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Met with Andreas at 7:30 pm and we walked in the cool night to Yodakimpo, about 20 minutes form home. There we had dinner, and talked, or rather tried to talk. It was quite impassible because of a gang of birthday celebrators too loud celebrations.

Once we finished eating the waiter bowed deeply and said “sumimasen” (sorry) as if it was his fault the birthday celebrators were loud as a hundred steam trains’ in a echo room.

We ended the evening with Chie at Grotta. A bar not far from home.

Met Andreas and his Family, Stina, Emil, Simon, Ulf, and Elisabeth at Yasaka after work. We spent a few hours there eating and playing with the kids. Well, mostly Chie played with the kids… Killing them with Japanese imaginary swords. And they tried to kill her with “hand” guns, without success.

Once they kids got tired we brought the Baskin-Robbins ice cream that Chie had bought in Naka-Meguro. They happily ate and was surprisingly quiet for a while And I was a bit jealous since I had to eat grilled chicken wings, grilled bamboo shots and other grown-up dishes

First thing that happened at the office today was that my PC got stuck in trying to connect to our disk server. It needs the connection to synchronize my local documents with the server for backups. Usually there are some minor troubles slowing the PC down. But not like today.

I could not get anything done the first 1.5 hours. My plan was to finish up yesterday’s meeting notes within an hour and get to my Japanese lessen at 9 am. Now I had to cancel the lessons to finish the notes after my PC decided to work properly again… Around 9:30. After I restarted it a few time.

So the day did not start so great. But the ending was really nice.

Chie and I met Andreas at a yaki-niku restaurant in Meguro for dinner. We had a lot of different types of meat, which we grilled over a bed of charcoal. And talked about anything and everything.

We had enjoyed the dinner so much that once it ended it felt too early to end the evening. Instead of going home we took a short taxi ride to Red Pepper in Ebisu.

They are always so friendly at Red Pepper. And this night was not different. We got our own room in a kind of outdoor tent space connected to the kitchen heated by a kerosene heater. In the cosy heat by ourselves we had desert. Grappa for the ladies (sorry Andreas I could not resists it ) and pancakes and ice cream for the man

We had invited Andreas and Martin for dinner at home tonight. Martin could not make it since he had a meeting until 8:30 pm. But Andreas could make it and we had shabu-shabu. We ate and talked until well past 11 pm.

Once the last grappa glass was empty Andreas went home. Chie went to bed. And I went to work… Well, not work work but I went to work cleaning up after the dinner. It is kind of my duty since Chie usually, like today, do most of the preparation of the dinners

When I was almost home I got a phone call from a friend working Sony Ericsson, Andreas. Surprise, surprise… He was waiting in the lobby of Chie’s and my building (well, at least it feels like our building).

He joined my to our apartment. Tried my home made ginger ale. And then we went to Yasaka for dinner.

Sometimes peculiar things happen. Like tonight. Tanaka-san was working. He’s from Osaka. Andreas show up and he is from Malmö (at least living in Malmo now… Hmm, not now since he is living in Tokyo now… Ahh, forget it!).

My point is that Malmö is the Swedish version of Osaka. People are a little bit 馬鹿 (baka – stupid/crazy). If you read this blog regularly you may remember I wrote about Osaka people some time ago and how you can “kill” them by shooting with your hand. And also that we soon afterwards found out that Tanaka-san is from Osaka.

Please keep on reading, I’m soon at my point Andreas and Tanaka-san found each other. Now, that is my point.

They were laughing and killing each other the whole night long. Though how they communicated I have no idea. Body language?

Andreas seemed to enjoy Yasaka. Chie and I have always enjoyed Yasaka, and this night was no exception.