Writing to stay awake

Man am I sleepy this morning. Totally worth it, though.

Yesterday was one of the most fun days I've had here so far, which is good because it totally redeemed the whole weekend that I spent basically sleeping. Not because I was being lazy, but I just still didn't feel like I was back to 100 percent and so sleeping seemed like a really good idea.

On Saturday night I texted Aya just to say hi, and it's lucky I did because she ended up inviting me to come with her and a bunch of friends on Sunday to play ping pong. Awesome. I hadn't played ping pong in a long time, so I was bad, but it was fuuuuun. We met at 5:00 and went to this place that had 9 floors with different things on each floor (arcade, bowling, cosmic bowling, billiards, karaoke, and ping pong). They had about 15 or 20 tables and you rented a table by the half-hour (paddles and balls were provided for free). It was so much fun. We got two tables because there ended up being 8 of us altogether, 3 girls and the rest guys. All the guys except for me drank lots of beer. I wanted to, but I was still a bit sick, plus I had work today, so I just had water with the girls, haha. One of the guys there, Taki, is actually a ping pong instructor at a school, and he is of course quite good, so he became 'sensei' to everybody else and helped us out with technique and stuff, which was also sweet. We played there for about two hours and when we divided up the cost of it, it only ended up being 850 Yen (like 7 bucks) per person! Great deal!

Afterwards we went to eat at an underground restaurant where we got a private room and everyone drank more and had great food and it was sooo fun. Some other people met up with us, too, including 2 English guys, George and Darren. who were both very cool. We stayed there until about 11, when they closed, and then went our separate ways.

I have been emailing a lot with Aya and become quite close with her and I wasn't sure I would get a chance to see her again because she works a LOT, so I gave her the CD I made her and she started to cry! It really surprised me. She said something like "Until now it had always just felt like you would stay here forever, but now it's really hitting me that you're going to leave." It was sad, but also very flattering and it made me very happy. She and Taki also decided that they are going to throw a "Sayonara party" for me, which will probably be this coming Saturday, so I'm so excited about that.

How's the USA? Have people gone iPhone crazy? They haven't announced when they're gonna release it here, I think, but apparently Steve Jobs (head of Apple) is really good friends with the head of one of the major phone companies here, so that company is going to get it. Lucky.

The other day Shino-san's phone rang and the ringtone was the "Sex and the City" theme song! It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud.

I do have pictures from ping pong and Aya also has some from ping pong (some with me playing, I think) and from the restaurant, so as soon as I get all those together, I'll load them up for you.

Love, Lawrence