the party/dinner was nice. i met several of my brother's english students, and several friends he has made here in japan. nearly all japanese people i meet are so very kind and friendly. all of his students had gifts for me and i felt like a big dummy because ... well, because i am a big dummy. i was given some lovely flowers that of course i cannot take home so that makes me sad. i'll have to take pictures to save the memory.

after the party, my brother, princess, tatsuhiko and one of my brother's students - mr. kokichi (oh man i know i've spelled that wrong. i will just call him 'sushi-san' from now on. that's his nickname anyway) who is 69 years old - went to the fiddler british pub again in takadanobaba. sushi-san was all giving shiatsu massages to everyone. i wanted to bring him home with me and hire him for those massages every day. he told me my shoulders are too hard - 'like a japanese farmer'. we met some guys there. one from china, one from bhutan, one from the philippines and one from canada. the guy from canada took a picture of the whole group that he promised to email me when he gets back and "figures out how to get the pictures onto his pc." i hope he does figure it out, because it was a great photo.

we left the fiddler a little before midnight because we needed to catch the last train. sucks how the trains quit running way earlier than everything closes. we missed the train anyway. duh. so we called tatsuhiko and he wasn't on his train yet, so he met us back at the fiddler. gary & princess were going to go try to find a room to sleep in until 5am when the trains start running again, so they left and around 2am tatsuhiko and i went to some karaoke place. so maybe he is my new style japanese boyfriend after all. heh. we sang songs (mostly he did because i think my voice sucks) until about 15 minutes until 6am and then left to go meet gary & princess at the train station. we got home around 7am i think.

that pretty much shot today to hell. we all slept very late. tonight we went to see vanilla sky. it was in english with japanese subtitles. beer in the theater in japan. the theater is owned by warner brothers so before the movie started there was a little cartoon - i think it was one of those "movie manners" deals - and bugs bunny, daffy duck and the whole gang were speaking japanese.

the movie kind of freaked me out. not so much on it's own, but because last night i had a dream that involved things that in a way ended up happening in this movie ... and i didn't know this stuff happened in the movie. i mean, i was pretty clueless about the plot of this movie before seeing it. so i had that weird dream yesterday and then i go to the movie and a lot of my weird dream plays out on the screen with actors in the roles instead of me and people i know. it was very odd. i know that probably doesn't make much sense, but i'm trying to keep it vague so that i don't possibly spoil the movie for someone who hasn't seen it yet.

i've only got one more full day here, so we're going to try to get an early start tomorrow. see how much we can cram into a day.