Final Thoughts for the Summer

I can't believe how quickly these 10 weeks have flown by.  We're all packed up and leaving for the airport in less than two hours.  Actually, it's funny, but I'm writing this at 9:30 am Saturday in Tokyo, and we will be landing at exactly the same time in California.  Lucky us, we get to do Saturday twice!

I remember at the end of last summer how desperately ready to come home I was.  And to be fair, I'm sure a big part of that was visiting 4 places over the summer rather than one, combined with how difficult our trip in China was.  But this summer, I feel a lot more settled, and a little sad to be leaving, although I am really looking forward to seeing family and friends.

This summer, I feel like we proved that we could live here in the future and be really happy.  We made friends (that got job offers last night, so they'll definitely be back next year!!), found favorite restaurants, and starting making a little place for ourselves in Tokyo.  So, whatever happens I believe that John and I have a beautiful future ahead of us, and I know that we'll keep working to make Japan a part of it.

Cake Buffet!

Japan is full of amazing things.  Most days I discover at least one thing that I love.  One of these discoveries was the fact that cake buffets exist.  You pay 1480 yen and get 90 minutes of all you can eat cake.  But besides cake they have lots of drinks and real food like pasta and curry to keep you from going into a sugar coma.

Weeks ago Raku and I decided we needed to go, but we finally got around to it yesterday.  That reminds me, I haven't talked about Raku yet have I?  One of the other summer associates working with Grant is here with his fiance, so we were introduced.  And we have so much in common.  Not only are we in the whole coming to Japan with a significant other situation, we could totally relate to the whole being in a relationship with a law student/future lawyer thing.  On top of that she just graduated with her MSW, but most importantly she's super fun!  Basically we were destined to be friends.  And it's been so great.  We go running together (she is an excellent motivator) and have all kinds of fun adventures.  We also plot together to figure out what to do with our lives once we actually live here.

Anyways, enough gushing about Raku, on to the pictures!

I think this pretty much says it all.

There were probably 30-40 types of cake, as well as jello, gummy things, and ice cream.

Our first selections.

Raku decided to go healthy with her next selection.  (And I'm sorry this picture is sideways, I've tried uploading multiple times, restarting my computer, etc. and it will not upload in the correct orientation no matter what I do).

Again, sorry it's sideways.  But, as you can see, I obviously know what the priorities should be at a cake buffet.

After our culinary adventure we set off to buy fake glasses.  There is this hilarious new trend where girls are wearing super thick black glasses.  My favorite ones are the kind that don't even bother to have lenses.  So, we clearly needed some.

I really loved these, even though I don't look like it in the picture.  But sadly, they were sunglasses, and that is just not good enough.

Raku's final selection.  We seriously spent about 2 hours trying on glasses searching for the perfect ones.

Mine!  I thought they were great because they combined 2 trends (floral print on everything and huge glasses), but John was horrified because he is a purist and thinks ONLY black frames are acceptable.  (let's just take a second to remember that we are wearing huge fake glasses without lenses...how serious do we need to be?)