Wilkommen!

And we're off! In a scant 6 hours, Ellie and I will board a bus for Hiroshima, to begin more adventures together. Last night I organized a welcome party for bigsis with all my Tamagawa friends as well as two new friends, a girl Yukiko and her cousin Gouki. When I say "I organized" I of course mean, "I made Mami-chan organize for me," referring to Mami-chan, my handler and sometime slave, who is amazing and strangely does kind of whatever I need her to do, like, all the time (but no, not like that. eeeeewwwwww). She's pretty amazing. So for last night she got together a whole posse of my Tamagawa townspeople and got us a reservation at the nice Izakaya located conviniently exactly across the street from where I live.

Oh, and when I say "welcome party" I mean "surprise party." I told Ellie that I'd made a reservation for us at a restaurant nearby. Just the two of us, you know: go, have some nice food, just a quiet night, catching up. Then BAM! Twenty people waiting for us at a steamy, noisy, super crowded Izakaya, set to welcome us in with a very big un-Japanese "AAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!"

A perfect surprise welcome for my sister. Many many dishes of small mostly deep fried mostly seafood, lots and lots and lots of drinking and eating (Ellie fell in love with something called Chuu-Hai, a fizzy fruit flavored girly drink based with Sho-chuu, an awful kind of vodka like drink. Ellie's was Lychie flavored ... uuuuugh!), lots of fun half-communication and question and answer, and I think a really good time had by all. OK, for now we're off to parts unknown!!!!