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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

In the afternoon Chie and I went to Shinjuku for some New Year’s shopping. We bought some mame (Japanese snacks). It was almost impossible to move around for all the people.

Our main purpose was not to buy mame though. Today was the 29th or 2-9 which in Japanese is ni-ku. Niku also means meat in Japanese so what better food to eat on one of the last days of the year than yaki-niku (BBQ)? We though going to Korean BBQ had no better alternative anyway. And so did Mina-sensei, so she joined us.

After the dinner we rolled to ChakaChaka for another drink. We’ve been to ChakaChaka a few times before, for instance after the last Gamarjobat show. It is owned by Taro-san, a friend of Chie. He always seems happy when we come there and usually joins us at the table. He did so today as well… Until a girl turned up that was more interesting

We were up for some meat for today’s dinner. Chie and I went to Jojoen a quite nice yaki-niku (BBQ) restaurant in Naka-Meguro. We ate until we were so full we hardly could walk out of there. Yummy!