A Short Week Review

It's been a rather interesting week, lots of things going on as usual.

Thursday, from a new group of friends I've met, the man that put it together, Aki, has left for Tokyo after moving the reminder of his belongings out of his apartment this weekend. The move was the result of his lab relocating to Tokyo University and him with it. He returned on Wednesday night and stayed over the weekend where he'd ride it back to Tokyo this morning. Interestingly, the group threw an impromptu BBQ by a river at 11:00 pm on a Thursday outside in the cold as a farewell party to the guy. I was informed about it at about 10:00 pm on that day. Interesting, to say the least!

Saturday was the lab meeting as usual and I confirmed to attend a "talking party" organized by an English school to drop in and chat with Japanese students studying English for an evening. I decided to go to hopefully meet some interesting people. There was one guy I gave my contact to who is an English teacher that came to Sendai from Montreal, we ended up exchanging contacts after some coffee and perhaps might arrange for a BBQ on a beach next weekend. Of an interesting note, it is quite easy for foreigners to make friends with other foreigners-- by default, we have lots in common.

Sunday (today), I was supposed to head South out of Sendai to a "Hawaiian" Spa Resort with a bunch of friends. Unfortunately that plan fell through because the guy that had originally agreed to give everyone a ride bailed. My friend noted to me that "well since we're Latino, things get planned and changed at the last minute... then there is my friends back in Vancouver which operate on the same basis. Anyways, the trip has hence been postponed.

I did arrange to meet up with another friend of mine for lunch and a short hike... unfortunately that too fell through when she took a nap and failed to wake up until 3:00 pm! We were supposed to meet up by noon. Actually I expected to meet at 1 pm because the friend of mine is perpetually late and when we arrange to meet at some time, she always arrives about an hour late! Sometimes I wonder if her clocks are set in the wrong time zone... but anyways, I still got my laundry done.

Anyways, we finally met up for some coffee, hit a hot spring (because today was terribly cold) and went for some yakiniku (fried meat) for the evening. Still, I wasn't entirely pleased with the schedule being pushed so far back, but a good time was had. I had originally arranged to meet up with some other friends of mine by 5 pm because one of them had just recently returned from New York and I hadn't seen them together in ages.

And so, there is my brief summary of what's been going on this week.