wall.

 

This is our calender for the Year of the Rabbit. It is also a gift from Saori.

Will's 25th Birthday

Will had his 25th birthday yesterday. We went out with our boss, Takada-san, co-worker, Saori, and Yusuke to celebrate. Here are some pictures of the evening. 

At the restaurant. 

Yusuke and Saori. Yusuke is an english student, but he also works at Takada-San's study school.

Will looks drunk, but he's not.

Some sort of fish shish kebab with teriyaki sauce. It was delicious!

Soy beans!

Chicken!

Sashimi which is raw fish. This is sea bass. I ate it, I cant believe it.

Here's the prof that I ate the sashimi. I also gave in to the peace sign. i am so ashamed.

Chicken on a stick!

What meal isn't complete without tofu!

Some sort of weird bean. I don't know what it is. But we ate them. They might be broad beans, says Will. You can also dip them in salt.

A variety of Japanese pickles.

This looks good, but don't be deceived by it's appearance. It was some sort of sashimi with yams. I didn't care for it at all. But, everyone else seemed to enjoy it, including Will. It was a bit slimy for my taste.

Octopus and rice.

Chicken and rice

Tempura, delicious!

The waiter and Yusuke.

Takada-san and Saori

Saori and Yusuke

As we all know soy sauce is a common sauce used in Asian food. There was a very cute bottle of soy sauce on our table. I joked and said I wanted to take it home. Saori then told us that you can sometimes actually ask a waiter at a restaurant for tableware and they will usually just give it to you, if you seem to be a visitor from out of town. So, at the end of the night Takada-san did just that....and now we have the cutest little soy sauce bottle. 

It says "shoyu" which mean soy sauce. That's what I was told, anyway. I can't read Kanji.

Now the drinks:

Aoi Ringo Chu-hi. It translates to blue apple chu-hi...even though it's green.

wino

Now for the cake:

oh yeah cake!

This was a staged photo-op.

A lovely present from Saori:

The gift is a traditional boys day display. It's very exciting! Something we will treasure for a life time. I was also given a girls day set for my birthday (blog to come). 

We finished the evening off with karaoke. It was a lot of fun, I mostly sang show-tunes. We really enjoyed ourselves!